TLDR InfoSec

TLDR INFORMATION SECURITY 2025-01-10

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01GENERAL

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ENVIRONMENT

Microsoft offers more than 2000 customizable policies for Office applications… but its security baseline covers just 137 by default. Haven't set these policies? Then you're potentially giving threat actors hundreds of ways to target your organization.

threatlocker.comSponsor

02ATTACKS & VULNERABILITIES

IVANTI WARNS OF NEW ZERO-DAY ATTACKS HITTING CONNECT SECURE PRODUCT

Ivanti has announced two high severity vulnerabilities in Ivanti Secure Connect appliances. The first vulnerability is a stack-based buffer overflow that allows unauthenticated, remote attackers to execute arbitrary code. The second vulnerability is a privilege escalation vulnerability for local, authenticated attackers. Ivanti says that the first vulnerability is being actively exploited and urges customers to update vulnerable devices.

securityweek.com2 min read

DATABASE TABLES OF STUDENT, TEACHER INFO STOLEN FROM POWERSCHOOL IN CYBERATTACK

PowerSchool, which serves 60 million K-12 students and teachers, suffered a data breach where hackers accessed personal information, including some Social Security Numbers and medical data, using stolen credentials. The company claims the data won't be shared publicly, though security firm Cyble suggests the breach may span years.

theregister.com4 min read

EXCELSIOR ORTHOPAEDICS FILES NOTICE OF DATA BREACH AFFECTING AN ESTIMATED 357,000

Excelsior Orthopaedics reported a data breach discovered in June 2024, exposing sensitive patient and employee data including Social Security numbers, medical records, and financial information. The company notified affected individuals on December 31, 2024, after investigating the unauthorized network access with cybersecurity experts.

jdsupra.com3 min read

03STRATEGIES & TACTICS

HIDING LINUX PROCESSES WITH BIND MOUNTS

This post refines a methodology for hiding Linux processes by using a bind mount to mount a different directory on top of /proc/PID for the malicious process. The author was looking to refine the original methodology by creating a more realistic directory to overlay but realized that they could instead overlay the proc directory of a spontaneous process which is usually ignored by sysadmins. They note that this method would still be easy to detect if you are aware of the technique and provide a command to do so.

righteousit.com3 min read

IMPLEMENTING SECURITY INVARIANTS IN AN AWS MANAGEMENT ACCOUNT

A Permission Boundary defines the maximum permissions that can be applied to a given principal. In an AWS management account, permissions boundaries are necessary because SCPs cannot be applied. This post introduces a set of security invariants that should be true in an AWS management account and provides an IAM policy to enforce them. It also links to a Lambda function that can be used to attach the policy to all newly created IAM principals.

chrisfarris.com8 min read

HERE'S HOW HUCKSTERS ARE MANIPULATING GOOGLE TO PROMOTE SHADY CHROME EXTENSIONS

Google Chrome's Web Store policy prohibits developers from manipulating extension search results, yet hundreds violate this rule. Developers exploit language translation features to hide thousands of misleading keywords in alternative language descriptions, affecting search results and promoting unrelated or potentially abusive extensions.

arstechnica.com6 min read

04LAUNCHES & TOOLS

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FIREWALL TESTS EXPOSE CRITICAL GAPS IN AWS, AZURE, AND GCP

In November 2024, CyberRatings[dot]org - a non-profit that evaluates cybersecurity products - released independent test results [11] on the effectiveness of cloud vendors' firewalls. The findings demonstrate variability in protection across the three major cloud platforms - with AWS Firewall blocking only 0.3% of exploits tested. Read more

blog.checkpoint.comSponsor

SLACK JACK

Slack Jack is a tool that allows penetration testers to hijack a Slack bot using its token to perform various exploitation and enumeration functions.

github.comGitHub repository

SYZKALLER

Syzkaller is a kernel fuzzer that finds bugs in various operating systems like Linux and Windows. Originally for Linux, it now supports other OS kernels. It is a coverage-guided tool developed by Google but is not an official product.

github.comGitHub repository

WAFW00F

WAFW00F is a tool that helps identify and fingerprint Web Application Firewall products protecting websites. It works by sending HTTP requests and analyzing responses to determine the type of WAF in place. Users can easily install WAFW00F from PyPI, run it in a Docker container, or build it from the source code available on GitHub.

github.comGitHub repository

05MISCELLANEOUS

100 DAYS OF YARA

100 Days of YARA is a community challenge to write a YARA rule every day for 100 days. This repository hosts individuals' YARA rules for the challenge as well as any tools or tips that users post.

github.comGitHub repository

SCHEMING REASONING EVALUATIONS

Apollo Research tested 6 popular LLMs to determine how they would react when given a prompt that gave them a goal, instructed them to achieve their goal at all costs, and then gave them a task to review files that contain proof that the developers have a different goal. 5 out of the 6 models tested would attempt to circumvent hurdles or safeguards to their goals and in some cases, models would lie about the actions on consultations. The researchers found that some models could deliberately underperform or otherwise scheme to attempt to achieve their goals.

apolloresearch.ai7 min read