December 28, 2024 - Red Dot Security

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Hello all,

The end is near! No, not of the world, but of the year. And what a year it has been! There are over half a dozen links that herald and decry the past year in the cyberverse as it relates to security and gains made by both defenders and adversaries. As expected, the final couple of weeks of 2024 are not going down quietly. Threat Actors are busy attempting to steal their holiday bonuses, with quite a few organizations falling prey to exfiltration of data and encrypting ransomware. So, do not let your guard down in the final few hours of this year’s countdown. Onward to news of the week.

As usual, my commentary is followed by a plethora of links to other items that are worth skimming to see if they interest you or pertain to your particular environment or of those you support.

Headline NEWS:

Adobe released a patch for a critical defect in ColdFusion. Even worse, a Proof of Concept (PoC) exploit is out in the wild already. If you use this, patch immediately.
Apache proffered up patches for critical defects in three different products, MINA, HugeGraph, and Traffic Control. Organizations are urged to patch immediately since threat actors are sure to exploit these quickly.
FTC, after saying that they’d “deceived customers” with claims of adequate security, has ordered “Marriott International, Inc. and its subsidiary Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide LLC to implement a comprehensive information security program to settle charges that the companies failed to implement reasonable data security, which led to three large data breaches affecting more than 344 million customers worldwide.” The 16-page ruling has a lot of provisions for them to follow for the next 20 years!
Node.js systeminformation package has been shown to be vulnerable to a Remote Code Execution (RCE) flaw. A PoC already exists, so developers would be wise to quickly update to the latest version to mitigate this defect.
Palo Alto Networks firewalls have a Denial of Service (DoS) defect that can be triggered if DNS Security logging is enabled. The defect enables an attacker to cause the firewall to go into maintenance mode, necessitating manual intervention to restore service. An update patch is now available to fix this flaw, as is a workaround of turning off the DNS Security logging function. This is under active exploitation, so if you use Palo Alto, address yours quickly if you don’t want yours locked up.
Webmin is a system administration tool used on Linux systems. A new defect has been found that “could allow attackers to seize control of servers”. If you use Webmin, please update yours to version 2.111 or later to fix this flaw.

In Ransomware, Malware, and Vulnerabilities News:

Data Leaks and Breaches have a number of links in this week’s news. If it seems to you like there are more of these than in the past, there are. It is due to legislation that mandates reporting. Many of these violations of the public’s trust that would have flown under the radar before, are now exposed via regulatory filings. The resulting lawsuits are often company-ending in the litigation costs and judgements rendered. It is vital to be proactive in your security. If your company makes it into the news, it likely won’t be around next year. Statistics show that 60% of small businesses shut down within six months of a cyber attack.

In Other News Events of Note and Interest:

xAI is about to get a 150-Megawatt power boost. Up until now, Memphis Light, Gas & Water (MLGW) was only able to provide 8MW of power, meaning that Musk’s company had to improvise and run their own generators to make up the difference. It takes a tremendous amount of power to bring the 100,000 GPUs of the Gigafactory of Compute to life – 155MW to be exact. MLGW has upgraded their infrastructure, prompting TVA to grant the extra power. I guess we now know where SkyNet will become self-aware.

Musings:

The internet is sort of like a Secret Santa gift exchange. Sometimes when you go to a website you find the most delightful surprises, what you want, what you need, what brings you joy, and what brings you amusement. Other times, you end up with a fruitcake, a Swiffer, a promotional swag regift, a $10 coupon off the price of a new Tesla, or a nasty virus from being near someone who was harboring an infection. Practice safe computing, and may your surprises be pleasant ones.

Headline NEWS

Ransomware, Malware, and Vulnerabilities News

Other News Events of Note and Interest

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