DeepSeek R1, a cost-efficient AI model, achieves impressive reasoning but fails all safety tests in a new study…

DeepSeek R1, a cost-efficient AI model, achieves impressive reasoning but fails all safety tests in a new study by Cisco’s Robust Intelligence. Researchers used algorithmic jailbreaking to demonstrate 100% vulnerability to harmful prompts, raising concerns about its training methods and the need for superior AI security measures.

Chinese start-up DeepSeek has gained attention for introducing large language models (LLMs) with advanced reasoning capabilities and cost-efficient training. Its recent releases DeepSeek R1-Zero and DeepSeek R1 have achieved performance comparable to leading models like OpenAI’s o1 at a fraction of the cost and outperformed Claude 3.5 Sonnet and ChatGPT-4o on tasks like math, coding, and scientific reasoning.

 However, the latest research from Robust Intelligence (now part of Cisco) and the University of Pennsylvania, shared with Hackread.com, reveals critical safety flaws.

Researchers reportedly collaborated to investigate the security of DeepSeek R1, a new reasoning model from the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek. The assessment cost was less than $50 and involved using an algorithmic validation methodology.

The team tested DeepSeek R1, OpenAI’s o1-preview, and other frontier models using an automated jailbreaking algorithm applied to 50 prompts from the HarmBench dataset. These prompts spanned six categories of harmful behaviour, including cybercrime, misinformation, illegal activities, and general harm. 

Their key metric was the Attack Success Rate (ASR), measuring the percentage of prompts that elicited harmful responses. The results were alarming: DeepSeek R1 exhibited a 100% attack success rate, failing to block a single harmful prompt. This contrasts sharply with other leading models, which demonstrated at least some level of resistance to such attacks. 

It is worth noting that researchers used a temperature setting of 0 for reproducibility and verified jailbreaks through automated methods and human oversight. DeepSeek R1’s 100% ASR starkly contrasts with o1, which successfully blocked many adversarial attacks. This suggests that DeepSeek R1 while achieving cost efficiencies in training, has significant trade-offs in safety and security.

Via Cisco’s Robust Intelligence

For your information, DeepSeek’s AI development strategy utilizes three core principles- Chain-of-thought” prompting, reinforcement learning, and distillation, which enhance its LLMs’ reasoning efficiency and self-evaluate reasoning processes.

As per Cisco’s investigation these strategies, while being cost-efficient, may have compromised the models’ safety mechanisms. Compared to other frontier models, DeepSeek R1 appears to lack effective guardrails, making it highly susceptible to algorithmic jailbreaking and potential misuse.  

The research emphasizes the need for rigorous security evaluation in AI development to balance efficiency and reasoning without compromising safety. It also highlights the significance of third-party guardrails for consistent security across AI applications.

Cisco Finds DeepSeek R1 Highly Vulnerable to Harmful Prompts

In an attack vector that's been used before, threat actors aim to commit crypto fraud by hijacking highly followed users, thus reaching a broad audience of secondary victims.

Source: Ronstik via Alamy Stock Photo

An active, one-click phishing campaign is targeting the X accounts of high-profile individuals — including journalists, political figures, and even an X employee — to hijack and exploit them to commit cryptocurrency fraud.

Researchers at SentinelLabs uncovered the campaign, which they said appears to be most prominent on X but is not limited to a single social media platform, they revealed in a recent blog post. The goal of attackers is ultimately to use the potential reach of the high-impact accounts — which also include technology and cryptocurrency organizations as well as owners of accounts with valuable, short usernames — to target people with crypto scams for financial gain, the researchers said.

"Once an account is taken over, the attacker swiftly locks out the legitimate owner and begins posting fraudulent cryptocurrency opportunities or links to external sites designed to lure additional targets, often with a crypto theft-related theme," SentinelLabs threat researchers Tom Hegel, Jim Walter, and Alex Delamotte wrote in the post.

Ultimately, this compromise of high-profile accounts — a tactic used before by cybercriminals, most notably in targeting celebrity Twitter accounts in 2020 — enables the attacker to reach a broader audience of potential secondary victims, maximizing their financial gains, the researchers noted.

Related:Can AI & the Cyber Trust Mark Rebuild Endpoint Confidence?

Indeed, the campaign is also similar to one uncovered last year that compromised the Linux Tech Tips X account along with other high-profile users. The researchers discovered related infrastructure and similar phishing messages used in both campaigns, evidence that suggests the same threat actor is behind both, they said. However, at this time it's not known from which region of the world the actor hails, or who might be behind the campaign.

**Classic Fake Crypto Lures & Adaptable Infrastructure**

SentinelLabs observed a variety of phishing lures being used in the campaign, including a "classic account login notice" that targets people with an email informing them that someone logged into their account from a new device. The email includes a link suggesting they "take steps to protect" their account which actually leads to a site that phishes X credentials, according to the post.

Other email-based lures use copyright-violation themes to get users to click on a phishing page that ask them to enter their X credentials. In recent cases, the phishing page to which victims were redirected abused Google’s “AMP Cache” domain cdn.ampproject\[.\]org to evade common email detections, according to SentinelLabs.

Related:PrintNightmare Aftermath: Windows Print Spooler Is Better. What's Next?

