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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

A practical guide to finding soundness bugs in ZK circuits

By: /u/Rude_Ad3947 — January 6th 2026 at 06:23

Hi everyone, I wrote a practical guide to finding soundness bugs in ZK circuits. It starts out with basic Circom examples, then discusses real-world exploits. Check it out if you are interested in auditing real-world ZK deployments.

submitted by /u/Rude_Ad3947
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

tailsnitch: A security auditor and configuration checklist for Tailscale configurations

By: /u/ok_bye_now_ — January 5th 2026 at 21:44

The tool is more important than the blog post; it does everything automatically for you: https://github.com/Adversis/tailsnitch

A security auditor for Tailscale configurations. Scans your tailnet for misconfigurations, overly permissive access controls, and security best practice violations.

And if you just want the checklist: https://github.com/Adversis/tailsnitch/blob/main/HARDENING_TAILSCALE.md

submitted by /u/ok_bye_now_
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

HardBit 4.0 Ransomware Evolution

By: /u/AriannaLombardi76 — January 3rd 2026 at 21:02

The HardBit ransomware family’s fourth iteration exhibits elevated operational security with mandatory operator-supplied runtime authorization, blurring forensic attribution. Its dual interface models, leveraging legacy infection deployment alongside contemporary hands-on-keys techniques, and an optional destructive wiper mode, represent hybrid malware design converging extortion and sabotage.

Lateral movement enabled through stolen credentials and disablement of recovery vectors reflects targeting of high-value networks for durable control. The absence of data leak websites limits external visibility into victimology, complicating response efforts. This evolution spotlights the intensifying sophistication and malice of ransomware operations.

submitted by /u/AriannaLombardi76
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Looking for fitting mystery guest certification

By: /u/Joepus16 — January 2nd 2026 at 20:08

Hi everyone,

I’m a 24-year-old cybersecurity and information security consultant working for a company in the Netherlands. I hold an HBO-level education and my main area of expertise is social engineering, with a strong focus on mystery guest and physical security assessments for clients.

Currently, I’m the only employee performing these types of projects. Our team was reduced from six people to just me, mainly to move away from multiple individual working styles and to allow the others to focus on long-term projects such as (C)ISO-related work.

Regarding physical security, my goal is to move toward an approach where I not only perform the physical tests (such as mystery guest or intrusion-style assessments), but also expand into providing advisory input on the theoretical and organizational side based on the findings. At the moment, my role is limited to executing the assessments and delivering the final report.

I’d like to further develop my skills and deepen my expertise by obtaining a certification this year (or however long it realistically takes). However, I’m finding it difficult to identify certifications that truly fit this niche. I’ve broadened my search beyond mystery guest and physical security to certifications focused on social engineering, ideally including the psychological or human-factor aspects, while still remaining rooted in security testing. OSINT certs like added aren’t relevant enough, since there isn’t enough interest from clients.

Most psychology-oriented certifications are unfortunately not an option for me, as they require an HBO diploma with a psychology background. My background is in cybersecurity, and I’d prefer something that builds on that.

Practical constraints: • Budget: ~€5,000 (with some flexibility if there’s a strong case) • Time: I work full-time (40 hours), run my own business on the side, and have a private life, so anything requiring extreme workloads (e.g. 100+ hours/week) is not realistic • Format: Online is preferred unless the training is located in the Netherlands or nearby regions in Belgium or Germany • Language: English or Dutch

I don’t currently hold any certifications in this specific area.

Does anyone have experience with certifications related to social engineering, human factors, or physical security testing that would fit this profile? Any recommendations or insights would be greatly appreciated.

submitted by /u/Joepus16
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Technical Analysis - MongoBleed (CVE-2025-14847): Memory Corruption in MongoDB

By: /u/Diligent-Side4917 — January 2nd 2026 at 16:59

Spent few days analysing MongoDB, please summarize the analysis and findings.

MongoBleed, tracked as CVE-2025-14847, an unauthenticated memory disclosure vulnerability affecting MongoDB across multiple major versions. It allows remote clients to extract uninitialized heap memory from the MongoDB process using nothing more than valid compressed wire-protocol messages.

