Publications

AUSCERT Week in Review for 11th June 2021 Greetings, This week, we’re pleased to share the following blog piece by our AUSCERT2021 Member Organisation of the Year – team ATO (Australian Taxation Office). Congratulations ATO, and in particular to Cody and Daniel for their efforts and representation of the ATO team at the conference, a well-deserved win! In the coming weeks, we will be sharing a couple more of these blog articles featuring our other award winners from AUSCERT2021. On the topic of the AUSCERT2021 conference, as per tradition, we’re slowly releasing the various recordings of our annual conference presentations and talks on our YouTube channel, please feel free to view them here. We hope folks were able to get through all of June 2021’s Patch Tuesday fixes. Please refer to our highlighted bulletins and articles below. A quick shout out to our colleague Narayan who’d processed 74 security bulletins in a single day on Wednesday this week, no small feat. Well done Narayan! Last but not least, we’re excited to share Episode 2 of the AUSCERT “Share today, save tomorrow” podcast series. Episode 2 features Lukasz Gogolkiewicz, Head of Corporate Security at SEEK and is titled “Crossing Into The Blue Team In Cyber Security.” Be sure to check it out. Our podcast is also available via Spotify, Apple Podcast and Google Podcast. Until next week everyone, have a great weekend. Microsoft June 2021 Patch Tuesday fixes 6 exploited zero-days, 50 flaws Date: 2021-06-08 Author: Bleeping Computer [See related bulletins ASB-2021.0114 through to 119, of note is the ALERT for ASB-2021.0116.] Today is Microsoft’s June 2021 Patch Tuesday, and with it comes fixes for seven zero-day vulnerabilities and a total of 50 flaws, so Windows admins will be scrambling to get devices secured. Microsoft has fixed 50 vulnerabilities with today’s update, with five classified as Critical and forty-five as Important. Scammers capitalise on pandemic as Australians lose record $851 million to scams Date: 2021-06-07 Author: ACCC Australians lost over $851 million to scams in 2020, a record amount, as scammers took advantage of the pandemic to con unsuspecting people, according to the ACCC’s latest Targeting Scams report released today. The report compiles data from Scamwatch, ReportCyber, other government agencies and 10 banks and financial intermediaries, and is based on more than 444,000 reports. Investment scams accounted for the biggest losses, with $328 million, and made up more than a third of total losses. Romance scams were the next biggest category, costing Australians $131 million, while payment redirection scams resulted in $128 million of losses. Govt to mandate the Essential Eight cyber security controls Date: 2021-06-09 Author: iTnews The federal government is set to mandate the Essential Eight cyber security controls for all 98 non-corporate Commonwealth entities, four years after they were first developed. The Attorney-General’s Department revealed the step change in government cyber security policy in its response to last year’s parliamentary committee report into cyber resilience. The hard truth about ransomware: we aren’t prepared, it’s a battle with new rules, and it hasn’t… Date: 2021-06-09 Author: Medium [Note: this is a lengthy read, approx. 20 minutes, but is considered by our Principal Analyst as a thoughtful and timely contribution to the conversation about the modern ransomware threat.] We are rebuilding entire economies around technology, while having some fundamental issues reducing foundations to quicksand. What we are seeing currently is a predictable crisis, which hasn’t yet near peaked. I’m not sure people generally understand the situation yet. The turning circle to taking action is large. With this post, I hope to lay out the reality, and some harsh truths people need to hear. Australian Federal Police and FBI nab criminal underworld figures in worldwide sting using encrypted app Date: 2021-06-08 Author: ABC News More than 200 members of Australia’s mafia and bikie underworld have been charged in the nation’s largest-ever crime sting, police say. As part of a three-year collaboration between the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), authorities say underworld figures were tricked into communicating via an encrypted app that had been designed by police. The app, known as AN0M, was used by organised crime gangs around the world to plan executions, mass drug importations and money laundering. Authorities say they were able to read up to 25 million messages in real-time. JBS paid $11 million to REvil ransomware, $22.5M first demanded Date: 2021-06-10 Author: Bleeping Computer JBS, the world’s largest beef producer, has confirmed that they paid an $11 million ransom after the REvil ransomware operation initially demanded $22.5 million. On May 31, JBS was forced to shut down some of its food production sites after the REvil ransomware operators breached their network and encrypted some of its North American and Australian IT systems. ESB-2021.2019 – Intel Products: Multiple vulnerabilities Intel released firmware updates to address multiple vulnerabilities. ESB-2021.1994 – BIG-IP (all modules): Multiple vulnerabilities A flaw was found in Nettle Cryptographic Library which affects F5 BIG-IP modules. ESB-2021.1984 – Adobe Photoshop: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote with user interaction Adobe has released updates for Photoshop for Windows and macOS to resolve a critical RCE vulnerability. ASB-2021.0116 – ALERT Microsoft Windows: Multiple vulnerabilities Microsoft has released its monthly security patch update for the month of June 2021. ESB-2021.2097 – Apache HTTP Server: Multiple vulnerabilities Multiple vulnerabilities have been resolved in Apache HTTP server 2.4.48. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT2021 Member Organisation of the Year Winner We recently had the pleasure of chatting with Daniel Ross and Cody Byrnes from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) who won the AUSCERT Member Organisation of the Year for 2021. Daniel and Cody both opened up about what it is like to be an AUSCERT member and how the ATO is dealing with new cyber security issues. How long has the Australian Taxation Office been an AUSCERT Member? Our membership goes back well over 10 years, and we’re always really pleased to come along to the AUSCERT conference each year. This was Cody’s and my first year in attendance and it was an overall fantastic experience. What value do you get out of the on-going AUSCERT membership? Our membership with AUSCERT has been invaluable in helping us successfully respond to the myriad of tax and super scams targeting Australians on a daily basis. The AUSCERT Team support us through the takedown of malicious phishing websites, domains and spam email accounts used in these scam campaigns, blocking the ability of the scammers and heavily reducing the number of potential scam victims. Their assistance in sharing the details of these scams with other AUSCERT members also broadens our reach in stopping these scams and heightens our ability to detect future scam campaigns. Congratulations on winning the Member Organisation Of The Year award! What does winning this award mean to you? Thank you! AUSCERT has provided much benefit to ATO over the years. It is great to know that the threat intelligence we share back with them and the broader community is of equal benefit and we appreciate receiving such recognition for this. What advice would you give other AUSCERT members? Engage and be involved with AUSCERT and the community members, and share back what you can, as we are stronger at defending against threats as a community. What cyber security challenges have you faced this year? We think we see a lot of similar challenges to other cyber security teams we talk to: making sure we’ve got the right resourcing, tools and skills in an ever-evolving landscape. One of the more specific challenges we face is protecting the public from ATO themed scams that try to steal their money or personal information. We’ve got a number of preventative strategies in place, as well as rapidly responding to threats as they emerge. This is where we work closely with AUSCERT to quickly respond. It’s very easy for a malicious actor to create a domain with ATO or tax in the title, so we need intelligence to identify these and quick response pipelines to de-activate the malicious domain and minimise the risk of a member of the public being compromised. What do you see as some of the main cyber threats in today’s society? Patching, scams, and supply chain are recurring common threats in today’s society. We see malicious actors weaponising vulnerabilities before patches have been implemented and therefore patching is still a very effective security mechanism in preventing threats to individuals and organisations alike. Scams continue to be an effective method in circumventing technical controls, and supply chain is increasingly targeted as a method of compromising the clients of the particular chain.      

