Tag: vulnerabilities

Paypal Disables Two Factor From Mobile

In the wake of a disclosure, yesterday, that a secure log-in feature was vulnerable to hacking, PayPal has suspended the ability of customers who elect to use the feature to log in to PayPal using the company’s mobile application. In a blog post on Wednesday, PayPal Director of Global Initiatives Anuj Nayar said that the company took the step of disabling mobile application log ins after the researcher, Zach Lanier of DUO Security, published his findings in a blog post yesterday. As reported by The Security Ledger, researcher Zach Lanier of DUO Labs discovered that a PayPal mobile API (application program interface) for its Security Key two-factor authentication technology contains a vulnerability that would allow even a non-technical hacker to bypass the second factor when accessing a Paypal customer’s account. The problem comes up when trying to access a Paypal account protected using two-factor authentication using a PayPal mobile application – […]

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Researchers Sidestep Paypal Two-Factor Authentication

Researchers at DUO Security claim to have found a way of bypassing a two factor authentication feature that secures logins to Paypal.com, eBay’s online payment service. The vulnerability could allow an attacker who has stolen a Paypal customer’s user name and password to gain access to the account, even though the customer had enabled the more secure two-factor authentication option. DUO described the problem in a blog post early Wednesday. According to researcher Zach Lanier, Paypal has published an API (application program interface) for its Security Key two-factor authentication technology that contains a vulnerability that would allow even a non-technical hacker to bypass the second factor when accessing a Paypal customer’s account. An attacker only needs a victim’s PayPal username and password in order to access a two-factor protected account and send money. “The protection offered by the two-factor Security Key mechanism can be bypassed and essentially nullified,” the company wrote in […]

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Update: Another IPMI Mishap? Researcher Claims Supermicro Devices Vulnerable

There’s more bad news for companies that rely on the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) to manage servers and other hardware in their IT environments. Specifically: researcher Zachary Wikholm over at Cari.net has published evidence of what he says is a head-slapping vulnerability affecting devices that use IPMI Base Management Controllers (BMCs) made by the firm SuperMicro. According to Wikholm, servers equipped with Supermicro BMCs store a password file, PSBlock, in plain text and – making matters worse- leave it open to the world on port 49152. “You can quite literally download the BMC password file from any UPnP enabled Supermicro motherboard running IPMI on a public interface,” he wrote. Baseboard Management Controllers (BMCs) are small, embedded systems attached to a system’s motherboard that manage IPMI communications. Wikholm says that Supermicro has fixed the problem in the latest version of its IPMI firmware. However, companies are often reluctant to flash […]

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Infographic: A Heartbleed Disclosure Timeline (Secunia)

The dangerous security hole in OpenSSL known as “Heartbleed” has (mostly) faded from the headlines, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still dangerous. As this blog has noted, the Heartbleed vulnerability was patched quickly on major platforms like Apache and nginx and by high profile service providers like Google and Facebook. But it still has a long tail of web applications that aren’t high risk (i.e. directly reachable via the Internet) and embedded devices that use OpenSSL or its various components. As the folks over at Acunetix note in a blog post today, hundreds of other services, application software and operating systems make use of OpenSSL for purposes that might be entirely unrelated to delivering pages over HTTPS. This includes all the email servers (using SMTP, POP and IMAP protocols), FTP servers, chat servers (XMPP protocol), virtual private networks (SSL VPNs), and network appliances that use OpenSSL or its components. The number of systems vulnerable to […]

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UEFI: Security, BIOS and the Internet of Things

One of the notable trends in recent years has been the drive, among malicious actors, to compromise devices in new- and hard-to-detect ways. An area of interest and exploration is malicious software that can attack a computer’s BIOS – the small bit of code that runs when a computing device is first powered on. BIOS malware is so powerful because it offers adversaries the possibility of getting a foothold on systems prior to an operating system and the security features- and applications that run there. Successful BIOS attacks give attackers almost total control over the system they are installed on. BIOS malware isn’t a new idea. In fact, it has been around since the late 1990s, when the Chernobyl Virus was identified. That virus could wipe a machine’s BIOS, a well as the contents of its hard drive. But BIOS threats have been getting more attention lately. Proof of concept malware appeared as recently […]

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