This is not native RCE. This is not an issue on the library zlib, is more on the compression-decompression and It is a memory leak. It does not leave a lot of traces, It is silent, repeatable, and reachable before authentication.

TL;DR for engineering teams

  • What broke MongoDB’s zlib decompression path trusts attacker-controlled length metadata.
  • Impact Unauthenticated heap memory disclosure.
  • What leaks Raw process memory fragments including credentials, tokens, config strings, runtime metadata, and recently processed data.
  • Auth required None.
  • Noise level Low. No crashes. No malformed packets. Minimal logs.
  • Exposure 213,490 publicly reachable MongoDB instances observed via Shodan on 29 Dec 2025.
  • Fix Upgrade immediately or disable zlib compression.
  • Reality check Public PoC exists. Scanning is trivial. Exploitation effort is low (links below on the exploit lab, explaination and scanners if you want to find yours

Links

- Full Detailed Blog: https://phoenix.security/mongobleed-vulnerability-cve-2025-14847/

- Exploit explanation and lab: https://youtu.be/EZ4euRyDI8I

- Exploit Description (llm generated from article): https://youtu.be/lxfNSICAaSc
- Github Exploit for Mongobleed: https://github.com/Security-Phoenix-demo/mongobleed-exploit-CVE-2025-14847/tree/main
- Github Scanner for web: https://github.com/Security-Phoenix-demo/mongobleed-exploit-CVE-2025-14847/tree/main/scanner
- Github Scanner for Code: https://github.com/Security-Phoenix-demo/mongobleed-exploit-CVE-2025-14847/tree/main/code-sca

(Note I spend more time writing exploits, have dyslexia, and I'm not a native English, an LLM proofreads some sections, if this offends you, stop reading)

Affected versions

MongoDB Server Vulnerable versions Fixed versions
8.2.x 8.2.0 – 8.2.2 8.2.3
8.0.x 8.0.0 – 8.0.16 8.0.17
7.0.x 7.0.0 – 7.0.27 7.0.28
6.0.x 6.0.0 – 6.0.26 6.0.27
5.0.x 5.0.0 – 5.0.31 5.0.32
4.4.x 4.4.0 – 4.4.29 4.4.30
4.2.x All EOL
4.0.x All EOL
3.6.x All EOL

SAAS version of MongoDB is already patched

Technical anatomy

MongoDB supports network-level message compression.

When a client negotiates compression, each compressed message includes an uncompressedSize field.

The vulnerable flow looks like this:

  1. Client sends a syntactically valid compressed MongoDB wire-protocol message
  2. Message declares an inflated uncompressedSize
  3. MongoDB allocates a heap buffer of that declared size
  4. zlib inflates only the real payload into the start of the buffer
  5. The remaining buffer space stays uninitialized
  6. MongoDB treats the entire buffer as valid BSON
  7. BSON parsing walks past real data into leftover heap memory

Memory gets leaked out, not a lot of IOC to detect

Root cause (code-level)

The vulnerability originates in MongoDB’s zlib message decompression logic:

src/mongo/transport/message_compressor_zlib.cpp

In the vulnerable implementation, the decompression routine returned:

return {output.length()}; 

output.length() represents the allocated buffer size, not the number of bytes actually written by ::uncompress().

If the attacker declares a larger uncompressedSize than the real decompressed payload, MongoDB propagates the allocated size forward. Downstream BSON parsing logic consumes memory beyond the true decompression boundary.

The fix replaces this with:

return length; 

length is the actual number of bytes written by the decompressor.

Additional regression tests were added in message_compressor_manager_test.cpp to explicitly reject undersized decompression results with ErrorCodes::BadValue.

This closes the disclosure path.

Why is this reachable pre-auth

Compression negotiation occurs before authentication.

