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Multiple security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in the  Exim mail transfer agent  that, if successfully exploited, could result in information disclosure and remote code execution. The list of flaws, which were reported anonymously way back in June 2022, is as follows - CVE-2023-42114  (CVSS score: 3.7) - Exim NTLM Challenge Out-Of-Bounds Read Information Disclosure Vulnerability CVE-2023-42115  (CVSS score: 9.8) - Exim AUTH Out-Of-Bounds Write Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2023-42116  (CVSS score: 8.1) - Exim SMTP Challenge Stack-based Buffer Overflow Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2023-42117  (CVSS score: 8.1) - Exim Improper Neutralization of Special Elements Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2023-42118  (CVSS score: 7.5) - Exim libspf2 Integer Underflow Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2023-42119  (CVSS score: 3.1) - Exim dnsdb Out-Of-Bounds Read Information Disclosure Vulnerability The most severe of the vulnerabilities is CVE-2023-

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is warning that Barracuda Networks Email Security Gateway (ESG) appliances patched against a recently disclosed critical flaw continue to be at risk of potential compromise from suspected Chinese hacking groups. It also  deemed  the fixes as "ineffective" and that it "continues to observe active intrusions and considers all affected Barracuda ESG appliances to be compromised and vulnerable to this exploit." Tracked as  CVE-2023-2868  (CVSS score: 9.8), the zero-day bug is said to have been weaponized as early as October 2022, more than seven months before the security hole was plugged. Google-owned Mandiant is tracking the China-nexus activity cluster under the name  UNC4841 . The remote command injection vulnerability, impacting versions 5.1.3.001 through 9.2.0.006, allows for unauthorized execution of system commands with administrator privileges on the ESG product. In the attacks observed so far, a successful b

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday disclosed details of a "novel persistent backdoor" called  SUBMARINE  deployed by threat actors in connection with the hack on Barracuda Email Security Gateway (ESG) appliances. "SUBMARINE comprises multiple artifacts — including a SQL trigger, shell scripts, and a loaded library for a Linux daemon — that together enable execution with root privileges, persistence, command and control, and cleanup," the agency  said . The findings come from an analysis of malware samples obtained from an unnamed organization that had been compromised by threat actors exploiting a critical flaw in ESG devices,  CVE-2023-2868  (CVSS score: 9.8), which allows for remote command injection. Evidence gathered so far shows that the attackers behind the activity, a suspected China nexus-actor tracked by Mandiant as  UNC4841 , leveraged the flaw as a zero-day in October 2022 to gain initial access to victim envir

Enterprise security company Barracuda is now urging customers who were impacted by a recently disclosed zero-day flaw in its Email Security Gateway (ESG) appliances to immediately replace them. "Impacted ESG appliances must be immediately replaced regardless of patch version level," the company  said  in an update, adding its "remediation recommendation at this time is full replacement of the impacted ESG." While the company did not disclose the reasons behind the move, it's likely an indication that the threat actors behind the campaign managed to tamper with the firmware on a much deeper level that a patch cannot completely address. The latest development comes as Barracuda  disclosed  that a critical flaw in the devices (CVE-2023-2868, CVSS score: 9.8) had been exploited as a zero-day for at least seven months since October 2022 to deliver bespoke malware and steal data. The  vulnerability  concerns a case of remote code injection affecting versions 5.1

Email protection and network security services provider Barracuda is warning users about a zero-day flaw that it said has been exploited to breach the company's Email Security Gateway (ESG) appliances. The zero-day is being tracked as  CVE-2023-2868  and has been described as a remote code injection vulnerability affecting versions 5.1.3.001 through 9.2.0.006. The California-headquartered firm  said  the issue is rooted in a component that screens the attachments of incoming emails. "The vulnerability arises out of a failure to comprehensively sanitize the processing of .tar file (tape archives)," according to an  advisory  from the NIST's national vulnerability database. "The vulnerability stems from incomplete input validation of a user-supplied .tar file as it pertains to the names of the files contained within the archive. As a consequence, a remote attacker can specifically format these file names in a particular manner that will result in remotely exe

