Category Archives: Cyber Attacks

SAML Roulette – The Hackers Typically Win

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SAML
SAML

Article by Gareth Heyes

Introduction:

In this post, we’ll show precisely how to chain round-trip attacks and namespace confusion to achieve unauthenticated admin access on GitLab Enterprise by exploiting the ruby-saml library.

While researching this, GitHub independently discovered and patched our vulnerabilities. However, their disclosure omits key technical details, including the specific mutation and how to exploit it without authentication.

https://github.blog/security/sign-in-as-anyone-bypassing-saml-sso-authentication-with-parser-differentials/

We believe sharing the full details on how these attacks work is crucial for improving security by empowering everyone with the knowledge needed to identify, mitigate, and defend against such threats effectively.

This research began after we came across a fascinating post by Juho Forsén detailing an XML round-trip vulnerability. What started as curiosity quickly spiraled into a deep dive into the intricacies of SAML, uncovering far more than we initially expected. We spent months exploring various round-trip attacks with the goal of presenting our findings at Black Hat. However, as luck would have it, we ran into a research collision with Alexander Tan ( ahacker1 ), leading to our discoveries being patched before we could submit. Despite that twist, we believe this work is still worth sharing, and while it may not be hitting Black Hat this year, we hope you find it just as compelling.

Round-trip attacks 101

SAML libraries often parse an XML document, store it as a string, and later re-parse it. In Ruby-SAML, this process involves two different parsers: REXML, which is used to parse the document and validate the signature, and Nokogiri, which is used to access attributes. If any mutations occur during this process, the document may not be identical when parsed a second time.

For secure authorization, the document must be parsed and serialized consistently; otherwise, structural inconsistencies may arise. These inconsistencies can be exploited in a round-trip attack. By leveraging XML comments and CDATA sections, an attacker can manipulate the document’s structure during mutation, bypassing signature verification and effectively gaining unauthorized access by assuming another user’s identity.

Round-trip attack on Ruby SAML/REXML

To facilitate testing, we developed a testbed to identify round-trip vulnerabilities and efficiently evaluate multiple SAML libraries. I began by examining the document type definition (DOCTYPE), as similar vulnerabilities had been discovered in the past. My initial approach focused on analyzing how XML entities were parsed, so I conducted tests in that area.

In Juho’s original discovery, notation declarations were used to introduce inconsistencies in how quotes were interpreted. Building on this, I investigated whether any additional vulnerabilities had been overlooked. After extensive testing, I found that mutations could be introduced within the SYSTEM identifier.

Continue reading the rest of the article by Gareth Heyes below!

SOURCE ARTICLE: Click Here!

ChatGPT – SSRF Vulnerability (CVE-2024-27564)

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ChatGPT Vulnerability

Threat actors are targeting a year-old server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerability in a third-party ChatGPT tool, mainly against financial entities and US government organizations, cybersecurity firm Veriti reports.

The affected tool is called ChatGPT, but it’s not made by OpenAI. Instead, it’s an open source tool created by a Chinese developer, designed to provide an interface for interacting with the ChatGPT gen-AI service.

The bug, tracked as CVE-2024-27564, is a medium-severity issue affecting the pictureproxy.php file. It allows attackers to inject crafted URLs in the url parameter and force the application to make arbitrary requests.

Reported in September 2023 and publicly disclosed one year ago, the flaw can be exploited without authentication, and has had proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code available publicly for some time.

According to Veriti, at least one threat actor has added an exploit for CVE-2024-27564 to its arsenal, and has started probing the internet for vulnerable applications.

Within a single week, the cybersecurity firm observed over 10,000 attack attempts coming from a single IP address. Roughly one-third of the targeted organizations are potentially at risk of exploitation due to misconfigurations in their protection solutions, Veriti warns.

Most of the attacks were targeting organizations in the US, mainly in the government and financial sector. Financial and healthcare firms in Germany, Thailand, Indonesia, Colombia, and the UK were targeted as well.

“Banks and fintech firms depend on AI-driven services and API integrations, making them vulnerable to SSRF attacks that access internal resources or steal sensitive data,” Veriti notes.

Although a medium-severity issue, CVE-2024-27564 has become a real-world attack vector and organizations should address it as soon as possible. They should also check their intrusion prevention systems and firewalls for any misconfigurations and monitor logs for known attacker IP addresses.

“Ignoring medium-severity vulnerabilities is a costly mistake, particularly for high-value financial organizations,” Veriti says.

