Preface: These aren’t objects in the “ object-oriented programming” sense of the word; instead, they are the building blocks on which PDF stands. There are nine types of objects: null, Boolean, integer, real, name, string, array, dictionary, and stream.

Background: The Pegasus spy program created by NSO uses a zero-day vulnerability in Apple’s operating system to fear entering the iPhone. Apple’s mobile phone nation has urgently updated all operating system platforms affected by the vulnerability.

Vulnerability details: The exploit uses PDF data disguised as GIF files to circumvent Apple’s “BlastDoor” sandbox for message content. The exploit has been given the CVE identifier CVE-2021-30860.

Ref: The exploit works by exploiting an integer overflow vulnerability in Apple’s image rendering library (CoreGraphics).

Available for: iPhone 6s and later, iPad Pro (all models), iPad Air 2 and later, iPad 5th generation and later, iPad mini 4 and later, and iPod touch (7th generation)

Additional: CVE-2021-30858 (WebKit) – Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to arbitrary code execution. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited.

For the above details, please refer to the official announcement. – https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212807

Other reference: https://citizenlab.ca/2021/09/forcedentry-nso-group-imessage-zero-click-exploit-captured-in-the-wild/

Preface: You can use Citrix Hypervisor in an unlicensed state. However, you do not have access to some features. To access Citrix hypervisor is easy, go through XenCenter then input user ID and password.

Background: Citrix Hypervisor is a high-performance hypervisor optimized for virtual app and desktop workloads and based on the Xen Project hypervisor. Citrix Hypervisor is optimized for both Windows and Linux virtual servers. It functions lets you create VMs, take VM disk snapshots, and manage VM workloads.

What is Xen Project hypervisor? The Xen Project hypervisor is an open-source type-1 or bare-metal hypervisor. It allows many instances of an operating system or different operating systems to run in parallel on a single machine (or host).

Two components contribute to the memory footprint of the Citrix Hypervisor server. First, the memory consumed by the Xen hypervisor itself. Second, there is the memory consumed by the Control Domain of the host.

Vulnerability details: Guests are permitted access to certain Xen-owned pages of memory. The majority of such pages remain allocated / associated with a guest for its entire lifetime. Freeing such pages requires that the hypervisor enforce that no parallel request can result in the addition of a mapping of such a page to a guest. That enforcement was missing, allowing guests to retain access to pages that were freed and perhaps re-used for other purposes.

Mitigation: Running only PV guests will avoid this vulnerability. Suppressing use of grant table v2 interfaces for HVM or PVH guests will also avoid this vulnerability.

Citrix Hypervisor Security Update – https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX325319

Preface: OpenStack Neutron is an SDN networking project focused on delivering networking-as-a-service (NaaS) in virtual compute environments. Neutron has replaced the original networking application program interface (API), called Quantum, in OpenStack.

Background: The Web Server Gateway Interface (WSGI) is a simple calling convention for web servers to forward requests to web applications or frameworks written in the Python programming language. The current version of WSGI, version 1.0. Router uses routes.middleware.RoutesMiddleware to map requests to WSGI applications.
In object-oriented programming, a singleton class is a class that can have only one object (an instance of the class) at a time. The Singleton is a useful Design Pattern for allowing only one instance of your class, but common mistakes can inadvertently allow more than one instance to be created.

Ref: When using “singleton=True” (default value), a routes._RequestConfig() is always created [1]. This object has a thread safe variable to store the context information for each request.

Vulnerability details: an authenticated user may cause the API worker to consume increasing amounts of memory, resulting in API performance degradation or denial of service.

Remedy: Don’t use singleton in routes.middleware.RoutesMiddleware – https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/neutron/+/807638

Preface: Windows RCE vulnerabilities have targeted Office users, and Microsoft urgently provides mitigation instructions.

Background: The MS web browser COM control adds browsing, document, viewing, and downloading capabilities to your applications. Parsing and rendering of HTML documents in the WebBrowser control is handled by the MSHTML component which is an Active Document Dynamic HTML (DHTML) object Model hosting ActiveX Controls and script languages.

Unicode is a standard encoding system that is used to represent characters from almost all languages. Every Unicode character is encoded using a unique integer code point between 0 and 0x10FFFF .

Vulnerability details: Lookback Microsoft expert found vulnerability on 2002. Hacker mimic a web page that specifies embedded ActiveX controls in a way that causes 2 Unicode strings to be concatenated.
As times goes by, in 2021 another critical flaw occurs with similarity. An attacker could craft a malicious ActiveX control to be used by a Microsoft Office document that hosts the browser rendering engine. The attacker would then have to convince the user to open the malicious document, said Microsoft. For mitigation and solutions, please refer to the link – https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2021-40444

Preface: Dashboard, a popular design trend concept in the digital world.Dashboard, a popular design trend concept in the digital world.
As the cloud and the Internet of Things force the network to evolve. Even operational work and network security can be managed in the
same dashboard.

