Headline
Patch it up: Old vulnerabilities are everyone’s problems
Thorsten picks apart some headlines, highlights Talos’ report on an unknown attacker predominantly targeting Japan, and asks, “Where is the victim, and does it matter?”
Thursday, March 13, 2025 14:04
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter.
Let’s pick up where we left off in my last newsletter. Please mark your calendars: The free support for Windows 10 will end on October 14, 2025.
When a software loses vendor support, it no longer receives patches or updates. As highlighted in my previous newsletter, the top method for initial access in the last quarter of 2024 was exploiting vulnerabilities in public-facing applications. While Windows 10 isn’t typically (or shouldn’t be) a public-facing application, unpatched client systems become prime targets for bad actors as they progress through the stages of an attack: Execution, Privilege Escalation, Defense Evasion, Credential Access, and Lateral Movement.
In last week’s newsletter, my colleague Martin asked, “Who is responsible, and does it matter?” As a thought exercise, let’s flip the script and ask, “Where is the victim, and does it matter?” I often field questions about threats specific to countries, regions, or continents, but the reality is that software is largely the same regardless of physical location. Yes, there are different language packs, and yes, spam and phishing campaigns may use local languages. However, when it comes to software, operating systems, libraries, and drivers, we share code globally.
Remember Log4j and NotPetya? These vulnerabilities caused chaos around the globe. Both have CVEs listed in the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, which is maintained by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
While researching the KEVs added in 2024, I discovered CVEs dating back to 2012, 2013, and 2014. This underscores that regardless of location, old vulnerabilities can remain relevant and dangerous years after their discovery.
Fast forward to 2025: CVE-2025-22224 was published on Mar. 4, 2025 and added to CISA’s KEV Catalog less than two hours later. A week later, over 40,000 vulnerable instances were still detected globally, as shown on the Shadowserver dashboard:
Rather than solely focusing on geography, the global vulnerability landscape suggests we should ask ourselves:
· “Am I running this software?”
· “Is my software up to date?"
· “How quickly can I fix it?”
· Or, for the brave, “Am I prepared to take the risk?”
While more attributes for CVEs may be beneficial, I personally believe the absence of a geographic attribute is a good thing. Patching and updating software should be prioritized regardless of nationality or geographic context. When it comes to maintaining robust cybersecurity, the only good vulnerability is no vulnerability.
Remember: In the digital world, we’re all neighbors. A vulnerability anywhere is a threat just around the corner.
The one big thing
Cisco Talos discovered malicious activities conducted by an unknown attacker as early as January 2025, predominantly targeting organizations in Japan. The attacker exploited a vulnerability, CVE-2024-4577, a remote code execution (RCE) flaw in the PHP-CGI implementation of PHP on Windows, to gain initial access to victim machines.
Why do I care?
We reported an increasing trend of threat actors exploiting vulnerable public facing applications for initial access in our quarterly Talos Incident Response report for Q4 2024, and this intrusion highlights this ongoing activity. In this case, the attacker establishes persistence by modifying registry keys, adding scheduled tasks, and creating malicious services using the plugins of the Cobalt Strike kit called “TaoWu.”
So now what?
This vulnerability affects a common open-source component, third-party library, or a protocol used by different products. Please check with specific vendors for information on patching status. For more information, please see the National Vulnerability Database. Here are the Snort SIDs for this threat:
· Snort 2: 64632, 64633, 64630, 64631
· Snort 3: 301157, 301156
Top security headlines of the week
· The Bluetooth “backdoor” that wasn’t. The original title, “Undocumented backdoor found in Bluetooth chip used by a billion devices,” was updated to a more precise description: “Undocumented commands found in Bluetooth chip used by a billion devices.” (Bleepingcomputer) (Darkmentor)
· A ransomware gang leveraged a vulnerable IP camera in an attack, effectively circumventing Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR). The “Mr. Monk” in me wants to point out that while the article title says “webcam” — which, in my definition, is a camera connected internally or via USB to a PC — the article discusses Linux and SMB shares, which suggests it is an IP camera. (Bleepingcomputer)
· Massive alleged cyber attack against X (formerly Twitter). This past Monday, a series of outages left X unavailable for thousands of users for at least one hour. Not all details are currently known to the public. (Securityweek)
Can’t get enough Talos?
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are ever present in modern day web browsing, however it’s far from their own use. Read our latest blog on Abusing with style: Leveraging cascading style sheets for evasion and tracking.
Cisco Talos discovered malicious activities conducted by an unknown attacker since as early as January 2025, predominantly targeting organizations in Japan. Read the full blog here: Unmasking the new persistent attacks on Japan
Upcoming events where you can find Talos
· DEVCORE (March 15, 2025) Taipei, Taiwan. Ashley Shen will give a talk on exploit hunting.
