Tuesday, October 14, 2025

WhatsApp Worm, Essential CVEs, Oracle 0-Day, Ransomware Cartel & Extra


Oct 13, 2025Ravie LakshmananCybersecurity / Hacking Information

Each week, the cyber world reminds us that silence does not imply security. Assaults usually start quietly — one unpatched flaw, one neglected credential, one backup left unencrypted. By the point alarms sound, the injury is completed.

This week’s version appears at how attackers are altering the sport — linking totally different flaws, working collectively throughout borders, and even turning trusted instruments into weapons. From main software program bugs to AI abuse and new phishing tips, every story exhibits how briskly the menace panorama is shifting and why safety wants to maneuver simply as shortly.

⚡ Risk of the Week

Dozens of Orgs Impacted by Exploitation of Oracle EBS Flaw — Dozens of organizations could have been impacted following the zero-day exploitation of a safety flaw in Oracle’s E-Enterprise Suite (EBS) software program since August 9, 2025, in response to Google Risk Intelligence Group (GTIG) and Mandiant. The exercise, which bears some hallmarks related to the Cl0p ransomware crew, is assessed to have common collectively a number of distinct vulnerabilities, together with a zero-day flaw tracked as CVE-2025-61882 (CVSS rating: 9.8), to breach goal networks and exfiltrate delicate knowledge. The assault chains have been discovered to set off two totally different payload chains, dropping malware households like GOLDVEIN.JAVA, SAGEGIFT, SAGELEAF, and SAGEWAVE. Oracle has additionally launched updates to EBS to deal with one other vulnerability in the identical product (CVE-2025-61884) that would result in unauthorized entry to delicate knowledge. The corporate didn’t point out if it was being exploited within the wild.

🔔 High Information

  • Storm-1175 Linked to Exploitation of GoAnywhere MFT Flaw — A cybercriminal group Microsoft tracks as Storm-1175 exploited a maximum-severity vulnerability in GoAnywhere MFT (CVE-2025-10035) to provoke multi-stage assaults, together with Medusa ransomware. Storm-1175’s assaults are opportunistic, and have affected organizations within the transportation, schooling, retail, insurance coverage, and manufacturing sectors. The exercise blends reputable instruments with stealthy strategies to remain underneath the radar and monetize entry via extortion and knowledge theft, utilizing the entry to put in distant monitoring instruments equivalent to SimpleHelp and MeshAgent, drop net shells, and transfer laterally throughout networks utilizing built-in Home windows utilities. Fortra has since disclosed that it started its investigation on September 11 following a “potential vulnerability” reported by a buyer, uncovering “doubtlessly suspicious exercise” associated to the flaw.
  • OpenAI Disrupted Three Clusters from China, North Korea, and Russia — OpenAI stated it disrupted three exercise clusters for misusing its ChatGPT synthetic intelligence (AI) instrument to facilitate malware growth. This features a Russian‑language menace actor, who is alleged to have used the chatbot to assist develop and refine a distant entry trojan (RAT), a credential stealer with an purpose to evade detection. The second cluster of exercise originated from North Korea, which used ChatGPT for malware and command-and-control (C2) growth, specializing in growing macOS Finder extensions, configuring Home windows Server VPNs, or changing Chrome extensions to their Safari equivalents. The third set of banned accounts shared overlaps with a cluster tracked as UNK_DropPitch (aka UTA0388), a Chinese language hacking group which employed the AI chatbot to generate content material for phishing campaigns in English, Chinese language, and Japanese; help with tooling to speed up routine duties equivalent to distant execution and site visitors safety utilizing HTTPS; and seek for info associated to putting in open-source instruments like nuclei and fscan.
  • Over 175 npm Packages Used for Phishing Marketing campaign — In an uncommon twist, menace actors have been noticed to push throwaway npm packages that, as soon as put in, are designed to create and publish an npm package deal of its personal with the sample “redirect-xxxxxx” or “mad-xxxxxx,” which, in flip, auto-redirects victims to credential-harvesting websites when opened from crafted HTML enterprise paperwork. “Not like the extra acquainted tactic of merely importing malicious packages to compromise builders throughout package deal set up, this marketing campaign takes a distinct path,” Snyk stated. “As an alternative of infecting customers through npm set up, the attackers leverage the browser supply path via UNPKG, turning reputable open supply internet hosting infrastructure right into a phishing mechanism.” It is believed that the HTML information generated via the npm packages are distributed to victims, who’re then redirected to the credential phishing websites after they try and open them. Within the packages analyzed by Snyk, the pages masquerade as Cloudflare safety checks earlier than main victims to an attacker-controlled URL fetched from a distant GitHub-hosted file.
  • LockBit, Qilin, and DragonForce Be a part of Forces — Three of essentially the most infamous ransomware-as-a-service operations, LockBit, Qilin, and DragonForce, have shaped a legal cartel aimed toward coordinating assaults and sharing assets. The partnership was introduced early final month, shortly following the emergence of LockBit 5.0. “Create equal competitors situations, no conflicts and no public insults,” DragonForce wrote in a put up on a darkish net discussion board. “This fashion, we are able to all improve our earnings and dictate market situations. Name it no matter you want – coalition, cartel, and many others. The principle factor is to remain in contact, be pleasant to one another, and be sturdy allies, not enemies.” The teaming up of the three teams comes amid mounting stress from regulation enforcement disruptions, prompting them to assault sectors beforehand thought of off-limits, equivalent to nuclear energy crops, thermal energy crops, and hydroelectric energy crops. It additionally follows an identical consolidation sample amongst primarily English-speaking cybercrime collectives like Scattered Spider, ShinyHunters, and LAPSUS$, which started collaborating underneath the identify Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters. That stated, the cartelization of ransomware additionally comes at a time of report fragmentation within the broader ecosystem, with the variety of lively knowledge leak websites reaching an all-time excessive of 81 within the third quarter of 2025.
  • China-Nexus Hackers Weaponize Open-Supply Nezha Software in Assaults — Risk actors with suspected ties to China have turned a reputable open-source monitoring instrument known as Nezha into an assault weapon, utilizing it to ship a identified malware known as Gh0st RAT to targets. The marketing campaign is alleged to have doubtless compromised greater than 100 sufferer machines since August 2025, with a majority of the infections reported in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong. The exercise is one more indication of how menace actors proceed to twist reputable instruments for malicious functions and mix in with regular community site visitors. In a single occasion noticed by Huntress, the attackers focused an uncovered phpMyAdmin panel to deploy an online shell by the use of a log poisoning assault. The entry obtained via the net shell was then used to drop Nezha and finally drop Gh0st RAT, however not earlier than laying the required groundwork to keep away from detection.

