Governments on high alert after CISA snuffs out Firestarter backdoor on fed network


A US federal agency was successfully targeted by a previously unknown backdoor malware called Firestarter, according to CISA cybersnoops and their UK counterparts – neither of which disclosed the agency’s name.

Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies include NASA; Homeland Security itself (cyberworkers at CISA are part of an operational unit in Homeland Security); the FBI; the DoJ; the IRS; the Department of Veteran Affairs; the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); and more. Described as a backdoor with remote access capabilities, Firestarter was named after Cisco Secure Firewall Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD), the two products the malware targeted.

Read more…
Source: The Register News


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • From cookie theft to BEC: Attackers use AiTM phishing sites as entry point to further financial fraud

    July 12, 2022

    A large-scale phishing campaign that used adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) phishing sites stole passwords, hijacked a user’s sign-in session, and skipped the authentication process even if the user had enabled multifactor authentication (MFA). The attackers then used the stolen credentials and session cookies to access affected users’ mailboxes and perform follow-on business email compromise (BEC) campaigns against ...

  • Defense contractor pays $9m to settle whistleblower’s cybersecurity allegations

    July 11, 2022

    Aerojet Rocketdyne, which makes propulsion and power systems for launch vehicles, missiles and satellites for NASA and the US military, has agreed to pay $9 million to settle charges it misrepresented its products’ compliance with cybersecurity requirements in federal government contracts. The El Segundo, California-based company has a deep history in American space and military contracting, ...

  • Security advisory accidentally exposes vulnerable systems

    July 6, 2022

    A security advisory for a vulnerability (CVE) published by MITRE has accidentally been exposing links to remote admin consoles of over a dozen vulnerable IP devices since at least April 2022. BleepingComputer became aware of this issue yesterday after getting tipped off by a reader who prefers to remain anonymous. The reader was baffled on seeing ...

  • What to do about inherent security flaws in critical infrastructure?

    July 3, 2022

    The latest threat security research into operational technology (OT) and industrial systems identified a bunch of issues — 56 to be exact — that criminals could use to launch cyberattacks against critical infrastructure. But many of them are unfixable, due to insecure protocols and architectural designs. And this highlights a larger security problem with devices that ...

  • Log4Shell Vulnerability in VMware Leads to Data Exfiltration and Ransomware

    June 28, 2022

    Trend Micro Research recently analyzed several cases of a Log4Shell vulnerability being exploited in certain versions of the software VMware Horizon. After investigating the chain of events, they found that many of these attacks resulted in data being exfiltrated from the infected systems. However, the researchers also found that some of the victims were infected ...

  • 2022 CWE Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Weaknesses

    June 28, 2022

    The Homeland Security Systems Engineering and Development Institute, sponsored by CISA and operated by MITRE, has released the 2022 Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Weaknesses list. The list uses data from the National Vulnerability Database to compile the most frequent and critical errors that can lead to serious vulnerabilities in software. An ...