AUSCERT Week in Review for 4th June 2021 Greetings, National Reconciliation Week (NRW) 2021 concluded on the 3rd of June and AUSCERT would like to take this opportunity to recap this year’s theme which was “More than a word. Reconciliation takes action.” To find out more about how we can all be better allies of Australia’s First Nations people, please visit the NRW website here. Be sure to catch up on our highlighted summary of Security Bulletins and ADIR articles below. We’re also pleased to share the following blog piece by our AUSCERT2021 Member Individual of the Year Winner – Simon Coggins from CQUniversity. Congratulations Simon, well deserved win! In the coming weeks, we will be sharing a couple more of these blog articles featuring our other award winners from AUSCERT2021. Last but not least, excited to be sharing the news that AUSCERT is back in the swing of things with respect to our training options. Earlier this week, our Principal Analyst ran a pilot session of the Introduction to Cyber Security for School Professionals course. For those wanting to find out more about our training options, please visit our website for further information or send us an email. Until next week everyone, have a great weekend. New sophisticated email-based attack from NOBELIUM Date: 2021-05-27 Author: Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center has uncovered a wide-scale malicious email campaign operated by NOBELIUM, the threat actor behind the attacks against SolarWinds, the SUNBURST backdoor, TEARDROP malware, GoldMax malware, and other related components. The campaign, initially observed and tracked by Microsoft since January 2021, evolved over a series of waves demonstrating significant experimentation. On May 25, 2021, the campaign escalated as NOBELIUM leveraged the legitimate mass-mailing service, Constant Contact, to masquerade as a US-based development organization and distribute malicious URLs to a wide variety of organizations and industry verticals. Microsoft is issuing this alert and new security research regarding this sophisticated email-based campaign that NOBELIUM has been operating to help the industry understand and protect from this latest activity. In this article, MSTIC have outlined attacker motives, malicious behavior, and best practices to protect against this attack. ASD using classified capabilities to warn local entities of impending ransomware hit Date: 2021-06-02 Author: ZDNet Speaking about the attack on Channel Nine in March, director-general of the Australian Signals Directorate Rachel Noble told Senate Estimates that pre-warning organisations about any precursor activity on their networks or systems is part of ASD’s “value add”. “We were very engaged with [Channel Nine] and the technical information that they were able to provide us about what happened on their network helped us, using our more classified capabilities, to warn two other entities that they were about to be victims as well, to prevent them from becoming victims,” Noble said. JBS resumes meat operations after cyber attack halts production Date: 2021-06-04 Author: ABC News Earlier this week, JBS USA confirmed the company was targeted by an organised cyber attack on Sunday, which paralysed its operations in North America and Australia. “Today, the vast majority of our facilities resumed operations as we forecast yesterday, including all of our pork, poultry and prepared foods facilities around the world and the majority of our beef facilities in the US and Australia,” [JBS] said in the statement. There is no further information on the source of the attack which is believed to be a Russian crime gang. RBA to step up cyber resilience with new identity and access management system Date: 2021-06-02 Author: ZDNet The Reserve Bank of Australia said it is looking to modernise its identity and access management capabilities by introducing more automated controls to its existing platform. The RBA explained it currently relies heavily on a mix of manual and automated processed to enforce bank controls but believes a new IDAM environment would help “futureproof” the bank, reduce the risk of unauthorised data access, and support staff with the delivery of normal operational activities. “Whilst these processes are acceptable in the current landscape, additional capabilities have been identified to implement more robust controls so as to future proof and make these fully effective in their intended undertakings,” the RBA said in its tender request. “In order to realise this initiative, the IDAM project has been initiated, where the bank is seeking the supply of one or more products and related services to uplift this technology area.” Under the IDAM project, the RBA identified that it wants to see the delivery of an identity governance and administration, hybrid identity infrastructure and password-less multi-factor authentication capabilities, privilege access management system, and customer identity access management integration. Countries are increasing their cyber response budgets — but spending still varies widely Date: 2021-05-28 Author: The Record by Recorded Future Nations around the world don’t seem to agree on the appropriate amount of money to earmark for cyber defense and incident response, according to an analysis by The Record. But in recent years, almost every country examined has boosted its cyber spending. ESB-2021.1884 – BIG-IQ Centralized Management: Multiple vulnerabilities F5 has released advisory to address remote code execution vulnerability in BIG-IQ Centralized Management module. ESB-2021.1897 – Firefox: Multiple vulnerabilities Mozilla has released Firefox 89 addressing multiple security vulnerabilities. ESB-2021.1905 – Cisco SD-WAN products: Root compromise – Existing account Cisco has addressed a privilege escalation vulnerability in SD-WAN software. ESB-2021.1908 – Cisco Webex Player: Multiple vulnerabilities A vulnerability in Cisco Webex Player for Windows and MacOS could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on an affected system. ESB-2021.1935 – dhcp: Denial of service – Remote/unauthenticated A buffer overrun in lease file parsing code can be used to exploit a common vulnerability shared by dhcpd and dhclient. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT2020 Member Individual of the Year Winner During the AUSCERT2020 Conference, we caught up with Rachael Leighton (Principal Advisor, Cyber Strategy & Awareness @ DPC Vic Gov) to discuss her role in the cyber security fight, and how she felt about being awarded AUSCERT2020’s ‘Member Individual of The Year. Tell us a little about your professional career? I actually started as a primary school teacher by trade. Then, during 2009 I worked as a volunteer firefighter and ended up contributing towards a community education program. This was my initial foray into IT, as part of the education project involved upgrading radios and informing the community on what to do. After this, I continued to work for different companies in an organisational change capacity. Eventually I ended up in a Big 4 bank and was working on the same floor as the anti-terror and anti-fraud team. One day I asked them—how do people learn and understand this stuff about cyber security? I realised that if I didn’t know it, surely others didn’t either. From there, my passion for educating people and encouraging organisations to change their behaviour, to consider cyber security and to cultivate a cyber culture was born. What’s involved in your day-to-day role at Principal Advisor—Cyber Strategy & Awareness for the Department of Premier and Cabinet? I see myself kind of like a conductor of an orchestra. When we think of cyber security and government, we, as government have a role in creating a Cyber Safe Victoria and that means… there are lots of moving parts – lots of activity that needs to take place and lots of different teams to secure all our kit. There is still some heavy lifting to do to connect the dots between academia, industry and government to form a vibrant cyber ecosystem. That’s my role – to bring all this together, usually through engaging and with meeting the right people, identifying synergies and opportunities for connecting them together.  Congratulations on winning Member Individual Of The Year. What does winning this award mean to you? I’m so honoured to get this award. To me, this validates the importance of collaboration. At the end of the day, cyber is hard. If we want to get ahead of the bad guys, we need to be sharing info, reporting incidents, and establishing a trusted and healthy feedback loop. This can be difficult to achieve when the traditional mindset of cyber security professionals is to protect what’s valuable. Yet it’s more beneficial for us all to break down the walls and build trust across the cyber community.    Trust was immediate for me when working with AUSCERT. The team will do anything they can to help Vic Gov uplift cyber posture. So thanks AUSCERT, I really appreciate this award. To be recognised for the willingness, and the crazy, that is cyber education and engagement is beautiful. If you could give one piece of advice for organisations and IT / cyber security professionals, what would that be? Reach out—don’t go it alone. Don’t try to be a lone hero—we are stronger together. We are a cyber family. Just like the baddies work together and collaborate, if we want to succeed against them, then we too need to work together.            

