The tech giant fixed privilege-escalation and model-exfiltration vulnerabilities in Vertex AI that could have allowed attackers to steal or poison custom-built AI models.

Source: Krot Studio via Alamy Stock Photo

Google has fixed two flaws in Vertex AI, its platform for custom development and deployment of large language models (LLMs), that could have allowed attackers to exfiltrate proprietary enterprise models from the system. The flaw highlights once again the danger that malicious manipulation of artificial intelligence (AI) technology present for business users.

Researchers at Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 discovered the flaws in Google's Vertex AI platform, a machine learning (ML) platform that allows enterprise users to train and deploy ML models and AI applications. The platform is aimed at allowing for custom development of LLMs for use in an organization's AI-powered applications.

Specifically, the researchers discovered a privilege escalation flaw in the "custom jobs" feature of the platform, and a model exfiltration flaw in the "malicious model" feature, Unit 42 revealed in a blog post published on Nov. 12.

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Don't miss the upcoming free Dark Reading Virtual Event, "Know Your Enemy: Understanding Cybercriminals and Nation-State Threat Actors," Nov. 14 at 11 a.m. ET. Don't miss sessions on understanding MITRE ATT&CK, using proactive security as a weapon, and a masterclass in incident response; and a host of top speakers like Larry Larsen from the Navy Credit Federal Union, former Kaspersky Lab analyst Costin Raiu, Ben Read of Mandiant Intelligence, Rob Lee from SANS, and Elvia Finalle from Omdia. Register now!

Related:Cloud Ransomware Flexes Fresh Scripts Against Web Apps

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The first bug allowed for exploitation of custom job permissions to gain unauthorized access to all data services in the project. The second could have allowed an attacker to deploy a poisoned model in Vertex AI, leading to "the exfiltration of all other fine-tuned models, posing a serious proprietary and sensitive data exfiltration attack risk," Palo Alto Networks researchers wrote in the post.

Unit 42 shared its findings with Google, and the company has "since implemented fixes to eliminate these specific issues for Vertex AI on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP)," according to the post.

While the imminent threat has been mitigated, the security vulnerabilities once again demonstrate the inherent danger that occurs when LLMs are exposed and/or manipulated with malicious intent, and how quickly the issue can spread, the researchers said.

"This research highlights how a single malicious model deployment could compromise an entire AI environment," the researchers wrote. "An attacker could use even one unverified model deployed on a production system to exfiltrate sensitive data, leading to severe model exfiltration attacks."

Related:5 Ways to Save Your Organization From Cloud Security Threats

**Poisoning Custom LLM Development**

The key for exploiting the flaws that were discovered lies within a feature of Vertex AI called Vertex AI Pipelines, which allow users to tune their models using custom jobs, also referred to as "custom training jobs." "These custom jobs are essentially code that runs within the pipeline and can modify models in various ways," the researchers explained.

However, while this flexibility is valuable, it also opens the door to potential exploitation, they said. In the case of the vulnerabilities, Unit 42 researchers were able to abuse permissions within what's called a "service agent" identity of a "tenant project" — connected through the project pipeline to the "source project," or fine-tuned AI model created within the platform. A service agent has excessive permissions to many permissions within a Vertex AI project.

From this position, the researchers could either inject commands or create a custom image to create a backdoor that allowed them to gain access to the custom model development environment. They then deployed a poisoned model for testing within Vertex AI that allowed them to gain further access to steal other AI and ML models from the test project.

Related:2 Zero-Day Bugs in Microsoft's Nov. Update Under Active Exploit

"In summary, by deploying a malicious model, we were able to access resources in the tenant projects that allowed us to view and export all models deployed across the project," the researchers wrote. "This includes both ML and LLM models, along with their fine-tuned adapters."

This method presents "a clear risk for a model-to-model infection scenario," they explained. "For example, your team could unknowingly deploy a malicious model uploaded to a public repository," the researchers wrote. "Once active, it could exfiltrate all ML and fine-tuned LLM models in the project, putting your most sensitive assets at risk."

**Mitigating AI Cybersecurity Risk**

Organizations are just beginning to have access to tools that can allow them to build their own in-house, custom LLM-based AI systems, and thus the potential security risks and solutions to mitigate them are still very much uncharted territory. However, it's become clear that gaining unauthorized access to LLMs created within an organization is one surefire way to expose that organization to compromise.

At this stage, key to securing any custom-built models is to limit the permissions of those in the enterprise that have access to it, the Unit 42 researchers noted. "The permissions required to deploy a model might seem harmless, but in reality, that single permission could grant access to all other models in a vulnerable project," they wrote in the post.

To protect against such risks, organizations also should implement strict controls on model deployments. A fundamental way to do this is to ensure an organization's development or test environments are separate from its live production environment.

"This separation reduces the risk of an attacker accessing potentially insecure models before they are fully vetted," Balassiano and Shaty wrote. "Whether it comes from an internal team or a third-party repository, validating every model before deployment is vital."

Don't miss the upcoming free Dark Reading Virtual Event, "Know Your Enemy: Understanding Cybercriminals and Nation-State Threat Actors," Nov. 14 at 11 am ET. Don't miss sessions on understanding MITRE ATT&CK, using proactive security as a weapon, and a masterclass in incident response; and a host of top speakers like Larry Larsen from the Navy Credit Federal Union, former Kaspersky Lab analyst Costin Raiu, Ben Read of Mandiant Intelligence, Rob Lee from SANS, and Elvia Finalle from Omdia. Register now!

**About the Author**

Elizabeth Montalbano is a freelance writer, journalist, and therapeutic writing mentor with more than 25 years of professional experience. Her areas of expertise include technology, business, and culture. Elizabeth previously lived and worked as a full-time journalist in Phoenix, San Francisco, and New York City; she currently resides in a village on the southwest coast of Portugal. In her free time, she enjoys surfing, hiking with her dogs, traveling, playing music, yoga, and cooking.

Google AI Platform Bugs Leak Proprietary Enterprise LLMs

The November 2024 Patch Tuesday update contains a substantially high percentage of remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities (including a critical issue in Windows Kerberos), and two other zero-day bugs that have been previously disclosed and could soon come under attack.

