Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

October 2022

New OpenSSL critical vulnerability: What you need to know

On Oct 25, 2022 The OpenSSL project announced a forthcoming release of OpenSSL (version 3.0.7) to address a critical security vulnerability. This release should go live on Tuesday, November 1, 2022 between 1300 and 1700 UTC. Snyk has published a placeholder advisory with the current known details, and will update the advisory when official vulnerability details are publicized. The last critical vulnerability in OpenSSL was released in 2016.

Top 5 scary AWS misconfigurations

In 2022, AWS (Amazon Web Services) remains one of the dominant cloud platforms and continues to be recognized as a leader in Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Services. AWS accounts for 34% of the cloud infrastructure service providers, so many organizations today have either all, most, or at least some of their infrastructure on AWS.

How to create SBOMs in Java with Maven and Gradle

When building applications in Java, we highly depend on external libraries and frameworks. And each Java package that is imported likely also depends on more libraries. This means that the amount of Java packages included in your application is often not really transparent. As a developer, these nested (transitive) dependencies create the problem that you probably do not know all the libraries you are actually using.

Using Sysdig Secure to Detect and Prioritize Mitigation of CVE 2022-3602 & CVE 2022-3786: OpenSSL 3.0.7

This is a work-in-progress blog post. It will be updated when more information is available. For more detailed information about the vulnerability, see the How the Critical OpenSSL Vulnerability may affect Popular Container Images blog post. A critical vulnerability with an expected high or critical severity rate of CVSS score is about to be announced on November 1st on the OpenSSL project. There are still no details besides an announcement on the OpenSSL mailing list on October 25th.

How the Critical OpenSSL Vulnerability may affect Popular Container Images

The big news this week is that a new CRITICAL OpenSSL vulnerability will be announced on November 1st, 2022. Critical-severity OpenSSL vulnerabilities don’t come along every day – the last was CVE-2016-6309, which ended up only affecting a single version of the software. The more famous vulnerability, known as Heartbleed, came out in 2014. Will this be more like Heartbleed or the vulnerability in 2016? We will soon find out.

Experts warn of critical security vulnerability discovered in OpenSSL

Understand what steps your organization needs to take now to prepare for the upcoming patch to address OpenSSL’s critical security vulnerability on November 1. Security experts are giving organizations advance disclosure of a critical vulnerability discovered in OpenSSL version 3.0 and above, leaving many to speculate about the potential impact to their organization.

Discovering the Critical OpenSSL Vulnerability with the CrowdStrike Falcon Platform

OpenSSL.org has announced that an updated version of its OpenSSL software package (version 3.0.7) will be released on November 1, 2022. This update contains a fix for a yet-to-be-disclosed security issue with a severity rating of “critical” that affects OpenSSL versions above 3.0.0 and below the patched version of 3.0.7, as well as applications with an affected OpenSSL library embedded.

Upcoming Critical OpenSSL Vulnerability

OpenSSL is the most popular implementation of the TLS protocol (Transport Layer Security) which is essentially the de-facto security protocol of the internet today. The OpenSSL team announced critical security updates of versions above version 3.0 (OpenSSL 3.0 was released on September 7, 2021). The myriad of projects and software depending on OpenSSL must update and release a new version to enable end users to start patching their systems.

Why fuzzing tools should be part of your security toolkit

Fuzzing is a software security testing technique that automatically provides invalid and random input to an application to expose bugs. The goal of fuzzing is to stress the application to cause unexpected behavior, crashes, or resource leaks. It allows us, as developers, to understand the behavior and vulnerability of applications more comprehensively. We use fuzzing tools, referred to as fuzzers, to perform this kind of testing.

Critical Remote Code Execution Vulnerability in VMware Cloud Foundation NSX-V: CVE-2021-39144

On Tuesday, October 25th 2022, VMware disclosed a critical remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2021-39144, CVSS 9.8) in VMware Cloud Foundation NSX-V versions 3.x and older. A threat actor could perform remote code execution in the context of ‘root’ on the appliance due to an unauthenticated endpoint that leverages XStream for input serialization.

