All news with #weak cryptography tag

Schneider Electric: Risky Cryptography in EcoStruxure

🔒 This advisory describes a cryptographic weakness in Schneider Electric's EcoStruxure Machine SCADA Expert and Pro-face BLUE Open Studio that could allow credential recovery from project files. An attacker with read access to Edge project or offline cache files can brute-force weak hashes to recover app-native or Active Directory passwords (CVE-2025-9317); the flaw requires local/file access and is not remotely exploitable. Apply 2023.1 Patch 1 immediately or implement recommended mitigations such as strict ACLs, strong project master passwords, removing embedded passwords, and following ICS cybersecurity best practices.

Critical Flaws in General Industrial Controls Lynx+ Gateway

⚠️ CISA reports multiple high-severity vulnerabilities affecting General Industrial Controls Lynx+ Gateway, including weak password requirements, missing authentication for critical functions, and cleartext transmission of sensitive data. These issues carry CVSS v4 scores up to 9.2 and permit remote exploitation with low attack complexity, potentially enabling unauthorized access, device resets, information disclosure, or denial-of-service. Affected firmware versions include R08, V03, V05, and V18; the findings were disclosed in November 2025. CISA recommends minimizing network exposure, isolating control devices behind firewalls, and using secure remote access methods such as updated VPNs while coordinating with the vendor.

AVEVA Edge cryptographic weakness enables password recovery

🔒 AVEVA has released advisory ICSA-25-317-03 addressing a cryptographic weakness in AVEVA Edge (formerly InduSoft Web Studio) that could allow a local actor with read access to project or offline cache files to brute-force user or Active Directory passwords. The issue is tracked as CVE-2025-9317 and carries a CVSS v4 base score of 8.3. AVEVA provides a 2023 R2 P01 Security Update and recommends project migration, password resets, and tightened file access controls. This vulnerability is not remotely exploitable according to CISA.

ABB FLXeon Devices: Multiple Remote-Access Vulnerabilities

⚠ ABB FLXeon devices are affected by multiple high-severity vulnerabilities, including hard-coded credentials, MD5 password hashing without proper salt, and improper input validation that can enable remote code execution. Combined CVSS v4 scores reach up to 8.7 and successful exploitation could allow remote control, arbitrary code execution, or device crashes. ABB and CISA advise disconnecting Internet-exposed units, applying the latest firmware, enforcing physical access controls, and using secure remote-access methods such as properly configured VPNs.

Dull but Dangerous: 15 Overlooked Cybersecurity Gaps

🔒 This article catalogs 15 frequently overlooked security blind spots that quietly increase organizational risk across six domains: time & telemetry, identity & edge, configuration & crypto, DNS & web trust, cloud & SaaS sprawl, and software supply chain & recovery readiness. It explains how mundane issues — NTP drift, orphaned DNS records, default IoT credentials, stale backups — become high-impact failures. The piece recommends immediate inventories, enforced baselines and a 90-day action plan to measure and close these gaps, and highlights metrics to track such as log coverage, patching cadence and backup restore success.

Study Finds Major Security Flaws in Popular Free VPN Apps

🔍 Zimperium zLabs’ analysis of 800 Android and iOS free VPN apps found widespread privacy and security weaknesses, including outdated libraries, weak encryption, and misleading privacy disclosures. The report highlights concrete failures such as vulnerable OpenSSL builds (including Heartbleed-era versions), roughly 1% of apps permitting Man-in-the-Middle decryption, and about 25% of iOS apps lacking valid privacy manifests. Researchers warn excessive permission requests and private entitlements increase risk, especially in BYOD and remote-work environments, and recommend stronger security models, endpoint visibility and zero-trust approaches.

