Advanced persistent threat group PlushDaemon, active since 2019, is using a sophisticated modular backdoor to collect data from infected systems in South Korea.

Source: BeeBright via Shutterstock

A newly discovered Chinese threat group has targeted a South Korean VPN developer with a supply chain attack aimed at deploying a custom backdoor to collect data for cyber-espionage purposes.

The group, dubbed PlushDaemon by the researchers at ESET Research who discovered it, typically aims to hijack legitimate updates of Chinese applications in its malicious operations "by redirecting traffic to attacker-controlled servers," according to a blog post by ESET researcher Facundo Muñoz published on Jan. 22. "Additionally, we have observed the group gaining access via vulnerabilities in legitimate web servers," he wrote.

However, the researchers also discovered the group in May 2024 planting malicious code in an NSIS installer for the Windows version of the VPN software of South Korean company IPany, representing a departure from its typical operations, they said. ESET notified IPany and the malicious installer was removed from the company's website.

PlushDaemon has been active since at least 2019, engaging in cyberespionage operations against individuals and entities in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, the US, and New Zealand. The group is the exclusive user of several types of malware in its malicious activities, mostly notably a custom, modular backdoor for collecting various data from infected machines, called SlowStepper for Windows, according to ESET.

**Atypical Supply-Chain Attack**

The first sign of the supply-chain attack came in May 2024, when ESET researchers noticed detections of malicious code in an NSIS installer for Windows that users from South Korea had downloaded from the IPany website.

"The victims appear to have manually downloaded a ZIP archive containing a malicious NSIS installer from the URL https://ipany\[.\]kr/download/IPanyVPNsetup.zip," Muñoz wrote. However, the researchers didn't find suspicious code on the download page "to produce targeted downloads, for example by geofencing to specific targeted regions or IP ranges." This led them to believe that "anyone using the IPany VPN might have been a valid target."

Several users attempted to install the Trojanized software in the network of a semiconductor company and an unidentified software development company in South Korea. Further research found even older cases of infection via the campaign, with the two oldest coming from a victim in Japan in November 2023 and a victim in China in December 2023, the researchers said.

**SlowStepper Backdoor**

The payload in the supply chain attack is PlushDaemon's own SlowStepper backdoor, which has more than 30 modules. However, the group used a "lite" version of the backdoor in the IPany attack, which contains fewer features than other previous and newer versions, the researchers said.

The backdoor features a multistage command-and-control (C2) protocol using DNS, and is known for its ability to download and execute dozens of additional Python modules with espionage capabilities.

"Both the full and Lite versions make use of an array of tools programmed in Python and Go, which include capabilities for extensive collection of data, and spying through recording of audio and videos," Muñoz wrote.

The researchers found PlushDaemon's tools stored in a remote code repository hosted on the Chinese platform GitCode, under the LetMeGo22 account. At the time of writing, the profile was private.

**Another Chinese APT Emerges**

China already has a raft of known and active APTs that regularly and persistently engage in cyberespionage activities against the US and its allies. One of the most notable operations of late was the infiltration of US broadband provider networks by Chinese APT Salt Typhoon; however, the investigation into that incident was dealt a significant blow on Jan. 21, when President Trump, on his second day back in office, fired the cyber safety board looking into it.

However, with a new, sophisticated actor like PlushDaemon now emerging from the shadows, organizations need to be more vigilant than ever against malicious cyber activity from China, Muñoz said.

"The numerous components in the PlushDaemon toolset and its rich version history show that, while previously unknown, this China-aligned APT group has been operating diligently to develop a wide array of tools, making it a significant threat to watch for," he wrote.

To that end, ESET included a link to its GitHub repository that contains a comprehensive list of indicators of compromise (IoCs) and samples of PlushDaemon activity.

**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.

Chinese Cyberspies Target South Korean VPN in Supply Chain Attack

### Impact

In a Kubernetes cluster where Cilium is configured to proxy DNS traffic, an attacker can crash Cilium agents by sending a crafted DNS response to workloads from outside the cluster.

For traffic that is allowed but without using DNS-based policy, the dataplane will continue to pass traffic as configured at the time of the DoS. For workloads that have DNS-based policy configured, existing connections may continue to operate, and new connections made without relying on DNS resolution may continue to be established, but new connections which rely on DNS resolution may be disrupted. Any configuration changes that affect the impacted agent may not be applied until the agent is able to  restart.

### Patches

This issue affects:

- Cilium v1.14 between v1.14.0 and v1.14.17 inclusive
- Cilium v1.15 between v1.15.0 and v1.15.11 inclusive
- Cilium v1.16 between v1.16.0 and v1.16.4 inclusive

This issue is fixed in:

- Cilium v1.14.18
- Cilium v1.15.12
- Cilium v1.16.5

### Workarounds

There are no known workarounds to this issue.

### Acknowledgements

The Cilium community has worked together with members of Isovalent and the Cisco Advanced Security Initiatives Group (ASIG) to prepare these mitigations. Special thanks to @kokelley-cisco for reporting this issue and @bimmlerd for the fix.