Source: Rix Pix Photography via Shutterstock

Attackers are already actively exploiting two vulnerabilities for which Microsoft issued patches on Nov. 12 as part of its monthly security update. And they could soon begin targeting two other publicly disclosed, but as yet unexploited, flaws.

The four zero-day bugs are among a set of 89 common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) that Microsoft addressed in November's Patch Tuesday. The batch contains a substantially high percentage of remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities, in addition to the usual collection of elevation of privileges flaws, spoofing vulnerabilities, security bypass, denial-of-service issues, and other vulnerability classes. Microsoft identified eight of the flaws as issues that attackers are more likely to exploit, though researchers pointed to other flaws as well that are of likely of high interest to adversaries.

**Microsoft Adopts CSAF Standard**

Along with the November security update, Microsoft also announced its adoption of Common Security Advisory Framework (CSAF), an OASIS standard for disclosing vulnerabilities in machine-readable form. "CSAF files are meant to be consumed by computers more so than by humans," Microsoft said in a blog post. It should help organizations accelerate their vulnerability response and remediation processes, the company noted.

"This is a huge win for the security community and a welcome addition to Microsoft’s security pages," said Tyler Reguly, associate director of security R&D at Fortra, via email. "This is a standard that has been adopted by many software vendors and it is great to see that Microsoft is following suit."

**Zero-Day Bugs Under Active Exploit**

One of the zero-day bugs that attackers are already actively exploiting is CVE-2024-43451 (CVSS 6.5 out of 10), a flaw that discloses a user's NTLMv2 hash for validating credentials in Windows environments. The hashes allow attackers to authenticate as legitimate users, and access applications and data to which they have permissions. The vulnerability affects all Windows versions and requires minimal user interaction to exploit. Merely selecting or inspecting a file could trigger the vulnerability, Microsoft warned.

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Don't miss the upcoming free Dark Reading Virtual Event, "Know Your Enemy: Understanding Cybercriminals and Nation-State Threat Actors," Nov. 14 at 11 a.m. ET. Don't miss sessions on understanding MITRE ATT&CK, using proactive security as a weapon, and a masterclass in incident response; and a host of top speakers like Larry Larsen from the Navy Credit Federal Union, former Kaspersky Lab analyst Costin Raiu, Ben Read of Mandiant Intelligence, Rob Lee from SANS, and Elvia Finalle from Omdia. Register now!

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"To my knowledge, it's the third such vulnerability that can disclose a user's NTLMv2 hash that was exploited in the wild in 2024," Satnam Narang, senior staff engineer at Tenable, wrote in an emailed comment. The other two are CVE-2024-21410 in Microsoft Exchange Server from February, and CVE-2024-38021 in Microsoft Office from July.

"One thing is certain," according to Narang. "Attackers continue to be adamant about discovering and exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities that can disclose NTLMv2 hashes."

The second bug under active exploit in Microsoft's latest update is CVE-2024-49039 (CVSS 8.8), a Windows Task Scheduler elevation of privilege bug that allows an attacker to execute remote procedure calls (RPC) normally available only to privileged accounts.

"In this case, a successful attack could be performed from a low privilege AppContainer," Microsoft said. "The attacker could elevate their privileges and execute code or access resources at a higher integrity level than that of the AppContainer execution environment."

The fact that it was Google's Threat Analysis Group that discovered and reported this flaw to Microsoft suggests that the attackers currently exploiting the flaw are either a nation-state-backed group or other advanced persistent threat actor, Narang said.

"An attacker can perform this exploit as a low-privileged AppContainer and effectively execute RPCs that should be available only to privileged tasks," added Ben McCarthy, lead cybersecurity engineer at Immersive Labs, via email. "It is unclear what RPCs are affected here, but it could give an attacker access to elevate privileges and execute code on a remote machine, as well as the machine in which they are executing the vulnerability."

**Previously Disclosed but Unexploited Zero-Days**

One of the two already disclosed — but not yet exploited — zero-days is CVE-2024-49019 (CVSS 7.8), an elevation-of-privilege vulnerability in Active Directory Certificate Services that attackers could use to gain domain administrator access. Microsoft's advisory listed several recommendations for organizations to secure certificate templates, including removing overly broad enrollment rights for users or groups, removing unused templates, and implementing additional measures to secure templates that allow users to specify a subject in the request.  

Microsoft is tracking the other publicly disclosed but unexploited flaw as CVE-2024-49040 (CVSS 7.5), a Windows Exchange Server spoofing flaw. "The primary issue lies in how Exchange processes ... headers, enabling attackers to construct emails that falsely appear to be from legitimate sources," Mike Walters, president and co-founder of Action1, wrote in a blog post. "This capability is particularly useful for spear phishing and other forms of email-based deception."

**RCE Security Bugs Have a Big Month**

Nearly 60% of the bugs — 52 of 89 — that Microsoft disclosed in its November update are RCE vulnerabilities that allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on vulnerable systems. Some allow for unauthenticated RCE, while others require an attacker to have authenticated access to exploit the bug. Most of the RCEs in Microsoft's latest update affect various versions of MS SQL Server. Other impacted technologies include MS Office 2016, MS Defender for iOS, MS Excel 2016, and Windows Server 2012, 2022, and 2025, said Will Bradle, security consultant at NetSPI, in an emailed statement.

Among the most critical of the RCEs, according to Walters, is CVE-2024-43639 in Windows Kerberos. The bug has a near-maximum CVSS severity score of 9.8 of 10 because, among other things, an unauthenticated attacker can exploit it remotely. Microsoft itself has assessed the bug as something that attackers are less likely to exploit. But putting it on the back burner for that reason could be a mistake.

"Kerberos is a fundamental component of Windows environments, crucial for authenticating user and service identities," Walters added. "This vulnerability turns Kerberos into a high-value target, allowing attackers to exploit the truncation flaw to craft messages that Kerberos fails to process securely, potentially enabling the execution of arbitrary code."

Bradle pointed to CVE-2024-49050 in Visual Studio Code Python Extension as another RCE in this month's set that merits priority attention. "The extension currently has over 139 million downloads and is affected by an RCE vulnerability with a base CVSS score of 8.8," he said. "Microsoft has patched the VSCode extension, and updates should be installed immediately."