*updated to clarify that the ChatGPT tool impacted by CVE-2024-27564 is not in any way related to ChatGPT developer OpenAI.

SOURCE ARTICLE: Click Here!

SANS Sees Phishers Use Tricky Hyphens in URLs

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To a phisher, one tiny hyphen can make a big mark.

SANS Technology Institute Dean of Research Johannes Ullrich alerted users to a “clever” phishing tactic that uses a URL containing a “com-” domain prefix. With that tiny, easy-to-miss hyphen, threat actors can disguise a malicious destination.

Ullrich noted on the SANS site that the phishing tactic was placed into fraudulent messages alerting a user of unpaid tolls. (The FBI warned the public of toll trolls in April 2024, when there were over 2,000 complaints of attacks using fake text messages.)

How the “.com-” tactic works. A legitimate site involving Florida’s toll system (SunPass) would involve a forward slash and look something like: “sunpass.com/tolls.”

In instances discovered by Ullrich and shared on the SANS site, the phisher registers for and receives a domain that begins with “com-,” followed by seemingly random letters, then ending with a top-level domain, like .info, .top, .xyz, and even .com.

To a reader, the phishy URL appears as something like: “sunpass.com-[random letters].top”—a tricky difference to notice when you’re quickly looking on a tiny phone screen and it appears that you owe toll money.

Fraud jobs. URL obfuscation is a favorite tactic of opportunistic threat actors, who register mimicking domains to trick fans of events like the Super Bowl or the Olympics. (Business administration company CSC identified 5,000 unique domain registrations mimicking well-known sportsbooks, between Jan. 1, 2023, and Dec. 24, 2024, for example.)

According to the FTC, government impersonation scammers led to $618 million in losses in 2023, up from $497 million in 2022 and $428 million in 2021.

Dash money. Ullrich told IT Brew that he continues to see “com-” domains registered: 315 on Feb. 11, 428 on Feb. 10, and 269 on Feb 9. (The sites are often short-lived and quickly shut down as fraudulent, he added.)

Many of the questionable domains point to the same IP address, Ullrich said, suggesting one actor is registering and rotating between them.

Ullrich also shared with IT Brew a new twist on the hyphen-ishing trend: A “com.-” domain prefix with a “.com” ending to the URL, and a “case number” in between to convince targeted users that the sender is from an IT support team.

“They can use any prefix for the domain to impersonate arbitrary .com domains,” Ullrich told us in an email.

In his Feb. 5 post, Ullrich advised IT pros to review DNS queries for these kinds of prefixes.

SOURCE ARTICLE:

https://www.itbrew.com/stories/2025/02/18/sans-sees-phishers-use-tricky-hyphens-in-urls?mbcid=38663986.101742&mblid=0526c530a3f5&mid=bfeacb7fd34941195bb37df6366acc6f&utm_campaign=itb&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=morning_brew

The Art of Linux Kernel Rootkits

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1. What is a rooktit?

A rootkit is malware whose main objective and purpose is to maintain persistence within a system, remain completely hidden, hide processes, hide directories, etc., in order to avoid detection.

This makes its detection very complex, and its mitigation even more complex, since one of the main objectives of a rootkit is to remain hidden.

A rootkit, it changes the system’s default behavior to what it wants.

1.1 What is a kernel? Userland and kernel land differences

The kernel is the core of the operating system, responsible for managing system resources and facilitating communication between hardware and software. It operates at the lowest layer of the system, for example components that operate in kernel land include the kernel itself, device drivers and kernel modules (which we call Loadable Kernel Module, short for LKM).

On the other hand, the userland or userspace is the layer where user programs and applications are executed. This is the part of the OS that interacts with the user, including browsers, text editors, games, common programs that the user uses, etc.

1.2 What is a system call?

System calls (syscalls) are fundamental in OS, they allow running processes to request services from the kernel

These services include operations such as file management, inter-process communication, process creation and management, among others.

A very practical example is when we write code in C, a simple hello world, if we analyze it with strace for example, you will notice that it uses sys_write to be able to write Hello world.

root@infect:~# cat hello.c ; ls hello
#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    printf("Hello, World!\n");
    return 0;
}
hello
root@infect:~# strace ./hello 2>&1 | grep write

write(1, "Hello, World!\n", 14Hello, World!
root@infect:~#
Continue reading →

Palo Alto Networks Tags New Firewall Bug

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Palo Alto Networks warns that a file read vulnerability (CVE-2025-0111) is now being chained in attacks with two other flaws (CVE-2025-0108 with CVE-2024-9474) to breach PAN-OS firewalls in active attacks.

