News

A software update was released fixing a local privilege escalation vulnerability affecting MacOS, iPadOS, and iOS. A proof of concept exploit has been publicly released and Apple reports this vulnerability is currently being exploited.

This message, appearing to come from a professor, is a convincing scam targeting students to engage in back and forth emails ending in money changing hands. If you have received this message and shared correspondence with the scammer, we recommend that you cease correspondence immediately and contact UCPD if there have been any financial transactions.

These are targeted and simple forms of phishing emails designed to get victims to click on a link that contains malicious content or steals your credentials.

These are targeted and simple forms of phishing emails designed to get victims to click on a link that contains malicious content or steals your credentials.

"I have a really great passphrase, it's long and easy to remember, so I use it on all my accounts."

Sound familiar? Why is it so hard for us to abandon this idea that reusing passphrases is a bad idea? Well, we're humans and humans tend to rationalize to confirm our decisions. "What are the chances that someone will get my password and compromise my account, I mean, will that really happen to me?" Well, it turns out it does - and more frequently that you might imagine.

Updated May 11, 2021:

UCOP Notice to UC Community: https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/data-security/index.html

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Updated Apr. 15, 2021:

Mar. 31st - The Internal Revenue Service issued a warning of an ongoing IRS-impersonation scam that appears to primarily target educational institutions, including students and staff who have ".edu" email addresses. The phishing emails appear to target university and college students from both public and private, profit and non-profit institutions.

The fraudulent email displays the IRS logo and uses various subject lines such as "Tax Refund Payment" or "Recalculation of your tax refund payment." It asks people to click a link and submit a form to claim their refund. 

These are targeted and simple forms of phishing emails designed to get victims to click on a link that contains malicious content or steals your credentials.

This month Microsoft released patches for multiple serious vulnerabilities in the Windows TCP/IP network stack (including CVE-2021-24074, CVE-2021-24094)[1,2]. These vulnerabilities can allow for remote code execution. Additionally, Microsoft appears to have released patches for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 which are officially no longer supported.

You and Your W-2

Every year phishing messages are crafted by tax scammers to trick victims into giving out personal information. Taxpayers should continue to watch out for fake emails and/or websites looking to steal personal information. Be wary of any message asking for W-2 or other tax information. Additionally, because of the UCPath conversion attackers may send emails with fraudulent links. Do not open any attachments or click on any email links.

A serious heap-based buffer overflow has been discovered in sudo that is exploitable by any local user. The flaw can be leveraged to elevate privileges to root, even if the user is not listed in the sudoers file. User authentication is not required to exploit the flaw. Researchers have developed working exploits against Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora Linux distributions. Other UNIX-based operating systems and distributions are also likely to be exploitable. [1] [2]

Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Google Chrome browser, the most severe of which could allow for arbitrary code execution. We recommend immediately updating your Google Chrome browser to Version 86.0.4240.183

Google has released Chrome version 86.0.4240.111 to apply security fixes, including a patch for an actively exploited zero-day vulnerability. We recommend that users patch immediately. Normally updates happen in the background, but if you haven't closed your browser in a while, you might see a pending update