UAC-0063: A Russian-linked threat actor targeting Central Asia and Europe with sophisticated cyberespionage campaigns, including weaponized documents, data…

UAC-0063: A Russian-linked threat actor targeting Central Asia and Europe with sophisticated cyberespionage campaigns, including weaponized documents, data exfiltration, and advanced malware.

Bitdefender has shared its latest research with Hackread.com ahead of its release, revealing an active espionage campaign by Russia APT28-linked threat actor UAC-0063. According to Bitdefender’s investigation, the actor is specifically targeting high-value entities in Central Asia and European countries like Germany, the UK, Romania, and the Netherlands in a multi-stage attack process involving various malware components and techniques.

UAC-0063 has been active since at least 2021 and has targeted a variety of organizations, including government entities, diplomatic missions, and private companies. In this campaign, the actor employs malicious Microsoft Word documents, a HATVIBE malware loader, and custom-built malware to infiltrate networks. Their operations are characterized by persistence, focusing on maintaining long-term access to compromised systems.

The attack starts with compromised Microsoft Word documents containing malicious macros that, when enabled by the user, deliver the initial malware payload (HATVIBE loader). HATVIBE is an HTA (HTML Application) script that downloads and executes further malicious code from the attacker’s command-and-control (C2) server.

A blurred malicious MS Word document used in the attack prompts users to enable macros to reveal its contents. However, once enabled, it also allows attackers to deploy a malicious payload. (Via Bitdefender)

DownExPyer is used extensively throughout the UAC-0063 attack chain. It is deployed after the initial infection stage, likely by the HATVIBE loader or other malware components. This Python-based malware establishes persistent communication with the C2 server, receives commands, and executes malicious actions on the infected system. 

PyPlunderPlug is a separate script designed to collect files from removable drives connected to the infected system. It focuses on specific file types and copies them to a staging location for potential exfiltration.

The attackers also deploy keyloggers to capture keystrokes entered by the victim, potentially revealing sensitive information like passwords and login credentials. The stolen data is then compressed into smaller archives to facilitate exfiltration and evade detection.

Researchers noted that the actor leverages previously compromised victims to spread the infection. This means the weaponised documents exfiltrated from one victim are used to attack other targets. Moreover, they create scheduled tasks to ensure the persistence of their malware on the compromised system. These tasks automatically execute the malicious code at regular intervals.

Researchers hinted at the involvement of the Russian government in this campaign.

UAC-0063’s arsenal “featuring sophisticated implants like DownExPyer and PyPlunderPlug, combined with well-crafted TTPs, demonstrates a clear focus on espionage and intelligence gathering. The targeting of government entities within specific regions aligns with _potential Russian strategic interests_,” Bitdefender researchers wrote in the blog post.

To mitigate the risks posed by UAC-0063, organizations should enhance their threat intelligence by continuously monitoring feeds from reputable sources, tracking C2 domains and implementing DNS-based blocking mechanisms to prevent network traffic from reaching these malicious domains. Implementing application whitelisting policies and deploying Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems (IDPS) are crucial for strengthening endpoint and network security. 

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Russian UAC-0063 Targets Europe and Central Asia with Advanced Malware

VulnCheck initially disclosed the critical command-injection vulnerability (CVE-2024-40891) six months ago, but Zyxel has yet to mention its existence or offer users a patch to mitigate threats.

Source: Timon Schneider via Alamy Stock Photo

NEWS BRIEF

A command-injection vulnerability in Zyxel CPE Series devices is being targeted by threat actors, and there's no patch available.

The bug, tracked as CVE-2024-40891, was first discovered by VulnCheck, a vulnerability intelligence firm, and disclosed to the vendor last July. Half a year later, Zyxel has yet to fix or even mention the vulnerability.

If successfully exploited, CVE-2024-40891 could allow threat actors to execute arbitrary commands on infected devices, ultimately potentially leading to system compromise, network infiltration, and data leaks, according to VulnCheck.

Researchers at GreyNoise meanwhile have been coordinating with the researchers at VulnCheck regarding exploitation of the vulnerability, and decided to disclose it publicly this week due to the "large number of attacks" they have been observing.

They also noted that CVE-2024-40891 is very similar to a known issue tracked as CVE-2024-40890, with the primary difference between the two being one is telnet-based and the other HTTP-based. Both, however, allow unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary commands using service accounts, whether in the "supervisor" or "zyuser" roles.

The lack of a patch could be a significant issue: Censys is reporting more than 1,500 vulnerable devices online, and it looks like some botnet operators have built exploits for the bug into their code, according to GreyNoise.

