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SonicWall SSL VPN devices have become the target of Akira ransomware attacks as part of a newfound surge in activity observed in late July 2025. "In the intrusions reviewed, multiple pre-ransomware intrusions were observed within a short period of time, each involving VPN access through SonicWall SSL VPNs," Arctic Wolf Labs researcher Julian Tuin said in a report. The cybersecurity company suggested that the attacks could be exploiting an as-yet-undetermined security flaw in the appliances, meaning a zero-day vulnerability, given that some of the incidents affected fully-patched SonicWall devices. However, the possibility of credential-based attacks for initial access hasn't been ruled out. The uptick in attacks involving SonicWall SSL VPNs was first registered on July 15, 2025, although Arctic Wolf said that it has observed similar malicious VPN logins as far back as October 2024 , suggesting sustained efforts to target the devices. "A short interval was obser...

Apple on Tuesday released security updates for its entire software portfolio, including a fix for a vulnerability that Google said was exploited as a zero-day in the Chrome web browser earlier this month. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-6558 (CVSS score: 8.8), is an incorrect validation of untrusted input in the browser's ANGLE and GPU components that could result in a sandbox escape via a crafted HTML page. While there are no details on how the issue has been weaponized by threat actors, Google acknowledged that an "exploit for CVE-2025-6558 exists in the wild." Clément Lecigne and Vlad Stolyarov of Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) have been credited with discovering and reporting the shortcoming. The iPhone maker, in its latest round of software updates, also included patches for CVE-2025-6558, stating the vulnerability impacts the WebKit browser engine that powers its Safari browser. "This is a vulnerability in open-source code and Apple Sof...

Google has announced that it's making available a security feature called Device Bound Session Credentials (DBSC) in open beta to ensure that users are safeguarded against session cookie theft attacks. DBSC, first introduced as a prototype in April 2024, is designed to bind authentication sessions to a device so as to prevent threat actors from using stolen cookies to sign-in to victims' accounts and gain unauthorized access from a separate device under their control. "Available in the Chrome browser on Windows, DBSC strengthens security after you are logged in and helps bind a session cookie – small files used by websites to remember user information – to the device a user authenticated from," Andy Wen, senior director of product management at Google Workspace, said . DBSC is not only meant to secure user accounts post-authentication. It makes it a lot more difficult for bad actors to reuse session cookies and improves session integrity. The company also note...

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Some risks don't breach the perimeter—they arrive through signed software, clean resumes, or sanctioned vendors still hiding in plain sight. This week, the clearest threats weren't the loudest—they were the most legitimate-looking. In an environment where identity, trust, and tooling are all interlinked, the strongest attack path is often the one that looks like it belongs. Security teams are now challenged to defend systems not just from intrusions—but from trust itself being turned into a weapon. ⚡ Threat of the Week Microsoft SharePoint Attacks Traced to China — The fallout from an attack spree targeting defects in on-premises Microsoft SharePoint servers continues to spread a week after the discovery of the zero-day exploits, with more than 400 organizations globally compromised. The attacks have been attributed to two known Chinese hacking groups tracked as Linen Typhoon (aka APT27), Violet Typhoon (aka APT31), and a suspected China-based threat actor codenamed Storm-2603 t...

The recently disclosed critical Microsoft SharePoint vulnerability has been under exploitation as early as July 7, 2025, according to findings from Check Point Research. The cybersecurity company said it observed first exploitation attempts targeting an unnamed major Western government, with the activity intensifying on July 18 and 19, spanning government, telecommunications, and software sectors in North America and Western Europe. Check Point also said the exploitation efforts originated from three different IP addresses – 104.238.159[.]149, 107.191.58[.]76, and 96.9.125[.]147 – one of which was previously tied to the weaponization of security flaws in Ivanti Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) appliances ( CVE-2025-4427 and CVE-2025-4428 ). "We're witnessing an urgent and active threat: a critical zero-day in SharePoint on-prem is being exploited in the wild, putting thousands of global organizations at risk," Lotem Finkelstein, Director of Threat Intelligence at Chec...

A critical security vulnerability in Microsoft SharePoint Server has been weaponized as part of an "active, large-scale" exploitation campaign. The zero-day flaw, tracked as CVE-2025-53770 (CVSS score: 9.8), has been described as a variant of CVE-2025-49704 (CVSS score: 8.8), a code injection and remote code execution bug in Microsoft SharePoint Server that was addressed by the tech giant as part of its July 2025 Patch Tuesday updates. "Deserialization of untrusted data in on-premises Microsoft SharePoint Server allows an unauthorized attacker to execute code over a network," Microsoft said in an advisory released on July 19, 2025. The Windows maker further noted that it's preparing and fully testing a comprehensive update to resolve the issue. It credited Viettel Cyber Security for discovering and reporting the flaw through Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI). In a separate alert issued Saturday, Redmond said it's aware of active attacks ta...

