**How could an attacker exploit this vulnerability?**

To successfully exploit this remote code execution vulnerability, an attacker could send a malicious logon request to the target domain controller.

CVE-2025-21369: Microsoft Digest Authentication Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

CVE-2025-21368: Microsoft Digest Authentication Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

**What type of information could be disclosed by this vulnerability?**

An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could potentially read small portions of heap memory.

CVE-2025-21383: Microsoft Excel Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Iranian-linked hackers claim to have breached Israeli police systems, stealing 2.1TB of sensitive data. Police deny the breach. Learn more about the alleged hack and its implications.

The infamous Handala hacking group, with suspected ties to Iranian intelligence, has claimed responsibility for a cyberattack against Israel’s police force, managing to exfiltrate 2.1 terabytes of sensitive data, including personnel records, weapons inventories, medical and psychological profiles, legal case files, weapon permits, and identity documents. Handala further claims to have disseminated 350,000 of these documents publicly.

The scope of the claimed data breach is extensive, encompassing a wide range of sensitive information. Reports suggest the stolen data includes email addresses, gun licenses, officer photos and personal contact details, classified documents, and personal information about suspects and convicted criminals, including details about sex offender employment permits.

Handala also alleges obtaining access to the personal files of police officers, including psychological evaluations and other private data, and breaching the servers of the Israeli Ministry of National Security. 

Despite Handala’s claims, the Israeli police have denied any direct penetration of their systems. Their statement suggests that the breach, if confirmed, likely involved third-party entities that share data with the police. An investigation is currently underway to ascertain the true extent of the incident and identify any vulnerabilities.

https://twitter.com/IL\_police/status/1888576600985243926

This alleged break follows a pattern of disruptive cyber actions by Handala targeting Israeli entities, particularly since the escalation of the Israeli-Hamas conflict. Microsoft reports that Israel has become a prime target for Iranian cyber operations, experiencing a significant increase in attacks. Handala’s own activity reflects this trend, with a series of increasing data breaches targeting Israeli institutions.

For instance, in October 2024, Hackread.com reported their suspected involvement in a phishing campaign targeting cybersecurity personnel within Israeli organizations with wiper malware, aiming to disrupt the country’s digital defences. In September 2024, the group targeted Israel’s Soreq Nuclear Research Center (SNRC) in a significant ransomware attack.

The group has targeted crucial Israeli institutions/ systems with the Elad Municipality and the Ramat Gan Academic College being their recent targets. On January 27, 2025, the group compromised the emergency alert system, operated by Israeli electronics firm Maagar-Tec, impacting at least 20 kindergarten educational institutions across Israel, triggering widespread panic with false terror alerts.

Nevertheless, in its post on BreachForums dated February 9, 2025, Handala Group not only claimed responsibility for the latest attack but also taunted Israel, emphasizing their success in penetrating their defences and exposing their secrets while accusing Israel of arrogance and deception.

“Handala does not forget. Handala does not forgive,” the group reiterated their slogan.

Handala Hackers Claim Massive Data Breach on Israeli Police, Leak 350,000 Files

Plus: Benjamin Netanyahu gives Donald Trump a golden pager, Hewlett Packard Enterprise blames Russian government hackers for a breach, and more.

As Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency rampage through United States federal institutions, WIRED reported extensively this week on DOGE’s members, activity, and digital access to some of the US government's most delicate and critical software systems. One DOGE technologist, 19-year-old high school graduate Edward Coristine, established at least five different companies in the past four years—including Tesla.Sexy LLC—and briefly worked at a network monitoring company that has hired convicted hackers. Experts question whether Coristine, who has gone by the name “Big Balls” online, would pass the background check typically required for access to sensitive US government systems.

Meanwhile, DOGE’s apparent dismantling of USAID coupled with the US State Department's funding freeze have dramatically disrupted efforts to help people escape forced labor camps in Southeast Asia run by criminal scammers.

Outside of US government news, WIRED conducted an investigation into more than 300 cyberattacks in the past five years against US K–12 schools and found that victim schools sometimes withhold critical information about the scale and scope of the breaches from impacted students and parents. In slightly better news, data from the cryptocurrency tracing firm Chainalysis shows that ransomware payments fell precipitously in the second half of 2024. Experts fear, though, that the brief reprieve could be short-lived and may not be easy for defenders to sustain.

