News

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NSF’s new Research Terms and Conditions (effective March 1, 2018) require recipients of NSF funding to protect Personally Identifiable Information within the scope of an NSF award.  Article 35 states:  

The Campus Policy for Minimum Security Standards for Electronic Information (MSSEI) [1] requires departments to register computer systems and applications containing restricted data.  Restricted Data is defined as "any confidential or personal information that is protected by law or policy, and that requires the highest level of access control and security protections whether in storage or in transit" [2]  and further refined based on adverse business impact into "High" or Protection Level 2 and "Moderate" or Protection Level 1. [3]

NOTE: These vulnerabilities are already being exploited in the wild. If you have an affected Drupal site, update IMMEDIATELY!

Summary

A remote code execution vulnerability exists within multiple subsystems of Drupal 7.x and 8.x. [1]

NOTE: Drupal core developers have stated that exploits for this vulnerability will likely be developed within days. Drupal site owners must take action immediately or risk complete compromise of their sites. 

Summary

A remote code execution vulnerability exists within multiple subsystems of Drupal 7.x and 8.x. [1]

Impact

This potentially allows attackers to exploit multiple attack vectors on a Drupal site, which could result in the site being completely compromised. [1]

The IST-Telecommunications networking group will begin piloting the new bSecure Campus VPN service in the coming weeks. Eventually, this service will become the replacement for the existing Cisco AnyConnect based Campus Remote Access VPN service.

Summary

Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in PHP, the most severe of which 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

Multiple critical vulnerabilities have been discovered in Drupal core. [1]

Impact

Attackers may be able to view restricted content or add content of their own. Additionally, a JavaScript function in Drupal core may allow attackers to perform cross-site scripting attacks. 

The bSecure team would like to provide an update on our planned migration to the new firewall services in the Data Center.

Data Center Firewall Administrator Training

As previously announced, we will be holding two on-campus training sessions for Data Center Firewall Administrators.  Both sessions are identical, so you only need to attend one.  The Dates for these one day sessions will be:

The Internal Revenue Service has reported a big spike in phishing and malware incidents during the 2016 and 2017 tax seasons.

The bSecure project team would like to provide the Campus IT community, and especially administrators of existing firewall services, with an update on the planned migration to the new service, and information on what to expect next.

Summary

A team of security researchers disclosed several software analysis methods that, when used for malicious purposes, have the potential to improperly gather sensitive data from many types of computing devices with many different vendors’ processors and operating systems. 

Systems with microprocessors utilizing speculative execution and indirect branch prediction may allow unauthorized disclosure of information to an attacker with local user access via a side-channel analysis. [1]

The Network Operations and Services team and the Information Security and Policy group are implementing bSecure, a new firewall and information security service for campus. This service will replace the existing Cisco ASA-based Data Center and Campus Departmental Firewall services.

Summary

Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in PHP, the most severe of which could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code.  Successfully exploiting the most severe of these vulnerabilities could allow for arbitrary code execution in the context of the affected application.  [1]

Summary

The Oracle Critical Patch Update for October, 2017, contains an unusually high number of patches for vulnerabilities that may be remotely exploitable without authentication, i.e., may be exploited over a network without requiring user credentials.

Researchers have discovered serious weaknesses in WPA2, a protocol that secures all modern protected Wi-Fi networks.  This includes everything from computers, tablets, phones, home wireless routers and any device that supports WPA2 over Wi-Fi.

While details are still emerging, not all vendors have released patches as of yet.  So, in some cases, there will be little users can do until patches are released.   An attacker needs to be in range of an access-point to leverage this attack.  

Summary

A critical vulnerability has been discovered in the Apache Struts web application framework for Java web applications. A remote code execution attack is possible when using the Apache Struts REST plugin with XStream handler to deserialise XML requests. [1]

Impact

Attackers can execute arbitrary code remotely by exploiting this vulnerability.

The bSecure team invites you to join us for a series of Town Hall events this month. All are welcome and existing Campus firewall customers are strongly encouraged to attend.

What?

The purpose of these Town Hall events is to introduce Campus to the bSecure project and its team. Topics will include:

Summary

A remote code execution vulnerability exists when Windows Search handles objects in memory.  This can be exploited by an attacker sending a specially crafted SMB message to the Windows Search service. [4]

Due to recent nation-state activity and the elevated risk of potential cyber attacks, Microsoft has released security updates for older unsupported versions of Windows for this issue as well as other high-severity fixes in the June patch release. [1]