Thousands of TP-Link routers have been infected by a botnet to spread malware


According to a new report from the Cato CTRL team, the Ballista botnet exploits a remote code execution vulnerability that directly impacts the TP-Link Archer AX-21 router.

The botnet can lead to command injection which then makes remote code execution (RCE) possible so that the malware can spread itself across the internet automatically. This high severity security flaw (tracked as CVE-2023-1389) has also been used to spread other malware families as far back as April 2023 when it was used in the Mirai botnet malware attacks. The flaw also linked to the Condi and AndroxGh0st malware attacks.

Read more…
Source: Tom’s Guide


Sign up for our Newsletter


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 ...

  • BPFDoor’s Hidden Controller Used Against Asia, Middle East Targets

    April 14, 2025

    The stealthy rootkit-like malware known as BPFDoor (detected as Backdoor.Linux.BPFDOOR) is a backdoor with strong stealth capabilities, most of them related to its use of Berkeley Packet Filtering (BPF). In a previous article, Trend Micro researchers covered how BPFDoor and BPF-enabled malware work. BPFDoor has been active for at least four years, with a report by ...

  • 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 ...

  • NSA warns “fast flux” threatens national security. What is fast flux anyway?

    April 4, 2025

    A technique that hostile nation-states and financially motivated ransomware groups are using to hide their operations poses a threat to critical infrastructure and national security, the National Security Agency has warned. The technique is known as fast flux. It allows decentralized networks operated by threat actors to hide their infrastructure and survive takedown attempts that would ...

  • Palo Alto Networks gateways facing huge number of possible security attacks

    April 2, 2025

    Someone may be getting ready to attack Palo Alto Network devices, security researchers are warning after spotting a rise in activity. Analysts from GreyNoise said they observed a “significant surge” in login scanning activity against the company’s PAN-OS GlobalProtect portals, with almost 24,000 unique IP addresses attempting to access these portals in March 2025. “The pattern ...

  • Security Update Released for CrushFTP

    March 28, 2025

      A vulnerability has been disclosed in CrushFTP, a file server supporting standard secure file transfer protocols, after being discovered by a security researcher. The vulnerability designated as CVE-2025-2825 is a critical ‘improper authentication’ vulnerability with a CVSSv3 score of 9.8. Successful exploitation could allow an unauthenticated attacker to craft remote and unauthenticated HTTP requests to CrushFTP, ...