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USN-8412-1: QEMU vulnerabilities
Details Felipe Franciosi, Raphael Norwitz, and Peter Turschmid discovered that the iSCSI block driver in QEMU incorrectly handled certain responses from an iSCSI server. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-1711) It was discovered that the iSCSI block driver in QEMU incorrectly handled certain memory operations, leading to a heap-based buffer over-read. An attacker could possibly use this issue to expose sensitive information from the host. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-11947) Ziming Zhang discovered that the SM501 display driver in QEMU contained an integer overflow. A local attacker could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue... Felipe Franciosi, Raphael Norwitz, and Peter Turschmid discovered that the iSCSI block driver in QEMU incorrectly handled certain responses from an iSCSI server. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-1711) It was discovered that the iSCSI block driver in QEMU incorrectly handled certain memory operations, leading to a heap-based buffer over-read. An attacker could possibly use this issue to expose sensitive information from the host. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-11947) Ziming Zhang discovered that the SM501 display driver in QEMU contained an integer overflow. A local attacker could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-12829) Gaoning Pan and Xingwei Li discovered that the USB xHCI controller implementation in QEMU contained an infinite loop. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to hang, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-14394) Lei Sun discovered that QEMU incorrectly handled certain MemoryRegionOps objects, leading to a NULL pointer dereference. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-15469) Alexander Bulekov discovered that the e1000e network device implementation in QEMU contained a use-after-free. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-15859) Ziming Zhang discovered that the XGMAC Ethernet controller in QEMU contained a buffer overflow. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-15863) Alexander Bulekov discovered that the SDHCI device emulation in QEMU contained a heap-based buffer overflow. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-17380) Sergej Schumilo, Cornelius Aschermann, and Simon Wörner discovered that the USB xHCI controller implementation in QEMU did not check a return value, leading to a use-after-free. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-25084) Gaoning Pan, Yongkang Jia, and Yi Ren discovered that the USB OHCI controller implementation in QEMU contained a stack-based buffer over-read. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-25624) It was discovered that the USB OHCI controller implementation in QEMU contained an infinite loop. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to consume resources, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-25625) Cheolwoo Myung discovered that the USB EHCI emulation in QEMU did not handle DMA memory map failures, leading to a reachable assertion. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-25723) Gaoning Pan discovered that the network device emulation in QEMU could be made to trigger an assertion failure when processing packets that lacked a valid layer 3 protocol. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-27617) Wenxiang Qian discovered that the ATAPI emulation in QEMU did not properly validate a buffer index, leading to an out-of-bounds read. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to expose sensitive information or cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-29443) Cheolwoo Myung discovered that the ESP SCSI emulation in QEMU contained a NULL pointer dereference. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-35504) Cheolwoo Myung discovered that the am53c974 SCSI host bus adapter emulation in QEMU contained a NULL pointer dereference. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-35505) It was discovered that the SDHCI controller emulation in QEMU contained out-of-bounds read and write issues. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2021-3409) It was discovered that several network device emulations in QEMU contained an infinite loop when operating in loopback mode. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2021-3416) Alexander Bulekov discovered that the floppy disk emulation in QEMU contained a heap-based buffer overflow. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to expose sensitive information or cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2021-3507) Remy Noel discovered that the USB redirector device emulation in QEMU performed an unbounded stack allocation when combining USB packets. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2021-3527) It was discovered that the QXL display device emulation in QEMU contained an integer overflow, leading to a heap-based buffer overflow. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2021-4206) It was discovered that the QXL display device emulation in QEMU performed a double fetch of guest-controlled values, leading to a heap-based buffer overflow. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2021-4207) It was discovered that the 9pfs server implementation in QEMU contained a race condition, leading to a use-after-free. A malicious 9p client could possibly use this issue to escalate privileges. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2021-20181) Gaoning Pan discovered that the floppy disk emulation in QEMU contained a NULL pointer dereference. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2021-20196) Gaoning Pan discovered that the vmxnet3 network device emulation in QEMU contained an integer overflow. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2021-20203) It was discovered that the ARM Generic Interrupt Controller emulation in QEMU contained an out-of-bounds heap access. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2021-20221) Alexander Bulekov, Cheolwoo Myung, Sergej Schumilo, Cornelius Aschermann, and Simon Wörner discovered that the e1000 network device emulation in QEMU contained an infinite loop. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to consume resources, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2021-20257) It was discovered that the 9p passthrough file system implementation in QEMU did not prevent opening special files on the host. A malicious guest could possibly use this issue to escape the exported 9p tree. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. (CVE-2023-2861) It was discovered that the virtio crypto device emulation in QEMU did not properly validate certain buffer lengths, leading to a heap buffer overflow. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. This issue only affected Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. (CVE-2023-3180) It was discovered that the built-in VNC server in QEMU contained a NULL pointer dereference when cleaning up a connection that failed during the handshake. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. (CVE-2023-3354) It was discovered that QEMU could incorrectly direct a guest I/O operation to disk offset 0 instead of the intended offset. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to read or overwrite sensitive data, potentially gaining control of the host. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. (CVE-2023-5088) It was discovered that several virtio device emulations in QEMU did not properly guard against DMA reentrancy, leading to a double free. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2024-3446) It was discovered that the SDHCI device emulation in QEMU contained a heap- based buffer overflow. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2024-3447) It was discovered that the QEMU disk image utility (qemu-img) did not properly handle certain crafted image files. An attacker could possibly use this issue to cause qemu-img to consume excessive resources or access an unintended external file, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. (CVE-2024-4467) Cyrille Chatras discovered that the LSI53C895A SCSI Host Bus Adapter emulation in QEMU contained a use-after-free. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2024-6519) It was discovered that the NBD server in QEMU contained an improper synchronization issue during socket closure. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2024-7409) It was discovered that the USB emulation in QEMU contained a reachable assertion. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2024-8354) It was discovered that QEMU incorrectly handled resources during the VNC WebSocket handshake, leading to a use-after-free. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. (CVE-2025-11234) It was discovered that QEMU could be made to read out of bounds when reading VMDK images. An attacker could possibly use this issue to expose sensitive information or cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2026-2243) The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions: Reduce your security exposure Ubuntu Pro provides ten-year security coverage to 25,000+ packages in Main and Universe repositories, and it is free for up to five machines.
