 According to reports, a security researcher has discovered an unpatched vulnerability in the Windows 10 operating system. The security researcher reportedly revealed the vulnerability on Twitter. It’s a zero-day flaw that exists in Windows 10 and it could allow an attacker to gain system privileges on an affected computer, according to CERT/CC vulnerability analyst Phil Dormann. The vulnerability was disclosed in a tweet by @SandboxEscaper and the account has been removed. It appears that vulnerability exists in task scheduler on Windows 10 but there’s no easy way to exploit the security flaw. The successful exploitation of the vulnerability requires the user to download a malicious app on a machine. “Microsoft Windows task scheduler contains a local privilege escalation vulnerability in the Advanced Local Procedure Call (ALPC) interface, which can allow a local user to obtain SYSTEM privileges,” the advisory reads. “Microsoft Windows task scheduler contains a vulnerability in the handling of ALPC, which can allow a local user to gain SYSTEM privileges. A local user may be able to gain elevated (SYSTEM) privileges.” “A local user may be able to gain elevated (SYSTEM) privileges,” the advisory explains. Another report claims that the patch for the said vulnerability may land soon. There’s a chance that Microsoft will deploy updates to address this vulnerability on next Patch Tuesday, which takes place on September 11. For more stop by OUR FORUM.  Current versions of Ubuntu and CentOS are disabling a security feature that was added to the GNOME desktop environment last year. The feature's name is Bubblewrap, which is a sandbox environment that the GNOME Project added to secure GNOME's thumbnail parsers in July 2017, with the release of GNOME 3.26. Thumbnail parsers are scripts that read files inside a directory and create thumbnail images to be used with GNOME, KDE, or other Linux desktop environments. This operation takes place every time a user navigates to folders, and the OS needs to display thumbnails for the files contained within. In recent years, security researchers have proven that thumbnail parses can be an attack vector when hackers trick a user into downloading a boobytrapped file on their desktop, which is then executed by the thumbnail parser. It's for this reason that the GNOME team added Bubblewrap sandboxes for all GNOME thumbnail parser scripts last year. But according to German security researcher and journalist Hanno Boeck, the Ubuntu operating system is disabling Bubblewrap support inside GNOME for all recent OS versions. Furthermore, Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy also discovered that GNOME Bubblewrap sandboxes were also missing in the default version of CentOS 7.x. But there's a valid explanation for what Ubuntu is doing, according to Alex Murray, Ubuntu Security Tech Lead at Canonical. Murray says the Ubuntu team opted to disable GNOME's Bubblewrap because they did not have the time and resources to audit the feature. Learn more by visiting OUR FORUM.  Google security researchers have revealed this week that the immensely popular Fortnite Android app is vulnerable to so-called man-in-the-disk (MitD) attacks. This vulnerability allows low-privileged malicious apps already installed on a users' phone to hijack the Fortnite app's installation process and install other malicious apps that have a higher permissions level. Epic Games, the Fortnite game developer, has released version 2.1.0 that patches this attack vector. The concept of man-in-the-disk attacks has been recently detailed in more depth by security researchers from Israel-based cyber-security firm Check Point. In a simplified explanation, MitD attacks are possible when an Android app stores data on External Storage mediums, outside its highly-secured Internal Storage space. An attacker can watch a specific app's External Storage space and tamper with the data stored in this storage space because this space is shared by all apps. The Fortnite app is vulnerable to this attack because the app does not contain the actual game, but is merely an installer. Once users install the app, this installer uses the device's External Storage space to download and install the actual game. "Any app with the WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission can substitute the APK immediately after the download is completed and the fingerprint is verified. "Any app with the WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission can substitute the APK immediately after the download is completed and the fingerprint is verified. This is easily done using a FileObserver. The Fortnite Installer will proceed to install the substituted (fake) APK," a Google researcher wrote in a bug report recently made public.Complete details are posted on OUR FORUM. |
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