AUSCERT2021 Member Individual of the Year Winner After the recent AUSCERT2021 conference, we caught up with Simon Coggins (Principal Systems Engineer at CQUniversity) to discuss his role in the cyber security sector, and how he felt about being awarded AUSCERT2021’s ‘Member Individual of The Year’. Tell us a little about your professional career? I’ve always been interested in system administration and networking. When I was in high school I started my own Bulletin Board System with a large user base and had a FidoNet address so that we could transfer email and forum posts around the world. While studying at university I started working at the local Internet Service Provider. We were small enough to only have a few staff so everyone had multiple jobs. I was a Sysadmin, Network Engineer, Developer and Tech Support. This led me to work at a University in NSW where I was the Network and Systems Management Officer. My role there involved  both networking and system administration duties as well as acting as a translation bridge between the network team and the sysadmin team. After working for 6 years at this university, friends I knew through the System Administrators Guild of Australia suggested I apply for a job at Central Queensland University, so I did.. That brings me to my current job that I’ve been in for over 15 years now. I started out as a Senior Systems Administrator and a few job title changes and roles later I’m now a Principal Systems Engineer. Because of my System Administration and Networking background and an understanding of how everything fitted together, this acted as a catalyst for security to start being included in things I was looking at. What’s involved in your day-to-day role as Principal Systems Engineer at CQUniversity ? I’m always busy doing something and every day is different. I’m the primary lead on our Linux Fleet, Firewalls, Load Balancers, SIEM platform, SAN Storage, Email Security, and the list goes on. So on any given day I will be doing operational work to keep the fleet of services running, level 3 work tickets that come in about weird issues that need problem solving, or project work for evaluating new products and testing them. Given I have a better than average understanding of how our network and systems fit together, and I have good problem solving skills, that allows me to help identify the cause of complex issues quicker. I like to think that my primary role is to automate my boring jobs where possible so I can focus on the fun ones but at the end of the day, I’m just someone that likes to solve problems, and in the process help people. Congratulations on winning the Member Individual of the Year! What does winning this award mean to you? What course will you use your SANS-sponsored prize for? It’s a great honour. AUSCERT is very trusted in the security community so getting this award is a huge deal. For me it means that what I’m doing is definitely helping other people. When I do things for CQUniversity I think to myself “Would this help me if someone else shared it?” If so, then I go and share that with the wider community via AUSCERT. This award reaffirms I’m doing good in the community. As for SANS courses, have you seen the list? It’s huge! I’m still trying to decide what I want to do, I’m thinking maybe Continuous Monitoring and Security Operations or something else on the Blue Team track. What do you see as some of the main cyber threats in today’s society? Are you seeing any trends of particular threats becoming more common? Ransomware and Phishing is the obvious choice, but for us we are seeing more and more supply chain attacks. The SolarWinds and PasswordState attacks drive home that you can do everything you possibly can to protect your systems, but you are only as good as the security of the companies that provide your tools. We need to update to fix security vulnerabilities but we can’t update until we’re sure the update hasn’t been compromised. Delay updating and you could end up with ransomware, be proactive and end up with a state based actor in your systems … It’s getting very hard! If you could give one piece of advice for organisations and IT/cyber security professionals, what would that be? In most cases you aren’t the only one defending against that cyber incident. At the end of the day we’re all Cyber Security Professionals and we’re probably defending against the same thing, at least across the same industry. You might be surprised to find out that your industry, even though it is competitive at front of house, already has an information sharing mechanism in place to assist and share common threats across the industry and there is a good chance that AUSCERT knows where to point you. They are also happy to accept any security reports, malware samples, and indicators of compromise that you might have, anonymise them and share them with the wider community of AUSCERT members if you wish to remain anonymous.    