Immersive Labs' McCarthy also identified multiple other flaws that organizations would do well to address quickly. They include the critical CVE-2024-43498 (CVSS 9.8), an RCE in .NET and Visual Studio; CVE-2024-49019 (CVSS 7.8), an Active Directory privilege escalation flaw; CVE-2024-49033 (CVSS 7.5), a Microsoft Word security bypass flaw; and CVE-2024-43623 (CVSS 7.8), a privilege escalation flaw in the Windows NT OS kernel that enables attacker to gain system level access on affected systems. Importantly, Microsoft has assessed the latter vulnerability as one that attackers are more likely to exploit.

**About the Author**

Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld, where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the publication. Over the course of his 20-year career at Computerworld, Jai also covered a variety of other technology topics, including big data, Hadoop, Internet of Things, e-voting, and data analytics. Prior to Computerworld, Jai covered technology issues for The Economic Times in Bangalore, India. Jai has a Master's degree in Statistics and lives in Naperville, Ill.

2 Zero-Day Bugs in Microsoft's Nov. Update Under Active Exploit

Microsoft’s November 2024 Patch Tuesday update fixes 91 security vulnerabilities, including four zero-day vulnerabilities. Critical fixes address actively…

Microsoft’s November 2024 Patch Tuesday update fixes 91 security vulnerabilities, including four zero-day vulnerabilities. Critical fixes address actively exploited flaws in Windows, emphasising the need for quick patching.

Microsoft has released its November 2024 Patch Tuesday updates, addressing 91 security vulnerabilities across its software portfolio, including four **zero-day flaws**, two of which have been actively exploited.

****Zero-Day Vulnerabilities****

The two actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities are:

1.  **CVE-2024-43451**: An NTLM Hash Disclosure Spoofing Vulnerability that exposes NTLMv2 hashes to remote attackers with minimal user interaction, such as selecting or right-clicking a malicious file.
2.  **CVE-2024-49039**: A Windows Task Scheduler Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability allowing attackers to execute RPC functions typically restricted to privileged accounts, potentially leading to unauthorized code execution or resource access.

Additionally, two publicly disclosed but not actively exploited vulnerabilities were addressed:

1.  **CVE-2024-49040**: A Microsoft Exchange Server Spoofing Vulnerability enabling threat actors to spoof sender email addresses to local recipients.
2.  **CVE-2024-49041**: A Windows MSHTML Platform Spoofing Vulnerability that could be leveraged to deceive users into interacting with malicious content.

****Vulnerabilities****

The 91 vulnerabilities fixed in this update are categorized as follows:

*   3 Spoofing vulnerabilities
*   4 Denial of Service vulnerabilities
*   1 Information Disclosure vulnerability
*   26 Elevation of Privilege vulnerabilities
*   2 Security Feature Bypass vulnerabilities
*   52 Remote Code Execution vulnerabilities.

It is worth noting that, four vulnerabilities are rated as critical, including two remote code executions and two elevations of privilege flaws.

****Windows 11 Updates****

For Windows 11 users, cumulative updates KB5046617 and KB5046633 have been released for versions 24H2 and 23H2, respectively. These updates address security vulnerabilities and include quality improvements. Notable fixes include resolving an issue causing a black screen when using Alt-Tab to switch between apps and correcting Task Manager’s incorrect display of zero running processes.

****Windows 10 Updates****

Windows 10 versions 21H2 and 22H2 have received cumulative update KB5046613, which focuses on security enhancements. Microsoft has indicated that there are no known issues with this update.

Saeed Abbasi, Manager of Vulnerability Research at the Qualys Threat Research Unit, highlighted the severity of the CVE-2024-43451 vulnerability. “The CVE-2024-43451 leverages the remnants of Internet Explorer’s MSHTML component through the WebBrowser control,” he explained.

“This flaw allows attackers to capture a user’s NTLMv2 hash with minimal interaction—just a single click or right-click on a malicious file.” With this hash in hand, attackers can authenticate as the user, potentially gaining unauthorized access and compromising sensitive data.”

Abbasi emphasized that this vulnerability affects all supported versions of Microsoft Windows, making it widespread and critical. “This vulnerability leads to a complete loss of confidentiality for affected users, making immediate action essential,” he added.

For protection, Abbasi recommends organizations take three critical steps: apply the latest patches, install IE cumulative updates, and inform users about this specific threat. Prompt action is crucial to safeguard an organization’s systems and data from potential breaches.

****Recommendations for Users****

It is strongly recommended that users **apply these updates** as soon as possible to mitigate possible security risks. Updates can be installed via Windows Update or manually downloaded from the Microsoft Update Catalog. Nevertheless, November Patch Tuesday shows the importance of maintaining up-to-date systems to protect yourself from increasing cybersecurity threats.

1.  “HM Surf” macOS Flaw Lets Attackers Access Camera and Mic
2.  CISA Warns of Palo Alto Networks’ Expedition Tool Vulnerability
3.  Attack Lets Hackers Downgrade Windows to Exploit Patched Flaws
4.  ZDI Slams Microsoft for Not Crediting It in Last Week’s Patch Tuesday
5.  Microsoft Patch Tuesday: Microsoft Patches 142 Critical Vulnerabilities

Microsoft’s November Patch Tuesday Fixes 91 Vulnerabilities, 4 Zero-Days

Microsoft today released updates to plug at least 89 security holes in its Windows operating systems and other software. November's patch batch includes fixes for two zero-day vulnerabilities that are already being exploited by attackers, as well as two other flaws that were publicly disclosed prior to today.

**Microsoft** today released updates to plug at least 89 security holes in its **Windows** operating systems and other software. November’s patch batch includes fixes for two zero-day vulnerabilities that are already being exploited by attackers, as well as two other flaws that were publicly disclosed prior to today.

The zero-day flaw tracked as CVE-2024-49039 is a bug in the **Windows Task Scheduler** that allows an attacker to increase their privileges on a Windows machine. Microsoft credits Google’s **Threat Analysis Group** with reporting the flaw.

