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Showing posts with the label MacOS

Microsoft Uncovers Flaws in ncurses Library Affecting Linux and macOS Systems

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A set of memory corruption flaws have been discovered in the  ncurses  (short for new curses) programming library that could be exploited by threat actors to run malicious code on vulnerable Linux and macOS systems. "Using environment variable poisoning, attackers could chain these vulnerabilities to elevate privileges and run code in the targeted program's context or perform other malicious actions," Microsoft Threat Intelligence researchers Jonathan Bar Or, Emanuele Cozzi, and Michael Pearse said in a technical report published today. The vulnerabilities, collectively tracked as  CVE-2023-29491  (CVSS score of 7.8), have been addressed as of April 2023. Microsoft said it also worked with Apple on remediating the macOS-specific issues related to these flaws. Environment variables are user-defined values that can be used by multiple programs on a system and can affect the manner in which they behave on the system. Manipulating the variables can cause applications to perfo

This Malware Turned Thousands of Hacked Windows and macOS PCs into Proxy Servers

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Threat actors are leveraging access to malware-infected Windows and macOS machines to deliver a proxy server application and use them as exit nodes to reroute proxy requests. According to AT&T Alien Labs, the unnamed company that offers the proxy service operates more than 400,000 proxy exit nodes, although it's not immediately clear how many of them were co-opted by malware installed on infected machines without user knowledge and interaction. "Although the proxy website claims that its exit nodes come only from users who have been informed and agreed to the use of their device," the cybersecurity company said it found evidence where "malware writers are installing the proxy silently in infected systems." Multiple malware families have been observed delivering the proxy to users searching for cracked software and games. The proxy software, written in the Go programming language, is capable of targeting both Windows and macOS, with the former capable of evad