Cyber security

Hackers Weaponizing AI Extension to steal Crypto Assets Through Malicious Packages

The amount of crypto malware has doubled in the first quarter of 2025 as per research.

Kaspersky GReAT (Global Research and Analysis Team) experts have discovered open-source packages that download the Quasar backdoor and a stealer designed to exfiltrate cryptocurrency. The malicious packages are intended for the Cursor AI development environment, which is based on Visual Studio Code — a tool used for AI-assisted coding.

The fake extension, published under the name “Solidity Language,” had accumulated 54,000 downloads before being detected and removed.

What makes this attack particularly insidious is its exploitation of search ranking algorithms to position the malicious extension above legitimate alternatives.

How the Threat actors deceive the developers

During an incident response, a blockchain developer from Russia reached out to Kaspersky after installing one of these fake extensions on his computer, which allowed attackers to steal approximately $500,000 worth of crypto assets.

The threat actor behind these packages managed to deceive the developer by making the malicious package rank higher than the legitimate one. The attacker achieved this by artificially inflating the malicious package’s downloads count to 54,000.

After the malicious extension downloaded by the developer was discovered and removed from the repository, the threat actor republished it and artificially inflated its installation count to a higher number – 2 million, compared to 61,000 for the legitimate package.

The extension was removed from the platform following a request from Kaspersky.

The attackers leveraged the Open VSX registry’s relevance-based ranking system, which considers factors including recency of updates, download counts, and ratings. The attack infrastructure reveals a well-organized operation extending beyond this single incident.

In 2025, threat actors are actively publishing clones of legitimate software packages that, once installed, execute harmful payloads ranging from cryptocurrency theft to full codebase deletion.

The discovery leads us to think how cyber criminals take advantage of the trust inherent in open-source environments by embedding harmful code. All third-party code should be treated as untrusted until proven.

After installation, the victim gained no actual functionality from the extension. Instead, malicious ScreenConnect software was installed on the computer, granting threat actors remote access to the infected device.

Using this access, they deployed the open-source Quasar backdoor along with a stealer that collects data from browsers, email clients, and crypto wallets. With these tools, the threat actors were able to obtain the developer’s wallet seed phrases and subsequently steal cryptocurrency from the accounts.

Mitigation Strategies from Intruceptlabs

GaarudNode is an all-in-one solution designed to empower development teams with the tools they need to secure their applications throughout the development lifecycle. By combining the power of SAST, DAST, SCA, API security, and CSPM, GaarudNode provides a comprehensive security framework that ensures your applications are built, tested, and deployed with confidence.

Source: https://www.kaspersky.com/about/press-releases/kaspersky-uncovers-500k-crypto-heist-through-malicious-packages-targeting-cursor-developers

Cyber-Breach on Qantas Airliner re-echo’s Cyber Risk associated with Third Party

Third-party vendors are critical to and business or industry – but they confirm to significant amount of cyber risk. Qanatas airline confirmed of cyber attack where nearly six million customers data may have been compromised. The airliner issued statement that said credit card details, financial information, and passport details were not part of the breach.

Qantas said in a statement: “We are continuing to investigate the proportion of the data that has been stolen, though we expect it will be significant. An initial review has confirmed the data includes some customers’ names, email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and frequent flyer numbers.”

The alarming aspect of a third-party data breach is the sheer scale of impact. Hackers have the potential to attack thousands of organizations in one fell swoop.

KPMG, study showed how 73% of organizations have experienced at least one significant disruption from a third-party cyber incident within the last three years.

Qantas Group chief executive Vanessa Hudson said the company was working closely with the National Cyber Security Coordinator and the Australian Cyber Security Centre.

We sincerely apologies to our customers and we recognize the uncertainty this will cause. Our customers trust us with their personal information, and we take that responsibility seriously,” she said.

In the breach that affected Qantas airliner which is one of the oldest, did not point to any hackers group. This data breach is one of Australia’s biggest breach in years which caused major setback and reputation damage to an airliner.

Last week, FBI said Scattered Spider group was targeting airlines and that Hawaiian Airlines (HAII.UL) and Canada’s WestJet had already reported breaches. Read more on our blogs:

Key pointer of the Qantas Breach

The Cyber hacker broke into a database containing the personal information of millions of customer.

The breach was executed by hackers who targeted a call center and gained access to a third-party customer service platform containing six million names, email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and frequent flyer numbers.

Third party risk management is complex but neglecting can be fatal for organizations whose data volume is huge such as airliners.

The airline is emailing affected customers and has set up a dedicated support line at 1800 971 541 (or +61 2 8028 0534 from overseas).

If we observe in recent past 2020, the solar Winds attack that happened where Solar winds confirmed that its network had been penetrated by a malicious actor and a complex malware program inserted into software updates of its technology platform – SolarWinds OrionⓇ.

Such is the magnitude of the attack that the malware program comprised a multistage process, scanning downstream customer networks to detect security tools it could avoid or disable, and stealthily connecting to the attacker’s command and control servers. The malware persisted for months before initial detection.

The solar winds attack cost to the company amounted to significant loss with Incident response and forensic services cost companies 11% of their annual revenue (an average of $12 million).

How to make sure your vendor don’t create unnecessary risk that pose challenge for organization at large

First ensure your third party vendor’s meet the required robust security posture

Vendor risk assessment must be done holistically by streamlining due diligence

Upon discovery of any vulnerabilities, it is important that customizing and updating security requirements of the newly discovered threats and patch.

As a part of better threat mitigation strategy it is important that to automate vendors onboarding this will provide agility.

