Federal cyber authorities issued an emergency directive Wednesday requiring federal agencies to identify and apply security updates to F5 devices after the cybersecurity vendor said a nation-state attacker had long-term, persistent access to its systems.

The order, which mandates federal civilian executive branch agencies take action by Oct. 22, marked the second emergency directive issued by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in three weeks. CISA issued both of the emergency directives months after impacted vendors were first made aware of attacks on their internal systems or products.

F5 said it first learned of unauthorized access to its systems Aug. 9, resulting in data theft including segments of BIG-IP source code and details on vulnerabilities the company was addressing internally at the time. CISA declined to say when F5 first alerted the agency to the intrusion.

CISA officials said they’re not currently aware of any federal agencies that have been compromised, but similar to the emergency directive issued following an attack spree involving zero-day vulnerabilities affecting Cisco firewalls, they expect the response and mitigation efforts to provide a better understanding of the scope of any potential compromise in federal networks.

Many federal agencies and private organizations could be impacted. CISA said there are thousands of F5 product types in use across executive branch agencies. 

These attacks on widely used vendors and their customers are part of a broader campaign targeting key elements of America’s technology supply chain, extending the potential downstream effect to federal agencies, critical infrastructure providers and government officials, Nick Andersen, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, said during a media briefing. 

CISA declined to name the country or specific threat groups behind the attack on F5’s systems. Generally, the broader goal of nation-state attackers is to maintain persistent access within the targeted victim’s network to hold those systems hostage, launch a future attack,  or gather sensitive information, Andersen said.

CISA’s order requires federal agencies to apply security patches F5 released in response to the attack, disconnect non-supported devices or services, and provide CISA a report including a detailed inventory of all instances of F5 products within scope of the directive.

Officials referred questions about the effectiveness of F5’s security patches back to the vendor and declined to independently verify if the software updates have fixed the vulnerabilities attackers gained information on during the breach. 

Neither CISA nor F5 have explained how the attackers gained access to F5’s internal systems. 

Officials repeatedly insisted that the government shutdown and multiple waves of reductions to CISA’s workforce did not negatively affect or delay the government’s ability to coordinate with partners, respond to this threat and issue the emergency directive. Andersen declined to say how many CISA employees have been dismissed with reduction-in-force orders since the federal government shut down two weeks ago. 

“This is really part of getting CISA back on mission,” Andersen said.

“While, yes, this may be the third emergency directive that’s been issued since the beginning of the Trump administration, this is the core operational mission for CISA,” Andersen said. “That’s really what we should be doing, and we’re able to continue to perform that mission in collaboration with our asset partners right now.”

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In early September, hackers stole the firewall configuration backup files stored using the MySonicWall service.

The post All SonicWall Cloud Backup Users Had Firewall Configurations Stolen appeared first on SecurityWeek.

A brute-force attack exposed firewall configuration files of every SonicWall customer who used the company’s cloud backup service, the besieged vendor said Wednesday.

An investigation aided by Mandiant confirmed the totality of compromise that occurred when unidentified attackers hit a customer-facing system of SonicWall controls. The company previously said less than 5% of its firewall install base stored backup firewall configuration files in the cloud-based service.

SonicWall did not answer questions about the extent to which the investigation revealed a more widespread impact for its customers, or if its assessment of that 5% figure remained accurate. The company initially revised its disclosure to clarify the scope of exposure was less than 5% of firewalls as of Sept. 17, but has since removed that detail from the blog post. 

“The investigation confirmed that an unauthorized party accessed firewall configuration backup files for all customers who have used SonicWall’s cloud backup service,” the company said in a statement.

The convoluted phrasing reignited criticism from threat researchers who have been tracking developments since SonicWall first reported the attack. 

Attackers accessed a “treasure trove of sensitive data, including firewall rules, encrypted credentials, routing configurations and more,” Ryan Dewhurst, head of proactive threat intelligence at watchTowr, said in an email.

“This raises questions about why the vendor didn’t implement basic protections like rate limiting and stronger controls around public APIs,” he added. 

SonicWall customers have confronted a barrage of actively exploited vulnerabilities in SonicWall devices for years. 

Fourteen defects affecting the vendor’s products have been added to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s known exploited vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog since late 2021. Nine of those defects are known to be used in ransomware campaigns, according to CISA, including a wave of about 40 Akira ransomware attacks between mid-July and early August.

