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In today’s digital age, cyber threats are more prevalent than ever. Did you know that a staggering 81% of data breaches are due to weak or stolen passwords? With hackers becoming more sophisticated, it’s crucial to ensure your passwords are as strong as a bull ant’s bite.

Storing Passwords

Strong passwords are the first line of defense for your online accounts. However, even a strong password is only as secure as the place where it’s stored. Your security tools and habits make all the difference.

Why It Matters

Using a plain file, like a document or spreadsheet, to store your passwords is like leaving the keys to the castle just inside the front door. Once a hacker is in, they’ve got access to everywhere else. Luckily, modern password managers are a convenient way to keep you safe.

Passwords.txt

In real-world attacks, hackers often search for documents and spreadsheets with passwords as one of their first steps. Using a text document, or any other unencrypted method to store your passwords, puts yourself and your company at risk. This could expose financial accounts, customer records, communications systems, and much more.

Password Managers

A password manager is an ultra-secure vault for all your online accounts. With a password manager, you only need to remember one very strong master password, and it takes care of the rest. It stores all your other passwords in an encrypted digital safe, making sure they’re safe from prying eyes and cyber attacks. Many password managers also offer unique password generators, taking the guesswork out of making new passwords.

Multi-factor Authentication

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is like having extra locks on your digital doors, adding an extra layer of security beyond just your password. Even if a password is compromised and someone tries to break into your online accounts, they would still need another piece of information, like a special code generated in an app or a code that’s sent in a text to you.

Reverse Shells

Attackers frequently gain footholds using reverse shells that give them the ability to invisibly control computers. This allows them to rummage around for valuable data such as credentials and use whatever trusted connections the compromised computer has before taking next steps such as installing ransomware.

Password Reuse

All passwords can be stolen, even the strong ones. If you reuse a password across multiple online accounts and one account is compromised, hackers will try those passwords with other online accounts. Password managers make it easy to have unique passwords for each of your online accounts so if one is breached, the rest are still safe.

Insecure Secrets

Files like documents and spreadsheets are not a secure place to store passwords. Hackers often search for these files as soon as they get access to a device because it gives them access to more accounts without having to do more work.

Password Managers

A password manager uses strong encryption in a way that not even the maker of the software could access without your password. By using a password manager with a very strong password, you limit the potential damage to having a single device compromised.

We Are All Targets

A common misconception among business owners is that their business is too small for hackers to care about them. The truth is businesses of any size are vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Your Role

It’s important to remember that keeping your accounts safe is your responsibility. You should never store passwords in an unencrypted document. Password managers and multi-factor authentication are the tools you need to protect your online accounts.

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So, what are you waiting for? Another password compromise? Go ahead and take the quiz now!

Microsoft has sent out a red alert this Tuesday, urging everyone to patch a critical TCP/IP remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability. This one’s a real doozy with a high chance of being exploited, and it affects all Windows systems that have IPv6 enabled by default.

Discovered by XiaoWei from Kunlun Lab and tracked as CVE-2024-38063, this vulnerability stems from an Integer Underflow weakness. Hackers can use this flaw to cause buffer overflows, allowing them to run arbitrary code on vulnerable Windows 10, Windows 11, and Windows Server systems.

XiaoWei has kept the finer details under wraps, tweeting that due to the severity of this flaw, more specifics won’t be shared anytime soon. To make matters worse, blocking IPv6 in the local Windows firewall won’t help since the vulnerability is triggered before the firewall gets a chance to process it.

According to Microsoft’s advisory on Tuesday, unauthenticated attackers can exploit this flaw remotely with ease by sending specially crafted IPv6 packets repeatedly.

Microsoft slapped an “exploitation more likely” label on this vulnerability, signalling that threat actors could quickly develop exploit code to consistently take advantage of it.

Redmond also pointed out that similar vulnerabilities have been exploited in the past, making this a particularly juicy target for attackers. As such, those who’ve checked out the security update and found it relevant to their systems should treat this as a top priority.

For those who can’t install the latest security updates straight away, Microsoft suggests disabling IPv6 to reduce the risk. However, they caution against this on their support site, as IPv6 is a core component of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and newer versions, and turning it off might cause some Windows features to stop working.

Wormable Vulnerability

Dustin Childs, Head of Threat Awareness at Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative, has also flagged CVE-2024-38063 as one of the nastiest bugs fixed by Microsoft this Patch Tuesday, calling it a “wormable” flaw.

“The most worrying aspect of this is that an unauthenticated attacker could gain elevated code execution just by sending specially crafted IPv6 packets to a vulnerable system,” Childs said.

“That makes it wormable. Disabling IPv6 can stop this exploit, but considering IPv6 is switched on by default on nearly everything, it’s a bit of a tricky situation.”

Microsoft and others are urging Windows users to patch their systems immediately to fend off potential attacks using CVE-2024-38063 exploits. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first, and likely won’t be the last, Windows vulnerability that can be exploited using IPv6 packets.

Over the past four years, Microsoft has patched several other IPv6-related issues, including two TCP/IP flaws known as CVE-2020-16898/9 (nicknamed Ping of Death), which could be exploited in remote code execution (RCE) and denial of service (DoS) attacks through malicious ICMPv6 Router Advertisement packets.

Additionally, an IPv6 fragmentation bug (CVE-2021-24086) left all Windows versions vulnerable to DoS attacks, while a DHCPv6 flaw (CVE-2023-28231) made it possible to gain RCE with a specially crafted call.

Even though these vulnerabilities haven’t yet been exploited in widespread attacks on all IPv6-enabled Windows devices, users are strongly advised to install this month’s Windows security updates as soon as possible, given the increased likelihood of exploitation for CVE-2024-38063.