Managing Third party risk with Intru360

A research with KPMG found that found 61% of businesses underestimate third party risk management and often also struggle to have a healthy operation model and scale it same time.

KPMG research further found that Third-party/nth-party risk management that covers all third-party relationships over the entire life cycle; subjects vendors that support critical activities or are heavily relied upon to more comprehensive and rigorous oversight; and considers transition, contingency, recovery, and duplicity alternatives.

With most of the technology investments fail to provide visibility into third-party risk, we at Intercept help you to expand the scope and cover third parties related risk areas by identifying.

Intru360 gives security analysts and SOC managers a clear view across the organization, helping them fully understand the extent and context of an attack. It also simplifies workflows by automatically handling alerts, allowing for faster detection of both known and unknown threats.

In vendor security and management here are some of the features we offer to make sure cyber health of each and every supplier is checked and alerts are placed to get notification.

Prebuilt playbooks and automated response capabilities.

Over 400 third-party and cloud integrations.

More than 1,100 preconfigured correlation rules.

Ready-to-use threat analytics, threat intelligence service feeds, and prioritization based on risk.

Sources: https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/feature/SolarWinds-hack-explained-Everything-you-need-to-know

https://kpmg.com/us/en/articles/2022/ten-key-regulatory-challenges-2023-risk-governance.html

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/qantas-data-breach-everything-we-know-so-far-about-stolen-customer-details/49iggxre0

Fintech Cybersecurity; Best Practices to Navigate Risk & Challenges

Fintech apps have gained momentum as Paypal, Mint, Gpay and Stash have transformed the way payment is made in financial service industries in the last few years. Fintech platforms are mostly subject to varying security standards striving the threat landscapes across different regions of geography.

In this blog we will discover how Fintech’s are growing at a pace and scaling up along with rising user base making it difficult for security teams to detect at the same pace and understand the attack surface vastness. As Fintech companies grow at pace, its impossible to keep growing with smaller infrastructure and security practices that may not be sufficient for smaller operations. Also growth in user base, makes it difficult with security teams to have proper visibility over an ever-expanding attack surface.

IntruceptLabs has a team of certified security experts who conduct manual penetration testing, identifying different business-centric vulnerabilities that an automated scan may not identify. GaarudNode from Intrucept provides a comprehensive security framework that ensures your applications are built, tested, and deployed with confidence.

The global aspect of operation in Fintech based organizations gives rise to data sovereignty issues, where some data must be within specific geographic limits.

The Fintech Service (FaaS) market from past few yrs is experiencing substantial growth and the global market is projected to increase by USD 806.9 billion by 2029. This growth is fueled by increasing demand for digital financial solutions and the adoption of FaaS among businesses of all sizes.FaaS provides agility, flexibility, and seamless integration, making it attractive for businesses.

Fintech’s mining Ground for cybercriminals

Apart from consumers and legitimate users across the globe, for cyber criminals Fintech’s are mining treasures as they can quiet probably gather or steal valuable personal and financial data.

Money is constantly flowing through various associated apps and we don’t know when and how bad actors will launch clever tactics and spill of money through various associated apps .This is making cyber security posture for fintech’s difficult.

Yes, Organizations can take up cyber skilling and training seriously and help staff to use phishing-resistant multifactor authentication and robust identity-verification measures. Organisation can take up security strategies and devise it keeping uniformity in enforcement practices and incident reporting requirements.

The past decade gave a consistent rise in the number and sophistication of cyberattacks targeting financial institutions as observed.

Now that is posing significant threats to the stability and trust within the financial ecosystem as financial losses increase due to cyber breaches or data hack and causing operational disruptions including reputational damage.

Navigating the risk & challenges affecting Fintech service (FaaS)

Fintech security is directly related to API security as API’s are responsible for smooth functioning of ‘Fintech as a platform’.

It is the same API’s that are prime target of cyber criminals as there has been increase in Cloud computing, mobile apps usage and Internet of Things (IoT) all have accelerated the adoption of APIs.

API’s are used by developers to integrate third party services ,also increase the functionable features and create solutions that are innovative in nature. Any flaw in API security could substantially damage the endpoints and is a common vulnerabilities. API ‘s can become insecure when endpoints finds failure to validate input, leading to injection attacks.

User identity Theft

Authentication vulnerabilities are issues that affect authentication processes and make websites and applications susceptible to security attacks in which an attacker can masquerade as a legitimate user.

Any flaw in authentication and authorization will give way to account compromises with insecure password that are crackable or single-factor authentication in systems lacking additional verification step. Authentication is a vital part of any website or application since it is simply the process of recognizing user identities.

Having authentication vulnerabilities have serious repercussions — whether it’s because of weak passwords or poor authentication design and implementation.

Threat actors use these vulnerabilities to get access into systems and user accounts to:

Steal sensitive information
Masquerade as a legitimate user
Gain control of the application
Destroy the system completely

Supply chain risk or third party integration

Often fintech applications interact with external services or providers. Any weaknesses arising in Supply chain from backdoors are embedded within financial apps via compromised third-party code. So many Vendor fail the risk assessments as they are unable to identify risks well before integration.

Mostly fintech functions are mobile transfers require Apps interacting with traditional banks having legacy infrastructure to support. Integrating the modern high-tech apps with the legacy systems often used by established financial institutions is a difficult technical challenge.

Regulatory Compliance

Fintech firms operate under regulatory landscape that is complex and changing and must comply with various frameworks, including GDPR,PCI etc, and few local financial regulations based on geographical points or country wise .

