Talos Threat Source is a regular intelligence update from Cisco Talos, highlighting the biggest threats each week and other security news.
Microsoft Releases Monthly Set of Security Updates for August 2017
Synopsis: Buzzwords are the bane of the infosec community. Whether it’s “cyber” or “APT”, these terms are often used as nothing more than a way to generate clicks or by marketing teams to push more blinky lights to customers. “Fileless malware” is the latest example of this. Attacks leveraging malware that have been dubbed “fileless malware attacks” have been generating significant media coverage recently leading many to wonder what impact these attacks may have on their organizations or whether they are adequately protected against them. In many cases these attacks are not truly fileless and result in various artifacts being written to targeted systems. In this presentation we will provide a brief history of in-memory malware as well as walk through some specific examples of malware that makes use of this approach to infecting systems. We will also cover why most malware is not actually “fileless”, along with specific examples of threats that make use of interesting persistence mechanisms that do not resemble what many have grown accustomed to seeing from malware.
Synopsis: What happens when the biggest players in a market just get up and quit? That's exactly what has happened to the exploit kit landscape over the last year. Now that Angler, Neutrino, and Nuclear are gone, we're left to pick up the pieces. What's been created is a vacuum with Rig, Sundown, and others jockeying for position, but none have taken the lead. We've observed adversaries changing kits frequently and gates switching from one kit to the next. Just like any other threat, adversaries are going to evolve and change. Oddly the kits don't appear to have evolved much, but looks can be deceiving. Previously unreleased details on several high profile exploit kits will be disclosed. This talk will discuss the state of exploit kits today. There will also be a section related to how exploit kits will evolve in the future and the impacts it may potentially have on the threat landscape overall.
Synopsis: This presentation will show how APT actors are evolving and how the reconnaissance phase is changing to protect their valuable 0-day exploit or malware frameworks. This talk will mainly focus on the usage of Office documents and watering hole attacks designed to establish if the target is the intended one (we will mention campaigns against political or military organizations). The techniques and the obfuscation put in place by these actors will be described in detail (techniques based on Macro, JavaScript, PowerShell, Flash or Python). At the end of the presentation, we will show different mitigations to help attendees protect their users.
Description: Microsoft has released its monthly set of security advisories for vulnerabilities that have been identified and addressed in various products. This month's advisory release addresses 48 new vulnerabilities with 25 of them rated critical, 21 rated important, and 2 rated moderate. These vulnerabilities impact Edge, Hyper-V, Internet Explorer, Remote Desktop Protocol, Sharepoint, SQL Server, the Windows Subsystem for Linux, and more. In addition, Microsoft is also releasing an update for Adobe Flash Player embedded in Edge and Internet Explorer.
Description: Adobe has released security updates for Flash Player, Acrobat/Reader, Experience Manager, and Digital Editions. This month's Flash security update is fairly small with two vulnerabilities addressed that could result in remote code execution if exploited. The Adobe Acrobat/Reader update however is fairly significant with 67 different vulnerabilities addressed. Most of these vulnerabilities could be exploited to execute arbitrary code on affected systems.
Description: Android has released its monthly security roll-up to address vulnerabilities that have been identified in the mobile OS. This month's release sees 10 critical vulnerabilities with all of them affecting Mediaserver. The most severe vulnerability could "enable a remote attacker using a specially crafted file to execute arbitrary code within the context of a privileged process." 15 other vulnerabilities have a high severity and 15 are deemed moderate severity. AOSP partners have been notified and updates should be forthcoming for various handsets.
WannaCry Hero Arrested, One of Two Charged with Distribution of Kronos Malware
https://threatpost.com/wannacry-hero-arrested-one-of-two-charged-with-distribution-of-kronos-malware/127186/
Senators Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Improve Cybersecurity of “Internet-of-Things” (IoT) Devices
https://www.warner.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?id=06A5E941-FBC3-4A63-B9B4-523E18DADB36
Modern Alchemy: Turning XSS into RCE in Electron
https://blog.doyensec.com/2017/08/03/electron-framework-security.html
Microsoft to remove WoSign and StartCom certificates in Windows 10
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mmpc/2017/08/08/microsoft-to-remove-wosign-and-startcom-certificates-in-windows-10/
Taking the FIRST look at Crypt0l0cker
http://blog.talosintelligence.com/2017/08/first-look-crypt0l0cker.html?f_l=s