While those attacks were linked to exploited vulnerabilities in SonicWall devices, the latest attack marked a direct hit on SonicWall’s internal infrastructure and practices.

The company said it has notified all impacted customers, released tools to assist with threat detection and remediation and encouraged all customers to log in to the MySonicWall.com platform to check for potential exposure.

“Although the passwords were encrypted, attackers have all the time in the world to crack them offline at their leisure,” Dewhurst said. 

“If the passwords used were weak in the first place, it’s almost certain that the threat actor has the plaintext versions already,” he added. “If the threat actor is unable to crack the passwords, you’re not out of the woods, as the information leaked will help in more complex targeted attacks.”

SonicWall said it has implemented additional security hardening measures and is working with Mandiant to improve the security of its cloud infrastructure and monitoring systems.

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Leading to remote code execution and privilege escalation, the flaws were exploited on Cisco ASA 5500-X series devices that lack secure boot.

The post Cisco Firewall Zero-Days Exploited in China-Linked ArcaneDoor Attacks appeared first on SecurityWeek.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency acknowledged it’s yet to get a complete handle on the scope and impact of attacks involving Cisco zero-day vulnerabilities that prompted it to release an emergency directive Thursday. 

The attack timeline dates back almost a year, according to an investigation Cisco and federal authorities did behind the scenes to identify the root cause and then coordinate the issuance of patches to address software defects under active exploitation. 

“We observed initial activity that we believe was related back in November,” Chris Butera, acting deputy executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, said during a media briefing Thursday. “It started off as reconnaissance activity on these types of devices, and that’s what kicked off back in November.”

That malicious activity — read-only memory modification — “began as early as November 2024, if not earlier,” he said. 

CISA said it’s aware of hundreds of Cisco firewalls in use across the federal government that are potentially susceptible to exploitation. The mandated steps outlined in the emergency directive will help the agency understand the full scope of those devices and the extent of compromise across federal agencies, Butera said.

Critical infrastructure operators are also likely affected, and CISA is asking those organizations to report incidents as they are confirmed, Butera said. 

He also addressed a considerable delay from discovery to disclosure. Cisco said it initiated an incident response investigation into the attacks on multiple federal agencies in May, but four months passed before it disclosed the malicious activity and patched the zero-day vulnerabilities. 

During that time, CISA chose to hold off on releasing the emergency directive, which requires federal agencies to take immediate action by the end of Friday. 

“With any vulnerability coordination, it takes some time to properly understand what that vulnerability is and whether that vulnerability is being exploited, and some time for the vendors to develop a patch to mitigate that,” Butera said. “So the timeline involved both investigation and patch development for that process.”

He added that CISA and Cisco collaborated to implement mitigation steps and remediate the malicious activity. The agency also worked with Cisco through the coordinated vulnerability disclosure process “so we could appropriately address the risk as fully as possible during this time,” Butera said.

Federal officials are concerned attacks may accelerate or shift in the wake of CISA’s effort to prod agencies to thwart the threat. 

“As soon as these vulnerabilities are released to the threat actor, we believe the threat actor will likely try to pivot and change tactics,” Butera said. “We think it’s really important for our organization to try to detect that threat actor activity as quickly as possible, so that is what’s driving the tight timeline.” 

Officials declined to discuss the attackers’ origins or motivations in detail. Butera said CISA is not focused on attribution at this time, and he did not confirm research from outside threat intelligence firms pinning the espionage attacks on a China state-affiliated threat group tracked as UAT4356 and Storm-1849. 

Butera said the espionage attacks linked to the Cisco zero-day vulnerabilities are separate and not connected to the widespread and ongoing China state-sponsored attack spree Mandiant and Google Threat Intelligence Group researchers warned about Wednesday. Those attacks also involve exploitation of network edge devices.

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Federal cyber authorities sounded a rare alarm Thursday, issuing an emergency directive about an ongoing and widespread attack spree involving actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities affecting Cisco firewalls. 

Cisco said it began investigating attacks on multiple government agencies linked to the state-sponsored campaign in May. The vendor, which attributes the attacks to the same threat group behind an early 2024 campaign targeting Cisco devices it dubbed “ArcaneDoor,” said the new zero-days were exploited to “implant malware, execute commands, and potentially exfiltrate data from the compromised devices.” 