How to write your first unit test in JavaScript

Testing code is the first step to making it secure. One of the best ways to do this is to use unit tests, ensuring that each of the smaller functions within an app behave as they should — especially when the app receives edge-case or invalid inputs, or inputs that are potentially harmful.

CrowdStrike Identifies New Kiss-a-Dog Cryptojacking Campaign Targeting Vulnerable Docker and Kubernetes Infrastructure

CrowdStrike has identified a new cryptojacking campaign targeting vulnerable Docker and Kubernetes infrastructure. Called “Kiss-a-dog,” the campaign targets Docker and Kubernetes infrastructure using an obscure domain from the payload, container escape attempt and anonymized “dog” mining pools.

Understanding DNS attacks: Identifying and patching vulnerabilities

The Domain Name System (DNS) translates domain names into IP addresses. Every device and website has an IP address that other devices, websites, and online services use to communicate with it. IP addresses are a string of numbers usually formatted as 000.000.000.000. However, we use domain names since people can’t easily remember these numbers.

5 Stages of the Vulnerability Management Process

The threat landscape in IT is ever-evolving, with new risks arising practically daily. Trying to anticipate the next type of threat can feel a little like playing whack-a-mole. Instead, IT teams are focusing on vulnerability management: reducing the opportunities for hackers and other bad actors to find a weakness in cyber defenses. Vulnerability management is an iterative process that allows companies to proactively defend valuable assets, no matter how the threat landscape changes.

Snyk's new native integration with Bitbucket Cloud emphasizes dev-first security

Snyk is excited to announce a new, native integration with Atlassian Bitbucket Cloud. This new release improves Snyk’s functionality within Bitbucket Cloud, making installation faster, and easier to implement. Our Bitbucket integration is the first out-of-the-box embedded security experience within the Atlassian UI, enabling users to access high vulnerability counts and rich contextual information right from their native Bitbucket workflow.

Wrapping up CSAM 2022 with Vulnerability Management Advice for Everyone

As we wrap up Cybersecurity Awareness Month (CSAM) 2022, the final topic we’ll cover is updating software and patching vulnerabilities. According to the 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) from Verizon one of the top paths threat actors use to infiltrate organizations is exploiting vulnerabilities. And there appears to be no end in sight as the number of unique security vulnerabilities rose almost 10% in 2021, up to 20,142 from 18,351 in 2020.

Node.js multithreading with worker threads series: worker_threads tutorial

Node.js provides a single-threaded JavaScript run-time surface that prevents code from running multiple operations in parallel. If your application typically employs synchronous execution, you may encounter blocks during long-running operations. However, Node.js itself is a multi-threaded application. This is evident when you use one of the standard library’s asynchronous methods to perform I/O operations, such as reading a file or making a network request.

How to send Snyk vulnerability data to the New Relic observability platform

Security and observability data go hand in hand when it comes to application health. If you can put those two sources of data behind a single pane of glass you can make your life a lot easier. By leveraging the different options that the Snyk platform provides, you can send all your application security vulnerabilities found by Snyk directly to your New Relic observability platform. Let’s see how!

What is Vulnerability Remediation?

Vulnerability remediation is the process of finding, addressing, and neutralizing security vulnerabilities within an organization’s IT environment, which can include computers, digital assets, networks, web applications, and mobile devices. Remediation is one of the most important steps in the vulnerability management process, which is critical for securing networks, preventing data loss, and enforcing business continuity.

Attack Surface Management vs. Vulnerability Management

Cyber innovation and digital transformation are moving at increasing speeds. With the shift to cloud-based software and assets, SaaS (software-as-a-service) applications, and the need for remote working, businesses are changing the way they approach risk management and the security of their digital assets.

How to make a mock API server in JavaScript

Developing and testing a frontend feature can be difficult, especially when the backend it depends on is not ready. This dependency on a backend API often slows down the development process. In scenarios like this, developing a mock API can save you a lot of time by allowing you to develop your feature independent of the backend, and make it easier to test and identify scenarios where your API might fail before it is ready.

