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A suspected China-nexus threat actor exploited a recently patched vulnerability in Fortinet FortiOS SSL-VPN as a zero-day in attacks targeting a European government entity and a managed service provider (MSP) located in Africa. Telemetry evidence gathered by Google-owned Mandiant indicates that the exploitation occurred as early as October 2022, at least nearly two months before fixes were released. "This incident continues China's pattern of exploiting internet facing devices, specifically those used for managed security purposes (e.g., firewalls, IPS\IDS appliances etc.)," Mandiant researchers  said  in a technical report. The attacks entailed the use of a sophisticated backdoor dubbed  BOLDMOVE , a Linux variant of which is specifically designed to run on Fortinet's FortiGate firewalls. The intrusion vector in question relates to the exploitation of  CVE-2022-42475 , a heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability in FortiOS SSL-VPN that could result in unauthenti

A zero-day vulnerability in FortiOS SSL-VPN that Fortinet addressed last month was exploited by unknown actors in attacks targeting governments and other large organizations. "The complexity of the exploit suggests an advanced actor and that it is highly targeted at governmental or government-related targets," Fortinet researchers  said  in a post-mortem analysis published this week. The attacks entailed the exploitation of  CVE-2022-42475 , a heap-based buffer overflow flaw that could enable an unauthenticated remote attacker to execute arbitrary code via specifically crafted requests. The infection chain analyzed by the company shows that the end goal was to deploy a generic Linux implant modified for FortiOS that's equipped to compromise Fortinet's intrusion prevention system ( IPS ) software and establish connections with a remote server to download additional malware and execute commands. Fortinet said it was unable to recover the payloads used in the subse

It comes as no surprise that today's cyber threats are orders of magnitude more complex than those of the past. And the ever-evolving tactics that attackers use demand the adoption of better, more holistic and consolidated ways to meet this non-stop challenge. Security teams constantly look for ways to reduce risk while improving security posture, but many approaches offer piecemeal solutions – zeroing in on one particular element of the evolving threat landscape challenge – missing the forest for the trees.  In the last few years, Exposure Management has become known as a comprehensive way of reigning in the chaos, giving organizations a true fighting chance to reduce risk and improve posture. In this article I'll cover what Exposure Management is, how it stacks up against some alternative approaches and why building an Exposure Management program should be on  your 2024 to-do list. What is Exposure Management?  Exposure Management is the systematic identification, evaluation,

Fortinet has warned of a high-severity flaw affecting multiple versions of FortiADC application delivery controller that could lead to the execution of arbitrary code. "An improper neutralization of special elements used in an OS command vulnerability in FortiADC may allow an authenticated attacker with access to the web GUI to execute unauthorized code or commands via specifically crafted HTTP requests," the company  said  in an advisory. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-39947 (CVSS score: 8.6) and internally discovered by its product security team, impacts the following versions - FortiADC version 7.0.0 through 7.0.2 FortiADC version 6.2.0 through 6.2.3 FortiADC version 6.1.0 through 6.1.6 FortiADC version 6.0.0 through 6.0.4 FortiADC version 5.4.0 through 5.4.5 Users are recommended to upgrade to FortiADC versions 6.2.4 and 7.0.2 as and when they become available. The  January 2023 patches  also address a number of command injection vulnerabilities in Fo

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

Fortinet on Monday issued emergency patches for a severe security flaw affecting its FortiOS SSL-VPN product that it said is being actively exploited in the wild. Tracked as  CVE-2022-42475  (CVSS score: 9.3), the critical bug relates to a heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code via specially crafted requests. The company  said  it's "aware of an instance where this vulnerability was exploited in the wild," urging customers to move quickly to apply the updates. The following products are impacted by the issue - FortiOS version 7.2.0 through 7.2.2 FortiOS version 7.0.0 through 7.0.8 FortiOS version 6.4.0 through 6.4.10 FortiOS version 6.2.0 through 6.2.11 FortiOS-6K7K version 7.0.0 through 7.0.7 FortiOS-6K7K version 6.4.0 through 6.4.9 FortiOS-6K7K version 6.2.0 through 6.2.11 FortiOS-6K7K version 6.0.0 through 6.0.14 Patches are available in FortiOS versions 7.2.3, 7.0.9, 6.4.11, and 6