Infrastructure used in the account suggests that the actor behind the campaign is "highly adaptable, continuously exploring new techniques while maintaining a clear financial motive," the researchers wrote.

Recent activity used the domain securelogins-x\[.\]com to deliver emails and x-recoverysupport\[.\]com to host phishing pages. As "any of these domains can be considered email delivery or phishing-page hosting," the activity indicates "a level of informality and flexibility of infrastructure use," the researchers observed.

Attackers also hosted a flurry of recent activity on an IP associated with a Belize-based VPS service called Dataclub. The domains associated with the campaign have been predominantly registered through Turkish hosting provider Turkticaret, but this alone is not enough to confirm that the attackers are from Turkey, the researchers added.

**Protect Your Corporate Social Accounts**

High-profile X accounts are often targets for threat actors because controlling them can help them reach a wider audience with fraudulent activity. Often this activity involves crypto scams aimed at financial fraud, such as a case last year in which security firm Mandiant temporarily lost control of its X account to cryptocurrency drainer malware operators.

Related:Unpatched Zyxel CPE Zero-Day Pummeled by Cyberattackers

"The cryptocurrency landscape offers financially-motivated threat actors multiple opportunities for profit and fraud," the researchers noted in the post. "While marketing for coins and tokens has long been irreverent and meme-driven, recent developments have further blurred the line between legitimate projects and scams."

To protect an X account, the researchers recommended the obvious: users should maintain good password hygiene by using a unique password, enabling two-factor authentication (2FA), and avoiding credential sharing with third-party services.

People also should be especially wary of messages containing links to account alerts or security notices, and always verify URLs before clicking on them. If their accounts do need a password reset for security purposes, these should be initiated only directly through the official website or app rather than relying on unsolicited links, the researchers advised.

**About the Author**

Elizabeth Montalbano is a freelance writer, journalist, and therapeutic writing mentor with more than 25 years of professional experience. Her areas of expertise include technology, business, and culture. Elizabeth previously lived and worked as a full-time journalist in Phoenix, San Francisco, and New York City; she currently resides in a village on the southwest coast of Portugal. In her free time, she enjoys surfing, hiking with her dogs, traveling, playing music, yoga, and cooking.

1-Click Phishing Campaign Targets High-Profile X Accounts

By integrating security into CI/CD, applying automated policies, and supporting developers with the right processes and tools, infosec teams can increase efficiency and build secure software.

Remi Yazigi, Information Security Engineer, Cisco Systems

February 3, 2025

4 Min Read

Source: Cagkan Sayin via Alamy Stock Photo

COMMENTARY

As cyber threats grow more sophisticated, organizations must prioritize secure software development practices. Vulnerability management is a critical aspect of this, but its success depends on clear ownership and collaboration between information security and engineering teams. By shifting left and embedding vulnerability management into the development life cycle, organizations can empower engineering teams to deliver secure code efficiently. Here's how infosec teams can drive this transformation.

**Shifting Left: The Key to Proactive Security**

Traditional vulnerability management approaches often focus on addressing issues post-deployment. This reactive strategy slows development and increases the risk of exposure. Shifting left means identifying and remediating vulnerabilities earlier in the development process, during the build phase, or even before code reaches the repository. This early action reduces cost and effort while improving the quality of the codebase.

By integrating vulnerability scanning tools like Trivy into continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, infosec teams can block builds that introduce known vulnerabilities. Tools like these, with seamless integration with GitHub Actions (GHA) and Jenkins, provide immediate feedback to developers. When vulnerabilities are identified, engineers can address them without disrupting the workflow. This approach not only enhances security but also fosters a culture of accountability and ownership among developers.

**Applying Policies for Image Promotion**

One of the most effective ways to enforce security practices is through automated policies for container image promotion. For example:

1.  Base images: Ensure that development teams use only approved base images vetted by information security. These images should be regularly updated to incorporate security patches and align with organizational standards.
    
2.  Docker registries: Restrict usage to trusted and approved registries, reducing the risk of introducing malicious or outdated images. Approved registries should provide regular scans and metadata to verify image integrity.
    
3.  Image scanning: Automate the scanning process for all container images before they are promoted to staging or production environments. By applying strict vulnerability gates, organizations can ensure only secure images progress through the pipeline. Coupled with regular rescanning of images in production, this practice maintains security over time.
    

**Handling Exceptions Transparently**

No vulnerability management strategy is complete without a robust mechanism for handling exceptions. infosec teams should provide engineering teams with a clear process to request and manage exceptions when immediate fixes are not feasible. This includes:

*   Time-bound exceptions: Set expiry dates for exceptions to ensure vulnerabilities are addressed within a reasonable time frame. Expired exceptions should trigger reminders and escalate unresolved issues.
    
*   Approval workflow: Establish an approval workflow that involves both engineering and infosec stakeholders. Collaboration ensures balanced decisions that consider security and business needs.
    
*   Documentation: Require detailed justifications for exceptions, including mitigation strategies, impact assessments, and follow-up plans. Documentation enables transparency and ensures accountability for all stakeholders.
    

