Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

A new critical vulnerability impacting Microsoft Outlook (CVE-2023-23397) was recently published by Microsoft. The CVE is particularly concerning as no user involvement is required by the exploit. Once a user receives a malicious calendar invite, the attacker can gain a user’s Active Directory credentials. Microsoft has released a security update that can be found here. Cato Research strongly encourages updating all relevant systems as proof-of-concept exploits have already appeared online.

Once written off as a failed CMS incapable of generating a significant user base, Microsoft’s SharePoint has continually defied expectations to become one of the most widely-used ECM and Collaboration products ever. It caters to over 200 million users and 250,000 organizations, including 85% of Fortune 500 companies. SharePoint is a user-friendly intranet portal and provides a consolidated center for document sharing, tracking, and overall project management.

As part of our efforts to improve the security of open-source software, we continuously test open-source projects with our JVM fuzzing engine Jazzer in Google’s OSS-Fuzz. One of our tests yielded a Denial of Service vulnerability in the Spring Framework (CVE-2023-20861). Spring is one of the most widely used frameworks for developing web applications in Java. As a result, vulnerabilities have an amplified impact on all applications that rely on the vulnerable version.

The business impact of critical open source vulnerabilities such as Spring4Shell and Log4j illustrate the crucial importance of detecting remediating such vulnerabilities as fast as possible, This is particularly important for the financial technology, which handles vast volumes of sensitive financial data for investors. That was certainly the case for MSCI, who deployed Mend to speedily thwart any potential threats posed by Spring4Shell.

A now fixed zero-day elevation of privilege (EoP) vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook (CVE-2023-23397) allows attackers to send craft emails to exploit Outlook. The vulnerability does not require user interaction to be exploited and runs even before the email is visualized in the preview pane of Outlook, which makes this vulnerability even more dangerous.

The not-so-distant memories of security events like Log4Shell and the SolarWinds attack keep software supply chain attacks front of mind for developers. There are things organizations can do to detect and deter malicious supply chain attacks, including the recently mandated (as per the U.S. federal government) software bill of materials (SBOM).

News broke in early February that the ACN, Italy’s National Cybersecurity Agency, issued a warning regarding a VMware vulnerability discovered two years ago. Many organizations hadn’t yet patched the issue and became the victims of a new ransomware called ZCryptor. The malicious software wreaked havoc on Italian and European businesses by encrypting users’ files and demanding payment for the data to be unencrypted.