The MITRE Corporation has revealed that the cyber attack targeting the not-for-profit company towards late December 2023 by exploiting zero-day flaws in Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS) involved the threat actor creating rogue virtual machines (VMs) within its VMware environment.
"The adversary created their own rogue VMs within the VMware environment, leveraging compromised vCenter Server access,"
Ransomware attacks targeting VMware ESXi infrastructure follow an established pattern regardless of the file-encrypting malware deployed, new findings show.
"Virtualization platforms are a core component of organizational IT infrastructure, yet they often suffer from inherent misconfigurations and vulnerabilities, making them a lucrative and highly effective target for threat actors to abuse,"
While cloud adoption has been top of mind for many IT professionals for nearly a decade, itβs only in recent months, with industry changes and announcements from key players, that many recognize the time to make the move is now. It may feel like a daunting task, but tools exist to help you move your virtual machines (VMs) to a public cloud provider β like Microsoft Azure
Multiple security flaws have been disclosed in VMware Workstation and Fusion products that could be exploited by threat actors to access sensitive information, trigger a denial-of-service (DoS) condition, and execute code under certain circumstances.
The four vulnerabilities impact Workstation versions 17.x and Fusion versions 13.x, with fixes available in version 17.5.2 and
The MITRE Corporation has offered more details into the recently disclosed cyber attack, stating that the first evidence of the intrusion now dates back to December 31, 2023.
The attack, which came to light last month, singled out MITRE's Networked Experimentation, Research, and Virtualization Environment (NERVE) through the exploitation of two Ivanti Connect Secure zero-day
Several security vulnerabilities disclosed in Brocade SANnav storage area network (SAN) management application could be exploited to compromise susceptible appliances.
The 18 flaws impact all versions up to and including 2.3.0, according to independent security researcher Pierre Barre, who discovered and reported them.
The issues range from incorrect firewall rules,
The MITRE Corporation revealed that it was the target of a nation-state cyber attack that exploited two zero-day flaws in Ivanti Connect Secure appliances starting in January 2024.
The intrusion led to the compromise of its Networked Experimentation, Research, and Virtualization Environment (NERVE), an unclassified research and prototyping network.
The unknown adversary "performed reconnaissance
VMware has released patches to address four security flaws impacting ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion, including two critical flaws that could lead to code execution.
Tracked as CVE-2024-22252 and CVE-2024-22253, the vulnerabilities have been described as use-after-free bugs in the XHCI USB controller. They carry a CVSS score of 9.3 for Workstation and Fusion, and 8.4 for ESXi systems.
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Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new Linux variant of a remote access trojan (RAT) called BIFROSE (aka Bifrost) that uses a deceptive domain mimicking VMware.
"This latest version of Bifrost aims to bypass security measures and compromise targeted systems," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers Anmol Maurya and Siddharth Sharma said.
BIFROSE is one of the long-standing
VMware is urging users to uninstall the deprecated Enhanced Authentication Plugin (EAP) following the discovery of a critical security flaw.
Tracked as CVE-2024-22245 (CVSS score: 9.6), the vulnerability has been described as an arbitrary authentication relay bug.
"A malicious actor could trick a target domain user with EAP installed in their web browser into requesting and relaying
An advanced China-nexus cyber espionage group previously linked to the exploitation of security flaws in VMware and Fortinet appliances has been attributed to the abuse of a critical vulnerability in VMware vCenter Server as a zero-day since late 2021.
"UNC3886 has a track record of utilizing zero-day vulnerabilities to complete their mission without being detected, and this latest example
Citrix is warning of two zero-day security vulnerabilities in NetScaler ADC (formerly Citrix ADC) and NetScaler Gateway (formerly Citrix Gateway) that are being actively exploited in the wild.
The flaws are listed below -
CVE-2023-6548 (CVSS score: 5.5) - Authenticated (low privileged) remote code execution on Management Interface (requires access to NSIP, CLIP, or SNIP with management
The threat actors behind theΒ 8Base ransomwareΒ are leveraging a variant of the Phobos ransomware to conduct their financially motivated attacks.
The findings come from Cisco Talos, which has recorded an increase in activity carried out by the cybercriminals.