And there's more. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

**UK Home Secretary Orders Apple Enable Access to Encrypted iCloud Backups**

The Washington Post reported on Friday that Apple has received a secret order from the UK office of the Home Secretary mandating the company to provide a way to access any user data protected by the company’s Advanced Data Protection for iCloud. The feature, which debuted at the end of 2022, is designed with end-to-end encryption so only users themselves, not Apple, have access to their data. As a result, complying with the UK demand would require Apple to break the feature by building a backdoor into it. Sources told the Post that rather than install a backdoor, Apple is likely to withdraw support for Advanced Data Protection for iCloud in the UK. “Yet that concession would not fulfill the UK demand for backdoor access to the service in other countries, including the United States,” the Post noted.

The order was issued under the UK’s broad 2016 Investigatory Powers Act. UK law enforcement agencies, not to mention cops in the US and other countries, have championed encryption backdoors for years, and lawmakers have tried at various times to mandate backdoors. The Home Office told the Post in a statement, “We do not comment on operational matters, including for example confirming or denying the existence of any such notices.” An Apple spokesperson declined to comment to the Post.

**Israel’s Netanyahu Gave Trump a Golden Pager During Washington Meeting**

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave President Donald Trump a golden pager when the two met in Washington on Tuesday. The gift references a September attack in Lebanon against the militant group Hezbollah in which booby-trapped pagers (and walkie-talkies) detonated in coordinated explosions around the country. The operation killed at least 42 people, including some civilians, and injured at least 4,000 civilians, according to Lebanese officials. The attack has been widely attributed to Israel, but the country has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement. At the meeting Trump apparently gave Netanyahu a signed photograph of the two of them, which he signed, “To Bibi, a great leader!”

**Hewlett Packard Enterprise Says Russian Government Hackers Stole Some Users’ Sensitive Data**

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has been notifying dozens of users that their personal information was stolen during a 2023 breach. The company is attributing the attack to Russian state-backed hackers. The stolen data included Social Security numbers, driver’s license information, and credit card numbers. The incident began as a system intrusion in May 2023 into HPE’s email mailboxes and Microsoft SharePoint systems. HPE publicly disclosed the incident in January 2024.

**PowerSchool Data Breach Impacted Students Outside the US, Including 16,000 in the UK**

The edtech giant PowerSchool says that at least 16,000 students in the United Kingdom had their data stolen as part of a massive December data breach that may have affected 62 million students and 9.5 million teachers, most of them in the US and Canada. Attackers used compromised credentials to infiltrate the company’s customer support portal and then access user data.

PowerSchool spokesperson Beth Keebler confirmed to TechCrunch in a statement that students at four UK schools were affected totaling “approximately 16,000 students.” It is not clear if this is the total number of UK victims. The compromised data includes students’ dates of birth, contact information, some medical data, and “other related information.”

UK Secret Order Demands That Apple Give Access to Users’ Encrypted Data

Microsoft cybersecurity experts have identified a vulnerability flaw affecting ASP.NET applications, putting thousands of web servers at risk.…

Microsoft cybersecurity experts have identified a vulnerability flaw affecting ASP.NET applications, putting thousands of web servers at risk. The issue originates from developers using publicly available ASP.NET machine keys in their configurations; keys that hackers are now exploiting to execute ViewState code injection attacks.

A recent attack in December 2024 used this vulnerability to deliver Godzilla, a dangerous post-exploitation framework capable of executing commands, injecting shellcode, and maintaining persistent access to compromised servers. Microsoft warns that over 3,000 publicly disclosed machine keys could be weaponized for similar attacks.

****Why This Matters****

ASP.NET machine keys are meant to protect web applications by encrypting and validating ViewState data, ensuring that attackers cannot tamper with it. However, some developers have mistakenly copied these keys from online resources, unknowingly allowing hackers to generate and inject malicious ViewState data into their servers.

Once a hacker has access to the right machine key, they can craft a malicious payload and send it to a vulnerable website. The server, trusting the key, decrypts and executes the attacker’s code—leading to full remote code execution.

****What Happened in December 2024?****

An unidentified hacker took advantage of a publicly known ASP.NET machine key to deploy Godzilla, a post-exploitation tool that provides remote access to compromised servers. The attack began with injection, where the attacker sent a malicious ViewState payload using a leaked machine key.

