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The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short ...

Threat actors are exploiting unpatched Atlassian servers to deploy a Linux variant of Cerber (aka C3RB3R) ransomware. The attacks leverage  CVE-2023-22518  (CVSS score: 9.1), a critical security vulnerability impacting the Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Server that allows an unauthenticated attacker to reset Confluence and create an administrator account. Armed with this access, a threat actor could take over affected systems, leading to a full loss of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. According to cloud security firm Cado, financially motivated cybercrime groups have been observed abusing the newly created admin account to install the Effluence web shell plugin and allow for the execution of arbitrary commands on the host. "The attacker uses this web shell to download and run the primary Cerber payload," Nate Bill, threat intelligence engineer at Cado,  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "In a default install, the Confluence appli...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new campaign that's exploiting a recently disclosed security flaw in Fortinet FortiClient EMS devices to deliver ScreenConnect and Metasploit Powerfun payloads. The activity entails the exploitation of  CVE-2023-48788  (CVSS score: 9.3), a critical SQL injection flaw that could permit an unauthenticated attacker to execute unauthorized code or commands via specifically crafted requests. Cybersecurity firm Forescout is  tracking  the campaign under the codename  Connect:fun  owing to the use of ScreenConnect and Powerfun for post-exploitation. The intrusion, which targeted an unnamed media company that had its vulnerable FortiClient EMS device exposed to the internet, took place shortly after the  release  of a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for the flaw on March 21, 2024. Over the next couple of days, the unknown adversary was observed leveraging the flaw to unsuccessfully download ScreenConnect an...

I had the honor of hosting the first episode of the Xposure Podcast live from Xposure Summit 2025. And I couldn't have asked for a better kickoff panel: three cybersecurity leaders who don't just talk security, they live it. Let me introduce them. Alex Delay , CISO at IDB Bank, knows what it means to defend a highly regulated environment. Ben Mead , Director of Cybersecurity at Avidity Biosciences, brings a forward-thinking security perspective that reflects the innovation behind Avidity's targeted RNA therapeutics. Last but not least, Michael Francess , Director of Cybersecurity Advanced Threat at Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, leads the charge in protecting the franchise. Each brought a unique vantage point to a common challenge: applying Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) to complex production environments. Gartner made waves in 2023 with a bold prediction: organizations that prioritize CTEM will be three times less likely to be breached by 2026. But here's the kicker -...

Cisco is warning about a global surge in brute-force attacks targeting various devices, including Virtual Private Network (VPN) services, web application authentication interfaces, and SSH services, since at least March 18, 2024. "These attacks all appear to be originating from TOR exit nodes and a range of other anonymizing tunnels and proxies," Cisco Talos  said . Successful attacks could pave the way for unauthorized network access, account lockouts, or denial-of-service conditions, the cybersecurity company added. The attacks, said to be broad and opportunistic, have been observed targeting the below devices - Cisco Secure Firewall VPN  Check Point VPN Fortinet VPN SonicWall VPN RD Web Services  MikroTik  Draytek  Ubiquiti  Cisco Talos described the brute-forcing attempts as using both generic and valid usernames for specific organizations, with the attacks indiscriminately targeting a wide range of sectors across geographies. The sourc...

Security researchers have uncovered a "credible" takeover attempt targeting the OpenJS Foundation in a manner that evokes similarities to the recently uncovered incident aimed at the open-source XZ Utils project. "The OpenJS Foundation Cross Project Council received a suspicious series of emails with similar messages, bearing different names and overlapping GitHub-associated emails," OpenJS Foundation and Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF)  said  in a joint alert. According to Robin Bender Ginn, executive director of OpenJS Foundation, and Omkhar Arasaratnam, general manager at OpenSSF, the email messages urged OpenJS to take action to update one of its popular JavaScript projects to remediate critical vulnerabilities without providing any specifics. The email author(s) also called on OpenJS to designate them as a new maintainer of the project despite having little prior involvement. Two other popular JavaScript projects not hosted by OpenJS are also sai...

The threat actor tracked as  TA558  has been observed leveraging steganography as an obfuscation technique to deliver a wide range of malware such as Agent Tesla, FormBook, Remcos RAT, LokiBot, GuLoader, Snake Keylogger, and XWorm, among others. "The group made extensive use of steganography by sending VBSs, PowerShell code, as well as RTF documents with an embedded exploit, inside images and text files," Russian cybersecurity company Positive Technologies  said  in a Monday report. The campaign has been codenamed SteganoAmor for its reliance on steganography and the choice of file names such as greatloverstory.vbs and easytolove.vbs. A majority of the attacks have targeted industrial, services, public, electric power, and construction sectors in Latin American countries, although companies located in Russia, Romania, and Turkey have also been singled out. The development comes as TA558 has also been spotted  deploying Venom RAT  via phishing attacks ...

New cybersecurity research has found that command-line interface (CLI) tools from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud can expose sensitive credentials in build logs, posing significant risks to organizations. The vulnerability has been codenamed  LeakyCLI  by cloud security firm Orca. "Some commands on Azure CLI, AWS CLI, and Google Cloud CLI can expose sensitive information in the form of environment variables, which can be collected by adversaries when published by tools such as GitHub Actions," security researcher Roi Nisimi  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. Microsoft has since  addressed  the issue as part of security updates released in November 2023, assigned it the CVE identifier CVE-2023-36052 (CVSS score: 8.6). The idea, in a nutshell, has to do with how the CLI commands such as could be used to show (pre-)defined environment variables and output to Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) logs. A list of ...