Cyber Defense Advisors

Year: 2025

Fortinet Urges FortiSwitch Upgrades to Patch Critical Admin Password Change Flaw

Fortinet has released security updates to address a critical security flaw impacting FortiSwitch that could permit an attacker to make unauthorized password changes. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-48887, carries a CVSS score of 9.3 out of a maximum of 10.0. “An unverified password change vulnerability [CWE-620] in FortiSwitch GUI may allow a remote unauthenticated attacker […]

Cyber News

Amazon EC2 SSM Agent Flaw Patched After Privilege Escalation via Path Traversal

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a now-patched security flaw in the Amazon EC2 Simple Systems Manager (SSM) Agent that, if successfully exploited, could permit an attacker to achieve privilege escalation and code execution. The vulnerability could permit an attacker to create directories in unintended locations on the filesystem, execute arbitrary scripts with root privileges, 

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Cryptocurrency Miner and Clipper Malware Spread via SourceForge Cracked Software Listings

Threat actors have been observed distributing malicious payloads such as cryptocurrency miner and clipper malware via SourceForge, a popular software hosting service, under the guise of cracked versions of legitimate applications like Microsoft Office. “One such project, officepackage, on the main website sourceforge.net, appears harmless enough, containing Microsoft Office add-ins copied from a legitimate GitHub […]

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Arguing Against CALEA

At a Congressional hearing earlier this week, Matt Blaze made the point that CALEA, the 1994 law that forces telecoms to make phone calls wiretappable, is outdated in today’s threat environment and should be rethought: In other words, while the legally-mandated CALEA capability requirements have changed little over the last three decades, the infrastructure that […]

Cyber News

Agentic AI in the SOC – Dawn of Autonomous Alert Triage

Security Operations Centers (SOCs) today face unprecedented alert volumes and increasingly sophisticated threats. Triaging and investigating these alerts are costly, cumbersome, and increases analyst fatigue, burnout, and attrition. While artificial intelligence has emerged as a go-to solution, the term “AI” often blurs crucial distinctions. Not all AI is built equal, especially in the SOC. Many […]

Cyber News

UAC-0226 Deploys GIFTEDCROOK Stealer via Malicious Excel Files Targeting Ukraine

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has revealed a new set of cyber attacks targeting Ukrainian institutions with information-stealing malware. The activity is aimed at military formations, law enforcement agencies, and local self-government bodies, particularly those located near Ukraine’s eastern border, the agency said. The attacks involve distributing phishing emails containing a macro-enabled […]

Cyber News

CISA Adds CrushFTP Vulnerability to KEV Catalog Following Confirmed Active Exploitation

A recently disclosed critical security flaw impacting CrushFTP has been added by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog after reports emerged of active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability is a case of authentication bypass that could permit an unauthenticated attacker to take over susceptible instances. […]

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Russian bots hard at work spreading political unrest on Romania’s internet

Internet users in Romania are finding their social media posts and online news articles bombarded with comments promoting blatant propaganda, inciting hatred towards the EU and NATO, and support for Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog. 

Cyber News

Google Releases Android Update to Patch Two Actively Exploited Vulnerabilities

Google has shipped patches for 62 vulnerabilities, two of which it said have been exploited in the wild. The two high-severity vulnerabilities are listed below – CVE-2024-53150 (CVSS score: 7.8) – An out-of-bounds flaw in the USB sub-component of Kernel that could result in information disclosure CVE-2024-53197 (CVSS score: 7.8) – A privilege escalation flaw […]

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