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

NOTE: In this blog, Zerobot refers to a botnet that spreads primarily through IoT and web application vulnerabilities. It is not associated with the chatbot ZeroBot.ai. 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

A now-patched vulnerability in VMware Workspace ONE Access has been observed being exploited to deliver both cryptocurrency miners and ransomware on affected machines. "The attacker intends to utilize a victim's resources as much as possible, not only to install RAR1Ransom for extortion, but also to spread GuardMiner to collect cryptocurrency," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin  said  in a Thursday report. The issue, tracked as CVE-2022-22954 (CVSS score: 9.8), concerns a remote code execution vulnerability that stems from a case of server-side template injection. Although the shortcoming was addressed by the virtualization services provider in April 2022, it has since come under active exploitation in the wild. Fortinet said it observed in August 2022 attacks that sought to weaponize the flaw to deploy the  Mirai botnet  on Linux devices as well as the RAR1Ransom and  GuardMiner , a variant of the XMRig Monero miner. The Mirai sample is retrieved fr

A proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code has been made available for the recently disclosed critical security flaw affecting Fortinet FortiOS, FortiProxy, and FortiSwitchManager, making it imperative that users move quickly to apply the patches. "FortiOS exposes a management web portal that allows a user to configure the system," Horizon3.ai researcher James Horseman  said . "Additionally, a user can SSH into the system which exposes a locked down CLI interface." The issue, tracked as  CVE-2022-40684  (CVSS score: 9.6), concerns an  authentication bypass  vulnerability that could allow a remote attacker to perform malicious operations on the administrative interface via specially crafted HTTP(S) requests. A successful exploitation of the shortcoming is tantamount to granting complete access "to do just about anything" on the affected system, including altering network configurations, adding malicious users, and intercepting network traffic. That said,

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

Fortinet has privately warned its customers of a security flaw affecting FortiGate firewalls and FortiProxy web proxies that could potentially allow an attacker to perform unauthorized actions on susceptible devices. Tracked as CVE-2022-40684 (CVSS score: 9.6), the critical flaw relates to an authentication bypass vulnerability that may permit an unauthenticated adversary to carry out arbitrary operations on the administrative interface via a specially crafted HTTP(S) request. The issue impacts the following versions, and has been addressed in FortiOS versions  7.0.7  and  7.2.2 , and FortiProxy versions 7.0.7 and 7.2.1 released this week: FortiOS - From 7.0.0 to 7.0.6 and from 7.2.0 to 7.2.1 FortiProxy - From 7.0.0 to 7.0.6 and 7.2.0 "Due to the ability to exploit this issue remotely, Fortinet is strongly recommending all customers with the vulnerable versions to perform an immediate upgrade," the company  cautioned  in an alert shared by a security researcher w

A newly observed phishing campaign is leveraging the recently disclosed Follina security vulnerability to distribute a previously undocumented backdoor on Windows systems. "Rozena is a backdoor malware that is capable of injecting a remote shell connection back to the attacker's machine," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin  said  in a report this week. Tracked as  CVE-2022-30190 , the now-patched Microsoft Windows Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT) remote code execution vulnerability has come under heavy exploitation in recent weeks ever since it came to light in late May 2022. The starting point for the latest attack chain observed by Fortinet is a weaponized  Office document  that, when opened, connects to a  Discord CDN URL  to retrieve an HTML file (" index.htm ") that, in turn, invokes the diagnostic utility using a PowerShell command to download next-stage payloads from the same CDN attachment space. This includes the Rozena implant ("Word