By managing exceptions transparently, organizations can balance security requirements with operational realities while maintaining accountability. This process also offers an opportunity for continuous improvement by identifying recurring vulnerabilities or patterns requiring systemic fixes.

**Building a Collaborative Framework**

For vulnerability management to succeed, infosec and engineering teams must work in harmony. Information security teams can support engineering teams by:

1.  Providing tools and training: Offer developers access to easy-to-use security tools and training on secure coding practices. This training should emphasize real-world examples.
    
2.  Defining clear policies: Develop and document policies that align with engineering workflows, ensuring that security requirements are achievable without disrupting productivity. Regularly review these policies to adapt to evolving threats and technologies.
    
3.  Creating feedback loops: Establish feedback mechanisms to address false positives, improve tool configurations, and enhance the developer experience. Prompt feedback helps developers focus on genuine risks and encourages compliance with security measures.
    
4.  Encouraging shared metrics: Track shared security metrics that matter to both teams, such as vulnerability closure rates and build success rates. Shared goals foster collaboration and build a sense of collective responsibility.
    

**Leveraging Automation and Metrics**

Automation plays a pivotal role in ensuring the scalability and reliability of vulnerability management processes. Integrating tools for automated scanning, ticket generation, and remediation tracking saves time and reduces human error. Meanwhile, metrics such as mean time to resolution (MTTR) and the number of vulnerabilities detected per build provide valuable insights into program effectiveness and areas for improvement.

**The Path Forward**

Empowering engineering teams with ownership of vulnerability management is a cultural shift that requires effort and collaboration. By integrating security into the CI/CD pipeline, applying automated policies, and supporting developers with clear processes and tools, infosec teams can drive efficiency and foster a shared commitment to building secure software.

Organizations that embrace this approach will not only reduce risk but also enhance their ability to deliver secure and reliable applications at scale. The time to shift left is now. Success requires a proactive mindset, the right tools, and above all, a strong partnership between infosec and engineering teams.

**About the Author**

Information Security Engineer, Cisco Systems

Remi Yazigi is information security engineer for Cisco Systems. He has extensive experience in cloud and container vulnerability management, specializing in automation to enhance security workflows. He holds two master’s degrees in computer engineering and cybersecurity and forensics. He joined ThousandEyes in London in 2018 and moved to the US in 2022 after Cisco Systems acquired ThousandEyes in 2020. There, he lead efforts to improve vulnerability detection and remediation. Prior to that, he worked in France as a cybersecurity consultant, focusing on securing industrial systems, including projects such as Ariane 5 space rocket and SECOIA. He is passionate about empowering engineering teams to take ownership of security processes, ensuring resilient and secure infrastructures. His expertise lies in creating scalable, efficient solutions that address modern security challenges.

Proactive Vulnerability Management for Engineering Success

Security researchers tested 50 well-known jailbreaks against DeepSeek’s popular new AI chatbot. It didn’t stop a single one.

Ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT at the end of 2022, hackers and security researchers have tried to find holes in large language models (LLMs) to get around their guardrails and trick them into spewing out hate speech, bomb-making instructions, propaganda, and other harmful content. In response, OpenAI and other generative AI developers have refined their system defenses to make it more difficult to carry out these attacks. But as the Chinese AI platform DeepSeek rockets to prominence with its new, cheaper R1 reasoning model, its safety protections appear to be far behind those of its established competitors.

Today, security researchers from Cisco and the University of Pennsylvania are publishing findings showing that, when tested with 50 malicious prompts designed to elicit toxic content, DeepSeek’s model did not detect or block a single one. In other words, the researchers say they were shocked to achieve a “100 percent attack success rate.”

The findings are part of a growing body of evidence that DeepSeek’s safety and security measures may not match those of other tech companies developing LLMs. DeepSeek’s censorship of subjects deemed sensitive by China’s government has also been easily bypassed.

“A hundred percent of the attacks succeeded, which tells you that there’s a trade-off,” DJ Sampath, the VP of product, AI software and platform at Cisco, tells WIRED. “Yes, it might have been cheaper to build something here, but the investment has perhaps not gone into thinking through what types of safety and security things you need to put inside of the model.”

Other researchers have had similar findings. Separate analysis published today by the AI security company Adversa AI and shared with WIRED also suggests that DeepSeek is vulnerable to a wide range of jailbreaking tactics, from simple language tricks to complex AI-generated prompts.

DeepSeek, which has been dealing with an avalanche of attention this week and has not spoken publicly about a range of questions, did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment about its model’s safety setup.

Generative AI models, like any technological system, can contain a host of weaknesses or vulnerabilities that, if exploited or set up poorly, can allow malicious actors to conduct attacks against them. For the current wave of AI systems, indirect prompt injection attacks are considered one of the biggest security flaws. These attacks involve an AI system taking in data from an outside source—perhaps hidden instructions of a website the LLM summarizes—and taking actions based on the information.

Jailbreaks, which are one kind of prompt-injection attack, allow people to get around the safety systems put in place to restrict what an LLM can generate. Tech companies don’t want people creating guides to making explosives or using their AI to create reams of disinformation, for example.