ubuntu.comJun 9, 2026extracted
⚡ Weekly Recap: Vercel Hack, Push Fraud, QEMU Abused, New Android RATs Emerge & More
Monday’s recap shows the same pattern in different places. A third-party tool becomes a way in, then leads to internal access. A trusted download path is briefly swapped to deliver malware. Browser extensions act normally while pulling data and running code. Even update channels are used to push payloads. It’s not breaking systems—it’s bending trust. There’s also a shift in how attacks run. Slower check-ins, multi-stage payloads, andmore code kept in memory. Attackers lean on real tools and normal workflows instead of custom builds. Some cases hint at supply-chain spread, where one weak link reaches further than expected. Go through the whole recap. The pattern across access, execution, and control only shows up when you see it all together. ⚡ Threat of the Week Vercel Discloses Data Breach—Web infrastructure provider Vercel has disclosed a security breach that allows bad actors to gain unauthorized access to "certain" internal Vercel systems. The incident originated from the compromise of Context.ai, a third-party artificial intelligence (AI) tool, which was used by an employee at the company, it added. "The attacker used that access to take over the employee's Vercel Google Workspace account, which enabled them to gain access to some Vercel environments and environment variables that were not marked as 'sensitive,'" the company said. It's currently not known who is behind the incident, but a threat actor using the ShinyHunters persona has claimed responsibility for the hack. Context.ai also disclosed a March 2026 incident involving unauthorized access to its AWS environment. However, it has since emerged that the attacker also likely compromised OAuth tokens for some of its consumer users. Furthermore, Hudson Rock uncovered that a Context.ai employee was compromised with Lumma Stealer in February 2026, raising the possibility that the infection may have triggered the "supply chain escalation." 99% of What AI Found Is Still Unpatched. See the Defensive Answer Anthropic's Mythos weaponized bugs that survived decades of human review. Atlassian's CISO, Frost & Sullivan, and leaders from Kraft Heinz and Glow Financial Services show how autonomous validation discovers what's exploitable, proves controls hold, and re-validates fixes. Register for Free ➝ 🔔 Top News Law Enforcement Operation Brings Down DDoS-for-Hire Operation—Law enforcement agencies across Europe, the U.S., and other partner nations cracked down on the commercial DDoS-for-hire ecosystem, targeting both operators and customers of services used to target websites and knock them offline. As part of the effort, authorities took down 53 domains, arrested four people, and sent warning notifications to thousands of criminal users. The U.S. Justice Department said court-authorized actions were undertaken to disrupt Vac Stresser and Mythical Stress. The actions are a persistent cat-and-mouse game, as booted services often reappear under new names and domains despite repeated takedowns. While these disruptions tend to have short-term results, the resilience of the criminal activity indicates that arrests need to be combined with infrastructure seizures, financial disruption, and user deterrence for lasting impact. Newly Discovered PowMix Botnet Hits Czech Workers—An active malicious campaign is targeting the workforce in the Czech Republic with a previously undocumented botnet dubbed PowMix since at least December 2025. "PowMix employs randomized command-and-control (C2) beaconing intervals, rather than persistent connection to the C2 server, to evade the network signature detections," Cisco Talos said. The never-before-seen botnet is designed to facilitate remote access, reconnaissance, and remote code execution, while establishing persistence by means of a scheduled task. At the same time, it verifies the process tree to ensure that another instance of the same malware is not running on the compromised host. AI-Driven Pushpaganda Exploits Google Discover to for Ad Fraud—A novel ad fraud scheme has been found to leverage search engine poisoning (SEO) techniques and artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content to push deceptive news stories into Google's Discover feed and trick users into enabling persistent browser notifications that lead to scareware and financial scams. The Pushpaganda campaign has been found to target the personalized content feeds of Android and Chrome users. "This operation, named for push notifications central to the scheme, generates invalid organic traffic from real mobile devices by tricking users into subscribing to enabling notifications that presented alarming messages," HUMAN Security said. Google has since rolled out fixes and algorithmic updates to address the issue. Obsidian Plugin Abuse Delivers PHANTOMPULSE RAT—A social engineering campaign has abused Obsidian, a cross-platform note-taking application, as an initial access vector to distribute a previously undocumented Windows remote access trojan called PHANTOMPULSE in attacks targeting individuals in the financial and cryptocurrency sectors. Elastic Security Labs is tracking the activity under the name REF6598. It employs elaborate social engineering tactics through LinkedIn and Telegram to breach both Windows and macOS systems by tricking victims into opening a cloud-hosted vault in Obsidian. PHANTOMPULSE is an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated backdoor that uses the Ethereum blockchain for resolving its C2 server. On macOS, the attack is used to deliver an unspecified payload. CPUID Downloads Hijacked to Serve STX RAT—Unknown threat actors hijacked the official CPUID download page to serve trojanized installers that ultimately led to the deployment of STX RAT, a remote access trojan with infostealer capabilities. The attack did not compromise CPUID's original signed binaries, the threat actors served their own trojanized packages via redirect. "The threat actor compromised the official CPUID download page to serve a trojanized package, employing DLL sideloading as the initial execution vector followed by a layered, five-stage in-memory unpacking chain designed to evade detection," Cyderes said. "The use of a timestomped compilation timestamp, reflective PE loading, and exclusively in-memory payload execution demonstrates a deliberate effort to hinder forensic analysis and bypass traditional security controls." 108 Malicious Chrome Extensions Steal Google and Telegram Data—A cluster of 108 Google Chrome extensions has been found to communicate with the same command-and-control (C2) infrastructure with the goal of collecting user data and enabling browser-level abuse by injecting ads and arbitrary JavaScript code into every web page visited. The extensions provide the expected functionality to avoid raising red flags, but malicious code running in the background connects to the threat actor's C2 server to perform the nefarious activities. At the center of the campaign is a backend hosted on a Contabo virtual private server (VPS), with multiple subdomains handling session hijacking, identity collection, command execution, and monetization operations. There is evidence indicating a Russian malware-as-a-service (MaaS) operation, based on the presence of a payment and monetization portal in its C2 infrastructure. OpenAI Launches GPT-5.4-Cyber—OpenAI announced a new model, GPT-5.4-Cyber, specifically designed for use by digital defenders. Artificial intelligence (AI) companies have repeatedly warned that more capable AI models could create an opening for bad actors to exploit vulnerabilities and security gaps in software with new speed and intensity. Unlike Anthropic, which said its new Claude Mythos model is only being privately released to a small number of trusted organizations due to concerns that it could be exploited by adversaries, OpenAI said "the class of safeguards in use today sufficiently reduce cyber risk enough to support broad deployment of current models," but hinted at the need for more advanced protections in the long term. Defending critical software has long depended on the ability to find and fix vulnerabilities faster than attackers can exploit them. GPT-5.4-Cyber has a lower refusal boundary for legitimate cybersecurity work than standard GPT-5.4. It adds capabilities aimed at advanced defensive workflows, including binary reverse engineering. "We don't think it's practical or appropriate to centrally decide who gets to defend themselves," OpenAI stated. "Instead, we aim to enable as many legitimate defenders as possible, with access grounded in verification, trust signals, and accountability." The use of AI for vulnerability discovery and analysis means that the barrier to entry for attackers is collapsing. Bad actors could ask an AI model to analyze differences between two versions of a binary and generate an exploit at a faster rate. Rob T. Lee, chief of research at the SANS Institute, said the debut of Mythos and GPT-5.4-Cyber is "nothing more than one vendor trying to one-up another," adding, "We need to start benchmarking how one AI model is able to find code vulnerabilities over another and how quickly they are doing it. There are real risks at stake here." At the same time, researchers from AISLE and Xint found that it's possible to replicate Mythos's results with smaller, cheaper models. "The critical variable in AI vulnerability discovery is not the model alone," Xint said. "It is the structured system that decides where to look, validates that findings are real and exploitable, eliminates false positives, and delivers actionable remediation." 