‎️‍🔥 Trending CVEs

Hackers transfer quick. They usually exploit new vulnerabilities inside hours, turning a single missed patch into a significant breach. One unpatched CVE will be all it takes for a full compromise. Beneath are this week’s most crucial vulnerabilities gaining consideration throughout the business. Overview them, prioritize your fixes, and shut the hole earlier than attackers take benefit.

This week’s checklist consists of — CVE-2025-61884 (Oracle E-Enterprise Suite), CVE-2025-11371 (Gladinet CentreStack and TrioFox), CVE-2025-5947 (Service Finder theme), CVE-2025-53967 (Framelink Figma MCP server), CVE-2025-49844 (Redis), CVE-2025-27237 (Zabbix Agent), CVE-2025-59489 (Unity for Android and Home windows), CVE-2025-36604 (Dell UnityVSA), CVE-2025-37728 (Elastic Kibana Connector), CVE-2025-56383 (Notepad++), CVE-2025-11462 (AWS Consumer VPN for macOS), CVE-2025-42701, CVE-2025-42706 (CrowdStrike Falcon), CVE-2025-11001, CVE-2025-11002 (7-Zip), CVE-2025-59978 (Juniper Networks Junos House), CVE-2025-11188, CVE-2025-11189, CVE-2025-11190 (SynchroWeb Kiwire Captive Portal), CVE-2025-3600 (Progress Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX), a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in REDCap, and unpatched safety vulnerabilities in Ivanti Endpoint Supervisor (from ZDI-25-935 via ZDI-25-947).

