Privilege Escalation
Ransomware gangs exploit Paragon Partition Manager bug in BYOVD attacks
Microsoft had discovered five Paragon Partition Manager BioNTdrv.sys driver flaws, with one used by ransomware gangs in zero-day attacks to gain SYSTEM privileges in Windows. The vulnerable drivers were exploited in ‘Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver’ (BYOVD) attacks where threat actors drop the kernel driver on a targeted system to elevate privileges. “An attacker with local access to a […]
Google fixes Android kernel zero-day exploited in attacks
The January 2025 Android security updates patch 48 vulnerabilities, including a zero-day kernel vulnerability tagged as exploited in the wild. This high-severity zero-day (tracked as CVE-2024-53104) is a privilege escalation security flaw in the Android Kernel’s USB Video Class driver that allows authenticated local threat actors to elevate privileges in low-complexity attacks. The issue occurs because the driver […]
Hackers use Windows RID hijacking to create hidden admin account
A North Korean threat group has been using a technique called RID hijacking that tricks Windows into treating a low-privileged account as one with administrator permissions. The hackers used a custom malicious file and an open source tool for the hijacking attack. Both utilities can perform the attack but researchers at South Korean cybersecurity company AhnLab say that […]
W3 Total Cache plugin flaw exposes 1 million WordPress sites to attacks
A severe flaw in the W3 Total Cache plugin installed on more than one million WordPress sites could give attackers access to various information, including metadata on cloud-based apps. The W3 Total Cache plugin uses multiple caching techniques to optimize a website’s speed, reduce load times, and generally improve its SEO ranking. The flaw is tracked […]
SAP fixes critical vulnerabilities in NetWeaver application servers
SAP has fixed two critical vulnerabilities affecting NetWeaver web application server that could be exploited to escalate privileges and access restricted information. As part of the January Security Patch Day, the vendor also released updates for other products to patch 12 additional issues rated with medium and high severity. “SAP strongly recommends that the customer […]
Premium WPLMS WordPress plugins address seven critical flaws
Two WordPress plugins required by the premium WordPress WPLMS theme, which has over 28,000 sales, are vulnerable to more than a dozen critical severity vulnerabilities. The bugs could enable a remote, unauthenticated attacker to upload arbitrary files to the server, execute code, escalate privileges to administrator level, and perform SQL injections. The WPLMS theme is a learning management […]
Windows kernel bug now exploited in attacks to gain SYSTEM privileges
CISA has warned U.S. federal agencies to secure their systems against ongoing attacks targeting a high-severity Windows kernel vulnerability. Tracked as CVE-2024-35250, this security flaw is due to an untrusted pointer dereference weakness that allows local attackers to gain SYSTEM privileges in low-complexity attacks that don’t require user interaction. While Microsoft didn’t share more details in a security […]
New stealthy Pumakit Linux rootkit malware spotted in the wild
A new Linux rootkit malware called Pumakit has been discovered that uses stealth and advanced privilege escalation techniques to hide its presence on systems. The malware is a multi-component set that includes a dropper, memory-resident executables, a kernel module rootkit, and a shared object (SO) userland rootkit. Elastic Security discovered Pumakit in a suspicious binary (‘cron’) upload […]
Palo Alto Networks patches two firewall zero-days used in attacks
Palo Alto Networks has finally released security updates for two actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities in its Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW). The first flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-0012, is an authentication bypass found in the PAN-OS management web interface that remote attackers can exploit to gain administrator privileges without requiring authentication or user interaction. The second one (CVE-2024-9474) is a PAN-OS privilege escalation […]
Critical RCE bug in VMware vCenter Server now exploited in attacks
Broadcom warned today that attackers are now exploiting two VMware vCenter Server vulnerabilities, one of which is a critical remote code execution flaw. TZL security researchers reported the RCE vulnerability (CVE-2024-38812) during China’s 2024 Matrix Cup hacking contest. It is caused by a heap overflow weakness in the vCenter’s DCE/RPC protocol implementation and affects products […]