A newly disclosed critical security flaw in CrushFTP has come under active exploitation in the wild. Assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2025-54309 , the vulnerability carries a CVSS score of 9.0. "CrushFTP 10 before 10.8.5 and 11 before 11.3.4_23, when the DMZ proxy feature is not used, mishandles AS2 validation and consequently allows remote attackers to obtain admin access via HTTPS," according to a description of the vulnerability in the NIST's National Vulnerability Database (NVD). CrushFTP, in an advisory, said it first detected the zero-day exploitation of the vulnerability in the wild on July 18, 2025, 9 a.m. CST, although it acknowledged that it may have been weaponized much earlier. "The attack vector was HTTP(S) for how they could exploit the server," the company said . "We had fixed a different issue related to AS2 in HTTP(S) not realizing that a prior bug could be used like this exploit was. Hackers apparently saw our code change, and figured...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new malware called MDifyLoader that has been observed in conjunction with cyber attacks exploiting security flaws in Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS) appliances. According to a report published by JPCERT/CC today, the threat actors behind the exploitation of CVE-2025-0282 and CVE-2025-22457 in intrusions observed between December 2024 and July 2025 have weaponized the vulnerabilities to drop MDifyLoader, which is then used to launch Cobalt Strike in memory. CVE-2025-0282 is a critical security flaw in ICS that could permit unauthenticated remote code execution. It was addressed by Ivanti in early January 2025. CVE-2025-22457, patched in February 2025, concerns a stack-based buffer overflow that could be exploited to execute arbitrary code. Previous findings from JPCERT/CC have revealed that CVE-2025-0282, which was weaponized in the wild as a zero-day beginning mid-December 2024, has been leveraged to deliver malware families like...

A threat activity cluster has been observed targeting fully-patched end-of-life SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 series appliances as part of a campaign designed to drop a backdoor called OVERSTEP . The malicious activity, dating back to at least October 2024, has been attributed by the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) to a hacking crew it tracks as UNC6148 . The number of known victims is "limited" at this stage. The tech giant assessed with high confidence that the threat actor is "leveraging credentials and one-time password (OTP) seeds stolen during previous intrusions, allowing them to regain access even after organizations have applied security updates." "Analysis of network traffic metadata records suggests that UNC6148 may have initially exfiltrated these credentials from the SMA appliance as early as January 2025." The exact initial access vector used to deliver the malware is currently not known due to the steps taken by the...

Google on Tuesday rolled out fixes for six security issues in its Chrome web browser, including one that it said has been exploited in the wild. The high-severity vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-6558 (CVSS score: 8.8), which has been described as an incorrect validation of untrusted input in the browser's ANGLE and GPU components. "Insufficient validation of untrusted input in ANGLE and GPU in Google Chrome prior to 138.0.7204.157 allowed a remote attacker to potentially perform a sandbox escape via a crafted HTML page," according to the description of the flaw from the NIST's National Vulnerability Database (NVD). ANGLE, short for "Almost Native Graphics Layer Engine," acts as a translation layer between Chrome's rendering engine and device-specific graphics drivers. Vulnerabilities in the module can let attackers escape Chrome's sandbox by abusing low-level GPU operations that browsers usually keep isolated, making this a rare but powerful path...

A Chinese national has been arrested in Milan, Italy, for his alleged links to a state-sponsored hacking group known as Silk Typhoon and for carrying out cyber attacks against American organizations and government agencies. The 33-year-old, Xu Zewei , has been charged with nine counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to cause damage to and obtain information by unauthorized access to protected computers, as well as committing aggravated identity theft. Details of the arrest were first reported by Italian media. Xu is alleged to have been involved in the U.S. computer intrusions between February 2020 and June 2021, including a mass attack spree that leveraged then-zero-day flaws in Microsoft Exchange Server, a cluster of activity the Windows maker designated as Hafnium . The suspect is also accused of participating in China's espionage efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, attempting to gain access to vaccine research at various U.S. universities, including the University of Texa...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday added four security flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation in the wild. The list of flaws is as follows - CVE-2014-3931 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A buffer overflow vulnerability in Multi-Router Looking Glass (MRLG) that could allow remote attackers to cause an arbitrary memory write and memory corruption CVE-2016-10033 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A command injection vulnerability in PHPMailer that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code within the context of the application or result in a denial-of-service (DoS) condition CVE-2019-5418 (CVSS score: 7.5) - A path traversal vulnerability in Ruby on Rails' Action View that could cause contents of arbitrary files on the target system's file system to be exposed CVE-2019-9621 (CVSS score: 7.5) - A Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability in the Zimbra Collaboration Suite that could ...