Background: Permission checks will typically use the authentication information in the request.user and request.auth properties to determine if the incoming request should be permitted.

One of the possibilities: If firewall administrator enable read-write JSON API access on FortiManager. As a result, it may encounter the following matter.
A slightly less strict style of permission would be to allow full access to authenticated users, but allow read-only access to unauthenticated users. This corresponds to the IsAuthenticatedOrReadOnly class in REST framework.

Vulnerability details: An improper access control vulnerability in FortiManager versions 6.4.0 to 6.4.3 may allow an authenticated attacker with a restricted user profile to access the SD-WAN Orchestrator panel via directly visiting its URL.

Vendor announcement – https://www.fortiguard.com/psirt/FG-IR-20-061

Preface: Big data analysis can understand data by discovering trends and patterns. Machine learning can accelerate this process with the help of decision-making algorithms. It can classify incoming data, recognize patterns, and transform the data to do the technology development. In addition, it is a way to develop artificial intelligence.

Background: What is Apache Zeppelin used for?

Apache Zeppelin is a new and upcoming web-based notebook which brings data exploration, visualization, sharing and collaboration features to Spark. It support Python, but also a growing list of programming languages such as Scala, Hive, SparkSQL, shell and markdown.

Web-based notebooks are files that contain the input code and output such as results and graphs from an interactive session. They also contain additional information, such as documentation, mathematical expressions, and media related to an interactive session. Therefore it is the key element of big data analytics.

Vulnerability details: Authentication bypass vulnerability in Apache Zeppelin allows an attacker to bypass Zeppelin authentication mechanism to act as another user. This issue affects Apache Zeppelin Apache Zeppelin version 0.9.0 and prior versions. The attack can only be initiated within the local network. No form of authentication is needed for a successful exploitation. Please refer to the link for details – https://seclists.org/oss-sec/2021/q3/150

Preface: Cyberark provides the perfect authentication solution for enterprises. Because of their solutions, traditional authentication methods have evolved. However, there is no absolute anti-hacking solution in the world. The following explanation is to let you quickly understand this vulnerability. Even if this is not the right way, you will find out what they are doing.

Background: The CyberArk Vault uses a Shared Secret in order for the Server to identify a person. This Shared Secret can be a password or a combination of a password and another type of authentication. The Vault can enforce a password policy to avoid usage of passwords that can be easily guessed.

Vulnerability details: A vulnerability was found in CyberArk Credential Provider up to 12.0. An attack has to be approached locally.
Under certain conditions, the effective key space used to encrypt the cache is significantly reduced.
The effective key space used to encrypt the cache in CyberArk Credential Provider prior to 12.1 has low entropy, and under certain conditions a local malicious user can obtain the plaintext of cache files.

Remediation: Upgrading to version 12.1 eliminates this vulnerability.

Reference: The advisory is shared at korelogic.com – https://korelogic.com/Resources/Advisories/KL-001-2021-010.txt

Preface: IEC 60870-5-104 protocol (aka IEC 104) is a part of IEC Telecontrol Equipment and Systems Standard IEC 60870-5 that provides a communication profile for sending basic telecontrol messages between two systems in electrical engineering and power system automation.

Background: IEC 104 enables communication between control station and a substation via a standard TCP/IP network. The communication is based on the client-server model. The IEC104 protocol package has been tested in 2015 and is compatible with the following platforms, including stm32 (Arm® Cortex®-M processor) and linux platforms.In addition, iec104.c is a key component of the iec104 protocol package.

Vulnerability details: IEC104 v1.0 contains a stack-buffer overflow in the parameter Iec10x_Sta_Addr. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2020-18730 since 13th Aug, 2020. However, the vulnerability was released by NIST on August 23, 2021. The technical article state that a segmentation violation in the Iec104_Deal_I function of IEC104 v1.0 allows attackers to cause a denial of service (DOS). In addition, start from line 1175 of the iec104[.]c file. Experts discovered where the vulnerability occurred.

CVE-2020-18730 details can be found on this link – https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-18730

Mitigation: Run or compile the software using features or extensions that automatically provide a protection mechanism that mitigates or eliminates buffer overflows. For example, certain compilers and extensions provide automatic buffer overflow detection mechanisms that are built into the compiled code. Examples include the Microsoft Visual Studio /GS flag, Fedora/Red Hat FORTIFY_SOURCE GCC flag, StackGuard, and ProPolice.