"After identifying a significant overlap between IPs exploiting CVE-2024-40891 and those classified as Mirai, the team investigated a recent variant of Mirai and confirmed that the ability to exploit CVE-2024-40891 has been incorporated into some Mirai strains," the researchers noted.

Since there is no current fix, GreyNoise recommended that users filter traffic for unusual requests to Zyxel CPE management interfaces, monitor Zyxel's security updates to be aware if a patch is made available, restrict administrative interface access to trusted IPs, and disable unused remote management features.

**About the Author**

Skilled writer and editor covering cybersecurity for Dark Reading.

Unpatched Zyxel CPE Zero-Day Pummeled by Cyberattackers

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

Cybersecurity researchers are warning that a critical zero-day vulnerability impacting Zyxel CPE Series devices is seeing active exploitation attempts in the wild.
"Attackers can leverage this vulnerability to execute arbitrary commands on affected devices, leading to complete system compromise, data exfiltration, or network infiltration," GreyNoise researcher Glenn Thorpe said in an alert

Zyxel CPE Devices Face Active Exploitation Due to Unpatched CVE-2024-40891 Vulnerability

Globally, security researchers and whistleblowers face increasingly hostile laws and judiciaries that are ready to levy fines and prison sentences.

Source: bestfoto77 via Shutterstock

While disclosure of software vulnerabilities and data breaches has become more accepted over the past three decades, researchers and whistleblowers continue to risk lawsuits and criminal charges depending on the country in which they live.

In April 2022, for example, police in Istanbul arrested independent Turkish journalist İbrahim Haskoloğlu after he revealed details of a breach of government data in Turkey. The country's ruling party has since proposed a law to make the false reporting of a data breach a crime punishable by two to five years in prison — a law that critics say will prevent disclosure of real data breaches.

And in the island nation of Malta, three computer-science students and their lecturer at the University of Malta will be charged in March, two years after they found vulnerabilities in scheduling service FreeHour and notified the company. FreeHour claimed the disclosure appeared to be a ransom demand and reported the students to the police — although, since then the firm has criticized the nation's lack of clear exemptions for researchers.

The students continue to face charges, however.

"I hope that at the end of this case, it results in a better climate for cybersecurity, but I'm genuinely exhausted from this whole situation," Michael Debono, one of the students, stated in a post on Facebook. "It's crazy that I've had to spend almost two years now dealing with the fallout of an incident that should have been resolved over a table in a day with FreeHour and the police."

Turkey and Malta are not the only countries to crack down people who report data breaches and software vulnerabilities. In Poland, a train manufacturer threatened to sue three ethical hackers who circumvented a kill code that the cybersecurity professionals claim disabled trains that had been parked in a third-party repair facility. In China, vulnerability researchers who do not first report software issues to the government risk prison time.

Even in the US, where vulnerability-disclosure issues have been debated for decades, companies and government agencies still occasionally resort to legal attacks rather than civil engagement. In September 2024, the city government of Columbus, Ohio, filed a lawsuit against whistleblower David L. Ross after he disputed the significance of a data breach, claiming that Ross colluded with the ransomware gang behind the breach. Two months later, the city settled the lawsuit.

**Defensive Driving and Disclosure**

Worldwide, vulnerability researchers need to take care when disclosing software security issues. Erring on the side of safety, like defensive driving, should be the default for cybersecurity researchers and whistleblowers, says Trey Ford, chief information security officer at San Francisco-based Bugcrowd, who connects its stable of independent penetration testers with clients.

The October 2022 email that resulted in three students and their lecturer facing charges. Source: Lecturer Luke Collins' site

In the best case, researchers should obtain permission from the targeted organization to conduct research and disclose findings, he says.

"The reality now is: If you see something, and you're not absolutely sure — and don't have receipts and proof — maybe don't say anything, or you risk going to jail," Ford says, pointing out that defensive or vindictive organizations can cause trouble. Any risk can be "further amplified by the misaligned incentives of companies that would prefer not to address an issue. These companies have the power to almost completely silence the reporter."

In addition, working with the organization rather than immediately adopting an adversarial approach can help minimize potential misinformation about what constitutes a breach or vulnerability, says Ilona Cohen, chief legal and policy officer at HackerOne, a hacking-services platform.

Researchers should also always be cognizant of local law, she says.

"Whether a data breach has occurred or a vulnerability is present are not always clear-cut," Cohen says. "It’s not uncommon for countries to have laws against fraudulent misrepresentation, but lawmakers must take care not to target individuals that do not intend to deceive or to cause harm."