Cloud security fundamentals part 3: Empower your developers

In our previous blog breaking down The 5 Fundamentals of Cloud Security, we looked at the value of prevention and secure design. Mapping resource relationships and enforcing security guardrails throughout development helps greatly reduce an available attack surface. But who will enforce these guardrails when your security team is busy with other work? This should be where developers are able to step in. So let’s look at another vital element in cloud security: empowering developers.

Manufacturing Overtakes Financial Services As The Sector With Fewest Software Security Flaws

72 percent of applications contain vulnerabilities, and 12 percent are considered 'high severity' - the lowest of all industries analyzed. Sector still has room for improvement, with some of the lowest and slowest fix rates, especially for open-source flaws.

Remote Code Execution Vulnerability Discovered in HSQLDB

19.10.2022 - As part of our goal to continuously improve our vulnerability detectors, we continuously test various open-source projects with Jazzer within OSS-Fuzz. In this case, a test run yielded a severe finding with a potential remote code execution in a HSQLDB (CVE-2022-41853).

Detecting and mitigating CVE-2022-42889 a.k.a. Text4shell

A new critical vulnerability CVE-2022-42889 a.k.a Text4shell, similar to the old Spring4shell and log4shell, was originally reported by Alvaro Muñoz on the very popular Apache Commons Text library. The vulnerability is rated as a critical 9.8 severity and it is always a remote code execution (RCE) which would permit attackers to execute arbitrary code on the machine and compromise the entire host.

Stranger Danger: Your Java Attack Surface Just Got Bigger

Building Java applications today means that we take a step further from writing code. We use open-source dependencies, create a Dockerfile to deploy containers to the cloud, and orchestrate this infrastructure with Kubernetes. Welcome, you're a cloud native application developer! As developers, our responsibility broadened, and more software means more software security concerns for us to address.

User Office Hours | How to Secure CI/CD Pipeline w/ GitHub Actions & Snyk | Mar 23, 2022

This User Office Hours session covers how to build a secure CI/CD Pipeline with GitHub Actions and Snyk. First, we'll build a demo application. Then, we'll walk through how to test for security issues using Snyk Open Source and Snyk Code. We'll then go on to deploy a container image. Missed the live stream? Feel free to ask questions in the comment section, and we'll do our very best to answer them.

SREs bring ORDER(R) to CHAOS

Categorizing the challenges and duties of your trusted friend, the site reliability engineer (SRE). From Snyk Ambassador Keith McDuffee, DevSecOps and founder of StackRef.com. “What’s the difference between a DevOps engineer and a site reliability engineer?” It’s a question I hear all the time — and one I’ve heard (and sometimes asked) in job interviews. But is there a correct answer? It all depends on who you ask.

2022 Snyk Customer Value Study highlights: The impact of developer-first security

Developer-centric security movements have dominated discussions in software development over recent years. The concepts are clear — integrate security early and find issues faster. But how does an organization measure the success of its developer security program?

Reviewing CVE-2022-42889: The arbitrary code execution vulnerability in Apache Commons Text

First things first, let’s be clear that this is NOT a new Log4Shell or Spring4Shell vulnerability. Although it is a remote code execution issue, the impact is neither as severe nor as easily exploitable as the issue in Log4j from December 2021. Similar to the Log4j issue, the essence of the problem is that you can perform a lookup that can then be misused. However, the Log4shell vulnerability was very easy to exploit — which is not necessarily the case this time.

Vulnerability Research: Here's How it Works at Mend

There are many types of security research, from digging into malware to discovering the latest DDoS attack vectors. At Mend, vulnerability research is a primary focus for our research team, but even that area has many different avenues to pursue. For example, we tend to focus on open source vulnerabilities, so it is quite unlikely that you’ll see us doing reverse engineering and trying to understand assembly code.