These regulations add up to lot of over head expenses and if something overlaps

The regulations adds massive, unnecessary overhead, as requirements often overlaps creating chaos. Complying with local regulations, requires resources that can be diverted away from other security efforts.

Moreover, if a Fintech platform ventures into multiple markets, it must comply with local regulations, which often requires a race against time and diverts resources away from other security efforts.

Enterprise security can prevent cyber attacks by enforcing account lockouts, rate limiting, IP-based monitoring, application firewalls, and CAPTCHAs.

AI Soft Spot by Cyber criminals

Now cyber criminals are using AI and machine learning to automate the testing process and find zero-day vulnerabilities—especially in APIs. Perhaps the most observed impact AI has had on cybercrime has been an increase in scams, particularly those leveraging deepfake technology. In certain dark web forums where experimentation takes place, few threat actors are claiming to employ AI to bypass facial recognition technology, create deepfake videos and adopt techniques to summaries large amount of data.

Cyber security best practices for Faas

The outputs derived from assessment of security testing must encompass the entire attack surface, including APIs, mobile applications and other interfaces to develop roadmaps to improve security. In any event of security breach any incident response planning by organizations will help to identify, mitigate threat and recover.

GaarudNode from IntruceptLabs

The dashboard presents findings with ratings and remediation steps, allowing developers to easily address critical issues.

What else you get from GaarudNode?

Identifies security flaws early in the development process by scanning source code, helping developers detect issues like insecure coding practices or logic errors.
Tests running applications in real-time to identify vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and other runtime threats.
Detects vulnerabilities in third-party libraries and open-source components, ensuring that your dependencies don’t introduce risks.
Continuously tests and monitors your APIs for vulnerabilities such as authentication flaws, data exposure, and insecure endpoints.

Sources: https:www.apisec.ai

NCSC UK, released set of 6 principles to build Cyber Security culture & Boost Resilience for Orgs

In recent times we witnessed many organizations who are facing numerous cyber attacks hold confidential customer, employee and supplier personal data. Such data is attractive to attackers, as they can steal it and demand ransom payments to stop them revealing it out in public. There is a constant fear against threat actors looming and that actually demands organizations to be cyber resilient.

What is the way out to create a cyber resilience culture that are meaningful both for employees and leaders ?

The U.K. National Cyber Security Centre on Wednesday published six cybersecurity culture principles developed through extensive research with industry and government partners.

The principles define the cultural foundations essential for building a cyber-resilient organization and offer guidance on how to cultivate that environment.

The principles are based on many factors on what leads to weak or misaligned cultures leading to poor security outcomes so that organizations understand how outcomes have deeper cultural issues and require urgent attention.

Cyber attack on Retail sector

This was followed by multiple cyber-attacks on the retail sector have gathered media attention over the first half of 2025. This included breaches on Co-op, Harrods, Adidas, The North Face, and Cartier.

Notably, a long-term disruption for UK brand Marks and Spencer, whose online sales are still paused seven weeks after the initial attack, was caused by phishing on a third-party supplier.

Over the Easter weekend, customers in M&S stores were unable to make contactless payments, click and collect services were unavailable. M&S has been quick to respond to cyber attacks faced and been applauded for its response to the attack, particularly its handling of external communications.

The newly released Operational Resilience Report 2025 has found organizations are taking a more integrated approach to resilience. Recognizing that people are vital to cybersecurity,

Cyber security culture The 6 principles laid by National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to build a cyber security culture within an organization.

Frame cybersecurity as an enabler, supporting the organization to achieve its goals
Build the safety, trust, and processes to encourage openness around security
Embrace change to manage new threats and use new opportunities to improve resilience
The organization’s social norms promote secure behaviours
Leaders take responsibility for the impact they have on security culture
Provide well-maintained cybersecurity rules and guidelines, which are accessible and easy to understand.

The first principle identifies that cybersecurity exists to protect the technology and information that keep an organization running.

But when it operates in isolation, its role as an enabler of every other function is often overlooked. This disconnect creates tension. Security may be seen as a blocker, its policies misunderstood or ignored, and controls bypassed, opening the door to further risk.

A shared purpose across the organization changes this dynamic. When everyone understands and works toward common goals, decisions reflect what supports the whole rather than just individual departments. Cybersecurity becomes part of how work gets done, not an obstacle in the way.

An effective culture recognises that secure behaviour is essential to meeting shared goals. Staff understand the value of cybersecurity in protecting systems and information. Controls are designed with an awareness of how people work, and security teams engage directly to reduce friction.

Clarity around purpose, consistent internal messaging, and strong leadership support all help integrate cybersecurity into the wider mission.

When people no longer see security as a separate concern, but as part of their contribution to organizational success, stronger and more resilient practices follow.

No amount of training can replace the value of open dialogue, especially when facing unfamiliar or fast-moving threats. When people are comfortable reporting mistakes, raising concerns, or suggesting improvements, the organization becomes more adaptive and resilient.

The second principle depends on a culture where people feel safe to speak up.

Without psychological safety, self-protection takes over. People stay silent, avoid reporting errors or tolerate behaviour that undermines security. Fear of blame or punishment blocks the flow of vital information and ideas.

To counter this, organizations need trusted, accessible channels for communication. Whether through help desks, portals, or local experts, these paths must be easy to use and free from friction. When people do reach out, their efforts should be acknowledged and, where possible, acted upon.

Security incidents should be investigated to understand what happened and how to improve, not to assign fault. Fair treatment and transparent processes build trust and make it more likely that people will engage in the future. Psychological safety is not a soft extra. It is a core condition for real-time responsiveness and continuous learning in security. When people trust the system and those behind it, they help protect it.

