Hacktivist Group Lab-Dookhtegan Disables Communications on Iranian Ships

Fortra has disclosed and patched a critical deserialization vulnerability (CVE-2025-10035) in GoAnywhere Managed File Transfer (MFT) software. This flaw, rated 10.0 on the CVSS scale, allows for arbitrary command execution if the system is publicly accessible over the internet. The vulnerability was actively exploited in the wild as early as September 10, 2025, a week before public disclosure. Fortra has released patches in versions 7.8.4 and 7.6.3. The flaw impacts the same license code path as the earlier CVE-2023-0669, which was widely exploited by multiple ransomware and APT groups in 2023, including LockBit. The vulnerability was discovered during a security check on September 11, 2025. Fortra advised customers to review configurations immediately and remove public access from the Admin Console. The Shadowserver Foundation is monitoring over 470 GoAnywhere MFT instances, but the number of patched instances is unknown. The flaw is highly dependent on systems being externally exposed to the internet. The exploitation sequence involved creating a backdoor account and uploading additional payloads, originating from an IP address flagged for brute-force attacks.

APT41, a China-linked threat group, has been conducting targeted phishing campaigns against U.S. trade officials, law firms, think tanks, and academic organizations. The attacks, impersonating U.S. officials and organizations, aim to steal sensitive data related to U.S.-China trade negotiations. The campaigns have been ongoing since at least January 2025, with a surge in activity observed in July and August 2025. The U.S. House Select Committee on China has issued a formal advisory warning about these activities, linking them to a Beijing-led effort to influence policy deliberations. The FBI is investigating these attacks. The phishing emails impersonate U.S. officials, including Rep. John Robert Moolenaar, and organizations such as the U.S.-China Business Council, to trick recipients into opening malicious attachments or links. The attacks exploit software and cloud services to evade detection and exfiltrate data. The goal is to gain an advantage in trade and foreign policy negotiations. The Chinese embassy has denied the allegations, stating that China opposes cyber attacks and cyber crime. APT41 has been linked to various sophisticated campaigns targeting multiple sectors, including logistics, utility companies, healthcare, high-tech, and telecommunications.

The Shai-Hulud attack, a self-replicating malware, has compromised at least 187 npm packages, affecting multiple maintainers. The attack uses a self-propagating mechanism to infect other packages by the same maintainer, modifying package.json, injecting a bundle.js script, repacking the archive, and republishing it. The malware uses TruffleHog to search the host for tokens and cloud credentials, creating unauthorized GitHub Actions workflows within repositories and exfiltrating sensitive data to a hardcoded webhook endpoint. The attack is named 'Shai-Hulud' after the shai-hulud.yaml workflow files used by the malware and follows the 's1ngularity' attack, potentially orchestrated by the same attackers. The attack unfolded in three phases, impacting 2,180 accounts and 7,200 repositories. The first phase, between August 26 and 27, directly impacted 1,700 users, leaking over 2,000 unique secrets and exposing 20,000 files. The second phase, between August 28 and 29, compromised an additional 480 accounts, mostly organizations, and exposed 6,700 private repositories. The third phase, beginning on August 31, targeted a single victim organization, publishing an additional 500 private repositories. The attackers used AI-powered CLI tools like Claude, Q, and Gemini to dynamically scan for high-value secrets, tuning the prompts for better success.

Chinese state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actors, specifically the Salt Typhoon group and a newly identified group named RedNovember, have been conducting sustained campaigns to compromise critical infrastructure networks worldwide. The campaigns aim to gain long-term access to telecommunications, government, transportation, lodging, and military networks. This activity has been detailed in a joint advisory by CISA, NSA, FBI, and international partners, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain. The advisory provides intelligence on tactics used by these actors and recommends mitigations to strengthen defenses. The Czech Republic's National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NUKIB) has issued a warning instructing critical infrastructure organizations to avoid using Chinese technology or transferring user data to servers located in China. The agency has re-evaluated its risk estimate of significant disruptions caused by China, now assessing it at a 'High' level. The NUKIB has confirmed malicious activities of Chinese cyber-actors targeting the Czech Republic, including a recent APT31 campaign targeting the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The advisory highlights concerns over the transfer of system and user data to China, potentially misused by state, military, or political interests. The Czech government previously accused China of targeting its critical infrastructure through APT 31, an allegation denied by the PRC but condemned by the US, EU, and NATO. The advisory suggests that individuals and organizations consider restricting or prohibiting the use of products and services that transfer data to China. The campaign has targeted at least 600 organizations across 80 countries, including 200 in the U.S. The threat actors have exploited vulnerabilities in Cisco, Ivanti, and Palo Alto Networks devices to gain initial access and have modified routers to maintain persistent access and pivot into other networks. The advisory also notes that the APT actors may target other devices such as Fortinet firewalls, Juniper firewalls, Microsoft Exchange, Nokia routers and switches, Sierra Wireless devices, Sonicwall firewalls, etc. RedNovember has targeted perimeter appliances of high-profile organizations globally, including defense and aerospace organizations, space organizations, and law firms. The group has breached at least two U.S. defense contractors, a European engine manufacturer, and a trade-focused intergovernmental cooperation body in Southeast Asia. RedNovember has used the Go-based backdoor Pantegana and Cobalt Strike as part of its intrusions, along with the Spark RAT and LESLIELOADER. The group has also used VPN services like ExpressVPN and Warp VPN to administer and connect to servers used for exploitation and communication.