**Benign Intent or Hostile Actions**

So far, the researchers and whistleblowers are paying the price of the lack of clarity. Turkish journalist Haskoloğlu, for example, claimed he notified the Turkish government two months before his disclosure, after being contacted by the hackers that the data had been stolen. Last month, he announced he would leave Turkey following escalating death threats.

In December, Newag — the train manufacturer in Poland that allegedly bricked trains not repaired in its workshops — filed a lawsuit against the three hackers who discovered and publicized their workaround for the kill code. While the European Union adopted a right-to-repair law for consumer goods in 2024, it's unclear whether industrial equipment, such as trains and machinery, are covered.

The incidents highlight that organizations are aiming to silence researchers, rather than engage publicly with them, says Dustin Childs, the head of threat awareness and the Zero Day Initiative at Trend Micro, which maintains a third-party bug bounty program.

"It’s a disturbing trend I hope reverses soon," he says. "We need to offer safe harbor to researchers who are willing to report vulnerabilities in a coordinated manner. Unfortunately, this trend is unlikely to change without either litigation or legislation."

Globally, however, legislation appears to be moving in a different direction. In August 2024, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention Against Cybercrime, which makes it a crime to "access ... an information or communications technology (ICT) system without right" or to intercept data or communications. Digital-rights groups worry that the treaty will lead to more laws that penalize legitimate security research.

While Turkey appears to be the first country since August to pass a more strict cybercrime statue, tougher regulations seem increasingly likely, Childs says.

"Overall, we are currently in a climate where governments favor businesses over individual researchers," he says. "It would not surprise me to see similar measures in other countries."

**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.

Reporting a Breach or Vuln? Be Sure Your Lawyer's on Call

Apple has released a host of security updates for iOS, iPadOS, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. Update as soon as you can.

Apple has released a host of security updates across many devices, including for a zero-day bug which is being actively exploited in iOS.

Apple said:

> “A malicious application may be able to elevate privileges. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS before iOS 17.2.”

Devices affected are those that run:

*   iPhone XS and later
*   iPad Pro 13-inch, iPad Pro 12.9-inch 3rd generation and later, iPad Pro 11-inch 1st generation and later, iPad Air 3rd generation and later, iPad 7th generation and later, and iPad mini 5th generation and later
*   macOS Sequoia
*   Apple Watch Series 6 and later
*   All models of Apple TV HD and Apple TV 4K

If you use any of these then you should install updates as soon as you can. To check if you’re using the latest software version, go to **Settings** (or **System Settings**) > **General** \> **Software Update**. It’s also worth turning on Automatic Updates if you haven’t already, which you can do on the same screen.

**Technical details about the zero-day**

The zero-day vulnerability patched in this update is tracked as CVE-2025-24085. It is described as a use after free (UAF) issue in Apple’s Core Media framework that would allow an attacker to elevate privileges.

The Core Media framework handles multimedia applications like photos, videos, and real-time communication applications. UAF is a type of vulnerability that is the result of the incorrect use of dynamic memory during a program’s operation. If, after freeing a memory location, a program does not clear the pointer to that memory, an attacker can use the error to manipulate the program. Referencing memory after it has been freed can cause a program to crash, use unexpected values, or execute code. In this case, successful exploitation could provide a malicious app with privileges on the affected device that it shouldn’t have.

**We don’t just report on phone security—we provide it**

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your mobile devices by downloading Malwarebytes for iOS, and Malwarebytes for Android today.

 Apple users: Update your devices now to patch zero-day vulnerability 

The firewall specialist has patched the security flaw, which was responsible for a series of attacks reported earlier this month that compromised FortiOS and FortiProxy products exposed to the public Internet.

Source: Lutsenko via Oleksandr via Shutterstock

Fortinet has patched an actively exploited zero-day authentication bypass flaw affecting its FortiOS and FortiProxy products, which attackers have been exploiting to gain super-administrative access to devices to conduct nefarious activities, including breaching corporate networks.

Fortinet characterized the flaw, rated as critical and tracked as CVE-2024-55591 (CVSS 9.6), as an "authentication bypass using an alternate path or channel vulnerability" that "may allow a remote attacker to gain super-admin privileges via crafted requests to Node.js websocket module," according to a FortiGuard Labs security advisory last week.

Fortinet observed threat actors performing various malicious operations by exploiting the flaw. These activities included: creating an admin account on the device with a random user name; creating a local user account on the device with a random user name; creating a user group or adding a local user to an existing SSL VPN user group; adding and/or changing other settings, including firewall policy and/or firewall address; and logging in to the SSL VPN to get a tunnel to the internal network.

