Tavis Ormandy is an English computer security white hat hacker. He is currently employed by Google and was formerly part of Google's Project Zero team. [1]
Ormandy is credited with discovering severe vulnerabilities in LibTIFF, [2] Sophos' antivirus software [3] and Microsoft Windows. [4] With Natalie Silvanovich he discovered a severe vulnerability in FireEye products in 2015. [5]
His findings with Sophos' products led him to write a 30-page paper entitled "Sophail: Applied attacks against Sophos Antivirus" in 2012, which concludes that the company was "working with good intentions" but is "ill-equipped to handle the output of one co-operative security researcher working in his spare time" and that its products shouldn't be used on high-value systems. [6]
He also created an exploit in 2014 to demonstrate how a vulnerability in glibc known since 2005 could be used to gain root access on an affected machine running a 32-bit version of Fedora. [7]
In 2016, he demonstrated multiple vulnerabilities in Trend Micro Antivirus on Windows related to the Password Manager, [8] and vulnerabilities in Symantec security products.
In February 2017, he found and reported a critical bug in Cloudflare's infrastructure leaking user-sensitive data along with requests affecting millions of websites around the world which has been referred to as Cloudbleed (in reference to the Heartbleed bug that Google co-discovered). [9]
On or around May 15, 2023, he found and reported a vulnerability called Zenbleed (CVE-2023-20593) affecting all Zen 2 class processors.
Antivirus software, also known as anti-malware, is a computer program used to prevent, detect, and remove malware.
ESET, s.r.o., is a software company specializing in cybersecurity. ESET's security products are made in Europe and provide security software in over 200 countries and territories worldwide. Its software is localized into more than 30 languages.
Xcitium, formerly known as Comodo Security Solutions, Inc., is a cybersecurity company headquartered in Bloomfield, New Jersey.
In computer security, coordinated vulnerability disclosure is a vulnerability disclosure model in which a vulnerability or an issue is disclosed to the public only after the responsible parties have been allowed sufficient time to patch or remedy the vulnerability or issue. This coordination distinguishes the CVD model from the "full disclosure" model.
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Malwarebytes is anti-malware software for Microsoft Windows, macOS, ChromeOS, Android, and iOS that finds and removes malware. Made by Malwarebytes Corporation, it was first released in January 2006. This is available in a free version, which scans for and removes malware when started manually, and a paid version, which additionally provides scheduled scans, real-time protection and a flash-memory scanner.
Kaspersky Lab is a Russian multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider headquartered in Moscow, Russia, and operated by a holding company in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1997 by Eugene Kaspersky, Natalya Kaspersky and Alexey De-Monderik. Kaspersky Lab develops and sells antivirus, internet security, password management, endpoint security, and other cybersecurity products and services.
Pwn2Own is a computer hacking contest held annually at the CanSecWest security conference. First held in April 2007 in Vancouver, the contest is now held twice a year, most recently in March 2024. Contestants are challenged to exploit widely used software and mobile devices with previously unknown vulnerabilities. Winners of the contest receive the device that they exploited and a cash prize. The Pwn2Own contest serves to demonstrate the vulnerability of devices and software in widespread use while also providing a checkpoint on the progress made in security since the previous year.
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Grammarly is a Ukraine-founded cloud-based typing assistant, headquartered in San Francisco. It reviews spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement, and delivery mistakes in English texts, detects plagiarism, and suggests replacements for the identified errors. It also allows users to customize their style, tone, and context-specific language.
A bug bounty program is a deal offered by many websites, organizations, and software developers by which individuals can receive recognition and compensation for reporting bugs, especially those pertaining to security exploits and vulnerabilities.
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Cloudbleed was a Cloudflare buffer overflow disclosed by Project Zero on February 17, 2017. Cloudflare's code disclosed the contents of memory that contained the private information of other customers, such as HTTP cookies, authentication tokens, HTTP POST bodies, and other sensitive data. As a result, data from Cloudflare customers was leaked to all other Cloudflare customers that had access to server memory. This occurred, according to numbers provided by Cloudflare at the time, more than 18,000,000 times before the problem was corrected. Some of the leaked data was cached by search engines.
Ben Hawkes is a computer security expert and white hat hacker from New Zealand, previously employed by Google as manager of their Project Zero.
Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) is an international software vulnerability initiative that was started in 2005 by TippingPoint, a division of 3Com. The program was acquired by Trend Micro as a part of the HP TippingPoint acquisition in 2015.
Log4Shell (CVE-2021-44228) is a zero-day vulnerability in Log4j, a popular Java logging framework, involving arbitrary code execution. The vulnerability had existed unnoticed since 2013 and was privately disclosed to the Apache Software Foundation, of which Log4j is a project, by Chen Zhaojun of Alibaba Cloud's security team on 24 November 2021. Before an official CVE identifier was made available on 10 December 2021, the vulnerability circulated with the name "Log4Shell", given by Free Wortley of the LunaSec team, which was initially used to track the issue online. Apache gave Log4Shell a CVSS severity rating of 10, the highest available score. The exploit was simple to execute and is estimated to have had the potential to affect hundreds of millions of devices.