The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is the standard protocol for time synchronization in the IT industry. It is widely used by servers, mobile devices, endpoints, and network devices, irrespective of their vendor. The latest version of NTP (version 4) is defined in RFC 5905. The…
Author Archives Tomasz Andrzej Nidecki
Tomasz Andrzej Nidecki Technical Content WriterLinkedIn: https://mt.linkedin.com/in/tonid
Tomasz Andrzej Nidecki (also known as tonid) is a Technical Content Writer working for Acunetix. A journalist, translator, and technical writer with 25 years of IT experience, Tomasz has been the Managing Editor of the hakin9 IT Security magazine in its early years and used to run a major technical blog dedicated to email security.
What Is Persistent XSS
Persistent Cross-site Scripting (Stored XSS) attacks represent one of three major types of Cross-site Scripting. The other two types of attacks of this kind are Non-Persistent XSS (Reflected XSS) and DOM-based XSS. In general, XSS attacks are based on the victim’s trust in a legitimate…
What Is HSTS and Why Should I Use It?
HSTS stands for HTTP Strict Transport Security. It is a method used by websites to declare that they should only be accessed using a secure connection (HTTPS). If a website declares an HSTS policy, the browser must refuse all HTTP connections and prevent users from…
XML External Entity Vulnerability in Internet Explorer
When exploiting a typical XML External Entity (XXE) vulnerability, the attacker attempts to gain access to the content of files on a Web server. However, XXE vulnerabilities may also allow the attacker to steal private data from the user. Such a case was recently discovered…
Visit Us at the Malta A.I. & Blockchain Summit 2019
Acunetix will be exhibiting at the Spring Edition of the Malta A.I. & Blockchain Summit. The event will take place on May 23-24 at the Hilton Business Centre in St. Julian’s in Malta. The summit focuses on AI, Big Data, Blockchain, IoT, and Quantum Technologies…
Remote Code Execution in bootstrap-sass Ruby Package
If you are using Ruby to develop applications, run the latest update of Acunetix to make sure that you are safe. A very popular Rails gem bootstrap-sass was recently compromised. A malicious version of the package (3.2.0.3) was available in the official RubyGems repository for several…
Mutation XSS in Google Search
Are you sure that your website is safe from Cross-site Scripting if Google Search was not for five months? On September 26, 2018, one of the developers working on the open-source Closure library (originally created by Google and used in Google Search) created a commit…
All That You Need to Know About Man-in-the-Middle Attacks
In a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack, a black hat hacker takes a position between two victims who are communicating with one another. In this spot, the attacker relays all communication, can listen to it, and even modify it. Imagine that Alice and Barbara talk to one…
GIF Buffer Content Exposed by Facebook Messenger
The saying one man’s trash is another man’s treasure applies to IT security as well. There are several types of attacks, such as buffer overflow, that rely on accessing leftover memory content. For example, this is exactly what the infamous Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL was…
Remote Code Execution Possible in Drupal
On February 19, Drupal released a security advisory PSA-2019-02-19 (further amended by PSA-2019-02-22). The advisory contains information about a critical security flaw in Drupal 8.5 and 8.6 core. This flaw, classified as CVE-2019-6340, can be used for remote code execution (code injection). An exploit for…