The British GCHQ has disclosed dozens vulnerabilities this year

The CESG is considered the Information Security Arm of GCHQ, it has disclosed more than 20 vulnerabilities affecting multiple software this year.

The British intelligence agency GCHQ has disclosed more than 20 vulnerabilities affecting multiple software. The information was shared by a GCHQ spokesperson with the Motherboard.

The flaws were discovered by the CESG (Communications-Electronics Security Group), which is considered the Information Security Arm of GCHQ.

“So far in 2016 GCHQ/CESG has disclosed more than 20 vulnerabilities across a number of software products,” is the statement released by the GCHQ spokesperson to Motherboard.

Among the vulnerabilities disclosed by the CESG this year, there is also a serious flaw in the Firefox Browser version 46, a kernel vulnerability in OS X El Captain v10.11.4, a couple of vulnerabilities in Squid, and two bugs in the iOS 9.3.

Some of the bugs allow attackers to execute arbitrary code on the vulnerable devices.

“We are not always credited by vendors for bugs that we disclose. We ask companies for credit in bulletins that they may publish, but recognise that this is not always possible,” said a GCHQ spokesperson.

The disclosure of security flaws affecting products on the market is unusual when dealing with intelligence agencies and law enforcement that use to exploit them for their hacking operations.

In August 2014, the BBC reported that the executive director of the Tor Project revealed that both US and UK intelligence agencies share bugs anonymously with Tor developers.

The information disclosed by Andrew Leman, in an interview with BBC confirm the existence of groups of experts inside the organizations that anonymously leak information about Tor vulnerabilities in order for the bugs to get patched.

“There’s a lot of groundswell of support as to what is going on, but at the same time there’s the other half of the organization that is: ‘You know what? People shouldn’t have privacy,’ and ‘Let’s go out and attack these things,’”“So there is always a balance between those who protect our freedom and liberty and those who don’t want you to have it.” Lewman said.

Lewman confirmed that agency insiders ordinary used Tor’s mechanism for anonymous bug submissions which doesn’t request any information to the researchers which provide information on bugs in the Tor network.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – GCHQ / CESG, hacking)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.