Science & Tech
By Anthony Isibor.
THE Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has advised telecom consumers and other Information and Communications Technology, ICT, end users on the need to always enable automatic update features for AVAST and AVG antivirus to prevent potential cyber vulnerabilities.
A statement released by the Computer Security Incident Response Team, CSIRT, the cyber security centre for the telecom sector established by the Commission, in continuation of its resolve to always keep Nigerians safe in the cyber space.
According to the statement signed by Dr. Ikechukwu Adinde Director, Public Affairs, NCC, the advice is based on the discovery by CSIRT, researchers at SentinelOne security firm that two potentially damaging vulnerabilities in AVAST and AVG antivirus products allow attackers to escalate privileges enabling them to disable security products, overwrite system components, corrupt the operating system, or perform malicious operations unimpeded.
The advisory noted that cyber vulnerability in AVAST and AVG Antiviruses can lead to attacks on millions of devices with high impact in terms of consequences to the ICT user. The threat types as a result of this vulnerability are Bypass Authentication, Remote Code Execution and Unauthorized Access, while consequences range from Privilege Escalation, Bypass Security Products, Overwrite System Components and corrupting the Operating System.
“Two vulnerabilities identified as CVE-2022-26522 and CVE-2022-26523 targeted the “Anti Rootkit” driver of Avast antivirus (also used by AVG) allowing an attacker with limited privileges on the targeted system to execute code in system mode (kernel mode) and take complete control of the device. Moreover, the vulnerabilities allow complete take-over of a device, even without privileges, due to the ability to execute code in kernel mode,” the CSIRT said in the advisory.
Consequently, the cyber security centre has offered a tripartite measures that should be taken by Internet/ICT users to prevent being vulnerable to the cyber threats.
They include enabling automatic update feature for AVAST and AVG antivirus, upgrading AVAST and AVG antivirus to version 22.1.2504, as well as carrying out regular patch management.
– May. 26, 2022 @ 13:50 GMT | A I.
Tags: Dr. Ikechukwu Adinde NCC
