Hacker News Reader

Comment by chair6 | Hacker News Reader

I was really hoping it would be something at least somewhat interesting like an SQL injection vulnerability or some kind of 0-day (EDIT: in external facing system/service), for the sake of RSA.

But no, it was email attachments (EDIT: granted, with an Excel 0-day). Email attachments???!! Says a lot about the effectiveness of security awareness training. Fear the APT.

View on HN

If it's as they describe they did have a 0-day used on them. The email attachments, which were excel spreadsheets with an embedded flash exploit apparently were the source of the 0-day report documented in CVE-2011-0609 and published on Mar 14. The RSA attack was reported on Mar 17.

https://www.adobe.com/support/security/advisories/apsa11-01....

While there is definitely something to be said for what you're saying about "omg, email attack" the other side of the coin is that spearphishing is the most popular/common attack vector because it works.

It's a good reminder that with ubiquity comes an increased focus on security. I'm much more conscious of the security problems with Flash after a lot of recent news about it. However, it isn't necessarily because it's any less secure than other applications, just that it's ubiquitous and therefore a more likely avenue of attack.

I was thinking 'in external facing system/service' while I was typing 0-day but yes, you're right. Agreed on the spearphishing point.

It came through an Excel document, but it appears to be an Adobe Flash security flaw, CVE 20110609

It was a zero day vulnerability in Excel that caused the isse - those tend to easily have great impact.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com