PHP is a widely used programming language that is put to use in the production of dynamic web pages. On the other hand, much like any other program, it is not completely safe from security flaws. CVE-2023–3823 and CVE-2023–3824 are the names of two new security flaws that have been identified in PHP during the course of the last several months.

An information disclosure vulnerability known as CVE-2023–3823 exists in PHP applications and makes it possible for a remote attacker to access sensitive data stored inside such applications. Inadequate validation of the XML input given by the user is the root cause of the vulnerability. This vulnerability might be exploited by the attacker by having them transmit a specially designed piece of XML code to the program. The program would then proceed to parse the code, at which point the attacker would be able to obtain access to sensitive information such as the contents of arbitrary files on the system or the results of queries made to external sources.

This issue may affect any program, library, or service that interacts with XML documents in any way, including processing or communicating with them. Because to the hard work done by nickvergessen, a security researcher, who also released the proof-of-concept.

A legitimate Windows search feature is being exploited by unknown malicious actors to download arbitrary payloads from remote servers and compromise targeted systems with remote access trojans such as AsyncRAT and Remcos RAT.

The novel attack technique, per Trellix, takes advantage of the “search-ms:” URI protocol handler, which offers the ability for applications and HTML links to launch custom local searches on a device, and the “search:” application protocol, a mechanism for calling the desktop search application on Windows.

“Attackers are directing users to websites that exploit the ‘search-ms’ functionality using JavaScript hosted on the page,” security researchers Mathanraj Thangaraju and Sijo Jacob said in a Thursday write-up. “This technique has even been extended to HTML attachments, expanding the attack surface.”

Zero-day vulnerabilities in Windows Installers for the Atera remote monitoring and management software could act as a springboard to launch privilege escalation attacks.

The flaws, discovered by Mandiant on February 28, 2023, have been assigned the identifiers CVE-2023–26077 and CVE-2023–26078, with the issues remediated in versions 1.8.3.7 and 1.8.4.9 released by Atera on April 17, 2023, and June 26, 2023, respectively.

“The ability to initiate an operation from a NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM context can present potential security risks if not properly managed,” security researcher Andrew Oliveau said. “For instance, misconfigured Custom Actions running as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM can be exploited by attackers to execute local privilege escalation attacks.”