Cybersecurity Brief

ICS Flaws, Rapper Bot Arrest, and Japan Ransomware Trends

Coverage: 19 Aug 2025 (UTC)

Patches

An advisory, ICSA-25-231-02, details an improper verification of cryptographic signatures in the Siemens Mendix SAML module (CVE-2025-40758) that can enable account hijacking under specific single sign-on configurations. The affected Mendix module series span versions compatible with Mendix 9.24-, 10.12-, and 10.21-, with patched releases identified as V3.6.21, V4.0.3, and V4.1.2. The CVSS v3.1 base score is 8.7; the advisory cites high attack complexity and no known public exploitation to date. Recommended actions include updating to the fixed module versions and ensuring the UseEncryption option is enabled where applicable, alongside standard hardening guidance for minimizing control system exposure and securing remote access.

A second notice, ICSA-25-231-01, covers a local privilege escalation in the Wibu CodeMeter runtime (CVE-2025-47809) affecting Siemens Desigo CC (V5.0–V8) and SENTRON Powermanager (V5–V8). The flaw can allow an unprivileged local user to open a privileged instance of Windows Explorer immediately after installation, before a logoff or reboot, when specific conditions are met. It is not remotely exploitable but carries high impact (CVSS 8.2). The mitigation is to remove vulnerable CodeMeter runtime versions, install CodeMeter v8.30a, and restart client and server systems, alongside standard industrial control security practices and change-impact analysis.

A separate disclosure from Kaspersky summarizes the PerfektBlue vulnerability chain—four OpenSynergy Blue SDK issues (CVE-2024-45431 through CVE-2024-45434)—that can be combined to achieve remote code execution on automotive head units once a Bluetooth pairing succeeds. Exploitation abuses AVRCP to trigger an operating system error, then inherits Bluetooth privileges, potentially exposing microphones, location data, and address books, and—in some architectures—enabling movement toward CAN-connected ECUs. Patches were issued by OpenSynergy in September 2024, but distribution depends on vehicle manufacturers and dealers. Mitigations include applying available firmware updates, disabling Bluetooth when not needed, and relying on user confirmation prompts to block unauthorized pairing.

Incidents

KrebsOnSecurity reports that a 22-year-old from Oregon has been charged with operating the Rapper Bot DDoS-for-hire service, a botnet composed of tens of thousands of compromised IoT devices. According to a criminal complaint, the operation produced routine floods exceeding two terabits per second and occasionally surpassing six terabits, with more than 370,000 attacks against roughly 18,000 victims observed from April through early August 2025 across about 1,000 networks. Investigators traced infrastructure through payment and account records and recovered chat logs describing log wiping and vulnerability hunting to grow the botnet, which reused code from fBot/Satori and Mirai. The complaint links Rapper Bot to a March 10, 2025 attack that caused intermittent outages on Twitter/X. The defendant is charged with aiding and abetting computer intrusions.

Separately, the Netherlands’ Public Prosecution Service disconnected systems after signs of unauthorized access via Citrix vulnerabilities, causing collateral outages in traffic enforcement. As Bitdefender recounts, fixed speed cameras, average speed checks, and many portable cameras went offline because back-end systems were taken down during incident response; devices could not be reactivated until the threat was fully removed. The outage disrupted automated enforcement and slowed judicial processes that temporarily fell back to paper workflows.

Research

Cisco’s threat team documents a rise in ransomware activity targeting Japanese organizations. In H1 2025, Talos counted 68 incidents (roughly 1.4× H1 2024), averaging about 11 per month, with small and mid-sized enterprises making up 69% of victims. Manufacturing saw the largest share of cases. Following disruption of several prominent groups, Qilin emerged as the most active actor with eight confirmed victims. The report highlights Kawa4096’s KaWaLocker, which uses Salsa20 with chunking, registers custom file extensions and icons, supports multi-threaded and targeted encryption, attempts to delete backups and logs, and implements double extortion. Indicators and technical details are provided to support hunting and response.

Unit 42 examines how attackers are exploiting the rapid growth of web-based GenAI platforms for phishing and brand abuse. The analysis from Unit 42 notes AI use more than doubled within six months, with high-tech sectors leading adoption. Around 40% of observed phishing misuse involved AI website builders, ~30% writing assistants, and ~11% chatbots. The team identified live credential-stealing pages built on AI site generators with minimal verification and simple lures hosted on third-party writing platforms. The report recommends layered defenses, including advanced URL and DNS protections, and shares indicators to aid detection.