Jailbreaks started out simple, with people essentially crafting clever sentences to tell an LLM to ignore content filters—the most popular of which was called “Do Anything Now” or DAN for short. However, as AI companies have put in place more robust protections, some jailbreaks have become more sophisticated, often being generated using AI or using special and obfuscated characters. While all LLMs are susceptible to jailbreaks, and much of the information could be found through simple online searches, chatbots can still be used maliciously.

“Jailbreaks persist simply because eliminating them entirely is nearly impossible—just like buffer overflow vulnerabilities in software (which have existed for over 40 years) or SQL injection flaws in web applications (which have plagued security teams for more than two decades),” Alex Polyakov, the CEO of security firm Adversa AI, told WIRED in an email.

Cisco’s Sampath argues that as companies use more types of AI in their applications, the risks are amplified. “It starts to become a big deal when you start putting these models into important complex systems and those jailbreaks suddenly result in downstream things that increases liability, increases business risk, increases all kinds of issues for enterprises,” Sampath says.

The Cisco researchers drew their 50 randomly selected prompts to test DeepSeek’s R1 from a well-known library of standardized evaluation prompts known as HarmBench. They tested prompts from six HarmBench categories, including general harm, cybercrime, misinformation, and illegal activities. They probed the model running locally on machines rather than through DeepSeek’s website or app, which send data to China.

Beyond this, the researchers say they have also seen some potentially concerning results from testing R1 with more involved, non-linguistic attacks using things like Cyrillic characters and tailored scripts to attempt to achieve code execution. But for their initial tests, Sampath says, his team wanted to focus on findings that stemmed from a generally recognized benchmark.

Cisco also included comparisons of R1’s performance against HarmBench prompts with the performance of other models. And some, like Meta’s Llama 3.1, faltered almost as severely as DeepSeek’s R1. But Sampath emphasizes that DeepSeek’s R1 is a specific reasoning model, which takes longer to generate answers but pulls upon more complex processes to try to produce better results. Therefore, Sampath argues, the best comparison is with OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model, which fared the best of all models tested. (Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment).

Polyakov, from Adversa AI, explains that DeepSeek appears to detect and reject some well-known jailbreak attacks, saying that “it seems that these responses are often just copied from OpenAI’s dataset.” However, Polyakov says that in his company’s tests of four different types of jailbreaks—from linguistic ones to code-based tricks—DeepSeek’s restrictions could easily be bypassed.

“Every single method worked flawlessly,” Polyakov says. “What’s even more alarming is that these aren’t novel ‘zero-day’ jailbreaks—many have been publicly known for years,” he says, claiming he saw the model go into more depth with some instructions around psychedelics than he had seen any other model create.

“DeepSeek is just another example of how every model can be broken—it’s just a matter of how much effort you put in. Some attacks might get patched, but the attack surface is infinite,” Polyakov adds. “If you’re not continuously red-teaming your AI, you’re already compromised.”

DeepSeek’s Safety Guardrails Failed Every Test Researchers Threw at Its AI Chatbot

Martin discusses how defenders can use threat intelligence to equip themselves against AI-based threats. Plus check out his introductory course to threat intelligence.

Thursday, January 30, 2025 14:05

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. 

You don’t need me to tell you that security is constantly changing and that more change is on its way. The enthusiastic adoption of new AI systems will inevitably lead to more demands on cybersecurity teams. Not only will these systems need protecting against the same threats which affect current systems, but also against new types of threats that target AI models. We can only expect that attacks designed to subvert AI models and get them to function in ways detrimental to their operators’ interests will become more effective and beneficial to attackers over time. 

The good news is that we can expect AI enabled security systems to help protect against attacks, detect incursions, and orchestrate the remediation of affected systems. However, we must not overlook the fact that people will remain involved and invested in the outcome. Within this AI powered future will be CISOs who will be held responsible for the security of systems. There will also be many analysts tasked with keeping systems operating correctly while trying to anticipate and protect against forthcoming malicious campaigns.

Although we may not be able to predict the nature of attacks in this distant future, we can predict some of the skills that will be necessary to beat these attacks. Threat intelligence skills will be vital to equip future cyber security professionals not only to understand the goals of the threat actors that they face but to situate their attacks within the context of these goals. Armed with this understanding, security teams will be able to make better decisions regarding the allocation and prioritization of resources to best defend against attacks. 

Developing threat intelligence skills within the cyber security professionals of tomorrow begins today. Training up people who are early in their careers and students yet to begin their careers is one of the best investments we can make to build resilience against future threats.

To help skill up future analysts, my colleagues and myself in collaboration with Cisco’s Networking Academy have developed an introductory course to threat intelligence. This course is free for all, only registration is required, and is intended to give an overview of the domain for someone without prior knowledge which can be used as a starting point for further study or employment.

For those looking to develop a threat intelligence program as part of their cyber security strategy, we are hosting a technical seminar at Cisco Live EMEA on Sunday February 9th. The session, “Establishing a Threat Intelligence Program, Why its Necessary, What to Expect and How to Go about it \[TECSEC-2003\]”, will present how managers can set-up a threat intelligence team as part of their arsenal against the bad guys and what can reasonably be expected.

