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Microsoft Discovers Supply Chain Attack at Unnamed Maker of PDF Software

posted by chromas on Saturday July 28 2018, @04:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the too-small-to-be-named dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for BoyceMagooglyMonkey

Microsoft said today that hackers compromised a font package installed by a PDF editor app and used it to deploy a cryptocurrency miner on users' computers.

The OS maker discovered the incident after its staff received alerts via the Windows Defender ATP, the commercial version of the Windows Defender antivirus.

Microsoft employees say they investigated the alerts and determined that hackers breached the cloud server infrastructure of a software company providing font packages as MSI files. These MSI files were offered to other software companies.

One of these downstream companies was using these font packages for its PDF editor app, which would download the MSI files from the original company's cloud servers during the editor's installation routine.

[...] Microsoft did not reveal the names of the two software companies involved in this incident. The OS maker says the compromise lasted between January and March 2018, and affected only a small number of users, suggesting the hacked companies aren't big names on the PDF software market.

Indicators of compromise are available in Microsoft's report on the attack, here.

Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/microsoft-discovers-supply-chain-attack-at-unnamed-maker-of-pdf-software/

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by leftover on Saturday July 28 2018, @04:03PM (1 child)

    by leftover (2448) on Saturday July 28 2018, @04:03PM (#714019)

    Another facet of this general problem is that every damned thing now wants to be "active", to contain code that is run automatically. Themes are another example. IMHO this is sloppy design, probably just inheriting capabilities from imported libraries then starting to use them. Font packages should contain font shape and kerning data in static data structures, period. Font rendering code should expect those structures and throw errors at anything else.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 28 2018, @06:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 28 2018, @06:27PM (#714052)

    No idea if they actually are (and if so, why the fuck they are), or if this is just more retarded lawmaking.

    https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/20050425novalis [fsf.org]