🔥 Trending CVEs Bugs drop weekly, and the gap between a patch and an exploit is shrinking fast. These are the heavy hitters for the week: high-severity, widely used, or already being poked at in the wild. Check the list, patch what you have, and hit the ones marked urgent first — CVE-2026-20184 (Cisco Webex Services), CVE-2026-20147 (Cisco Identity Services Engine and ISE Passive Identity Connector), CVE-2026-20180, CVE-2026-20186 (Cisco Identity Services Engine), CVE-2026-33032 (nginx-ui), CVE-2026-32201 (Microsoft SharePoint Server), CVE-2026-27304 (Adobe ColdFusion), CVE-2026-39813, CVE-2026-39808 (Fortinet FortiSandbox), CVE-2026-40176, CVE-2026-40261 (Composer), CVE-2025-0520 (ShowDoc), CVE-2026-22039 (Kyverno), CVE-2026-27681 (SAP Business Planning and Consolidation and Business Warehouse),CVE-2026-34486, CVE-2026-29146 (Apache Tomcat), CVE-2026-40175 (Axios), CVE-2026-32196 (Microsoft Windows Admin Center), CVE-2026-20204 (Splunk Enterprise), CVE-2026-20205 (Splunk MCP Server) CVE-2026-6296, CVE-2026-6297, CVE-2026-6298, CVE-2026-6299, CVE-2026-6358, CVE-2026-5873 (Google Chrome), CVE-2026-34078 (Tails), CVE-2026-34622 (Adobe Acrobat Reader), CVE-2026-33413 (etcd), CVE-2026-1492 (User Registration & Membership plugin), CVE-2026-23818 (HPE Aruba Networking Private 5G Core On-Prem), CVE-2025-54236 (Magento), CVE-2026-26980 (Ghost CMS), CVE-2026-40478 (Thymeleaf), CVE-2026-41242 (protobufjs), CVE-2026-40871 (Mailcow), CVE-2026-5747 (AWS Firecracker), and CVE-2025-50892 (eudskacs.sys). 🎥 Cybersecurity Webinars The Force Awakens in AppSec: Rethinking Mythos & Organizational Defenses at AI Speed → This webinar explores how AI-powered hacking is making traditional security patching too slow to be effective. It focuses on the "patch gap"— the dangerous time between a bug being found and fixed—and offers a new way to prioritize vulnerabilities based on real-world risk. The session provides practical strategies for security leaders to defend against automated, high-speed attacks. The Rise of the Agent: Moving to Autonomous Exposure Validation → This webinar explores how "agentic" AI is changing security testing by using autonomous AI agents to simulate real-world attacks. Unlike traditional scanners, these tools continuously find and validate which security gaps are actually reachable by hackers. The session focuses on moving from slow, manual checks to automated exposure validation to stay ahead of AI-driven threats. 📰 Around the Cyber World Vect Partners with BreachForums and TeamPCP —Dataminr revealed that the Vect ransomware group has formalized partnerships with the BreachForums cybercrime marketplace and TeamPCP hacking group. The partnership will allow BreachForums members to deploy ransomware and will use the victims of TeamPCP's supply chain attacks to attack organizations that are in a vulnerable state. "Between the two partnerships, Vect will lower the barrier to entry for ransomware actors, incentivize group members to carry out attacks, and exploit pre-existing breaches to broaden impact," the company said. "The convergence of large-scale supply chain credential theft, a maturing RaaS operation, and mass dark web forum mobilization represents an unprecedented model of industrialized ransomware deployment." MuddyWater Targets Global Organizations via Microsoft Teams —The Iranian hacking group known as MuddyWater has been observed using targeted social engineering to approach targets via Microsoft Teams by masquerading as IT support staff to trick them into running a botnet malware called Tsundere (aka Dindoor). "A notable aspect of this intrusion was the abuse of Deno, a legitimate JavaScript and TypeScript runtime typically used for backend application development," CyberProof said. "The attacker leveraged deno.exe to execute a highly obfuscated, Base64‑encoded payload -- tracked as DINODANCE -- directly in memory, minimizing on-disk artifacts and complicating detection." Once decoded, the malware establishes C2 communications with a remote server, exfiltrating basic host metadata such as username, hostname, and operating system details. Multi-Stage Intrusion Drops Direct-Sys Loader and CGrabber Stealer —An attack chain involving ZIP archives distributed through GitHub user attachment URLs is abusing DLL side-loading to deliver a malware loader called Direct-Sys Loader, which performs anti-analysis checks and then drops CGrabber. The malware, for its part, avoids infecting machines running in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries and collects browser credentials, crypto wallet data, password manager data, and a broad range of application artifacts. "By skipping execution on machines in those regions, they reduce the risk of attracting attention from local law enforcement and avoid targeting their own infrastructure or allies," Cyderes said. "The Direct-Sys Loader and CGrabber Stealer represent a cohesive, multi-stage, stealth-focused malware ecosystem engineered with advanced detection-evasion capabilities." Russian Hackers Target Ukrainian Agencies —Threat actors linked to Russia broke into more than 170 email accounts belonging to prosecutors and investigators across Ukraine in recent months," Reuters reported, citing data from Ctrl-Alt-Intel. The espionage activity also targeted officials in Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia. Speaking to The Record, Ukraine's State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection (SSSCIP) confirmed that local government agencies were targeted in a long-running hacking campaign that it has been tracking since 2023, with the attacks weaponizing flaws in Roundcube webmail software to run malicious code as soon as a specially crafted message is opened. The campaign is believed to be the work of APT28 (aka Fancy Bear). Infostealer Lookup Services are Changing Cybercrime —Hudson Rock revealed that infostealer lookup services, some accessible via a simple search on Google, are rapidly fueling a new era of initial access, shifting how cyber attacks begin and transforming a complex hacking process into a simple, automated transaction. "These platforms have effectively turned billions of compromised credentials and active session cookies into a highly searchable, low-cost commodity available to the masses," it said. "Because this data is so easily accessible, organizations can no longer afford to be reactive." AdaptixC2 Detailed —Kaspersky has detailed the inner workings of an open-source command-and-control (C2) framework known as AdaptixC2, which has seen increased adoption by bad actors over the past year. Written in Go and C++, AdaptixC2 is designed for post-exploitation and stealthy interaction with its malicious agents deployed on compromised systems. It also employs diverse network communication and post-exploitation techniques to get around traffic monitoring tools and minimize its footprint. "Unlike many general-purpose C2 platforms, AdaptixC2 focuses on advanced agent-to-C2 communication and specific evasion techniques designed to bypass modern security tools, including EDR and NDR solutions," the company said. "The framework provides the flexibility to develop custom agents while also including standard agent implementations in Go and C++ for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Additionally, it supports a modular approach to extending its functionality." Adware Update Delivers EDR Killer —In an unusual attack, a browser-hijacking adware family rolled out a multi-phase update that attempted to disable security software on infected hosts. The adware is signed by Dragon Boss Solutions LLC, a U.A.E.-based company that claims to conduct search monetization research and has promoted modified versions of the Chrome browser (e.g., Chromstera, Chromnius, and Artificius). "The signed software silently fetches and executes payloads capable of killing antivirus products, all while running with SYSTEM privileges," Huntress said. The antivirus killing capability was observed starting in late March 2025, although the loader and updater components date back to late 2024. "The operation uses an off-the-shelf software update mechanism to deploy these MSI and PowerShell-based payloads. Establishing WMI persistence disables security applications and blocks reinstallation of protective software," it added. The MSI installer, downloaded from a fallback update server, performs reconnaissance, queries for installed security products, and runs a PowerShell script ("ClockRemoval.ps1") to terminate running processes, disable antivirus services by tampering with the Windows Registry, delete installation directories, and force deletion when uninstallers fail. What's significant is that the update mechanism can be modified to deploy any payload. To make matters worse, the primary update domain baked into the operation to retrieve the MSI installer – chromsterabrowser[.]com – was left unregistered, meaning any threat actor could have registered the domain for as little as $10 and push malicious updates, turning an adware infection into a potential supply chain compromise. The domain has since been sinkholed. That said, 23,565 unique IP addresses connected to the sinkhole during a 24-hour monitoring period. The infections are concentrated around the U.S., France, Canada, the U.K., and Germany. These included universities, OT networks, government entities, primary and secondary educational institutions, healthcare organizations, and multiple Fortune 500 companies. India Will Not Require Smartphone Makers to Preload Aadhaar App —The Indian government will no longer require smartphone makers like Apple and Samsung to preload devices with a state-owned biometric identification app, Reuters reported. India's IT ministry reviewed the proposal and "is not in favour of mandating the pre-installation of the Aadhaar App on smartphones," UIDAI said in a statement. The Aadhaar request was the sixth time in two years the government has sought pre-installation of state apps on phones, according to industry communications. Smartphone makers flagged concerns about device security and compatibility when they received the Aadhaar preload proposal, and also flagged higher production costs as they would have been required to run separate manufacturing lines for India and export markets. SQL Injection Campaign Targets Payment Services —An active SQL injection campaign is operating through attacker infrastructure located in Canada. The campaign has targeted 35 websites, with confirmed successful SQL injection exploitation and data exfiltration affecting three organizations operating in the payment, real estate, and developer service sectors. Attacker-side artifacts indicate coordinated and deliberate exploitation