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Philippine Nuclear and Naval Targets Hit by Suspected Chinese Operator
Suspected Chinese-speaking operator breached Philippine nuclear research and naval supplier systems via ownCloud CVE-2023-49103 and WordPress CVE-2024-28000.
Hunt.io found an exposed staging server containing custom Python scripts, logs, and stolen data documenting intrusions against a Philippine nuclear research body and a marine engineering company serving the Philippine Navy. The actor exploited an ownCloud authentication bypass (CVE-2023-49103) using empty-secret pre-signed WebDAV URLs and a LiteSpeed Cache plugin flaw (CVE-2024-28000) to gain WordPress admin access, also guessing passwords against XML-RPC with rockyou.txt. Roughly 9 GB was referenced as stolen from the nuclear agency, including reactor databases, radiation-safety records, and staff passport data; Simplified Chinese labels suggest a Chinese-speaking operator.
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Tick Group Weaponized Secure USB Drives to Target Air
Unit 42 says the Tick group weaponized South Korean certified secure USB drives with SymonLoader malware to reach air-gapped Windows XP systems.
Unit 42 discovered that the Tick cyberespionage group, which targets Japan and South Korea, compromised an ITSCC-certified secure USB drive made by a South Korean defense company and used a new loader named SymonLoader to extract a hidden executable from these drives. SymonLoader only infects Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, suggesting deliberate targeting of legacy air-gapped systems used by government and defense organizations. The group also delivered HomamDownloader and SymonLoader via Trojanized Korean and Japanese software sent as spearphishing attachments. Unit 42 believes the attacks occurred multiple years ago and that this malware is not part of an active campaign.
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ThreatsDay: Gogs 10.0 RCE, n8n Workflow-to-RCE, $10M Reward, GLM
Hacker News ThreatsDay roundup: Defender BTR.sys driver abuse, DoJ charges 17 Mabna Institute members over IRGC-linked intrusions, Grandoreiro sideloading, OpenAI monitoring.
Check Point researchers showed Microsoft's signed Defender Boot-Time Removal driver (BTR.sys) can be repurposed as a universal kernel operation engine to bypass endpoint security without BYOVD. The DoJ charged 17 members of Iran's Mabna Institute, which on behalf of the IRGC stole over 31 TB of academic data from 144 US universities and compromised roughly 8,000 of 100,000 targeted professor accounts; the State Department offered a $10 million reward for five defendants. Separately, Acronis tracked a Grandoreiro campaign abusing DLL sideloading in the Duplicate Files Finder app across Latin America and Spain, while ErrTraffic ClickFix campaigns deliver Cruciferra (BYOVD) and Remus Stealer. OpenAI also previewed Private Safety Processing, a privacy-centric approach to monitoring model misuse without retaining customer content.
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