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a previously undocumented threat actor called NightEagle (aka APT-Q-95) that has been observed targeting Microsoft Exchange servers as a part of a zero-day exploit chain designed to target government, defense, and technology sectors in China. According to QiAnXin's RedDrip Team, the threat actor has been active since 2023 and has switched network infrastructure at an extremely fast rate. The findings were presented at CYDES 2025 , the third edition of Malaysia's National Cyber Defence & Security Exhibition and Conference held between July 1 and 3, 2025. "It seems to have the speed of an eagle and has been operating at night in China," the cybersecurity vendor said , explaining the rationale behind naming the adversary NightEagle. Attacks mounted by the threat actor have singled out entities operating in the high-tech, chip semiconductors, quantum technology, artificial intelligence, and military verticals with th...

The French cybersecurity agency on Tuesday revealed that a number of entities spanning governmental, telecommunications, media, finance, and transport sectors in the country were impacted by a malicious campaign undertaken by a Chinese hacking group by weaponizing several zero-day vulnerabilities in Ivanti Cloud Services Appliance (CSA) devices. The campaign, detected at the beginning of September 2024, has been attributed to a distinct intrusion set codenamed Houken , which is assessed to share some level overlaps with a threat cluster tracked by Google Mandiant under the moniker UNC5174 (aka Uteus or Uetus). "While its operators use zero-day vulnerabilities and a sophisticated rootkit, they also leverage a wide number of open-source tools mostly crafted by Chinese-speaking developers," the French National Agency for the Security of Information Systems (ANSSI) said . "Houken's attack infrastructure is made up of diverse elements -- including commercial VPNs and d...

With nearly 80% of cyber threats now mimicking legitimate user behavior, how are top SOCs determining what's legitimate traffic and what is potentially dangerous? Where do you turn when firewalls and endpoint detection and response (EDR) fall short at detecting the most important threats to your organization? Breaches at edge devices and VPN gateways have risen from 3% to 22%, according to Verizon's latest Data Breach Investigations report. EDR solutions are struggling to catch zero-day exploits, living-off-the-land techniques, and malware-free attacks. Nearly 80% of detected threats use malware-free techniques that mimic normal user behavior, as highlighted in CrowdStrike's 2025 Global Threat Report. The stark reality is that conventional detection methods are no longer sufficient as threat actors adapt their strategies, using clever techniques like credential theft or DLL hijacking to avoid discovery.  In response, security operations centers (SOCs) are turning to a multi-lay...

Google has released security updates to address a vulnerability in its Chrome browser for which an exploit exists in the wild. The zero-day vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-6554 (CVSS score: 8.1), has been described as a type confusion flaw in the V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine. "Type confusion in V8 in Google Chrome prior to 138.0.7204.96 allowed a remote attacker to perform arbitrary read/write via a crafted HTML page," according to a description of the bug on the NIST's National Vulnerability Database (NVD). Type confusion vulnerabilities can have severe consequences as they can be exploited to trigger unexpected software behavior, resulting in the execution of arbitrary code and program crashes. Zero-day bugs like this are especially risky because attackers often start using them before a fix is available. In real-world attacks, these flaws can let hackers install spyware, launch drive-by downloads, or quietly run harmful code — sometimes just by getting...

Cisco has released updates to address two maximum-severity security flaws in Identity Services Engine (ISE) and ISE Passive Identity Connector (ISE-PIC) that could permit an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands as the root user. The vulnerabilities, assigned the CVE identifiers CVE-2025-20281 and CVE-2025-20282, carry a CVSS score of 10.0 each. A description of the defects is below - CVE-2025-20281 - An unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability affecting Cisco ISE and ISE-PIC releases 3.3 and later that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the underlying operating system as root CVE-2025-20282 - An unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability affecting Cisco ISE and ISE-PIC release 3.4 that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to upload arbitrary files to an affected device and execute those files on the underlying operating system as root Cisco said CVE-2025-20281 is the result of insuffici...

Citrix has released security updates to address a critical flaw affecting NetScaler ADC that it said has been exploited in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-6543 , carries a CVSS score of 9.2 out of a maximum of 10.0. It has been described as a case of memory overflow that could result in unintended control flow and denial-of-service. However, successful exploitation requires the appliance to be configured as a Gateway (VPN virtual server, ICA Proxy, CVPN, RDP Proxy) or AAA virtual server. The shortcoming impacts the below versions - NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway 14.1 prior to 14.1-47.46  NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway 13.1 prior to 13.1-59.19 NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway 12.1 and 13.0 (vulnerable and end-of-life) NetScaler ADC 13.1-FIPS and NDcPP prior to 13.1-37.236-FIPS and NDcPP "Secure Private Access on-prem or Secure Private Access Hybrid deployments using NetScaler instances are also affected by the vulnerabilities," Citrix ...