**The one big thing**

One pointer to the nature of future threats against AI systems is a technique used in spam that Talos recently blogged about. Hiding the nature of the content displayed to the recipient from anti-spam systems is not a new technique. Spammers have included hidden text or used formatting rules to camouflage their actual message from anti-spam analysis for decades. However, we have seen increase in the use of such techniques during the second half of 2024.

**Why do I care?**

Parsers which are required for computers to understand text content, view the world very differently from humans. The human eye ignores text in miniscule font or can’t detect black letters on a black background, but this is not necessarily the case for parsers. Where the human eye sees readily readable text, the parser can see the gibberish that spammers have included to confuse them. Potentially the opposite is also true with humans seeing gibberish, but language parsing software seeing readable text.

Being able to disguise and hide content from machine analysis or from human oversight is likely to become a more important vector of attack against AI systems as they become a larger part of our lives. 

**So now what?**

Fortunately, the techniques to detect this kind of obfuscation are well known and already integrated into spam detection systems such as Cisco Email Threat Defense. Conversely, the presence of attempts to obfuscate content in this manner makes it obvious that a message is malicious and can be classed as spam.

**Top security headlines of the week**

Another incident of an undersea telecommunications cable being cut in the Baltic was encountered. (CNN). Organisations need to plan for the effects of a major telecommunications outage or internet bandwidth restriction affecting their business.

Three members of Russia’s GRU have been placed under sanctions for their suspected role in conducting cyber attacks against Estonia in 2020 (SecurityAffairs). Threat actors might try to hide their identities but eventually they will be discovered and held to account for their actions.

A botnet consisting of infected IoT devices is behind the largest ever DDoS attack (Help Net Security). Small network connected devices can easily be overlooked as part of a cyber security strategy, but they can be compromised by threat actors and used for nefarious purposes.

**Can't get enough Talos?**

Today we released the new Cisco Talos Quarterly Trends Report - covering incidents from October to December 2024. The big call out? Threat actors are increasingly deployed web shells against vulnerable web applications. They primarily exploited vulnerable or unpatched public-facing applications to gain initial access, a notable shift from previous quarters.

Watch Hazel, Joe and Craig break down the report - they discuss hunting down web shells, the Interlock ransomware, and the increasing use of remote access tools within ransomware attacks.

**Upcoming events where you can find Talos**

Talos team members: Martin LEE, Thorsten ROSENDAHL, Yuri KRAMARZ, Giannis TZIAKOURIS, and Vanja SVAJCER will be speaking at Cisco Live EMEA. Amsterdam, Netherlands, 9-14 February.  (Cisco Live EMEA)

**Most prevalent malware files of the week**

**SHA 256:** 9f1f11a708d393e0a4109ae189bc64f1f3e312653dcf317a2bd406f18ffcc507  
**MD5:** 2915b3f8b703eb744fc54c81f4a9c67f  
**VirusTotal:**https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/9f1f11a708d393e0a4109ae189bc64f1f3e312653dcf317a2bd406f18ffcc507  
**Typical Filename:** VID001.exe  
**Detection Name:** Simple\_Custom\_DetectionClaimed Product: 

**SHA 256:** 47ecaab5cd6b26fe18d9759a9392bce81ba379817c53a3a468fe9060a076f8ca  
**MD5:** 71fea034b422e4a17ebb06022532fdde  
**VirusTotal:** https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/47ecaab5cd6b26fe18d9759a9392bce81ba379817c53a3a468fe9060a076f8ca  
**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

Defeating Future Threats Starts Today

San Francisco, United States / California, 30th January 2025, CyberNewsWire

**San Francisco, United States / California, January 30th, 2025, CyberNewsWire**

Doppler, the leading provider of secrets management solutions, announced a new integration with Datadog, a cloud application monitoring and security platform. This collaboration provides engineering and operations teams with an integrated solution for securely managing sensitive credentials and gaining insights into cloud environments through real-time monitoring.

In an era of rapid cloud adoption, DevOps and security teams face mounting challenges in safeguarding sensitive data across distributed systems. By combining Doppler’s automated secrets management capabilities with Datadog’s comprehensive monitoring platform, this integration enables teams to enhance their security practices while maintaining operational visibility. Doppler’s automated secrets storage and rotation, paired with Datadog’s continuous monitoring, empowers teams to mitigate risks of secret sprawl and prevent unauthorized access in a scalable, automated fashion.

**Streamlining security and visibility across cloud environments**

Many DevOps teams need help maintaining consistent security practices as secrets are often scattered across environments, increasing the risk of misconfigurations. The Doppler integration with Datadog addresses this issue head-on by creating a centralized workflow for managing secrets and monitoring activity across all environments. With Datadog’s alerts and Doppler’s automated security measures, teams can detect and respond to suspicious activity, helping to ensure security and compliance.

> “We are thrilled to integrate with Datadog to combine our secrets management capabilities with their monitoring platform,” said Brian Vallelunga, CEO and Founder of Doppler. “This integration simplifies security for developers and gives organizations the ability to manage secrets at scale, gaining visibility and control over sensitive information across the entire cloud environment. Together, we’re helping teams protect their data while allowing them to stay focused on building great software.”