βMost of the groupβs Phobos variants are distributed by SmokeLoader, a backdoor trojan," security researcher Guilherme Venere said in an
VMware is warning of a critical and unpatched security flaw in Cloud Director that could be exploited by a malicious actor to get around authentication protections.
Tracked asΒ CVE-2023-34060Β (CVSS score: 9.8), the vulnerability impacts instances that have been upgraded to version 10.5 from an older version.
"On an upgraded version of VMware Cloud Director Appliance 10.5, a malicious actor with
As many as 34 unique vulnerable Windows Driver Model (WDM) and Windows Driver Frameworks (WDF) drivers could be exploited by non-privileged threat actors to gain full control of the devices and execute arbitrary code on the underlying systems.
"By exploiting the drivers, an attacker without privilege may erase/alter firmware, and/or elevate [operating system] privileges," Takahiro Haruyama, a
VMware has released security updates to address a critical flaw in the vCenter Server that could result in remote code execution on affected systems.
The issue, tracked asΒ CVE-2023-34048Β (CVSS score: 9.8), has been described as an out-of-bounds write vulnerability in the implementation of theΒ DCE/RPC protocol.
"A malicious actor with network access to vCenter Server may trigger an out-of-bounds
Virtualization services provider VMware has alerted customers to the existence of a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for a recently patched security flaw in Aria Operations for Logs.
Tracked as CVE-2023-34051 (CVSS score: 8.1), the high-severity vulnerability relates to a case of authentication bypass that could lead to remote code execution.
"An unauthenticated, malicious actor can inject files
Proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code has been made available for a recently disclosed and patched critical flaw impacting VMware Aria Operations for Networks (formerly vRealize Network Insight).
The flaw, tracked asΒ CVE-2023-34039, is rated 9.8 out of a maximum of 10 for severity and has been described as a case of authentication bypass due to a lack of unique cryptographic key generation.
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VMware has released software updates to correct two security vulnerabilities in Aria Operations for Networks that could be potentially exploited to bypass authentication and gain remote code execution.
The most severe of the flaws is CVE-2023-34039 (CVSS score: 9.8), which relates to a case of authentication bypass arising as a result of a lack of unique cryptographic key generation.
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A ransomware threat called 8Base that has been operating under the radar for over a year has been attributed to a "massive spike in activity" in May and June 2023.
"The group utilizes encryption paired with 'name-and-shame' techniques to compel their victims to pay their ransoms," VMware Carbon Black researchers Deborah Snyder and Fae CarlisleΒ saidΒ in a report shared with The Hacker News. "8Base
VMware has flagged that a recently patched critical command injection vulnerability in Aria Operations for Networks (formerly vRealize Network Insight) has come under active exploitation in the wild.
The flaw, tracked asΒ CVE-2023-20887, couldΒ allowΒ a malicious actor with network access to the product to perform a command injection attack, resulting in remote code execution.
It impacts VMware
The Chinese state-sponsored group known asΒ UNC3886Β has been found to exploit a zero-day flaw in VMware ESXi hosts to backdoor Windows and Linux systems.
The VMware Tools authentication bypass vulnerability, tracked asΒ CVE-2023-20867Β (CVSS score: 3.9), "enabled the execution of privileged commands across Windows, Linux, and PhotonOS (vCenter) guest VMs without authentication of guest credentials
VMware hasΒ releasedΒ security updates to fix a trio of flaws in Aria Operations for Networks that could result in information disclosure and remote code execution.
The most critical of the three vulnerabilities is a command injection vulnerability tracked asΒ CVE-2023-20887Β (CVSS score: 9.8) that could allow a malicious actor with network access to achieve remote code execution.
Also patched by
A surge in TrueBot activity was observed in May 2023, cybersecurity researchers disclosed.
"TrueBot is a downloader trojan botnet that uses command and control servers to collect information on compromised systems and uses that compromised system as a launching point for further attacks," VMware's Fae CarlisleΒ said.
Active since at least 2017, TrueBot is linked to a group known as Silence that's
An analysis of the Linux variant of a new ransomware strain called BlackSuit has covered significant similarities with another ransomware family calledΒ Royal.
Trend Micro, which examined an x64 VMware ESXi version targeting Linux machines, said it identified an "extremely high degree of similarity" between Royal and BlackSuit.
"In fact, they're nearly identical, with 98% similarities in