The exploit does not require:

  • malformed compression streams
  • memory corruption primitives
  • race conditions
  • timing dependencies

It relies on:

  • attacker-controlled metadata
  • valid compression
  • Incorrect length propagation

Any network client can trigger it, hence is super easy to deploy

Exploitation reality

A working proof of concept exists and is public, more details:

The PoC:

  • negotiates compression
  • sends crafted compressed messages
  • iterates offsets
  • dumps leaked memory fragments to disk and saves it locally

No credentials required.

No malformed packets.

Repeatable probing.

What actually leaks

Heap memory is messy. That is the point.

Observed and expected leak content includes:

  • database credentials
  • SCRAM material
  • session tokens
  • API keys
  • WiredTiger config strings
  • file paths
  • container metadata
  • client IPs and connection details
  • fragments of recently processed documents

The PoC output already shows real runtime artifacts.

This is not RCE, but steals pieces of memory, which is not as bad as RCE but still very dangerous (Heartbleed anyone)

MongoBleed does not provide native remote code execution.

There is no instruction pointer control. No shellcode injection. No crash exploitation.

What it provides is privilege discovery.

Memory disclosure enables:

  • credential reuse
  • token replay
  • service-to-service authentication
  • CI/CD compromise
  • cloud control plane access

A leaked Kubernetes token is better than RCE.

A leaked CI token is persistent RCE.

A leaked cloud role is full environment control.

This is RCE-adjacent through legitimate interfaces.

How widespread is this

MongoDB is everywhere.

Shodan telemetry captured on 29 December 2025 shows:

213,490 publicly reachable MongoDB instances

Version breakdown (port 27017):

Version Count Query
All versions 201,659 product:"MongoDB" port:27017
8.2.x 3,164 "8.2."
8.0.x (≠8.0.17) 13,411 "8.0." -"8.0.17"
7.0.x (≠7.0.28) 19,223 "7.0." -"7.0.28"
6.0.x (≠6.0.27) 3,672 "6.0." -"6.0.27"
5.0.x (≠5.0.32) 1,887 "5.0." -"5.0.32"
4.4.x (≠4.4.30) 3,231 "4.4." -"4.4.30"
4.2.x 3,138 "4.2."
4.0.x 3,145 "4.0."
3.6.x 1,145 "3.6."

Most are directly exposed on the default port, not shielded behind application tiers.

Core behaviors that matter

  • Unauthenticated Any client can trigger it.
  • Remote and repeatable Memory offsets can be probed over time.
  • Low noise No crashes. Logs stay quiet.
  • Data agnostic Whatever was on the heap becomes fair game.

This favors patient actors and automation.

Detection guidance

IOC Identification Network-level signals

Look for:

  • Inbound traffic to port 27017
  • compressed MongoDB messages
  • Repeated requests with:
    • large declared uncompressedSize
    • small actual payloads
  • high request frequency without auth attempts

Process-level signals

Watch for:

  • elevated CPU on mongod without query load
  • repeated short-lived connections
  • memory allocation spikes
  • abnormal BSON parsing warnings

Post-leak fallout

Check for:

  • new MongoDB users
  • role changes
  • admin command usage anomalies
  • auth attempts from unfamiliar IPs
  • API key failures
  • cloud IAM abuse
  • new outbound connections

If you see filesystem artifacts or shells, you are already past exploitation.

Temporary protections

If you cannot upgrade immediately:

  • Disable zlib compression Remove zlib from networkMessageCompressors
  • Restrict network access Remove direct internet exposure Enforce allowlists

These are stopgaps. The bug lives in the server - hence patch

Tooling and validation

A full test suite is available, combining:

  • exploit lab (vulnerable + patched instances)
  • network scanner
  • code scanner for repos and Dockerfiles

Repository:

https://github.com/Security-Phoenix-demo/mongobleed-exploit-CVE-2025-14847

This allows:

  • safe reproduction
  • exposure validation
  • pre-deployment detection

Why this one matters

MongoBleed does not break crypto it breaks data and memory

The database trusts client-supplied lengths.

Attackers live for that assumption.

Databases are part of your application attack surface.

Infrastructure bugs leak application secrets.

