Cybersecurity Brief – 2025-11-21

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Major Incidents or Breaches

Salesforce reported unauthorized data access via Gainsight-linked OAuth activity, resulting in revoked refresh tokens and an ongoing investigation into possible customer data theft.
Italy’s national railway operator, FS Italiane Group, suffered a data breach after its IT services provider, Almaviva, was compromised. A threat actor claims to have stolen 2.3TB of data.
CTM360 exposed a global WhatsApp hijacking campaign (“HackOnChat”) leveraging deceptive authentication portals and impersonation pages to compromise accounts.
Over 50,000 Asus routers were compromised in “Operation WrtHug,” attributed to a Chinese threat actor exploiting known vulnerabilities in discontinued devices.
A vulnerability, now patched, previously allowed scraping of up to 3.5 billion WhatsApp accounts.
Researchers reported that some budget Samsung phones were shipped with unremovable spyware (“AppCloud”) in certain regions.
A TV streaming piracy platform, Photocall, with 26 million annual users, was shut down following an investigation by ACE and DAZN.

A high-severity SonicOS SSLVPN vulnerability in SonicWall firewalls can allow attackers to crash devices. SonicWall has urged immediate patching.
D-Link disclosed three remote command execution vulnerabilities affecting all models and hardware revisions of the now end-of-life DIR-878 router.
A two-year-old, unpatched security flaw in the Ray open-source AI framework is being actively exploited by the ShadowRay 2.0 botnet to compromise clusters with NVIDIA GPUs.
A recent 7-Zip vulnerability is being exploited in the wild, with proof-of-concept code available for remote code execution.
Oracle patched CVE-2025-61757 in Oracle Identity Manager, a vulnerability allowing attackers to escalate privileges.
Researchers highlighted ongoing malicious scanning against Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect VPN portals, with 2.3 million scan sessions detected since 14 November 2025.

The Tsundere botnet, active since mid-2025, is expanding and targeting Windows users. It abuses Node.js and Ethereum blockchain for command and control, spreading via MSI installers, PowerShell scripts, and game-related lures.
A Chinese APT group (“PlushDaemon”) is infecting routers to hijack software updates, primarily targeting Chinese organizations.
China-linked APT24 has been using the previously undocumented “BadAudio” malware in a three-year espionage campaign, recently adopting more sophisticated attack methods.
Russian bulletproof hosting providers Media Land and Hypercore, along with their leadership, were sanctioned by the US and allies for facilitating cybercriminal activities.
A Russian hacking suspect wanted by the FBI was arrested in Thailand following an FBI tip-off.
The “Eternidade” WhatsApp Trojan is self-propagating in Brazil, combining infostealer, banking malware, and worm capabilities, specifically targeting Brazilian Portuguese speakers.

Ransomware attacks surged globally in October 2025, with over 700 organizations affected, according to Cyfirma.
Mobile phishing attacks are projected to increase fourfold during the holiday season as attackers exploit seasonal shopping behaviors.
The Sturnus Android banking trojan, currently in development, targets users in Europe and is capable of capturing messages from encrypted apps (Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram) and hijacking devices for financial fraud.
The dark web job market remains active, with over 2,000 job-related posts observed between January 2023 and June 2025, indicating ongoing professionalization among cybercriminals.
The “Matrix Push” C2 tool is being used to hijack browser notifications for phishing purposes.
OSINT (open-source intelligence) remains a critical tool for both attackers and defenders to identify digital footprint vulnerabilities.
Heisenberg Dependency Health Check, a new GitHub Action, provides automated supply chain risk assessment by flagging risky dependencies in pull requests.
Cisco and other vendors are highlighting the increasing risks posed by aging network infrastructure, especially in the context of generative AI-driven attacks.
Budget Samsung phones in certain regions are shipped with pre-installed, unremovable spyware, raising concerns over supply chain and device security.

The US and allied governments imposed sanctions on Russian bulletproof hosting service providers Media Land and Hypercore for their roles in supporting cybercriminal activities.
The founders of the Samourai cryptocurrency mixer were sentenced to prison for laundering over $237 million.
Windows 10 end-of-support is driving organizations to migrate to Windows 11, with security implications for unsupported systems.
Mozilla formally ended its partnership with Onerep, an identity protection service previously offered via Firefox.