"FritzFrog Botnet Exploits Log4Shell, PwnKit Vulnerabilities"

"FritzFrog Botnet Exploits Log4Shell, PwnKit Vulnerabilities"

The FritzFrog cryptocurrency mining botnet is growing as a recently analyzed variant exploits the Log4Shell and PwnKit vulnerabilities for lateral movement and privilege escalation. The FritzFrog botnet, discovered in August 2020, is a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) botnet run by Golang-based malware. It targets SSH servers by brute-forcing login credentials and has successfully compromised thousands of them.

Submitted by Gregory Rigby on
Continuous Reasoning with Gradual Verification
Lead PI:
Jonathan Aldrich
Abstract

This project proposes a program of research aimed at helping developers to more quickly construct and repair software, specifications, and proofs within a continuous reasoning process. our project begins by prototyping a Continuous Assurance system. This system adapts our prior work on Gradual Verification to context of continuous integration, supporting incremental progress towards proofs through the integration of static and dynamic verification. Once an initial prototype of continuous assurance is complete, we will begin on a Proof Maintenance system, which aims to maintain proofs in a checkable state after evolutionary changes are made to one or more components or their specifications. The final technical component of our approach is a Proof repair system, which adapts specifications that have been falsified by finding closely related specifications that remain true after an evolutionary step. 

Jonathan Aldrich

Jonathan Aldrich is an Associate Professor of the School of Computer Science. He does programming languages and software engineering research focused on developing better ways of expressing and enforcing software design within source code, typically through language design and type systems. Jonathan works at the intersection of programming languages and software engineering. His research explores how the way we express software affects our ability to engineer software at scale. A particular theme of much of his work is improving software quality and programmer productivity through better ways to express structural and behavioral aspects of software design within source code. Aldrich has contributed to object-oriented typestate verification, modular reasoning techniques for aspects and stateful programs, and new object-oriented language models. For his work specifying and verifying architecture, he received a 2006 NSF CAREER award and the 2007 Dahl-Nygaard Junior Prize. Currently, Aldrich excited to be working on the design of Wyvern, a new modularly extensible programming language.

Performance Period: 01/01/2024 - 03/31/2024
Institution: Carnegie Mellon University

"'Leaky Vessels' Cloud Bugs Allow Container Escapes Globally"

"'Leaky Vessels' Cloud Bugs Allow Container Escapes Globally"

Researchers have discovered four vulnerabilities, collectively called "Leaky Vessels," in container engine components. Three of the vulnerabilities enable attackers to break out of containers and perform malicious actions on the host system. One of the vulnerabilities affects runC, the lightweight container runtime for Docker and other container environments. It is the most critical of the four vulnerabilities, scoring 8.6 on the CVSS scale.

Submitted by Gregory Rigby on

"Pump-and-Dump Schemes Make Crypto Fraudsters $240m"

"Pump-and-Dump Schemes Make Crypto Fraudsters $240m"

According to security researchers at Chainalysis, market manipulators may have made over $240m last year by artificially inflating the value of Ethereum tokens.  Chainalysis investigated the 370,000 tokens launched on Ethereum between January and December 2023, 168,600 of which were available to trade on at least one decentralized exchange (DEX).

Submitted by Adam Ekwall on

"New NCCoE Guide Helps Major Industries Observe Incoming Data While Using Latest Internet Security Protocol"

"New NCCoE Guide Helps Major Industries Observe Incoming Data While Using Latest Internet Security Protocol"

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a practice guide covering methods aimed at helping major industries implement the Internet security protocol TLS 1.3, as well as conduct network monitoring and auditing safely, securely, and effectively. Companies in finance, healthcare, and other major industries must follow best practices for monitoring incoming data for cyberattacks. TLS 1.3 provides advanced protection but complicates the performance of required data audits.

Submitted by Gregory Rigby on

"Europcar Dismisses Data Leak Claims as AI Fake"

"Europcar Dismisses Data Leak Claims as AI Fake"

Europcar, a global car rental company, has denied claims of a data breach, arguing that the Europcar data posted online by threat actors was generated using ChatGPT, the Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot. An advertisement on a popular data leak forum claims that attackers are selling the personal information of 50 million Europcar customers. The authors say they accessed usernames, passwords, home addresses, passport numbers, and other sensitive information. However, the company says this advertisement is false, and the sample data is likely ChatGPT-generated.

Submitted by Gregory Rigby on

"Telegram Marketplaces Fuel Phishing Attacks with Easy-to-Use Kits and Malware"

"Telegram Marketplaces Fuel Phishing Attacks with Easy-to-Use Kits and Malware"

According to Guardio Labs researchers, the phishing ecosystem has been made highly accessible due to Telegram's emergence as a hub for cybercrime, allowing threat actors to launch massive attacks inexpensively. The messaging app has evolved into a place where cybercriminals of different skill levels could exchange illicit tools and insights, resulting in an effective supply chain of tools and victim data. They are sharing free samples, tutorials, kits, and other components that could help build a malware campaign.

Submitted by Gregory Rigby on

"A Zero-Day Vulnerability (And PoC) to Blind Defenses Relying on Windows Event Logs"

"A Zero-Day Vulnerability (And PoC) to Blind Defenses Relying on Windows Event Logs"

A zero-day vulnerability, discovered by a security researcher named Florian and reported to Microsoft, has the potential to crash the Windows Event Log service on all supported (and some legacy) versions of Windows. The exploitation of this vulnerability by a malicious actor could cause significant problems for enterprise defenders. The vulnerability has not yet been patched, but in the meantime, the researcher has received permission from the company to publish a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) exploit.

Submitted by Gregory Rigby on

"Hack of PJ&A Tops 2023 US Healthcare Data Breaches as Tally Jumps by 4M"

"Hack of PJ&A Tops 2023 US Healthcare Data Breaches as Tally Jumps by 4M"

An attack on the medical transcription company Perry Johnson & Associates (PJ&A) is now considered the largest US health sector data breach that occurred in 2023. PJ&A provides transcription services to medical facilities in the US, so it holds sensitive information about millions of Americans. Last year, hackers breached the company between March 27 and May 2, later stealing personal data from its systems in April. PJ&A disclosed that the breach affected more than 8.95 million people.

Submitted by Gregory Rigby on
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