Cyber Defense Advisors

Month: March 2025

Silk Typhoon Hackers Indicted

Lots of interesting details in the story: The US Department of Justice on Wednesday announced the indictment of 12 Chinese individuals accused of more than a decade of hacker intrusions around the world, including eight staffers for the contractor i-Soon, two officials at China’s Ministry of Public Security who allegedly worked with them, and two […]

Cyber News

Alleged Co-Founder of Garantex Arrested in India

Authorities in India today arrested the alleged co-founder of Garantex, a cryptocurrency exchange sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2022 for facilitating tens of billions of dollars in money laundering by transnational criminal and cybercriminal organizations. Sources close to the investigation told KrebsOnSecurity the Lithuanian national Aleksej Besciokov, 46, was apprehended while vacationing on the […]

Cyber News

The AI Fix #41: Can AIs be psychopaths, and why we should be AI optimists

In episode 41 of the AI Fix, our hosts learn that society needs to be completely reordered by December, Grok accuses Trump of being a Russian asset, Graham discovers that parents were wrong about computer games all along, and Mark wonders if a kung-fu kicking robot from Unitree is the hero that we need. Graham […]

Cyber News

Blind Eagle Hacks Colombian Institutions Using NTLM Flaw, RATs and GitHub-Based Attacks

The threat actor known as Blind Eagle has been linked to a series of ongoing campaigns targeting Colombian institutions and government entities since November 2024. “The monitored campaigns targeted Colombian judicial institutions and other government or private organizations, with high infection rates,” Check Point said in a new analysis. “More than 1,600 victims were affected […]

Cyber News

Ballista Botnet Exploits Unpatched TP-Link Vulnerability, Targets Over 6,000 Devices

Unpatched TP-Link Archer routers have become the target of a new botnet campaign dubbed Ballista, according to new findings from the Cato CTRL team. “The botnet exploits a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in TP-Link Archer routers (CVE-2023-1389) to spread itself automatically over the Internet,” security researchers Ofek Vardi and Matan Mittelman said in a […]

Cyber News

Your Risk Scores Are Lying: Adversarial Exposure Validation Exposes Real Threats

In cybersecurity, confidence is a double-edged sword. Organizations often operate under a false sense of security, believing that patched vulnerabilities, up-to-date tools, polished dashboards, and glowing risk scores guarantee safety. The reality is a bit of a different story. In the real world, checking the right boxes doesn’t equal being secure. As Sun Tzu warned, […]

Cyber News

Steganography Explained: How XWorm Hides Inside Images

Inside the most innocent-looking image, a breathtaking landscape, or a funny meme, something dangerous could be hiding, waiting for its moment to strike. No strange file names. No antivirus warnings. Just a harmless picture, secretly concealing a payload that can steal data, execute malware, and take over your system without a trace. This is steganography, […]

Cyber News

SideWinder APT Targets Maritime, Nuclear, and IT Sectors Across Asia, Middle East, and Africa

Maritime and logistics companies in South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa have become the target of an advanced persistent threat (APT) group dubbed SideWinder. The attacks, observed by Kaspersky in 2024, spread across Bangladesh, Cambodia, Djibouti, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam. Other targets of interest include nuclear power plants and […]

Cyber News

Moxa Issues Fix for Critical Authentication Bypass Vulnerability in PT Switches

Taiwanese company Moxa has released a security update to address a critical security flaw impacting its PT switches that could permit an attacker to bypass authentication guarantees. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-12297, has been assigned a CVSS v4 score of 9.2 out of a maximum of 10.0. “Multiple Moxa PT switches are vulnerable to an […]

Cyber News