rather than opportunistic scanning. QEMU Abused for Defense Evasion —Threat actors are abusing QEMU, an open-source machine emulator and virtualizer, to hide malicious activity within virtualized environments. "Attackers are drawn to QEMU and more common hypervisor-based virtualization tools like Hyper-V, VirtualBox, and VMware because malicious activity within a virtual machine (VM) is essentially invisible to endpoint security controls and leaves little forensic evidence on the host itself," Sophos said. Two clusters of activity have been detected: STAC4713, which has used QEMU as a covert reverse SSH backdoor to deliver tooling and harvest domain credentials with the end goal of likely deploying Payouts King ransomware (likely tied to former BlackBasta affiliates) after obtaining initial access via exploitation of known security flaws in SolarWinds Web Help Desk, and STAC3725, which exploits Citrix Bleed 2 (aka CVE-2025-5777) for obtaining a foothold and installs ScreenConnect for persistent remote access. The threat actors then deploy a QEMU VM to install additional tools for conducting enumeration and credential theft. "Follow-on activity differed across intrusions, suggesting that initial access brokers originally compromised the victims’ environments and then sold the access to other threat actors," Sophos said. Fake Adobe Reader Site Drops ScreenConnect —Threat actors are using fake Adobe Acrobat Reader website lures to lure victims into installing ConnectWise's ScreenConnect. The attack chain was detected in February 2026. "The attack uses .NET reflection to keep payloads in memory only, which helps it evade signature-based defenses and hinder forensic examination," Zscaler ThreatLabz said. "A VBScript loader dynamically reconstructs strings and objects at runtime to defeat static analysis and sandboxing. Auto-elevated Component Object Model (COM) objects are abused to bypass User Account Control (UAC) and run with elevated privileges without user prompts." The attack employs an in-memory .NET loader that's responsible for launching ScreenConnect. Nearly 6M Hosts Use FTP —Censys said it observed about 5,949,954 hosts running at least one internet-facing FTP service, down from over 10.1 million in 2024, which amounts to a decline of 40% in two years. Of these, nearly 2.45 million hosts had no evidence of encryption. "Over 150,000 IIS FTP services return a 534 response, indicating TLS was never set up," Censys said. "For most use cases, FTP can be replaced without significant disruption. If FTP must remain, enabling Explicit TLS is a configuration change, not a protocol upgrade, and both Pure-FTPd and vsftpd support it natively." Malformed APKs Bypass Detections as New Android RATs Emerge —Threat actors are increasingly using malformed APKs, which refer to Android packages that can be installed and run on Android but are intentionally broken by using unsupported compression methods, header manipulation, or false password protection, to bypass static analysis tools and delay detection. Cleafy has released an open-source tool called Malfixer to detect and fix malformed APKs. The development comes as Zimperium flagged four new Android malware families, RecruitRat, SaferRat, Astrinox (aka Mirax), and Massiv, that are capable of harvesting sensitive information and facilitating unauthorized financial transactions. In all, campaigns distributing these malware families target over 800 applications across the banking, cryptocurrency, and social media sectors. RecruitRat leverages recruitment-related social engineering and fraudulent job-seeking platforms for initial access. SaferRat is distributed through fake websites that claim to offer free access to premium streaming platforms and legitimate video streaming software. All four banking trojans abuse the native Session Installation API to bypass Android's sideloading restrictions and request accessibility services permissions to carry out their malicious activities. Over 200 PrestaShop Stores Expose Installer —More than 200 PrestaShop online stores have left their installation folder exposed online, allowing attackers to abuse the behavior to overwrite database configuration, gain admin access, and execute arbitrary code on the server. According to Sansec, the affected stores span 27 countries, including France, Italy, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Another set of 15 stores has been found to expose the Symfony Profiler, which is enabled when PrestaShop runs in debug mode. How to Contain a Domain Compromise via Predictive Shielding —Microsoft detailed an attack chain in which a threat actor targeted a public sector organization in June 2025, methodically progressing from one state of the attack lifecycle to the next, starting with dropping a web shell following the exploitation of a file-upload flaw in an internet-facing Internet Information Services (IIS) server. The attacker then performed reconnaissance, escalated their privileges, leveraged the compromised IIS service account to reset the passwords of high-impact identities, and deployed Mimikatz to harvest credentials. Then, the threat actor abused privileged accounts and remotely created a scheduled task on a domain controller to capture NTDS snapshots. The attacker also planted a Godzilla web shell on the Exchange Server and leveraged their privileged context to alter mailbox permissions, allowing them to read and manipulate all mailbox contents. The threat actor subsequently used Impacket to enumerate the role assignments and other activities that were flagged and blocked by Microsoft Defender. "The threat actor then launched a broad password spray from the initially compromised IIS server, unlocking access to at least 14 servers through password reuse," Microsoft said. "They also attempted remote credential dumping against a couple of domain controllers and an additional IIS server using multiple domain and service principals." After Microsoft Defender's predictive shielding was enabled in late July 2025, the attacker's attempts to sign in to Microsoft Entra Connect servers were blocked. The campaign stopped on July 28, 2025. Cargo Theft Malware Actor Conducts Remote Access Campaigns —In November 2025, Proofpoint detailed a threat actor that used compromised load boards to gain access to trucking companies with the end goal of freight diversion and cargo theft. New research from the enterprise security company has revealed that the attacker abused multiple remote access tools like ScreenConnect, Pulseway, and SimpleHelp to establish persistence to a controlled decoy environment, with attempts made to identify financial access, payment platforms, and cryptocurrency assets to conduct freight fraud and broader financial theft. The actor maintained access for more than a month. At least one ScreenConnect instance is said to have leveraged a third‑party signing‑as‑a‑service provider to re-sign the installer with a valid but fraudulent code‑signing certificate. "This reconnaissance focused on identifying financial access – such as banking, accounting, tax software, and money transfer services – as well as transportation‑related entities, including fuel card services, fleet payment platforms, and load board operators," the company said. "The latter activity was likely designed to support crimes against the transportation industry, including cargo theft and related financial fraud." British National Pleads Guilty to Scattered Spider Campaign —Tyler Robert Buchanan, who was extradited from Spain to the U.S. last April following his arrest in the European nation in June 2024, pleaded guilty to hacking a dozen companies and stealing at least $8 million in digital assets. He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. "From September 2021 to April 2023, Buchanan and other individuals conspired to conduct cyber intrusions and virtual currency thefts," the U.S. Justice Department said. "The victims and intended victims included interactive entertainment companies, telecommunications companies, technology companies, business process outsourcing (BPO) and information technology (IT) suppliers, cloud communications providers, virtual currency companies, and individuals." Buchanan and his co-conspirators conducted SMS phishing attacks targeting a victim company's employees, tricking them into clicking on bogus links that exfiltrated their credentials via a phishing kit to an online Telegram channel under their control. The stolen data was then used to access the accounts, gather confidential company information, and siphon millions of dollars' worth of virtual currency after conducting SIM swapping attacks. 🔧 Cybersecurity Tools Cirro → It is an open-source tool designed to help security experts find hidden risks in cloud environments. It works by collecting data about people, their permissions, and the digital resources they use, then turning that information into a visual map. By showing how these different pieces are connected, the tool makes it easier to spot "attack paths"—the step-by-step routes a hacker could take to move through a system and reach sensitive data. While it is currently focused on Azure, it is built to be flexible so users can add other platforms over time. Janus → It is an open-source tool designed to help security teams track technical failures during operations. It automatically pulls logs from command-and-control (C2) platforms like Mythic and Cobalt Strike to identify where tools failed or commands were blocked. By organizing these "friction points" into reports, Janus helps teams see exactly where their workflow slows down and what tasks need to be improved or automated. Disclaimer: This is strictly for research and learning. It hasn't been through a formal security audit, so don't just blindly drop it into production. Read the code, break it in a sandbox first, and make sure whatever you’re doing stays on the right side of the law. Conclusion That wraps this week’s recap. Most of it isn’t loud, but it shows how easy it is for trusted paths to turn into entry points and for normal activity to hide real access. Keep an eye on the basics. Check what you trust, watch how things run, and don’t ignore the small changes.