### For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, please reach out on [Slack](https://docs.cilium.io/en/latest/community/community/#slack).

If you think you have found a vulnerability affecting Cilium, we strongly encourage you to report it to our security mailing list at [security@cilium.io](mailto:security@cilium.io). This is a private mailing list for the Cilium security team, and your report will be treated as top priority.

1.  GitHub Advisory Database
2.  GitHub Reviewed
3.  CVE-2025-23028

**DoS in Cilium agent DNS proxy from crafted DNS responses**

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published Jan 22, 2025 in cilium/cilium • Updated Jan 22, 2025

**Package**

gomod github.com/cilium/cilium (Go)

**Affected versions**

\>= 1.14.0, < 1.14.18

\>= 1.15.0, < 1.15.12

\>= 1.16.0, < 1.16.5

**Patched versions**

1.14.18

1.15.12

1.16.5

**Impact**

In a Kubernetes cluster where Cilium is configured to proxy DNS traffic, an attacker can crash Cilium agents by sending a crafted DNS response to workloads from outside the cluster.

For traffic that is allowed but without using DNS-based policy, the dataplane will continue to pass traffic as configured at the time of the DoS. For workloads that have DNS-based policy configured, existing connections may continue to operate, and new connections made without relying on DNS resolution may continue to be established, but new connections which rely on DNS resolution may be disrupted. Any configuration changes that affect the impacted agent may not be applied until the agent is able to restart.

**Patches**

This issue affects:

*   Cilium v1.14 between v1.14.0 and v1.14.17 inclusive
*   Cilium v1.15 between v1.15.0 and v1.15.11 inclusive
*   Cilium v1.16 between v1.16.0 and v1.16.4 inclusive

This issue is fixed in:

*   Cilium v1.14.18
*   Cilium v1.15.12
*   Cilium v1.16.5

**Workarounds**

There are no known workarounds to this issue.

**Acknowledgements**

The Cilium community has worked together with members of Isovalent and the Cisco Advanced Security Initiatives Group (ASIG) to prepare these mitigations. Special thanks to @kokelley-cisco for reporting this issue and @bimmlerd for the fix.

**For more information**

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, please reach out on Slack.

If you think you have found a vulnerability affecting Cilium, we strongly encourage you to report it to our security mailing list at security@cilium.io. This is a private mailing list for the Cilium security team, and your report will be treated as top priority.

**References**

*   GHSA-9m5p-c77c-f9j7
*   cilium/cilium@1971bc6
*   cilium/cilium@b1948e2
*   https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-23028
*   cilium/cilium#36252

Published to the GitHub Advisory Database

Jan 22, 2025

Last updated

Jan 22, 2025

GHSA-9m5p-c77c-f9j7: DoS in Cilium agent DNS proxy from crafted DNS responses

The flurry of non-human identity attacks at the end of 2024 demonstrates extremely strong momentum heading into the new year. That does not bode well.

Itzik Alvas, Co-Founder & CEO, Entro Security

January 22, 2025

3 Min Read

Source: Brain light via Alamy Stock Photo

COMMENTARY

A look back at 2024's top non-human identity (NHI) attacks and their year-end explosion sends a worrying signal that 2025 is going to be a tough year for machine-to-machine identity theft.

One year ago, NHI burst onto the scene with a big warning flare, when Cloudflare disclosed that NHI mismanagement caused a massive breach, stemming from the failure to rotate an access token and account credentials exposed in the 2023 Okta compromise. 

While the attack was contained, the impact on Cloudflare was nonetheless significant. The company disclosed it had to rotate every production credential (more than 5,000 individual credentials), physically segment test and staging systems, perform forensic triages on 4,893 systems, and then reimage and reboot every machine in its global network.

As the year progressed, NHI breaches gained momentum.

In June, the New York Times made its own news when 270GB of its internal data and applications in 5,000 repositories were stolen from GitHub and published on the Web. 

How? The breach was executed using NHI when an exposed GitHub Personal Access Token, a machine-to-machine secret, allowed unauthorized access to the company's code repositories. The "All the News That's Fit to Print" outlet downplayed the story. Cybersecurity experts did not agree, however, arguing that source-code leaks can have wide-ranging implications.

**High-Profile Breach Disclosures**

The year ended with a spate of high-profile breach disclosures attributed to NHI during the fourth quarter. 

Thousands of online stores running Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) software were hacked and infected with digital payment skimmers. The NHI attack used stolen cryptographic keys to generate an application programming interface (API) authorization token, enabling the attacker to access private customer data and insert payment skimmers into the checkout process.

AWS and Microsoft Azure machine-to-machine authentication keys found in Android and iOS apps used by millions were compromised, exposing user data and source code to security breaches. Exposing this type of credential can easily lead to unauthorized access to storage buckets and databases with sensitive user data. Apart from this, attackers could use them to manipulate or steal data.