The second bug fixed this month that is already seeing in-the-wild exploitation is CVE-2024-43451, a spoofing flaw that could reveal Net-NTLMv2 hashes, which are used for authentication in Windows environments.

**Satnam Narang**, senior staff research engineer at **Tenable**, says the danger with stolen NTLM hashes is that they enable so-called “pass-the-hash” attacks, which let an attacker masquerade as a legitimate user without ever having to log in or know the user’s password. Narang notes that CVE-2024-43451 is the third NTLM zero-day so far this year.

“Attackers continue to be adamant about discovering and exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities that can disclose NTLMv2 hashes, as they can be used to authenticate to systems and potentially move laterally within a network to access other systems,” Narang said.

The two other publicly disclosed weaknesses Microsoft patched this month are CVE-2024-49019, an elevation of privilege flaw in **Active Directory Certificate Services** (AD CS); and CVE-2024-49040, a spoofing vulnerability in **Microsoft Exchange Server**.

**Ben McCarthy**, lead cybersecurity engineer at **Immersive Labs**, called special attention to CVE-2024-43639, a remote code execution vulnerability in **Windows Kerberos**, the authentication protocol that is heavily used in Windows domain networks.

“This is one of the most threatening CVEs from this patch release,” McCarthy said. “Windows domains are used in the majority of enterprise networks, and by taking advantage of a cryptographic protocol vulnerability, an attacker can perform privileged acts on a remote machine within the network, potentially giving them eventual access to the domain controller, which is the goal for many attackers when attacking a domain.”

McCarthy also pointed to CVE-2024-43498, a remote code execution flaw in **.NET** and **Visual Studio** that could be used to install malware. This bug has earned a CVSS severity rating of 9.8 (10 is the worst).

Finally, at least 29 of the updates released today tackle memory-related security issues involving **SQL server**, each of which earned a threat score of 8.8. Any one of these bugs could be used to install malware if an authenticated user connects to a malicious or hacked SQL database server.

For a more detailed breakdown of today’s patches from Microsoft, check out the SANS Internet Storm Center’s list. For administrators in charge of managing larger Windows environments, it pays to keep an eye on Askwoody.com, which frequently points out when specific Microsoft updates are creating problems for a number of users.

As always, if you experience any problems applying any of these updates, consider dropping a note about it in the comments; chances are excellent that someone else reading here has experienced the same issue, and maybe even has found a solution.

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, November 2024 Edition

Marketed on a cybercriminal forum, the $700 tool harvests email addresses from public GitHub profiles, priming cyberattackers for further credential theft, malware delivery, OAuth subversion, supply chain attacks, and other corporate breaches.

Source: Piotr Swat via Alamy Stock Photo

Researchers have uncovered a tool aimed at targeting GitHub users, distributed on a cybercrime forum. It offers bulk developer credential theft and the ability to conduct further malicious activities, including supply chain attacks.

The tool — called GoIssue and potentially linked to a previous GitHub repository extortion campaign called Gitloker — allows potential attackers to extract email addresses from GitHub profiles and to send bulk emails directly to user inboxes, researchers from SlashNext discovered.

"At its core, the tool systematically harvests email addresses from public GitHub profiles, using automated processes and GitHub tokens to collect data based on various criteria — from organization memberships to stargazer lists," SlashNext revealed in a blog post on Nov. 12.

GoIssue is marketed to potential attackers at $700 for a custom build or $3,000 for full source code access. The tool combines bulk email capabilities with sophisticated data collection features, and protects the operator's identity through proxy networks, according to SlashNext. 

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Don't miss the upcoming free Dark Reading Virtual Event, "Know Your Enemy: Understanding Cybercriminals and Nation-State Threat Actors," Nov. 14 at 11 a.m. ET. Don't miss sessions on understanding MITRE ATT&CK, using proactive security as a weapon, and a masterclass in incident response; and a host of top speakers like Larry Larsen from the Navy Credit Federal Union, former Kaspersky Lab analyst Costin Raiu, Ben Read of Mandiant Intelligence, Rob Lee from SANS, and Elvia Finalle from Omdia. Register now!

Related:Citrix Issues Patches for Zero-Day Recording Manager Bugs

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**Developers Have a Target on Their Backs**

Developers increasingly have become a top target for threat actors because they provide the keys to valuable source code that can be used to launch supply chain attacks, reaching numerous victims by merely altering or abusing lines of code. As the leading online repository for source code, GitHub already has been in the crosshairs of numerous malicious campaigns targeting its users.

"The emergence of GoIssue signals a new era where developer platforms become high-stakes battlegrounds," with attackers aiming to "exploit trusted developer environments," observes Jason Soroko, senior fellow at Sectigo, an automated certificate life-cycle management firm.

GoIssue represents an evolution in GitHub-focused attack tools, giving attackers a way to orchestrate large-scale, customized phishing campaigns that can bypass spam filters and target specific developer communities, while attackers maintain the cover of anonymity.

Related:Citrix 'Recording Manager' Zero-Day Bug Allows Unauthenticated RCE

Through these campaigns, attackers can steal developer credentials and use that stolen information in phishing attacks that can steal login credentials, spread malicious payloads to compromise a user's device, or distribute prompts for OAuth app authorization that give attackers access to private repositories and data.

In this way, threat actors can steal and/or poison source code from GitHub projects to launch supply chain and other attacks that can breach corporate networks, the researchers said. "This is a high-impact attack mechanism that specifically preys on the trust and openness of the developer community," Soroko observes.

**Cybercrime Link to Gitloker Extortion Campaign?**

When investigating GoIssue, the contact info provided to potential buyers of the tool led SlashNext researchers to a Telegram profile for "cyberluffy," which states that someone called "Cyber D' Luffy" is a member of the Gitloker team. Gitloker is an ongoing campaign uncovered in June that uses GitHub notifications to push malicious OAuth apps aimed at wiping developer repositories for extortion purposes.

Moreover, in a thread advertising GoIssue, the seller even links to high-profile security blogs that detail and validate Gitloker attack efficacy. This seems to suggest that the same attackers selling GoIssue are behind Gitloker, and the tool "could be an extension of the Gitloker campaign or an evolved version of the same tool," according to SlashNext.

