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:

  • New Rust Botnet “RustoBot” is Routed via Routers

    April 21, 2025

    FortiGuard Labs recently discovered a new botnet propagating through TOTOLINK devices. Unlike previous malware targeting these devices, this variant is written in Rust—a programming language introduced by Mozilla in 2010. Due to its Rust-based implementation, we’ve named the malware “RustoBot.” In January and February of 2025, FortiGuard Labs observed a significant increase in alerts related to ...

  • Cisco Releases Security Advisory for Webex App

    April 17, 2025

    Cisco has released a security advisory to address a high severity vulnerability affecting Webex App, regardless of configuration or operating system. Cisco Webex is a web conferencing software solution. CVE-2025-20236 is an ‘insufficient input validation’ vulnerability with a CVSSv3 score of 8.8. If exploited, a remote, unauthenticated attacker could achieve remote code execution (RCE) by persuading ...

  • Apple says zero-day bugs exploited against ‘specific targeted individuals’ using iOS

    April 16, 2025

    Apple has released new software updates across its product line to fix two security vulnerabilities, which the company said may have been actively used to hack customers running its mobile software, iOS. In security advisories posted on its website, Apple confirmed it fixed the two zero-day vulnerabilities, which “may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated ...

  • Fortinet Releases Security Updates for FortiOS and FortiGate

    April 11, 2025

    Fortinet has released security updates for FortiOS to mitigate novel post-exploitation activity observed against FortiGate devices. The disclosure details a new persistence technique used by an attacker, in conjunction with known vulnerabilities, to maintain read-only access to FortiGate devices through the use of symbolic links even after the initial access vector has been remediated. Fortinet has ...

  • Incomplete NVIDIA Patch to CVE-2024-0132 Exposes AI Infrastructure and Data to Critical Risks

    April 10, 2025

    In September 2024, NVIDIA released several updates to address a critical vulnerability (CVE-2024-0132) in its NVIDIA Container Toolkit. If exploited, this vulnerability could expose AI infrastructure, data, or sensitive information. With a CVSS v3.1 rating of 9.0, all customers were advised to update their affected software immediately. Further research, however, uncovered that the patch was incomplete. ...

  • Trump orders federal investigation into former CISA director Chris Krebs

    April 10, 2025

    President Trump on Wednesday ordered a federal investigation into Chris Krebs, the former director of U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA. In a new executive order, Trump instructed the Department of Homeland Security, which houses CISA, and the U.S. attorney general to investigate Krebs, who was fired by the Trump administration in November 2020 soon after he publicly ...