thehackernews.comApr 20, 2026extracted
Hackers Abuse QEMU for Defense Evasion
Threat actors have been abusing QEMU in campaigns leading to the deployment of ransomware and remote access tools, Sophos reports. A cross-platform open source machine emulator, QEMU allows users to run a guest VM on top of their operating system (VM host). Over the past years, security researchers documented several malicious campaigns using QEMU to establish covert communication channels and deploy backdoors, and Sophos now says it has observed an uptick in abuse since late 2025. As part of a campaign first observed in November 2025, tracked as STAC4713 and potentially linked to the PayoutsKing ransomware, threat actors used the machine emulator as a covert reverse SSH backdoor for payload delivery and credential harvesting. At first, the hackers targeted exposed SonicWall VPNs that lacked MFA for initial access, but later switched to exploiting CVE-2025-26399, a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in SolarWinds Web Help Desk. The attackers created a scheduled task to launch a QEMU VM with System privileges and to establish persistence. Upon launch, the virtual hard disk image creates a reverse SSH tunnel, providing the threat actors with direct access to the VM. Sophos observed the attackers creating a volume shadow copy snapshot, copying the Active Directory database and the SAM and SYSTEM hives to temporary folders, and performing network share discovery and file access using native Windows tools. The cybersecurity firm attributes the attacks to Gold Encounter, a closed hacking group operating the PayoutsKing ransomware. The gang is known to target VMware and ESXi environments for encryption. In February 2026, Sophos observed a second campaign abusing QEMU. Tracked as STAC3725, it has been relying on the exploitation of CVE-2025-5777 (the infamous CitrixBleed2 bug) for initial access and on a malicious ScreenConnect client to achieve persistence. Following the NetScaler exploitation, the attackers created a start service, installed the remote access tool to retrieve QEMU and a virtual disk image, and manually executed the attack within the VM. The hackers were observed deploying roughly a dozen tools and libraries, harvesting credentials, enumerating Kerberos usernames, performing Active Directory reconnaissance, staging payloads, and exfiltrating data. “Follow-on activity differed across intrusions, suggesting that initial access brokers originally compromised the victims’ environments and then sold the access to other threat actors,” Sophos notes. Organizations are advised to search for unauthorized QEMU installations, rogue scheduled tasks, unusual port forwarding rules, and monitor outbound SSH tunnels, which could reveal potential compromise. Related: Next.js Creator Vercel Hacked Related: Hackers Fail to Exploit Flaw in Discontinued TP-Link Routers Related: Microsoft Paid Out $2.3 Million at Zero Day Quest 2026 Hacking Contest Related: 100 Chrome Extensions Steal User Data, Create Backdoor
securityweek.comApr 20, 2026extracted
Payouts King ransomware uses QEMU VMs to bypass endpoint security
The Payouts King ransomware is using the QEMU emulator as a reverse SSH backdoor to run hidden virtual machines on compromised systems and bypass endpoint security. QEMU is an open-source CPU emulator and system virtualization tool that allows users to run operating systems on a host computer as virtual machines (VMs). Since security solutions on the host cannot scan inside the VMs, attackers can use them to execute payloads, store malicious files, and create covert remote access tunnels over SSH. For these reasons, QEMU has been abused in past operations from multiple threat actors, including the 3AM ransomware group, LoudMiner cryptomining, and ‘CRON#TRAP’ phishing. Researchers at cybersecurity company Sophos documented two campaigns where attackers deployed QEMU as part of their arsenal and to collect domain credentials. One campaign that Sophos tracks as STAC4713 was first observed in November 2025 and has been linked to the Payouts King ransomware operation. The other, tracked as STAC3725, has been spotted in February this year and exploits the CitrixBleed 2 (CVE‑2025‑5777) vulnerability in NetScaler ADC and Gateway instances. Running Alpine Linux VMs Researchers note that the threat actors behind the STAC4713 campaign are associated with the GOLD ENCOUNTER threat group, which is known to target hypervisors and encryptors for VMware and ESXi environments. According to Sophos, the malicious actor creates a scheduled task named ‘TPMProfiler’ to launch a hidden QEMU VM as SYSTEM. They use virtual disk files disguised as databases and DLL files, and set up port forwarding to provide covert access to the infected host via a reverse SSH tunnel. The VM runs Alpine Linux version 3.22.0 that includes attacker tools such as AdaptixC2, Chisel, BusyBox, and Rclone. Sophos notes that initial access was achieved via exposed SonicWall VPNs, while exploitation of the SolarWinds Web Help Desk vulnerability CVE-2025-26399 was observed in more recent attacks. In the post-infection phase, the threat actors used VSS (vssuirun.exe) to create a shadow copy, then used the print command over SMB to copy NTDS.dit, SAM, and SYSTEM hives to temp directories. More recently observed incidents attributed to the threat actor relied on other initial access vectors. The researchers say that in an attack in February, GOLD ENCOUNTER used an exposed Cisco SSL VPN, and in March they posed as IT staff and tricked employees over Microsoft Teams into downloading and installing QuickAssist. According to a Zscaler report this week, Payouts King is likely tied to former BlackBasta affiliates, based on its use of similar initial access methods like spam bombing, Microsoft Teams phishing, and Quick Assist abuse. The strain employs heavy obfuscation and anti-analysis mechanisms, establishes persistence via scheduled tasks, and terminates security tools using low-level system calls. Payouts King encryption scheme uses AES-256 (CTR) with RSA-4096 with intermittent encryption for larger files. The dropped ransom notes point victims to leak sites on the dark web. The second campaign that Sophos observed (STAC3725), has been active since February and exploits the CitrixBleed 2 vulnerability to gain initial access to target environments. After compromising NetScaler devices, the attackers deploy a ZIP archive containing a malicious executable that installs a service named ‘AppMgmt,’ creates a new local admin user (CtxAppVCOMService), and installs a ScreenConnect client for persistence. The ScreenConnect client connects to a remote relay server and establishes a session with system privileges, then drops and extracts a QEMU package that runs a hidden Alpine Linux VM using a custom.qcow2 disk image. Instead of using a pre-built toolkit, the attackers manually install and compile their tools, including Impacket, KrbRelayx, Coercer, BloodHound.py, NetExec, Kerbrute, and Metasploit, inside the VM. Observed activity includes credential harvesting, Kerberos username enumeration, Active Directory reconnaissance, and staging data for exfiltration via FTP servers. Sophos recommends that organizations look for unauthorized QEMU installations, suspicious scheduled tasks running with SYSTEM privileges, unusual SSH port forwarding, and outbound SSH tunnels on non-standard ports. Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply. The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments. Get the report
bleepingcomputer.comApr 17, 2026extracted
USN-8073-1: QEMU vulnerabilities