📰 Across the Cyber World

  • TwoNet Targets Forescout Honeypot — An ICS/OT honeypot run by Forescout, designed to imitate a water therapy facility, was focused final month by a Russia-linked group named TwoNet. The financially motivated hacktivist group subsequently tried to deface the related human machine interface (HMI), disrupt processes, and manipulate different ICS. Forescout’s honeypots additionally noticed assault makes an attempt which have been linked to Russia and Iran. TwoNet first emerged in January, primarily targeted on DDoS assaults utilizing the MegaMedusa Machine malware, per Intel471. By way of an affiliated group, CyberTroops, TwoNet introduced it was ceasing operations on September 30, 2025. “This underscores the ephemeral nature of the ecosystem the place channels and teams are short-lived, whereas operators sometimes persist by rebranding, shifting alliances, becoming a member of different teams, studying new strategies, or concentrating on different organizations,” Forescout stated. “Teams transferring from DDoS/defacement to OT/ICS usually misinterpret targets, journey over honeypots, or overclaim. That does not make them innocent; it exhibits the place they’re headed.”
  • Sophos Probes WhatsApp Worm’s Hyperlinks to Coyote — A lately disclosed marketing campaign dubbed Water Saci concerned the menace actors utilizing self-propagating malware dubbed SORVEPOTEL that spreads through the favored messaging app WhatsApp. Sophos stated it is investigating to find out if the marketing campaign might be associated to prior reported campaigns that distributed a banking trojan named Coyote concentrating on customers in Brazil, and if the malware used within the assaults, Maverick, is an evolution of Coyote. The WhatsApp messages include a zipped LNK file that, when launched, initiates a sequence of malicious PowerShell instructions to drop next-stage PowerShell, which then makes an attempt to change native safety controls. In some instances, Sophos stated it noticed an extra payload, the reputable Selenium browser automation instrument, that enabled management of working browser periods on the contaminated host. It is suspected that Selenium is delivered alongside Maverick through the identical command-and-control (C2) infrastructure.
  • North Korean IT Staff Search Jobs in New Sectors — The notorious North Korean IT staff at the moment are looking for distant jobs within the industrial design and structure fields, in response to safety firm KELA. “Their involvement might pose dangers associated to espionage, sanctions evasion, security considerations, and entry to delicate infrastructure designs,” it stated, describing the menace as a “a extremely organized, state-backed community that extends far past IT roles.” One in every of IT staff, Hailong Jin, has been recognized as related to the event of a malicious sport known as DeTankZone, whereas additionally sharing ties with one other IT employee named Lian Hung, who has claimed to be a cell app developer in Tanzania. It is believed that Hailong Jin and Lian Hung could be the similar individual, the Chollima Group stated, including Bells Inter Buying and selling Restricted is a North Korean run entrance firm using IT Staff in Tanzania. The corporate, for its half, has been linked to a number of VPN apps printed on each Apple and Google’s iOS and Android app shops. “Slightly than viewing them as a monolithic entity, North Korean IT Staff are extra akin to particular person entrepreneurs working underneath the blessing of a higher-status boss,” the Chollima Group famous. “As an IT Employee beneficial properties extra standing and respect, they can climb the group’s ranks and finally grow to be bosses themselves. From there they could type their very own entrance firms and acquire the standing essential to tackle extra malicious exercise (in the event that they so select). We consider Lian Hung and Hailong Jin, each showing to be of their 30s-40s, could also be working as center managers or maintain increased statuses on this construction, which can clarify their titles of selection being ‘Mission Supervisor.'”
  • FBI Seizes Website Utilized by Salesforce Extortionists — The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) seized a web site (“breachforums[.]hn”) that was being utilized by Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters to extort Salesforce and its prospects. The motion marks one other chapter within the ongoing cat-and-mouse sport to dismantle the persistent knowledge leak website. That stated, the darkish net model of the leak website remains to be up and working. “BreachForums was seized by the FBI and worldwide companions as we speak. All our domains had been taken from us by the U.S. Authorities. The period of boards is over,” the Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters group stated in a PGP-encrypted assertion on Telegram. Whereas the teams initially claimed they had been shutting down their operations, the web site resurfaced merely a number of days later, transitioning from a hacking discussion board to a devoted extortion website. The group additionally admitted that the BreachForums servers and backups had been destroyed, and that database archives and escrow knowledge from way back to 2023 had been compromised. Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters (aka the Trinity of Chaos) is a newly shaped alliance comprising Scattered Spider (aka Muddled Libra), LAPSUS$, and ShinyHunters (aka Bling Libra). In current weeks, the menace actors breached Salesloft’s methods and used the entry to acquire prospects’ Salesforce knowledge. Final month, Salesloft revealed that the information breach linked to its Drift software began with the compromise of its GitHub account. BreachForums has a protracted and turbulent historical past, punctuated by quite a few takedowns and resurrections since its authentic administrator was arrested in March 2023.