Related:'SteelFox' Malware Blitz Infects 11K Victims With Bundle of Pain

"Both tools share a similar target audience (GitHub users) and leverage email communication to initiate attacks," according to the post. "This overlap in purpose and personnel strongly supports the theory that they are either linked or variations of one another."

No matter who is distributing the tool, it represents a dire warning to developers using GitHub that they need to remain vigilant and not engage with any anomalous email correspondence or messages that seem suspicious, the researchers noted. "This isn’t just spam; it’s a potential entry point to taking over your account or projects," according to SlashNext.

Enterprises with developers in the organization that use GitHub in particular should be especially proactive and adaptive at securing their people, notes Mika Aalto, co-founder and CEO at human risk-management firm Hoxhunt.

"As attackers leverage automation and advanced tools with increasing sophistication, we must give people the instincts to recognize a suspicious email and the skills to report threats that bypass filters," he says.

Enterprises also should integrate human threat intelligence into the security stack to facilitate accelerated detection and response to suspicious activity, Aalto adds.

**About the Author**

Elizabeth Montalbano is a freelance writer, journalist, and therapeutic writing mentor with more than 25 years of professional experience. Her areas of expertise include technology, business, and culture. Elizabeth previously lived and worked as a full-time journalist in Phoenix, San Francisco, and New York City; she currently resides in a village on the southwest coast of Portugal. In her free time, she enjoys surfing, hiking with her dogs, traveling, playing music, yoga, and cooking.

'GoIssue' Cybercrime Tool Targets GitHub Developers En Masse

There is some disagreement over whether the remote code execution (RCE) security flaws allow for unauthenticated exploitation or not. Citrix says no, but researchers say the company is downplaying a "good old unauthenticated RCE."

Source: JHVEPhoto via Shutterstock

Very swiftly after their disclosure, Citrix has issued patches for two vulnerabilities in its Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop technology that allow a remote attacker escalate privileges or execute code of their choice on vulnerable systems.

Citrix has described the remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities as something that only a previously authenticated attacker could abuse. However, researchers at watchTowr who discovered the flaws and developed a proof-of-concept exploit (PoC) say it's a point-and-click vulnerability that an unauthenticated attacker can exploit with relative ease.

Citrix is tracking one of the flaws as CVE-2024-8068 and the other as CVE-2024-8069.  

**Citrix Downplaying Threat Severity?**

The flaws affect the thin-client technology's Session Recording Manager component that allows admins to capture, store, and manage recordings of user sessions. They stem from a weakness in how Session Recording Manager deserializes or unpacks data that has been converted into a format that makes it easy to store and transmit, according to the researchers at watchTowr who discovered and reported the issues to Citrix in July.

Citrix initially said it was unable to reproduce the issue but later acknowledged the problem after the security vendor gave them a PoC exploit for the vulnerability.

Related:'GoIssue' Cybercrime Tool Targets GitHub Developers En Masse

In an advisory on Nov. 12, the company described CVE-2024-8068 as a privilege escalation vulnerability that allows an authenticated user in the same Windows Active Directory domain as the session recording server to gain NetworkService Account access. CVE-2024-8069, according to Citrix, is a "limited" RCE for attackers with admin level account access on vulnerable systems. "Cloud Software Group strongly urges affected customers of Citrix Session Recording to install the relevant updated versions of Citrix Session Recording as soon their upgrade schedule permits," the company cautioned.

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Don't miss the upcoming free Dark Reading Virtual Event, "Know Your Enemy: Understanding Cybercriminals and Nation-State Threat Actors," Nov. 14 at 11 a.m. ET. Don't miss sessions on understanding MITRE ATT&CK, using proactive security as a weapon, and a masterclass in incident response; and a host of top speakers like Larry Larsen from the Navy Credit Federal Union, former Kaspersky Lab analyst Costin Raiu, Ben Read of Mandiant Intelligence, Rob Lee from SANS, and Elvia Finalle from Omdia. Register now!

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Even so, Citrix has assigned both vulnerabilities only medium severity scores of 5.1 of 10 on the CVSS vulnerability rating scale. It's an assignment that watchTowr has disputed.

Related:Citrix 'Recording Manager' Zero-Day Bug Allows Unauthenticated RCE

"Citrix is downplaying the severity of this vulnerability as a medium priority when it’s really point-click-full-takeover," says Benjamin Harris, CEO of watchTowr, pointing to the company's exploit code. The combination of the two vulnerabilities allows for a "good old unauthenticated RCE," Harris tells Dark Reading.

"Citrix's Virtual Apps and Desktop offering is a flagship Citrix solution, targeted at \[Fortune 500\] organizations," he notes. "Since we're dealing with a deserialization issue, a bug class that is known for being relatively stable, we \[have\] a high degree of confidence that our exploit will work reliably. There's no tricky heap manipulation or other entropy creeping in."

Many organizations use Citrix’s Virtual Apps and Desktop technology to enable users to access their applications and desktop environments from anywhere and using any device. It gives organizations a way to centrally deploy, update and secure all user apps from a single location making maintenance more efficient, consistent and cost effective. Another benefit that Citrix advertises is increased security from having applications and data on centralized servers rather than on individual endpoint devices. The technology's Session Recording feature — where watchTowr discovered the flaws — enables admins to monitor for anomalous behavior and to maintain a detailed record of user activity for future audit and troubleshooting purposes.

Related:'SteelFox' Malware Blitz Infects 11K Victims With Bundle of Pain

Demand for such technologies has increased in recent years as more companies have embraced remote and hybrid work models. Research firm MarketsandMarkets estimates the market will reach $1.7 billion in 2028 from around $1.5 billion last year. The broader desktop as a service (DaaS) market itself is expected to hit nearly $19 billion by 2030 from just over $4 billion in 2021.

**Dependence on Known Insecure Technology**

watchTowr discovered the vulnerabilities while scrutinizing Citrix's Virtual Apps and Desktop's architecture for potential security issues. The security vendor's examination showed that Citrix's app uses Microsoft's Message Queuing (MSMQ) service to receive recorded user session files and to store them in a separate storage manager component. In addition, watchTowr found Citrix using a Microsoft technology called BinaryFormatter to deserialize data in the storage manager component when needed. BinaryFormatter is technology that Microsoft itself has urged organizations to stop using as soon as possible because of security weaknesses that are no longer fixable, watchTowr said.