The threat actor, tracked as UNC6395 by Google and GRUB1 by Cloudflare, exploited OAuth tokens associated with the Drift AI chat agent to breach Salesloft and steal data from Salesforce customer instances. The campaign, active from August 8 to at least August 18, 2025, targeted over 700 organizations, including Workiva and Stellantis, and impacted all integrations connected to the Drift platform, not just Salesforce. The attackers exported large volumes of data, including credentials for AWS, passwords, and Snowflake access tokens. Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, Cloudflare, and Workiva reported data breaches after threat actors accessed their Salesforce instances via compromised Salesloft Drift credentials, exposing customer information. The breach began with the compromise of Salesloft's GitHub account, accessed by UNC6395 from March to June 2025. The threat actor accessed multiple repositories, added a guest user, and established workflows. Reconnaissance activities occurred in the Salesloft and Drift application environments between March and June 2025. The attackers accessed Drift's AWS environment and obtained OAuth tokens for Drift customers' technology integrations. Salesloft isolated the Drift infrastructure, application, and code, and took the application offline on September 5, 2025. Salesloft rotated credentials in the Salesloft environment and hardened it with improved segmentation controls. Salesloft recommends that all third-party applications integrated with Drift via API key revoke the existing key. Salesforce restored the integration with the Salesloft platform on September 7, 2025, except for the Drift app, which remains disabled. Salesloft and Salesforce have taken steps to mitigate the breach, including revoking tokens and removing the Drift application from AppExchange. The breach highlights the risks associated with third-party integrations and the potential for supply chain attacks. UNC6395 demonstrated operational discipline, querying and exporting data methodically, and attempting to cover their tracks by deleting query jobs. The targeted organizations included security and technology companies, suggesting a broader strategy to infiltrate vendors and service providers. The campaign is limited to Salesloft customers who integrate their own solutions with the Salesforce service. There is no evidence that the breaches directly impacted Google Cloud customers, though any of them that use Salesloft Drift should review their Salesforce objects for any Google Cloud Platform service account keys. The threat group ShinyHunters and Scattered Spider claimed responsibility for many of those attacks, and vishing attacks have been cited as the means of compromise. Google disclosed that UNC6040 breached one of its Salesforce instances using these tactics. The UNC6395 Salesloft Drift activity is separate from the vishing attacks attributed to UNC6040. Okta successfully defended against a potential breach by enforcing inbound IP restrictions, securing tokens with DPoP, and using the IPSIE framework. Okta recommends that organizations demand IPSIE integration from application vendors and implement an identity security fabric. Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 advised organizations to conduct immediate log reviews for signs of compromise and rotate exposed credentials. Okta suggests reducing the blast radius of a single entity breach by constraining token use by IP and client and ensuring granular permissions for M2M integrations. The FBI has issued a FLASH alert warning that two threat clusters, tracked as UNC6040 and UNC6395, are compromising organizations' Salesforce environments to steal data and extort victims. UNC6040 is a threat actor that specializes in voice phishing or vishing and recently was observed using social engineering to pose as IT support staff to get into Salesforce environments. UNC6395 is best known for using stolen OAuth tokens from Salesloft's Drift application, which has a Salesforce integration, to steal sensitive data from hundreds of Salesforce environments earlier this year. The FBI's latest advisory provides additional context into the technical aspects of the threat campaigns, particularly UNC6040's activity, which began last fall. The advisory also includes indicators of compromise, including IP addresses and URLs associated with the two campaigns.