Once received, the server decrypted and executed the code, unknowingly running the attacker’s instructions. This led to Godzilla deployment, where the payload triggered the execution of _assembly.dll_, loading the framework and allowing further exploitation.

Injection chain shows ViewState code leading to Godzilla. (Via Microsoft)

****Microsoft’s Response****

According to Microsoft’s **blog post**, the company has removed machine key samples from public documentation to discourage bad security practices. The company has also issued new detection alerts via Microsoft Defender for Endpoint to flag any usage of publicly disclosed machine keys.

If your system is compromised, simply rotating the machine keys may not be enough. Microsoft advises a full forensic investigation, as attackers may have installed backdoors or additional malware.

**Tim Mackey**, Head of Software Supply Chain Risk Strategy at Black Duck commented on the new development stating, _“_This misconfiguration allows attacks by using ViewState payloads encrypted with publicly available keys, often from demo code. Developers should replace sample keys, but some copy them without understanding the risk. Hardcoded keys in production signal poor configuration. Checking against Microsoft’s public key list helps, but DevOps teams should also use tools to detect and remove hardcoded secrets.”

****Protecting Yourself****

To protect your web servers from attacks, start by replacing any publicly available machine keys if they were copied from online sources. Next, rotate and secure your keys by generating new ones and applying them consistently across all servers in your web farm.

Additionally, encrypting machine keys in the web.config file will help prevent exposure. Monitoring for suspicious activity is also essential. Microsoft Defender now detects publicly disclosed ASP.NET machine keys, and enabling attack surface reduction rules can help block web shell attacks.

Upgrading to ASP.NET 4.8 enhances security by incorporating Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI) support. Finally, conducting a security audit is important. If a machine key has been exposed, assume a breach, investigate thoroughly, and check for unauthorized access.

ASP.NET Vulnerability Lets Hackers Hijack Servers, Inject Malicious Code

Developers are pulling in publicly available ASP.NET keys into their environments, without realizing that cyberattackers can use them for clandestine code injection.

Source Hilda DeSanctis via Alamy Stock Photo

NEWS BRIEF

Website developers are unwittingly putting their companies at risk by incorporating publicly disclosed ASP.NET machine keys from code documentation and repositories into their applications, Microsoft is warning.

The tech giant has issued an alert on the insecure practice, after observing threat actors in December using a static, known ASP.NET machine key to deploy the Godzilla post-exploitation cyberattack framework, known for stomping all over corporate environments.

The attack vector involves manipulating ViewState, which represents the state of a webpage when it was last processed on the server. If threat actors can get ahold of ASP.NET keys, they can craft a malicious ViewState, send it to a targeted website via a POST request to be loaded, and can thus compromise the environment via code injection.

"Once it's processed by ASP.NET Runtime on the targeted server, the ViewState is decrypted and validated successfully because the right keys are used," a Microsoft post on the concern explained. "The malicious code is then loaded into the worker process memory and executed, providing the threat actor remote code execution capabilities on the target IIS Web server."

Microsoft has uncovered at least 3,000 publicly disclosed keys that could be used for these types of attacks, which lowers the bar for exploitation significantly.

"Whereas many previously known ViewState code injection attacks used compromised or stolen keys that are often sold on Dark Web forums, these publicly disclosed keys could pose a higher risk because they are available in multiple code repositories and could have been pushed into development code without modification," according to the post.

To prevent attack, Microsoft recommends that organizations do not copy keys from publicly available sources and to regularly rotate keys in any event.

**About the Author**

Tara Seals has 20+ years of experience as a journalist, analyst and editor in the cybersecurity, communications and technology space. Prior to Dark Reading, Tara was Editor in Chief at Threatpost, and prior to that, the North American news lead for Infosecurity Magazine. She also spent 13 years working for Informa (formerly Virgo Publishing), as executive editor and editor-in-chief at publications focused on both the service provider and the enterprise arenas. A Texas native, she holds a B.A. from Columbia University, lives in Western Massachusetts with her family and is on a never-ending quest for good Mexican food in the Northeast.

Microsoft: Thousands of Public ASP.NET Keys Allow Web Server RCE

A year after Google and Yahoo started requiring DMARC, the adoption rate of the email authentication specification has doubled; and yet, 87% of domains remain unprotected.