Vulnerability management without reachability is incomplete.

Patch this.

Then ask why it was reachable.

submitted by /u/Diligent-Side4917
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Windows Registry Persistence Techniques without Registry Callbacks

By: /u/radkawar — January 2nd 2026 at 13:15

A blog post on a technique I've been sitting on for almost 18 months that is wildly succesful against all EDRs. Why? They don't see anything other than the file write to %USERPROFILE% (NTUSER.MAN) and not the writes to HKCU.

Ultimately making it incredibly effective for medium integrity persistence through the registry/without tripping detections.

submitted by /u/radkawar
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

r/netsec monthly discussion & tool thread

By: /u/albinowax — January 1st 2026 at 14:29

Questions regarding netsec and discussion related directly to netsec are welcome here, as is sharing tool links.

Rules & Guidelines

  • Always maintain civil discourse. Be awesome to one another - moderator intervention will occur if necessary.
  • Avoid NSFW content unless absolutely necessary. If used, mark it as being NSFW. If left unmarked, the comment will be removed entirely.
  • If linking to classified content, mark it as such. If left unmarked, the comment will be removed entirely.
  • Avoid use of memes. If you have something to say, say it with real words.
  • All discussions and questions should directly relate to netsec.
  • No tech support is to be requested or provided on r/netsec.

As always, the content & discussion guidelines should also be observed on r/netsec.

Feedback

Feedback and suggestions are welcome, but don't post it here. Please send it to the moderator inbox.

submitted by /u/albinowax
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

built an SSRF prevention library

By: /u/Inner-Combination177 — January 1st 2026 at 12:56

nullspace - ssrf protection for node.js

  • blocks private ips, cloud metadata, loopback

  • handles encoding tricks (0x7f000001 = 127.0.0.1)

  • dns rebinding protection built-in

  • zero deps

github : [ https://github.com/bymehul/nullspace ]

submitted by /u/Inner-Combination177
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Detecting unknown MCPs in local dev environments

By: /u/Ok-Guide-4239 — December 29th 2025 at 14:21

Working with a CTO on visibility into what's actually running locally across a 70-engineer org. (For the context, there's no ZTNA implementation, At the moment, if there's a way to approach it from ZTNA angle, I'd love to know)

Engineers use cursor heavily, started adopting MCPs, and now there's a mix of verified, open source, and basically untrusted github repos running locally.

Customer creds are accessible from these environments. We want visibility first - detect what MCPs exist, where they're installed, track usage.

That part feels tractable. But from a detection/monitoring angle, once you know what's there - what's worth actually watching?

Some MCPs legitimately need local execution so you can't just block them. Full network proxying feels unrealistic for dev workflows.

How you approached it? what can implement after visibility?

submitted by /u/Ok-Guide-4239
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Static scans vs runtime reality

By: /u/SaadMalik12 — December 29th 2025 at 07:25

Static analysis is necessary, but it feels incomplete when it comes to how systems behave under real conditions. How are others dealing with that gap

submitted by /u/SaadMalik12
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Identity misuse that looks completely normal

By: /u/Additional_Bar8316 — December 28th 2025 at 07:22

When attackers use real credentials, everything they do can appear legitimate. Runtime monitoring often becomes the only way to spot it. How do you approach this in practice?

submitted by /u/Additional_Bar8316
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Implicit execution authority is the real failure mode behind prompt injection

By: /u/anima-core — December 27th 2025 at 17:57

I’m approaching prompt injection less as an input sanitization issue and more as an authority and trust-boundary problem.

In many systems, model output is implicitly authorized to cause side effects, for example by triggering tool calls or function execution. Once generation is treated as execution-capable, sanitization and guardrails become reactive defenses around an actor that already holds authority.

I’m exploring an architecture where the model never has execution rights at all. It produces proposals only. A separate, non-generative control plane is the sole component allowed to execute actions, based on fixed policy and system state. If the gate says no, nothing runs. From this perspective, prompt injection fails because generation no longer implies authority. There’s no privileged path from text to side effects.