Cisco on Wednesday rolled out patches for  10 security flaws  spanning multiple products, one of which is rated Critical in severity and could be weaponized to conduct absolute path traversal attacks. The issues, tracked as  CVE-2022-20812 and CVE-2022-20813 , affect Cisco Expressway Series and Cisco TelePresence Video Communication Server (VCS) and "could allow a remote attacker to overwrite arbitrary files or conduct null byte poisoning attacks on an affected device," the company  said  in an advisory. CVE-2022-20812 (CVSS score: 9.0), which concerns a case of arbitrary file overwrite in the cluster database API, requires the authenticated, remote attacker to have Administrator read-write privileges on the application so as to be able to mount path traversal attacks as a root user. "This vulnerability is due to insufficient input validation of user-supplied command arguments," the company said. "An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by authenticati

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

Details have emerged about a new unpatched security vulnerability in Fortinet's web application firewall (WAF) appliances that could be abused by a remote, authenticated attacker to execute malicious commands on the system. "An OS command injection vulnerability in FortiWeb's management interface (version 6.3.11 and prior) can allow a remote, authenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the system, via the SAML server configuration page," cybersecurity firm Rapid7  said  in an advisory published Tuesday. "This vulnerability appears to be related to  CVE-2021-22123 , which was addressed in  FG-IR-20-120 ." Rapid7 said it discovered and reported the issue in June 2021. Fortinet is expected to release a patch at the end of August with version Fortiweb 6.4.1. The command injection flaw is yet to be assigned a CVE identifier, but it has a severity rating of 8.7 on the CVSS scoring system. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability can allow auth

Check Point researchers have discovered multiple security vulnerabilities in Fortnite, a massively popular online battle game, one of which could have allowed remote attackers to completely takeover player accounts just by tricking users into clicking an unsuspectable link. The reported Fortnite flaws include a SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS) bug, a web application firewall bypass issue, and most importantly an OAuth account takeover vulnerability. Full account takeover could be a nightmare, especially for players of such a hugely popular online game that has been played by 80 million users worldwide, and when a good Fortnite account has been sold on eBay for over $50,000. The Fortnite game lets its players log in to their accounts using third-party Single Sign-On (SSO) providers, such as Facebook, Google, Xbox, and PlayStation accounts. According to the researchers, the combination of cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw and a malicious redirect issue on the Epic Games&

Last week, a group calling itself " The Shadow Brokers " published what it said was a set of NSA "cyber weapons," including some working exploits for the Internet's most crucial network infrastructure, apparently stolen from the agency's Equation Group in 2013. Well, talking about the authenticity of those exploits, The Intercept published Friday a new set of documents from the Edward Snowden archive, which confirms that the files leaked by the Shadow Brokers contain authentic NSA software and hacking tools used to secretly infect computers worldwide. As I previously mentioned , the leaked documents revealed how the NSA was systematically spying on customers of big technology companies like Cisco, Fortinet, and Juniper for at least a decade. Hacking tools from The Shadow Brokers leak named ExtraBacon, EpicBanana, and JetPlow, contain exploits that can compromise Cisco firewall products including devices from the Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) li

Malwares are getting updated during the age of social networking. FortiGuard Labs researchers have discovered a new malware called ' Rodpicom Botnet ' that spreads via messaging applications such as Skype and MSN Messenger. Dubbed W32/Rodpicom.A - Rodpicom Botnet sends a message to the victim with a link to a malicious site that leads to downloadable content. When the user clicks the link, the attack downloads another strain of malware, known as Dorkbot . Once the target machine is infected, it checks to see if the victim is using any messaging applications such as Skype or MSN Messenger.  It is revealed that, the malware employs new stealth tactics, including an exception handling technique that generates its own error to dodge analysis and relies on an anti-emulator that attacks the heuristic-scanning capabilities in antivirus software and enables its code to jump around several hundred times. The malware is enough smart to checks the language of the installed operating