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Two recently disclosed security flaws in Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS) devices are being exploited to deploy the infamous  Mirai botnet . That's according to  findings  from Juniper Threat Labs, which said the vulnerabilities  CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887  have been leveraged to deliver the botnet payload. While CVE-2023-46805 is an authentication bypass flaw, CVE-2024-21887 is a command injection vulnerability, thereby allowing an attacker to chain the two into an exploit chain to execute arbitrary code and take over susceptible instances. In the attack chain observed by the network security company, CVE-2023-46805 is exploited to gain access to the "/api/v1/license/key-status/;" endpoint, which is vulnerable to command injection, and inject the payload. As  previously outlined  by Assetnote in their technical deep dive of the CVE-2024-21887, the exploit is triggered by means of a request to "/api/v1/totp/user-backup-code/" to deploy the malware. &quo

Two security vulnerabilities have been discovered in F5 Next Central Manager that could be exploited by a threat actor to seize control of the devices and create hidden rogue administrator accounts for persistence. The remotely exploitable flaws "can give attackers full administrative control of the device, and subsequently allow attackers to create accounts on any F5 assets managed by the Next Central Manager," security firm Eclypsium  said  in a new report. A description of the two issues is as follows - CVE-2024-21793  (CVSS score: 7.5) - An OData injection vulnerability that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute malicious SQL statements through the BIG-IP NEXT Central Manager API CVE-2024-26026  (CVSS score: 7.5) - An SQL injection vulnerability that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute malicious SQL statements through the BIG-IP Next Central Manager API Both the flaws impact Next Central Manager versions from 20.0.1 to 20.1.0. The sho

Permissions in SaaS platforms like Salesforce, Workday, and Microsoft 365 are remarkably precise. They spell out exactly which users have access to which data sets. The terminology differs between apps, but each user's base permission is determined by their role, while additional permissions may be granted based on tasks or projects they are involved with. Layered on top of that are custom permissions required by an individual user.  For example, look at a sales rep who is involved in a tiger team investigating churn while also training two new employees. The sales rep's role would grant her one set of permissions to access prospect data, while the tiger team project would grant access to existing customer data. Meanwhile, special permissions are set up, providing the sales rep with visibility into the accounts of the two new employees. While these permissions are precise, however, they are also very complex. Application admins don't have a single screen within these applications th

Researchers have discovered two novel attack methods targeting high-performance Intel CPUs that could be exploited to stage a key recovery attack against the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm. The techniques have been collectively dubbed  Pathfinder  by a group of academics from the University of California San Diego, Purdue University, UNC Chapel Hill, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Google. "Pathfinder allows attackers to read and manipulate key components of the branch predictor, enabling two main types of attacks: reconstructing program control flow history and launching high-resolution Spectre attacks," Hosein Yavarzadeh, the lead author of the  paper , said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. "This includes extracting secret images from libraries like libjpeg and recovering encryption keys from AES through intermediate value extraction." Spectre is the name given to a  class of side-channel attacks  that exploit  branch prediction

״Defenders think in lists, attackers think in graphs," said John Lambert from Microsoft, distilling the fundamental difference in mindset between those who defend IT systems and those who try to compromise them. The traditional approach for defenders is to list security gaps directly related to their assets in the network and eliminate as many as possible, starting with the most critical. Adversaries, in contrast, start with the end goal in mind and focus on charting the path toward a breach. They will generally look for the weakest link in the security chain to break in and progress the attack from there all the way to the crown jewels. Security teams must embrace the attacker's perspective to ensure their organization's cybersecurity defenses are adequate. Drawing an analogy to a daily life example, the standard way to defend our house from intrusion is to ensure all the doors are locked. But to validate that your house is protected requires testing your security like a burgla

A newer version of a malware loader called  Hijack Loader  has been observed incorporating an updated set of anti-analysis techniques to fly under the radar. "These enhancements aim to increase the malware's stealthiness, thereby remaining undetected for longer periods of time," Zscaler ThreatLabz researcher Muhammed Irfan V A  said  in a technical report. "Hijack Loader now includes modules to add an exclusion for Windows Defender Antivirus, bypass User Account Control (UAC), evade inline API hooking that is often used by security software for detection, and employ process hollowing." Hijack Loader, also called IDAT Loader, is a malware loader that was  first documented  by the cybersecurity company in September 2023. In the intervening months, the tool has been used as a conduit to deliver various malware families. This includes Amadey, Lumma Stealer (aka LummaC2), Meta Stealer, Racoon Stealer V2, Remcos RAT, and Rhadamanthys. What makes the latest vers

A high-severity flaw impacting the LiteSpeed Cache plugin for WordPress is being actively exploited by threat actors to create rogue admin accounts on susceptible websites. The  findings  come from WPScan, which said that the vulnerability ( CVE-2023-40000 , CVSS score: 8.3) has been leveraged to set up bogus admin users with the names wpsupp‑user and wp‑configuser. CVE-2023-40000, which was  disclosed  by Patchstack in February 2024, is a stored cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability that could permit an unauthenticated user to elevate privileges by means of specially crafted HTTP requests. The flaw was addressed in October 2023 in version 5.7.0.1. It's worth noting that the latest version of the plugin is 6.2.0.1, which was  released  on April 25, 2024. LiteSpeed Cache has over 5 million active installations, with statistics showing that versions other than 5.7, 6.0, 6.1, and 6.2 are still active on 16.8% of all websites. According to the Automattic-owned company, the ma

The U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) has unmasked the administrator and developer of the LockBit ransomware operation, revealing it to be a 31-year-old Russian national named  Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev . In addition, Khoroshev has been sanctioned  by the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCD), the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs. Europol, in a  press statement , said authorities are in possession of over 2,500 decryption keys and are continuing to contact LockBit victims to offer support. Khoroshev, who went by the monikers LockBitSupp and putinkrab, has also become the subject of asset freezes and travel bans, with the U.S. Department of State offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to his arrest and/or conviction. Previously, the agency had  announced  reward offers of up to $15 million seeking information leading to the identity and location of k

The Iranian state-backed hacking outfit called  APT42  is making use of enhanced social engineering schemes to infiltrate target networks and cloud environments. Targets of the attack include Western and Middle Eastern NGOs, media organizations, academia, legal services and activists, Google Cloud subsidiary Mandiant said in a report published last week. "APT42 was observed  posing as journalists  and event organizers to build trust with their victims through ongoing correspondence, and to deliver invitations to conferences or legitimate documents," the company  said . "These social engineering schemes enabled APT42 to harvest credentials and use them to gain initial access to cloud environments. Subsequently, the threat actor covertly exfiltrated data of strategic interest to Iran, while relying on built-in features and open-source tools to avoid detection." APT42 (aka Damselfly and UNC788),  first documented  by the company in September 2022, is an Iranian st