Schneider Electric confirmed its development platform was breached after a hacker used exposed Jira credentials to steal data. The hacker gloated that the breach compromised critical data, including projects, issues and plug-ins, along with over 400,000 rows of user data, totaling more than 40GB of compressed data,

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned that attackers were exploiting a critical missing authentication vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks Expedition, a migration tool that can help convert firewall configuration from Checkpoint, Cisco, and other vendors to PAN-OS. This security flaw enabled threat actors to remotely exploit it to reset application admin credentials on Internet-exposed Expedition servers.

A new sophisticated phishing tool targeting GitHub users was also revealed in the fourth quarter. It posed a significant threat to developers and organizations worldwide. Here's how this relates to NHIs: Bots used a compromised secret and set of permissions associated with that credential as the ingredients to make the API calls and create comments using a script.

The comments themselves convinced developers to use insecure scripts as validated solutions.

These scripts, in turn, could lead victims to phishing pages designed to steal login credentials, malware downloads, or rogue OAuth app authorization prompts granting attackers access to private repositories and data.

Finally, and bringing the year to a dramatic close, NHI was responsible for the US Treasury hack by Chinese threat actors, who gained access to "unclassified documents" after compromising the agency's networks. The attackers were able to exploit vulnerabilities in remote tech support software by misusing a leaked API key to gain unauthorized access.

The flurry of NHI attacks at the end of the year demonstrates extremely strong momentum heading into 2025. That does not bode well. 

Chief information security officers (CISOs) and security teams need to prioritize the emerging NHI threats roaring into the new year.

**About the Author**

Co-Founder & CEO, Entro Security

Itzik Alvas is co-founder and CEO at Entro Security and former healthcare organization CISO and information technology manager at Microsoft.

A cloud and security expert with more than 17 years of experience managing and building teams of hundreds of employees for both leading global enterprise companies and early-stage startups, always at the forefront of state-of-art security solutions used by governments, top intelligence agencies, data centers, cloud providers and industrial markets. Itzik served with the IDF's elite intelligence unit.

Will 2025 See a Rise of NHI Attacks?

President Trump pardons Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, slamming prosecutors as “scum.” The move reignites debates on cybercrime…

President Trump pardons Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, slamming prosecutors as “scum.” The move reignites debates on cybercrime justice, presidential power, and fairness.

U.S. President Donald Trump has issued a full pardon to Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the infamous dark web marketplace **Silk Road**. The decision has kicked off a debate across political, legal, and cybersecurity circles while raising questions about possible pardons for other high-profile figures such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

****The Silk Road Story****

Launched in February 2011, Silk Road was an online marketplace accessible through the Tor network, designed to ensure user anonymity. The platform operated much like eBay but was primarily known for facilitating the trade of illegal goods, particularly drugs. Payments on Silk Road were conducted using Bitcoin, making transactions nearly untraceable.

Ross Ulbricht, operating under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts,” positioned himself as a libertarian ideologue, claiming the marketplace was a tool to undermine government overreach and provide individuals with greater personal freedoms. However, the site soon became a hub for illegal activities, including drug trafficking, weapons sales, and hacking tools.

****The Arrest****

Ulbricht was **arrested on October 1, 2013**, in the science fiction section of a public library in San Francisco. The dramatic takedown was part of a planned operation by federal agents who had been tracking Ulbricht for months including postings on online forums, metadata from server logs, and evidence found on Ulbricht’s laptop at the time of his arrest.

When captured, Ulbricht’s laptop was open and running, providing agents with incriminating evidence, including logs of Silk Road transactions, communications with administrators, and his personal journal. Ulbricht then faced a litany of charges, including:

*   **Conspiracy to traffic narcotics.**
*   **Conspiracy to commit computer hacking.**
*   **Conspiracy to commit money laundering.**
*   **Continuing a criminal enterprise** (a charge commonly used against organized crime figures).

While the charges focused on his role in enabling large-scale drug trafficking, federal authorities also accused him of attempting to arrange hits on individuals he perceived as threats to Silk Road. Although no murders were carried out, these allegations added significant weight to the prosecution’s case.

****The Sentencing****

In 2015, Ross Ulbricht was convicted on all charges and sentenced to **two life sentences plus 40 years** without the possibility of parole. The severity of the sentence shocked many observers, who argued that it was disproportionately harsh compared to other cases involving similar offenses. Civil liberties advocates and digital rights groups questioned whether the punishment was intended to set an example for others operating in the digital underground.

Seized Silk Road market (Screenshot: Hackread.com)

****The Pardon****

Trump’s decision to pardon Ross Ulbricht was announced on January 21, 2025. In a post on Truth Social, Trump described the prosecution and conviction of Ulbricht as a “scum,” criticizing the authorities involved in the case.

> _“I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross. The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me. He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!”_
> 
> Donald Trump

The Ulbricht pardon raises fundamental questions about justice in the digital age. How should courts balance technological innovation, personal freedom, and the responsibility for harm caused?