Details It was discovered that the UHCI controller implementation of QEMU could be brought into an invalid state. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2024-8354) It was discovered that QEMU incorrectly handled memory during certain VNC operations. An remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2025-11234) It was discovered that the e1000 network device implementation of QEMU could be made to write out of bounds. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. This issue only affected Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and Ubuntu 25.10. ( It was discovered that the UHCI controller implementation of QEMU could be brought into an invalid state. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2024-8354) It was discovered that QEMU incorrectly handled memory during certain VNC operations. An remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2025-11234) It was discovered that the e1000 network device implementation of QEMU could be made to write out of bounds. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. This issue only affected Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and Ubuntu 25.10. (CVE-2025-12464) It was discovered that the virtio-crypto device implementation of QEMU did not limit the length of a certain path input. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to consume large amount of memory, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and Ubuntu 25.10. (CVE-2025-14876) It was discovered that the KVM Xen guest support of QEMU could be made to read out of bounds. An attacker inside the guest could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and Ubuntu 25.10. (CVE-2026-0665) The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions: Reduce your security exposure Ubuntu Pro provides ten-year security coverage to 25,000+ packages in Main and Universe repositories, and it is free for up to five machines.
ubuntu.comMar 4, 2026extracted
Astaroth Banking Trojan Abuses GitHub to Remain Operational After Takedowns
Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a new campaign that delivers the Astaroth banking trojan that employs GitHub as a backbone for its operations to stay resilient in the face of infrastructure takedowns. "Instead of relying solely on traditional command-and-control (C2) servers that can be taken down, these attackers are leveraging GitHub repositories to host malware configurations," McAfee Labs researchers Harshil Patel and Prabudh Chakravorty said in a report. "When law enforcement or security researchers shut down their C2 infrastructure, Astaroth simply pulls fresh configurations from GitHub and keeps running." The activity, per the cybersecurity company, is primarily focused on Brazil, although the banking malware is known to target various countries in Latin America, including Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and Panama. This is not the first time Astaroth campaigns have trained their sights on Brazil. In July and October 2024, both Google and Trend Micro warned of threat clusters dubbed PINEAPPLE and Water Makara that used phishing emails to distribute the malware. The latest attack chain is no different in that it also begins with a DocuSign-themed phishing email containing a link that downloads a zipped Windows shortcut (.lnk) file, which, when opened, installs Astaroth on the compromised host. The LNK file incorporates obfuscated JavaScript that's responsible for fetching additional JavaScript from an external server. The newly fetched JavaScript code, for its part, downloads a number of files from one of the randomly selected hard-coded servers. This includes an AutoIt script that's executed by the JavaScript payload, following which it loads and runs shellcode, which, in turn, loads a Delphi-based DLL to decrypt and inject the Astaroth malware into a newly created RegSvc.exe process. Astaroth is a Delphi malware designed to monitor victims' visits to banking or cryptocurrency websites and steal their credentials using keylogging. The captured information is transmitted to the attackers using the Ngrok reverse proxy. It accomplishes this by checking the active browser program window every second and whether it has a banking-related site opened. If these conditions are met, the malware hooks keyboard events to record keystrokes. Some of the targeted websites are listed below - caixa.gov[.]br safra.com[.]br itau.com[.]br bancooriginal.com[.]br santandernet.com[.]br btgpactual[.]com etherscan[.]io binance[.]com bitcointrade.com[.]br metamask[.]io foxbit.com[.]br localbitcoins[.]com Astaroth also comes fitted with capabilities to resist analysis and shuts down automatically if it detects emulator, debugger, and analysis tools like QEMU Guest Agent, HookExplorer, IDA Pro, ImmunityDebugger, PE Tools, WinDbg, and Wireshark, among others. Persistence on the host is set up by dropping an LNK file in the Windows Startup folder that runs the AutoIT script to launch the malware automatically upon a system reboot. What's more, not only is the initial URL accessed by the JavaScript within the LNK file geofenced, the malware also makes sure that the machine's system locale is not set to English or the U.S. "Astaroth uses GitHub to update its configuration when the C2 servers become inaccessible, by hosting images on GitHub, which uses steganography to hide this information in plain sight," McAfee said. In doing so, the malware leverages a legitimate platform to host configuration files and turn it into a resilient backup infrastructure when primary C2 servers become inaccessible. The company noted that it worked with the Microsoft-owned subsidiary to remove the GitHub repositories, temporarily neutralizing the operations.
thehackernews.comOct 13, 2025extracted
Ukraine Warns of CABINETRAT Backdoor + XLL Add-ins Spread via Signal ZIPs
The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has warned of new targeted cyber attacks in the country using a backdoor called CABINETRAT. The activity, observed in September 2025, has been attributed to a threat cluster it tracks as UAC-0245. The agency said it spotted the attack following the discovery of software tools taking the form of XLL files, which refer to Microsoft Excel add-ins that are typically used to extend the functionality of Excel with custom functions. Further investigation has uncovered that the XLL files are distributed within ZIP archives shared on the Signal messaging app, disguised as a document concerning the detention of individuals who had attempted to cross the Ukrainian border. The XLL, once launched, is designed to create a number of executables on the compromised host, namely an EXE file in the Startup folder, an XLL file named "BasicExcelMath.xll" in the "%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART\" directory, and a PNG image named "Office.png." Windows Registry modifications are done to ensure persistence of the executable, after which it launches the Excel application ("excel.exe") with the "/e" ("/embed") parameter in hidden mode in order to ultimately run the XLL add-in. The main purpose of the XLL is to parse and extract from the PNG file shellcode that's classified as CABINETRAT. Both the XLL payload and the shellcode come with a number of anti-VM and anti-analysis procedures to evade detection, including checking for at least two processor cores and at least 3GB of RAM, and the presence of tools like VMware, VirtualBox, Xen, QEMU, Parallels, and Hyper-V. A full-fledged backdoor written in the C programming language, CABINETRAT is mainly designed to gather system information, a list of installed programs, screenshots, as well as enumerate directory contents, deleting specific files or directories, running commands, and carrying out file uploads/downloads. It communicates with a remote server over a TCP connection. The disclosure comes days after Fortinet FortiGuard Labs warned of attacks targeting Ukraine by impersonating the National Police of Ukraine in a fileless phishing campaign that delivers Amatera Stealer and PureMiner for harvesting sensitive data and mining cryptocurrency from targeted systems.
