Threat Spotlight: Group 72
This post is co-authored by Joel Esler, Martin Lee and Craig Williams. Everyone has certain characteristics that can be recognised. This may be a way of walking, an accent, a turn of phrase or a style of dressing. If you know what to look for you can easily spot a friend or acqua
Evolution of the Nuclear Exploit Kit
This post is co-authored by Alex Chiu, Martin Lee, Emmanuel Tacheau, and Angel Villegas. Exploit kits remain an efficient mechanism for cyber criminals to distribute malware. Such kits include exploits for multiple vulnerabilities within a single malicious webpage. Criminals can
Shellshock Exploits in the Wild
This post was authored by Joel Esler & Martin Lee. The recently discovered Bash vulnerability (CVE-2014-6271) potentially allows attackers to execute code on vulnerable systems. We have already blogged about the issue and provided more technical detail in a further blog. The
Shellshock - Update Bash Immediately!
Shellshock is a serious vulnerability. Bash, arguably the most widely distributed shell on Linux systems, fails to correctly parse environment variables with function declarations. Why the fuss over environment variables? Because these variables are often set by programs that han
Another Major Vulnerability Bashes Systems
Vulnerabilities that permit remote network attacks against ubiquitous software components are the nightmares of security professionals. On 24 September the presence of a new vulnerability, CVE-2014-6271 in Bash shell allowing remote code execution was disclosed. The Bash shell
Threat Spotlight: “Kyle and Stan” Malvertising Network 9x Larger Than Expected
This post was authored by Armin Pelkmann. On September 8th, Cisco's Talos Security Intelligence & Research Group unveiled the existence of the "Kyle and Stan" Malvertisement Network. The network was responsible for placing malicious advertisements on big websit
Help! My IP Address Has Been Hijacked!
This post is authored by Jaeson Schultz. SpamCop is a free, community-based spam email reporting service provided by Cisco. SpamCop analyzes reported spam, and extracts details about the sending IP, the URLs contained in the spam, and the networks over which the spam message has
Looking Glasses with Bacon
This is my first post on the VRT blog and I would like to introduce myself. I am Mariano Graziano, an Italian third-year Ph.D. student at the Software and Systems Security Group at Institut Eurecom in Sophia-Antipolis (France) under the supervision of professor Davide Balzarotti.
Microsoft Update Tuesday September 2014: another generally light month but with a significant IE bulletin
This month’s Microsoft Update Tuesday is pretty light save for the Internet Explorer bulletin. While there’s only a total of 4 bulletins, they cover a total of 42 CVEs. The IE bulletin, as is usual, has the most updates for bugs and is rated critical. It covers a total of 37 CVEs