Tag Archives: Kaspersky

Microsoft Patch Tuesday July 2023: Vulristics improvements, Office RCE, SFB SmartScreen and Outlook, EoP MSHTML and ERS, other RCEs

Hello everyone! This episode will be about Microsoft Patch Tuesday for July 2023, including vulnerabilities that were added between June and July Patch Tuesdays.

Alternative video link (for Russia): https://vk.com/video-149273431_456239131

As usual, I use my open source Vulristics project to analyse and prioritize vulnerabilities.

Vulristics improvements

I optimized the detection of the vulnerable product and the type of vulnerability based on the description. Now processing already downloaded data (with option --rewrite-flag "False") takes a few seconds. For example, only ~3 seconds for 100 MS Patch Tuesday vulnerabilities . It used to take a few minutes.

What I’ve done:

  1. For Microsoft generated descriptions, e.g. “Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability”, vulnerability type and product are now directly parsed out of the description, keyword search is not performed.
  2. I rewrote the generic keyword search based on products.json. I have reduced the use of heavy functions without sacrificing the quality of the detections.
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Is it possible to detect Zero Day vulnerabilities with Vulnerability Management solutions?

Hello everyone! In my English-language telegram chat avleonovchat, the question was asked: “How to find zero day vulnerabilities with Qualys?” Apparently this question can be expanded. Not just with Qualys, but with any VM solution in general. And is it even possible? There was an interesting discussion.

Alternative video link (for Russia): https://vk.com/video-149273431_456239109

Image generated by Stable Diffusion 2.1: “calendar on the wall cyber security vulnerability zero day”

The question is not so straightforward. To answer it, we need to define what a Zero Day vulnerability is. If we look at wikipedia, then historically “0” is the number of days a vendor has to fix a vulnerability.

“Eventually the term was applied to the vulnerabilities that allowed this hacking, and to the number of days that the vendor has had to fix them.”

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Microsoft Patch Tuesday August 2022: DogWalk, Exchange EOPs, 13 potentially dangerous, 2 funny, 3 mysterious vulnerabilities

Hello everyone! In this episode, let’s take a look at the Microsoft Patch Tuesday August 2022 vulnerabilities. I use my Vulristics vulnerability prioritization tool as usual. I take comments for vulnerabilities from Tenable, Qualys, Rapid7, ZDI and Kaspersky blog posts. Also, as usual, I take into account the vulnerabilities added between the July and August Patch Tuesdays.

Alternative video link (for Russia): https://vk.com/video-149273431_456239098

There were 147 vulnerabilities. Urgent: 1, Critical: 0, High: 36, Medium: 108, Low: 2.

There was a lot of great stuff this Patch Tuesday. There was a critical exploited in the wild MSDT DogWalk vulnerability, 3 critical Exchange vulnerabilities that could be easily missed in prioritization, 13 potentially dangerous vulnerabilities, 2 funny vulnerabilities and 3 mysterious ones. Let’s take a closer look.

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AM Live Vulnerability Management Conference 2022: my impressions and position

Hello everyone! This episode will be about the AM Live Vulnerability Management online conference. I participated in it on May 17th.

Alternative video link (for Russia): https://vk.com/video-149273431_456239090

The event lasted 2 hours. Repeating everything that has been said is difficult and makes little sense. Those who want can watch the full video or read the article about the event (both in Russian). Here I would like to share my impressions, compare this event with last year’s and express my position.

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Microsoft Patch Tuesday April 2022 and custom CVE comments sources in Vulristics

Hello everyone! This episode will be about Microsoft Patch Tuesday for April 2022 and new improvements in my Vulristics project. I decided to add more comment sources. Because it’s not just Tenable, Qualys, Rapid7 and ZDI make Microsoft Patch Tuesday reviews, but also other security companies and bloggers.

Alternative video link (for Russia): https://vk.com/video-149273431_456239085

You can see them in my automated security news telegram channel avleonovnews after every second Tuesday of the month. So, now you can add any links with CVE comments to Vulristics.

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CISO Forum 2022: the first major Russian security conference in the New Reality

Hello everyone! After a two-year break, I took part in Moscow CISO Forum 2022 with a small talk “Malicious open source: the cost of using someone else’s code”.

Alternative video link (for Russia): https://vk.com/video-149273431_456239084

CISO Forum is the first major Russian conference since the beginning of The New Reality of Information Security (TNRoIS). My presentation was just on this topic. How malicious commits in open source projects change development and operations processes. I will make a separate video about this (upd. added Malicious Open Source: the cost of using someone else’s code). In this episode, I would like to tell you a little about the conference itself.

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Crypto AG scandal

The article in The Washington Post is really huge, but even a brief glance is enough to see how absolutely amazing this Crypto scandal is. A great example of chutzpah. ?

“Crypto AG was a Swiss company specialising in communications and information security. It was jointly owned by the American CIA and West German intelligence agency BND from 1970 until about 2008. … The company was a long-established manufacturer of [backdoored] encryption machines and a wide variety of cipher devices.”

“You think you do good work and you make something secure,” said Juerg Spoerndli, an electrical engineer who spent 16 years at Crypto. “And then you realize that you cheated these clients.”
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now the causes of hysteria around Kaspersky and Huawei become more clear. It is natural to suspect others in the things you practiced yourself.

A completely different company, with a different strategy

And note the disclaimer on the Crypto’s website. A completely different company, with a different strategy. ☝️? Okaaay…