1.  **Obama Pardons** **Chelsea Manning**
2.  **CIA Whistleblower Guilty of Leaking Vault 7 Docs to WikiLeaks**
3.  **Dark Web Hydra Market Mastermind Sentenced to Life by Russia**
4.  **British judge says Julian Assange will not be extradited to the US**
5.  **23-Year-Old Arrested for Running 100M Incognito Dark Web Market**

Trump Pardons Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht, Calls Prosecutors ‘Scum’

Torrance, United States / California, 22nd January 2025, CyberNewsWire

**Torrance, United States / California, January 22nd, 2025, CyberNewsWire**

AI SPERA, a leading Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) provider, has collaborated with OnTheHub, a global provider of software in education, to deliver its integrated cybersecurity solution, Criminal IP, to students and educational institutions. This strategic initiative aims to enhance cybersecurity awareness and protection in the education sector by offering internationally compliant solutions at affordable prices.

Criminal IP will now extend its reach to educational institutions worldwide, reinforcing its growing presence in the global security market. Since its launch, Criminal IP has gained users in over 150 countries and formed strategic alliances with more than 40 global cybersecurity companies, including Cisco, Snowflake, Tenable, and VirusTotal.

(Criminal IP Lite Plan on OnTheHub)

OnTheHub is a worldwide operating platform that provides software and learning materials at discounted rates to educational organizations and their members. Through this collaboration, Criminal IP and OnTheHub seek to strengthen the cybersecurity frameworks of educational organizations on the platform, aligning with the ongoing digital transformation (DT) in education, particularly regarding Learning Management Systems (LMS). Students and researchers can access Criminal IP by redeeming coupons purchased through OnTheHub on the Criminal IP website, enabling them to utilize a globally recognized CTI platform at an affordable cost.

Criminal IP offers real-time risk analysis and vulnerability insights for global IP addresses and domains. Utilizing AI and machine learning technologies, the solution scans for security threats across various ports and devices, quickly identifying malicious IPs and domains while categorizing threat levels into five distinct tiers. Additionally, organizations can leverage Criminal IP ASM to oversee and manage IT assets, and Criminal IP FDS to detect unauthorized network access attempts during login or payment processes, all provided through a user-friendly SaaS model.

In terms of compatibility, Criminal IP offers an intuitive user interface (UI) and an integrated API, facilitating seamless integration with a variety of software and security solutions. This enables users to comprehensively evaluate security risks, including threat scores for IT assets, exposure of IoT devices, and phishing domain identification. Consequently, students and researchers associated with OnTheHub’s partner institutions will gain access to high-quality threat intelligence data and a robust platform for academic activities such as threat hunting, development, and research.

> AI SPERA CEO Byung-tak Kang commented, “Through this partnership, we are excited to provide more students and educational institutions with a globally recognized security solution at a reasonable price. We hope that Criminal IP will help students and researchers prevent security threats in educational environments and ensure a safe digital space for learning.”

**About AI SPERA**

AI SPERA, renowned for its advanced solutions, has expanded internationally, with ‘Criminal IP’ as its flagship offering. Operating in more than 150 countries, ‘Criminal IP’ is backed by enterprise-grade security solutions like ‘Criminal IP ASM’ and ‘Criminal IP FDS’. Strategic partnerships with global leaders such as Cisco, VirusTotal, and Quad9 have significantly enhanced ‘Criminal IP’s capabilities. AI SPERA’s ‘Criminal IP’ has recently entered the marketplace of major US data warehousing platforms, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Snowflake, expanding its global reach for threat data.

**Contact**

**Michael Sena**  
**\[email protected\]**

Criminal IP and OnTheHub Partner to Deliver Advanced Cybersecurity Solutions for Education

Donald Trump pardoned the creator of the world’s first dark-web drug market, who is now a libertarian cause célèbre in some parts of the crypto community.

A little over 11 years and three months ago, Ross Ulbricht was arrested in the science fiction section of a public library in San Francisco, caught with his laptop still logged in to the Silk Road, the world’s first dark-web drug market that he created and ran under the pseudonym the Dread Pirate Roberts.

Now, after being sentenced to life in prison and spending more than a decade behind bars, Ulbricht will walk free, thanks to Donald Trump—and to the president’s ever-closer ties to the American cryptocurrency world.

“I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbright to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross,” president Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday evening, misspelling Ulbricht's last name. “The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me. He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!”

For close to two and a half years after Ulbricht created the Silk Road in 2011, the dark-web site facilitated the sale of vast amounts of narcotics, as well as counterfeit documents, money laundering services and, at times, guns, for hundreds of millions of dollars in bitcoin payments. After the FBI located the Silk Road’s server in Iceland in 2013 and arrested then 29-year-old Ulbricht in San Francisco, he was convicted on seven charges relating to the distribution of narcotics, money laundering, and computer hacking, as well as a “continuing criminal enterprise” statute—sometimes known as the “kingpin statute”—usually reserved for mob bosses and cartel leaders. In 2015, he was sentenced to life in prison, a punishment beyond even the 20-plus years that prosecutors in the case requested.