AUSCERT Week in Review for 28th May 2021 Greetings, To kick things off, in conjunction with National Reconciliation week 2021, AUSCERT would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the First Nations people as the Traditional Owners of the land on which we are on today. We acknowledge all Elders past, present and emerging. The theme this year is “More than a word. Reconciliation takes action.” To find out more about the week and what it means to our First Nations people, please visit the NRW website here. Our team issued an alert re: VMWare earlier this week, be sure to catch up on it below. For those of you keen to check out photos from the recent AUSCERT2021 conference, we’ve uploaded several albums to the AUSCERT Facebook page. We’re also pleased to announce that our podcast series “Share today, save tomorrow” is now listed on Spotify. Episode 2 will be released in mid-June. Last but not least, sharing a special request from our colleagues at UQ Cyber one final time. See below: Keen on helping the future generation of cyber and information security professionals? Here’s your chance! “Vignette Survey on Effectiveness of Place Managers in Preventing Ransomware” Folks from UQ Cyber are seeking assistance from the AUSCERT membership audience to participate in a cyber security survey that is investigating factors which can influence the effectiveness of cyber security professionals in preventing cyber security incidents such as ransomware within their respective organisations. The survey results will shed valuable insights and influence how organisations should channel their limited resources in preventing cyber security incidents more effectively. The survey will take approximately 20 minutes to complete. To participate, please click here. Surveys close on Monday 31 May. For further information, please feel free to get in touch with Heemeng Ho, the lead researcher of this project. Until next week everyone, have a great weekend. This massive phishing campaign delivers password-stealing malware disguised as ransomware Date: 2021-05-24 Author: ZDNet A massive phishing campaign is distributing what looks like ransomware but is in fact trojan malware that creates a backdoor into Windows systems to steal usernames, passwords and other information from victims. Detailed by cybersecurity researchers at Microsoft, the latest version of the Java-based STRRAT malware is being sent out via a large email campaign, which uses compromised email accounts to distribute messages claiming to be related to payments, alongside an image posing as a PDF attachment that looks like it has information about the supposed transfer. Apple fixes macOS zero-day abused by XCSSET malware Date: 2021-05-24 Author: The Record Apple has released today security updates for several of its products, including a patch for its macOS desktop operating system that includes a fix for a zero-day vulnerability that has been abused in the wild for almost a year by the XCSSET malware gang. Tracked as CVE-2021-30713, the zero-day was discovered by researchers at security firm Jamf during an analysis of XCSSET, a malware strain that was spotted in the wild in August 2020, hidden inside malicious Xcode projects hosted on GitHub. VMware says critical vCenter Server bug needs ‘immediate attention’ Date: 2021-05-26 Author: iTnews [See related bulletin ESB-2021.1805] VMware said three versions of its vCenter Server management software for controlling vSphere environments are susceptible to a critical security flaw that should be immediately patched. The vendor said in a blog post that the issue needs the “immediate attention” of administrators. “Given the severity, we strongly recommend that you act,” VMware said. Crimes of Opportunity: Increasing Frequency of Low Sophistication Operational Technology Compromises Date: 2021-05-25 Author: FireEye Mandiant has observed an increase in compromises of internet-accessible OT assets over the past several years. In this blog post we discuss previously undisclosed compromises and place them in context alongside publicly known incidents. Although none of these incidents have appeared to significantly impact the physical world, their increasing frequency and relative severity calls for analysis on their possible risks and implications.ols and techniques. Oracle Peddled Software Used for Spying on U.S. Protesters to China Date: 2021-05-26 Author: The Intercept [Context: In early May 2021, Twitter temporarily suspended an Oracle executive from posting after he used the social network to publicise the e-mail address and Signal phone number of the journalist who wrote this article – whose reporting he had personally found to be biased and inaccurate. This research-based article has been produced to counter this claim by Oracle.] Chicago police used CIA-backed Oracle software to surveil protesters and mine their Twitter feeds. Oracle then peddled that same software for police work in China. This is an article on global surveillance. ESB-2021.1794 – Big Sur, Catalina and Mojave: Multiple vulnerabilities Apple’s latest security updates include a patch for its macOS desktop operating system that fixes a zero-day vulnerability by the XCSSET malware gang. ESB-2021.1805 – ALERT VMWare Products: Multiple vulnerabilities VMware vCenter Server updates address remote code execution and authentication vulnerabilities. ASB-2021.0112 – Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based): Multiple vulnerabilities Microsoft’s Security Update released on 27 May 2021 fixes multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based). ESB-2021.1819 – linux kernel: Multiple vulnerabilities An update for the Linux Kernel 4.12.14-150_66 fixes three vulnerabilities. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 21st May 2021 Greetings, To kick things off, we’d like to share the following wrap-up article on AUSCERT2021 which concluded last week. Again, heartfelt thanks to our colleagues, delivery partners, delegates, speakers and sponsors who came along to support our first ever hybrid endeavour. To those of you who registered to attend as a delegate, you can revisit the conference’s key learnings by re-watching the presentations on-demand. A personalised link to access these recordings has been shared by team GEMS Events so please keep an eye out for it in your inbox. To those who didn’t register as an AUSCERT2021 delegate, we will also be sharing these recordings via our YouTube channel in due time. Last but not least, sharing a special request from our colleagues at UQ Cyber. See below: Keen on helping the future generation of cyber and information security professionals? Here’s your chance! “Vignette Survey on Effectiveness of Place Managers in Preventing Ransomware” Folks from UQ Cyber are seeking assistance from the AUSCERT membership audience to participate in a cyber security survey that is investigating factors which can influence the effectiveness of cyber security professionals in preventing cyber security incidents such as ransomware within their respective organisations. The survey results will shed valuable insights and influence how organisations should channel their limited resources in preventing cyber security incidents more effectively. The survey will take approximately 20 minutes to complete. To participate, please click here. For further information, please feel free to get in touch with Heemeng Ho, the lead researcher of this project. Until next week everyone, have a great weekend. AFP using a squad of good boys to detect devices such as USBs and SIM cards Date: 2021-05-20 Author: ZDNet The Australian Federal Police (AFP) this week revealed some of its canine squad have been trained to sniff out devices, such as USBs and SIM cards, at crime scenes or during the execution of search warrants. In a Facebook post showing a video of one dog, Georgia, finding a phone hidden in a vacuum cleaner, the AFP said since 2019, its three AFP technology detection dogs have located more than 120 devices in support of investigations ranging from child protection investigations to counter terrorism operations. How to ‘Demystify’ Cybersecurity Date: 2021-05-14 Author: BankInfoSecurity [Jeremy Kirk was hosted at the AUSCERT2021 conference as a media representative.] To defend against cyberattacks, it’s important to “demystify” cybersecurity and break it into risks that can be managed by any organization, says Ciaran Martin, the former director of the