Cybersecurity Brief – 2025-08-12

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Major Incidents or Breaches

Connex Credit Union disclosed a data breach affecting 172,000 members, with attackers stealing personal and financial information after breaching its systems.
The Netherlands’ National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) reported exploitation of Citrix NetScaler vulnerability CVE-2025-6543 to breach critical organisations in the country.
Air France experienced a data breach resulting in the leak of frequent flyer data (as per Check Point’s weekly threat bulletin).
A major automaker’s dealership platform used by over 1,000 US dealerships was found to be vulnerable, allowing car hacking and personal data theft, including the ability for unauthorised remote vehicle unlocking.
Two hackers reportedly breached North Korean state-sponsored group Kimsuky, stealing and leaking internal data.
Law enforcement, in collaboration with international partners, took down infrastructure and seized over $1 million associated with the BlackSuit (Royal) ransomware group.
Over 29,000 Microsoft Exchange servers remain unpatched against a high-severity vulnerability, leaving them exposed to lateral movement and cloud environment compromise.

Researchers identified new security flaws in the TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) communications protocol, including weaknesses in its proprietary end-to-end encryption, impacting law enforcement and critical infrastructure communications.
A critical vulnerability in the OPC UA industrial protocol was disclosed, exposing utilities and factories to risk despite the protocol’s use of complex cryptography.
A sandbox escape with remote code execution was discovered in Google Chrome, earning a $250,000 bug bounty.
A path traversal vulnerability in WinRAR (CVE-2025-8088) was exploited as a zero-day by the Russian ‘RomCom’ group, targeting financial, defence, manufacturing, and logistics sectors in Europe and Canada.
A BadUSB attack technique, dubbed BadCam, was demonstrated against Lenovo Linux webcams, allowing persistent compromise via malicious USB devices.
Flaws in a major automaker’s dealership portal exposed customer and vehicle data and enabled unauthorised remote access to vehicles.

The Russian-linked ‘RomCom’ hacking group exploited the WinRAR CVE-2025-8088 zero-day in targeted attacks on organisations in Europe and Canada.
North Korean Kimsuky hackers were themselves compromised, with internal data reportedly leaked by adversarial actors.
US authorities charged four Ghanaian nationals for their involvement in a $100 million fraud ring involving romance scams and business email compromise attacks.
The BlackSuit (Royal) ransomware gang suffered infrastructure seizures and asset forfeiture following coordinated law enforcement action.
An affiliate of the REvil ransomware group accused the Russian government of orchestrating the 2021 Kaseya supply chain attack.
Malicious actors have been actively exploiting a critical Erlang/OTP SSH vulnerability, with 70% of detected attacks targeting operational technology (OT) firewalls.

Surge in exploitation of Erlang/OTP SSH vulnerabilities, with a focus on OT firewall targets.
Increase in “native phishing” campaigns, where attackers abuse Microsoft 365 apps such as OneNote and OneDrive to deliver internal phishing lures.
Jailbreaking techniques for GPT-5 were demonstrated using “echo chamber” prompts and storytelling, bypassing safeguards without using inappropriate language.
The DarkBit ransomware (linked to MuddyWater) encryption was cracked by researchers, enabling free victim data recovery.
Exposure of persistent threats via USB-based attacks (BadCam) targeting Linux webcams.
Ongoing risk from large numbers of unpatched Exchange servers, facilitating potential lateral movement and cloud compromise.

The Netherlands’ NCSC issued a public warning regarding active exploitation of Citrix NetScaler CVE-2025-6543, urging immediate remediation for critical infrastructure.