Since then, a Free Ross movement has steadily pressed for Ulbricht’s release, first in a failed appeal, then in petitions for clemency. Many of Ulbricht’s supporters have long argued that the Silk Road was a principled libertarian experiment in free trade, one in which Ulbricht allowed only “victimless crime”—despite prosecutors arguing during his trial that at least six people died of opioid overdoses from drugs linked to the Silk Road. They point out that Ulbricht never actually sold or possessed drugs himself, and rather ran a website that facilitated their sale. And they argue that by moving the sale of narcotics online, he reduced violence in the drug trade and committed no violence himself.

That argument has been complicated, however, by allegations that Ulbricht tried to have six people killed who presented a threat to him or the Silk Road. Ultimately all six alleged murders-for-hire were fake—one was staged by undercover DEA agents and five more were a scam. Ulbricht was charged with only one of those alleged paid killings in a separate prosecution in Maryland, which was then dropped after he received a life sentence in his New York trial. But evidence presented at Ulbricht’s trial showed him allegedly arranging those killings and even pinpointed transactions on Bitcoin’s blockchain that showed a payment for them from Ulbricht’s laptop to the would-be killer.

Those allegations of murders-for-hire, in fact, dissuaded the first Trump administration from granting clemency to Ulbricht. The White House in 2020 considered freeing Ulbricht but ultimately rejected the idea because of the alleged role of violence in the case, according to one former government official involved in the process who spoke to WIRED on condition of anonymity.

Since then, however, the Trump administration has shifted its stance on Ulbricht’s case—in part, perhaps, due to its embrace of the libertarian cryptocurrency community, for whom Ulbricht has become a martyr and cause célèbre. At the Libertarian National Convention in Washington, DC, last May, then presidential candidate Trump promised to commute Ulbricht’s sentence “on day one” if reelected. (Ultimately, day one passed with no clemency for Ulbricht, even as Trump pardoned more than a thousand participants in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol, though Trump ally Elon Musk promised in a post to X on Monday evening that “Ross will be freed too.”)

Just what role Ulbricht will play in the free world is far from clear. Even in his statement to the judge at his sentencing hearing in 2015, Ulbricht never fully acknowledged the harm inflicted by the Silk Road’s drug sales. And according to Jared Der-Yeghiayan, a former Homeland Security Investigations agent who infiltrated the Silk Road during the investigation, Ulbricht still shows little remorse for his actions in his public posts to X.

“The idea of him being released doesn’t bother me in the least,” says Der-Yeghiayan, who now works as the head of strategic intelligence at cryptocurrency tracing firm Chainalysis. “I do get bothered if there’s now a perception that he did nothing wrong; that doesn’t acknowledge the facts of the case.”

Among some advocates of criminal justice reform, however, Ulbricht has become an exemplar of oversentencing, particularly given that he was technically charged with nonviolent crimes. “Ross has served more than enough time. He has been a model prisoner. He’s a first-time, nonviolent offender. He poses zero safety risk to the community,” Alice Johnson, CEO of the justice reform foundation Taking Action for Good, told WIRED in November. Johnson spent two decades in prison herself for attempted possession with intent to distribute before Trump commuted her life sentence in 2018 and pardoned her in 2020. “I believe that Ross’ case is going to pave the way for many others who have been unjustly given these draconian sentences to come home.”

On Tuesday night, Ulbricht's supporters celebrated his freedom and voiced their gratitude to Trump for his clemency. “Words cannot express how grateful we are,” reads a tweet from @Free\_Ross, an X account devoted to the more than decade-long effort on Ulbricht's behalf. “President Trump is a man of his word and he just saved Ross's life. ROSS IS A FREE MAN!!!!!"

_Additional reporting by Joel Khalili_

Trump Frees Silk Road Creator Ross Ulbricht After 11 Years in Prison

The company reports that it is not experiencing any operational issues within its business, so far.

Source: JHVEPhoto via Alamy Stock Photo

NEWS BRIEF

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is conducting an investigation after a threat actor said it had stolen data from the company's network.

IntelBroker, a cyberattack group that has been active since at least 2022, claimed responsibility for the breach on the BreachForums underground forum, alleging that it had access to the company's API, WePay, private and public GitHub repositories, Zerto and iLO source code, old user information, and more.

Previously, IntelBroker claimed to have breached organizations such as AMD, Europol, Cisco, Nokia, and others, and its members have served in leadership positions at BreachForums.

And this isn't the first time HPE has faced breaches at the hands of malicious actors. In 2018, APT10 hackers reportedly compromised some HPE systems, hacking into customer devices; and in 2021, its Aruba Central network monitoring platform was breached, allowing threat actors to access data regarding monitored devices.

As HPE investigates the most recent data breach claims, it remains unclear if there is any truth to them, and, if so, how the breach occurred.

