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Major Linux distributions are vulnerable to three bugs in systemd, a Linux initialization system and service manager in widespread use, California-based security company Qualys said late yesterday. From a report: The bugs exist in 'journald' service, tasked with collecting and storing log data, and they can be exploited to obtain root privileges on the target machine or to leak information. No patches exist at the moment. Discovered by researchers at Qualys, the flaws are two memory corruption vulnerabilities (stack buffer overflow - CVE-2018-16864, and allocation of memory without limits - CVE-2018-16865) and one out-of-bounds error (CVE-2018-16866). They were able to obtain local root shell on both x86 and x64 machines by exploiting CVE-2018-16865 and CVE-2018-16866. The exploit worked faster on the x86 platform, achieving its purpose in ten minutes; on x64, though, the exploit took 70 minutes to complete. Qualys is planning on publishing the proof-of-concept exploit code in the near future, but they did provide details on how they were able to take advantage of the flaws.

More than 45,000 Internet routers have been compromised by a newly discovered campaign that's designed to open networks to attacks by EternalBlue, the potent exploit that was developed by, and then stolen from, the National Security Agency and leaked to the Internet at large, researchers say. From a report: The new attack exploits routers with vulnerable implementations of Universal Plug and Play to force connected devices to open ports 139 and 445, content delivery network Akamai said in a blog post. As a result, almost 2 million computers, phones, and other network devices connected to the routers are reachable to the Internet on those ports. While Internet scans don't reveal precisely what happens to the connected devices once they're exposed, Akamai said the ports --which are instrumental for the spread of EternalBlue and its Linux cousin EternalRed -- provide a strong hint of the attackers' intentions.

The attacks are a new instance of a mass exploit the same researchers documented in April. They called it UPnProxy because it exploits Universal Plug and Play -- often abbreviated as UPnP -- to turn vulnerable routers into proxies that disguise the origins of spam, DDoSes, and botnets.

angry tapir writes "A yet-to-be-patched flaw discovered in the Apache HTTP server allows attackers to access protected resources on the internal network if some rewrite rules are not defined properly. The vulnerability affects Apache installations that operate in reverse proxy mode, a type of configuration used for load balancing, caching and other operations that involve the distribution of resources over multiple servers."

CWmike writes "About eight out of every 10 Web browsers run by consumers are vulnerable to attack by exploits of already-patched bugs, a security expert said Thursday. The poor state of browser patching stunned Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of Qualys, which presented data from the company's free BrowserCheck service Wednesday at RSA. 'I really thought it would be lower,' Kandek said. BrowserCheck scans Windows, Mac and Linux machines for vulnerable browsers, as well as up to 18 browser plug-ins, from Adobe's Flash to Windows Media Player. When browsers and plug-ins are tabulated together, between 90% and 65% of all consumer systems scanned with BrowserCheck since June 2010 reported at least one out-of-date component. In January 2011, about 80% of the machines were vulnerable. The most likely plug-in to require a patch: same as last year, Oracle's Java."

Wolfgang Kandek writes "Hacker Jeff Moss, founder of computer security conferences DEFCON and Black Hat, has been sworn in as one of the new members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) of the DHS. Moss, who goes by the handle 'the Dark Tangent' says he was surprised to be asked to join the council and that he was nominated to bring an 'outside perspective' to its meetings. He said, 'I know there is a new-found emphasis on cybersecurity, and they're looking to diversify the members and to have alternative viewpoints. I think they needed a skeptical outsider's view because that has been missing.'"

Dan Kaminsky writes "We may not know what the Conficker authors have in store for us on April 1st, but I doubt many network administrators want to find out. Maybe they don't have to: I've been working with the Honeynet Project'sTillmann Werner and Felix Leder, who have been digging into Conficker's profile on the network. What we've found is pretty cool: Conficker actually changes what Windows looks like on the network, and this change can be detected remotely, anonymously, and very, very quickly. You can literally ask a server if it's infected with Conficker, and it will give you an honest answer. Tillmann and Felix have their own proof of concept scanner, and with the help of Securosis' Rich Mogull and the multivendor Conficker Working Group, enterprise-class scanners should already be out from Tenable (Nessus), McAfee/Foundstone, nmap, ncircle, and Qualys. We figured this out on Friday, and got code put together for Monday. It's been one heck of a weekend."

Da Schmiz writes: "Security firm Qualys discovered a new Linux trojan on Saturday ... details can be found on their website.. Vnunet picked up the story earlier today, and then followed up with more details. They're comparing the potential impact to Code Red or worse, since more servers run Linux / Apache than NT / IIS. I don't think it's that bad, since the infection can be easily detected, but it certainly isn't good." Update: 09/08 11:58 AM GMT by H : Of course, as Kurt Siefried pointed out in e-mail: "The trojan has nothing to do with Apache. The virus attaches itself to an executable, which you must run to infect other binaries (i.e. you must run this as root). This means that infection vectors include, but are not limited to email attachments, but you must of course save the binary, then set it executable, and then run it, as root, to do any real damage. Alternatively you must download binary software and run it (again as root to do any real damage). In other words someone must run binaries of unknown origin as root, and if this is common practice then you have larger policy and education problems to deal with." So - comparing it to Code Red is a bit dubious.