Daily Edition · Page 5

THE DAILY INDEX

Technology, AI, software, security, crypto and business

ATTACKS & VULNERABILITIES

TLDR InfoSec

VSCODE EXTENSIONS WITH 9M INSTALLS PULLED OVER SECURITY RISKS

Two security researchers reported the ‘Material Theme - Free' and ‘Material Theme Icons - Free' to Microsoft because they seemed malicious. BleepingComputer found a heavily obfuscated release-notes.js file that upon partial deobfuscation makes reference to usernames and passwords in several places. The author of the themes denies any malicious intent and states that a dependency may have been compromised but that Microsoft should have alerted them instead of removing the package.

SECURING TOMORROW'S SOFTWARE: THE NEED FOR MEMORY SAFETY STANDARDS

This blog post, from Google's Security team, discusses the urgent need to eliminate memory safety vulnerabilities in software to enhance security and trust in technology. The authors propose a standardization framework to promote the widespread adoption of memory-safe practices and tools in the software industry. Google is actively involved in advocating for memory safety standards, developing potential standards with partners, and prioritizing memory-safe languages to reduce vulnerabilities and enhance security in its products and services.

STREAMLINING VULNERABILITY RESEARCH WITH IDA PRO AND RUST

Marco Ivaldi of HN Security has released new tools in Rust for reverse engineering and vulnerability research in IDA Pro that leverage the IDA SDK and Binarly's idalib Rust bindings for a faster user experience. These tools, which include rhabdomancer and haruspex, help locate potentially insecure API calls and extract pseudo-code for analysis, enhancing the efficiency of vulnerability research efforts. The availability of idalib opens up opportunities for developers to create standalone analysis tools in Rust, expanding the capabilities of IDA Pro in security research.

AN ICLOUD BACKDOOR WOULD MAKE OUR PHONES LESS SAFE

The UK government asking Apple to create a backdoor in iCloud could put everyone's data at risk. This could perhaps be a coordinated effort with other “Five Eyes” countries of the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand: the rich English-language-speaking spying club. Everyone can help with privacy and support companies like Apple not buckle down by enabling the Advanced Protection feature as well as being proactively involved in the policy front.

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