Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s November 2023 Security Updates . VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-1082 on Wednesday, November 15th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2023-36033 A vulnerability in the Microsoft Desktop Window Manager (DWM) could allow an attacker to gain SYSTEM level privileges. This vulnerability has been publicly disclosed and seen active exploitation. Microsoft has reported this vulnerability as Exploitation Detected . CVE-2023-36025 Windows SmartScreen is the technology that pops up when running a file...
Author: Tyler Reguly
These days, it’s not a matter of if your password will be breached but when. Major websites experience massive data breaches at an alarming rate. Have I Been Pwned currently has records from 705 sites comprising 12.6 billion accounts. This includes well-known names like Wattpad, Verifications.io, and Facebook. This is a 30% increase in the number of sites and a 10% increase in the number of accounts from when I published these numbers in 2021 and 139% and 138% respectively since the first version of this article in 2018. Password breaches are a cause for embarrassment. They are talked about in...
Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s September 2023 Security Updates , which includes a recently introduced release notes format. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-1073 on Wednesday, September 13th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2023-36761 Microsoft has indicated that a vulnerability impacting Microsoft Word, including the preview pane, has been publicly disclosed and has seen active exploitation. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability could disclose NTLM hashes to the attacker. Microsoft has reported this vulnerability as...
A few years ago, I wrote about the importance of security immutability. More specifically, I discussed how important it is that your environment be unchangeable in order to ensure that it remains secure. As I looked back on the article, I found it rather amusing that the article was published 4 years ago, but that feels like a lifetime ago. In the last few years, we really have seen just how volatile the world can be. Interestingly, while the world around us has changed in ways that we never imagined over the past few years, our technology has been doing that for decades. That’s why there’s a...
Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s August 2023 Security Updates, which includes a recently introduced release notes format. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-1068 on Wednesday, August 9th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2023-38180 A vulnerability in Kestrel could allow for a denial of service. Kestrel is the cross-platform web server that is included with (and enabled by default in) ASP.NET Core. When detecting a potentially malicious client, Kestrel will sometimes fail to disconnect said client, resulting in the denial of service...
I recently spoke at a Fortra Webinar about CIS and MITRE. More specifically, I discussed the intersection between the CIS Critical Security Controls, CIS Benchmarks, and MITRE ATT&CK. In this post, I won't go into deep details about the core background, but there are plenty of excellent references available online, including our breakdown of the various CIS Controls. I do, however, want to share the outcome of my research. One of the things that prompted my decision to talk about the intersection between these offerings was a CIS blog post discussing how they would start mapping the CIS...
There’s nothing that makes you feel older than realizing how much of your life you have dedicated to a single topic. At what point do you consider yourself an expert? After more than 17 years in vulnerability management, I’m starting to come around to the idea that I might be an expert in the field. Although, the main reason I feel that way is because, at this point, I’ve seen pretty much everything. One of those things that I’ve seen time and time again is the argument around Patch Management vs. Vulnerability Management. We could delve deeper into discussions around management vs. assessment...
Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s July 2023 Security Updates, which include a new release notes format. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-1064 on Wednesday, July 12th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2023-32046 A vulnerability in MSHTML could allow an attacker to execute code in the context of the logged in user providing the attacker can convince the user to visit a malicious link. It is important to note that older, supported versions of Windows have an IE Cumulative update available to them that must be installed in addition to...
The cybersecurity community is one of the best communities around. Whether it is our peers, our colleagues, or our managers, there are a number of great qualities that we all share. That’s one of the reasons that we’re so lucky to work in this industry. One of the more interesting aspects of the industry is that there are so many ways to accomplish a goal, and that doesn’t just apply to technical skills. Soft skills, like people management and communication, are equally important and have a multitude of approaches. Over the years, I’ve had a handful of managers and I’ve found that the best...
Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s June 2023 Security Updates, which include a new release notes format. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-1060 on Wednesday, June 14th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs There were no in-the-wild or disclosed CVEs in the June Patch Tuesday drop. CVE Breakdown by Tag While historical Microsoft Security Bulletin groupings are gone, Microsoft vulnerabilities are tagged with an identifier. This list provides a breakdown of the CVEs on a per tag basis. Vulnerabilities are also colour coded to aid with...