**How the Doppler-Datadog Integration Solves Key Security Challenges**

*   **Automated secrets management**: Doppler’s platform automates the rotation, storage, and encryption of secrets, minimizing the risk of human error and unauthorized access.
*   **Real-time monitoring and alerts**: Datadog’s continuous monitoring enables teams to track secret usage, receive alerts for suspicious access, and respond quickly to any anomalies.
*   **Security across hybrid environments**: This integration unifies secrets management and monitoring, providing consistency in security practices across hybrid and multi-cloud setups.

**Centralized deployment for DevOps and Security teams**

The integration allows teams to centralize secrets management in Doppler while benefiting from Datadog’s secret usage observability. This provides a simplified solution for both managing and monitoring sensitive information. This approach enhances security without disrupting workflows, helping organizations to meet compliance requirements, reduce risk, and modernize their operations.

**Availability**

The integration is available now. For more information on how this integration can improve users’ security posture and improve secrets management, users can visit the Datadog Integration Documentation.

**About Doppler**

Doppler is a leader in secrets management, providing a centralized, secure solution that automates handling sensitive information such as API keys, tokens, and credentials. Thousands of development teams worldwide trust Doppler to simplify secrets management, improve operational efficiency, and prevent data breaches.

**Contact**

**Doppler Press**  
**\[email protected\]**

Doppler announces integration with Datadog to streamline security and monitoring

This new report from Cisco Talos Incident Response explores how threat actors increasingly deployed web shells against vulnerable web applications, and exploited vulnerable or unpatched public-facing applications to gain initial access.

Talos IR trends Q4 2024: Web shell usage and exploitation of public-facing applications spike

Yet another spinoff of the infamous DDoS botnet is exploiting a known vulnerability in active attacks, while its threat actors are promoting it on Telegram for other attackers to use as well, in a DDoS-as-a-service model.

Source: Kirill Ivanov via Alamy Stock Photo

Yet another Mirai botnet variant is making the rounds, this time offering distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) as-a-service by exploiting flaws in Mitel SIP phones. It also features a unique capability to communicate with attacker command-and-control (C2).

Researchers at the Akamai Security Intelligence and Response Team (SIRT) identified the variant of the infamous botnet, dubbed Aquabot, that actively exploits CVE-2024-41710, a command-injection vulnerability that affects various Mitel models that are used in corporate environments, they revealed in a blog post published Jan. 29. The vulnerability relies on an input sanitization flaw, and exploitation can lead to root access of the device, SIRT researchers Kyle Lefton and Larry Cashdollar wrote in the post.

The variant is the third version of Aquabot (Akamai calls it Aquabotv3) to appear on the scene; the first version was built off the Mirai framework with the ultimate goal of DDoS, discovered in November 2023, and it was first reported by Antiy Labs. The second version of the bot "tacked on concealment and persistence mechanisms, such as preventing device shutdown and restart" that remain present in v3, the researchers wrote.

The new variant is distinct from the previous versions for a couple of reasons, the researchers said. One is a unique feature appearing first in Aquabotv3: a function named "report\_kill" that reports back to the C2 when a kill signal is caught on the infected device. So far, however, researchers have not seen any response to the function from the attacker C2.

Related:Unpatched Zyxel CPE Zero-Day Pummeled by Cyberattackers

Another notable aspect of v3 of Aquabot is that the threat actors behind it have been advertising the botnet as DDoS as-a-service through platforms such as Telegram. The bot is advertised under several different names — including Cursinq Firewall, The Eye Services, and The Eye Botnet — offering Layer 4 and Layer 7 DDoS, the researchers noted.

**Active Exploitation of Mitel Phone Security Flaw**

Akamai SIRT detected exploit attempts targeting CVE-2024-41710 through its global network of honeypots in early January using a payload almost identical to a proof-of-concept (PoC) developed and released on GitHub in mid-August by Packetlabs' researcher Kyle Burns.

Burns discovered that the Mitel 6869i SIP phone, firmware version 6.3.0.1020, failed to sanitize user-supplied input properly, with multiple endpoints vulnerable to the flaw. His PoC demonstrated that an attacker could smuggle in entries otherwise blocked by the application's sanitization checks by sending a specially crafted HTTP POST request.

Related:Super Bowl LIX Could Be a Magnet for Cyberattacks

The exploitation activity that Akamai SIRT observed delivered a payload that attempts to fetch and execute a shell script called :bin.sh, which will in turn fetch and execute Mirai malware on the target system, the researchers wrote. The malware has support for a variety of different architectures, including x86 and ARM.

"Based on our analysis of the malware samples, we determined that this is a version of the Aquabot Mirai variant," specifically the latest evolution of the malware, Aquabotv3, the researchers wrote in the post.

In addition to being used in DDoS attacks, threat actors also are hawking Aquabot for DDoS-as-a-service, though they are trying to disguise the activity as "purely testing" for DDoS mitigation. However, the same domain featured in the ad promoting testing is actively spreading Mirai malware, the researchers noted.

"Threat actors will claim it's just a \[proof of concept\] or something educational, but a deeper analysis shows that they are in fact advertising DDoS as a service, or the owners are boasting about running their own botnet on Telegram," they wrote in the post.

