Cisco Threat Research Blog

Threat intelligence for Cisco Products

We detect, analyze, and protect customers from both known and unknown emerging threats

Vulnerability Spotlight: VMWare Workstation DoS Vulnerability

Today, Talos is disclosing a vulnerability in VMWare Workstation that could result in Denial of Service. VMWare Workstation is a widely used virtualization platform designed to run alongside a normal operating system, allowing users to use both virtualized and physical systems concurrently.

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Microsoft Patch Tuesday — October 18: Vulnerability disclosures and Snort coverage

Microsoft released its monthly security update today, disclosing a variety of vulnerabilities in several of its products. The latest Patch Tuesday covers 49 vulnerabilities, 12 of which are rated “critical,” 34 that are rated “important,” two that are considered to have “moderate” severity and one that’s rated as “low.”

The advisories cover bugs in the Chakra scripting engine, the Microsoft Edge internet browser and the Microsoft Office suite of products, among other software.

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Vulnerability in the Intel Unified Shader compiler for the Intel Graphics Accelerator

Vulnerabilities discovered by Piotr Bania of Cisco Talos

Talos is disclosing a pointer corruption vulnerability in the Intel Unified Shader compiler for the Intel Graphics Accelerator.

OVERVIEW

In order for the graphics to be produced, the graphics accelerators need to process the OpenGL scripts into actual graphics. That process is named “shader compilation.” On the Intel Graphics accelerator, this is done inside the igdusc64 dynamic linked library (DLL), and this is where the vulnerability exists.

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Threat Roundup Sept 28 – Oct 5

Today, as we do every week, Talos is giving you a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed this week — covering the dates between Sept. 28 and Oct. 5. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, we will summarize the threats we’ve observed by highlighting key behavioral characteristics and indicators of compromise, and discussing how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.

As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of the date of publication. Additionally, please keep in mind that IOC searching is only one part of threat hunting. Spotting a single IOC does not necessarily indicate maliciousness. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates, pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your Firepower Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net.

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Vulnerability Spotlight: Google PDFium JBIG2 Image ComposeToOpt2WithRect Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Discovered by Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos

Overview

Cisco Talos is releasing details of a new vulnerability in Google PDFium’s JBIG2 library. An exploitable out-of-bounds read on the heap vulnerability exists in the JBIG2-parsing code in Google Chrome, version 67.0.3396.99. A specially crafted PDF document can trigger an out-of-bounds read, which can possibly lead to an information leak. That leak could be used as part of an exploit. An attacker needs to trick the user into visiting a malicious site to trigger the vulnerability.

In accordance with our coordinated disclosure policy, Cisco Talos has worked with Google to ensure that these issues have been resolved and that an update has been made available for affected users. It is recommended that this update is applied as quickly as possible to ensure that systems are no longer affected by this vulnerability.

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BruCON Primer: 10 Years and Cisco Talos Talks

Cisco Talos will have a significant presence at the 10th edition of BruCON, which kicks off this week. Below, you will find the presentations that Talos researchers will give, along with a brief overview of the topics they will discuss. We are fortunate to have multiple speakers presenting this year: Benny Ketelslegers, Jared Rittle and Lilith Wyatt.

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Vulnerability Spotlight: Adobe Acrobat Reader DC Collab reviewServer Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Discovered by Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos

Overview

Today, Talos is releasing details of a new vulnerability within Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. Adobe Acrobat Reader is the most popular and most feature-rich PDF reader. It has a big user base, is usually a default PDF reader on systems and integrates into web browsers as a plugin for rendering PDFs. As such, tricking a user into visiting a malicious web page or sending a specially crafted email attachment can be enough to trigger this vulnerability. The one method call required to trigger this vulnerability is privileged and can only be called from trusted functions or from a trusted location. Additionally, the use-after-free condition is only triggered upon closing the application.

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Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple Issues in Foxit PDF Reader

Overview

Cisco Talos is disclosing eightteen vulnerabilities in Foxit PDF Reader, a popular free program for viewing, creating and editing PDF documents. It is commonly used as an alternative to Adobe Acrobat Reader and has a widely used browser plugin.

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Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple vulnerabilities in Atlantis Word Processor

Vulnerabilities discovered by Cory Duplantis and Ali Rizvi-Santiago of Cisco Talos.

Overview

Cisco Talos is disclosing several vulnerabilities discovered in Atlantis Word Processor. Atlantis Word Processor is a portable word processor that is also capable of converting any TXT, RTF, ODT, DOC, WRI, or DOCX document into an eBook in the ePub format.

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