U.K. National Cyber Security Center. “It’s very easy to be terrified of cybersecurity,” Martin said. “It’s very easy to be infantilized by cyber risks and the hype around cybersecurity.” In his keynote speech, Martin showed a slide listing key cybersecurity steps, including ensuring software is up to date, making sure partners and suppliers protect data and reviewing authentication methods used to access systems. An essential step, he said, is making sure an organization knows what data it holds and who may most likely try to target it so the right security controls can be deployed. Most organizations, for example, are not going to be targeted by nation-states, he said. “Just manage risk well enough,” Martin said. “You don’t need to have nation-state defenses.” “So understand the harms, have a risk-bask based approach – a realistic approach, and work with partners,” Martin said. “We can get on top of this problem.” Exploit released for wormable Windows HTTP vulnerability Date: 2021-05-17 Author: Bleeping Computer Proof-of-concept exploit code has been released over the weekend for a critical wormable vulnerability in the latest Windows 10 and Windows Server versions. The bug, tracked as CVE-2021-31166, was found in the HTTP Protocol Stack (HTTP.sys) used by the Windows Internet Information Services (IIS) web server as a protocol listener for processing HTTP requests. Microsoft has patched the vulnerability during this month’s Patch Tuesday, and it impacts ONLY Windows 10 versions 2004/20H2 and Windows Server versions 2004/20H2. Chrome now automatically fixes breached passwords on Android Date: 2021-05-18 Author: Bleeping Computer Google is rolling out a new Chrome on Android feature to help users change passwords compromised in data breaches with a single tap. Chrome already helped you check if your credentials were compromised and, with the rollout of the new automated password change feature, it will also allow you to change them automatically. Now, whenever checking for stolen passwords on supported sites and apps, Google Assistant will display a “Change password” button that will instruct Chrome to navigate to the website and go through the entire password change process on its own. Ransomware’s Dangerous New Trick Is Double-Encrypting Your Data Date: 2021-05-17 Author: WIRED Ransomeware groups have always taken a more-is-more approach. If a victim pays a ransom and then goes back to business as usual—hit them again. Or don’t just encrypt a target’s systems; steal their data first, so you can threaten to leak it if they don’t pay up. The latest escalation? Ransomware hackers who encrypt a victim’s data twice at the same time. Double-encryption attacks have happened before, usually stemming from two separate ransomware gangs compromising the same victim at the same time. But antivirus company Emsisoft says it is aware of dozens of incidents in which the same actor or group intentionally layers two types of ransomware on top of each other. “The groups are constantly trying to work out which strategies are best, which net them the most money for the least amount of effort,” says Emsisoft threat analyst Brett Callow. “So in this approach you have a single actor deploying two types of ransomware. The victim decrypts their data and discovers it’s not actually decrypted at all.” ASB-2021.0111 – Microsoft Edge (based on Chromium): Multiple vulnerabilities Microsoft Edge, the default browser for Windows 10, contained multiple vulnerabilities that could lead to arbitrary code execution. ESB-2021.1721 – GNOME: Multiple vulnerabilities Patches were made available for GNOME to address multiple code execution vulnerabilities. ESB-2021.1702 – sudo: Multiple vulnerabilities Red Hat released patches for vulnerabilities that could lead to privilege escalation via sudo utilities. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 14th May 2021 Greetings, What a week! (although it certainly feels like we’ve been saying this a bit in 2021) To kick things off, we celebrated the 20th anniversary of our annual conference AUSCERT2021. It’s been a week of awesome catch-ups and learnings from the various presentation sessions on the conference program. Thank you so much for the support of our wonderful sponsors and delegates. We hope you enjoyed coming back together in-person as much as the AUSCERT team did. For those who couldn’t make it, we will be sharing the content from the conference in due time via our YouTube channel. We hope folks were able to get through all of May 2021’s Patch Tuesday fixes, please refer to our highlighted bulletins and articles below. Thrilled to announce that we’ve now officially launched our AUSCERT podcast, “Share today, save tomorrow” – a special shout out to our ex colleague Nick Soysa for coining this phrase. Episode 1 now available on our website here. Last but not least, thank you for supporting AUSCERT taking over the @WeAreBrisbane Twitter account this week, we hope that was an educational one for those who play in the Twitter space. Until next week everyone, have a wonderful weekend – to our colleagues and followers of Muslim faith, Happy Eid ul Fitr, Eid Mubarak! Microsoft’s May 2021 Patch Tuesday: 55 flaws fixed, four critical Date: 2021-05-11 Author: ZDNet Microsoft’s May Patch Tuesday dump included patches for 55 CVEs with four rated critical. There were also three zero-day bugs but none have been exploited. Products impacted includes Internet Explorer, .NET Core and Visual Studio, Windows 10 and Office to name a few. You can find the updates for May here. The fixed zero day bugs include: – CVE-2021-31204 .NET and Visual Studio Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability – CVE-2021-31207 Microsoft Exchange Server Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability – CVE-2021-31200 Common Utilities Remote Code Execution Vulnerability Hackers Leverage Adobe Zero-Day Bug Impacting Acrobat Reader Date: 2021-05-11 Author: Threatpost A patch for Adobe Acrobat, the world’s leading PDF reader, fixes a vulnerability under active attack affecting both Windows and macOS systems that could lead to arbitrary code execution. Adobe is warning customers of a critical zero-day bug actively exploited in the wild that affects its ubiquitous Adobe Acrobat PDF reader software. A patch is available, as part of the company’s Tuesday roundup of 43 fixes for 12 of its products, including Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop Application, Illustrator, InDesign, and Magento. Attackers added thousands of Tor exit nodes to carry out SSL stripping attacks Date: 2021-05-10 Author: Security Affairs Starting from January 2020, a threat actor has been adding thousands of malicious exit relays to the Tor network to intercept traffic and carry out SSL stripping attacks on users while accessing mixing websites, The Record first reported. SSL Stripping (aka SSL Downgrade Attack) allows downgrading connection from secure HTTPS to HTTP which could expose the traffic to eavesdropping and data manipulation. In the case of the attacks against the Tor network, threat actors aimed at replacing the addresses of legitimate wallets with the ones under the control of the attackers to hijack transactions. In August 2020, the security researcher and Tor node operator “Nusenu” described this practice in an analysis on how malicious Tor Relays are exploiting users in 2020. Nusenu has published a new part of its research that reveals that threat actor are still active. US and Australia warn of escalating Avaddon ransomware attacks Date: 2021-05-10 Author: Bleeping Computer The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Australian Cyber Security Centre are warning of an ongoing Avaddon ransomware campaign targeting organizations from an extensive array of sectors in the US and worldwide. The FBI said in a TLP:GREEN flash alert last week that Avaddon ransomware affiliates are trying to breach the networks of manufacturing, healthcare, and other private sector organizations around the world. The ACSC expanded on the targeting information, saying that the ransomware gang’s affiliates are targeting entities from a wide range of sectors, including but not limited to government, finance, law enforcement, energy, information technology, and health. A Closer Look at the DarkSide Ransomware Gang Date: 2021-05-11 Author: Krebs on Security The FBI confirmed this week that a relatively new ransomware group known as DarkSide is