The third principle On cyber resilient organizations treat change as a constant and improvement as a shared responsibility. In cybersecurity, this mindset is critical.

As threats evolve and technologies shift, staying still is not neutral, it increases exposure and limits growth. Rather than viewing incidents or disruptions as setbacks, forward-looking organizations treat them as signals for refinement. Ignoring these moments in favour of maintaining the status quo leads to blind spots and missed opportunities.

Change must be coordinated across the organization. If one area races ahead or stalls without alignment, the imbalance can cause harm. Cybersecurity teams have a key role in guiding this process. They help ensure that risks are managed by those equipped to handle them, instead of being pushed onto teams lacking the resources or context to respond effectively.

Strong cultures embrace change as a path to better outcomes. They are measured in how and when they implement changes, mindful of fatigue and disruption. People feel supported during transitions and trust that new risks are handled responsibly. To sustain this, organizations need systems in place to identify emerging challenges and bring the right voices into decision-making. Clear roles, timely choices, and shared accountability allow security and resilience to move forward together.

The fourth principle identifies that workplace behaviour is shaped not just by formal rules but by unwritten ones picked up through observation.

These social norms often influence how people approach cybersecurity. When aligned with security goals, they help reinforce good habits and guide new staff toward secure practices.

But not all norms work in favour of security. Some, like cutting corners to be helpful or following senior examples, can quietly encourage risky behaviour. These norms are hard to change if they help people get their work done more easily than formal processes allow. Addressing this requires understanding the values behind these norms. Without doing so, even well-designed policies will be ignored, increasing risk and weakening trust in security measures.

A strong security culture identifies both helpful and harmful social norms and finds ways to align them with formal policies.

This may involve redesigning controls to support productivity or shifting behaviors through influence, incentives, and role models.

The fifth principle recognizes that cybersecurity culture depends on leadership that leads by example.

When leaders align with a shared purpose, model secure behaviors, and foster trust, they help embed security into daily work. Their influence shapes norms and drives change.

Leaders who engage openly and share lessons from past challenges build confidence and inspire action. Those who ignore this responsibility risk undermining progress, as teams often follow their lead. Strong leadership means linking security to business goals, promoting learning, and removing incentives for risky behaviour.

Supporting leaders with the right knowledge and encouraging honest dialogue strengthens a culture where security becomes a collective effort.

The sixth principle calls for creating a cyber-secure workplace that depends on finding the right balance between clear expectations and practical flexibility.

Rules must support people in solving problems locally while setting consistent standards across the organization. When done well, this balance builds trust between staff and leadership.

Overly rigid rules risk becoming outdated and burdensome, while vague guidance leaves teams confused and vulnerable. Both extremes can lead to frustration and disengagement from cybersecurity efforts. A better approach involves understanding where different teams struggle, inviting their input, and refining the rules based on real-world use and ongoing feedback.

Security rules should be integrated into daily workflows and onboarding. They must be easy to find, clearly written, and regularly updated, with changes communicated. Where gaps exist or the rules do not apply, teams must have quick access to experts who can help manage risk at the moment.

In practice, effective cybersecurity guidance is inclusive, tested for usability, and aligned with organizational goals. People should know what is mandatory and what is advisory. Feedback is actively used to improve the rules, and outdated material is removed to prevent confusion.

IntruceptLabs products are influencing cyber culture by promoting proactive security measures, automation, and a focus on user behavior and training.

IntruceptLabs enable organizations to improve their security posture by providing tools for patching vulnerabilities, managing access, and responding to threats, ultimately contributing to a more secure and resilient cyber environment.

The platform offers:

Identifies security flaws early in the development process by scanning source code, helping developers detect issues like insecure coding practices or logic errors.
Tests running applications in real-time to identify vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and other runtime threats.
Detects vulnerabilities in third-party libraries and open-source components, ensuring that your dependencies don’t introduce risks.
Continuously tests and monitors your APIs for vulnerabilities such as authentication flaws, data exposure, and insecure endpoints.

Conclusion:

The importance of cyber resilience helps set businesses who have a solid response plan and test it regularly so that the organization is prepared for any cyber incidents.

The cyber-security incident plan should be part of a wider business continuity plan, considering the impact of a cyber incident on the business and defining steps to recover and respond.

NCSC emphasized that creating the culture takes time and is not a one-off exercise, but needs a focused and sustained effort from cyber security professionals, innovators and culture specialists, and organisations’ leaders.

Sources: https://www.thebci.org/news/retail-under-attack-the-growing-movement-towards-operational-resilience.html

Critical 0-Day Vulnerabilities in Qualcomm Adreno GPU Drivers Actively Exploited

Summary

OEM	Qualcomm
Severity	HIGH
CVSS Score	8.6
CVEs	CVE-2025-21479, CVE-2025-21480, CVE-2025-27038
Actively Exploited	Yes
Exploited in Wild	Yes
Advisory Version	1.0

Overview

Three actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities in Qualcomm’s Adreno GPU drivers (CVE-2025-21479, CVE-2025-21480, CVE-2025-27038) have been disclosed and patched.

These flaws impact billions of Android devices across vendors such as Samsung, Google, Xiaomi, and OnePlus. Qualcomm released patches to OEMs in May 2025, urging immediate integration to mitigate severe memory corruption and code execution threats.