  • NSO Group Acquired by U.S. Funding Group — Israeli spy ware maker NSO Group has disclosed {that a} U.S. funding group has acquired the controversial firm. An organization’s spokesperson advised TechCrunch that “an American funding group has invested tens of tens of millions of {dollars} within the firm and has acquired controlling possession.”
  • Apple Revises its Bug Bounty Program — Apple introduced vital updates to its bug bounty program, with the corporate now providing as much as $2 million for exploit chains that may obtain comparable targets as refined mercenary spy ware assaults. It is also rewarding one-click WebKit sandbox escapes with as much as $300,000, and as much as $1 million for wi-fi proximity exploits over any radio, broad unauthorized iCloud entry, and WebKit exploit chains resulting in unsigned arbitrary code execution. “Since we launched the general public Apple Safety Bounty program in 2020, we’re proud to have awarded over $35 million to greater than 800 safety researchers, with a number of particular person reviews incomes $500,000 rewards,” the corporate stated. The brand new payouts will go into impact in November 2025.
  • Spanish Guardia Civil Disrupts GXC Staff — Spanish authorities dismantled the GXC Staff and arrested its alleged mastermind, a 25-year-old Brazilian nationwide who went on-line as GoogleXcoder. In line with Group-IB, GXC Staff operated a crime-as-a-service (CaaS) platform providing AI-powered phishing kits, Android malware, and voice rip-off instruments through Telegram and a Russian-speaking hacker discussion board to cybercriminals concentrating on banks, transportation, and e-commerce, in Spain, Slovakia, the UK, US, and Brazil.”To keep away from seize, the suspect adopted a ‘digital nomad’ way of life, regularly relocating between Spanish provinces and utilizing stolen identities to safe housing, telephone strains, and fee playing cards,” Group-IB stated.
  • Inside Russian Market — Rapid7 stated Russian Market has advanced its operations over time, pivoting from promoting RDP entry to stolen bank card knowledge and, extra lately, infostealer logs. “Stolen credentials originate from organizations worldwide, with 26% originating within the US and 23% in Argentina,” the corporate stated. “Most sellers have adopted a multi-stealer method through the years, leveraging numerous malware variants of their operations, with Lumma rising as a broadly used instrument. The most typical varieties of infostealers being utilized by sellers in Russian Market through the years have been Raccoon, Vidar, Lumma, RedLine, and Stealc, with Rhadamanthys and Acreed gaining recognition within the first half of 2025.” The findings got here as Crimson Canary revealed that Atomic, Poseidon, and Odyssey have emerged because the three distinguished stealer households concentrating on Apple macOS methods, whereas additionally sharing many tactical similarities. Odyssey Stealer is a successor to Poseidon that was first detected in March 2025.
  • Austria Says Microsoft Violated E.U. Legal guidelines — Austria’s privateness regulator discovered that Microsoft violated E.U. regulation by illegally monitoring college students via Microsoft 365 Schooling utilizing monitoring cookies with out their consent. The choice was reached following noyb’s criticism in 2024. The Austrian Information Safety Authority (DSB) has ordered the deletion of the related private knowledge. “The choice by the Austrian DPA actually highlights the dearth of transparency with Microsoft 365 Schooling,” noyb stated. “It’s virtually not possible for colleges to tell college students, mother and father and academics about what is going on with their knowledge.”
  • AI Fashions Can Purchase Backdoors from About 250 Malicious Paperwork — A brand new tutorial examine from Anthropic, the U.Okay. AISI’s Safeguards group, and The Alan Turing Institute has discovered that it takes roughly 250 malicious paperwork to determine a easy “backdoor” in massive language fashions. The analysis challenges the concept that attackers want to manage or poison a big portion of the coaching knowledge with a view to affect an LLM’s output. “Poisoning assaults require a near-constant variety of paperwork no matter mannequin and coaching knowledge measurement,” it stated. “If attackers solely must inject a hard and fast, small variety of paperwork somewhat than a proportion of coaching knowledge, poisoning assaults could also be extra possible than beforehand believed.” A 2024 examine by researchers at Carnegie Mellon College, ETH Zürich, Meta, and Google DeepMind confirmed that attackers controlling 0.1 % of pre-training knowledge might introduce backdoors for numerous malicious goals. “Our outcomes recommend that injecting backdoors via knowledge poisoning could also be simpler for big fashions than beforehand believed because the variety of poisons required doesn’t scale up with mannequin measurement,” the researchers stated, “highlighting the necessity for extra analysis on defences to mitigate this threat in future fashions.” The disclosure coincided with OpenAI’s stating that its GPT-5 mannequin displays decrease ranges of political bias than any earlier fashions.

