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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 subs...

A recent IcedID malware attack enabled the threat actor to compromise the Active Directory domain of an unnamed target less than 24 hours after gaining initial access, while also borrowing techniques from other groups like Conti to meet its goals. "Throughout the attack, the attacker followed a routine of recon commands, credential theft, lateral movement by abusing Windows protocols, and executing Cobalt Strike on the newly compromised host," Cybereason researchers  said  in a report published this week. IcedID , also known by the name BokBot, started its life as a banking trojan in 2017 before evolving into a  dropper for other malware , joining the likes of  Emotet ,  TrickBot ,  Qakbot ,  Bumblebee , and  Raspberry Robin . Attacks involving the delivery of IcedID have  leveraged a variety of methods , especially in the wake of  Microsoft's decision to block macros  from Office files downloaded from the web. The intrusion d...

Security researchers have disclosed multiple architectural vulnerabilities in Siemens SIMATIC and SIPLUS S7-1500 programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that could be exploited by a malicious actor to stealthily install firmware on affected devices and take control of them. Discovered by Red Balloon Security , the issues are tracked as  CVE-2022-38773  (CVSS score: 4.6), with the low severity stemming from the prerequisite that exploitation requires physical tampering of the device. The flaws "could allow attackers to bypass all protected boot features, resulting in persistent arbitrary modification of operating code and data," the company  said . More than 100 models are susceptible. Put differently, the weaknesses are the result of a lack of asymmetric signature verifications for firmware at bootup, effectively permitting the attacker to load tainted bootloader and firmware in a manner that undermines integrity protections. A more severe consequence of loading such ...

While phishing and ransomware dominate headlines, another critical risk quietly persists across most enterprises: exposed Git repositories leaking sensitive data. A risk that silently creates shadow access into core systems Git is the backbone of modern software development, hosting millions of repositories and serving thousands of organizations worldwide. Yet, amid the daily hustle of shipping code, developers may inadvertently leave behind API keys, tokens, or passwords in configuration files and code files, effectively handing attackers the keys to the kingdom. This isn't just about poor hygiene; it's a systemic and growing supply chain risk. As cyber threats become more sophisticated, so do compliance requirements. Security frameworks like NIS2, SOC2, and ISO 27001 now demand proof that software delivery pipelines are hardened and third-party risk is controlled. The message is clear: securing your Git repositories is no longer optional, it's essential. Below, we look at the ris...

Details have emerged about a now-patched vulnerability in Google Chrome and Chromium-based browsers that, if successfully exploited, could have made it possible to siphon files containing confidential data. "The issue arose from the way the browser interacted with  symlinks  when processing files and directories," Imperva researcher Ron Masas  said . "Specifically, the browser did not properly check if the symlink was pointing to a location that was not intended to be accessible, which allowed for the theft of sensitive files." Google characterized the medium-severity issue (CVE-2022-3656) as a case of insufficient data validation in File System,  releasing   fixes  for it in versions 107 and 108 released in October and November 2022. Dubbed SymStealer, the vulnerability, at its core, relates to a type of weakness known as symbolic link (aka symlink) following, which  occurs  when an attacker abuses the feature to bypass the file system restr...

A recently published  Security Navigator  report data shows that businesses are still taking 215 days to patch a reported vulnerability. Even for critical vulnerabilities, it generally takes more than 6 months to patch. Good vulnerability management is not about being fast enough in patching all potential breaches. It's about focusing on the real risk using vulnerability prioritization to correct the most significant flaws and reduce the company's attack surface the most. Company data and threat intelligence need to be correlated and automated. This is essential to enable internal teams focus their remediation efforts. Suitable technologies can take the shape of a global Vulnerability Intelligence Platform. Such a platform can help to prioritize vulnerabilities using a risk score and let companies focus on their real organizational risk.  Getting Started Three facts to have in mind before establishing an effective vulnerability management program:  1. The numbe...

Twitter on Wednesday said that its investigation found "no evidence" that users' data sold online was obtained by exploiting any security vulnerabilities in its systems. "Based on information and intel analyzed to investigate the issue, there is no evidence that the data being sold online was obtained by exploiting a vulnerability of Twitter systems," the company  said  in a statement. "The data is likely a collection of data already publicly available online through different sources." The disclosure comes in the wake of  multiple   reports  that Twitter data belonging to millions of users – 5.4 million in November 2022, 400 million in December 2022, and 200 million last week – have been made available for sale on online criminal forums. The social media giant further said the breach "could not be correlated with the previously reported incident, nor with any new incident," adding no passwords were exposed. The two datasets published in...

Malicious actors are actively attempting to exploit a recently patched critical vulnerability in Control Web Panel (CWP) that enables elevated privileges and unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) on susceptible servers. Tracked as  CVE-2022-44877  (CVSS score: 9.8), the bug impacts all versions of the software before 0.9.8.1147 and was  patched  by its maintainers on October 25, 2022. Control Web Panel, formerly known as CentOS Web Panel, is a popular server administration tool for enterprise-based Linux systems. "login/index.php in CWP (aka Control Web Panel or CentOS Web Panel) 7 before 0.9.8.1147 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary OS commands via shell metacharacters in the login parameter," according to  NIST . Gais Security researcher Numan Turle has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw to the Control Web Panel developers. Exploitation of the flaw is said to have commenced on January 6, 2023, following the  avail...

A new analysis of Raspberry Robin's attack infrastructure has  revealed  that it's possible for other threat actors to repurpose the infections for their own malicious activities, making it an even more potent threat. Raspberry Robin (aka QNAP worm), attributed to a threat actor dubbed DEV-0856, is a malware that has  increasingly   come under the radar  for being used in attacks aimed at finance, government, insurance, and telecom entities. Given its use by multiple threat actors to drop a wide range of payloads such as SocGholish , Bumblebee ,  TrueBot ,  IcedID , and  LockBit  ransomware, it's believed to be a pay-per-install (PPI) botnet capable of serving next-stage malware. Raspberry Robin, notably, employs infected USB drives as a propagation mechanism and leverages breached QNAP network-attached storage (NAS) devices as first-level command-and-control (C2). Cybersecurity firm SEKOIA said it was able to identify at least eight vi...

A recent wave of Gootkit malware loader attacks has targeted the Australian healthcare sector by leveraging legitimate tools like VLC Media Player. Gootkit , also called Gootloader, is  known  to  employ  search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning tactics (aka spamdexing) for initial access. It typically works by compromising and abusing legitimate infrastructure and seeding those sites with common keywords. Like other malware of its kind, Gootkit is capable of stealing data from the browser, performing adversary-in-the-browser (AitB) attacks, keylogging, taking screenshots, and other malicious actions. Trend Micro's  new findings  reveal that the keywords "hospital," "health," "medical," and "enterprise agreement" have been paired with various city names in Australia, marking the malware's expansion beyond accounting and law firms. The starting point of the cyber assault is to direct users searching for the same keywords to an infe...