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A new Go-based botnet has been spotted scanning and brute-forcing self-hosted websites using the WordPress content management system (CMS) to seize control of targeted systems. "This new brute forcer is part of a new campaign we have named GoTrim because it was written in Go and uses ':::trim:::' to split data communicated to and from the C2 server," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researchers Eduardo Altares, Joie Salvio, and Roy Tay  said . The active campaign, observed since September 2022, utilizes a bot network to perform distributed brute-force attacks in an attempt to login to the targeted web server. A successful break-in is followed by the operator installing a downloader PHP script in the newly compromised host that, in turn, is designed to deploy the "bot client" from a hard-coded URL, effectively adding the machine to the growing network. In its present form, GoTrim does not have self-propagation capabilities of its own, nor can it distribute oth

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has cautioned of ongoing Royal ransomware attacks targeting healthcare entities in the country. "While most of the known ransomware operators have performed Ransomware-as-a-Service, Royal appears to be a private group without any affiliates while maintaining financial motivation as their goal," the agency's Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center (HC3)  said  [PDF]. "The group does claim to steal data for double-extortion attacks, where they will also exfiltrate sensitive data." Royal ransomware, per  Fortinet FortiGuard Labs , is said to be active since at least the start of 2022. The malware is a 64-bit Windows executable written in C++ and is launched via the command line, indicating that it involves a human operator to trigger the infection after obtaining access to a targeted environment. Besides deleting volume shadow copies on the system, Royal utilizes the OpenSSL cryptographic library

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A novel Go-based botnet called  Zerobot  has been observed in the wild proliferating by taking advantage of nearly two dozen security vulnerabilities in the internet of things (IoT) devices and other software. The botnet "contains several modules, including self-replication, attacks for different protocols, and self-propagation," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin  said . "It also communicates with its command-and-control server using the WebSocket protocol." The campaign, which is said to have commenced after November 18, 2022, primarily singles out Windows and Linux operating systems to gain control of vulnerable devices. Zerobot gets its name from a propagation script that's used to retrieve the malicious payload after gaining access to a host depending on its microarchitecture implementation (e.g., "zero.arm64"). The malware is designed to target a wide range of CPU architectures such as i386, amd64, arm, arm64, mips, mips64, mips64

Fortinet on Monday revealed that the newly patched critical security vulnerability impacting its firewall and proxy products is being actively exploited in the wild. Tracked as  CVE-2022-40684  (CVSS score: 9.6), the flaw relates to an authentication bypass in FortiOS, FortiProxy, and FortiSwitchManager that could allow a remote attacker to perform unauthorized operations on the administrative interface via specially crafted HTTP(S) requests. "Fortinet is aware of an instance where this vulnerability was exploited, and recommends immediately validating your systems against the following indicator of compromise in the device's logs: user='Local_Process_Access,'" the company  noted  in an advisory. The list of impacted devices is below - FortiOS version 7.2.0 through 7.2.1 FortiOS version 7.0.0 through 7.0.6 FortiProxy version 7.2.0 FortiProxy version 7.0.0 through 7.0.6 FortiSwitchManager version 7.2.0, and FortiSwitchManager version 7.0.0 Updates hav

A variant of the Mirai botnet called Beastmode has been observed adopting newly disclosed vulnerabilities in TOTOLINK routers between February and March 2022 to infect unpatched devices and expand its reach potentially. "The Beastmode (aka B3astmode) Mirai-based DDoS campaign has aggressively updated its arsenal of exploits," Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs Research team  said . "Five new exploits were added within a month, with three targeting various models of TOTOLINK routers." The list of exploited vulnerabilities in TOTOLINK routers is as follows - CVE-2022-26210  (CVSS score: 9.8) - A command injection vulnerability that could be exploited to gain arbitrary code execution CVE-2022-26186  (CVSS score: 9.8) - A command injection vulnerability affecting TOTOLINK N600R and A7100RU routers, and CVE-2022-25075 to CVE-2022-25084  (CVSS scores: 9.8) - A command injection vulnerability impacting multiple TOTOLINK routers, leading to code execution The other e