"HPE became aware on Jan. 16 of claims being made by a group called IntelBroker that it was in possession of information belonging to HPE," an HPE spokesperson tells Dark Reading. "HPE immediately activated our cyber-response protocols, disabled related credentials, and launched an investigation to evaluate the validity of the claims."

HPE also reported that there is no evidence that customer information was involved, and currently no operational impact to the business.

**About the Author**

Skilled writer and editor covering cybersecurity for Dark Reading.

HPE Investigates After Alleged Data Breach

Two separate campaigns are targeting flaws in various IoT devices globally, with the goal of compromising them and propagating malware worldwide.

Source: Aleksey Funtap via Alamy Stock Photo

Separate spinoffs of the infamous Mirai botnet are responsible for a fresh wave of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks globally. One is exploiting specific vulnerabilities in Internet of Things (IoT) devices to establish "expansive" botnet networks, while the other has been targeting organizations in North America, Europe, and Asia with DDoS attacks since the end of 2024, researchers have found.

An ongoing operation within Mirai dubbed "Murdoc\_Botnet" (which began in July and has more than 1,300 active IPs) is targeting Avtech cameras and Huawei HG532 routers, researchers from Qualys revealed in a report posted today.

The researchers uncovered more than 100 distinct sets of servers associated with the Murdoc botnet, "each tasked with deciphering its activities and establishing communication with one of the compromised IPs implicated in this ongoing campaign," Qualys lead security researcher Shilpesh Trivedi wrote in the post.

Meanwhile, a botnet that comprises malware variants derived from both Mirai and Bashlite is exploiting security flaws and weak credentials in IoT devices in DDoS attacks spanning the globe, according to separate research from Trend Micro. "The malware infiltrates the device by exploiting RCE vulnerabilities or weak passwords, then executes a download script on the infected host," the researchers said.

Related:Email Bombing, 'Vishing' Tactics Abound in Microsoft 365 Attacks

The two campaigns demonstrate the ongoing impact of Mirai, a botnet that has spawned myriad variants since its source code was leaked in 2016 and which remains a significant security threat 10+ years after first appearing on the cyberattack scene.

**Murdoc Botnet Exploits Specific Flaws**

The Murdoc botnet delivering Mirai malware uses existing exploits, including CVE-2024-7029 and CVE-2017-17215, to download next-stage payloads. The former is an Avtech camera flaw that allows for commands to be injected over the network and executed without authentication, while the latter is a remote code execution (RCE) flaw found in Huawei routers.

Most of the IP addresses associated with the Murdoc botnet campaign are found in Malaysia, followed by Thailand, Mexico, and Indonesia.

Qualys researchers discovered more than 500 samples containing ELF files and shell script files associated with the Murdoc botnet. Each shell script "is loaded onto devices such as IP cameras, Network devices, and IoT devices, and, in turn, the C2 server loads the new variant of Mirai botnet, i.e., Murdoc\_Botnet, into the devices," Trivedi wrote in the post.

**An Expansive DDoS Campaign Targets US**

Related:DONOT Group Deploys Malicious Android Apps in India

Meanwhile, researchers at Trend Micro initially detected "large-scale" DDoS botnet attacks against Japanese organizations, including major corporations and banks, starting at the end of 2024, but then tracked the activity to a larger global campaign. Organizations in the US were most affected by the attacks, followed by companies in Bahrain, Poland, and Spain, among various other countries.

The primary devices targeted in the attacks have been wireless routers and IP cameras from well-known brands, including TP-Link and Zyxel routers, and Hikvision IP cameras. As with the Murdoc botnet activity, cyberattackers here targeted flaws in the devices to compromise them, but they also used weak passwords to gain access.

In terms of attack vector, the researchers found two different types of DDoS attacks related to the activity, they said. One type overloads the network by sending a large number of packets, while the other exhausts server resources by establishing a large number of sessions.

"In addition, we observed two or more commands used in combination, making it possible that both network overload attacks and server resource exhaustion attacks occur simultaneously," according to the post.

**How to Defend Against DDoS Cyberattacks**

Related:Russian APT Phishes Kazakh Gov't for Strategic Intel

With Mirai variants continuing to spawn new botnets for mounting new and widespread DDoS attacks, it's important that organizations can identify and protect their networks from floods of unwanted traffic, the researchers said.

Qualys researchers recommended that organizations regularly monitor the suspicious processes, events, and network traffic spawned by the execution of any untrusted binary/scripts, as well as exercise caution in executing shell scripts from unknown and untrusted sources.

Meanwhile, Trend Micro analysts recommended different mitigation efforts for the two types of DDoS attacks that they observed. For attacks that flood the network with packets, the researchers recommended organizations use a firewall or router to block specific IP addresses or protocols and restrict traffic; collaborate with communication service providers to filter DDoS traffic at the backbone or edge of the network; and strengthen router hardware to increase the number of packets that can be processed.