Vulnerability Scanning vs. Penetration Testing

One of the most important parts of a solid security program involves testing to see where your weaknesses lie. Continual improvement cannot be achieved without continual review. However, many people confuse the importance of vulnerability scanning with penetration testing. As a means of protecting an enterprise, one can never take precedence over, or replace the other. Both are equally important, and in some cases, they are suggested, if not outright directed by many standards and regulations.

Real-time OWASP vulnerabilities as you code with Code Sight and Rapid Scan Static

Imagine you are developing an application – no matter if it’s a web, mobile, or desktop app – and your IDE informs you of security vulnerabilities as you code. The release of Code Sight 2022.9.0 for VS Code and IntelliJ makes that a reality. With Synopsys’ industry-leading static application security testing (SAST) engine powering Code Sight’s Rapid Scan Static, there is no configuration or tuning. It’s actual sophisticated taint flow and not just lint.

Secure JavaScript URL validation

When developers need to handle URLs in different forms for different purposes — such as browser history navigation, anchored targets, query parameters, and so on — we often turn to Java. However, its frequent use motivates attackers to exploit its vulnerabilities. This risk of exploitation is why we must implement URL validation in our JavaScript applications.

Why You Need a Data-driven Approach to Vulnerability Management

With most of us working from anywhere, smartphones and tablets have become a big part of how we stay productive. At the same time, the average cost of data breaches continues to rise, averaging $4.35 million in 2022. While there are numerous threat vectors organizations have to juggle, this got me thinking about how applications and device vulnerabilities are currently managed.

Implementing TLS/SSL in Python

Nowadays, we do virtually everything online: book flights, pay for goods, transfer bank funds, message friends, store documents, and so on. Many things we do require giving out sensitive information like our credit card details and banking information. If a website uses an unsecured network, a malicious hacker can easily steal user information. This is why encryption is so important.

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Considering managed it security services? It is more important than ever to have a resilient security posture. Hackers are constantly looking for ways to exploit weaknesses in systems, and even a small data breach can have devastating consequences.

CVE-2022-40684: Widespread Exploitation of Critical Fortinet Authentication Bypass Vulnerability

Previously published blog post: Recently, Arctic Wolf observed threat actors begin exploiting CVE-2022-40684, a critical remote authentication bypass vulnerability impacting FortiOS, FortiProxy, and FortiSwitchManager.

How to add Playwright tests to your pull request CI with GitHub Actions

If you’re like me, you really appreciate a test automation step as part of your pull request (PR) CI for that added confidence before merging code. I want to show you how to add Playwright tests to your PRs and how to tie it all together with a GitHub Actions CI workflow.

Critical Remote Code Execution & Authentication Bypass Vulnerabilities in Aruba EdgeConnect Enterprise Orchestrator

On Tuesday, October 11th, 2022, Aruba disclosed three critical vulnerabilities impacting EdgeConnect Enterprise Orchestrator. The vulnerabilities, CVE-2022-37913, CVE-2022-37914, CVE-2022-37915, are remote code execution and authentication bypass vulnerabilities that could enable remote threat actors to compromise a host. In order for a threat actor to exploit these vulnerabilities, WAN access would need to be available for the CLI and/or web-based management interfaces.

Ruby email rule removed from Snyk Code

Snyk Code supports various languages important in the cloud native arena, Ruby being among them (and we’ve seen great adoption, so thank you!). Our researchers are constantly monitoring our rule sets, using our training set of open source projects, but also — and, yes this is an advantage of a SaaS service — how the rules do on the code that is scanned. Just as a reminder, Snyk does not use your code to train our sets — but we do aggregate usage statistics.

ModSecurity Request Body Parsing: Recent Bypass Issues

ModSecurity is an open-source web application firewall (WAF) engine maintained by Trustwave. This blog post discusses multiple input interpretation weaknesses in the ModSecurity project. Each input interpretation weakness could allow a malicious actor to evade some ModSecurity rules. Both ModSecurity v2 and ModSecurity v3 were affected. The issues have been addressed in v2.9.6 and v3.0.8, respectively.