Platforms

AWS lowered friction for developers using open-weight models by making two OpenAI foundation models—gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b—available by default in its managed AI service. The announcement on Bedrock states that administrators retain governance through IAM and Service Control Policies. In parallel, Amazon RDS for SQL Server added Kerberos authentication with self-managed Active Directory, removing the prior requirement for AWS Managed Microsoft AD; the capability spans commercial and GovCloud regions, per the update for RDS. Together, the changes streamline AI experimentation while preserving access controls, and simplify lift-and-shift migrations for Windows-integrated authentication.

The contact center platform expanded its collaboration features: Amazon Connect now supports multi-user web, in-app, and video calling across all available regions. Agents can add participants during live calls or host scheduled sessions with audio, video, and screen sharing to keep multi-stakeholder engagements in a single interaction. The enhancement targets complex scenarios—such as joint financial or medical consultations—and prompts operational reviews around consent, recording, bandwidth, device requirements, and integration with routing and CRM workflows.

These and other news items from the day:

Tue, August 19, 2025

Oregon Man Charged Over Rapper Bot DDoS Service Probe

🔒 Federal agents arrested 22‑year‑old Ethan J. Foltz of Springfield, Ore., on Aug. 6, 2025, on suspicion of operating Rapper Bot, a global IoT botnet rented to extortionists for DDoS attacks. The complaint alleges Rapper Bot routinely generated attacks exceeding 2 terabits per second and at times surpassed 6 Tbps, including an attack tied to intermittent outages on Twitter/X. Investigators traced control infrastructure and payments through an ISP subpoena, PayPal records and Google data, recovered Telegram chats with a co‑conspirator known as 'Slaykings,' and say Foltz wiped logs regularly to hinder attribution. He faces one count of aiding and abetting computer intrusions, carrying a maximum statutory term of 10 years.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

Siemens Mendix SAML Module: Signature Verification Flaw

⚠️ The Siemens Mendix SAML module contains an improper verification of cryptographic signature that can be exploited remotely and has been assigned CVE-2025-40758 with a CVSS v3.1 base score of 8.7. Affected versions prior to V3.6.21, V4.0.3, and V4.1.2 (depending on Mendix compatibility) may allow unauthenticated attackers to hijack accounts in specific SSO configurations. Siemens recommends updating to the fixed versions, enabling UseEncryption, and reducing network exposure using firewalls and secure VPNs.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

Ransomware Incidents in Japan: H1 2025 Trends and Analysis

🔒 Cisco Talos identified a roughly 1.4× rise in ransomware incidents in Japan during H1 2025, with 68 confirmed cases versus 48 in the same period last year. Attacks continued to focus on small and medium-sized enterprises, with manufacturing the most affected sector. The report highlights active groups such as Qilin, RansomHub and Hunters International and spotlights the emerging Kawa4096/KaWaLocker family. Talos recommends layered defenses including Cisco Secure Endpoint, Secure Email and Secure Malware Analytics, and publishes IOCs for responders.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

Siemens CodeMeter Privilege Escalation in Desigo CC

🔒 Siemens has disclosed a Least Privilege Violation in the Wibu CodeMeter runtime that affects the Desigo CC product family and SENTRON Powermanager series. The issue (CVE-2025-47809) can allow local privilege escalation immediately after installation if the CodeMeter Control Center is present and not restarted. A CVSS v3.1 base score of 8.2 has been assigned. Siemens and WIBU recommend updating to CodeMeter v8.30a and restarting systems; CISA advises network segmentation and minimizing exposure.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

PerfektBlue: Bluetooth Vulnerabilities in Car Infotainment

🔒 Researchers have identified a chain of four Bluetooth vulnerabilities collectively named PerfektBlue in the OpenSynergy Blue SDK, used in millions of vehicles. An attacker that pairs via Bluetooth can exploit AVRCP flaws to execute code on the head unit and inherit its Bluetooth privileges, potentially accessing microphones, location data, and personal information. Vehicle owners should update head-unit firmware when patches are available and disable Bluetooth when not in use.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