For attacks that exhaust resources by establishing a large number of sessions, Trend Micro recommended that organizations limit the number of requests that can be sent by a specific IP address within a certain period of time; use third-party services to separate attack traffic and process clean traffic; and perform real-time monitoring and block IP addresses with a high number of connections, among other mitigations and preventions.

**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 Botnet Spinoffs Unleash Global Wave of DDoS Attacks

Set for release in March, Cisco AI Defense will provide algorithmic red teaming of large language models with technology that came over as part of the Robust Intelligence acquisition last year.

Source: Andriy Popov via Alamy Stock Photo

Cisco is expanding its cloud security platform with new technology that will let developers detect and mitigate vulnerabilities in artificial intelligence (AI) applications and their underlying models.

The new Cisco AI Defense offering, introduced Jan. 15, is also designed to prevent data leakage by employees who use services like ChatGPT, Anthropic, and Copilot. The networking giant already offers AI Defense to early-access customers and plans to release it for general availability in March.

AI Defense is integrated with Cisco Secure Access, the revamped secure service edge (SSE) cloud security portfolio that Cisco launched last year. The software-as-a-service offering includes zero-trust network access, VPN-as-a-service, a secure Web gateway, cloud access security broker, firewall-as-a-service, and digital experience monitoring.

Administrators can view the AI Defense dashboard in the Cisco Cloud Control interface, which hosts all of Cisco's cloud security offerings.

**Gaps in AI Capabilities**

AI Defense is intended to help organizations that are concerned about the security risks associated with AI but are under pressure to implement the technology into their business processes, said Jeetu Patel, Cisco's chief product officer and executive VP, at the launch event.

"You need to have the right level of speed and velocity to keep innovating in this world, but you also need to make sure that you have safety," Patel said. "These are not trade-offs that you want to have. You want to make sure that you have both."

According to Cisco's 2024 AI Readiness Survey, 71% of respondents don't believe they are fully equipped to prevent unauthorized tampering of AI within their organizations. Further, 67% said they have a limited understanding of the threats specific to machine learning. Patel said AI Defense addresses these issues.

"Cisco AI Defense is a product which is a common substrate of safety and security that can be applied across any model, that can be applied across any agent, any application, in any cloud," he said.

**Model Validation at Scale**

Cisco AI Defense is primarily targeted at enterprise AppSecOps organizations. It allows developers to validate AI models before applications and agents are deployed into production.

Patel noted that the challenge with AI models is that they are constantly changing with new data added to them, which changes the behavior of the applications and agents.

"If models are changing continuously, your validation process also has to be continuous," he said.

Seeking a way to offer the equivalent of red teaming, Cisco last year acquired Robust Intelligence, a startup founded in 2019 by Harvard researchers Yaron Singer and Kojin Oshiba, and the core component of AI Defense. The Robust Intelligence Platform uses algorithmic red teaming to scan for vulnerabilities, along with a mechanism Robust Intelligence created called Tree of Attacks with Pruning, an AI-based method of using automation to systematically jailbreak large language models (LLMs).

According to Patel, Cisco AI Defense uses detection models from generative AI (GenAI) platform provider Scale AI and threat intelligence telemetry from Cisco's Talos and its recently acquired Splunk to continuously validate the models and automatically recommend guardrails. Further, he noted that Cisco designed AI Defense to distribute those guardrails through the network fabric.

"This essentially allows us to deliver a purpose-built model and data for going out, allowing us to validate if a model is going to work as per expectations or if it's going to surprise us," said Patel, adding that it typically takes most organizations seven to 10 weeks to validate a model. "We can do it within 30 seconds because this is completely automated," he said.

**An Industry-First?**

Analysts believe Cisco is the first major player to launch technology that can address automated model verification at that scale.

"I don't know anyone else who's done anything close to this," says Frank Dickson, group VP for IDC's security and trust research practice. "I've heard people doing what we might call an LLM firewall, but it's not as intricate and complex as this. The ability to do this kind of automated pen testing in 30 seconds looks pretty slick."

Scott Crawford, research director for the 451 Research Information Security channel with S&P Global Market Intelligence, agrees, noting that a variety of large vendors are approaching security for GenAI in different ways.

"But in Cisco's case, it made the first acquisition of a startup with this focus with its pickup of Robust Intelligence, which is at the heart of this initiative," Crawford says. "There are a range of other startups in this space, any of which could be an acquisition target in this emerging field, but this was the first such acquisition by a major enterprise IT vendor."

Addressing AI security will be a major concern this year, given the rise in attacks against vulnerable models, Crawford says.

"We have already seen examples of LLM exploits, and experts have considered the ways in which it can be manipulated and attacked," he says.

Such incidents, often described as LLMjacking, are waged by exploiting vulnerabilities with prompt injections, supply chain attacks, and data and model poisoning. One notable LLMjacking attack was discovered last year by the Sysdig Threat Research Team, which observed stolen cloud credentials targeting 10 cloud-hosted LLMs. In that incident, the attackers accessed credentials from a system running a vulnerable version of Laravel (CVE-2021-3129).