Cisco disclosed three vulnerabilities affecting its Adaptive Security Appliances  — CVE-2025-20333, CVE-2025-20363 and CVE-2025-20362 — but said “evidence collected strongly indicates CVE-2025-20333 and CVE-2025-20362 were used by the attacker in the current attack campaign.” 

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said those two zero-days pose an “unacceptable risk” to federal agencies and require immediate action. 

Federal agencies are required to hunt for evidence of compromise, report findings and disconnect compromised devices by the end of Friday. Agencies running Cisco ASA firewalls are also required to apply Cisco’s patches or permanently disconnect end-of-life devices by the end of Friday.

“CISA is directing federal agencies to take immediate action due to the alarming ease with which a threat actor can exploit these vulnerabilities, maintain persistence on the device, and gain access to a victim’s network,” CISA Acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala said in a statement.

Cisco did not fully explain why it waited four months from its initial response to the attacks on federal agencies to disclose the malicious activity and patch the zero-day vulnerabilities. 

The attackers “employed advanced evasion techniques such as disabling logging, intercepting command-line interface commands, and intentionally crashing devices to prevent diagnostic analysis. The complexity and sophistication of this incident required an extensive, multi-disciplinary response across Cisco’s engineering and security teams,” the company said. 

CISA did not immediately respond to questions about why it waited four months to issue an emergency directive.

The agency described the campaign as widespread, resulting in remote-code execution and manipulation of read-only memory that persists through reboots and system upgrades. While CISA’s emergency directive only applies to federal agencies, the private sector often follows these urgent warnings closely.

“The same risks apply to any organizations using these devices. We strongly urge all entities to adopt the actions outlined in this emergency directive,” Gottumukkala said.

Cisco and CISA did not attribute the espionage attacks to a specific nation state, but Censys researchers previously said it found compelling evidence indicating a threat group based in China was behind the ArcaneDoor campaign last year. Censys noted it found evidence of multiple major Chinese networks and Chinese-developed anti-censorship software during its investigation into the early 2024 attacks.

The latest attacks initiated by the espionage group, tracked as UAT4356 by Cisco Talos and Storm-1849 by Microsoft Threat Intelligence, are a continuation or resurgence of that previous campaign involving new zero-days. 

Cisco said remote attackers can “gain full control of an affected device” by chaining together the vulnerabilities, two of which are designated as critical. 

When Storm-1849 was first identified in early 2024, the espionage group was targeting international entities, according to Sam Rubin, senior vice president of Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42. Unit 42 also considers Storm-1849 to be affiliated with China.

“Over the past year, Unit 42 has observed them evolve their toolkit and in recent months their focus has shifted towards entities in the United States,” he said. “As we have seen before, now that patches are available, we can expect attacks to escalate as cybercriminal groups quickly figure out how to take advantage of these vulnerabilities.”

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The company sent a new preferences file to less than 5% of customers, urging them to import it into firewalls and reset their passwords.

The post SonicWall Prompts Password Resets After Hackers Obtain Firewall Configurations appeared first on SecurityWeek.

SonicWall said it confirmed an attack on its MySonicWall.com platform that exposed customers’ firewall configuration files — the latest in a steady stream of security weaknesses impacting the besieged vendor and its customers.

The company’s security teams began investigating suspicious activity and validated the attack “in the past few days,” Bret Fitzgerald, senior director of global communications at SonicWall, told CyberScoop. “Our investigation determined that less than 5% of our firewall install base had backup firewall preference files stored in the cloud for these devices accessed by threat actors.”

While SonicWall customers have been repeatedly bombarded by actively exploited vulnerabilities in SonicWall devices, this attack marks a new pressure point — an attack on a customer-facing system the company controls.

This distinction is significant because it indicates systemic security shortcomings exist throughout SonicWall’s product lines, internal infrastructure and practices. 

“Incidents like this underscore the importance of security vendors — not just SonicWall — to hold themselves to the same or higher standards that they expect of their customers,” Mauricio Sanchez, senior director of enterprise security and networking research at Dell’Oro Group, told CyberScoop. 

“When the compromise occurs in a vendor-operated system rather than a customer-deployed product, the consequences can be particularly damaging because trust in the vendor’s broader ecosystem is at stake,” he added. 