responsible for an attack that caused Colonial Pipeline to shut down 5,550 miles of pipe, stranding countless barrels of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel on the Gulf Coast. Here’s a closer look at the DarkSide cybercrime gang, as seen through their negotiations with a recent U.S. victim that earns $15 billion in annual revenue. New York City-based cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint said its analysts assess with a moderate-strong degree of confidence that the attack was not intended to damage national infrastructure and was simply associated with a target which had the finances to support a large payment. “This would be consistent with DarkSide’s earlier activities, which included several ‘big game hunting’ attacks, whereby attackers target an organization that likely possesses the financial means to pay the ransom demanded by the attackers,” Flashpoint observed. The DarkSide of the Ransomware Pipeline Date: 2021-05-11 Author: Splunk If you want to quickly find out how to use Splunk to find activity related to the DarkSide Ransomware, skip to the “Detection and Remediation of DarkSide” section. Otherwise, read on for a quick breakdown of what happened to the Colonial Pipeline, how to detect the ransomware, and view MITRE ATT&CK mappings. ESB-2021.1611 – ALERT Adobe Acrobat & Adobe Reader: Multiple vulnerabilities Adobe reports that CVE-2021-28550 has been exploited in the wild that could lead to arbitrary code execution. ASB-2021.0101 – ALERT exim: Multiple vulnerabilities Serious vulnerabilities identified in the Exim mail server allowing remote attackers to gain complete root privileges. ASB-2021.0110 – ALERT Microsoft Extended Security Update products Microsoft releases its monthly security patch update for the month of May 2021 resolving 12 vulnerabilities. ESB-2021.1644 – ALERT libgetdata: Multiple vulnerabilities Multiple vulnerabilities in libgetdata are addressed by Debian’s security updates. ASB-2021.0108 – Microsoft Developer Tools : Multiple vulnerabilities Latest security patches for Microsoft fix multiple vulnerabilities in Developer Tools. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 7th May 2021 Greetings, This week, we’ve been elated to announce a couple of well-known speakers joining us at AUSCERT2021. Troy Hunt will be doing an AMA session, hosted by MC Adam Spencer; and Kevin Mitnick will be joining us for the Speed Debate session. A note to remind folks that in-person places for AUSCERT2021 are selling fast, with very limited numbers remaining. The conference will be delivered in hybrid mode so you can still join us from the comfort of your own home/office. Don’t forget to register before we sell out! Another busy week has gone past for our analyst team with alerts sent out for multiple products. On that note, be sure to review our highlighted security bulletins and articles below. Members, remember to keep your organisation’s IPs and domains up to date on the AUSCERT member portal. This week saw us supporting Privacy Awareness Week 2021, some really handy tips from the OAIC on the topics of protecting personal information, both at home and in the workplace. On that note, at AUSCERT, we also offer a short course training session on the topic of “Practising good cyber hygiene for hybrid working” – to find out more, email us via training@auscert.org.au. Last but not least, AUSCERT will be taking over the @WeAreBrisbane Twitter account over the period of 10th-16th May (during conference week, we’re very excited!). We hope to highlight and amplify the topics of Internet safety, cyber and information security as well as the various personal work of sector focussed colleagues in the greater Brisbane area. Don’t forget to follow and re-Tweet our posts during this period. Until next week everyone, have a good and restful weekend, and please remember to spoil your mums and mother figures on Sunday 9th May. Apple hurries out fixes for WebKit zero-days Date: 2021-05-03 Author: Search Security Apple dropped updates on Monday for iOS, macOS, and watchOS in response to in-the-wild attacks on its WebKit browser engine. The macOS Big Sur 11.3.1, iOS/iPadOS 14.5.1, and iOS 12.5.3 each include fixes for CVE-2021-30665 and CVE-2021-30663. Both flaws are present in WebKit, the engine Apple uses as the basis for its Safari desktop browser and multiple components of iOS. Critical 21Nails Exim bugs expose millions of servers to attacks Date: 2021-05-04 Author: Bleeping Computer Newly discovered critical vulnerabilities in the Exim mail transfer agent (MTA) software allow unauthenticated remote attackers to execute arbitrary code and gain root privilege on mail servers with default or common configurations. The security flaws (10 remotely exploitable and 11 locally) found and reported by the Qualys Research Team are collectively known a 21Nails. Exim 4.94.2 are vulnerable to attacks attempting to exploit the 21Nails vulnerabilities. “Some of the vulnerabilities can be chained together to obtain a full remote unauthenticated code execution and gain root privileges on the Exim Server,” as Qualys senior Manager Bharat Jogi noted. UnitingCare cyber attack claimed by notorious ransom gang REvil/Sodin Date: 2021-05-06 Author: ABC News Hackers claiming responsibility for an attack on health and community care provider UnitingCare Queensland have been revealed as one of the most notorious cyber ransom gangs in the world. Last week, the Queensland healthcare provider fell victim to the cyber attack, which affected its hospitals and aged care homes. It runs the Wesley and St Andrew’s Hospitals in Brisbane, St Stephen’s Hospital in Hervey Bay and the Buderim Private Hospital on the Sunshine Coast, and dozens of aged care and disability services throughout the state. UnitingCare on Wednesday confirmed the hack had been claimed by REvil/Sodin. The gang that has been linked to multiple attacks on high-profile targets across the globe and is thought to have named itself after apocalyptic science fiction horror video game-turned movie, Resident Evil. UnitingCare Queensland’s corporate affairs director Matthew Cuming said as a result, some of the organisation’s digital and technology systems had been left inaccessible. But Mr Cuming said at this time there was no evidence the health and safety of patients, residents or clients had been compromised as a result of the cyber incident. NSW Labor takes a hit from Windows Avaddon ransomware Date: 2021-05-05 Author: iTWire The NSW branch of the Labor Party appears to have suffered a Windows ransomware attack, with the Avaddon strain having been used to attack the party’s network. Cybersecurity is too big for governments or firms to handle alone Date: 2021-05-03 Author: World Economic Forum The recent hack of network management company SolarWinds, which enabled bad actors to compromise a range of US government agencies and major corporations, has revealed a troubling truth: Business and government expose each other to significant cyber-risks because they are interconnected and rely on the same network of software vendors. That’s why the strategic response must involve more intense collaboration. Simply put, the threat of cyberattacks is too big a job for either government or business to tackle alone. • Business and government are exposing each other to an increasing range of cyber-risks. • Current efforts to pool cybersecurity resources are limited in scope. • Sharing threat intelligence is the first step to provide a clear cyberthreat picture. ESB-2021.1499 – ALERT Apple iOS products: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote with user interaction Apple reveals two iOS zero-day vulnerabilities that allow attackers to access fully patched devices. ASB-2021.0101 – ALERT exim: Multiple vulnerabilities Qualys researchers uncover 21 bugs in Exim mail servers. ESB-2021.1528 – ALERT HyperFlex HX Software: Multiple vulnerabilities Multiple vulnerabilities in Cisco HyperFlex could allow arbitrary code execution. ESB-2021.1529 – ALERT Cisco SD-WAN vManage: Multiple vulnerabilities Cisco released patches to address critical vulnerabilities in SD-WAN vManage software. ESB-2021.1563 – ALERT vRealize Business for Cloud: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote/unauthenticated VMWare addresses critical remote code execution vulnerability in vRealize Business for Cloud. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 30th April 2021 Greetings, This week, we’re thrilled to announce the opening keynote at AUSCERT2021! To celebrate the return of in-person events, we will kick off the 20th anniversary of our conference with a panel discussion on how SOAR can help with your security transformation strategy. The panel will feature experts from Splunk (James Young), Microsoft (Jess Dodson), Bugcrowd (Casey Ellis) and Airservices Australia (Anthony Kitzelmann). Places selling fast, the conference will be delivered in hybrid mode so you can still join us from the comfort of your own home/office. Don’t forget to register before we sell out! Another busy week has gone past for our analyst team with alerts sent out for multiple products. On that note, be sure to review our highlighted security bulletins and articles below. Members, please keep an eye out for a copy of our membership newsletter The Feed which landed in your inbox on Tuesday this week. It was a bumper edition, on it we shared a copy of our Quarter 1, 2021 report and a piece on how we tackled the recent Microsoft Exchange server critical ProxyLogon vulnerabilities and exploits and helped our members – the latter was also covered in Edition 2 of the Women in Security magazine, a publication from team Source2Create. Next week will see us supporting Privacy Awareness Week 2021, follow us on our social media channels for information around this year’s campaign. Last but not least, thank you to those who joined us yesterday as we discussed the 2020 BDO and AUSCERT Cyber Security Survey insights. A copy of the webinar recording can be found here. AUSCERT will maintain minimal coverage for Labour Day long weekend in Queensland. Our staff will be on-call for emergencies only and email will not be monitored during this time. Any AUSCERT member with an emergency may contact on-call AUSCERT staff on the AUSCERT Incident Hotline, details available here. Until next week everyone, have a good and restful weekend. UnitingCare Queensland hit by cyber attack Date: 2021-04-26 Author: iTnews UnitingCare Queensland, a provider of hospital and aged care services, said some of its digital and technology systems were rendered “inaccessible” by a cyber attack on Sunday. 9News in Queensland reported the attack as a ransomware infection that all hospitals and aged care homes run by the organisation with IT systems. Hospitals run by UnitingCare Queensland include The Wesley Hospital and St Andrews War Memorial Hospital, both in Brisbane, St Stephen’s Hospital in Hervey Bay, and Buderim Private Hospital on the Sunshine Coast. A software bug let malware bypass macOS’ security defenses Date: 2021-04-27 Author: TechCrunch Apple has spent years reinforcing macOS with new security features to make it tougher for malware to break in. But a newly discovered vulnerability broke through most of macOS’ newer security protections with a double-click of a malicious app, a feat not meant to be allowed under Apple’s watch. Worse, evidence shows a notorious family of Mac malware had been exploiting this vulnerability for months before it was subsequently patched by Apple this week. Ransomware gang targets Microsoft SharePoint servers for the first time Date: 2021-04-27 Author: The Record by Recorded Future Microsoft SharePoint servers have now joined the list of network devices being abused as an entry vector into corporate networks by ransomware gangs. SharePoint now joins a list that also includes Citrix gateways, F5 BIG-IP load balancers, Microsoft Exchange email servers, and Pulse Secure, Fortinet, and Palo Alto Network VPNs. The group behind the attacks targeting SharePoint servers is a new ransomware operation that was first seen at the end of 2020. The group is tracked by security vendors under the codenames of Hello or the WickrMe ransomware—because of its use of Wickr encrypted instant messaging accounts as a way for victims to reach out and negotiate the ransom fee. Typical Hello/WickrMe attacks usually involve the use of a publicly known exploit for CVE-2019-0604, a well-known vulnerability in Microsoft’s SharePoint team collaboration servers. Data From The Emotet Malware is Now Searchable in Have I Been Pwned, Courtesy of the FBI and NHTCU Date: 2021-04-27 Author: Troy Hunt Earlier this year, the FBI in partnership with the Dutch National High Technical Crimes Unit (NHTCU), German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and other international law enforcement agencies brought down what Europol rereferred to as the world’s most dangerous malware: Emotet. This strain of malware dates back as far as 2014 and it became a gateway into infected machines for other strains of malware ranging from banking trojans to credential stealers to ransomware. Emotet was extremely destructive and wreaked havoc across the globe before eventually being brought to a halt in February. University of Minnesota responds to Linux security patch requests Date: 2021-04-27 Author: ZDNet The UMN wants to make peace with the Linux kernel developer community after an annoying Linux code security research blunder. ESB-2021.1408.2 – UPDATED ALERT Apple iOS products: Multiple vulnerabilities The bug is under active exploitation by unknown attackers and affects a wide range of devices, including iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches. ESB-2021.1416 – ALERT macOS Catalina: Multiple vulnerabilities Apple has released security patches for multiple vulnerabilities including a zero day bypass vulnerabilty. ESB-2021.1439 – ALERT FortiWAN: Multiple vulnerabilities FortiGuard has released security update to patch authentication bypass vulnerability. ESB-2021.1440 – ALERT ShareFile: Root compromise – Remote/unauthenticated A security issue in Citrix ShareFile could allow a remote attacker to compromise the storage zones controller. ASB-2021.0100 – Microsoft Edge: Multiple vulnerabilities Microsoft has released security update to address multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft Edge. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 23rd April 2021 Greetings, Another busy week has gone past for the folks in our sector, with Oracle’s quarterly patch releases, two separate notable announcements from FireEye, an exploited Chrome zero-day and two vulnerabilities in the QNAP NAS products for good measure! On that note, be sure to review our highlighted security bulletins and articles below. Thank you to those who’ve registered to attend the AUSCERT2021 conference with your organisation’s member tokens, part of your AUSCERT membership perks which allows you to attend our annual conference for free or as a partially subsidised delegate. Not long to go until we kick things off in mid-May! Members, keep an eye out for a copy of our membership newsletter The Feed landing in your inbox early next week. It will be a bumper edition in the lead up to AUSCERT2021. Last but not least, please come and join us on our next webinar session, Thursday 29th April at 10:00AM AEST with colleagues from BDO Australia as we discuss the 2020 BDO and AUSCERT Cyber Security Survey insights. Details on how to register for this session can be found here. Lest we forget, we would like to take this opportunity to commemorate the men and women who have served our nation in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations. AUSCERT will maintain minimal coverage for the Anzac Day long weekend. Our staff will be on-call for emergencies only and email will not be monitored during this time. Any AUSCERT member with an emergency may contact on-call AUSCERT staff on the AUSCERT Incident Hotline, details available here. Until next week, have a good and restful weekend everyone. AirDrop bugs expose Apple users’ email addresses, phone numbers Date: 2021-04-21 Author: The Record by Recorded Future A team of academics from a German university said it discovered two vulnerabilities that can be abused to extract phone numbers and email addresses from Apple’s AirDrop file transfer feature. The two bugs reside in the authentication process during the initial phase of an AirDrop connection, where devices try to discover one another and determine if they belong to users who know each other (by checking if a device/user’s phone number is in the other device’s contacts list). Google issues Chrome update patching seven security vulnerabilities Date: 2021-04-20 Author: ZDNet [See related bulletin ESB-2021.1363] Google on Wednesday released version 90.0.4430.85 of the Chrome browser for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The release contains seven security fixes, including one for a zero-day vulnerability that was exploited in the wild. The zero-day, which was assigned the identifier of CVE-2021-21224, was described as a “type confusion in V8”. Google Alerts continues to be a hotbed of scams and malware Date: 2021-04-19 Author: Bleeping Computer Google Alerts continues to be a hotbed of scams and malware that threat actors are increasingly abusing to promote malicious websites. While Google Alerts has been abused for a long time, BleepingComputer has noticed a significant increase in activity over the past couple of weeks. To deceive Google into thinking they are legitimate sites rather than scams, threat actors use a black hat search engine optimization (SEO) technique called ‘cloaking.’ Cloaking is when a website displays different content to visitors than it does search engine spiders. This cloaking allows the website to look like a plain text or a typical blog post when Google’s search engine spiders visit the page but perform malicious redirects when a user visits the site from a Google redirect. Linux bans University of Minnesota for committing malicious code Date: 2021-04-21 Author: Bleeping Computer In a rare, groundbreaking decision, Linux kernel project maintainers have imposed a ban on the University of Minnesota (UMN) from contributing to the open-source Linux project. The move comes after a group of UMN researchers were caught submitting a series of malicious code commits, or patches that deliberately introduced security vulnerabilities in the official Linux codebase, as a part of their research activities. ASB-2021.0098 – ALERT QNAP NAS: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote/unauthenticated Widespread attacks on QNAP products resulting in Qlocker and eCh0raix ransomware infections. Attacks are being carried out through exploitation of vulnerabilities allowing unauthenticated takeover of Internet-facing hosts. ESB-2021.1363 – ALERT Google Chrome: Multiple vulnerabilities Chrome contained a multitude of vulnerabilties causing reduced security including remote code execution and denial of service. Google is aware of reports that exploits for CVE-2021-21224 exist in the wild. ASB-2021.0074 – ALERT MySQL Products: Multiple vulnerabilities Various MySQL products contained multiple vulnerabilities which granted attackers abilities to execute remote code, cause denial of service, and root compromise. ESB-2021.1330 – sudo: Root compromise – Existing account Any local user could exploit a flaw in sudo and cause a heap-based buffer overflow, which allowed privilege escalation to root. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 16th April 2021 Greetings, We hope everyone’s had a good week and were able to get through all of April 2021’s Patch Tuesday fixes. On that note, be sure to review our highlighted security bulletins below, in particular ASB-2021.0062 – these were newly announced this week and are not the previous ProxyLogon vulnerabilities. Thank you to those who tuned in to the joint AUSCERT (UQ) & Duo Security webinar which took place yesterday during which our Director, Dr. David Stockdale, discussed the focus on securing remote access as a key step in the zero-trust journey. Members – a FINAL reminder that all nominated Primary and Organisation contact person(s) would have received details regarding your organisation’s member token(s), part of your AUSCERT membership perks which allows you to attend our annual conference for free or as a partially subsidised delegate. Please make sure you utilise the token(s) by midnight on Sunday 18 April, this is your last chance to claim the token(s). Conference registrations can be completed via our website here. Ramadan Kareem to folks of the Muslim faith; until next week, have a good weekend everyone! GitLab Critical Security Release: 13.10.3, 13.9.6, and 13.8.8 Date: 2021-04-14 Author: GitLab Today we are releasing versions 13.10.3, 13.9.6, and 13.8.8 for GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition. These versions contain important security fixes, and we strongly recommend that all GitLab installations be upgraded to one of these versions immediately. We have requested a CVE ID and will update this blog post when it is assigned. Zero-day vulnerability in Desktop Window Manager (CVE-2021-28310) used in the wild Date: 2021-04-13 Author: Securelist While analyzing the CVE-2021-1732 exploit originally discovered by the DBAPPSecurity Threat Intelligence Center and used by the BITTER APT group, we discovered another zero-day exploit we believe is linked to the same actor. We reported this new exploit to Microsoft in February and after confirmation that it is indeed a zero-day, it received the designation CVE-2021-28310. Microsoft released a patch to this vulnerability as a part of its April security updates. We believe this exploit is used in the wild, potentially by several threat actors. It is an escalation of privilege (EoP) exploit that is likely used together with other browser exploits to escape sandboxes or get system privileges for further access. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to capture a full chain, so we don’t know if the exploit is used with another browser zero-day, or coupled with known, patched vulnerabilities. CISA gives federal agencies until Friday to patch Exchange servers Date: 2021-04-13 Author: Bleeping Computer The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has ordered federal agencies to install newly released Microsoft Exchange security updates by Friday. Today, Microsoft released security updates for four Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities discovered by the NSA. These Exchange vulnerabilities are capable of remote code execution, with two vulnerabilities not requiring attackers to authenticate first. While none of the vulnerabilities are known to be used in attacks, CISA believes that threat actors will reverse-engineer the patches to create working exploits due to their severity and public disclosure. LinkedIn denies 500 million user data breach Date: 2021-04-11 Author: The Record LinkedIn has formally denied a rumor that it suffered a devastating security breach that exposed the account details of more than 500 million of its registered users. Rumors of a breach appeared last week after a threat actor claimed to have been in possession of a large trove of LinkedIn user data and proceeded to leak a sample of two million user records as proof. But in a message published last week, LinkedIn said it investigated the breach and concluded that the hacker’s data only included public information that was scraped off LinkedIn’s website and which users consciously made public on their profiles. 100,000 Google Sites Used to Install SolarMarket RAT Date: 2021-04-14 Author: Threatpost Hackers are using search-engine optimization tactics to lure business users to more than 100,000 malicious Google Sites that seem legitimate, but instead install a remote access trojan (RAT), used to gain a foothold on a network and later infect systems with ransomware, credential-stealers, banking trojans and other malware. eSentire’s Threat Response Unit discovered legions of unique, malicious web pages that contain popular business terms/particular keywords, including business-form related keywords like template, invoice, receipt, questionnaire and resume, researchers observed, in a report published Wednesday. ESB-2021.1219 – Adobe Bridge: Multiple vulnerabilities Adobe has released a security update for Adobe Bridge addressing critical and important vulnerabilities that could lead to arbitrary code execution. ASB-2021.0062 – ALERT Microsoft Exchange Server Products: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote/unauthenticated Microsoft has released patches to fix four more security vulnerabilities for MS Exchange Server. ASB-2021.0063 – Microsoft Office Products & Services and Web App Products: Microsoft released updates to plug various security holes in its Windows Operating Systems and other products. ESB-2021.1285 – ALERT GitLab Products: Multiple vulnerabilities Gitlab released newer versions to address critical remote code execution vulnerability. ESB-2021.1287 – Google Chrome: Multiple vulnerabilities Google released Chrome 90.0.4430.72 which contains a number of security fixes and improvements. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team