Vulnerability Name	CVE ID	Product Affected	CVSS Score	Severity
Incorrect Authorization Vulnerability	CVE-2025-21479	Qualcomm Adreno GPU Driver	8.6	High
Incorrect Authorization Vulnerability	CVE-2025-21480	Qualcomm Adreno GPU Driver	8.6	High
Use-After-Free Vulnerability	CVE-2025-27038	Qualcomm Adreno GPU Driver	7.5	High

Technical Summary

These vulnerabilities reside within Qualcomm’s Adreno GPU driver, specifically in the Graphics component. The flaws allow attackers to corrupt memory, escalate privileges or execute arbitrary code. Two issues (CVE-2025-21479, CVE-2025-21480) result from incorrect authorization mechanisms in GPU microcode and the third (CVE-2025-27038) is a use-after-free flaw that can be exploited via malicious content rendered through Chrome.

CVE ID	System Affected	Vulnerability Details	Impact
CVE-2025-21479	Android (Adreno GPU)	Unauthorized command execution during specific GPU microcode sequences causes memory corruption.	Privilege escalation, system compromise.
CVE-2025-21480	Android (Adreno GPU)	Similar unauthorized GPU command flaw allowing memory corruption via improper authorization checks.	Memory corruption, remote code execution.
CVE-2025-27038	Android (Chrome/Adreno)	Use-after-free condition in graphics rendering pipeline (via Chrome) allows attacker control over freed memory space.	Arbitrary code execution.

Recommendations:

Apply OEM Patches Immediately: Qualcomm released fixes in May 2025 to all OEMs; users should install the latest firmware updates from their device manufacturers.

Check for Updates: Go to Settings → System → Software Update and apply the latest security patches as soon as available.

Apply Security Updates: Users should ensure their Android devices receive the latest security updates.

Monitor Manufacturer Communications: Stay informed about patch availability specific to your device model via official OEM channels.

Conclusion:
These zero-day vulnerabilities in Qualcomm’s Adreno GPU drivers highlight ongoing security risks in mobile hardware components.

Exploited in limited, targeted attacks potentially by spyware vendors or state-sponsored actors these flaws pose significant threats to Android devices worldwide.

In response to confirmed exploitation, CISA has added all three CVEs (CVE-2025-21479, CVE-2025-21480, CVE-2025-27038) to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, mandating swift action for federal systems.

Timely patching by OEMs and proactive updates by users are critical to mitigating these risks and preventing further exploitation.

References:

https://docs.qualcomm.com/product/publicresources/securitybulletin/june-2025-bulletin.html

https://securityonline.info/actively-exploited-qualcomm-gpu-zero-days-added-to-cisas-kev-catalog/

Ways to combat Cyber Threats; Strengthen your SOC’s readiness involves 3 key strategies

Cyber threats are no longer limited to human attackers, with AI-driven “bad bot” attacks now accounting for 1/3 as per research. These attacks can be automated, allowing attackers to launch more extensive and efficient campaigns

Organizations are now exposed new risks, providing cybercriminals with more entry points and potential “surface areas” to exploit as they go digital and adopt to innovations and wider use of digital technologies.

Some of the types of bad bots are DDoS bots, which disrupt a website or online service by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources.

Cybercriminals are using Gen-AI tools to improve the efficiency and yield of their campaigns – with Check Point Research’s recent AI Security Report 2025 flagging the use of the technology for malicious activities like AI-enhanced impersonation and social engineering.

Account takeover bots, which use stolen credentials to access users’ online accounts; web content scraping bots, which copy and reuse website content without permission; and social media bots, which spread fake news and propaganda on social media platforms.

The purpose of Bad Bot is expose critical flaws and vulnerabilities within the security frameworks that IT leaders have established in their architectures and operations.

Unfortunately, traditional security operations centers (SOCs) are built to detect threats based on predefined rules and human-driven logic or characteristics.

AI-powered bots use automation and adaptive methods to execute more sophisticated and dynamic attacks that can bypass these existing defences.

Vulnerabilities are evolving so SOC team have more responsibilities then before as BOTs are AI powered.

Here we outlined three strategies to strengthen your SOC readiness

1.SOC team an essential or important component of business are in Fatigue Zone:

SOCs continuously monitor your organization’s network, systems, and applications to identify potential vulnerabilities and detect any signs of malicious activity.

SOC team quickly takes action to contain the threat and minimize damage, ultimately reducing the overall impact on your business.

Ponemon institute research say SOC teams are fatigued and one research pointed that 65% has fatigue and burn out issues.

That means Cyber security need to support the SOC teams and research found highlight that a lack of visibility and having to perform repetitive tasks are major contributors to analyst burnout.

Threat hunting teams have a difficult time identifying threats because they have too many IOCs to track, too much internal traffic to compare against IOCs.

Sometimes organizations have lack internal resources and expertise and too many false positives.

Bringing out SOC team from fatigue issue is as important as investing on training, upskilling on cyber skills and development to keep your team’s spirit high.

Establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of your SOC. Monitor these KPIs closely and use them to identify areas for improvement.

2. How do Organization harness Nex-gen technology to combat cyber Threats

Staying abreast of industry trends and best practices to ensure your SOC teams remains at the forefront of cyber security or ahead of the curve with Nex-gen technologies.

So that SOC teams can detect and respond to threats more quickly and efficiently, get holistic view of organizations security posture, AI and ML can augment the SOC team by automating routine task.

Many organizations are adopting hybrid cloud infrastructure and SaaS applications for productivity and cost efficiency reasons. But organizations face difficulty of managing and securing the data on those platforms, which is again leading to higher breach costs.

Darktrace report says 78% of the more than 1,500 security executives responding to a recent survey said that AI-powered threats are having a significant impact on their organizations – with many admitting they lack the knowledge, skills, and personnel to successfully defend against those threats.