Cloud security fundamentals part 2: Prevention and secure design

In our previous blog breaking down The 5 Fundamentals of Cloud Security, we discussed the importance of knowing your environment. Teams need to have a comprehensive inventory of their cloud environments to have a clear understanding of the security risks that might exist within. With that in mind, let’s explore the importance of vulnerability prevention and secure design working together to keep threat actors from gaining meaningful access to your organization’s cloud control plane.

Improving code quality with linting in Python

Python is a growing language. As it evolves and expands, so do the number of tools and development strategies available for working with it. One process that’s become increasingly popular is linting — or checking code for potential problems. With linting, errors in our code will be flagged so we can correct unusual programming practices that might result in problems. Linting is performed while the source code is written and before it’s compiled.

Secure your application from Argo CD to Kubernetes

GitOps is a popular framework for managing and securing the application development pipeline. For many who have embarked on a GitOps journey, a common question is: “how can I secure my pipeline when everything is automated?” The GitOps framework is a concept where any code commits or changes are done through Git, which then triggers an automated pipeline that builds and deploys applications on Kubernetes.

SnykLive | Stranger Danger: Your JavaScript Attack Surface Just Got Bigger | Oct 5, 2022

Your JavaScript Attack Surface Just Got Bigger- here's what you need to know: Building JavaScript applications today means developers must take a step further from writing code. This live stream demonstrates a live JavaScript and cloud-native hacking session to show common threats, vulnerabilities, and misconfigurations. Further, we show how you can protect your application with actionable remediation and best practices for each exploit shown.

Stranger Danger: Your JavaScript Attack Surface Just Got Bigger

Building JavaScript applications today means that we take a step further from writing code. We use open-source dependencies, create a Dockerfile to deploy containers to the cloud, and orchestrate this infrastructure with Kubernetes. Welcome - you're a cloud native application developer! As developers, our responsibility has broadened, and more software means more software security concerns for us to address.

How to use Java DTOs to stay secure

Data Transfer Objects (DTOs) in Java are objects that transport data between subsystems. It is an enterprise design pattern to aggregate data. The main purpose is to reduce the number of system calls needed between the subsystems, reducing the amount of overhead created. In this article, I will explain how DTOs are used in modern Java applications, ways your application can benefit, and how Java DTOs can help you be more secure by preventing accidental data leaks.

DirtyCred: Opening Pandora's Box to Current and Future Container Escapes

DirtyCred is a new Linux kernel exploitation technique that allows kernel Use After Free (UAF) or Double free vulnerabilities to swap a credential or file structure on the kernel heap memory to escalate privileges to root. The replaced credential or file structure provides root access on a Linux host and breaks out of the container at the same time. Ph.D.

Security lessons with a Snyk Ambassador

Security has been a concern in the tech industry for years now. However, not a lot of companies follow their own protocols or guides when it comes to securing code. It’s easy to believe that security incidents are uncommon (or unlikely to happen in your own organization), but the latest issue with Uber is one of many examples to the contrary.

CVE-2022-40684: Critical Remote Authentication Bypass Vulnerability in FortiOS & FortiProxy

Late Thursday, October 6, 2022, Fortinet disclosed a critical remote authentication bypass vulnerability —CVE-2022-40684— impacting FortiOS and FortiProxy. The vulnerability could allow a remote unauthenticated threat actor to obtain access to the administrative interface and perform operations via specially crafted HTTP or HTTPS requests.

Cloud security fundamentals part 1: Know your environment

140,000 Social Security numbers and about 80,000 bank account numbers — that’s what one attacker stole from a major financial institution back in 2019. How did it happen? The attacker used firewall credentials to obtain privilege escalation and hack into improperly secured Amazon cloud instances.

2022 Collaboration Partner of the Year: Snyk

This week, at HashiConf 2022, Snyk was recognized by HashiCorp as the winner of the 2022 Collaboration Technology Partner of the Year award. Carey Stanton, Snyk’s Senior Vice President of Business Development, was in Los Angeles and accepted the award on stage at HashiConf. Snyk is honored to be named HashiCorp’s 2022 Technology Partner of the Year for Collaboration.

