Krebsonsecurity.com Website Review

MICROSOFT today issued security updates to plug some 80 security holes in various flavors of its WINDOWS operating systems and related software. The software giant as*igned a “critical” rating to almost a quarter of those vulnerabilities, meaning they could be used by malware or miscreants to hijack vulnerable systems with little or no interaction on the part of the user. already been exploited in the wild. Both are known as “privilege escalation” flaws in that they allow an attacker to as*ume the all-powerful administrator status on a targeted system. Exploits for these types of weaknesses are often deployed along with other attacks September also marks the fourth time this year Microsoft has fixed critical bugs in its Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) feature, with four critical flaws being patched in the service. According to security vendor Qualys Microsoft, and in order to exploit them an attacker would have to trick a user into connecting to a malicious or hacked RDP server. in the way Windows handles link files ending in “.lnk” that could be used to launch malware on a vulnerable system if a user were to open a removable drive or access a shared folder with a booby-trapped .lnk file on it. Shortcut files — or those ending in the “.lnk” extension — are Windows files that link easy-to-recognize icons to specific executable programs, and are typically placed on the user’s Desktop or Start Menu. It’s perhaps worth noting that poisoned .lnk files I ruefully lamented the utter hose job inflicted on my WINDOWS 10 system by the July round of security updates from Redmond. Many readers responded by saying one or another updates released by Microsoft in August similarly caused reboot loops or issues with As there do not appear to be any patch-now-or-be-compromised-tomorrow flaws in the September patch rollup, it’s probably safe to say most The U.S. SECRET SERVICE is investigating a breach at a Virginia-based government technology contractor that saw access to several of its