The vulnerabilities that watchTowr discovered involved a combination of an Internet-accessible MSMQ instance in the session recording component of Citrix's Virtual Apps and Desktop technology along with misconfigured permissions related to BinaryFormatter. "This isn't really a bug in the BinaryFormatter itself, nor a bug in MSMQ, but rather the unfortunate consequence of Citrix relying on the documented-to-be-insecure BinaryFormatter to maintain a security boundary," Harris says. "It's a 'bug' that manifested during the design phase, when Citrix decided which serialization library to use."

Harris says watchTowr reported the vulnerability as a single issue, whereas Citrix appears to have treated it as two separate issues.  

"While it is inarguable that Citrix's use of a BinaryFormatter with untrusted data is a de-facto bug, we don't have enough context to determine if exposing the MSMQ queue via HTTP is a really a bug, caused by a careless oversight, or a carefully calculated effect of some obscure business requirement."

Citrix's technologies are a frequent target for attackers because of the high-level of access the company's technology provides to enterprise applications and data. Many of the reported security flaws recently have impacted the company's NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway remote access platforms.

**About the Author**

Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld, where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the publication. Over the course of his 20-year career at Computerworld, Jai also covered a variety of other technology topics, including big data, Hadoop, Internet of Things, e-voting, and data analytics. Prior to Computerworld, Jai covered technology issues for The Economic Times in Bangalore, India. Jai has a Master's degree in Statistics and lives in Naperville, Ill.

Citrix Issues Patches for Zero-Day Recording Manager Bugs

The security vulnerability is due to an exposed Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) instance and the use of the insecure BinaryFormatter.

Source: Brian Jackson via Alamy Stock PhotoSource:

\[Ed. note, Nov. 12 at 12:30 p.m. ET: Citrix has now issued patches for the issue and assigned CVE-2024-8068/CVE-2024-8069 for tracking.\]

An unpatched zero-day vulnerability in Citrix’s Session Recording Manager allows unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE, paving the way for data theft, lateral movement, and desktop takeover.

According to watchTowr research out today, the issue (which does not yet have a CVE or CVSS score) resides in Citrix's Session Recording Manager, which, as its name implies, records user activity, including keyboard and mouse inputs, websites visited, video streams of desktop activity, and more.

"Citrix advertises the feature as being really useful for monitoring (somewhat obviously), but also for compliance and troubleshooting. It can even be set up so that certain actions (like identifying sensitive data) will trigger recording, which helps meet regulatory needs and flag suspicious activities," the watchTowr researchers noted in the report.

The feature logs session recordings via Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ), which enables efficient data transfer from individual computers to centralized storage. However, the Citrix implementation uses BinaryFormatter for serialization and deserialization of the information for easier and more accurate transfer and storage. The utility is unfortunately well-known to be insecure.

Related:'GoIssue' Cybercrime Tool Targets GitHub Developers En Masse

BinaryFormatter is a .NET class created by Microsoft, which is in the process of deprecating it: "BinaryFormatter is insecure and can't be made secure. Applications should stop using \[it\] as soon as possible, even if they believe the data they're processing to be trustworthy," the computing giant said in August.

On top of the BinaryFormatter issue, Recording Session Manager also involves an exposed MSMQ service that can be reached from any host via HTTP. This, combined with what watchTowr says are misconfigured permissions, paves the way for unauthenticated RCE.

Dark Reading has reached out for comment and planned patching or mitigation information from both watchTowr and Citrix. There is no evidence of in-the-wild exploitation yet, but given Citrix's attractiveness as a cybercrime target, that could soon change.

Don't miss the upcoming free Dark Reading Virtual Event, "Know Your Enemy: Understanding Cybercriminals and Nation-State Threat Actors," Nov. 14 at 11 am ET. Don't miss sessions on understanding MITRE ATT&CK, using proactive security as a weapon, and a masterclass in incident response; and a host of top speakers like Larry Larson from the Navy Credit Federal Union, former Kaspersky Lab analyst Costin Raiu, Ben Read of Mandiant Intelligence, Rob Lee from SANS, and Elvia Finalle from Omdia. Register now!

Related:Citrix Issues Patches for Zero-Day Recording Manager Bugs

**About the Author**

Tara Seals has 20+ years of experience as a journalist, analyst and editor in the cybersecurity, communications and technology space. Prior to Dark Reading, Tara was Editor in Chief at Threatpost, and prior to that, the North American news lead for Infosecurity Magazine. She also spent 13 years working for Informa (formerly Virgo Publishing), as executive editor and editor-in-chief at publications focused on both the service provider and the enterprise arenas. A Texas native, she holds a B.A. from Columbia University, lives in Western Massachusetts with her family and is on a never-ending quest for good Mexican food in the Northeast.

Citrix 'Recording Manager' Zero-Day Bug Allows Unauthenticated RCE

A critical security vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks’ Expedition tool is being actively exploited by hackers. CISA urges…

A critical security vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks’ Expedition tool is being actively exploited by hackers. CISA urges patch – Learn how to protect your network and sensitive data by patching your Expedition software immediately.

If you have recently migrated your network configuration to Palo Alto Networks using their Expedition tool, you need to act quickly as a critical security flaw (CVE-2024-5910) in the tool is actively being exploited by threat actors. This means hackers can takeover administrator account, access sensitive configuration data, and even gain control over your firewalls if you haven’t patched your Expedition software.

For your information, Expedition is a handy tool that helps users seamlessly switch their network configuration from other vendors like Cisco or Checkpoint to their own products. It automates many steps, making the transition smoother for businesses. The tool will be will discontinued from January 2025.

Palo Alto Networks has reportedly been notified by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) about the exploitation of a security flaw within its Expedition tool versions prior to 1.2.92. Palo Alto already released a patch for this vulnerability in July, but attackers are already exploiting it.

 “Palo Alto Expedition contains a missing authentication vulnerability that allows an attacker with network access to takeover an Expedition admin account and potentially access configuration secrets, credentials, and other data,” CISA explained in its advisory.

