Tech News

Electron App Vulnerable to Recode Code Execution Vulnerability

Electron, an open source web application platform for creating cross-platform applications, has reported a critical vulnerability that affects Windows users. The remote code execution vulnerability affects several popular apps, including Skype, Slack, and Signal.

"A remote code execution vulnerability has been discovered, affecting Electron apps that use custom protocol handlers. This vulnerability has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2018-1000006," wrote Electron in a blog post.

The vulnerability affects every Electron app that runs on Windows and registers as the default handler for a protocol, like MyApp.

According to Electron, "Such apps can be affected regardless of how the protocol is registered, e.g. using native code, the Windows registry, or Electron's app.setAsDefaultProtocolClient API."

Electron has released a new version of the framework that fixes the vulnerability. If you work on Windows and are using Electron to build your apps, please update to the latest version immediately. Linux and Mac OS users are not affected by the vulnerability.

More than 2,000 WordPress Sites Infected by Malware

If you are a WordPress admin, you need to check if your site is infected by the infamous cloudflare.solutions malware.

A few month ago, researchers at Sucuri, a web security company, discovered two infections related to cloudflare.solutions. The company reports that the malware and attack are back.

The malware is a bigger threat to WordPress-powered sites that offer e-commerce services because it is designed to steal payment details. "If hackers manage to steal the admin credentials, they can just log into the site without relying on a flaw to break into the site," wrote The Hacker News.

Although the new attack is not as widespread as the original, the return of the malware does show that website admins didn't protect their sites after the first attack. It's very likely that most WordPress admins may not even be aware of the problem.

According to The Hacker News, "More than 2,000 WordPress websites have once again been found infected with a piece of crypto-mining malware that not only steals the resources of visitors' computers to mine digital currencies but also logs visitors' every keystroke."

"To clean up a website that has been compromised with this infection, you'll need to remove the malicious code from the theme's functions.php, scan the wp_posts table for possible injections, change all WordPress passwords(!), and update all server software, including third-party themes and plugins," wrote Sucuri in a blog post.

If you are a WordPress admin, you might want to try the Sucuri plugin to check how to clean your website of any infected code.

Torvalds Calls Intel's Patch Garbage

After releasing the patches for Spectre/Meltdown, Intel is asking users to stop installing these patches until a better version is out.

"We recommend that OEMs, cloud service providers, system manufacturers, software vendors, and end users stop deployment of current versions on specific platforms," Navin Shenoy, executive vice president of Intel wrote in an announcement, "as they may introduce higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior."

Red Hat has already reverted the patches that the companies earlier released for the RHEL family of products, after reports of rebooting problems.

Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, reserves the harshest words for Intel. "… I really don't want to see these garbage patches just mindlessly sent around," wrote Torvalds on the LKML mailing list.

Not everyone on the mailing list thought it was such a bad thing. One maintainer said, "Certainly it's a nasty hack, but hey – the world was on fire, and in the end we didn't have to just turn the data centers off and go back to goat farming, so it's not all bad."

Another maintainer chimed in and said, "As a hack for existing CPUs, it's just about tolerable – as long as it can die entirely by the next generation."

Torvalds didn't buy either argument. "That's part of the big problem here. The speculation control cpuid stuff shows that Intel actually seems to plan on doing the right thing for meltdown (the main question being _when_). Which is not a huge surprise, since it should be easy to fix, and it's a really honking big hole to drive through. Not doing the right thing for meltdown would be completely unacceptable," said Torvalds. "So the IBRS garbage implies that Intel is _not_ planning on doing the right thing for the indirect branch speculation. Honestly, that's completely unacceptable too."

AMT Flaw in Intel Chips Allows Attacker to Create a Backdoor

F-Secure researchers have found a way to exploit the security flaw in AMT that allows a local attacker to backdoor almost any corporate laptop in a matter of seconds, even if the BIOS password, TPM Pin, BitLocker and login credentials are in place. Once the system is compromised, the attacker can control it remotely.

"The attack is almost deceptively simple to enact, but it has incredible destructive potential," said Harry Sintonen, F-Secure's senior security consultant. "In practice, it can give a local attacker complete control over an individual's work laptop, despite even the most extensive security measures," Sintonen says.

F-Secure detailed how the exploit may work. All you need to do is reboot the system and enter the boot menu. Typically, you can't go beyond that point as there is BIOS password. That's where AMT comes to the rescue. An attacker can log into Intel's Management Engine BIOS Extension (MEBx), using the default password admin, which is not changed in most cases. An attacker can now change the default password, enable remote access and set AMT's user opt-in to None. Behold, the system is compromised. Now the attacker can gain access to the system, remotely.

Most people would dismiss such flaw as a real threat because it does require "physical" access to the target device. Sintonen said it's not that hard. Once the attackers identify the victim, they approach the victim in a public place like an airport, cafe, or hotel lobby and engage in the "evil maid" scenario. One attacker distracts the target while the other attacker quickly gains access to the laptop. The whole operation can be done in under a minute, said Sintonen.

It may sound like an episode from Mr. Robot, but it's actually not. To mitigate all such risks, organizations should either disable AMT or set a strong password for it.

First Malware for Mac OS in 2018

A security researcher has discovered a new malware targeting Mac OS systems. The stealth malware, dubbed OSX/MaMi, was discovered by security researcher Patrick Wardle. The malware can be used to steal sensitive user information and is undetectable by current antivirus programs.

Wardle believes that MaMi is closely related to the DNS Unlocker malware that targeted Windows systems in 2015.

"OSX/MaMi isn't particular advanced – but does alter infected systems in rather nasty and persistent ways. By installing a new root certificate and hijacking the DNS servers, the attackers can perform a variety of nefarious actions such as man-in-the-middle'ing traffic (perhaps to steal credentials, or inject ads)," wrote Wardle.

He has suggested some steps to ensure that your system is not infected – either reset the DNS server and delete the malicious certificate or simply reinstall Mac OS; I would go with the latter option.

You can also download and install a free and open source firewall, called LuLu, that Wardle has published on GitHub.

Critical Flaw in phpMyAdmin

A security researcher has found a critical flaw in phpMyAdmin that allows an attacker to damage databases. According to The Hacker News, "The vulnerability is a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attack and affects phpMyAdmin versions 4.7.x (prior to 4.7.7)."

The vulnerability was discovered by researcher, Ashutosh Barot. Barot wrote in a blog post, "In this case (phpMyAdmin), a database admin/Developer can be tricked into performing database operations like DROP TABLE using CSRF. It can cause devastating incidents! The vulnerability allows an attacker to send a crafted URL to the victim and if she (authenticated user) clicks it, the victim may perform a DROP TABLE query on her database."

On its advisory page, phpMyAdmin wrote that "by deceiving a user to click on a crafted URL, it is possible to perform harmful database operations such as deleting records, dropping/truncating tables, etc." The phpMyAdmin project has already released a patch and suggests users either apply the patch to the existing installs or upgrade to phpMyAdmin 4.7.7 or newer.

phpMyAdmin is an open source tool for managing MySQL over the web. It supports a wide range of functions, including management of databases, tables, columns, relations, indexes, users, permissions, etc. via the user interface, instead of using a command-line interface. This ease of use has made phpMyAdmin a very popular tool for hosting providers.