CISA Issues Four New Industrial Control Systems Advisories

🛡️ CISA released four Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories on August 19, 2025, highlighting vulnerabilities and potential exploits that could affect operational technology environments. The advisories—ICSA-25-231-01 (Siemens Desigo CC Product Family and SENTRON Powermanager), ICSA-25-231-02 (Siemens Mendix SAML Module), ICSA-25-217-02 (Tigo Energy Cloud Connect Advanced, Update A), and ICSA-25-219-07 (EG4 Electronics EG4 Inverters, Update A)—include technical details and recommended mitigations. Users and administrators are urged to review the advisories and apply vendor guidance and mitigations promptly to reduce exposure.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

AWS auto-enables OpenAI open-weight models in Bedrock

🔓 AWS has made two OpenAI models with open weights — gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b — automatically available to all Amazon Bedrock users as of August 5, 2025. Users can access them immediately via the Amazon Bedrock console playground or the unified Bedrock API in supported regions. Administrators retain full control and can restrict usage with AWS IAM policies and Service Control Policies.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

Amazon Connect Adds Multi-User Web, In-App and Video Calling

📞 Amazon Connect now supports multi-user web, in-app, and video calling, allowing multiple participants to join the same session with an agent via browser or mobile app. Agents can dynamically add participants during live calls or host scheduled multi-party sessions, and attendees can use audio, video, and screen sharing. This feature enables richer, more inclusive interactions for scenarios such as joint financial planning, family medical consultations, and meetings with legal representatives or translators.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

Dutch prosecution hack disables multiple speed cameras

⚠️ The Netherlands' Public Prosecution Service (Openbaar Ministerie) disconnected its networks on July 17 after suspecting attackers had exploited Citrix device vulnerabilities, leaving several fixed, average and portable speed cameras unable to record offences. Internal email remained available, but external communications and documents required printing and postal delivery. Regulators including the National Cybersecurity Centre were informed, and prosecutors warned that ongoing downtime will delay cases and hamper road-safety enforcement while systems remain offline.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

Amazon MSK Expands Graviton3 M7g Support to 8 Regions

🚀 Amazon MSK now supports Graviton3-based M7g instances for Standard brokers on MSK Provisioned clusters across eight additional AWS Regions, including both AWS GovCloud regions and several Asia Pacific and European locations. M7g instances offer up to 24% lower compute costs and up to 29% higher write and read throughput versus comparable M5-based clusters. The expansion helps customers optimize performance and reduce operational expenses for production Kafka workloads.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

AWS Expands EC2 I7i Storage Instances to Europe, APAC

🔔 Amazon Web Services has made EC2 I7i storage-optimized instances available in AWS Europe (Frankfurt, London) and Asia Pacific (Malaysia, Sydney, Tokyo). Powered by 5th generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors and 3rd generation AWS Nitro SSDs, I7i delivers up to 23% better compute and >10% improved price performance versus I4i, plus up to 45TB NVMe and significant latency and IOPS gains. Eleven sizes (including two bare metal) offer up to 100 Gbps network and 60 Gbps EBS bandwidth, and a torn write prevention feature supporting 16 KB blocks helps remove database bottlenecks.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

AWS launches memory-optimized EC2 R8i and R8i-flex

🔔 AWS announced general availability of new memory-optimized Amazon EC2 R8i and R8i‑flex instances powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors. AWS says these instances deliver up to 15% better price-performance and 2.5x the memory bandwidth of prior Intel-based generations, with up to 20–60% faster results on targeted workloads. R8i provides 13 sizes including a new 96xlarge and SAP certification, while R8i‑flex offers common, cost-efficient sizes from large to 16xlarge. Instances are initially available in N. Virginia, Ohio, Oregon, and Spain and can be purchased via On‑Demand, Spot, or Savings Plans.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

GenAI-Enabled Phishing: Risks from AI Web Services

🚨 Unit 42 analyzes how rapid adoption of web-based generative AI is creating new phishing attack surfaces. Attackers are leveraging AI-powered website builders, writing assistants and chatbots to generate convincing phishing pages, clone brands and automate large-scale campaigns. Unit 42 observed real-world credential-stealing pages and misuse of trial accounts lacking guardrails. Customers are advised to use Advanced URL Filtering and Advanced DNS Security and report incidents to Unit 42 Incident Response.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

