News

Updated Apr. 15, 2021:

On Thursday, April 15 at 11 a.m. we hosted a town hall for the campus community on how to protect yourself against identity theft.  The recording and slides are available here: https://technology.berkeley.edu/town-hall

---

Updated Apr. 5, 2021:

Updates from UCOP on the Accellion Breach and FAQs (English and Spanish Translations): 

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. 

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.

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]

A serious vulnerability exists in the Windows TCP/IP network stack [1,2]. Currently, it is known that this vulnerability can be used to trigger a Denial of Service (DoS) event, however, Microsoft and others are warning that it may also be possible to remotely execute code. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted ICMPv6 Router Advertisement to the target system. The vulnerability does not require authentication or user-interaction.

Summary

The Information Security Office is aware of published reports that there are flaws in the built-in Mail app on iPhones. These flaws reportedly allow attackers to get remote access in the context of the Mail app without any interaction on the users part. [1]

Summary

The Information Security Office (ISO) is aware of the new, unpatched Windows Zero-day exploit, that has been reported by Microsoft[1] and in the press[2]. The vulnerability is currently unpatched; however, workarounds are available.

Summary

*** Patch Windows 10 and affected Windows Server 2019 systems IMMEDIATELY, even where there is a potential business impact (unscheduled maintenance). Notify security@berkeley.edu if you anticipate delays in patching. ***

Summary

Mozilla has published an out-of-band patch for Mozilla Firefox and Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR).  It fixes a type confusion vulnerability in Mozilla’s Javascript compiler, IonMonkey. This vulnerability is identified as CVE-2019-17026. [1]

Mozilla’s advisory states they are “aware of targeted attacks in the wild abusing this flaw.” Based on this note in the advisory, it appears the vulnerability was exploited in the wild as a zero-day. [2]

Summary

Impact

Summary

A vulnerability has been discovered in Exim, which could allow for unauthenticated remote attackers to execute arbitrary system commands on the mail server. Exim is a mail transfer agent used to deploy mail servers on Unix-like systems. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability will enable the attacker to perform command execution as root in the context of the mail server. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.

Summary

A vulnerability has been discovered in PHP 7.3 (the latest release series) that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code. PHP is a programming language originally designed for use in web-based applications with HTML content. PHP supports a wide variety of platforms and is used by numerous web-based software applications.  [1]

Summary

A vulnerability has been publicly disclosed in the Mac version of Zoom that allows any website to forcibly join a user to a Zoom call, with their video camera activated, without the user's permission. [1]

Advisory 

Summary

Serious security vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Ruby on Rails web application framework including a remote file content disclosure flaw and a Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability. Please read the References links below to learn if your Rails application is affected.

Impact

Summary

A highly critical bug has been discovered in Drupal that can be used for remote code execution [1].  Drupal is a Content Management System (CMS) commonly used to host websites. In the past this sort of exploit has been used to deliver remote access tools, ransomware, and cryptominers to web servers [2]. Based on similar exploits against various CMS software in the past, we can expect that attackers will begin exploiting this software quickly.