I’m curious whether people here see this as a meaningful shift in the trust model, or just a restatement of existing capability-based or mediation patterns in security systems.

submitted by /u/anima-core
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Early warning signs of runtime compromise

By: /u/AviMitz_ — December 27th 2025 at 14:54

Runtime threats rarely trigger obvious alerts. Usually something just feels slightly off before anything breaks. What subtle signs have tipped you off in the past?

submitted by /u/AviMitz_
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Why runtime attacks stay quiet for so long

By: /u/OKAMI_TAMA — December 27th 2025 at 10:35

A lot of environments look secure on paper, but runtime attacks often operate quietly. Credential misuse, app-layer abuse, and supply chain compromises tend to blend in rather than break things. What runtime signals have actually helped you catch issues early?

submitted by /u/OKAMI_TAMA
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

First verified SHA-256 second-preimage collision: Structural analysis of the W-schedule vulnerability

By: /u/No_Arachnid_5563 — December 27th 2025 at 02:03

I am presenting a verified second-preimage collision for the SHA-256 algorithm, specifically targeting the Bitcoin Genesis Block header (Hash: 000000000019d668...).

Unlike previous theoretical differential attacks, this method utilizes a structural exploit in the message schedule (W-schedule) to manipulate internal states during the compression function. This allows for the generation of an alternative preimage (Kaoru DNA) that results in an identical 256-bit output.

Key Technical Aspects:

  • Target: SHA-256 Second-preimage resistance.
  • Exploit Vector: Internal state extraction via W-schedule structural weakness.
  • Verification: The collision is bit-perfect and can be verified using any standard SHA-256 implementation.

This discovery suggests that the collision resistance of SHA-256 is fundamentally compromised under specific state-transition conditions.

Verification Code: https://osf.io/2gdzq/files/dqghk

submitted by /u/No_Arachnid_5563
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

How do you handle daily news fatigue? Looking for feedback on a curation project.

By: /u/Big-Engineering-9365 — December 26th 2025 at 10:07

Every morning I find myself scrolling through 50+ tabs of RSS feeds, BleepingComputer, and CISA alerts. It’s exhausting.

​I started a project called Threat Road to curate the "Top 3" most critical stories daily with a focus on immediate mitigations. I want to make it as useful as possible for the community.

​I’d love your brutal honesty:

​What makes a security newsletter "instant delete" for you?

​Do you care about "Chili-pepper" risk ratings, or do you find them gimmicky?

​Would you rather have a deep dive on one bug or a brief on three?

​I'm just looking to hear what you all actually want in a daily briefing.

submitted by /u/Big-Engineering-9365
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

WebSocket RCE in the CurseForge Launcher

By: /u/elliott-diy — December 24th 2025 at 23:59

Little write-up for a patched WebSocket-based RCE I found in the CurseForge launcher.

It involved an unauthenticated local websocket API reachable from the browser, which could be abused to execute arbitrary code.

Happy to answer any questions if anyone has any!

submitted by /u/elliott-diy
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

certgrep: a free CT search engine

By: /u/JDBHub — December 24th 2025 at 14:07

Hey r/netsec -- it's been about two years since we last published a tool for the security community. As a little festive gift, today we're happy to announce the release of certgrep, a free Certificate Transparency search tool we built for our own detection work and decided to open up.

It’s focused on pattern-based discovery (regex/substring-style searches) and quick search and drill down workflows, as a complement to tools like crt.sh.

A few fun example queries it’s useful for:

  • (login|signin|account|secure).*yourbrand.*
  • \*.*google.*
  • yourbrand.*(cdn|assets|static).*

We hope you like it, and would love to hear any feedback you folks may have! A number of iterations will be coming up, including API, SDKs, and integrations (e.g., Slack).

Enjoy!

submitted by /u/JDBHub
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Technical Deep Dive: How Early-Boot DMA Attacks are bypassing IOMMU on modern UEFI systems

By: /u/Imaginary-Ad-8278 — December 24th 2025 at 11:35

A new research paper highlights a critical implementation flaw in how major vendors (ASUS, MSI, etc.) configure IOMMU during the DXE phase of boot.

