Imperva cloud firewall pwned, D-Link bug uncovered – plus more

October 14, 2019 TH Author

Roundup It’s time for another security news catch-up.

Imperva announces database break-in

Security house Imperva says that back in October of 2018 an attacker got hold of an API that was then used to access an AWS database containing customer emails along with hashed and salted passwords.

The company found out about the intrusion in August of this year and, following several weeks of investigation, is delivering their findings.

“We have since gone back and looked for malicious activity, leveraging threat intelligence feeds in conjunction with audit logs (see product security update below), related to accounts in the dataset,” said Imperva CTO Kunal Anand.

“Thus far, we have not found any malicious behavior targeting our customers (logins, rule changes, etc.) and have implemented procedures to continue monitoring for such activity. We remain vigilant, however, and will continue to monitor for malicious behavior.”

DCH caves, pays ransom

Early in October, Alabama-based hospital chain DCH announced that it had fallen victim to a ransomware attack.

The US hospitals now say they are recovering, but it has come at a steep price. DCH has admitted that in order to begin the process of getting its systems back online, the hackers’ ransom demands had been paid.

“In collaboration with law enforcement and independent IT security experts, we have begun a methodical process of system restoration,” DCH said.

“We have been using our own DCH backup files to rebuild certain system components, and we have obtained a decryption key from the attacker to restore access to locked systems.”

This is a good time to point out that paying the ransom demand is generally a bad idea and more often than not, doesn’t actually work. Instead, keeping regular backups and having a recovery plan are advised.

There was a mild panic last week when tweets circulated that FireEye discovered a China-linked hacking crew, known as APT41, had broken into TeamViewer customer accounts. However, TeamViewer has stressed this is not “a compromise of TeamViewer or a previously undisclosed incident.” FireEye, which was presenting at its security conference this month, was likely referring to that time a few years ago when TeamViewer was probed by hackers, and some customer accounts were pwned via their insecure passwords. So, no new hack.

Old D-Link routers get fresh crop of bugs

Fortinet has issued a warning over new security vulnerabilities in D-Link routers that can be exploited to hijack this equipment. The command-injection flaw is present in the DIR-655, DIR-866L, DIR-652, and DHP-1565 lines.

Unfortunately for users, these devices are end-of-life, so there won’t be any firmware updates coming.

Direct email marketing biz Click2Mail confirmed it was hacked. “We have learned that your personal information, including name, organization name, account mailing address, email address, and phone number may have been compromised,” it told customers in an email.

Ormandy strikes again with Visual Studio bug

Google bug-hunter Tavis Ormandy has disclosed a new security vulnerability, this time in Visual Studio for Linux and Windows. According to Ormandy, a miscreant could access a built-in on-by-default remote debugger, potentially allowing for a sandbox escape. The flaw has been fixed by Microsoft, and patches should be making their way to users shortly.

Manhattan prosecutors accused of hacking iPhones during investigations

A report from OneZero claims that going back to 2018, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, in the USA, has been working with phone-hacking biz Cellebrite.

“A contract obtained by OneZero shows that the Manhattan District Attorney’s office — one of the largest and most influential prosecution offices in the country — has had UFED Premium in-house since January 2018. According to the contract, the DA’s office agreed to pay Cellebrite about $200,000 over three years for UFED Premium,” the report reads.

“The $200,000 fee covered software licensing and installation, training for select office personnel on the platform, and an agreed-upon number of phone cracks.”

Cisco Talos warns of PDF reader flaws

The team at Talos has disclosed a set of vulnerabilities in the Nitro PDF application that could potentially allow for remote code execution via poisoned documents. There is currently no patch available, so users and admins should take care if they are using Nitro to handle PDFs obtained from untrusted sources. ®