Cybersecurity Brief – 2025-08-14

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Major Incidents or Breaches

The Office of the Pennsylvania Attorney General experienced a cyberattack that disrupted email, phone systems, and their website.
Manpower disclosed a data breach affecting 140,000 individuals after the RansomHub ransomware group stole sensitive information in January.
US investigators confirmed that Russian hackers breached the US court electronic filing system, accessing court records and sealed filings.
Norwegian police attributed suspected sabotage at a dam to pro-Russian hackers, who accessed and manipulated a remote valve control system.

Fortinet disclosed a critical pre-authentication remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2025-25256) in FortiSIEM, with exploit code observed in the wild. A surge in brute-force attacks against Fortinet SSL VPNs and FortiManager was also reported.
CISA added two N-able N-central vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog due to evidence of active exploitation.
Zoom and Xerox released critical security updates addressing privilege escalation and remote code execution flaws in Zoom Clients for Windows and FreeFlow Core, respectively.
Microsoft’s August 2025 Patch Tuesday addressed 111 vulnerabilities, including a publicly known Kerberos zero-day and multiple high-severity flaws.
Intel, AMD, and Nvidia published advisories for numerous vulnerabilities in their products as part of their coordinated Patch Tuesday releases.
A new downgrade attack was demonstrated against Microsoft Entra ID, enabling bypass of FIDO authentication by coercing users into weaker authentication methods.
A critical vulnerability (CVSS 10) in an Erlang-based OT platform was observed being actively exploited to target operational technology networks.

North Korean threat actors deployed a variety of malware, including stealers, backdoors, and ransomware, against South Korean targets in a multi-pronged campaign.
Pro-Russian hackers were linked to both the sabotage of a Norwegian dam and the breach of the US court system.
A significant increase in brute-force attacks targeting Fortinet SSL VPN appliances was observed, raising concerns of potential zero-day exploitation.

Phishing and scam campaigns are increasingly leveraging AI, deepfakes, Telegram, Google Translate, and Blob URLs, with new methods targeting biometric data.
A new malvertising campaign is distributing the modular PS1Bot malware, which uses multi-stage in-memory attack techniques.
Persistent exploitation of older vulnerabilities, such as CVE-2017-11882, continues to be reported.
AI-based tools are gaining traction in penetration testing, with an automated pen tester becoming a top bug hunter on HackerOne.
Open source AI models are reportedly less effective in vulnerability research compared to commercial and underground models.
Data brokers are facing scrutiny for hiding privacy opt-out tools from search engines, with regulatory pressure increasing for transparency.
Reports highlight the continued presence of the XZ Utils backdoor in legacy Docker images, though the risk of exploitation is considered low.

CISA and partners released new asset inventory guidance aimed at improving operational technology (OT) security practices.
Increased policy attention in the US on data broker practices, with calls for improved visibility and accessibility of consumer privacy controls.
Microsoft announced the removal of PowerShell 2.0 from Windows 11 and Windows Server starting August 2025, following its long-standing deprecation.