The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday added two security flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation in the wild.
The list of flaws is below –
- CVE-2024-20767 (CVSS score: 7.4) – Adobe ColdFusion contains an improper access control vulnerability that could allow an attacker to access or modify restricted files via an internet-exposed admin panel (Patched by Adobe in March 2024)
- CVE-2024-35250 (CVSS score: 7.8) – Microsoft Windows Kernel-Mode Driver contains an untrusted pointer dereference vulnerability that allows a local attacker to escalate privileges (Patched by Microsoft in June 2024)
Taiwanese cybersecurity company DEVCORE, which discovered and reported CVE-2024-35250, shared additional technical details in August 2024, stating it’s rooted in the Microsoft Kernel Streaming Service (MSKSSRV).
There are currently no details on how the shortcomings are being weaponized in real-world attacks, although proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits for both of them exist in the public domain.
In light of active exploitation, Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies are recommended to apply the necessary remediation by January 6, 2025, to secure their networks.
FBI Warns of HiatusRAT Targeting Web Cameras and DVRs
The development follows an alert from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about HiatusRAT campaigns expanding beyond network edge devices like routers to scan Internet of Things (IoT) devices from Hikvision, D-Link, and Dahua located in the U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
“The actors scanned web cameras and DVRs for vulnerabilities including CVE-2017-7921, CVE-2018-9995, CVE-2020-25078, CVE-2021-33044, CVE-2021-36260, and weak vendor-supplied passwords,” the FBI said. “Many of these vulnerabilities have not yet been mitigated by the vendors.”
The malicious activity, observed in March 2024, involved the use of open-source utilities called Ingram and Medusa for scanning and brute-force authentication cracking.
DrayTek Routers Exploited in Ransomware Campaign
The warnings also come as Forescout Vedere Labs, with intelligence shared by PRODAFT, revealed last week that threat actors have exploited security flaws in DrayTek routers to target over 20,000 DrayTek Vigor devices as part of a coordinated ransomware campaign between August and September 2023.
“The operation exploited a suspected zero-day vulnerability, enabling attackers to infiltrate networks, steal credentials, and deploy ransomware,” the company said, adding the campaign “involved three distinct threat actors – Monstrous Mantis (Ragnar Locker), Ruthless Mantis (PTI-288) and LARVA-15 (Wazawaka) – who followed a structured and efficient workflow.”
Monstrous Mantis is believed to have identified and exploited the vulnerability and systematically harvested credentials, which were then cracked and shared with trusted partners like Ruthless Mantis and LARVA-15.
The attacks ultimately allowed the collaborators to conduct post-exploitation activities, including lateral movement and privilege escalation, ultimately leading to the deployment of different ransomware families such as RagnarLocker, Nokoyawa, RansomHouse, and Qilin.
“Monstrous Mantis withheld the exploit itself, retaining exclusive control over the initial access phase,” the company said. “This calculated structure allowed them to profit indirectly, as ransomware operators who successfully monetized their intrusions were obliged to share a percentage of their proceeds.”
Ruthless Mantis is estimated to have successfully compromised at least 337 organizations, mainly located in the U.K. and the Netherlands, with LARVA-15 acting as an initial access broker (IAB) by selling the access it gained from Monstrous Mantis to other threat actors.
It’s suspected that the attacks made use of a then zero-day exploit in DrayTek devices, as evidenced by the discovery of 22 new vulnerabilities that share root causes similar to CVE-2020-8515 and CVE-2024-41592.
“The recurrence of such vulnerabilities within the same codebase suggests a lack of thorough root cause analysis, variant hunting and systematic code reviews by the vendor following each vulnerability disclosure,” Forescout noted.