The Core Issue:
The firmware reports DMA protection as "Active" to the OS, but fails to actually enable the IOMMU translation tables during the initial boot sequence. This creates a window of vulnerability where a malicious peripheral can read/write system memory unrestricted.

I've analyzed the root cause and the discrepancy between "Reported Status" vs "Actual Enforcement" in this report:
[👉 Full Analysis & Mitigation Strategies]https://www.nexaspecs.com/2025/12/critical-uefi-flaw-exposes-motherboards.html

Has anyone started seeing patched BIOS versions roll out yet?

submitted by /u/Imaginary-Ad-8278
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Linearizing SHA-256 via fractional modular analysis (Kaoru Method)

By: /u/No_Arachnid_5563 — December 24th 2025 at 05:33

Hi everyone,

Over the last month I’ve been analyzing modular addition not as a bitwise operation, but as a fractional mapping. Treating (a + b) mod 2^32 as a projection into the fractional domain [0, 1), modular “bit loss” stops behaving like noise and instead becomes predictable geometric wrapping.

This leads to what I call the Kaoru Method.

The core idea is to run a “Shadow SHA-256” in parallel using infinite precision arithmetic. By comparing the real SHA-256 state with the shadow state, it’s possible to reconstruct a Universal Carry Map (k) that fully captures all modular wraps occurring during execution.

Once k is recovered for the 64 rounds, the modular barriers effectively disappear and the compression function reduces to a system of linear equations.

In my experiments, a standard SHA-256 block produces exactly 186 modular wraps. This number appears stable and acts like a structural “DNA” of the hash computation.

Under this framework, differential cryptanalysis becomes significantly simpler, since the carry behavior is no longer hidden. I’m releasing both the theoretical framework and an extractor implementation so others can validate, attack, or extend the idea toward full collisions.

Paper (theory):
https://osf.io/jd392/files/4qyxc

Code (Shadow SHA-256 extractor):
https://osf.io/n9xcw

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/JD392

I’m aware this challenges some long-held assumptions about modular addition as a source of non-linearity, so I’m especially interested in feedback, counterexamples, or independent replication.

Thanks for reading.

submitted by /u/No_Arachnid_5563
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Availability of old crypto exchange user email addresses? - Help to notify victims of the Bitfinex Hack - Now the largest forfeiture (113000 Bitcoins)

By: /u/ExpensivePrompt2902 — December 24th 2025 at 00:06

Over one year ago the Goverment wanted to email the victims but Bitfinex denied it. But it is not too late yet if we act now. Did you hear of any availability of old crypto exchange user email addresses? Security researchers in possession of historic leak data could help to return $ nine digits to victims soon.
Please suggest specific forums for outreach.
Thanks!

Ranked list of 2016 exchanges: Poloniex Bitstamp OKCoin BTC-e LocalBitcoins Huobi Xapo Kraken CoinJoinMess Bittrex BitPay NitrogenSports-eu Cex-io BitVC Bitcoin-de YoBit-net Cryptsy HaoBTC BTCC BX-in-th Hashnest BtcMarkets-net Gatecoin Purse-io CloudBet Cubits AnxPro Bitcurex AlphaBayMarket Luno BTCC Loanbase Bitbond BTCJam Bit-x BitPay BitBay-net NucleusMarket PrimeDice BitAces-me Bter MasterXchange CoinGaming-io CoinJar Cryptopay-me FaucetBOX Genesis-Mining

submitted by /u/ExpensivePrompt2902
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Thank you reddit (u/broadexample) - updated version of my STIX feed

By: /u/Clear_Ask9073 — December 22nd 2025 at 19:20

A few days ago u/broadexample pointed out that our free STIX feed was doing it wrong:

"You're creating everything as Indicator, not as IPv4Address linked to Indicator via STIX Relationship hierarchy. This works when you use just this feed alone, but for everyone using multiple feeds it would be much less useful."

