Cyber Defense Advisors

Month: January 2025

PlushDaemon APT Targets South Korean VPN Provider in Supply Chain Attack

A previously undocumented China-aligned advanced persistent threat (APT) group named PlushDaemon has been linked to a supply chain attack targeting a South Korean virtual private network (VPN) provider in 2023, according to new findings from ESET. “The attackers replaced the legitimate installer with one that also deployed the group’s signature implant that we have named […]

Cyber News

Oracle Releases January 2025 Patch to Address 318 Flaws Across Major Products

Oracle is urging customers to apply its January 2025 Critical Patch Update (CPU) to address 318 new security vulnerabilities spanning its products and services. The most severe of the flaws is a bug in the Oracle Agile Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Framework (CVE-2025-21556, CVSS score: 9.9) that could allow an attacker to seize control of […]

Cyber News

Mirai Botnet Launches Record 5.6 Tbps DDoS Attack with 13,000+ IoT Devices

Web infrastructure and security company Cloudflare on Tuesday said it detected and blocked a 5.6 Terabit per second (Tbps) distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, the largest ever attack to be reported to date. The UDP protocol-based attack took place on October 29, 2024, targeting one of its customers, an unnamed internet service provider (ISP) from Eastern […]

Cyber News

The AI Fix #34: Fake Brad Pitt and why AI means we will lose our jobs

In episode 34 of The AI Fix, our hosts watch in horror as a vacuum cleaner sprouts a robotic arm and legs, a rivet embedded in the side of your head claims it will be able to read your mind and chat up French girls, a robot dog runs much quicker than you ever will, […]

Cyber News

Mirai Variant Murdoc Botnet Exploits AVTECH IP Cameras and Huawei Routers

Cybersecurity researchers have warned of a new large-scale campaign that exploits security flaws in AVTECH IP cameras and Huawei HG532 routers to rope the devices into a Mirai botnet variant dubbed Murdoc Botnet. The ongoing activity “demonstrates enhanced capabilities, exploiting vulnerabilities to compromise devices and establish expansive botnet networks,” Qualys security researcher Shilpesh 

Cyber News

Medusa ransomware: what you need to know

What is the Medusa ransomware? Medusa is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) platform that first came to prominence in 2023. The ransomware impacts organisations running Windows, predominantly exploiting vulnerable and unpatched systems and hijacking accounts through initial access brokers. Initial access brokers? Initial access brokers (IABs) specialise in gaining unauthorised access to the networks of organisations, and […]

Cyber News

13,000 MikroTik Routers Hijacked by Botnet for Malspam and Cyberattacks

A global network of about 13,000 hijacked Mikrotik routers has been employed as a botnet to propagate malware via spam campaigns, the latest addition to a list of botnets powered by MikroTik devices. The activity “take[s] advantage of misconfigured DNS records to pass email protection techniques,” Infoblox security researcher David Brunsdon said in a technical […]

Cyber News

AI Mistakes Are Very Different from Human Mistakes

Humans make mistakes all the time. All of us do, every day, in tasks both new and routine. Some of our mistakes are minor and some are catastrophic. Mistakes can break trust with our friends, lose the confidence of our bosses, and sometimes be the difference between life and death. Over the millennia, we have […]

Cyber News

Ex-CIA Analyst Pleads Guilty to Sharing Top-Secret Data with Unauthorized Parties

A former analyst working for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) pleaded guilty to transmitting top secret National Defense Information (NDI) to individuals who did not have the necessary authorization to receive it and attempted to cover up the activity. Asif William Rahman, 34, of Vienna, was an employee of the CIA since 2016 and […]

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