Senator Wyden Urges FTC Probe of Microsoft Ransomware Lapses

🔍 Senator Ron Wyden has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Microsoft for what he describes as "gross cybersecurity negligence" that he says facilitated ransomware attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure, including healthcare. Wyden's four-page letter to FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson cites the 2024 Ascension breach attributed to Black Basta and details an attack chain that began when a contractor clicked a malicious link after using Microsoft's Bing search. The senator highlights exploitation of insecure default Kerberos settings and legacy RC4 support enabling Kerberoasting, and criticizes Microsoft for not enforcing stronger defaults and minimum password requirements while noting the company's published mitigations and planned deprecations.

Rockwell Automation FactoryTalk Authentication Flaw

🔒 A cryptographic implementation error in Rockwell Automation's FactoryTalk Activation Manager v5.00 can allow attackers to decrypt communications, enabling data exposure, session hijacking, or full communication compromise. The issue is tracked as CVE-2025-7970 with a CVSS v4 base score of 8.7 and is exploitable remotely with low attack complexity. Users should update to Version 5.02 or later and follow vendor security guidance.

Password Manager Auto-Fill Flaw, Quantum Risks, Devices

🔒 In this edition of the Smashing Security podcast Graham Cluley and guest Thom Langford examine how some password managers can be tricked into auto-filling secrets into cookie banners via a clickjacking sleight-of-hand. They discuss practical defenses for website owners and hardening steps for users to protect their personal vaults. The episode also covers post-quantum concerns—"harvest-now, decrypt-later"—Microsoft’s 2033 quantum-safe commitment, and device update risks including printers, plus lighter segments like a dodgy URL "shadyfier" and repurposing an iMac G4 as a media hub.

AI-Generated Ransomware 'PromptLock' Uses OpenAI Model

🔒 ESET disclosed a new proof-of-concept ransomware called PromptLock that uses OpenAI's gpt-oss:20b model via the Ollama API to generate malicious Lua scripts in real time. Written in Golang, the strain produces cross-platform scripts that enumerate files, exfiltrate selected data, and encrypt targets using SPECK 128-bit. ESET warned that AI-generated scripts can vary per execution, complicating detection and IoC reuse.

ESET Finds PromptLock: First AI-Powered Ransomware

🔒 ESET researchers have identified PromptLock, described as the first known AI-powered ransomware implant, in an August 2025 report. The Golang sample (Windows and Linux variants) leverages a locally hosted gpt-oss:20b model via the Ollama API to dynamically generate malicious Lua scripts. Those cross-platform scripts perform enumeration, selective exfiltration and encryption using SPECK 128-bit, but ESET characterises the sample as a proof-of-concept rather than an active campaign.

Backdoor Weakness Found in TETRA Radio Encryption Standard

🔒 Security researchers from Midnight Blue have disclosed a critical weakness in an ETSI-endorsed TETRA end-to-end encryption implementation used in professional radios. After extracting and reverse-engineering a Sepura device, they found the E2EE algorithm compresses a 128-bit key to an effective 56 bits before encryption, drastically weakening confidentiality. The behavior looks like an intentional backdoor, and it is unclear which organizations use the vulnerable implementation or whether operators are aware of the risk.

LA County 211 Data Exposure: Emergency Call Records

🔒 The UpGuard Cyber Risk Team discovered an Amazon S3 bucket for LA County 211 that was publicly accessible and contained Postgres backups and CSV exports with sensitive data. A 1.3GB t_contact export included millions of records, roughly 200,000 detailed call notes and 33,000 Social Security numbers, alongside 384 user accounts with MD5-hashed passwords. The exposure dated from 2010–2016; UpGuard notified the service in March–April 2018 and confirmed the bucket was closed within 24 hours of contact.

Cost of Quantum Factoring for RSA: Updated Estimates

🧮 Google Quantum AI authors report that a future quantum computer with roughly one million noisy qubits running for about a week could theoretically factor a 2048-bit RSA key — a roughly 20× reduction in qubit requirements compared to their 2019 estimate. The improvement reflects both algorithmic advances (including approximate modular exponentiation and lower operation overhead) and error-correction gains. The post stresses the urgency of migrating to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) per NIST guidance, highlights deployment steps already taken in Chrome and Cloud KMS previews, and warns of “store now, decrypt later” risks for long-lived keys.