Latest cybersecurity reporting from selected sources.

Fortinet customers are seeing attackers exploiting a patch bypass for a previously fixed critical FortiGate authentication vulnerability (CVE-2025-59718) to hack patched firewalls. [...]

CISA Issues Emergency Directive After Cisco Exploits Persist After RebootCISA issued an emergency directive Thursday after discovering an advanced hacking campaign exploiting two persistent zero-days in Cisco firewall gear - malware that survives system reboots and upgrades - forcing agencies to disconnect vulnerable devices by Friday.

Hundreds of Firewall Alarms Sounded But Weren't Heeded, CrowdStrike Probe FindsThe governor of Rhode Island slammed professional services firm Deloitte for failing to spot a months-long hack attack against the RIBridges health and human services data environment it manages, despite hundreds of firewall alerts sounding as attackers exfiltrated gigabytes of data.

The leak likely comes from a zero-day exploit affecting Fortinet’s products

Hackers Targeted a PAN-OS Flaw Days After Its DisclosureA suspected Chinese hacking campaign that began in November is exploiting a vulnerability in Palo Alto firewalls to install a custom malware backdoor for espionage. UNC5325 activity aligns with the Chinese hacking strategy of targeting edge devices.

Also, US Court Rules NSO Group Violated Hacking Laws With Pegasus SpywareThis week, cyberattack disrupts Japan Airlines, U.S. court rules NSO Group violated hacking laws, the European Space Agency’s web store hacked, FTC orders Marriott to overhaul data security, Sophos patches critical firewall flaws and Apache fixes critical SQL injection in Traffic Control.

The US government has sanctioned Sichuan Silence and one of its employees for the mass compromise of firewalls which led to the deployment of malware and ransomware

Tianfeng Guan Allegedly Developed Zero-Day Exploit of Sophos XG FirewallThe U.S. federal government rolled out its heavy guns Tuesday against a Chinese hacker allegedly at the center of a zero-day exploit used to hack firewalls made by Sophos, unsealing an indictment, rolling out sanctions and offering $10 million for information leading to the suspect's arrest.

The U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned Chinese cybersecurity company Sichuan Silence and one of its employees for their involvement in a series of Ragnarok ransomware attacks targeting U.S. critical infrastructure companies and many other victims worldwide in April 2020. [...]

UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has published an analysis of a Linux malware named "Pigmy Goat" created to backdoor Sophos XG firewall devices as part of recently disclosed attacks by Chinese threat actors. [...]

Volt Typhoon, APT31, APT41 Targeted Sophos Edge DevicesFirewall maker Sophos disclosed Thursday a half-decade worth of efforts by multiple nation-state Chinese hacking groups to infiltrate its appliances, calling the admission a wake-up call for the cybersecurity industry. Targeting firewall appliances is a known nation state tactic as hackers

The government-backed crew also enjoys ransomware as a side hustle Iranian government-backed cybercriminals have been hacking into US and foreign networks as recently as this month to steal sensitive data and deploy ransomware, and they're breaking in via vulnerable VPN and firewall devices from Check Point, Citrix, Palo Alto Networks and other manufacturers, according to Uncle Sam.…

Networking Giant Dubs Campaign Against Government Customers 'Arcane Door'Probable nation-state hackers targeted Cisco firewall appliances in a campaign dating to late 2023, the networking giant disclosed Wednesday while releasing three patches, two of them rated critical. Cisco doesn't connect the hackers with a specific country. It dubs the campaign "Arcane Door."

​Cisco warned today that a state-backed hacking group has been exploiting two zero-day vulnerabilities in Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) firewalls since November 2023 to breach government networks worldwide. [...]

The cyber attacks targeting the energy sector in Denmark last year may not have had the involvement of the Russia-linked Sandworm hacking group, new findings from Forescout show

"Cyclops Blink" operation disabled firewalls behind the Sandworm hacking team's network of infected victim devices.

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks leveraging a new amplification technique called TCP Middlebox Reflection have been detected for the first time in the wild, six months after the novel attack mechanism was presented in theory

Intelligence agencies in the U.K. and the U.S. disclosed details of a new botnet malware called Cyclops Blink that's been attributed to the Russian-backed Sandworm hacking group and deployed in attacks dating back to 2019