A list of recently found security threats

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Indusface has outlined some recently found security threats.

Exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities has always been the primary choice for hackers. It is just obvious that they will be looking for new weaknesses within the layers and misuse them before anyone knows about it.

The Factoring Attack on RSA-EXPORT Keys of FREAK was one such instance. This Secure Sockets Layer vulnerability was discovered this year in March, but was surprisingly present from the early 90s. It posed man-in-the-middle threat to around 33pc of all the website and servers along with major browsers.

Ghost Vulnerability

Several Linux operating systems including Debian, Cent OS 6 & 7, and Ubuntu 10.04 & 12.04 were found to be vulnerable to what was termed as the GHOST vulnerability earlier this year.

It was found that attackers could actually exploit glibc's GetHOST functions buffering overflow in glibc function__nss_hostname_digits_dots ().

When applications and DNS resolver are connected, an attacker can get IP address from the hostname and assume complete control over 32-bit and 64-bit servers. A day after the GHOST vulnerability was found, most operation systems released their patches to update glibc version.

Freak Vulnerability

A month approximately after GHOST, the 'FREAK' scare threatened once again on encryption technology. Though FREAK wasn't as severe as POODLE, an informed attacker could still gain access to sensitive information and inject commands.

Giants like Google, Apples, and Windows had confirmed in March, 2015 that their then-latest operating system versions were susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks using FREAK vulnerability.

About three months have passed since FREAK was discovered and patched, still many users have still not updated their operating systems and browsers. Additionally, with detailed information on FREAK available online, companies also need to secure their end with vulnerability scanning and web application firewall in place to stop such attacks.

Logjam Vulnerability

Bearing similarities to FREAK, the recently found Logjam vulnerability made Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Shell (SSH) vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attack. It had been estimated that more than 1 million domains were at risk.

Logjam basically helped hackers downgrade the encryption to 512-bit export-grade cryptograph and decrypt it. Export-grade cipher suites were believed to be the cause of this vulnerability, so if users and companies would have dealt with FREAK properly, it should not have caused problems.