BlackBerry OS vulnerability is seriously bad news for car owners, hospitals

Date:
Wed, 18 Aug 2021 13:33:49 +0000

Description:
BlackBerry admits that its IoT devices are susceptible to a serious vulnerability, months after it was first reported.

FULL STORY ======================================================================

More than two months after it was first reported by Microsoft , BlackBerry
has admitted that its devices are not immune to critical remote code
execution (RCE) vulnerabilities in Internet of Things (IoT) and Operational Technology (OT) devices.

The vulnerabilities, collectively referred to as BadAlloc, stem from the
usage of memory functions such as malloc, calloc, realloc, memalign, valloc, pvalloc, and more. Crucially these memory allocation functions are widely
used in the software stacks of IoT devices.

BlackBerry has finally admitted that its embedded OS, QNX, also suffers from the BadAlloc vulnerability, reportedly leaving millions of cars, along with critical hospital and factory equipment, exploitable by hackers. TechRadar needs you!

We're looking at how our readers use VPNs with streaming sites like Netflix
so we can improve our content and offer better advice. This survey won't take more than 60 seconds of your time, and we'd hugely appreciate if you'd share your experiences with us.

Click here to start the survey in a new window << These are the best endpoint protection tools Protect your devices with these best antivirus software These are the best ransomware protection tools

According to BlackBerrys security advisory , a successful attack could
exploit the vulnerability to execute denial of service attacks or run arbitrary code on the affected devices. Dilly dallying

The Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) team reported the BadAlloc vulnerabilities to the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) earlier this year.

However, based on details garnered from two anonymous sources, Politico reports that BlackBerry first denied its products were susceptible to BadAlloc, and then resisted making a public announcement that its QNX-powered devices were indeed vulnerable.

Security experts consulted by TechRadar Pro are not best pleased. Yossi Naar, Chief Visionary Officer and co-founder at Cybereason, believes BlackBerrys disclosure is appalling and a good illustration of the sorry state of affairs of IoT security.

In general, IoT has terrible security, but it is hardly a concern in most cases. Some vendors do better, others do nothing. When youre competing in a market, needing to balance cost, power consumption, size, scale and many
other issues security takes a back seat, he said.

BlackBerry has urged users to patch their devices. Here's our choice of the best malware removal software on the market



======================================================================
Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/news/blackberry-os-vulnerability-is-seriously-bad-ne ws-for-automakers-hospitals/


--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 (Linux/64)
* Origin: tqwNet Technology News (1337:1/100)