Source: Tapati Rinchumrus via Shutterstock

A year after Google and Yahoo forced bulk email senders to implement the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) standard, the rate of the adoption of DMARC among domains has doubled, although many of the same email threats continue to successfully deliver payloads or redirect unwary users to phishing sites.

The increase in adoption started in February 2024, when Google and Yahoo started requiring bulk email senders — defined as any company sending more than 5,000 email messages daily — to use DMARC. The email authentication standard uses two authentication specifications — Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainsKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) — to confirm that an email comes from an authorized email server and on behalf of the purported sender. The technology makes it much more difficult to spoof email from a legitimate company or brand.

In the past year, adoption has increased by about 2.3 million domains, but that still leaves about 87% of domains without a DMARC record, according to data published by cyber-resilience firm Red Sift on Feb 5. Adoption is also uneven, with organizations in Austria, Japan, and Indonesia seeing some of the highest growth and publicly traded companies making the most significant gains.

Related:Microsoft: Thousands of Public ASP.NET Keys Allow Web Server RCE

While doubling the adoption rate of DMARC is a significant success, the private sector needs to do better, says Sean Costigan, managing director of resilience strategy at Red Sift.

"DMARC is considered an indicator of cyber maturity in many sectors, and we are still in the early days — healthcare, for example, is struggling to surpass 40% to 50% adoption," he says, adding that "widely, properly managed DMARC adoption will reduce spoofing, phishing and other forms of cybercrime."

Source: Red Sift

Google, for example, has seen a significant reduction in questionable email. In 2024, Gmail users saw 265 billion fewer unauthenticated emails, or about 65% less. During the 2024 holidays, a season that typically sees a massive spike in phishing attacks, users encountered 35% fewer scams, says Neil Kumaran, group product manager at Google.

"We think these improvements represent a huge boost in the health of the email ecosystem overall," he says. "We are actually seeing the industry embrace these requirements, seeing how important they are to increase the healthy ecosystem for everybody."

**DMARC Adoption Likely to Accelerate**

Large email senders are not the only groups quickening the pace of DMARC adoption. The latest Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) version 4.0 requires DMARC for all organizations that handle credit card information, while the European Union's Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) makes DMARC a necessity for its ability to report on and block email impersonation, Red Sift's Costigan says.

Related:Abandoned AWS Cloud Storage: A Major Cyberattack Vector

"Mandatory regulations and legislation often serve as the tipping point for most organizations," he says. "Failures to do reasonable, proactive cybersecurity — of which email security and DMARC is obviously a part — are likely to meet with costly regulatory actions and the prospect of class action lawsuits."

Overall, the authentication specification is working as intended, which explains its arguably rapid adoption, says Roger Grimes, a data-driven-defense evangelist at security awareness and training firm KnowBe4. Other cybersecurity standards, such as DNSSEC and IPSEC, have been around longer, but DMARC adoption has outpaced them, he maintains.

"DMARC stands alone as the singular success as the most widely implemented cybersecurity standard introduced in the last decade," Grimes says.

**Subdomain Attacks Exploit Gaps**

Yet that does not mean that threats have diminished. Attackers have adapted, Grimes says. Typically, attackers will just use lookalike domains — or use creative punctuation to create confusion — and fool the end user while still sending messages from an authenticated domain.

Related:Name That Toon: Incentives

"Since the creation and wide-scale adoption of DMARC, the percentage and number of phishing emails claiming to be from a particular legitimate domain are significantly less, perhaps just a few percent of what they used to be," Grimes says. "Unfortunately, phishers just created new illegitimate domains, often with lookalike names, that they then applied DMARC on so that the new, illegitimate domains passed DMARC inspection."

One technique used to dodge DMARC is "subdomail," where attackers seek out SPF records that include unregistered domains, and then take control of the orphaned domains as a way to conduct massive spamming campaigns. In one case, an SPF record for msnmarthastewartsweeps.com "included" two domains, allowing any authorized mail servers listed in those domain records to send authenticated email. In the Sender Policy Framework, the "include" keyword allows on domain to specify that those domains' lists of authenticated email servers should be trusted. For msnmarthastewartsweeps.com, that resulted in nearly 18,000 domains being authorized to send email on behalf of the domain.

Because the email messages make it past DMARC checks, they are more likely to successfully impersonate other companies, says Red Sift's Costigan.