Fortinet recommended that customers using affected products follow the recommended upgrade path on its website to mitigate the flaw. It also offered workaround options in its advisory.

Related:For $50, Cyberattackers Can Use GhostGPT to Write Malicious Code

**First Signs of Fortinet Zero-Day Exploitation**

The first signs that something was amiss came earlier this month, when researchers at Arctic Wolf revealed that a zero-day flaw was likely to blame for a series of recent attacks on FortiGate firewall devices with management interfaces exposed on the public Internet. Attackers were targeting the devices to create unauthorized administrative logins and make other configuration changes, create new accounts, and perform SSL VPN authentication.

Fortinet quietly informed its customer base of the issue before revealing the patch and extent of the situation late last week; this low-key revelation is how Arctic Wolf got wind of it, according to a blog post analyzing the flaw by watchTowr Labs published on Jan. 27. However, security researchers did not yet know exactly what the flaw was or what the exploitation entailed.

That's become clearer now. The flaw resided within the jsconsole functionality, which is a graphical user interface (GUI) feature to execute command line interface (CLI) commands inside FortiOS's management interface, according to watchTowr Labs. "Specifically, the weakness in this functionality allowed attackers to add a new administrative account," according to the post.

Related:Change Healthcare Breach Impact Doubles to 190M People

Jsconsole is a WebSocket-based Web console to the CLI of the affected Fortinet appliances. "This CLI is all-powerful, since it is effectively the same as the actual provided CLI that is used by legitimate administrators to configure the device," according to watchTowr Labs. Therefore, if an attacker gains access to the Web console, the appliance itself should be considered compromised.

The researchers took a deep dive into the vulnerability and found that it was actually a chain of issues combined into one critical vulnerability that allowed attackers to follow four key steps to achieve super administrative access.

Those steps are: creating a WebSocket connection from a pre-authenticated HTTP request; using a special parameter local\_access\_token to skip session checks; exploiting a race condition in the WebSocket Telnet CLI to send authentication before the server does; and picking the access profile that an attacker wishes to assume, which in the case of the researchers' proof-of-concept was to become a super administrator.

**Mitigation & Protection Against CVE-2024-55591**

Fortinet devices are a popular target for threat actors, with vulnerabilities found in the products often widely exploited to breach not only devices but also act as a point of entry to attack corporate networks.

Related:The Case for Proactive, Scalable Data Protection

Organizations using the devices affected by the flaw are advised to follow the appropriate update path or apply the workaround provided by Fortinet.

Fortinet also noted in its advisory that an attacker generally would need to know an admin account's username to perform the attack and log in to the CLE to exploit the flaw. "Therefore, having a non-standard and non-guessable username for admin accounts does offer some protection, and is, in general, a best practice," according to the advisory.

However, the company added, since the targeted WebSocket is not itself an authentication point, attackers still have the possibility of brute-forcing the username to exploit the flaw.

**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.

Actively Exploited Fortinet Zero-Day Gives Attackers Super-Admin Privileges

Apple has released software updates to address several security flaws across its portfolio, including a zero-day vulnerability that it said has been exploited in the wild.
The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-24085, has been described as a use-after-free bug in the Core Media component that could permit a malicious application already installed on a device to elevate privileges.
"Apple is

Apple Patches Actively Exploited Zero-Day Affecting iPhones, Macs, and More

Malware writing is only one of several malicious activities for which the new, uncensored generative AI chatbot can be used.

Source: Owlie Productions via Shutterstock

A recently debuted AI chatbot dubbed GhostGPT has given aspiring and active cybercriminals a handy new tool for developing malware, carrying out business email compromise scams, and executing other illegal activities.

Like previous, similar chatbots like WormGPT, GhostGPT is an uncensored AI model, meaning it is tuned to bypass the usual security measures and ethical constraints available with mainstream AI systems such as ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot.

**GenAI With No Guardrails: Uncensored Behavior**

Bad actors can use GhostGPT to generate malicious code and to receive unfiltered responses to sensitive or harmful queries that traditional AI systems would typically block, Abnormal Security researchers said in a blog post this week.  

"GhostGPT is marketed for a range of malicious activities, including coding, malware creation, and exploit development," according to Abnormal. "It can also be used to write convincing emails for business email compromise (BEC) scams, making it a convenient tool for committing cybercrime." A test that the security vendor conducted of GhostGPT's text generation capabilities showed the AI model producing a very convincing Docusign phishing email, for example.

