Back in October 2022, Kaspersky GReAT was looking into a peculiar advertisement on a hacking forum. A cybercriminal had been advertising a UEFI bootkit, dubbed BlackLotus, that could bypass Secure Boot, for $5,000. Given the low price for such powerful capabilities, the cybersecurity community initially took this advertisement with a grain of salt. As no BlackLotus samples were found in the wild, no one could at the time verify the claims made in the forum post.
However, about half a year later, in March 2023, ESET confirmed that the BlackLotus advertisement was genuine. The researchers tracked down samples of this bootkit and confirmed that it can indeed bypass Secure Boot through a vulnerability called Baton Drop (CVE-2022-21894). As this vulnerability was still exploitable in 2023, Microsoft had to release multiple security updates to address it.
Read more…
Source: Kaspersky
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Hackers take aim at Washington Post journalists in an apparent ‘targeted’ cyberattack
June 15, 2025
Hackers have tried to break into the email accounts of a select number of Washington Post journalists, according to an internal Washington Post memo obtained by CNN. The Post discovered the “possible targeted” hack of its email system last Thursday, prompting the newspaper to reset login credentials for all its employees on Friday, Washington Post Executive ...
- Anubis: A Closer Look at an Emerging Ransomware with Built-in Wiper
June 13, 2025
A new ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) group has emerged and has been making a name for itself in 2025. Anubis is a recently identified group that sets itself apart by partnering encryption with more destructive capabilities—wiping directories which severely impact chances of file recovery. Given its brief history and use of a multi-layered extortion model, Anubis has all ...
- Mitel Releases Security Advisory for MiCollab
June 13, 2025
Mitel has released a security advisory to address a critical severity vulnerability in Mitel MiCollab. MiCollab is a cloud-based platform that integrates chat, voice, video, and SMS messaging for teams. The vulnerability, which has no CVE identifier at time of publish, is a “path traversal” vulnerability with a CVSSv3 score of 9.8. Successful exploitation could allow ...
- Apple fixes new iPhone zero-day bug used in Paragon spyware hacks
June 12, 2025
Researchers revealed on Thursday that two European journalists had their iPhones hacked with spyware made by Paragon. Apple says it has fixed the bug that was used to hack their phones. The Citizen Lab wrote in its report, shared with TechCrunch ahead of its publication, that Apple had told its researchers that the flaw exploited in ...
- MyCert: Malaysia data breaches up 29% in Q1 2025
June 11, 2025
The Malaysia Computer Emergency Response Team (MyCert) reported an increase in data breach incidents in Malaysia in the first quarter of the year. “Data breach incidents are growing in Malaysia with a nearly 29% increase this quarter, underscoring the need for better security measures to ensure national security and public trust,” said MyCert. According to its ...
- US government’s vaccine website defaced with AI-generated content
June 11, 2025
A U.S. government website designed to inform the public about vaccines has been defaced and now hosts apparently AI-generated spam. The domain, which belongs to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), appears to have been hosting the same kind of content — mostly gay-themed and LGBTQ+ posts — since at least May 12, ...