SonicWall acknowledged the potential downstream risk for customers is severe. “While the files contained encrypted passwords, they also included information that could make it easier for attackers to potentially exploit firewalls,” Fitzgerald said. 

“This was not a ransomware or similar event for SonicWall, rather this was a series of account-by-account brute force attacks aimed at gaining access to the preference files stored in backup for potential further use by threat actors,” he added. 

SonicWall did not identify or name those responsible for the attack, adding that it hasn’t seen evidence of any online leaks of the stolen files. The company said it disabled access to the backup feature, took steps across infrastructure and processes to bolster the security of its systems and initiated an investigation with assistance from an incident response and consulting firm. 

Sanchez described the breach as a serious issue. “These files often contain detailed network architecture, rules, and policies that could provide attackers with a roadmap to exploit weaknesses more efficiently,” he said. “While resetting credentials is a necessary first step, it does not address the potential long-term risks tied to the information already in adversaries’ hands.”

SonicWall said it has notified law enforcement, impacted customers and partners. Customers can check if impacted serial numbers are listed in their MySonicWall account, and those determined to be at risk are advised to reset credentials, contain, remediate and monitor logs for unusual activity.

Many vendors allow customers to store configuration data in cloud-managed portals, a practice that introduces inherent risks, Sanchez said. 

“Vendors must continuously weigh the convenience provided against the potential consequences of compromise, and customers should hold them accountable to strong transparency and remediation practices when incidents occur,” he added.

Organizations using SonicWall firewalls have confronted persistent attack sprees for years, as evidenced by the vendor’s 14 appearances on CISA’s known exploited vulnerabilities catalog since late 2021. Nine of those defects are known to be used in ransomware campaigns, according to CISA, including a recent wave of about 40 Akira ransomware attacks. 

Fitzgerald said SonicWall is committed to full transparency and the company will share updates as its investigation continues.

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Cisco disclosed a maximum-severity vulnerability affecting its Secure Firewall Management Center Software that could allow unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary shell commands and execute high-privilege commands, the vendor said in a security advisory Thursday. 

The enterprise networking vendor said it discovered the vulnerability — CVE-2025-20265 — during internal security testing. Cisco released a patch for the defect along with a series of 29 vulnerabilities in other Cisco Secure technologies. 

“To date, Cisco’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) is not aware of any malicious use or exploitation of this vulnerability, and we strongly urge customers to upgrade to update releases,” a Cisco spokesperson told CyberScoop. “If an immediate upgrade is not feasible, implement a mitigation as outlined in the advisory.”

The disclosure marks yet another vulnerability in a widely used edge technology — a common and persistent point of intrusion for attackers. Edge technologies, including VPNs, firewalls and routers, harbored the four most frequently exploited vulnerabilities in 2024, according to Mandiant’s M-Trends report released earlier this year. 

“Anytime you see ‘remote, unauthenticated command injection,’ you should be concerned,” Nathaniel Jones, VP of security and AI strategy at Darktrace, told CyberScoop. “These are exactly the types of vulnerabilities that pose significant danger because they are highly attractive to nation-state actors like Salt Typhoon — and such groups are likely to move quickly to exploit them.” 

Darktrace hasn’t observed exploitation in the wild, nor is it aware of a proof-of-concept exploit. “But, this type of vulnerability means the clock is ticking. I’d bet a proof-of-concept is available come Monday,” Jones said. 

The remote-code execution vulnerability, which has a CVSS rating of 10, involves improper handling of user input during the authentication phase. “For this vulnerability to be exploited, Cisco Secure FMC Software must be configured for RADIUS (remote authentication dial-in user service) authentication for the web-based management interface, SSH (secure shell) management, or both,” Cisco said in the advisory.

The vulnerability affects Cisco Secure FMC Software versions 7.0.7 and 7.7.0 with RADIUS authentication enabled. The platform allows customers to configure, monitor, manage and update firewall controls. 

“The vulnerability means that no credential is needed nor proximity, and you can get full privileges,” Jones added. “The improper-input handling could let an attacker craft authentic packets containing malicious payloads that escape the intended command context and run arbitrary OS commands.”