**About the Author**

Contributing Writer

Jeffrey Schwartz is a journalist who has covered information security and all forms of business and enterprise IT, including client computing, data center and cloud infrastructure, and application development for more than 30 years. Jeff is a regular contributor to Channel Futures. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Redmond magazine and contributed to its sister titles Redmond Channel Partner, Application Development Trends, and Virtualization Review. Earlier, he held editorial roles with CommunicationsWeek, InternetWeek, and VARBusiness. Jeff is based in the New York City suburb of Long Island.

Cisco Previews AI Defenses to Cloud Security Platform

Hacker IntelBroker claims to have breached Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), exposing sensitive data like source code, certificates, and…

Hacker IntelBroker claims to have breached Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), exposing sensitive data like source code, certificates, and PII, now available for sale online.

The notorious IntelBroker hacker along with their associates have claimed responsibility for breaching Hewlett Packard Enterprise (**HPE**), a Houston, TX, United States-based global company that provides technology solutions to businesses.

The hacker, who was previously linked to several high-profile data breaches, is now selling the allegedly stolen data, demanding payment in Monero (XML) cryptocurrency to remain anonymous and untraceable.

This was revealed to Hackread.com by the hacker himself and later announced on Breach Forums, a cybercrime and data breach forum administered by the hacker. In an exclusive conversation with Hackread.com, IntelBroker claimed that the breach was the result of a direct attack on HPE’s infrastructure and did not involve compromising a third party for access, as has been **common in recent attacks**.

****What’s in the Allegedly Stolen Data?****

IntelBroker also shared a data tree and two screenshots allegedly taken from the company’s internal infrastructure. The data tree, analyzed by Hackread.com, appears to reference a development or system environment involving both open-source software and proprietary package management systems.

Additionally, the hacker claims to have extracted sensitive data, including source code, private GitHub repositories, Docker builds, certificates (both private and public keys), product source code belonging to Zerto and iLO, user data such as old PII related to deliveries, and access to APIs, WePay, self-hosted GitHub repositories, and more.

IntelBroker on Breach Forums claiming Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) breach Credit: Hackread.com

During Hackread.com’s initial analysis of the alleged data tree, several findings align with the hacker’s claims. The directory structure includes private keys and certificates, such as ca-signed.key and hpe_trusted_certificates.pem, suggesting possible exposure to sensitive cryptographic material.

Source code for HPE products like iLO and Zerto is present, with files such as ilo_client.py and zerto_bootstrapper.py hinting at leaked proprietary implementations. References to .github directories and .tar archives for private repositories further point to compromised development assets.

Additionally, the presence of files like VMW-esx-7.0.0-hpe-zertoreplication.zip and ZertoRunner.exe suggests the possible leak of compiled software packages and deployment files. If verified by HP, this could be a major security incident.

The following image combines two screenshots shared by the hacker, providing detailed insights into Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s internal systems. The first screenshot shared by the hacker shows details of Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s internal SignonService web service. The image displays the service’s endpoint address, WSDL link, and implementation class, potentially exposing sensitive infrastructure information.

The second screenshot reveals sensitive configuration details from Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s internal systems. The image exposes credentials for Salesforce and QIDs integrations, internal URLs for SAP S/4 HANA quoting services, and placeholder email addresses for error logging, potentially highlighting serious security vulnerabilities within HPE’s infrastructure.”

Credit: Hackread.com

****HPE and HP, What’s the Difference?****

While the names Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) and HP Inc. are often used interchangeably, they are two different companies with different focuses. In 2015, Hewlett-Packard **split** into two separate entities. HP Inc. continues to specialize in consumer products like laptops, desktops, and printers, while Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) focuses on providing enterprise-level IT solutions, including servers, storage, networking, and cloud computing.

Both companies are separate with independent ownership and management. The mention of this distinction is important, as the reported breach specifically targets HPE, not HP Inc.

****Right After the CICSO Incident****

Intel Broker is known for high-profile data breaches. In October 2024, the hacker announced **breaching Cisco** and stealing terabytes of data. Cisco later confirmed that the stolen data originated from a misconfigured, public-facing DevHub resource exposed without password protection, allowing hackers to download it.

In November 2024, the hackers claimed to have **breached Nokia** through a third-party contractor. The data was being sold for $20,000. The same hackers boasted about **breaching AMD** (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.), and stealing employee and product information.

_This is a developing story. Hackread.com is closely monitoring the situation and will provide updates as new information becomes available. Stay tuned for further details._

1.  **Hacker Leak Over 10,000 DELL Employee Details**
2.  **Acer Data Breach: Hacker Sells 160GB of Stolen Data**
3.  **Dell Discloses Data Breach As Hacker Sells 49M User Data**
4.  **3 Billion National Public Data Records with SSNs Dumped Online**
5.  **Trello Data Breach: Hacker Dumps Personal Info of Millions of Users**
6.  **Hackers Steal Call and Text Records for “Nearly All” AT&T Customers  
    **

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