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:
- Log4j flaw: Thousands of applications are still vulnerable, warn security researchers
April 28, 2022
Months on from a critical zero-day vulnerability being disclosed in the widely-used Java logging library Apache Log4j, a significant number of applications and servers are still vulnerable to cyberattacks because security patches haven’t been applied. First detailed in December, the vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) allows attackers to remotely execute code and gain access to systems that use Log4j. Not ...
- 2021 Top Routinely Exploited Vulnerabilities
April 27, 2022
CISA, the National Security Agency (NSA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS), the New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre (NZ NCSC), and the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-UK) have released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory that provides details on the top ...
- Android security: Flaw in an audio codec left two-thirds of smartphones at risk of snooping, say researchers
April 22, 2022
Millions of Android devices were vulnerable to a remote code execution attack due to flaws in an audio codec that Apple open-sourced years ago but which hasn’t been patched since. Researchers at Check Point discovered a bug in Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC), which is audio-compression technology that Apple open-sourced in 2011. After this, ALAC was ...
- Critical bug in Android could allow access to users’ media files
April 21, 2022
Security analysts have found that Android devices running on Qualcomm and MediaTek chipsets were vulnerable to remote code execution due to a flaw in the implementation of the Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC). ALAC is an audio coding format for lossless audio compression that Apple open-sourced in 2011. Since then, the company has been releasing updates ...
- Oracle’s quarterly Critical Patch Update arrives with 520 fixes
April 20, 2022
Enterprise software giant Oracle has released its April Critical Patch Update (CPU) advisory, which includes 520 fixes for security flaws. Critical Patch Updates are collections of security fixes for Oracle products, published quarterly. This update addresses security flaws in dozens of products with three bugs getting a severity rating of 10 out of a possible 10, ...
- Lenovo patches UEFI firmware vulnerabilities impacting millions of users
April 19, 2022
Lenovo has patched a trio of bugs that could be abused to perform UEFI attacks. Discovered by ESET researcher Martin Smolár, the vulnerabilities, assigned as CVE-2021-3970, CVE-2021-3971, and CVE-2021-3972, could be exploited to “deploy and successfully execute UEFI malware either in the form of SPI flash implants like LoJax or ESP implants like ESPecter” in the ...