The vendor said there are no workarounds for the vulnerability, and it confirmed the defect does not affect Cisco Secure Firewall Adaptive Security Appliance Software or Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Software.

Jones said the maximum-severity vulnerability accentuates the unflattering security posture of edge devices and their development lifecycles. “It just reinforces why they’re attacked — because they sit at network boundaries where attackers can reach them without stepping inside first, often have high privileges and broad visibility and the gatekeeper can bypass multiple layers of security at once,” he said.

Cisco encouraged customers to determine exposure to CVE-2025-20265 and other vulnerabilities by running the Cisco Software Checker, which identifies vulnerabilities impacting specific software releases.

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SonicWall warned customers to disable encryption services on Gen 7 firewalls in the wake of an active attack spree targeting a yet-to-be identified vulnerability affecting a critical firewall service. Attacks have increased notably since Friday, the company said in a blog post.

Threat hunters and incident responders from Arctic Wolf, Google and Huntress have observed a wave of ransomware attacks beginning as early as July 15. Mounting evidence points to a zero-day vulnerability affecting the secure sockets layer (SSL) VPN protocol as the initial attack vector.

“A financially motivated threat actor is actively compromising victim environments and deploying Akira ransomware,” Charles Carmakal, CTO at Mandiant Consulting, said in a LinkedIn post Tuesday. “The speed and scale of the compromises suggests a potential zero-day vulnerability in SonicWall Gen 7 firewalls.”

SonicWall said an ongoing investigation has yet to determine if the attacks involve a previously disclosed vulnerability or a zero-day. “If a new vulnerability is confirmed, we will release updated firmware and guidance as quickly as possible,” Bret Fitzgerald, senior director of global communications at SonicWall, told CyberScoop.

Researchers from multiple security companies confirmed attackers have intruded and compromised customer networks, even in environments with multi-factor authentication enabled.

Attackers are moving swiftly, pivoting directly to domain controllers within hours and deploying ransomware after short dwell times, Huntress said in a threat advisory Monday. The company said it has observed about 20 attacks, occurring in almost daily bursts, starting July 25.

Huntress said post-compromise techniques span a mix of automated scripts and hands-on keyboard activities prior to Akira ransomware deployment. This includes the abuse of privileged accounts for administrative access, backdoor implants, lateral movements to steal credentials from multiple databases and a methodical disablement of security tools and firewalls. 

Multiple attackers have gained access to internal networks via SonicWall devices. While there are some similarities across the various attacks, Huntress also noted some differences, suggesting multiple threat groups might be involved or attackers are adapting to situations upon gaining access.  

SonicWall, a repeat offender

The active mass exploitation targeting SonicWall firewalls underscores the persistent risk the vendor’s customers have confronted for years. SonicWall has 14 entries on the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s known exploited vulnerabilities catalog since late 2021.

The more recent and ongoing attacks are targeting a next-generation firewall, unlike last month’s series of financially motivated attacks targeting organizations using fully patched, but outdated SonicWall Secure Mobile Access 100 series appliances. Half of the exploited vulnerabilities on CISA’s catalog affect SonicWall SMA 100 appliances, including three of the four defects actively exploited this year. 

SonicWall’s recommendation to disable SSLVPN on Gen 7 firewalls, which allows users to establish encrypted connections to the corporate network, serves as an acknowledgment that the critical service can’t be trusted to serve its primary purpose. Many organizations require employees to access their corporate network via VPN.

SonicWall’s SSLVPN was the root of the problem in at least three actively exploited vulnerabilities on CISA’s known exploited vulnerabilities catalog, including CVE-2024-53704, CVE-2023-44221 and CVE-2021-20016. 

Akira ransomware impacted more than 250 organizations, claiming about $42 million in extortion payments from March 2023 to January 2024, CISA said in an advisory last year. Officials said Akira operators steal data and encrypt systems before threatening to publish data. Some Akira affiliates have also called victimized companies to apply further pressure, according to the FBI.

An investigation into the root cause of the attacks and origins of those responsible is ongoing.

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Kent Ickler & Jordan Drysdale // BHIS Webcast and Podcast This post accompanies BHIS’s webcast recorded on August 7, 2018, Active Directory Best Practices to Frustrate Attackers, which you can view below. […]

The post Active Directory Best Practices to Frustrate Attackers: Webcast & Write-up appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..