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The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday added a now-patched high-severity security flaw impacting Acclaim Systems USAHERDS to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2021-44207 (CVSS score: 8.1), a case of hard-coded, static credentials in Acclaim USAHERDS that could allow an attacker to ultimately execute arbitrary code on susceptible servers. Specifically, it concerns the use of static ValidationKey and DecryptionKey values in version 7.4.0.1 and prior that could be weaponized to achieve remote code execution on the server that runs the application. That said, an attacker would have to leverage some other means to obtain the keys in the first place. "These keys are used to provide security for the application ViewState," Google-owned Mandiant said in advisory for the flaw back in December 2021. "A threat actor with knowledge ...

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has released a security update to address an important vulnerability in its Tomcat server software that could result in remote code execution (RCE) under certain conditions. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-56337 , has been described as an incomplete mitigation for CVE-2024-50379 (CVSS score: 9.8), another critical security flaw in the same product that was previously addressed on December 17, 2024. "Users running Tomcat on a case insensitive file system with the default servlet write enabled (readonly initialisation parameter set to the non-default value of false) may need additional configuration to fully mitigate CVE-2024-50379 depending on which version of Java they are using with Tomcat," the project maintainers said in an advisory last week. Both the flaws are Time-of-check Time-of-use ( TOCTOU ) race condition vulnerabilities that could result in code execution on case-insensitive file systems when the default servlet is...

Cybersecurity researchers have found that it's possible to use large language models (LLMs) to generate new variants of malicious JavaScript code at scale in a manner that can better evade detection. "Although LLMs struggle to create malware from scratch, criminals can easily use them to rewrite or obfuscate existing malware, making it harder to detect," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers said in a new analysis. "Criminals can prompt LLMs to perform transformations that are much more natural-looking, which makes detecting this malware more challenging." With enough transformations over time, the approach could have the advantage of degrading the performance of malware classification systems, tricking them into believing that a piece of nefarious code is actually benign. While LLM providers have increasingly enforced security guardrails to prevent them from going off the rails and producing unintended output, bad actors have advertised tools like WormGPT...

The online world never takes a break, and this week shows why. From ransomware creators being caught to hackers backed by governments trying new tricks, the message is clear: cybercriminals are always changing how they attack, and we need to keep up. Hackers are using everyday tools in harmful ways, hiding spyware in trusted apps, and finding new ways to take advantage of old security gaps. These events aren’t random—they show just how clever and flexible cyber threats can be. In this edition, we’ll look at the most important cyber events from the past week and share key takeaways to help you stay safe and prepared. Let’s get started. ⚡ Threat of the Week LockBit Developer Rostislav Panev Charged in the U.S. — Rostislav Panev, a 51-year-old dual Russian and Israeli national, has been charged in the U.S. for allegedly acting as the developer of the now-disrupted LockBit ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation, netting about $230,000 between June 2022 and February 2024. Panev was ...

An interruption to the phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) toolkit called Rockstar 2FA has led to a rapid uptick in activity from another nascent offering named FlowerStorm . "It appears that the [Rockstar2FA] group running the service experienced at least a partial collapse of its infrastructure, with pages associated with the service no longer reachable," Sophos said in a new report published last week. "This does not appear to be because of a takedown action, but due to some technical failure on the backend of the service." Rockstar2FA was first documented by Trustwave late last month as a PhaaS service that allows criminal actors to launch phishing attacks that are capable of harvesting Microsoft 365 account credentials and session cookies, thereby circumventing multi-factor authentication (MFA) protections. The service is assessed to be an updated version of the DadSec phishing kit, which is tracked by Microsoft under the name Storm-1575. A majority of the ph...

The 2025 cybersecurity landscape is increasingly complex, driven by sophisticated cyber threats, increased regulation, and rapidly evolving technology. In 2025, organizations will be challenged with protecting sensitive information for their customers while continuing to provide seamless and easy user experiences. Here’s a closer look at ten emerging challenges and threats set to shape the coming year. 1. AI as a weapon for attackers The dual-use nature of AI has created a great deal of risk to organizations as cybercriminals increasingly harness the power of AI to perpetrate highly sophisticated attacks. AI-powered malware can change its behavior in real-time. This means it can evade traditional methods of detection and find and exploit vulnerabilities with uncanny precision. Automated reconnaissance tools let attackers compile granular intelligence about systems, employees, and defenses of a target at unprecedented scale and speed. AI use also reduces the planning time for a...