With a bunch of security fixes released Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability and more on the way , details have been made public Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability of a Bluetooth bug that potentially allows miscreants to commandeer nearby devices . This Carnegie-Mellon CERT vulnerability advisory on Monday laid out Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability the cryptographic flaw : firmware or operating system drivers skip a vital check during a Diffie-Hellman key exchange between devices . The impact : a nearby eavesdropper could “ intercept and decrypt and/or forge and inject device messages ” carried over Bluetooth Low Energy and Bluetooth Basic Rate/Enhanced Data Rate ( BR/EDR ) wireless connections between gizmos . In other words , you can potentially snoop on supposedly encrypted communications between two devices to steal Attack.Databreach their info going over the air , and inject malicious commands . To pull this off , you must have been within radio range and transmitting while the gadgets were initially pairing . The bug 's status in Android is confusing : while it does n't appear in the operating system project 's July monthly bulletin , phone and tablet manufacturers like LG and Huawei list the bug as being patched Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability in the , er , July security update . Microsoft has declared itself in the clear . The CERT note says fixes are needed both in software and firmware , which should be obtained from manufacturers and developers , and installed – if at all possible . We 're guessing for random small-time Bluetooth gizmos , it wo n't be very easy to prise an update out of the vendors , although you should have better luck with bigger brand gear . So , make sure you 're patched via the usual software update mechanisms , or just look out for nearby snoops , and be ready to thwart them , when pairing devices . Manufacturers were warned in January , it appears , so have had plenty of time to work on solutions . Indeed , silicon vendor patches for CVE-2018-5383 are already rolling out Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability among larger gadget and device makers , with Lenovo and Dell posting updates Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability in the past month or so . Linux versions prior to 3.19 do n't support Bluetooth LE Secure Connections and are therefore not vulnerable , we 're told .

A severe WordPress vulnerability which has been left a year without being patched Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability has the potential to disrupt countless websites running the CMS , researchers claim Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability . At the BSides technical cybersecurity conference in Manchester on Thursday , Secarma researcher Sam Thomas said Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability the bug permits attackers to exploit the WordPress PHP framework , resulting in a full system compromise . If the domain permits the upload of files , such as image formats , attackers can upload a crafted thumbnail file in order to trigger a file operation through the `` phar : // '' stream wrapper . In turn , the exploit triggers eXternal Entity ( XXE -- XML ) and Server Side Request Forgery ( SSRF ) flaws which cause unserialization in the platform 's code . While these flaws may only originally result in information disclosure and may be low risk , they can act as a pathway to a more serious remote code execution attack . The security researcher says Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability the core vulnerability , which is yet to receive a CVE Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability number , is within the wp_get_attachment_thumb_file function in /wpincludes/post.php and when attackers gain control of a parameter used in the `` file_exists '' call , '' the bug can be triggered . Unserialization occurs when serialized variables are converted back into PHP values . When autoloading is in place , this can result in code being loaded and executed , an avenue attackers may exploit in order to compromise PHP-based frameworks . `` Unserialization of attacker-controlled data is a known critical vulnerability , potentially resulting in the execution of malicious code , '' the company says . The issue of unserialization was first uncovered Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability back in 2009 , and since then , vulnerabilities have been recognized Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability in which the integrity of PHP systems can be compromised , such as CVE-2017-12934 , CVE-2017-12933 , and CVE-2017- 12932 . The WordPress content management system ( CMS ) is used by millions of webmasters to manage domains , which means the vulnerability potentially has a vast victim pool should the flaw being exploited Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability in the wild . `` I 've highlighted that the unserialization is exposed to a lot of vulnerabilities that might have previously been considered quite low-risk , '' Thomas explainde . `` Issues which they might have thought were fixed Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability with a configuration change or had been considered quite minor previously might need to be reevaluated in the light of the attacks I demonstrated . '' According to Secarma , the CMS provider was made aware Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability of the security issue in February 2017 , but `` is yet to take action . '' TechRepublic : The need for speed : Why you should optimize your CMS Technical details have been provided in a white paper ( .PDF ) . `` This research continues a worrying recent trend , in demonstrating that object ( un ) serialization is an integral part of several modern languages , '' Thomas said . `` We must constantly be aware of the security impact of such mechanisms being exposed to attackers . '' No reports have been received which suggest the exploit is being actively used in the wild . The vulnerability was originally reported Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability through the WordPress HackerOne bug bounty program last year . The issue was confirmed Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability after several days and Thomas was credited for his findings . However , a Secarma spokesperson told ZDNet that while there was `` some attempt to fix Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability the issue '' in May 2017 , this did not address Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability the problem . `` Communication then went dead for a number of months and has only recently begun again , '' the spokesperson added . ZDNet has reached out to WordPress and will update if we hear back .

A security flaw affecting Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice has been fixed Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability in one of the two open-source office suites . The other still appears to be vulnerable Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability . Before attempting to guess which app has yet to be patched Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability , consider that Apache OpenOffice for years has struggled attract more contributors . And though the number of people adding code to the project has grown since last we checked , the project missed its recent January report to the Apache Foundation . The upshot is : security holes are n't being patched Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability , it seems . The issue , identified Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability by security researcher Alex Inführ , is that there 's a way to achieve remote code execution by triggering an event embedded in an ODT ( OpenDocument Text ) file . In a blog post on Friday , Inführ explains Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability how he found Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability a way to abuse the OpenDocument scripting framework by adding an onmouseover event to a link in an ODT file . The event , which fires when a user 's mouse pointer moves over the link , can traverse local directories and execute a local Python script . After trying various approaches to exploit the vulnerability , Inführ found Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability that he could rig the event to call a specific function within a Python file included with the Python interpreter that ships with LibreOffice . `` For the solution I looked into the Python parsing code a little more in depth and discovered that it is not only possible to specify the function you want to call inside a python script , but it is possible to pass parameters as well , '' he said . The exploit was tested on Windows , and should work on Linux , too . Inführ says Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability he reported Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability the bug on October 18 and it was fixed Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability in LibreOffice by the end of the month . RedHat assigned Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability it CVE-2018-16858 in mid-November and gave Inführ a disclosure Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability date of January 31 , 2019 . When he published Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability on February 1 , in conjunction with the LibreOffice fix notification , OpenOffice still had not been patched Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability . Inführ says Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability he reconfirmed Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability that he could go ahead with disclosure Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability even though OpenOffice 4.16 has yet to be fixed Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability . His proof-of-concept exploit does n't work with OpenOffice out-of-the-box because the software does n't allow parameters to be passed in the same way as the unpatched version of LibreOffice did . However , he says Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability that the path traversal issue can still be abused to execute a local Python file and cause further mischief and damage . We 're imagining specifically targeted netizens being tricked Attack.Phishing into opening a ZIP file , unpacking an ODT and Python script , and then the ODT document attempting to execute the Python script when the victim rolls their mouse over a link , for instance . The Register tried to reach two OpenOffice contributors to find out what 's going on . We 've not heard back . According to Inführ , OpenOffice users can mitigate the risk by removing or renaming the pythonscript.py file in the installation folder .