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Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed multiple security flaws in SimpleHelp remote access software that could lead to information disclosure, privilege escalation, and remote code execution. Horizon3.ai researcher Naveen Sunkavally, in a technical report detailing the findings, said the "vulnerabilities are trivial to reverse and exploit." The list of identified flaws is as follows - CVE-2024-57727 - An unauthenticated path traversal vulnerability that allows an attacker to download arbitrary files from the SimpleHelp server, including the serverconfig.xml file that contains hashed passwords for the SimpleHelpAdmin account and other local technician accounts CVE-2024-57728 - An arbitrary file upload vulnerability that allows an attacker with SimpleHelpAdmin privileges (or as a technician with admin privileges) to upload arbitrary files anywhere on the SimpleServer host, potentially leading to remote code execution CVE-2024-57726 - A privilege escalation vulnerab...

Microsoft has shed light on a now-patched security flaw impacting Apple macOS that, if successfully exploited, could have allowed an attacker running as "root" to bypass the operating system's System Integrity Protection ( SIP ) and install malicious kernel drivers by loading third-party kernel extensions. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2024-44243 (CVSS score: 5.5), a medium-severity bug that was addressed by Apple as part of macOS Sequoia 15.2 released last month. The iPhone maker described it as a "configuration issue" that could permit a malicious app to modify protected parts of the file system. "Bypassing SIP could lead to serious consequences, such as increasing the potential for attackers and malware authors to successfully install rootkits, create persistent malware, bypass Transparency, Consent and Control (TCC), and expand the attack surface for additional techniques and exploits," Jonathan Bar Or of the Microsoft Threat Intelligen...

As SaaS providers race to integrate AI into their product offerings to stay competitive and relevant, a new challenge has emerged in the world of AI: shadow AI.  Shadow AI refers to the unauthorized use of AI tools and copilots at organizations. For example, a developer using ChatGPT to assist with writing code, a salesperson downloading an AI-powered meeting transcription tool, or a customer support person using Agentic AI to automate tasks – without going through the proper channels. When these tools are used without IT or the Security team's knowledge, they often lack sufficient security controls, putting company data at risk. Shadow AI Detection Challenges Because shadow AI tools often embed themselves in approved business applications via AI assistants, copilots, and agents they are even more tricky to discover than traditional shadow IT. While traditional shadow apps can be identified through network monitoring methodologies that scan for unauthorized connections based on...

New research has pulled back the curtain on a "deficiency" in Google's "Sign in with Google" authentication flow that exploits a quirk in domain ownership to gain access to sensitive data. "Google's OAuth login doesn't protect against someone purchasing a failed startup's domain and using it to re-create email accounts for former employees," Truffle Security co-founder and CEO Dylan Ayrey said in a Monday report.  "And while you can't access old email data, you can use those accounts to log into all the different SaaS products that the organization used." The San Francisco-based company said the issue has the potential to put millions of American users' data at risk simply by purchasing a defunct domain associated with a failed startup and gaining unauthorized access to old employee accounts related to various applications like OpenAI ChatGPT, Slack, Notion, Zoom, and even HR systems. "The most sensitive accou...

Threat hunters are calling attention to a new campaign that has targeted Fortinet FortiGate firewall devices with management interfaces exposed on the public internet. "The campaign involved unauthorized administrative logins on management interfaces of firewalls, creation of new accounts, SSL VPN authentication through those accounts, and various other configuration changes," cybersecurity firm Arctic Wolf said in an analysis published last week. The malicious activity is believed to have commenced in mid-November 2024, with unknown threat actors gaining unauthorized access to management interfaces on affected firewalls to alter configurations and extract credentials using DCSync . The exact initial access vector is currently not known, although it has been assessed with "high confidence" that it's likely driven by the exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability given the "compressed timeline across affected organizations as well as firmware versions af...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday added a second security flaw impacting BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access (PRA) and Remote Support (RS) products to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2024-12686 (CVSS score: 6.6), a medium-severity bug that could allow an attacker with existing administrative privileges to inject commands and run as a site user. "BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access (PRA) and Remote Support (RS) contain an OS command injection vulnerability that can be exploited by an attacker with existing administrative privileges to upload a malicious file," CISA said. "Successful exploitation of this vulnerability can allow a remote attacker to execute underlying operating system commands within the context of the site user." The addition of CVE-2024-12686 to the KEV catalog comes nearly a month after it a...

A recently disclosed critical security flaw impacting the Aviatrix Controller cloud networking platform has come under active exploitation in the wild to deploy backdoors and cryptocurrency miners. Cloud security firm Wiz said it's currently responding to "multiple incidents" involving the weaponization of CVE-2024-50603 (CVSS score: 10.0), a maximum severity bug that could result in unauthenticated remote code execution. Put differently, a successful exploitation of the flaw could permit an attacker to inject malicious operating system commands owing to the fact that certain API endpoints do not adequately sanitize user-supplied input. The vulnerability has been addressed in versions 7.1.4191 and 7.2.4996. Jakub Korepta, a security researcher at Polish cybersecurity company Securing, has been credited with discovering and reporting the shortcoming. A proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit has since been made publicly available . Data gathered by the cybersecurity company...