The advisory warns that configuration secrets, credentials, and other data moved into Expedition are at risk due to the critical flaw as the tool can trigger an administrative account takeover for threat actors. This vulnerability is rated as “critical” with a CVSS score of 9.3 (out of 10) entails a missing authentication for Critical Function (CWE-306). This means it’s very easy for attackers to exploit and can have severe consequences.

Exploitation attempts likely rose in October when a security researcher Zach Hanley released a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit. It demonstrates how to combine CVE-2024-5910 and another vulnerability (CVE-2024-9464) to execute unauthenticated remote code on vulnerable Expedition servers, allowing attackers to reset admin accounts and control firewall configurations.

CISA has added this vulnerability to its “Known Exploited Vulnerabilities” catalog, urging federal agencies to address it before November 28th.

To protect yourself, update your software to the latest version (1.2.92 or later). Once updated, change usernames, passwords, and API keys for both Expedition and firewalls processed through Expedition.  Additionally, sign up for security alerts from Palo Alto Networks or other reputable sources to stay updated on the latest threats and vulnerabilities.

It is worth noting that the advisory comes after Threat intelligence firm Volexity discovered a zero-day exploit in April that affected Palo Alto Networks’ firewall appliances. The vulnerability had a maximum CVSS score of 10 and probably exploited by nation-state hackers, according to researchers.

John Bambenek, President at Bambenek Consulting weighed in on the situation stating, _“_This vulnerability lets attackers reach out and take over these devices without authentication and they are the kind of tool you set up for a tactical reason. Once the work is done, you forget about it. If, for whatever reason, you can’t shut it down, get these devices off the open Internet._“_

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5.  Cisco Fixes High-Severity Code Execution, VPN Hijacking Flaws

CISA Urges Patching of Critical Palo Alto Networks’ Expedition Tool Vulnerability

Large language models (LLMs) can help app security firms find and fix software vulnerabilities. Malicious actors are on to them too, but here's why defenders may retain the edge.

Source: vs148 via Shutterstock

Security researchers and attackers are turning to AI models to find vulnerabilities, a technology whose use will likely drive the annual count of software flaws higher, but could eventually result in fewer flaws in public releases, experts say.

On Nov. 1, Google said its Big Sleep large language model (LLM) agent discovered a buffer-underflow vulnerability in the popular database engine, SQLite. The experiment shows both the peril and the promise of AI-powered vulnerability discovery tools: The AI agent searched through the code for variations on a specific vulnerability, but identified the software flaw in time for Google to notify the SQLite project and work with them to fix the issue.

Using AI just for software-defect discovery could result in a surge in vulnerability disclosures, but introducing LLM agents into the development pipeline could reverse the trend and lead to fewer software flaws escaping into the wild, says Tim Willis, head of Google's Project Zero, the company's effort to identify zero-day vulnerabilities.

"While we are at an early stage, we believe that the techniques we develop through this research will become a useful and general part of the toolbox that software developers have at their disposal," he says.

Google is not alone in searching for better ways to find — and fix — vulnerabilities. In August, a group of researchers from Georgia Tech, Samsung Research, and other firms — collectively known as Team Atlanta — used an LLM bug-finding system to automatically find and patch a bug in SQLite. And just last month, cybersecurity firm GreyNoise Intelligence revealed it had used its Sift AI system to analyze honeypot logs leading to the discovery and patching of two zero-day vulnerabilities affecting Internet-connected cameras used in sensitive environments.

Overall, companies are gaining more ways to automate vulnerability discovery, and — if they are serious about security — will be able to drive down the number of vulnerabilities in their products by using the tools in development, says Corey Bodzin, chief product officer at GreyNoise Intelligence.

"The exciting thing is we do have technology that allows people who \[care about\] security to be more effective," he says. "Sadly ... there are not many companies where that is ... a primary driver, but even in companies where \[security is\] purely viewed as a cost" can benefit from using these tools.

**Only the First Steps**

Currently, Google's custom approach is still bespoke and requires work to adapt to specific vulnerability-finding tasks. The company's Big Sleep agent does not to look for completely new vulnerabilities, but uses details from a previously discovered vulnerability to look for similar issues. The project has looked at smaller programs with known vulnerabilities as test cases, but the SQLite experiment is the first time they found vulnerabilities in production code, the Google Project Zero and Google DeepMind researchers stated in Google's blog post describing the research.

While specialized fuzzers would likely have found the bug, tuning those tools to perform well is a very manual process, says Google's Willis.

"One promise of \[L\]LM agents is that they might generalize across applications without the need for specialized tuning," he says. "Additionally, we're hopeful that \[L\]LM agents will be able to uncover a different subset of vulnerabilities than those typically found through fuzzing."

The use of AI-based vulnerability discovery tools will be a race between attackers and defenders. Manual code review is a viable way of finding bugs for attackers, who only need a single exploitable vulnerability or short chain of vulnerabilities. But defenders need a scalable way of finding and fixing applications, Willis says. While bug-finding tools can be a force multiplier for both attackers and defenders, the ability to scale up to analyze code will likely be a greater benefit for defenders, Willis says.

"We expect that advances in automated vulnerability discovery, triage, and remediation will disproportionately benefit defenders," he says.

**Focus AI on Finding and Fixing Bugs**

Companies that focus on using AI to generate secure code and fix bugs when found will deliver higher quality code from developers, says Chris Wysopal, co-founder and chief security evangelist at Veracode, an application security firm. He argues that automating bug finding and bug fixing are two completely different problems. Finding vulnerabilities is a very large data problem, whIle fixing bugs usually deals with perhaps a dozen lines of code.

"Once you know the bug is there — if you found it through fuzzing, or through an LLM, or using human code review — and you know what kind of bug it is, fixing it is relatively easy," he says. "So, LLMs favor defenders, because having access to source code and fixing issues is easy. So I'm kind of bullish that we can eliminate whole classes of vulnerabilities, but it's not from finding more, it's from being able to fix more."

Companies that require developers to run automated security tools before code check-in will find themselves on a path to paying down their security debt — the collection of issues that they know about, but have not had time to fix, he says. Currently, about half (46%) of organizations have security debt in the form of persistent critical flaws in applications, according to Veracode's 2024 State of Software Security report.

