News

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]

bSecure is the new initiative from the Network Operations & Services and Information Security & Policy teams to replace legacy firewalls and VPN, and provide proactive security technologies to Campus.

You can access all bSecure project information at http://bsecure.berkeley.edu or https://security.berkeley.edu/projects/bsecure.

Summary

The samba team has released a patch for a Remote Code Execution bug that affects all versions between 3.5.0 and 4.6.3/4.5.9/4.4.13. This vulnerability will allow a malicious attacker to upload a library to a writable share then cause the server to execute that library. [1] Patches are available from the samba.org. [2]

Impact

This message, appearing to come from the HR department, was successful at convincing several campus recipients to click on the link provided and enter their Calnet credentials. The link was directed to a fake Calnet login page, the account name and password entered on this page would be compromised.

This phishing message was received by students across campus, purporting that the student's library account has expired. The Library does not issue emails concerning inactive accounts.

Summary

A critical vulnerability has been discovered and released in the Apache Struts 2 framework. Patches are available from Apache. [1]

Impact

This vulnerability allows for unauthenticated, remote code execution on the server. Further, there are at least two known public exploits for this vulnerability [2] and ISP has already started to see scanning and exploit attempts against campus systems.

Summary

WordPress has fixed several critical flaws in its content management system, addressing cross-site scripting and sql injection bugs, along with a severe privilege escalation / content injection vulnerability. [1]

A recent spate of phishing messages have been received on campus purporting to be Dropbox notifications. The link in the email message to "View File" is a ruse to capture CalNet passphrase credentials.

A targeted phishing message was received on campus appearing as an expiration notice for access to bCourses. The message attempted to trick recipients to login with CalNet credentials to prevent access expiration

Campus printers have received unwanted printouts in recent weeks. Report any unwanted printouts to CSS-IT and Information Security and Policy.

This very simple phishing message that appeared to be sent from FedEx was effective in convincing several campus recipients to download the PDF attachment. The file contained a link that required password authentication, allowing the attacker to capture these credentials for future use.

On Dec. 14th, the campus was the target of a phishing email purporting to be from Chancellor Dirks and containing a PDF file attachment with a link to a site intended to steal credentials. Beware of emails with the subject line "Important Announcement from Chancellor B. Dirks".

A pretty convincing phishing message that appears to come from CSS-IT issuing a warning that the user's ID may have been compromised.

A local privilege escalation vulnerability has been found in the Linux kernel. Nearly all versions of Linux are affected, and when exploited, attackers can escalate local privileges to root. Linux users are advised to patch or implement temporary mitigation immediately.

This phishing message, purportedly from Bank of America, contained multiple threats - two file attachments that likely contain malware and a separate ploy to obtain user credentials.