Palo Alto Networks has released software patches to address several security flaws in its Expedition migration tool, including a high-severity bug that an authenticated attacker could exploit to access sensitive data. "Multiple vulnerabilities in the Palo Alto Networks Expedition migration tool enable an attacker to read Expedition database contents and arbitrary files, as well as create and delete arbitrary files on the Expedition system," the company said in an advisory. "These files include information such as usernames, cleartext passwords, device configurations, and device API keys for firewalls running PAN-OS software." Expedition, a free tool offered by Palo Alto Networks to facilitate migration from other firewall vendors to its own platform, reached end-of-life (EoL) as of December 31, 2024. The list of flaws is as follows - CVE-2025-0103 (CVSS score: 7.8) - An SQL injection vulnerability that enables an authenticated attacker to reveal Expedition...

Threat actors are attempting to take advantage of a recently disclosed security flaw impacting GFI KerioControl firewalls that, if successfully exploited, could allow malicious actors to achieve remote code execution (RCE). The vulnerability in question, CVE-2024-52875 , refers to a carriage return line feed ( CRLF ) injection attack, paving the way for HTTP response splitting , which could then lead to a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw. Successful exploitation of the 1-click RCE flaw permits an attacker to inject malicious inputs into HTTP response headers by introducing carriage return (\r) and line feed (\n) characters.  The flaw impacts KerioControl versions 9.2.5 through 9.4.5, according to security researcher Egidio Romano, who discovered and reported the flaw in early November 2024. The HTTP response splitting flaws have been uncovered in the following URI paths - /nonauth/addCertException.cs /nonauth/guestConfirm.cs /nonauth/expiration.cs "User input passed ...

Ivanti is warning that a critical security flaw impacting Ivanti Connect Secure, Policy Secure, and ZTA Gateways has come under active exploitation in the wild beginning mid-December 2024. The security vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-0282 (CVSS score: 9.0), a stack-based buffer overflow that affects Ivanti Connect Secure before version 22.7R2.5, Ivanti Policy Secure before version 22.7R1.2, and Ivanti Neurons for ZTA gateways before version 22.7R2.3. "Successful exploitation of CVE-2025-0282 could lead to unauthenticated remote code execution," Ivanti said in an advisory . "Threat actor activity was identified by the Integrity Checker Tool (ICT) on the same day it occurred, enabling Ivanti to respond promptly and rapidly develop a fix." Also patched by the company is another high-severity flaw (CVE-2025-0283, CVSS score: 7.0) that allows a locally authenticated attacker to escalate their privileges. The vulnerabilities, addressed in version 22.7R2.5, imp...

A Mirai botnet variant has been found exploiting a newly disclosed security flaw impacting Four-Faith industrial routers since early November 2024 with the goal of conducting distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The botnet maintains approximately 15,000 daily active IP addresses, with the infections primarily scattered across China, Iran, Russia, Turkey, and the United States. Exploiting an arsenal of over 20 known security vulnerabilities and weak Telnet credentials for initial access, the malware is known to have been active since February 2024. The botnet has been dubbed "gayfemboy" in reference to the offensive term present in the source code. QiAnXin XLab said it observed the malware leveraging a zero-day vulnerability in industrial routers manufactured by China-based Four-Faith to deliver the artifacts as early as November 9, 2024. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2024-12856 (CVSS score: 7.2), which refers to an operating system (OS) command injectio...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday added three flaws impacting Mitel MiCollab and Oracle WebLogic Server to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The list of vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2024-41713 (CVSS score: 9.1) - A path traversal vulnerability in Mitel MiCollab that could allow an attacker to gain unauthorized and unauthenticated access CVE-2024-55550 (CVSS score: 4.4) - A path traversal vulnerability in Mitel MiCollab that could allow an authenticated attacker with administrative privileges to read local files within the system due to insufficient input sanitization CVE-2020-2883 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A security vulnerability in Oracle WebLogic Server that could be exploited by an unauthenticated attacker with network access via IIOP or T3 It's worth noting that CVE-2024-41713 could be chained with CVE-2024-55550 to permit an unauthenticated, remote attacker to re...

Taiwan-based Moxa has warned of two security vulnerabilities impacting its cellular routers, secure routers, and network security appliances that could allow privilege escalation and command execution. The list of vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2024-9138 (CVSS 4.0 score: 8.6) - A hard-coded credentials vulnerability that could allow an authenticated user to escalate privileges and gain root-level access to the system, leading to system compromise, unauthorized modifications, data exposure, or service disruption CVE-2024-9140 (CVSS 4.0 score: 9.3) - A vulnerability allows attackers to exploit special characters to bypass input restrictions, potentially leading to unauthorized command execution The shortcomings, reported by security researcher Lars Haulin, affect the below products and firmware versions - CVE-2024-9138 - EDR-810 Series (Firmware version 5.12.37 and earlier), EDR-8010 Series (Firmware version 3.13.1 and earlier), EDR-G902 Series (Firmware version 5.7.25 ...

