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:

  • Cisco Releases Security Advisory Affecting Cisco Identity Service Engine

    June 5, 2025

    Cisco has released software updates for its Identity Service Engine (ISE). The updates address a critical severity vulnerability in the ISE product. Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is a context-aware policy service to control access and threats across wired, wireless, and VPN networks. CVE-2025-20286 has a CVSSv3 score of 9.9 and is a “use of hard-coded ...

  • Multiple vulnerabilities in SonicWall SMA 100 series (FIXED)

    May 7, 2025

    In April of 2025, Rapid7 discovered and disclosed three new vulnerabilities affecting SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (“SMA”) 100 series appliances (SMA 200, 210, 400, 410, 500v). These vulnerabilities are tracked as CVE-2025-32819, CVE-2025-32820, and CVE-2025-32821. An attacker with access to an SMA SSLVPN user account can chain these vulnerabilities to make a sensitive system directory writable, ...

  • Cyber Criminal Proxy Services Exploiting End of Life Routers

    May 7, 2025

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is issuing this announcement to inform individuals and businesses about proxy services taking advantage of end of life routers that are susceptible to vulnerabilities. When a hardware device is end of life, the manufacturer no longer sells the product and is not actively supporting the hardware, which also means ...

  • 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 ...