They were right. We were creating flat Indicator objects instead of proper STIX 2.1 hierarchy with SCOs and Relationships.

Fixed it today. New V2 endpoint with:

- IPv4Address SCOs with deterministic UUIDs (uuid5 for cross-feed deduplication)

- Relationship objects linking Indicator → SCO ("based-on")

- Malware SDOs for 10 families (Stealc, LummaC2, Cobalt Strike, etc.)

- Relationship objects linking Indicator → Malware ("indicates")

Should actually work properly in OpenCTI now.

V2 endpoint: https://analytics.dugganusa.com/api/v1/stix-feed/v2

V1 still works if you just need IOC lists: https://analytics.dugganusa.com/api/v1/stix-feed

Full writeup: https://www.dugganusa.com/post/stix-v2-reddit-feedback-opencti-ready

Thanks for the feedback. This is why we post here - you catch the stuff we miss.

submitted by /u/Clear_Ask9073
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

I caught a Rust DDoS botnet on my honeypot, reverse engineered it, and now I'm monitoring its targets in real-time

By: /u/mario_candela — December 22nd 2025 at 15:47

During routine threat hunting on my Beelzebub honeypot, I caught something interesting: a Rust-based DDoS bot with 0 detections across 60+ AV engines at the time of capture.

TL;DR:

  • The malware exploits exposed Docker APIs on port 2375
  • Written in Rust using Tokio for async networking, bincode for the custom C2 protocol, and obfstr for string obfuscation
  • Same server (196.251.100.116) for malware distribution (port 80) and C2 (port 8080), single point of failure.
  • I decoded the C2 protocol and found it surprisingly weak: no encryption, predictable nonce, hardcoded username ("client_user")
  • I built a honeypot that impersonates a bot to monitor DDoS attack targets 👀

In the post you'll find:

  • Full attack chain of the Docker API exploitation
  • Sandbox setup for dynamic analysis (Docker inside an isolated VM)
  • Complete C2 protocol decoding
  • YARA rule and Snort rule for detection
  • All IoCs

The fact that no AV detected it shows that Rust + string obfuscation is making life hard for traditional detection engines.

Questions? AMA!

submitted by /u/mario_candela
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Cyberctf.space - Early Access Open

By: /u/Royal_Independent517 — December 22nd 2025 at 09:25

I’ve opened the early access waitlist for CyberCTF.space, a cybersecurity CTF platform focused on real-world attacks, not puzzle only challenges. - Docker based labs - MITRE ATT&CK aligned techniques - Real World exploits

🎖 Early joiners receive Founding Hacker recognition.

I’m also looking for security practitioners interested in contributing labs, challenges, or documentation.

Join the waitlist: https://cyberctf.space/

Contributors: https://cyberctf.space/contributors

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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Vulnhalla: Picking the true vulnerabilities from the CodeQL haystack

By: /u/ES_CY — December 21st 2025 at 10:47

Full disclosure: I'm a researcher at CyberArk Labs.

This is a technical deep dive from our threat research team, no marketing fluff, just code and methodology.
Static analysis tools like CodeQL are great at identifying "maybe" issues, but the signal-to-noise ratio is often overwhelming. You get thousands of alerts, and manually triaging them is impossible.

We built an open-source tool, Vulnhalla, to address this issue. It queries CodeQL's "haystack" into GPT-4o, which reasons about the code context to verify if the alert is legitimate.

The sheer volume of false positives often tricks us into thinking a codebase is "clean enough" just because we can't physically get through the backlog. This creates a significant amount of frustration for us. Still, the vulnerabilities remain, hidden in the noise.
Once we used GPT-4o to strip away ~96% of the false positives, we uncovered confirmed CVEs in the Linux Kernel, FFmpeg, Redis, Bullet3, and RetroArch. We found these in just 2 days of running the tool and triaging the output (total API cost <$80).
Running the tool for longer periods, with improved models, can reveal many additional vulnerabilities.
Write-up & Tool:

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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Transforming InfoSec - How the next generation of security products should not require any IT knowledge

By: /u/pathetiq — December 19th 2025 at 19:08

We don’t lack security ideas. We lack companies hiring juniors and products that are secure by default. These two problems are connected, and until we fix both, we’ll keep talking about a skills shortage while making it impossible to build a secure society.

