Cybersecurity Brief – 2025-11-21
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.
Newly Discovered Vulnerabilities
- 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.
Notable Threat Actor Activity
- 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.
Trends, Tools, or Tactics of Interest
- 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.
Regulatory or Policy Developments
- 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.