Amazon RDS for SQL Server: Kerberos via Self-Managed AD

🔐 Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for SQL Server now supports Kerberos authentication when instances are joined to a self-managed Microsoft Active Directory. Previously, Kerberos integration required AWS Managed Microsoft AD; customers can now enable Kerberos authentication with their existing on-premises or self-managed AD environments. This change simplifies migrations and preserves enterprise identity configurations while continuing to support existing integrations with AWS Managed AD. The feature is available in all AWS Commercial and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

TwelveLabs Pegasus 1.2 Now in AWS Virginia and Seoul

📹 TwelveLabs Pegasus 1.2 is now available in US East (N. Virginia) and Asia Pacific (Seoul) through Amazon Bedrock. The video-first language model is optimized for long-form content and combines visual, audio, and textual signals to deliver advanced video-to-text generation and temporal understanding. Regional availability reduces latency and simplifies architecture for enterprise video-intelligence applications. To begin, request model access via the Amazon Bedrock console.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

Why Speed and Trust Matter in Modern MDR Services Now

⚡ Top-tier managed detection and response (MDR) gives organisations 24/7 expert monitoring to detect, contain and remediate threats before they escalate. With adversaries reducing breakout times to minutes, rapid detection and containment are essential to minimise dwell time, limit blast radius and reduce breach costs. Choose MDR with AI-driven detection, proactive threat hunting and a trusted SOC team for speedy, tailored protection.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

Fortinet at Black Hat USA 2025: Innovation & Community

🔒 Fortinet played a central role at Black Hat USA 2025, engaging thousands of attendees through demos, theater sessions, and partner presentations. At Booth #2446 and the Security Fabric Theater, Fortinet highlighted integrated capabilities across secure networking, SOC transformation, endpoint protection, and CNAPP, and showcased research on adversarial AI. The program extended into DEF CON 33, reinforcing the urgency of attack surface management and rapid threat detection.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

Value Exchange in Cybersecurity: Aligning Vendors & Partners

🤝 Strong vendor–partner alignment drives faster resolution, tailored deployments and sustained security outcomes for customers. Palo Alto Networks frames this mutual commitment as the value exchange and supports it with investments such as a refreshed Learning Center for Partners to build role-based expertise. When vendors and partners operate as a unified ecosystem, platformization reduces silos, lowers total cost of ownership and enables unified visibility and faster remediation. Weak collaboration, conversely, increases downtime, cost and risk.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

AWS Achieves Standards Exceeded in NHS DSPT 2024-25

🔒 Amazon Web Services (AWS) has completed the NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit (NHS DSPT) assessment for 2024–25, achieving Standards Exceeded. The certification is valid until June 30, 2026 and is available via NHS England and AWS Artifact. NHS DSPT measures performance against the National Data Guardian’s 10 data security standards, covering Personal Confidential Data, Continuity Planning, and IT Protection. AWS emphasises that security is a shared responsibility and directs customers to its compliance resources.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

The AI Fix Episode 64: AI, robots, and industry disputes

🎧 In episode 64 of The AI Fix, hosts Graham Cluley and Mark Stockley survey a lively mix of AI breakthroughs, quirky robotics, and high-profile industry rows. Highlights include machine-learning work that uncovers unexpected results in dusty plasmas, a mudflat robocrab contest, a laundry-folding robot demo, and a contentious public spat involving Elon Musk and Sam Altman. The episode also touches on Geoffrey Hinton’s warnings about superintelligence, UK government advice on old emails, and recent research from Anthropic and Figure AI. Listeners are invited to support the show and follow on podcast platforms and Bluesky.

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Tue, August 19, 2025

JJ Cummings on Managing Sensitive Threat Intelligence

🔒 At Talos, JJ Cummings — leader of the Threat Intelligence and Interdiction team — discusses the delicate work of handling partner-provided, sensitive information while conducting nation‑state investigations. He outlines how analysts create unattributable or alternatively attributable reporting to preserve sources and still deliver operationally useful findings. JJ credits colleagues such as Matt Olney and Ryan Pentney and emphasizes his team's role as force multipliers in incident response, threat hunting, and deep analysis.

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