Many organizations are already leveraging AI as a cyber-security tool.

Now more IT leaders say they are integrating AI into their cloud strategies for use in advanced security and threat detection.

Organizations can encounter several challenges when integrating AI into their cloud strategies.

Along with SOC team who seamlessly integrate across the organization, same is for AI. Seamless integrations of AI will make it easier for AI-assisted threat detection, notification, enrichment and remediation.

The purpose is AI should focus on tuning models that is organization specific environment. Once done AI will integrate threat intelligence and filtering will be done based on specific context. This will help reinforcing trust with customers and stakeholders.

3. Investing in Predictive Threat Modelling priority for Nex-gen SOC Teams

In this era where AI is being leveraged by organisation to derive accuracy, SOC teams who are evolving will prefer investing in intelligence predictive threat models that are proactive in nature to anticipate risks and refine their response strategies.

When organizations have a Threat Intelligence-Driven SOC it is easier to transform security operations from reactive to proactive defence. Most of the organization builds and operates its own SOC. That is done by employing a dedicated team of cyber security professionals who offers to take complete control over security operations but can be resource-intensive.

AI makes the process easier, as having AI-driven analytics will assist detect anomalous behaviours and zero-day threats.

Further with implementing predictive threat modelling to anticipate emerging attack patterns and leveraging the right frameworks, tools and best practices will help organizations build an intelligence-driven SOC. And with an intelligence-driven SOC team, anticipating any cyber threats can be dealt with efficiency.

IntruceptLabs now offers Mirage Cloak and to summarise Mirage Cloak offers various deception methods to detect and stop threats before they cause damage.

These methods include adding decoys to the network, deploying breadcrumbs on current enterprise assets, using baits as tripwires on endpoints.

This is executed by setting up lures with intentionally misconfigured or vulnerable services or applications.

The flexible framework also lets customers add new deception methods as needed.

Conclusion: Organizations can better protect their digital assets and ensure business continuity by understanding the key components and best practices for building a successful SOC.

At the end we must accept that to defend against any sort of AI attack, SOC teams must evolve with right collaborations and effective communication between partners seamlessly to evaluate information to stay ahead of attackers.

Sources: What is SOC (Security Operations Center)?

RCE Risk in D-Link Routers due to Hardcoded Telnet Credentials

Summary A significant security flaw (CVE-2025-46176) has exposed thousands of D-Link routers to remote code execution attacks through hardcoded Telnet credentials embedded in firmware. This is affecting its DIR-605L and DIR-816L routers.

If successful exploitation happens this will enables attackers to modify router configurations, deploy malware, or pivot into internal networks.

OEM	D-link
Severity	Medium
CVSS Score	6.5
CVEs	CVE-2025-46176
Actively Exploited	No
Exploited in Wild	No
Advisory Version	1.0

Overview

The flaw exposes devices to remote command execution (RCE) through hardcoded Telnet credentials.

The vulnerability has been rated medium in severity (CVSS 6.5), with no official firmware patch available as of May 2025.

Vulnerability Name	CVE ID	Product Affected	Severity	Fixed Version
Hardcoded Telnet Credentials vulnerability	CVE-2025-46176	D-Link Router	Medium	No official fix available

Technical Summary

The vulnerability arises from hardcoded Telnet credentials in the router firmware, which allows unauthenticated remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands.

Firmware analysis revealed embedded credentials in configuration files used during Telnet service initialization.

Security experts recommended retiring these EOL devices due to absence of security support and the impossibility of removing hardcoded credentials through configuration changes.

CVE ID	System Affected	Vulnerability Details	Impact
CVE-2025-46176	D-Link DIR-605L v2.13B01, DIR-816L v2.06B01	Telnet service (/usr/sbin/telnetd -l /bin/sh -u Alphanetworks:$image_sign) uses hardcoded credentials from image_sign file, exposing plaintext passwords.	RCE

Recommendations:

As of May 2025, no firmware updates are available to fix the vulnerability. Recommended temporary mitigations include :

Disable Telnet access via the router’s web interface.
Block Telnet port (23) using firewall rules:

“iptables -A INPUT -p tcp –dport 23 -j DROP”

Restrict WAN access to management interfaces.
Monitor D-Link’s official support page for firmware updates.

Conclusion:
Security researchers discovered the flaw through firmware analysis, revealing that both router models contain default Telnet credentials that cannot be changed by users.

While exploitation likelihood is currently assessed as low, vulnerability enables unauthenticated attackers to gain control of the routers, affecting confidentiality, integrity and availability.

Immediate mitigation is advised, especially for publicly exposed devices and Security experts strongly recommend retiring these EOL devices due to the absence of security support and the impossibility of removing hardcoded credentials through configuration changes.

Threat from Legacy Devices:

The vulnerability in Telnet revealed security risks that legacy networking equipment carry with them and is embedded hardcoded credentials in IoT devices.

Inadequate security, harboring multiple unpatched vulnerabilities and relying on inadequate security controls that fail to address underlying risks. This poses a threat not only to device itself, but also to the network and connected critical assets.

References:

NIST & CISA Proposed Metric for Vulnerability Exploitation Probability

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is proposing a new metric to determine the likelihood of any software or hardware vulnerability being exploited.

The new metric is “Likely Exploited Vulnerabilities” (LEV), that aims to close a key gap in vulnerability management.

This new data point can benefit the SecOps teams who are working to release an effective patch management strategy and address the development flaws.

NIST now wants members of cyber security community to come forward and validate the method as predicting which ones is important for the efficiency and cost effectiveness of enterprise vulnerability remediation.

