Improving open source security during the Google summer internship program (Google Online Security Blog)

Sécurité
Posted by the Information Security Engineering team at Google Every summer, Google’s Information Security Engineering (ISE) team hosts a number of interns who work on impactful projects to help improve security at Google. This year was no different—well, actually it was a little bit different because internships went virtual. But our dedication to security was still front and center as our intern team worked on improvements in open source software. Open source software is the foundation of many modern software products. Over the years, developers increasingly have relied on reusable open source components for their applications. It is paramount that these open source components are secure and reliable.  The focus of this year’s intern projects reflects ISE’s general approach of tackling security issues at scale, and can be split into three…
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Mitigating Memory Safety Issues in Open Source Software (Google Online Security Blog)

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Posted by Dan Lorenc, Infrastructure Security Team Memory-safety vulnerabilities have dominated the security field for years and often lead to issues that can be exploited to take over entire systems.  A recent study found that "~70% of the vulnerabilities addressed through a security update each year continue to be memory safety issues.” Another analysis on security issues in the ubiquitous `curl` command line tool showed that 53 out of 95 bugs would have been completely prevented by using a memory-safe language. Software written in unsafe languages often contains hard-to-catch bugs that can result in severe security vulnerabilities, and we take these issues seriously at Google. That’s why we’re expanding our collaboration with the Internet Security Research Group to support the reimplementation of critical open-source software in memory-safe languages. We previously…
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Launching OSV – Better vulnerability triage for open source (Google Online Security Blog)

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Posted by Oliver Chang and Kim Lewandowski, Google Security Team We are excited to launch OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities), our first step towards improving vulnerability triage for developers and consumers of open source software. The goal of OSV is to provide precise data on where a vulnerability was introduced and where it got fixed, thereby helping consumers of open source software accurately identify if they are impacted and then make security fixes as quickly as possible. We have started OSV with a data set of fuzzing vulnerabilities found by the OSS-Fuzz service. OSV project evolved from our recent efforts to improve vulnerability management in open source ("Know, Prevent, Fix" framework). Vulnerability management can be painful for both consumers and maintainers of open source software, with tedious manual work involved in…
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Vulnerability Reward Program: 2020 Year in Review (Google Online Security Blog)

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Posted by Anna Hupa, Senior Strategist, Vulnerability Rewards TeamDespite the challenges of this unprecedented year, our vulnerability researchers have achieved more than ever before, partnering with our Vulnerability Reward Programs (VRPs) to protect Google’s users by discovering security and abuse bugs and reporting them to us for remediation. Their diligence helps us keep our users, and the internet at large, safe, and enables us to fix security issues before they can be exploited. The incredibly hard work, dedication, and expertise of our researchers in 2020 resulted in a record-breaking payout of over $6.7 million in rewards, with an additional $280,000 given to charity. We’d like to extend a big thank you to our community of researchers for collaborating with us. It’s your excellent work that brings our programs to life,…
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Know, Prevent, Fix: A framework for shifting the discussion around vulnerabilities in open source (Google Online Security Blog)

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Posted by Eric Brewer, Rob Pike, Abhishek Arya, Anne Bertucio and Kim Lewandowski Executive Summary: The security of open source software has rightfully garnered the industry’s attention, but solutions require consensus about the challenges and cooperation in the execution. The problem is complex and there are many facets to cover: supply chain, dependency management, identity, and build pipelines. Solutions come faster when the problem is well-framed; we propose a framework (“Know, Prevent, Fix”) for how the industry can think about vulnerabilities in open source and concrete areas to address first, including: Consensus on metadata and identity standards: We need consensus on fundamentals to tackle these complex problems as an industry. Agreements on metadata details and identities will enable automation, reduce the effort required to update software, and minimize the impact of…
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Data Driven Security Hardening in Android (Google Online Security Blog)

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Posted by Kevin Deus, Joel Galenson, Billy Lau and Ivan Lozano, Android Security & Privacy Team The Android platform team is committed to securing Android for every user across every device. In addition to monthly security updates to patch vulnerabilities reported to us through our Vulnerability Rewards Program (VRP), we also proactively architect Android to protect against undiscovered vulnerabilities through hardening measures such as applying compiler-based mitigations and improving sandboxing. This post focuses on the decision-making process that goes into these proactive measures: in particular, how we choose which hardening techniques to deploy and where they are deployed. As device capabilities vary widely within the Android ecosystem, these decisions must be made carefully, guided by data available to us to maximize the value to the ecosystem as a whole. The…
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The Taxman Cometh for ID Theft Victims (Krebs on Security)

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The unprecedented volume of unemployment insurance fraud witnessed in 2020 hasn’t abated, although news coverage of the issue has largely been pushed off the front pages by other events. But the ID theft problem is coming to the fore once again: Countless Americans will soon be receiving notices from state regulators saying they owe thousands of dollars in taxes on benefits they never received last year. One state’s experience offers a window into the potential scope of the problem. Hackers, identity thieves and overseas criminal rings stole over $11 billion in unemployment benefits from California last year, or roughly 10 percent of all such claims the state paid out in 2020, the state’s labor secretary told reporters this week. Another 17 percent of claims — nearly $20 billion more –…
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Arrest, Seizures Tied to Netwalker Ransomware (Krebs on Security)

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U.S. and Bulgarian authorities this week seized the darkweb site used by the NetWalker ransomware cybercrime group to publish data stolen from its victims. In connection with the seizure, a Canadian national suspected of extorting more than $27 million through the spreading of NetWalker was charged in a Florida court. The victim shaming site maintained by the NetWalker ransomware group, after being seized by authorities this week. NetWalker is a ransomware-as-a-service crimeware product in which affiliates rent access to the continuously updated malware code in exchange for a percentage of any funds extorted from victims. The crooks behind NetWalker used the now-seized website to publish personal and proprietary data stolen from their prey, as part of a public pressure campaign to convince victims to pay up. NetWalker has been among…
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U.S. Indicts North Korean Hackers in Theft of $200 Million (Krebs on Security)

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The U.S. Justice Department today unsealed indictments against three men accused of working with the North Korean regime to carry out some of the most damaging cybercrime attacks over the past decade, including the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures, the global WannaCry ransomware contagion of 2017, and the theft of roughly $200 million and attempted theft of more than $1.2 billion from banks and other victims worldwide. Investigators with the DOJ, U.S. Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security told reporters on Wednesday the trio’s activities involved extortion, phishing, direct attacks on financial institutions and ATM networks, as well as malicious applications that masqueraded as software tools to help people manage their cryptocurrency holdings. Prosecutors say the hackers were part of an effort to circumvent ongoing international financial sanctions against…
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Bluetooth Overlay Skimmer That Blocks Chip (Krebs on Security)

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As a total sucker for anything skimming-related, I was interested to hear from a reader working security for a retail chain in the United States who recently found Bluetooth-enabled skimming devices placed over top of payment card terminals at several stores. Interestingly, these skimmers interfered with the terminal’s ability to read chip-based cards, forcing customers to swipe the stripe instead. The payment card skimmer overlay transmitted stolen data via Bluetooth, physically blocked chip-based transactions, and included a PIN pad overlay. Here’s a closer look at the electronic gear jammed into these overlay skimmers. It includes a hidden PIN pad overlay that captures, stores and transmits via Bluetooth data from cards swiped through the machine, as well as PINs entered on the device: The hidden magnetic stripe reader is in the…
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