The vendor first disclosed the authentication bypass vulnerability tracked as CVE-2025-0108 on February 12, 2025, releasing patches to fix the vulnerability. That same day, Assetnote researchers published a proof-of-concept exploit demonstrating how CVE-2025-0108 and CVE-2024-9474 could be chained together to gain root privileges on unpatched PAN-OS firewalls.

A day later, network threat intel firm GreyNoise reported that threat actors had begun actively exploiting the flaws, with attempts coming from two IP addresses.

CVE-2024-9474 is a privilege escalation flaw in PAN-OS fixed in November 2024 that allows a PAN-OS administrator to execute commands on firewalls with root privileges. Palo Alto Networks warned at the disclosure that the vulnerability was exploited as a zero-day.

CVE-2025-0111 is a file read vulnerability in PAN-OS, allowing authenticated attackers with network access to the management web interface to read files that are readable by the “nobody” user.

The CVE-2025-0111 flaw was also fixed on February 12, 2025, but the vendor updated its bulletin today to warn that it is also now being used in an exploit chain with the other two vulnerabilities in active attacks.

“Palo Alto Networks has observed exploit attempts chaining CVE-2025-0108 with CVE-2024-9474 and CVE-2025-0111 on unpatched and unsecured PAN-OS web management interfaces,” reads the updated bulletin.

While Palo Alto Networks has not shared how the exploit chain is being abused, BleepingComputer has been told they could be chained together to download configuration files and other sensitive information.

Continue reading →

Apple Fixes Zero-Day Vulnerability – Update ASAP!

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Apple has released an emergency security update for a vulnerability which it says may have been exploited in an “extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals.”

The update is available for:

  • iOS 18.3.1 and iPadOS 18.3.1 – 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
  • iPadOS 17.7.5 – iPad Pro 12.9-inch 2nd generation, iPad Pro 10.5-inch, and iPad 6th generation

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

The new-found zero-day vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2025-24200. When exploited, the vulnerability would allow an attacker to disable USB Restricted Mode on a locked device. The attack would require physical access to your device

The introduction of USB Restricted Mode feature came with iOS 11.4.1 in July 2018. The feature was designed to make it more difficult for attackers to unlock your iPhone. When USB Restricted Mode is active, your device’s Lightning port (where you plug in the charging cable) will only allow charging after the device has been locked for more than an hour. This means that if someone tries to connect your locked iPhone to a computer or other device to access its data, they won’t be able to do so unless they have your passcode.

To enhance data security, especially when traveling or in public places, it is recommended that you enable USB Restricted Mode in your device settings. If your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch is running iOS 11.4.1 or later, USB Restricted Mode is automatically on by default, but if you want to check and enable USB Restricted Mode, this can be done by going to Settings > Face ID & Passcode or Touch ID & Passcode > (USB) Accessories and toggling off (grey) the (USB) Accessories option. Enabling this setting adds an extra layer of protection against unauthorized data access.

Please note: toggling the option to green turns this feature off.

Vulnerabilities like these typically target specific individuals as deployed by commercial spyware vendors like Pegasus and Paragon. This means the average user does not need to fear attacks as long as the details are not published. But once they are, other cybercriminals will try to copy them.

Source Article:

https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2025/02/apple-fixes-zero-day-vulnerability-used-in-extremely-sophisticated-attack?utm_source=iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=b2c_pro_oth_20250217_februaryweeklynewsletter_v3_173948923242&utm_content=Apple_fixes

Hackers Steal Personal Data from Watergate’s Hotel Network

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Watergate Hotel

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein would be of limited use with this 21st-century breach though.

The Watergate Hotel in the District suffered a data breach last year and has recently notified those affected online and via mail.

The hackers targeted personal and financial information.

The hotel noticed suspicious activity on its network on April 6, 2024. After securing the network and investigating, the hotel found that the cyber-burglars had gotten access to hotel computers and were therefore able to see and download certain files, the hotel said on its website.

About 2,220 people were affected by the data breach, according to a data breach database maintained by the Office of the Maine Attorney General.

The data stolen varies by individual, the Watergate said, but includes names, financial account and credit card information, health insurance and medical information, and Social Security, government identification and driver’s license numbers.

Source Page:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/feb/13/hackers-broke-watergate-hotel-network-stole-person/?utm_source=tldrinfosec