However NIST proposed that predicting ones which is important for the efficiency and cost effectiveness of enterprise vulnerability remediation efforts is important.

Currently, such remediation efforts rely on the Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS), which has known inaccurate values, and Known Exploited Vulnerability (KEV) lists, which may not be comprehensive.

The proposed likelihood metric may augment EPSS remediation (correcting some inaccuracies) and KEV lists (enabling measurements of comprehensiveness). However, collaboration with industry is necessary to provide necessary performance measurements.

Importance of Metric for Vulnerability Exploitation Probability

Remediating vulnerabilities is time-consuming and costly. According to the paper, most companies only manage to patch about 16% of the vulnerabilities affecting their systems each month.

Meanwhile, research shows that only about 5% of vulnerabilities are exploited in the wild.

It is found organizations would spend their limited resources patching that small but dangerous subset, but identifying them has proven difficult.

That’s where LEV comes in to assist organizations prioritize vulnerabilities that are likely to have already been used in attacks, the metric could make patching efforts more targeted and effective.

In a recently published paper, Peter Mell (formerly of NIST) and Jonathan Spring of CISA presented a vulnerability exploitation metric that builds upon the existing Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS) and CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.

The researchers noted that studies show only about 5% of known vulnerabilities are exploited in the wild, while organizations typically remediate only 16% of vulnerabilities each month.

The researchers outline four key ways LEV could be used:

1. Estimate how many vulnerabilities have been exploited.
2. Check how complete KEV lists are.
3. Identify high-risk vulnerabilities missing from those lists.
4. Fix blind spots in EPSS, which sometimes underestimates risk for already-exploited bugs.

Introducing the LEV Metric

Mell and Spring’s new metric—called Likely Exploited Vulnerabilities (LEV) probabilities—aims to address the limitations of both EPSS and the KEV catalog. While EPSS provides 30-day exploitation probabilities, it has known inaccuracies, particularly underestimating risk for already-exploited vulnerabilities. KEV, on the other hand, is limited by its reliance on known exploit data and may not be comprehensive.

LEV probabilities are designed to:

Estimate how many and which vulnerabilities are likely to have been exploited
Assess the completeness of the KEV catalog
Enhance KEV-based prioritization by identifying likely-exploited vulnerabilities not yet listed
Improve EPSS-based prioritization by correcting underestimations

Key Findings

The researchers compared LEV and EPSS scores for specific vulnerabilities, showing significant differences.

For example:

CVE-2023-1730 (SupportCandy WordPress plugin SQL injection): before 3.1.5, the LEV probability was 0.70, while the peak EPSS score was 0.16.
CVE-2023-29373 (Microsoft ODBC Driver RCE – Remote Code Execution vulnerability): the LEV probability was 0.54350, while the peak EPSS probability was 0.08.

The LEV analysis identified hundreds of vulnerabilities with probabilities near 1.0. However, many of these are not listed in current KEV catalogs. NIST is actively seeking collaboration with partners as real-world validation is must for LEV to be a promising idea rather than a trusted tool.

NIST is currently seeking industry partners with relevant datasets to empirically evaluate the effectiveness of LEV probabilities through real-world performance measurements.

Sources: https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2025/05/26/nist-likely-exploited-vulnerabilities/#:~:text=LEV%20aims%20to%20bridge%20that,%2C%20not%20replace%2C%20existing%20methods.

Recent Health Care Data Breaches Highlight Importance of Proactive Leadership

Recent data breaches on healthcare organisation be it insurance provider to big hospitals and healthcare organisation witnesses how hackers were able to compromise the protected health information of patients.

Healthcare organisations collect an enormous amount of data and these are not only personal details but includes health insurance details, payment structure and medical records etc. These information’s are extremely important from financial point and a big lucrative market for hackers to track down and use them for gains.

In 2024 there were 1,160 healthcare related cyber breaches, exposing 305 million patients record out in dark web a marked increase of 26% in 2025.

As of March 19, 2025, 734 large data breaches have been reported to OCR, a percentage decrease of 1.74% from the 747 large healthcare data breaches reported in 2023.

While a reduction in healthcare data breaches is a step in the right direction, 2024 was the worst-ever year in terms of breached healthcare records, which jumped by 64.1% from last year’s record-breaking total to 276,775,457 breached records, or 81.38% of the 2024 population of the United States.

The Star Health Data Breach

Star Health and Allied Insurance is delaing a difficult situation where a potential exodus of top executives following a massive data breaches affecting over 30 million customers.

The breach has led to internal cybersecurity investigations, possible financial penalties up to ₹250 crore and heightened scrutiny over leadership accountability.

Employee attrition is reportedly rising with the organization, especially in tier-2 and tier-3 cities and top it all the reputational damage and operational challenges.

The hacker responsible for a major data breach at Star Health and Allied Insurance last year has reportedly claimed responsibility for sending death threats and bullet cartridges to the insurer’s top executives.

As per reports the hacker reportedly said the recent threats were triggered after being contacted by Star Health policyholders who claimed their legitimate insurance claims were denied.

Star Health, India’s biggest health insurer, has faced criticism from customers and data security experts as per Reuters. Since last September the hacker known by alias name ‘xenZen’ had leaked sensitive client data, including medical reports. At the time, xenZen told Reuters in an email they possessed 7.24 terabytes of data related to over 31 million Star Health customers and was speaking to potential buyers for the data.

This incident brings in light top leadership crisis within the organisation.

Crisis Management is broader perspective that encompasses leadership decisions, communication strategies, stakeholder engagement, business continuity, fiscal management, and long-term reputational considerations.