Google has announced the general availability of client-side encryption (CSE) for Gmail and Calendar, months after  piloting the feature  in late 2022. The data privacy controls enable "even more organizations to become arbiters of their own data and the sole party deciding who has access to it," Google's Ganesh Chilakapati and Andy Wen  said . To that end, users can send and receive emails or create meeting events within their organizations or to other external parties in a manner that's encrypted "before it reaches Google servers." The company is also making available a decrypter utility in beta for Windows to decrypt client-side encrypted files and emails exported via its Data Export tool or Google Vault. macOS and Linux versions of the decrypter are expected to be released in the future. The development follows the  rollout of CSE  to other products such as Google Drive, Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Meet. The solution, the tech behemoth said, is aim

Cisco has released security updates to contain three vulnerabilities affecting its products, including one high-severity flaw in its Email Security Appliance (ESA) that could result in a denial-of-service (DoS) condition on an affected device. The weakness, assigned the identifier CVE-2022-20653 (CVSS score: 7.5), stems from a case of insufficient error handling in  DNS  name resolution that could be abused by an unauthenticated, remote attacker to send a specially crafted email message and cause a DoS. "A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the device to become unreachable from management interfaces or to process additional email messages for a period of time until the device recovers, resulting in a DoS condition," the company  said  in an advisory. "Continued attacks could cause the device to become completely unavailable, resulting in a persistent DoS condition." The flaw impacts Cisco ESA devices running Cisco AsyncOS Software running vers

DMARC  is a global standard for email authentication. It allows senders to verify that the email really comes from whom it claims to come from. This helps curb spam and phishing attacks, which are among the most prevalent cybercrimes of today. Gmail, Yahoo, and many other large email providers have implemented DMARC and praised its benefits in recent years. If your company's domain name is bankofamerica.com, you do not want a cyber attacker to be able to send emails under that domain. This puts your brand reputation at risk and could potentially spread financial malware. The DMARC standard prevents this by checking whether emails are sent from an expected IP address or domain. It specifies how domains can be contacted if there are authentication or migration issues and provides forensic information so senders can monitor email traffic and quarantine suspicious emails. What is a Phishing Attack? Phishing is an attempt by cybercriminals to trick victims into giving away sensitive

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol or SMTP has easily exploitable security loopholes. Email routing protocols were designed in a time when cryptographic technology was at a nascent stage (e.g., the de-facto protocol for email transfer, SMTP, is nearly 40 years old now), and therefore security was not an important consideration.  As a result, in most email systems encryption is still opportunistic, which implies that if the opposite connection does not support TLS, it gets rolled back to an unencrypted one delivering messages in plaintext.  To mitigate SMTP security problems,  MTA-STS  (Mail Transfer Agent Strict Transport Security) is the recommended email authentication standard. It enforces TLS in order to allow MTAs to send emails securely. This means that it will only allow mail from MTAs that support TLS encryption, and it will only allow mail to go to MX hosts that support TLS encryption. In case an encrypted connection cannot be negotiated between communicating SMTP servers, the

Security researchers have disclosed as many as 40 different vulnerabilities associated with an opportunistic encryption mechanism in mail clients and servers that could open the door to targeted man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks, permitting an intruder to forge mailbox content and steal credentials. The now-patched flaws, identified in various STARTTLS implementations, were  detailed  by a group of researchers Damian Poddebniak, Fabian Ising, Hanno Böck, and Sebastian Schinzel at the 30th USENIX Security Symposium. In an Internet-wide scan conducted during the study, 320,000 email servers were found vulnerable to what's called a command injection attack. Some of the popular clients affected by the bugs include Apple Mail, Gmail, Mozilla Thunderbird, Claws Mail, Mutt, Evolution, Exim, Mail.ru, Samsung Email, Yandex, and KMail. The attacks require that the malicious party can tamper connections established between an email client and the email server of a provider and has login cr

There is a saying that goes something like, "Do not judge a book by its cover." Yet, we all know we can not help but do just that - especially when it comes to online security. Logos play a significant role in whether or not we open an email and how we assess the importance of each message. Brand Indicators for Message Identification, or BIMI, aims to make it easier for us to quickly identify important information within emails using branding guidelines and visual cues found in logos.  In recent years, users are often unsure about the authenticity of emails, and this has become a major issue for businesses fighting spam. BIMI gives email users access to information about a brand's identity. A company has complete control and freedom over what logo to attach to authenticated emails. Overall, BIMI acts as an additional layer of security to the existing email authentication process. What is BIMI, and how does it strengthen the security of your emails?  BIMI is a standa