What do you all think?

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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

[Research] Geometric analysis of SHA-256: Finding 68% bit-match pairs through dimensional transformation

By: /u/No_Arachnid_5563 — December 19th 2025 at 02:01

New preprint exploring unconventional cryptanalysis:

• Framework: “Inverse Dimensionalization”
• Target: SHA-256 structural analysis
• Result: 174/256 matching bits (M₁ = 88514, M₂ = 88551)
• Time: 3.8 seconds
• NOT a collision — but statistically anomalous

Paper + reproducible code: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/6YRW8
Full paper with math and code: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/6YRW8
Paper: https://osf.io/6yrw8/files/wj9ze
Code: https://osf.io/6yrw8/files/zy8ck
Verification code: https://osf.io/6yrw8/files/pqne7

Device specifications used to find the 174/256-bit match in 3.8 seconds:
• Google Colab Free CPU
• Intel Xeon
• Clock speed: between 2.20 GHz and 2.30 GHz
• Cores (vCPUs): 2 virtual cores
• RAM: 12 GB

Security implications discussion welcome.

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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Remote Desktop access and IP address

By: /u/Mission_Protection40 — December 19th 2025 at 01:55

I’m traveling next week and will need to access a website that is IP address -sensitive. My work computer’s IP address is approved for the site. If I access my work desktop remotely using something like LogMeIn or Team Viewer, will I be able to get onto the website I need to use? Or will my public IP address show up as the one I’m using from far?

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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Free STIX 2.1 Threat Intel Feed

By: /u/IwantAMD — December 18th 2025 at 18:53

Built a threat intel platform that runs on $75/month infrastructure. Decided to give the STIX feed away for free instead of charging enterprise prices for it.

What's in it:
- 59K IOCs (IPs, domains, hashes, URLs)
- ThreatFox, OTX, honeypot captures, and original discoveries
- STIX 2.1 compliant (works with Sentinel, TAXII consumers, etc.)
- Updated continuously

Feed URL: https://analytics.dugganusa.com/api/v1/stix-feed

Search API (if you want to query it): https://analytics.dugganusa.com/api/v1/search?q=cobalt+strike

We've been running this for a few months. Microsoft Sentinel and AT&T are already polling it. Found 244 things before CrowdStrike/Palo Alto had signatures for them (timestamped, documented).

Not trying to sell anything - genuinely curious if it's useful and what we're missing. Built it to scratch our own itch.

Tear it apart.

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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

I built a mitmproxy AI agent using 4000 paid security disclosures

By: /u/badhiyahai — December 18th 2025 at 16:53

tl;dr: Ask Claude Code to tee mitmdump to a log file (with request and response). Create skills based on hackerone public reports (download from hf), let Claude Code figure out if it can find anything in the log file.

submitted by /u/badhiyahai
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

Active HubSpot Phishing Campaign

By: /u/Deciqher_ — December 18th 2025 at 13:46

An active phishing campaign has been detection by Evalian SOC targeting HubSpot customers.

submitted by /u/Deciqher_
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☐ ☆ ✇ /r/netsec - Information Security News & Discussion

New research confirms what we suspected: every LLM tested can be exploited

By: /u/CortexVortex1 — December 17th 2025 at 22:17

Just finished reading ActiveFence’s emerging threats assessment on 7 major models across hate speech, disinfo, fraud, and CSAM-adjacent prompts.

Key findings are: 44% of outputs were rated risky, 68% of unsafe ones were hate-speech-related, and only a single model landed in the safe range.

What really jumps out is how different vendors behave per abuse area (fraud looks relatively well-covered, hate and child safety really don’t).

For those doing your own evals/red teaming: are you seeing similar per-category gaps? Has anyone brought in an external research partner like ActiveFence to track emerging threats over time?

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