Healthcare specific Cyber security performance goal(CPGs)

With record numbers of healthcare records being compromised, it is clear that more needs to be done to improve healthcare cybersecurity.

Beginning of 2024, the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights published two sets of healthcare-specific cybersecurity performance goals (CPGs).

In December 2024, the HHS published a long-awaited proposed update to the HIPAA Security Rule that will, if enacted, force healthcare organizations to implement a range of measures to improve their security posture. The proposed update includes some of the recommended measures in the CPGs, such as multifactor authentication, encryption for data at rest and in transit, mitigating known vulnerabilities, network segmentation, maintaining an accurate asset inventory and cyber security testing.

Stable Leadership to deal with un-certainties of cyber threats

Organisations under stable leadership must undertake a rigorous risk-assessment process that encompasses disaster mitigation. This will include cyber incident recovery and business continuity planning to support the resilience of critical health care functions and systems.

With strong new leadership companies can adopt bold steps to regain trust by investing heavily in cyber security infrastructure. This is led by launching new products focused on identity protection.

Having a transparent approach in addressing vulnerabilities and commitment to innovation will help restore customer confidence and set a new industry standard for data protection. To turn cybersecurity threats into oppertunites, CEO and CISO’s must embrace a multifaceted leadership approach to deal with advance cyber tactics employed by hackers and cyber criminals.

To go beyond technical solutions and extends to cultural, strategic and operational changes.

Adopting a cyber-security first culture within the Organization

First and foremost it is important to foster a security-first culture within an organization is critical. This will involve embedding cyber security considerations into every level of business decision-making.
Organisations and top leadership taking decisions from development to customer engagement. Leadership must set the tone by prioritizing security as a fundamental business value .
Cyber security training a must within the organisation will help build a culture that requires continuous reinforcement through regular training, internal etc.
The next step would be ad frameworks that allow businesses to quickly pivot in response to emerging risks.
The next step would be adopting frameworks that will allow business to quickly scale and impose proper response during emergency or any cyber threat.
The growing cyber risk is also an opportunity for cyber security leadership to stay ahead of their adversaries by improving certain aspects like involving real time threat visibility, gathering actionable insights from industry partners etc.. This will enable proactive security measures that is resilient in building a cyber-security strategy . To reduce the after affect of breaches, top leadership must adopt cross-functional collaboration and investing in ongoing education to create a more security-conscious workforce.
All in all a proactive cyber security strategy will help organizations and this is possible by embracing innovation and having a transparent and proactive leadership.

A strong leadership will help to mitigate risks and enhance organisations competitive standing in the market. This can be followed by Iidentifing not only technical vulnerabilities but also operational weaknesses, supply chain risks, and human factors or insider threat .

Cyber Security News at a Glance; May 2025

For the month of May 2025 here are the Top News including Security Advisory & Blogs

Tesla Model 3 VCSEC Vulnerability Allows Remote Code Execution via TPMS Exploit

A high-severity vulnerability (CVE-2025-2082) in Tesla Model 3’s Vehicle Controller Security (VCSEC) module allows attackers within wireless range to remotely execute arbitrary code by exploiting a flaw in the Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS)

Tesla Model 3 VCSEC Vulnerability Allows Remote Code Execution via TPMS Exploit

The FBI issued an alert warning of ongoing exploitation of 13 EOL Linksys/Cisco routers by cybercriminal groups operating the 5Socks and Anyproxy services.

FBI Warns End-of-Life Routers Exploited in Active Botnet and Proxy Campaigns

Microsoft May 2025 Patch Tuesday Released; Fixed 83 Vulnerabilities, Including 5 Zero-Days

Microsoft addressed 83 vulnerabilities across its product suite. Among them are 5 zero-day vulnerabilities have been confirmed as actively exploited in the wild. The updates span Windows components, Office, Visual Studio, and other core services.

11 vulnerabilities were rated critical, emphasizing the importance of timely remediation especially for enterprise environments.

5 non-Microsoft CVEs included

78 Microsoft CVEs addressed

Microsoft May 2025 Patch Tuesday Released; Fixed 83 Vulnerabilities, Including 5 Zero-Days

Critical SAP NetWeaver Vulnerabilities Addressed in May 2025 Patch – Immediate Action Required

SAP has released critical security updates for its May 2025 patch, including fixes for two actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities in SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer.

SAP Visual Composer is not installed by default, however it is enabled because it was a core component used by business process specialists to develop business application components without coding.

Critical SAP NetWeaver Vulnerabilities Addressed in May 2025 Patch – Immediate Action Required

CISA is officially changing the way it disseminates online security updates and guidance.

CISA says the enhanced information dissemination system will from now on use social media and email only to disperse cybersecurity alerts and advisories, saving its landing page for more critical warnings on May 12.

Updates on May 13

Just a day after announcing it was changing the way it sent out alerts, CISA has changed its mind and reverted back to its old system of putting everything on its website.

“We recognize this has caused some confusion in the cyber community,” the site now reads. “As such, we have paused immediate changes while we re-assess the best approach to sharing with our stakeholders.”

Social Media & emails as Medium to disperse Cybersecurity alerts; CISA

Zero-Day Threat in Chrome’s Loader Component (CVE-2025-4664) – CISA Flags Urgent Risk

A zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2025-4664) in Google Chrome’s Loader component has been actively exploited in the wild.This flaw allows attackers to bypass security policies, leak cross-origin data, and potentially execute unauthorized code. CISA has added this vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, urging immediate patching.

Zero-Day Threat in Chrome’s Loader Component (CVE-2025-4664) – CISA Flags Urgent Risk