The security vendor first spotted GhostGPT for sale on a Telegram channel in mid-November. Since then, the rogue chatbot appears to have gained a lot of traction among cybercriminals, a researcher at Abnormal tells Dark Reading. The authors offer three pricing models for the large language model: $50 for one-week usage; $150 for one month and $300 for three months, says the researcher, who asked not to be named.

Related:Actively Exploited Fortinet Zero-Day Gives Attackers Super-Admin Privileges

For that price, users get an uncensored AI model that promises quick responses to queries and can be used without any jailbreak prompts. The author(s) of the malware also claim that GhostGPT doesn't maintain any user logs or record any user activity, making it a desirable tool for those who want to conceal their illegal activity, Abnormal said.

**Rogue Chatbots: An Emerging Cybercriminal Problem**

Rogue AI chatbots like GhostGPT present a new and growing problem for security organizations because of how they lower the barrier for cybercriminals. The tools allow anyone, including those with minimal to no coding skills, the ability to quickly generate malicious code by entering a few prompts. Significantly, they also allow individuals who already have some coding skills the ability to augment their capabilities and improve their malware and exploit code. They largely eliminate the need for anyone to spend time and effort trying to jailbreak GenAI models to try and get them to engage in harmful and malicious behavior.

Related:Change Healthcare Breach Impact Doubles to 190M People

WormGPT, for instance, surfaced in July 2023 — or about eight months after ChatGPT exploded on the scene — as one of the first so-called "evil" AI models created explicitly for malicious use. Since then, there have been a handful of others, including WolfGPT, EscapeGPT, and FraudGPT, that their developers have tried monetizing in cybercrime marketplaces. But most of them have failed to gather much traction because, among other things, they failed to live up to their promises or were just jailbroken versions of ChatGPT with added wrappers to make them appear as new, standalone AI tools. The security vendor assessed GhostGPT to likely also be using a wrapper to connect to a jailbroken version of ChatGPT or some other open source large language model.

"In many ways, GhostGPT is not massively different from other uncensored variants like WormGPT and EscapeGPT," the Abnromal researcher tells Dark Reading. "However, the specifics depend on which variant you're comparing it to."

For example, EscapeGPT relies on jailbreak prompts to bypass restrictions, while WormGPT was a fully customized large language model (LLM) designed for malicious purposes. "With GhostGPT, it’s unclear whether it is a custom LLM or a jailbroken version of an existing model, as the author has not disclosed this information. This lack of transparency makes it difficult to definitively compare GhostGPT to other variants."

Related:The Case for Proactive, Scalable Data Protection

The growing popularity of GhostGPT in underground circles also appear to have made its creator(s) more cautious. The author or the seller of the chatbot has deactivated many of the accounts they had created for promoting the tool and appears to have shifted to private sales, the researcher says. "Sales threads on various cybercrime forums have also been closed, further obscuring their identity, \[so\] as of now, we do not have definitive information about who is behind GhostGPT."

**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.

For $50, Cyberattackers Can Use GhostGPT to Write Malicious Code

The Apple iOS 18.3 update fixes 28 other vulnerabilities identified by the tech company, though there is little information on them.

Source: Shahid Jamil via Alamy Stock Photo

NEWS BRIEF

In its latest security update for users, Apple has released a patch for a zero-day vulnerability tracked as CVE-2025-24085 (no CVSS score assigned yet).

The vulnerability, not yet added to the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), can be found in iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, and visionOS. As a privileged escalation security flaw, it is located in Apple's Core Media framework. The bug is being actively exploited in the wild.

The Core Media framework, according to Apple, is "the media pipeline used by AVFoundation and other high-level media frameworks found on Apple platforms." It allows users to process media samples as well as manage queues of media data.

This patch comes in the form of iOS 18.3, which fixes 28 other vulnerabilities as well. Apple has yet to divulge many details about any of the issues that have been patched by this update, likely to prevent attackers from exploiting them before users can apply the necessary fix.

Impacted devices from this bug include:

*   Apple Watch Series 6 and later
    

*   Apple TV HD and Apple TV 4K (all models)
    
*   iPad Pro 13-inch, iPad Pro 12.9-inch 3rd generation and later, iPad Pro 11-inch 1st generation and later, iPad Air 3rd generation and later, iPad 7th generation and later, and iPad mini 5th generation and later
    

Though the tech giant has disclosed that "Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS before iOS 17.2," it has not published any details of the attacks nor attributed its discovery to a researcher.

**About the Author**

Skilled writer and editor covering cybersecurity for Dark Reading.

Tag

#zero_day