bug

According to a recent report, Microsoft products made up eight of the ten most exploited software bugs last year according to a security company. That's higher than in recent years, largely because Adobe Flash is becoming a less rewarding target for ... hackers as it loses popularity. As recently as 2015, most of the top ten involved bugs with Flash. Microsoft took the unwanted lead in 2017 with seven entries on the list. (Source: bleepingcomputer.com ) Internet Explorer Tops The List The top spot for 2018 went to a bug in the Windows VBScript engine . That's a tool that handles code designed for ... (view more)

A security researcher says he's found a major security flaw in the Mac's password storage tool. But he's refusing to publish the details as a protest against Apple's "bug bounty" program. Linuz Henze has produced a video showing what he calls an ... exploit of the Keychain feature in MacOS Mojave, the current edition of the operating system for Mac computers. Keychain is an application on Macs that lets users save passwords for online accounts and digital certificates so that they don't have to type them in again. Users can also open Keychain and access a full list of passwords. Normally every ... (view more)

Microsoft has begun rolling out the October 2018 update for Windows 10 for a second time. It doesn't take a much of a look at the calendar to reveal that things went very badly . The release is one of the twice-yearly updates that replace the old ... model of having small updates every month and then a completely new edition of Windows every few years. The October update had a variety of problems including: Key document folders being irretrievable deleted in some cases if they weren't stored in the default disk location. Some computers being completely silenced after the update rolled out an ... (view more)

A security researcher has found a way to crash the Firefox browser and even Windows itself. Sabri Haddouche has demonstrated the technique to highlight the risk that it could be misused. The bug is shown off at Haddouche's site Browser Reaper, which ... he created to chart his interest in denial of service attacks. Normally such attacks involve flooding a website with bogus visits until it is overloaded and becomes unavailable to ordinary users. However, Haddouche has been exploring the technique from the other perspective: forcing a browser to deal with so much traffic that it crashes. Epic Name ... (view more)

Both Microsoft and Google are warning of another bug in computer processors. It's similar to previous bugs known as 'Spectre' and 'Meltdown'. For now the new issue has the less dramatic codenames 'Speculative Store Bypass Variant 4' and ... 'CVE-2018-3639'. As with Spectre and Meltdown , it involves a processor function known as speculative execution that's meant to improve computation processes. Unlike some bugs, it's classed as a low risk to users but is significant because of the sheer number of computers that could be affected. The processor is the part of the computer that physically carries ... (view more)

Google has revealed a security flaw with the Microsoft Edge browser before Microsoft released a patch. It's a controversial move with arguments across both the tech and security industries. The flaw in question is somewhat complicated. In very ... simplified terms, the flaw is to do with how Microsoft Edge converts website code into what users see on their computer screen when visiting a website. Google realized that it could work out precisely when the browser would access part of the computer's memory and use this knowledge to effectively set a booby trap. That could then force the computer to ... (view more)

Apple has been forced to fix a major security flaw in the latest edition of the Mac operating system. The fix makes it far easier for a thief to access a computer's files. The bug is in MacOS High Sierra, which was released two months ago. It's ... widely used as its compatible with most Mac computers released in the past eight years or so. The problem is with root access on the system. That's the highest level of access, giving complete control of the computer and even the opportunity to alter key system files. Normally only the most confident users would enable root access (which then acts a ... (view more)

T-Mobile has fixed a bug that let hackers get sensitive personal data just by using a phone number. In theory, it could have been possible to collect details on all the company's customers, though T-Mobile denies this. The problem was discovered by ... Karan Saini, a security researcher who discussed the problem with the Motherboard Vice website. The site then approached T-Mobile about the problem. It said "we were alerted to an issue that we investigated and fully resolved in less than 24 hours. There is no indication that it was shared more broadly." (Source: vice.com ) The bug had to do with T ... (view more)

A newly discovered Internet Explorer bug means rogue websites can track the next site a user visits, or even the next search the user makes. While it's not necessarily devastating in itself, the researcher who found the bug says it is a sign ... Microsoft isn't paying enough attention to its old browser. The bug means that a 'rogue' web page could access the content of whatever the user types in to the Internet Explorer address bar as soon as they press the Enter key. This would normally be another website address, but the way Internet Explorer works means it could also be a search term. Security ... (view more)

Microsoft has criticized Google for revealing details of what the search giant has dubbed a "critical" security flaw in Windows. The two companies dispute whether Google gave Microsoft enough time to fix the problem before going public. The ... controversy lies in the fact that Microsoft has yet to release a fix for the problem and has not even said if one exists. The bug applies to 32-bit editions of Windows and allows an unauthorized local privilege escalation. The effect is to undermine a security feature known as " sandboxing ," which is designed so that if a hacker ... (view more)