thehackernews.comOct 1, 2025extracted
$50 Battering RAM Attack Breaks Intel and AMD Cloud Security Protections
A group of academics from KU Leuven and the University of Birmingham has demonstrated a new vulnerability called Battering RAM to bypass the latest defenses on Intel and AMD cloud processors. "We built a simple, $50 interposer that sits quietly in the memory path, behaving transparently during startup and passing all trust checks," researchers Jesse De Meulemeester, David Oswald, Ingrid Verbauwhede, and Jo Van Bulck said on a website publicizing the findings. "Later, with just a flip of a switch, our interposer turns malicious and silently redirects protected addresses to attacker-controlled locations, allowing corruption or replay of encrypted memory." Battering RAM compromises Intel's Software Guard Extensions (SGX) and AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization with Secure Nested Paging (SEV-SNP) hardware security features, which ensure that customer data remains encrypted in memory and protected during use. It affects all systems using DDR4 memory, specifically those relying on confidential computing workloads running in public cloud environments to secure data from the cloud service provider using hardware-level access control and memory encryption. The attack, in a nutshell, involves leveraging a custom-built, low-cost DDR4 interposer hardware hack to stealthily redirect physical addresses and gain unauthorized access to protected memory regions. The interposer makes use of simple analog switches to actively manipulate signals between the processor and memory, and can be built for less than $50. On Intel platforms, Battering RAM achieves arbitrary read access to victim plaintext or write plaintext into victim enclaves, whereas on AMD systems, the attack can be used to sidestep recent firmware mitigations against BadRAM, which was documented by the researchers back in December 2024, and introduce arbitrary backdoors into the virtual machine without raising any suspicion. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability can allow a rogue cloud infrastructure provider or insider with limited physical access to compromise remote attestation and enable the insertion of arbitrary backdoors into protected workloads. Battering RAM was reported to the vendors earlier this year, following which Intel, AMD, and Arm have responded that physical attacks are currently considered out of scope of their product's threat model. However, defending against Battering RAM would require a fundamental redesign of memory encryption itself, the researchers noted. "Battering RAM exposes the fundamental limits of the scalable memory encryption designs currently used by Intel and AMD, which omit cryptographic freshness checks in favor of larger protected memory sizes," they added. "Battering RAM [...] is capable of introducing memory aliases dynamically at runtime. As a result, Battering RAM can circumvent Intel's and AMD's boot-time alias checks." The disclosure comes as AMD released mitigations for attacks dubbed Heracles and Relocate-Vote disclosed by the University of Toronto and ETH Zürich, respectively, that can leak sensitive data from cloud environments and confidential virtual machines that rely on AMD's SEV-SNP technology by means of a malicious hypervisor. "The system lets the hypervisor move data around to manage memory efficiently," David Lie, director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute (SRI) at the University of Toronto, said. "So when data is relocated, AMD's hardware decrypts it from the old location and re-encrypts it for the new location. But, what we found was that by doing this over and over again, a malicious hypervisor can learn recurring patterns from within the data, which could lead to privacy breaches." Last month, ETH Zürich researchers also demonstrated that a CPU optimization known as the stack engine can be abused as a side channel for attacks that lead to information leakage. A proof-of-concept (PoC) has been developed for AMD Zen 5 machines, although it's believed that all models have this "abusable hardware feature." The discovery of Battering RAM also follows a report from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam researchers about a new, realistic attack technique referred to as L1TF Reloaded that combines L1 Terminal Fault (aka Foreshadow) and Half-Spectre gadgets (aka incomplete Spectre-like code patterns) to leak memory from virtual machines running on public cloud services. "L1TF is a CPU vulnerability that allows an (attacker) VM to speculatively read any data residing in the (core-local) L1 data cache – including data the VM shouldn't have access to," VUSec researchers said. "At a high level, L1TF Reloaded abuses this to obtain an arbitrary RAM read primitive." Google, which provided the researchers with a sole-tenant node in order to conduct the research safely without potentially affecting any other customers, awarded a $151,515 bug bounty and "applied fixes to the affected assets." Amazon said the L1TF Reloaded vulnerability does not impact the guest data of AWS customers running on the AWS Nitro System or Nitro Hypervisor. Spectre, which first came to light in early 2018, continues to haunt modern CPUs, albeit in the form of different variants. As recently as two weeks ago, academics from ETH Zürich devised a new attack known as VMScape (CVE-2025-40300, CVSS score: 6.5) that breaks virtualization boundaries in AMD Zen CPUs and Intel Coffee Lake processors. Described as a Spectre branch target injection (Spectre-BTI) attack targeting the cloud, it exploits isolation gaps across host and guest in user and supervisor modes to leak arbitrary memory from an unmodified QEMU process. A software fix has been introduced in the Linux kernel to counter the cross-virtualization BTI (vBTI) attack primitive. "VMScape can leak the memory of the QEMU process at the rate of 32 B/s on AMD Zen 4," the authors said in a study. "We use VMScape to find the location of secret data and leak the secret data, all within 772 s, extracting the cryptographic key used for disk encryption/decryption as an example."