**Mirai Botnet Remains Key Conduit for DDoS**

As the majority of botnets responsible for DDoS attacks are based on Mirai, "they predominantly target Internet of Things (IoT) devices, which makes spreading the malware relatively easy to do," the researchers noted in the post. Indeed, a recent wave of global DDoS attacks were attributed to Mirai botnet spinoffs, demonstrating that attackers aiming to leverage Mirai show no signs of slowing down.

Related:Apple Patches Actively Exploited Zero-Day Vulnerability

That's likely because "the \[return on investment\] of Mirai for an aspiring botnet author is high," because it's not only one of the most successful botnet families in the world, it's also one of the more simple ones to modify, the researchers noted.

Moreover, many IoT devices often lack proper security features, are at the end of service, or are left with default configurations and passwords either from neglect or lack of knowledge about the dangers, making them low-hanging fruit for Mirai and its variants, the researchers wrote.

No matter what an attacker's intentions are, the researchers recommended that organizations take action to secure IoT devices through discovery or changing default credentials to protect against DDoS threats.

"Many of these botnets rely on common password libraries for authentication," they wrote in the post. "Find out where your known IoT devices are, and check for rogue ones, too. Check the login credentials and change them if they are default or easy to guess."

Akamai SIRT also included a list of indicators of compromise (IoCs) as well as Snort and Yara rules in the post to aid defenders.

**About the Author**

Elizabeth Montalbano is a freelance writer, journalist, and therapeutic writing mentor with more than 25 years of professional experience. Her areas of expertise include technology, business, and culture. Elizabeth previously lived and worked as a full-time journalist in Phoenix, San Francisco, and New York City; she currently resides in a village on the southwest coast of Portugal. In her free time, she enjoys surfing, hiking with her dogs, traveling, playing music, yoga, and cooking.

Mirai Variant 'Aquabot' Exploits Mitel Device Flaws

Cisco Talos’ Vulnerability Research team recently disclosed three vulnerabilities in Observium, three vulnerabilities in Offis, and four vulnerabilities in Whatsup Gold.   
These vulnerabilities exist in Observium, a network observation and monitoring system; Offis DCMTK, a collection of libraries and applications implementing DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications

Wednesday, January 29, 2025 11:45

Cisco Talos’ Vulnerability Research team recently disclosed three vulnerabilities in Observium, three vulnerabilities in Offis, and four vulnerabilities in Whatsup Gold.   

These vulnerabilities exist in Observium, a network observation and monitoring system; Offis DCMTK, a collection of libraries and applications implementing DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) standard formats; and WhatsUp Gold, an IT infrastructure management product.  

The vulnerabilities mentioned in this blog post have been patched by their respective vendors, all in adherence to Cisco’s third-party vulnerability disclosure policy.  

For Snort coverage that can detect the exploitation of these vulnerabilities, download the latest rule sets from Snort.org, and our latest Vulnerability Advisories are always posted on Talos Intelligence’s website.   

**Observium Vulnerabilities  **

_Discovered by Marcin "Icewall" Noga._   

Two cross-site scripting vulnerabilities exist in Observium, which can lead to arbitrary JavaScript code execution, as well as one HTML code injection vulnerability. All three can be triggered by an authenticated user clicking a malicious link crafted by the attacker.  

*   TALOS-2024-2090 (CVE-2024-47140) 
*   TALOS-2024-2091 (CVE-2024-47002) 
*   TALOS-2024-2092 (CVE-2024-45061) 

**Offis Vulnerabilities  **

_Discovered by Emmanuel Tacheau._   

Three vulnerabilities were found in the Offis DCMTK libraries that support the DICOM standard format. TALOS-2024-1957 (CVE-2024-28130) is an incorrect type conversion vulnerability that can lead to arbitrary code execution, and TALOS-2024-2121 (CVE-2024-52333) and TALOS-2024-2122 (CVE-2024-47796) are improper array index validation vulnerabilities that can lead to out-of-bounds write capabilities. All can be triggered with specially crafted malicious DICOM files.  

**Whatsup Gold Vulnerabilities  **

_Discovered by Marcin "Icewall" Noga._   

Two Whatsup Gold vulnerabilities include a risk of information disclosure (TALOS-2024-1932 (CVE-2024-5017) and TALOS-2024-2089 (CVE-2024-12105)), which can be triggered by an attacker making an authenticated HTTP request. 

There is also a risk of disclosure of sensitive information (TALOS-2024-1933 (CVE-2024-5010)), and denial of service (TALOS-2024-1934 (CVE-2024-5011)). These two vulnerabilities can be triggered by an attacker making an unauthenticated HTTP request.

Whatsup Gold, Observium and Offis vulnerabilities

Concerns include everything from ransomware, malware, and phishing attacks on the game's infrastructure to those targeting event sponsors and fans.

Source: Steve Cukrov via Shutterstock

Sporting events like the upcoming Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans are prime targets for cyberattacks due to their massive audiences, extensive digital infrastructure, and the potential for high financial and reputational impact. Experts say organizers should be prepared for an onslaught of attacks leading up to and on game day, which is Feb. 9 this year.

Securing such events can be particularly challenging due to the vast array of potential attack surfaces, including ticketing systems, livestreaming platforms, in-stadium Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and valuable fan data. The New Year's Day terrorist attack in the city has only added to the concerns, and has prompted greater physical security measures in the form of increased surveillance, a significantly larger police presence than initially planned, and the use of drones and extra cameras to monitor for threats.