"The idea that you're committing code that has a problem in it, and it's not fixed, will become the exception, not the rule, like it is today," Wysopal says. "Once you can start to automate this fixing — and we're always getting better at automating finding \[vulnerabilities\] — I think that's how things change."

Yet, the technology will still have to overcome companies' focus on efficiency and productivity over security, says Bob Rudis, vice president of data science and security research at GreyNoise Intelligence. He points to the fixing of the two security vulnerabilities that GreyNoise Intelligence found and responsibly disclosed. The company only fixed the issues in two product models, but not others — despite the fact that the other products likely had similar issues, he says.

Google and GreyNoise Intelligence proved that the technology will work, but whether companies integrate AI into the development pipelines to eliminate bugs is still an open question.

Rudis has doubts.

"I'm sure a handful of organizations are going to deploy it — it's going to make like seven C files a little bit safer across a bunch of organizations, and maybe we'll get like a tick more security for the ones that can actually deploy it properly," he says. "But ultimately, until we actually change the incentive structure around how software vendors build and deploy things, and how consumers actually purchase and deploy and configure things, we are not going to see any benefit."

**About the Author**

Veteran technology journalist of more than 20 years. Former research engineer. Written for more than two dozen publications, including CNET News.com, Dark Reading, MIT's Technology Review, Popular Science, and Wired News. Five awards for journalism, including Best Deadline Journalism (Online) in 2003 for coverage of the Blaster worm. Crunches numbers on various trends using Python and R. Recent reports include analyses of the shortage in cybersecurity workers and annual vulnerability trends.

AI &amp; LLMs Show Promise in Squashing Software Bugs

Direct cyberattacks on vehicles are all but unheard of. In theory though, the opportunity is there to cause real damage — data extraction, full system compromise, even gaining access to safety-critical systems.

Source: Marin Tomas via Alamy Stock Photo

Six unpatched vulnerabilities in a Mazda in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) system could be exploited with a simple USB in a moments' time, and one of them has legitimate consequences to vehicle safety.

These days, cars are just computers on wheels, and IVIs are their user interface. The IVI in most Mazda vehicles of recent years — like the Mazda3 and CX-3, 5, and 9 — are built with the Mazda Connect Connectivity Master Unit (CMU), developed by the Michigan-based Visteon Corporation. The CMU is a core hardware component that enables various connectivity services: smartphone integration, a Wi-Fi hotspot, and various remote monitoring and control features.

Recent research through Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) has surfaced half a dozen vulnerabilities in the Mazda IVI. A few of them enable full system compromise, and access to various sensitive data. One of particular note could enable an attacker to pivot to the vehicle's Controller Area Network (CAN) bus — the central nervous system connecting its various component parts.

None of the vulnerabilities have been assigned a value according to the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) yet. All of them remain unpatched as of this writing. On the plus side: They all require that an attacker physically insert a malicious USB into the center console. Such a scenario — carried out by a carjacker, or possibly a valet or dealer — is essentially unheard of in the real world to date.

Dark Reading has reached out to Visteon for further comment on this story.

**6 Mazda IVI Security Bugs**

Three of the vulnerabilities — CVE-2024-8358, CVE-2024-8359, and CVE-2024-8360 — target functions used to locate and extract specific files during software updates. Because the provided file path is not sanitized, an attacker can step in with their own malicious injection, which gets executed at the root level of the system. With a specially crafted command, this one-step hack could facilitate a full system takeover.

Another way to skin this cat would be to take advantage of CVE-2024-8357, affecting the CMU's System on Chip (SoC) running Linux. The SoC's boot process has no authentication in place, so an attacker with the ability to execute code can take advantage to manipulate files, establish persistence through reboots, and establish control over the system even before it boots up.

The Mazda IVI; Source: Trend Micro's ZDI

CVE-2024-8355 might seem at first a bit different from the rest but, in reality, it's caused by the same underlying problem: lack of sanitization of input data.

To establish a connection with an Apple device, the CMU will request the device's serial number. Because it doesn't apply scrutiny to that value, a spoofed device can send specially crafted SQL code instead. The system's DeviceManager will run that code at the root level, enabling all kinds of malicious outcomes: database exposure, arbitrary file creation, etc.

Last, but certainly not least, is CVE-2024-8356, a missing verification during the CMU software update process. This one, however, affects the unit's other processor, the Verification IP Microcontroller Unit (VIP MCU). The VIP MCU is designed to be separate from the SoC for security purposes, because instead of running the operating system, it connects to the vehicle's CAN bus. The CAN bus, in turn, connects the rest of the vehicle: everything from climate control to the engine and airbags. With a tampered firmware image, ZDI demonstrated that one can jump the SoC to manipulate the VIP MCU, and from there reach the CAN bus.

**Serious, But Unlikely Consequences**

"In truth, it's hard to predict what an attacker could do once they have access to a CAN bus," says Dustin Childs, head of threat awareness at ZDI. "Since the CAN bus serves as the nervous system of the vehicle, a threat actor could potentially impact whatever electronic control units (ECUs) or components that interact with the CAN bus." Translation: Attackers can subvert just about any conceivable part of the vehicle.

"The worst case scenario would be an attacker impacting the driving characteristic of the car, rendering it unsafe to operate," he adds.

Still, the threat is immaterial. For all of the exploits demonstrated by researchers, actual criminals still consistently stick to those older tried-and-true methods of compromise: a stolen set of keys; an unfurled clothes hanger slipped artfully in between a window and a door frame; or a rock, a window, and a good baseball toss.

"At this point, there isn't a lot of real-world impact," Childs admits. "However, as cars become more connected, remote exploitation becomes more realistic. In the last Pwn2Own Automotive, the team from Synacktiv exploited the modem of the Tesla Model 3 over-the-air to reach and interact with the onboard systems of the vehicle. It's just a matter of time until a complete, remote vehicle takeover becomes a real possibility."

He adds, "That's why manufacturers should build in security to each component and not rely on the defenses of other modules. A vehicle should have a multilayered protective system that assumes every message may be from a compromised source. The more we get ahead of the problem now, the easier it will be to react to it in the future."

**About the Author**

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.

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