Researchers have uncovered a new vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-6769, which enables attackers to bypass Windows User Access Control (UAC) and elevate their privileges to gain full system control without triggering any alerts. This exploit, affecting Microsoft’s Windows platform, has sparked debate about whether UAC truly acts as a security boundary. While Microsoft does not classify this as a vulnerability, security experts warn organizations to be vigilant about the risks involved.

New research by Recorded Future provides insight into how advanced and sophisticated the threat group Marko Polo has become since launching in 2022. Marko Polo is of particular interest due to their rapid progress in advancing their operations.

Enterprises are increasingly adopting multi-cloud environments to take advantage of the flexibility and scalability of different cloud platforms. However, this shift has also introduced a major security challenge: the rise of identity-based threats. With 82% of data breaches now involving cloud-stored data, securing cloud identities has become a critical need. The complexity of managing identities and permissions across multiple cloud platforms only amplifies the risks.

Supply chain attacks are a growing concern, particularly within the financial sector, with attackers increasingly using key technology suppliers as a ‘jumpbox’ to pivot into their intended target organisation. Last year’s MOVEit breach for instance saw a single ICT supplier ultimately cause ~2,356 organisations to be compromised, with primary victims predominantly in the financial sector.

There are lots of hurdles to jump when trying to set up and maintain a SIEM. Preparing infrastructure and installing the software components, getting logs ingested into the system, parsing and normalizing those log messages properly, configuring alerts for detection, etc. These are all large tasks that require thoughtful planning and a lot of work to get right. But let’s say you’ve managed to clear all those hurdles…in that case, great job!!

When it comes to securing applications in the cloud, the challenge isn’t detecting potential security issues. There are hundreds of application security tools and cloud security tools that are capable of surfacing code flaws and security misconfigurations that could lead to vulnerabilities. The real challenge is empowering development teams to adopt these tools to consistently improve the security posture of their services.