Cyber Defense Advisors

Month: January 2025

Beware: Fake CAPTCHA Campaign Spreads Lumma Stealer in Multi-Industry Attacks

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a new malware campaign that leverages fake CAPTCHA verification checks to deliver the infamous Lumma information stealer. “The campaign is global, with Netskope Threat Labs tracking victims targeted in Argentina, Colombia, the United States, the Philippines, and other countries around the world,” Leandro Fróes, senior threat research engineer at […]

Cyber News

Third Interdisciplinary Workshop on Reimagining Democracy (IWORD 2024)

Last month, Henry Farrell and I convened the Third Interdisciplinary Workshop on Reimagining Democracy (IWORD 2024) at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg Center in Washington DC. This is a small, invitational workshop on the future of democracy. As with the previous two workshops, the goal was to bring together a diverse set of political scientists, law […]

Cyber News

Custom Backdoor Exploiting Magic Packet Vulnerability in Juniper Routers

Enterprise-grade Juniper Networks routers have become the target of a custom backdoor as part of a campaign dubbed J-magic. According to the Black Lotus Labs team at Lumen Technologies, the activity is so named for the fact that the backdoor continuously monitors for a “magic packet” sent by the threat actor in TCP traffic. “J-magic […]

Cyber News

Experts Find Shared Codebase Linking Morpheus and HellCat Ransomware Payloads

An analysis of HellCat and Morpheus ransomware operations has revealed that affiliates associated with the respective cybercrime entities are using identical code for their ransomware payloads. The findings come from SentinelOne, which analyzed artifacts uploaded to the VirusTotal malware scanning platform by the same submitter towards the end of December 2024. “These two payload samples […]

Cyber News

How to Eliminate Identity-Based Threats

Despite significant investments in advanced technologies and employee training programs, credential and user-based attacks remain alarmingly prevalent, accounting for 50-80% of enterprise breaches[1],[2]. While identity-based attacks continue to dominate as the leading cause of security incidents, the common approach to identity security threats is still threat reduction, implementing layers of controls to reduce risk while […]

Cyber News

SonicWall Urges Immediate Patch for Critical CVE-2025-23006 Flaw Amid Likely Exploitation

SonicWall is alerting customers of a critical security flaw impacting its Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 1000 Series appliances that it said has been likely exploited in the wild as a zero-day. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-23006, is rated 9.8 out of a maximum of 10.0 on the CVSS scoring system. “Pre-authentication deserialization of untrusted data […]

Cyber News

New Research: The State of Web Exposure 2025

Are your websites leaking sensitive data? New research reveals that 45% of third-party apps access user info without proper authorization, and 53% of risk exposures in Retail are due to the excessive use of tracking tools. Learn how to uncover and mitigate these hidden threats and risks—download the full report here. New research by web […]

Cyber News

QakBot-Linked BC Malware Adds Enhanced Remote Access and Data Gathering Features

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new BackConnect (BC) malware that has been developed by threat actors linked to the infamous QakBot loader. “BackConnect is a common feature or module utilized by threat actors to maintain persistence and perform tasks,” Walmart’s Cyber Intelligence team told The Hacker News. “The BackConnect(s) in use were ‘DarkVNC’ […]

Cyber News

Cisco Fixes Critical Privilege Escalation Flaw in Meeting Management (CVSS 9.9)

Cisco has released software updates to address a critical security flaw impacting Meeting Management that could permit a remote, authenticated attacker to gain administrator privileges on susceptible instances. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-20156, carries a CVSS score of 9.9 out 10.0. It has been described as a privilege escalation flaw in the REST API of […]

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