**High-Stakes Cybersecurity Playbook for the Big Game**

James DeMeo, faculty member with Tulane University's School of Professional Advancement, is an expert in sport event security, facilities, and venue risk assessment. The Super Bowl, he reminds, is a mega event that the Department of Homeland Security has designated as a Special Event Assessment Rating 1 (SEAR 1), which is the highest rating from a threat assessment standpoint. Following the Jan. 1 vehicle ramming incident in New Orleans' French Quarter, event security concerns are sure to have only heightened, he says.

The top cybersecurity concerns will include those around ransomware, malware, and phishing threats directed at critical infrastructure for the games and communication networks. "Command center controls will be tasked with averting bad actors from infiltrating CCTV, access controls, and wireless networks while ensuring a seamless fan experience," DeMeo says.

Other focus areas for the security team at the Super Bowl will include protecting fan payment data and monitoring social media networks for signs of potential physical threat activity. "Law enforcement will be sharing relative and timely information with governmental stakeholders like the JTTF and the Secret Service," DeMeo says. Expect the DHS to monitor posts on social media platforms in real time before and during the games for conversations that indicate a threat to the event.

DeMeo expects drones will play a key role on the physical security side of things as well. "Drones are an effective risk mitigation tool for key Super Bowl security stakeholders," he says. "This technology can be implemented for properly monitoring crowds, crowd management, crowd ingress/egress, and reconnaissance for potential nefarious bad actors on the exterior perimeters of the venue."  

Additionally, such technologies as biometrics and iris scans can be utilized as an effective risk mitigation tool by event security leads, he says.

**A Collaborative Defensive Effort**

Mike Storm, distinguished engineer at Cisco, says preparation for an event like the Super Bowl actually begins years in advance, with collaboration between a number of entities, including the host venue, the local city, a wide network of tech vendors, and government entities like the FBI. "In the years, months and weeks leading up to the event, the cross-functional team engages in a wide variety of scenario and role-playing exercises so that should any issues arise during the event, responses are swift, coordinated, and ideally resolve the problem before it can impact the game or the fan experience."

As the primary network provider for the Super Bowl, Cisco has partnered with the NFL in a collaborative approach to manage threats to the game. "This playbook," he says, "is built on a few core attributes that are essential to successfully protecting an event of this magnitude — simplicity, visibility, reliability, and protection." As part of the effort, Cisco has deployed a range of technologies to secure the game network, including Cisco Secure Firewall, Cisco Umbrella, Cisco Security Malware Analytics, Cisco XDR with Meraki, and Splunk Enterprise.

The NFL is also tapping Cisco's Talos threat intelligence service for real-time intelligence pertinent to the event. The goal is to safeguard game day operations and respond to potential threats during the event to prevent disruptions, Storm says. "When it comes to large sporting events, we are looking for all types of attacks, at volume," he says. Many attacks are often focused on trying to degrade the experience of fans or on the misuse of data of viewers, guests, or participants of the game. "These events are targeted by a variety of different actors, which can include ideologically or politically motivated hacktivists and state-sponsored threat actors." These actors employ a variety of tactics, which can include targeting sponsors to disrupt the game or misusing branding to lure viewers to click something on something malicious.  

Storm points to the rising use of artificial intelligence as impacting Cisco's approach to protecting high-profile events like the Super Bowl. For instance, it adds complexity, he says: "The stakes of something going wrong with AI are incredibly high. On the other hand, it unlocks opportunities for faster, smarter security."

**The Threat from Unmonitored Service Accounts & APIs**

Meanwhile. the proliferation of automated systems and services like "just walk out" payment methods and frictionless checkout systems at events like the Super Bowl present a new attack vector that security teams need to guard against. The growing digitization has enabled faster retail transactions and a host of other benefits for fans. But it also led to an explosion of non-human identities (NHIs) and shared multiuse service accounts, APIs, tokens, and access keys that are often poorly monitored or completely unmonitored, says Tim Eades, CEO and co-founder of Anetac.

"Anetac's research indicates that large-scale events like the Super Bowl represent a perfect storm for NHI vulnerabilities," Eades says. "The combination of reliance on automated systems, rapid deployment, and the expansive network of NHIs required to support modern stadiums \[has\] significantly \[increased\] the attack surface," at events like the Super Bowl.

Eades perceives the targeting of NHIs as presenting a threat for event organizers in New Orleans and remote locations, "Bad actors recognize that automated accounts are gateways to critical infrastructure and sensitive data such as customer information, employee data, and more," he says. Securing such accounts, Eades notes, is important because they enable attackers to potentially gain control over stadium systems, from payment processing to manipulating environmental controls and emergency systems.

**About the Author**

Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld, where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the publication. Over the course of his 20-year career at Computerworld, Jai also covered a variety of other technology topics, including big data, Hadoop, Internet of Things, e-voting, and data analytics. Prior to Computerworld, Jai covered technology issues for The Economic Times in Bangalore, India. Jai has a Master's degree in Statistics and lives in Naperville, Ill.

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