There has been a lot of buzz in the industry about ransomware lately. Almost every other day, it's making headlines. With businesses across the globe holding their breath, scared they might fall victim to the next major ransomware attack, it is now time to take action. The FBI IC3 report of 2020 classified Ransomware as the most financially damaging cybercrime of the year, with no major improvement in 2021. Wouldn't it be nice if you could prevent a ransomware attack from occurring in the first place?  DMARC  can make this seemingly impossible claim a possibility for domain owners!  Multiple benefits arise from your DMARC implementation over time, including an increase in the deliverability of your email as well as a higher domain reputation. DMARC is also known as the first line of defense against Ransomware. Let's take a closer look. What are the Risks Associated with Ransomware?  Ransomware is malicious software that installs itself on your computer without your p

Are you aware of how secure your domain is? In most organizations, there is an assumption that their domains are secure and within a few months, but the truth soon dawns on them that it isn't. Spotting someone spoofing your domain name is one way to determine if your security is unsatisfactory - this means that someone is impersonating you (or confusing some of your recipients) and releasing false information. You may ask, "But why should I care?" Because these spoofing activities can potentially endanger your reputation. With so many companies being targeted by domain impersonators, email domain spoofing shouldn't be taken lightly. By doing so, they could put themselves, as well as their clients, at risk.  Your domain's security rating can make a huge difference in whether or not you get targeted by phishers looking to make money quickly or to use your domain and brand to spread ransomware without you knowing it! Check your domain's security rating with

The maintainers of Exim have  released patches  to remediate as many as 21 security vulnerabilities in its software that could enable unauthenticated attackers to achieve complete remote code execution and gain root privileges. Collectively named  '21Nails ,' the flaws include 11 vulnerabilities that require local access to the server and 10 other weaknesses that could be exploited remotely. The issues were discovered by Qualys and reported to Exim on Oct. 20, 2020. "Some of the vulnerabilities can be chained together to obtain a full remote unauthenticated code execution and gain root privileges on the Exim Server," Bharat Jogi, senior manager at Qualys, said in a public disclosure. "Most of the vulnerabilities discovered by the Qualys Research Team for e.g. CVE-2020-28017 affects all versions of Exim going back all the way to 2004." Exim is a popular mail transfer agent (MTA) used on Unix-like operating systems, with over 60% of the publicly reachable

No matter which type of business you are in, whether small, medium, or large, email has become an irrefutable tool for communicating with your employees, partners, and customers. Emails are sent and received each day in bulk by companies from various sources. In addition, organizations may also employ third-party vendors who may be authorized to send emails on behalf of the company. As a result, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between sources that are legitimate and malicious. Here's a solution – PowerDMARC. This SaaS platform helps you assess your  email authentication  protocols from time to time and see if your domain is secure against spoofing with a DMARC record checker, so you can make changes if necessary. Check Your Domain Today!  Use our free tool to examine your domain's DMARC, SPF, DKIM, BIMI, and MTA-STS records instantly to ensure your domain is protected from impersonation and email fraud! Importance of Having Robust Email Security in 2021 S

Email spoofing is a growing problem for an organization's security. Spoofing occurs when a hacker sends an email that appears to have been sent from a trusted source/domain. Email spoofing is not a new concept. Defined as "the forgery of an email address header to make the message appear as if it was sent from a person or location other than the actual sender," it has plagued brands for decades.  When an email is sent, the From address doesn't show which server the email was actually sent from - instead, it shows the domain that was entered when the address was created so as not to arouse suspicion among recipients. With the amount of data flowing through email servers these days, it should come as no surprise that spoofing is a problem for businesses. At the end of 2020, we found that phishing incidents were up a staggering 220% year-over-year at the height of the global pandemic scare. Since not all spoofing attacks are large-scale, the actual number could be muc

Following Microsoft's release of out-of-band patches to address multiple zero-day flaws in on-premises versions of Microsoft Exchange Server, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has  issued  an emergency directive warning of " active exploitation " of the vulnerabilities. The alert comes on the heels of Microsoft's  disclosure  that China-based hackers were exploiting unknown software bugs in Exchange server to steal sensitive data from select targets, marking the second time in four months that the U.S. has scrambled to address a widespread hacking campaign believed to be the work of foreign threat actors. While the company mainly attributed the campaign to a threat group called HAFNIUM, Slovakian cybersecurity firm ESET  said  it found evidence of CVE-2021-26855 being actively exploited in the wild by several cyber espionage groups, including LuckyMouse, Tick, and Calypso targeting servers located in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and the