Five worthy reads is a regular column on five noteworthy items we have discovered while researching trending and timeless topics. This week, we explore decentralized identity, aka self-sovereign identity.
Following on from Brexit, the UK received a positive adequacy decision on its personal data security standards by the EU. Building on this, the UK’s Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has opened a consultation period to introduce its new International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA). The European Commission has also issued a draft update addressing the same thing. So what triggered this new work? It’s all in response to the work done by privacy activist Max Schrems.
When we asked the security community who is their hacker hero, it was unsurprising to see that Eva Galperin, Director of Cybersecurity at EFF and co-founder of the Coalition Against Stalkerware was a finalist on the list. Galperin is a hacktivist known for her rage tweets that help her fight the good fight to protect vulnerable groups being targeted. Most known for her work to track down APTs, she also champions personal privacy and taking down stalkerware. Oh and she’s done a TED talk.
CVE-2021-25741 is a new vulnerability discovered in Kubernetes that allows users to create a container with subpath volume mounts to access files & directories outside of the volume, including the host filesystem. It was disclosed in September 2021 and affects kubelet, which is the node agent that runs on each Kubernetes node. In particular CVE-2021-25741 affects kubelet in these Kubernetes versions.
Most organizations understand the critical role that cybersecurity solutions play in protecting their environment. However, the abundance of available tools that claim to serve that need are leaving them unsure they're actually protected against today's sophisticated threats.
A selection of this week’s more interesting vulnerability disclosures and cyber security news. For a daily selection see our twitter feed at #ionCube24. Complex features require a little more care and understanding. If unsure I would advise disabling them and looking at the documentation – that is assuming such features have correct documentation!.
In cybersecurity, an attack vector is a method of gaining unauthorized access to a private network. These pathways are either unintentional, such as vulnerabilities in third-party software, or intentionally designed by hackers, such as malicious software (malware). Cybercriminals primarily exploit attack vectors to advance extorsion tactics, the most popular being the deployment of ransomware.
During a web shell attack, a cybercriminal injects a malicious file into a target web server's directory and then executes that file from their web browser. After launching a successful web shell attack, cybercriminals could gain access to sensitive resources, recruit the target system into a botnet, or create pathways for malware or ransomware injections. If you haven't implemented defense strategies against this cyber threat, your systems are at a high risk of exploitation.
It doesn’t seem that long ago that I wrote about the OWASP Top 10 changes that came in 2017. OWASP has announced the release for the new 2021 Top 10. Find out more about Broken Access Control and Cryptographic Failure vulnerabilities and understand what it means for application development and DevSecOps
Customers using Microsoft SQL Server tend to grow horizontally in terms of the number of databases. For recent versions of SQL Server, the max number of databases you can have on a single instance is 32,767 and it is common to see customers push that limit. At Rubrik, we have run into several customers who approach 10,000 databases on a single host. As SQL Server accelerates the push into the enterprise segment, one needs to address the problem of managing and protecting these servers at scale.