"SubdoMailing exploits gaps in DMARC safeguards, allowing attackers to send emails from subdomains that pass both SPF and DMARC checks," he says. "These messages appear legitimate and are incredibly deceptive."

**BIMI on Deck for Email Security**

Still, companies gain much more visibility into their email by using DMARC, as the standard includes a reporting function that allows companies — or service providers on their behalf — to track email failures. Thus, companies should rapidly move from "none" to "quarantine" to "reject" as their policy, experts say.

In addition, companies should also look to take the next step, moving to Brand Indicators for Message Identification or BIMI, which allows companies to present a logo to email recipients. BIMI requires strict DMARC, however, and only about a third of domains currently comply, according to Red Sift's data.

While none of these technologies solve the problem of malicious emails, they all give companies and their email service providers more reliable signals to use to filter out unwanted messages and potential attacks, says Google's Kumaran. DMARC adoption does not boil down to "authenticated mail is good, and unauthenticated email is bad," he says.

"The idea is that authentication gives you confidence of the source of the message, and then you can start to do a better job of classification and actually providing protections to users," Kumaran says. "So I think it's a very desirable behavior if 100% of attacks are actually authenticated, because it makes the job of protecting people — and gives those the folks working in defending — stronger signals on which to operate."

**About the Author**

Veteran technology journalist of more than 20 years. Former research engineer. Written for more than two dozen publications, including CNET News.com, Dark Reading, MIT's Technology Review, Popular Science, and Wired News. Five awards for journalism, including Best Deadline Journalism (Online) in 2003 for coverage of the Blaster worm. Crunches numbers on various trends using Python and R. Recent reports include analyses of the shortage in cybersecurity workers and annual vulnerability trends.

Google's DMARC Push Pays Off, but Email Security Challenges Remain

A cybercriminal calling themselves emirking is offering 20 million OpenAI accounts for sale on a Dark Web forum

A cybercriminal acting under the monicker “emirking” offered 20 million OpenAI user login credentials this week, sharing what appeared to be samples of the stolen data itself.

Post by emirking

A translation of the Russian statement by the poster says:

> “When I realized that OpenAI might have to verify accounts in bulk, I understood that my password wouldn’t stay hidden. I have more than 20 million access codes to OpenAI accounts. If you want, you can contact me—this is a treasure.”

The statement suggests that the cybercriminal found access codes which could be used to bypass the platform’s authentication systems. It seems unlikely that such a large amount of credentials could be harvested in phishing operations against users, so if the claim is true, emirking may have found a way to compromise the _auth0.openai.com_ subdomain by exploiting a vulnerability or by obtaining administrator credentials.

While emirking looks like a relatively new user of the forums (they joined in January 2025), that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. They could have posted under another handle previously and switched because of security reasons.

Millions of users around the world rely on OpenAI platforms like ChatGPT and other GPT integrations.

With the allegedly stolen credentials, cybercriminals could possibly access sensitive information provided during conversations and queries with OpenAI. This stolen data could prove useful in targeted phishing campaigns and financial fraud. But the stolen credentials could also be used to abuse the OpenAI API and have the victims pay for their usage of OpenAI’s “Plus” or “Pro” features. However, other users of the same dark web forum claimed that the posted credentials did not provide access to the ChatGPT conversations of the leaked accounts.

True or not, this comes at a bad time for OpenAI after Microsoft recently investigated accusations that DeepSeek used OpenAI’s ChatGPT model to train DeepSeek’s AI chatbot.

**What can users do?**

If you fear that this breach might include your credentials you should:

*   Change your password.
*   Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA).
*   Monitor your account for any unusual activity or unauthorized usage.
*   Beware of phishing attempts using the information that might be stolen as part of this breach.

BreachForums, the Dark Web forum where the accounts were offered for sale was offline at the time of writing, so we were unable to verify any claims ourselves. We will do so when the opportunity arises and keep you posted, so stay tuned.

 20 Million OpenAI accounts offered for sale 

Microsoft is warning of an insecure practice wherein software developers are incorporating publicly disclosed ASP.NET machine keys from publicly accessible resources, thereby putting their applications in attackers' pathway.
The tech giant's threat intelligence team said it observed limited activity in December 2024 that involved an unknown threat actor using a publicly available, static ASP.NET

Tag

#microsoft