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 security features. This vulnerability has seen active exploitation. It...

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-the-wild via MysterySnail . This vulnerability appears to impact all...

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 Ransomware Group Goes Offline Back in July 2021, CyberNews reported that the...

In this episode, Patrick Miller , Founder of Ampere Industrial Security, discusses what utilities and other industrial companies need to consider when it comes to the goldmines of data they're collecting from their machines and customers. He also explains why security and privacy needs to be incorporated in these operations by design. https://open.spotify.com/episode/7cMR1D4nastJLUDE4VUXYm?si...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s September 2021 Security Updates . VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-964 on Wednesday, September 15th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-40444 This CVE describes a publicly exploited vulnerability in MSHTML that provides user level access upon successful exploitation. According to Microsoft, a...

Throughout this blog series, I have examined real-world ICS cyber-related incidents as a way of looking back to predict what the next attack may look like. The three categories of attacker that I have considered so far are disgruntled insiders, ransomware groups, and APT. Knowing about past events, their impact, and how they unfolded can be critical for thwarting similar attacks in the future. As...

No discussion on ICS attacks could be complete without talking about what some would call, ‘the elephant in the room.’ Critical infrastructure has always been a target for warfare, and modern ICS are no exception. Several high-profile ICS disruptions have in fact been attributed to malicious hackers working at the behest of a military or intelligence agency. Looking at Examples of APTs The...

OT networks often rely on Windows systems for various ICS applications including HMIs, historians, and data gateways. Beyond that, they also commonly rely on Windows systems to run associated IT-networks . A successful ransomware deployment into either of these networks may prevent engineers from controlling plant operations and lead to an unplanned shutdown. This creates an immediate cost on the...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s August 2021 Security Updates . VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-959 on Wednesday, August 11th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-36948 This privilege escalation vulnerability that affects the Windows Update Medic Service (WaasMedic) has been actively exploited. Medic Service is a feature of modern...

Often, the most critical threats come from within an organization itself. This is true for all sectors, but it is especially true for industrial control systems (ICS). Technicians in these environments already have access to plant controls and may have the deep knowledge of industrial processes needed to achieve specific goals. The damage caused by an insider may range from mild disruption to...

Faced with rows of empty gas pumps , many Americans on the East Coast may be wondering why this happened , whether it will happen again, or if there is anything we can do to avoid future catastrophe. The unpleasant truth of the matter is that this will certainly not be the last time society is disrupted due to attackers targeting critical industrial control systems (ICS). The impact of such an...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s July 2021 Security Upd ates . VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-954 on Wednesday, July 14th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-34527 The vulnerability dubbed PrintNightmare was patched prior to the Tuesday patch drop, but it is still worth including here. This vulnerability also generated a bit of...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s June 2021 Security Updates . VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-947 on Wednesday, June 9th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-31955 This is one of two vulnerabilities fixed in today’s patch drop which were reported by Kaspersky Lab after detecting exploitation by threat actor PuzzleMaker. This Windows...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s May 2021 Security Updates . VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-943 on Wednesday, May 12th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-31204 Up first in the list this month, we have a vulnerability that impacts .NET and Visual Studio and could allow a successful attacker to elevate their permissions. We see...

Over the weekend, the Alpharetta-based Colonial Pipeline was hit by an extensive ransomware attack that shut down its information technology (IT) and industrial operational technology (OT) systems. Simply put, an all-too-common ransomware event targeting IT systems encouraged a voluntary shutdown on the production side (OT) of the business to prevent further exposure. Colonial Pipeline is...

Lane Thames, PhD and principal security researcher at Tripwire explains the challenges you might not have considered in IT/OT convergence. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2w3lsuN3V1ZOiLVGqxw58v?si=5lVBp46tTiK7tfzmCnpeuA Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5UDKiGLlzxhiGnd6FtvEnm Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-tripwire-cybersecurity-podcast RSS: https://tripwire.libsyn.com/rss...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s April 2021 Security Updates . VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-939 on Wednesday, April 14th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-28310 Borin Larin of Kaspersky Lab discovered this vulnerability being actively used for exploitation and suspects that it is tied to the BITTER APT group. Larin and co...

When it comes to cybersecurity, industrial IT —consisting mainly of operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS)—has failed to keep up with development in the enterprise IT world. That’s mostly because industries’ adoption of internet technology has been slower when compared with enterprises. It would take some time to close the gap, but concerted efforts have already been made...

The latest Honeywell USB Threat Report 2020 indicates that the number of threats specifically targeting Operational Technology systems has nearly doubled from 16% to 28%, while the number of threats capable of disrupting those systems rose from 26% to 59% over the same period. Let’s face it. Critical infrastructure operators in manufacturing, aerospace, energy, shipping, chemical, oil and gas...