How to Find Arbitrary Code Execution Vulnerabilities with Fuzzing

Remember Log4j? Arbitrary code execution bugs are more common than you think, even in memory-safe languages, like Java. Learn how to find these vulnerabilities with fuzzing. Arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities represent one of the most dangerous classes of vulnerabilities in Java applications. Incidents such as Log4Shell clearly demonstrate the impact of these security issues, even in memory-safe languages. They also show that fuzzing can be very effective in finding these vulnerabilities.

Uncovering Hidden Bugs and Vulnerabilities in C/C++ | How to Fuzz Your Code With 3 Commands

CI Fuzz CLI is an open-source solution that lets you run feedback-based fuzz tests from your command line. Every developer can use it to find bugs and vulnerabilities with three simple commands. In this stream, I will demonstrate: 1) How to cover the current state of fuzz testing 2) How to set up CLI fuzzing within 3 commands 3) How to uncover multiple bugs and severe memory corruption vulnerabilities

Stranger Danger: Your JavaScript Attack Surface Just Got Bigger

Building JavaScript applications today means that we take a step further from writing code. We use open-source dependencies, create a Dockerfile to deploy containers to the cloud, and orchestrate this infrastructure with Kubernetes. Welcome - you're a cloud native application developer! As developers, our responsibility has broadened, and more software means more software security concerns for us to address.

How to hack a vulnerable OWASP Node.js apps: Part 2 | Snyk

How to hack a vulnerable OWASP Node.js Apps We are back with part 2 of this livestream. Join us as we demonstrate how you can use the Node.js app. We also show the various ways it can be hacked so you can learn how to prevent it. Didn't catch the live stream? Ask all of your Snyk questions and we’ll do our very best to answer them in the comment section.

Snyk and HashiCorp: The Snyk IaC Integration With HashiCorp Terraform Cloud and Terraform Enterprise

In this video, learn about the Snyk IaC integration with HashiCorp Terraform Cloud and Terraform Enterprise, which enable developers to automate security checks and ensure public cloud environments are secure and compliant pre-deployment — directly in their Terraform Cloud pipelines.

Phony PyPi package imitates known developer

Snyk Security Researchers have been using dynamic analysis techniques to unravel the behaviors of obfuscated malicious packages. A recent interesting finding in the Python Package Index (PyPi) attempted to imitate a known open source developer through identity spoofing. Upon further analysis, the team uncovered that the package, raw-tool, was attempting to hide malicious behavior using base64 encoding, reaching out to malicious servers, and executing obfuscated code.

Unify vulnerability detection and remediation with the ManageEngine-Tenable.io integration

According to the latest Ransomware Spotlight Year End report, 56% of the 223 older vulnerabilities identified prior to 2021 are still actively exploited and used as the entry points to ransomware attacks. This warrants the question of why enterprises aren’t patching vulnerabilities regularly.

ProxyNotShell-Microsoft Exchange Vulnerabilities

On September 29, Microsoft Security Threat Intelligence reported two significant zero-day vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild. The two vulnerabilities, named “ProxyNotShell”, affect Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, Exchange Server 2016, and Exchange Server 2019.

Vulnerability Assessment vs Risk Assessment

As a CIO in charge of your organization's security, you're responsible for ensuring the security of your company's data. But with so many cybersecurity threats out there, it can be difficult to know where to start. Should you focus on conducting a vulnerability assessment? Or is a risk assessment more important? In this article, we will discuss vulnerability vs risk, cyber threats, and protecting sensitive data.

Trustwave Action Response: Zero Day Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, 2016, and 2019

Trustwave security teams are aware of two zero-day vulnerabilities (CVE-2022-41040 and CVE-2022-41082) impacting Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, 2016, and 2019 and organizations with Outlook Web Access facing the Internet. If exploited, the vulnerabilities can allow an attacker to elevate privilege and remote code execution capability. We immediately investigated the vulnerabilities and potential exploits and continue to monitor the situation.