thehackernews.comSep 30, 2025extracted
New VMScape attack breaks guest-host isolation on AMD, Intel CPUs
A new Spectre-like attack dubbed VMScape allows a malicious virtual machine (VM) to leak cryptographic keys from an unmodified QEMU hypervisor process running on modern AMD or Intel CPUs. The attack breaks the isolation between VMs and the cloud hypervisor, bypassing existing Spectre mitigations and threatening to leak sensitive data by leveraging speculative execution. The researchers highlight that VMScape does not require compromising the host and works on unmodified virtualization software with default mitigations enabled on the hardware. They note that a threat actor could deploy such an attack against a cloud provider by simply renting a virtual machine to leak secrets from the hypervisor or other VMs. VMScape was developed by a team of researchers at ETH Zurich public university in Switzerland, who discovered that it affects all AMD processors from Zen 1 to Zen 5, as well as Intel’s “Coffee Lake” CPUs. The newer, “Raptor Cove” and “Gracemont” are not impacted. Leaking secrets from QEMU Modern CPUs protect against speculative attacks by extending isolation to branch prediction units (BPU) between the guest and host, but the researchers discovered that this isolation is incomplete. A guest user can influence indirect branch prediction in a host user process due to shared BPU structures like the BTB (Branch Target Buffer), IBP/ITA, and BHB (Branch History Buffer). The attack targets QEMU, the user-mode hypervisor component, which maps guest memory into its address space, enabling the use of a ‘FLUSH+RELOAD’ cache side channel. ETH Zurich researchers used a Spectre-BTI (Branch Target Injection) attack to misguide a target indirect branch in QEMU so it speculatively executes a disclosure gadget that leaks secret data into the shared reload buffer. To extend the speculative execution window, the attacker evicts relevant cache entries from inside the guest by building eviction sets targeting the Last-Level Cache (LLC) on AMD Zen 4 CPUs. ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization), a security feature that randomizes the memory addresses where data is loaded in a process, is defeated by probing for branch collisions to locate the victim gadget and brute-forcing the virtual address of the reload buffer. ETH Zurich researchers showed that VMScape leaks arbitrary memory data from QEMU at a rate of 32 bytes/second, with a byte-level accuracy of 98.7%, and an overall exploit success rate of 43%. At this rate, a 4KB secret, such as a disk encryption key, could be leaked in 128 seconds. The total end-to-end time, including the ASLR bypassing process, would be 772 seconds, or just under 13 minutes. Impact and response Virtualization is the backbone of cloud computing, and if one guest machine can read memory from the host, it threatens multi-tenant cloud security. However, it is essential to emphasize that attacks like VMScape require advanced knowledge, deep technical expertise, and sustained execution time. Because of this, such attacks, even if possible, do not represent a threat to the larger userbase. The ETH Zurich team reported their findings to AMD and Intel on June 7, and the issue received the identifier CVE-2025-40300. AMD has released a security bulletin about the problem. Linux kernel developers released patches that mitigate VMScape by adding an IBPB (Indirect Branch Prediction Barrier) on VMEXIT, effectively flushing the BPU when switching from guest to host. The researchers say that this mitigation has minimal performance impact in common workloads. Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply. The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments. Get the report
bleepingcomputer.comSep 11, 2025extracted
USN-7744-1: QEMU vulnerabilities
Details It was discovered that QEMU incorrectly handled certain virtio devices. A privileged guest attacker could use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, leading to a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. This issue only affected Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. (CVE-2024-3446) It was discovered that QEMU incorrectly handled SDHCI device emulation. A guest attacker could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, leading to a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. (CVE-2024-3447) It was discovered that QEMU incorrectly handled calculating the checksum of a short-sized fragmented packet. A guest attacker could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, leading to a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. (CVE-2024-3567) It... It was discovered that QEMU incorrectly handled certain virtio devices. A privileged guest attacker could use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, leading to a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. This issue only affected Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. (CVE-2024-3446) It was discovered that QEMU incorrectly handled SDHCI device emulation. A guest attacker could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, leading to a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. (CVE-2024-3447) It was discovered that QEMU incorrectly handled calculating the checksum of a short-sized fragmented packet. A guest attacker could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, leading to a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. (CVE-2024-3567) It was discovered that the QEMU qemu-img utility incorrectly handled certain crafted image files. An attacker could use this issue to cause QEMU to consume resources, leading to a denial of service, or possibly read and write to an existing external file. This issue only affected Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. (CVE-2024-4467) It was discovered that QEMU incorrectly handled the RSS feature on virtio-net devices. A privileged guest attacker could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, leading to a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. (CVE-2024-6505) It was discovered that QEMU incorrectly handled the NBD server. An attacker could use this issue to cause QEMU to consume resources, leading to a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. (CVE-2024-7409) It was discovered that QEMU incorrectly handled certain USB devices. A guest attacker could possibly use this issue to cause QEMU to crash, leading to a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. (CVE-2024-8354) It was discovered that the QEMU package incorrectly set up a binfmt_misc registration with the C (Credential) flag. A local attacker could use this with a suid/sgid binary to escalate privileges. This update will no longer run foreign-architecture binaries with suid/sgid with elevated privileges. The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions: Reduce your security exposure Ubuntu Pro provides ten-year security coverage to 25,000+ packages in Main and Universe repositories, and it is free for up to five machines.
ubuntu.comSep 11, 2025extracted
Open-source server management platform Proxmox VE 9.0 released
Open-source server management platform Proxmox VE 9.0 released Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE) 9.0 introduces advancements in both storage and networking capabilities, addressing critical enterprise demands. A highlight is the long-awaited support for snapshots on thick-provisioned LVM shared storage, improving storage management capabilities especially for enterprise users with Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI SAN environments. With newly added “fabric” support for Software-Defined Networking (SDN), administrators can construct highly complex and scalable network architectures. Highlights in Proxmox Virtual Environment 9.0 Debian 13 “Trixie” at the core This core update is based on Debian 13 “Trixie”, bringing the latest Debian release as foundation for Proxmox VE including newer packages, improved hardware support, and enhanced security. Proxmox VE is using a newer Linux kernel 6.14.8-2 as stable default enhancing hardware compatibility and performance. Also, updates to the latest versions of leading open-source technologies for virtual environments like QEMU 10.0.2, LXC 6.0.4, Ceph Squid 19.2.3, and ZFS 2.3.3 are included. ZFS now supports adding new devices to existing RAIDZ pools with minimal downtime. For existing users of Proxmox VE 8.4 or older versions, an extensively tested and detailed upgrade path is available. Snapshots for thick-provisioned LVM shared storage VMs utilizing thick-provisioned LVM shared storages, such as those backed by iSCSI or FC-based SANs, now benefit from snapshot functionality out of the box. This is achieved by implementing snapshots as volume chains, where a volume based on a snapshot only records differences to its parent snapshot volume. Directory, NFS, and CIFS storages also gain additional support for snapshots as volume chains. This new feature provides a powerful and highly requested capability for customers with traditional SAN infrastructure who have historically relied on clustered file systems. While direct integrations from many storage vendors continue to grow, this new feature closes the gap by providing a storage-independent solution for snapshots. New Fabrics feature for the SDN stack This release enhances the SDN capabilities with the introduction of an SDN Fabrics feature, designed to simplify the configuration and management of complex routed networks. Engineered for reliability, SDN Fabrics facilitates multiple paths between nodes and automatic failover across Network Interface Cards (NICs), enabling the configuration of robust two-layer spine-leaf architectures for improved network redundancy and performance. This new feature simplifies the management of dynamically routed networks which can for example be used as Ethernet VPN (EVPN) underlay or full-mesh networks for Ceph. The SDN stack in Proxmox VE gains support for two different routing protocols, OpenFabric and OSPF, and provides intuitive tools for the simplified configuration and precise management of those dynamic routing protocols. Affinity rules in High Availability (HA) clusters The Proxmox team introduces HA resource affinity rules to enable fine-grained control and flexibility over resource placement in HA clusters, ensuring optimal performance, enhanced resiliency, and minimized latency for critical workloads. To better control complex, interconnected applications, the new HA Resource Affinity Rules allow administrators to precisely define how virtual machines and other HA resources are distributed across a cluster. Interdependent HA resources, such as for example an application server and its associated database, can be kept together on the same physical node to minimize network latency. For services requiring maximum redundancy, like multiple VMs running the same mission-critical application, the rules can ensure these instances are kept on different nodes. This increases fault tolerance and ensures resiliency even during HA failovers. Enhanced mobile interface The Proxmox VE mobile interface has been thoroughly reworked, using the new Proxmox widget toolkit powered by the Rust-based Yew framework. The redesigned interface provides quick access to service overviews and includes essential management functions, including starting and stopping virtual guests and basic configuration. It is now easier than ever for users to access fundamental functionalities of Proxmox VE directly from their mobile browsers. Download Proxmox VE 9.0 is available for download. The ISO contains the complete feature-set and can be installed on bare-metal. The virtualization platform from Proxmox comes stocked with all the essential management tools, as well as an easy-to-use, web-based user interface. This allows for simple, out-of-the-box management of the host, either through the command line or a standard web browser. Seamless upgrade instructions from Proxmox VE 8 to 9 are available. It’s also possible to install Proxmox VE 9.0 on top of Debian.
helpnetsecurity.comAug 6, 2025extracted