A high-severity security flaw has been disclosed in ProjectDiscovery's Nuclei , a widely-used open-source vulnerability scanner that, if successfully exploited, could allow attackers to bypass signature checks and potentially execute malicious code. Tracked as CVE-2024-43405 , it carries a CVSS score of 7.4 out of a maximum of 10.0. It impacts all versions of Nuclei later than 3.0.0. "The vulnerability stems from a discrepancy between how the signature verification process and the YAML parser handle newline characters, combined with the way multiple signatures are processed," according to a description of the vulnerability. "This allows an attacker to inject malicious content into a template while maintaining a valid signature for the benign part of the template." Nuclei is a vulnerability scanner designed to probe modern applications, infrastructure, cloud platforms, and networks to identify security flaws. The scanning engine makes use of templates , wh...

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Friday issued sanctions against a Beijing-based cybersecurity company known as Integrity Technology Group, Incorporated for orchestrating several cyber attacks against U.S. victims. These attacks have been publicly attributed to a Chinese state-sponsored threat actor tracked as Flax Typhoon (aka Ethereal Panda or RedJuliett ), which was outed last year as operating an Internet of Things (IoT) botnet called Raptor Train . The hacking crew has been active since at least mid-2021, targeting various entities across North America, Europe, Africa, and across Asia. Attacks mounted by Flax Typhoon have typically leveraged known vulnerabilities to gain initial access to victims' computers and then make use of legitimate remote access software to maintain persistent access.  The Treasury Department described Chinese malicious cyber actors as one of the "most active and most persistent threats to U.S. nati...

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a new jailbreak technique that could be used to get past a large language model's (LLM) safety guardrails and produce potentially harmful or malicious responses. The multi-turn (aka many-shot) attack strategy has been codenamed Bad Likert Judge by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers Yongzhe Huang, Yang Ji, Wenjun Hu, Jay Chen, Akshata Rao, and Danny Tsechansky. "The technique asks the target LLM to act as a judge scoring the harmfulness of a given response using the Likert scale , a rating scale measuring a respondent's agreement or disagreement with a statement," the Unit 42 team said . "It then asks the LLM to generate responses that contain examples that align with the scales. The example that has the highest Likert scale can potentially contain the harmful content." The explosion in popularity of artificial intelligence in recent years has also led to a new class of security exploits called prompt in...

Details have emerged about three now-patched security vulnerabilities in Dynamics 365 and Power Apps Web API that could result in data exposure. The flaws, discovered by Melbourne-based cybersecurity company Stratus Security, have been addressed as of May 2024. Two of the three shortcomings reside in Power Platform's OData Web API Filter , while the third vulnerability is rooted in the FetchXML API . The root cause of the first vulnerability is the lack of access control on the OData Web API Filter, thereby allowing access to the contacts table that holds sensitive information such as full names, phone numbers, addresses, financial data, and password hashes. A threat actor could then weaponize the flaw to perform a boolean-based search to extract the complete hash by guessing each character of the hash sequentially until the correct value is identified. "For example, we start by sending startswith(adx_identity_passwordhash, 'a') then startswith( adx_identity_p...

Threat hunters have disclosed a new "widespread timing-based vulnerability class" that leverages a double-click sequence to facilitate clickjacking attacks and account takeovers in almost all major websites. The technique has been codenamed DoubleClickjacking by security researcher Paulos Yibelo. "Instead of relying on a single click, it takes advantage of a double-click sequence," Yibelo said . "While it might sound like a small change, it opens the door to new UI manipulation attacks that bypass all known clickjacking protections, including the X-Frame-Options header or a SameSite: Lax/Strict cookie." Clickjacking , also called UI redressing, refers to an attack technique in which users are tricked into clicking on a seemingly innocuous web page element (e.g., a button), leading to the deployment of malware or exfiltration of sensitive data. DoubleClickjacking is a variation of this theme that exploits the gap between the start of a click and the...

The United States Treasury Department said it suffered a "major cybersecurity incident" that allowed suspected Chinese threat actors to remotely access some computers and unclassified documents.  "On December 8, 2024, Treasury was notified by a third-party software service provider, BeyondTrust, that a threat actor had gained access to a key used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service used to remotely provide technical support for Treasury Departmental Offices (DO) end users," the department said in a letter informing the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. "With access to the stolen key, the threat actor was able to override the service's security, remotely access certain Treasury DO user workstations, and access certain unclassified documents maintained by those users." The federal agency said it has been working with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered three security weaknesses in Microsoft's Azure Data Factory Apache Airflow integration that, if successfully exploited, could have allowed an attacker to gain the ability to conduct various covert actions, including data exfiltration and malware deployment. "Exploiting these flaws could allow attackers to gain persistent access as shadow administrators over the entire Airflow Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said in an analysis published earlier this month. The vulnerabilities, albeit classified as low severity by Microsoft, are listed below - Misconfigured Kubernetes RBAC in Airflow cluster Misconfigured secret handling of Azure's internal Geneva service, and Weak authentication for Geneva Besides obtaining unauthorized access, the attacker could take advantage of the flaws in the Geneva service to potentially tamper with log data or send fake logs to avoid raising suspicion when c...