🎥 Cybersecurity Webinars

  • Drowning in Vulnerability Alerts? This is Methods to Lastly Regain Management – Most safety groups face the identical drawback — too many vulnerabilities and never sufficient time. Dynamic Assault Floor Discount (DASR) helps repair this by discovering and shutting dangers routinely, earlier than attackers can use them. As an alternative of chasing infinite alerts, groups can give attention to what actually issues: maintaining methods protected and working easily. It is a smarter, quicker technique to keep one step forward.
  • How Main Groups Are Utilizing AI to Simplify Compliance and Scale back Danger – AI is altering how organizations deal with Governance, Danger, and Compliance (GRC). It will possibly make compliance quicker and smarter—but it surely additionally brings new dangers and guidelines to comply with. This session will present you easy methods to use AI safely and successfully, with actual examples, classes from early adopters, and sensible tricks to put together your group for the way forward for compliance.
  • From Firefighting to Safe-by-Design: A Sensible Playbook – AI is altering quick, however safety cannot lag behind. The neatest groups now deal with safety controls as launchpads, not roadblocks — enabling AI brokers to maneuver shortly and safely. By shifting from reactive firefighting to a secure-by-design mindset, organizations acquire each pace and confidence. With the appropriate framework, you possibly can management AI dangers whereas accelerating innovation as an alternative of slowing it down.

🔧 Cybersecurity Instruments

  • P0LR Espresso – A brand new open-source instrument from Permiso that helps safety groups shortly analyze multi-cloud logs throughout dwell response. It normalizes knowledge from platforms like AWS, Azure, and GCP to ship clear timelines, behavioral insights, and IOC evaluation—making it simpler to identify compromised identities and perceive what actually occurred.
  • Ouroboros – A brand new open-source decompiler inbuilt Rust that makes use of symbolic execution to get better high-level code construction from compiled binaries. Not like conventional decompilers that depend on static task fashions, Ouroboros tracks constraints and knowledge stream to know how registers and reminiscence change throughout execution. This method helps it reconstruct logical code patterns equivalent to loops, situations, and management stream areas, making it a sensible instrument for reverse engineering, program evaluation, and safety analysis.

Disclaimer: These instruments are for instructional and analysis use solely. They have not been absolutely security-tested and will pose dangers if used incorrectly. Overview the code earlier than making an attempt them, take a look at solely in protected environments, and comply with all moral, authorized, and organizational guidelines.

🔒 Tip of the Week

Do not Depart Your Backups Unlocked — Backups are your security web — but when they are not encrypted, they will grow to be your greatest threat. Anybody who will get entry to an unencrypted backup can learn every part inside: passwords, emails, monetary knowledge, buyer information — all of it.

The Easy Repair: All the time encrypt your backups earlier than saving or sending them wherever (USB, cloud, or server). Encryption locks your knowledge so solely you possibly can open it.

🔐 Straightforward, Trusted Open-Supply Instruments:

  • Restic: Quick, easy, and encrypts every part routinely. Works with many cloud companies.
  • BorgBackup: Compresses, deduplicates, and encrypts your backups — excellent for long-term storage.
  • Duplicity: Makes use of GPG encryption and helps encrypted backups to native or distant storage.
  • rclone: Syncs information securely to cloud storage with built-in encryption choices.

Professional Tip: Take a look at your backup frequently — be sure to can decrypt and restore it. A locked or damaged backup is as dangerous as no backup in any respect.

Conclusion

The week’s tales present each side of cybersecurity — the creativity of attackers and the resilience of defenders. Our energy lies in consciousness, collaboration, and motion. Let’s use each lesson discovered to make subsequent week’s information rather less alarming.

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