Hackers are actively trying to steal passwords from two widely used VPNs

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Hackers are actively unleashing attacks that attempt to steal encryption keys, passwords, and other sensitive data from servers that have failed to apply critical fixes for two widely used virtual private network (VPN) products, researchers said.

The vulnerabilities can be exploited by sending unpatched servers Web requests that contain a special sequence of characters, researchers at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas said earlier this month. The pre-authorization file-reading vulnerabilities resided in the Fortigate SSL VPN, installed on about 480,000 servers, and the competing Pulse Secure SSL VPN, installed on about 50,000 machines, researchers from Devcore Security Consulting reported.