· RSA (April 28-May 1, 2025) San Francisco, CA
· PIVOTcon (May 7-May 9, 2025) Malaga, Spain. Ashley Shen and Vitor Ventura will present “Redefining IABs: Impacts of Compartmentalization on Threat Tracking & Modeling.”
· CTA TIPS 2025 (May 14-15, 2025) Arlington, VA
· Cisco Live U.S. (June 8 – 12, 2025) San Diego, CA
Most prevalent malware files from Talos telemetry over the past week
SHA 256: 9f1f11a708d393e0a4109ae189bc64f1f3e312653dcf317a2bd406f18ffcc507
MD5: 2915b3f8b703eb744fc54c81f4a9c67f
VirusTotal: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/9f1f11a708d393e0a4109ae189bc64f1f3e312653dcf317a2bd406f18ffcc507
Typical Filename: VID001.exe
Claimed Product: N/A
Detection Name: Win.Worm.Coinminer::1201
SHA 256: 9c60480afbbfbdf20520a9e7705f60a54ff2d0a94d72e4c26fc2aee55a158a9f
MD5: 7abf12ab98f4cbed63228bba977cea7e
VirusTotal: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/9c60480afbbfbdf20520a9e7705f60a54ff2d0a94d72e4c26fc2aee55a158a9f
Typical Filename: pdfzonepro.msi
Claimed Product: N/A
Detection Name: W32.9C60480AFB-95.SBX.TG
SHA256: 47ecaab5cd6b26fe18d9759a9392bce81ba379817c53a3a468fe9060a076f8ca
MD5: 71fea034b422e4a17ebb06022532fdde
VirusTotal: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/47ecaab5cd6b26fe18d9759a9392bce81ba379817c53a3a468fe9060a076f8ca/details
Typical Filename: VID001.exe
Claimed Product: N/A
Detection Name: Coinminer:MBT.26mw.in14.Talos
SHA 256: a31f222fc283227f5e7988d1ad9c0aecd66d58bb7b4d8518ae23e110308dbf91
MD5: 7bdbd180c081fa63ca94f9c22c457376
VirusTotal: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/a31f222fc283227f5e7988d1ad9c0aecd66d58bb7b4d8518ae23e110308dbf91
Typical Filename: c0dwjdi6a.dll
Claimed Product: N/A
Detection Name: Trojan.GenericKD.33515991
Related news
Cisco Talos has discovered an active exploitation of CVE-2024-4577 by an attacker in order to gain access to the victim's machines and carry out post-exploitation activities.
Androxgh0st, a botnet targeting web servers since January 2024, is also deploying IoT-focused Mozi payloads, reveals CloudSEK’s latest research.
The threat actors behind the AndroxGh0st malware are now exploiting a broader set of security flaws impacting various internet-facing applications, while also deploying the Mozi botnet malware. "This botnet utilizes remote code execution and credential-stealing methods to maintain persistent access, leveraging unpatched vulnerabilities to infiltrate critical infrastructures," CloudSEK said in a
A previously undocumented backdoor named Msupedge has been put to use against a cyber attack targeting an unnamed university in Taiwan. "The most notable feature of this backdoor is that it communicates with a command-and-control (C&C) server via DNS traffic," the Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom, said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The origins of the backdoor are
Gentoo Linux Security Advisory 202408-32 - Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in PHP, the worst of which can lead to a denial of service. Versions greater than or equal to 8.1.29:8.1 are affected.
Multiple threat actors have been observed exploiting a recently disclosed security flaw in PHP to deliver remote access trojans, cryptocurrency miners, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnets. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2024-4577 (CVSS score: 9.8), which allows an attacker to remotely execute malicious commands on Windows systems using Chinese and Japanese language locales. It
This Metasploit module exploits a PHP CGI argument injection vulnerability affecting PHP in certain configurations on a Windows target. A vulnerable configuration is locale dependant (such as Chinese or Japanese), such that the Unicode best-fit conversion scheme will unexpectedly convert a soft hyphen (0xAD) into a dash (0x2D) character. Additionally a target web server must be configured to run PHP under CGI mode, or directly expose the PHP binary. This issue has been fixed in PHP 8.3.8 (for the 8.3.x branch), 8.2.20 (for the 8.2.x branch), and 8.1.29 (for the 8.1.x branch). PHP 8.0.x and below are end of life and have note received patches. XAMPP is vulnerable in a default configuration, and we can target the /php-cgi/php-cgi.exe endpoint. To target an explicit .php endpoint (e.g. /index.php), the server must be configured to run PHP scripts in CGI mode.
PHP versions prior to 8.3.8 suffer from a remote code execution vulnerability.
An RCE vulnerability that affects the Web scripting language on Windows systems is easy to exploit and can provide a broad attack surface.