Dirty COW, a seemingly light-hearted name, masks a severe Linux privilege escalation issue. This bug has affected many older Linux systems, which is concerning given that 41% of web servers run on Linux. Despite widespread patches in distributions like Ubuntu and Red Hat, Dirty COW remains a threat, particularly to outdated systems. As a significant security flaw, it poses risks to various devices and servers even in 2024.

Vulnerabilities are a major risk for organizations, and a major attack vector for threat actors. There were over 29,000 vulnerabilities published in 2023, amounting to over 3,800 more common vulnerabilities and exposure (CVEs) identifiers being issued last year than in 2022. But that doesn’t mean these most recent vulnerabilities are the only ones in a threat actor’s toolbox.

On March 21, 2024, security researchers published a technical analysis along with a proof of concept (PoC) regarding the critical Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability, CVE-2023-48788, in Fortinet’s FortiClientEMS. This vulnerability enables an unauthenticated threat actor to achieve RCE through the manipulation of SQL commands. Fortinet has stated that this vulnerability is under active exploitation. PoC exploit code is also now publicly available.

In the last blog on fixing vulnerabilities with Veracode Fix, we looked at SQL Injection remediation in a Java application. Since then, we have released Fix support for Python (and PHP) and launched a new VS Code plugin that includes support for Fix. It seems appropriate, therefore, to look at resolving a problem in a Python app using Veracode Fix in the VS Code IDE. This time let’s examine a simple cross-site scripting (XSS) weakness.

Several months ago, Darcy Clarke, a former Staff Engineering Manager at GitHub, discovered the “Manifest Confusion” bug in the npm ecosystem. The bug was caused by the npm registry not validating whether the manifest file contained in the tarball (package.json) matches the manifest data published to the npm server. Clarke claims this to be a large threat, allowing malicious actors to deceive developers and hide harmful code from detection.

When a new vulnerability is found, the race is on to either solve it or exploit it (depending on which side you’re on). But while attackers are getting faster, companies not so much. Dev teams take around 215 days to resolve a security vulnerability. The numbers are only marginally shorter when dealing with critical vulnerabilities. This delay is particularly concerning given the rise in zero-day exploits, where hackers take advantage of a security flaw before the organization even knows it exists.

With the Seemplicity platform and VulnCheck KEV, organizations can remediate the riskiest vulnerabilities faster than ever. The integration of the VulnCheck KEV catalog, a community resource that enables security teams to manage vulnerabilities and risk with additional context and evidence-based validation, is available to all Seemplicity platform customers.

There's no doubt that no organization wants to be the victim of a cyber attack, but even the most security-minded entity can find itself caught off-guard or exposed when a zero-day exploit is discovered.

A website vulnerability refers to a weakness or misconfiguration in the design, implementation, or operation of a website that can be exploited by attackers to compromise its integrity, availability, or confidentiality. These vulnerabilities can exist in various components of a website, including its code, server configuration, database, and third-party plugins or extensions.

Back in August 2023, Checkmarx and Sysdig announced a new partnership. This collaboration enables customers of both Checkmarx and Sysdig to leverage the comprehensive visibility offered by Sysdig Runtime Insights to get even more value from the Checkmarx One application security platform.