Image Industrial control systems (ICS) are specific kinds of assets and associated instrumentation that help to oversee industrial processes. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, there are three common types of ICS. These are supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, which help organizations...

Image All of us at Tripwire’s Vulnerability Exposure and Research Team (VERT) are constantly looking out for interesting stories and developments in the infosec world. Here’s what cybersecurity news stood out to us during the week of January 17, 2022. We’ve also included the comments from a few folks here at Tripwire VERT. Root-Level...

Image Earlier this year, I wrote about what’s new in Version 8 of the Center for Internet Security’s Critical Security Controls (CIS Controls). An international consortium of security professionals first created the CIS Controls back in 2008. Since then, the security community has continued to update the CIS Controls to keep pace with...

Image Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s January 2022 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-981 on Wednesday, January 12th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2022-21919 This vulnerability was a bypass to CVE-2021-34484, released by the same researcher,...

Image Which Flavor of the Purdue Model Should You Follow? If you enter the term "Purdue Model" into your favorite search engine, the resulting images will vary considerably. There's almost no better way to stir up an Operational Technology (OT) security conversation than to begin debating what belongs on Level 1 or Level 3 of the...

Image It seems that the most popular topics in cybersecurity for the last year have been zero trust as well as the convergence of Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT). These developments are good, as they signal some positive motion towards better overall security. Some of the current risks are worth noting,...

Image Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s December 2021 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-978 on Wednesday, December 15th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-43890 Up first this month is a vulnerability in the Windows AppX Installer that could allow...

Image Users who do not have the appropriate security awareness training are considered a weak link in the security of an enterprise. These untrained users are easier to exploit than finding a flaw or vulnerability in the equipment that an enterprise uses to secure its network. Attackers could convince unsuspecting users to...

Image Networks form a critical core for our modern-day society and businesses. People, processes, and technologies should be in place for monitoring, detecting, logging, and preventing malicious activities that occur when an enterprise experiences an attack within or against their networks. Key Takeaways for Control 13 Enterprises...

Image Networks form a critical core for our modern-day society and businesses. These networks are comprised of many types of components that make up the networks’ infrastructure. Network infrastructure devices can be physical or virtual and include things such as routers, switches, firewalls, and wireless access points. Unfortunately,...

Image Word splitting is a function of BASH that I was unfamiliar with, but it is definitely one that impacted my recent research. From the bash(1) man page: IFS The Internal Field Separator that is used for word splitting after expansion and to split lines into words with the read builtin command. The default value is <space>...

Image The past few weeks, I’ve been spending a lot of my free time preparing for the OSCP exam, which means refreshing a lot of skills that I haven’t used in years. A large part of that is rebuilding muscle memory around buffer overflows, so that’s how I spent my four-day weekend. I logged about 70 hours compiling small programs,...

Image Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s November 2021 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-972 on Wednesday, November 10th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-42292 Up first this month, we have a 0-day in Microsoft Excel that allows an attacker to bypass...

Image Data loss can be a consequence of a variety of factors from malicious ransomware to hardware failures and even natural disasters. Regardless of the reason for data loss, we need to be able to restore our data. A data recovery plan begins with prioritizing our data, protecting it while it is being stored, and having a plan to...

Image With the continuing rise of ransomware, malware defenses are more critical than ever before with regard to securing the enterprise. Anti-Malware technologies have become an afterthought in many organizations, a technology that they’ve always had, always used, and never really thought about. This control serves as a reminder that...

Image Web browsers and email clients are used to interact with external and internal assets. Both applications can be used as a point of entry within an organization. Users of these applications can be manipulated using social engineering attacks. A successful social engineering attack needs to convince users to interact with...

Image Audit logs provide a rich source of data critical to preventing, detecting, understanding, and minimizing the impact of network or data compromise in a timely manner. Collection logs and regular review is useful for identifying baselines, establishing operational trends, and detecting abnormalities. In some cases, logging may be...

Image Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s October 2021 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-968 on Wednesday, October 13th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-40449 Up first this month, we have an elevation of privilege in Win32k that has been exploited in...

Image When it comes to cybersecurity, vulnerability management is one of the older technologies that still play a critical role in securing our assets. It is often overlooked, disregarded, or considered only for checkbox compliance needs, but a proper vulnerability management program can play a critical role in avoiding a series data...

Image All of us at Tripwire’s Vulnerability Exposure and Research Team (VERT) are constantly reviewing the news for interesting stories and developments in the cybersecurity world. Here’s what stood out to us during the week of September 27, 2021. We’ve also included the comments from a few folks here at Tripwire VERT.   REvil...