Government websites in Europe and elsewhere go dark as software flaw sparks security scramble


Government websites in Europe and elsewhere went offline on Wednesday after the disclosure of critical vulnerabilities in a widely used programming language sent website operators scrambling to protect their systems.

Developers of the PHP programming language said Tuesday they had identified two critical vulnerabilities and urged users to update their sites as soon as a fix was released. They said around 1345 GMT on Wednesday that a new version fixing the vulnerabilities was live.

But with reports that hackers were exploiting the flaws to break into websites, government agencies in the Netherlands and Finland were among those that took sites offline ahead of the fix as a precaution.

Read more…
Source:  CNBC News


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • iPhone Bug Allowed for Complete Device Takeover Over the Air

    December 2, 2020

    Details tied to a stunning iPhone vulnerability were disclosed by noted Google Project Zero researcher Ian Beer. Apple patched the vulnerability earlier this year. But few details, until now, were known about the bug that could have allowed a threat actor to completely take over any iPhone within a nearby vicinity. The hack could of ...

  • Robot Vacuums Suck Up Sensitive Audio in ‘LidarPhone’ Hack

    November 19, 2020

    Researchers have uncovered a new attack that lets bad actors snoop in on homeowners’ private conversations – through their robot vacuums. The vacuums, which utilize smart sensors in order to autonomously operate, have gained traction over the past few years. The attack, called “LidarPhone” by researchers, in particular targets vacuums with LiDAR sensors, as the name ...

  • German COVID-19 Contact-Tracing Vulnerability Allowed RCE

    November 19, 2020

    A security vulnerability in the infrastructure underlying Germany’s official COVID-19 contact-tracing app, called the Corona-Warn-App (CWA), would have allowed pre-authenticated remote code execution (RCE). Researcher Alvaro Muñoz wrote in a report this week that he and his team at GitHub Security Labs were chasing down RCE vulnerabilities on the platform and found one in the infrastructure ...

  • APT10: Japan-Linked Organizations Targeted in Long-Running and Sophisticated Attack Campaign

    November 17, 2020

    A large-scale attack campaign is targeting multiple Japanese companies, including subsidiaries located in as many as 17 regions around the globe in a likely intelligence-gathering operation. Companies in multiple sectors are targeted in this campaign, including those operating in the automotive, pharmaceutical, and engineering sector, as well as managed service providers (MSPs). The scale and sophistication of ...

  • High-Severity Cisco DoS Flaw Can Immobilize ASR Routers

    November 11, 2020

    A high-severity flaw in Cisco’s IOS XR software could allow unauthenticated, remote attackers to cripple Cisco Aggregation Services Routers (ASR). The flaw stems from Cisco IOS XR, a train of Cisco Systems’ widely deployed Internetworking Operating System (IOS). The OS powers the Cisco ASR 9000 series, which are fully distributed routers engineered to address massive surges ...

  • CVE-2020-17051: Remote kernel heap overflow in NFSv3 Windows Server

    November 10, 2020

    Microsoft released a patch today for a critical vulnerability (CVE-2020-17051) in the Windows NFSv3 (Network File System) server. NFS is typically used in heterogenous environments of Windows and Unix/Linux for file sharing. The vulnerability can be reproduced to cause an immediate BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) within the nfssvr.sys driver. Interestingly, the November patches from ...