Cybersecurity Brief

Cloud Guardrails, KEV Updates, and Red Hat Breach Lead the Day

Coverage: 02 Oct 2025 (UTC)

Cloud and AI platforms emphasized preventive controls and tooling. AWS introduced enforceable data access budgets in Clean Rooms, and AWS expanded PrivateLink to Secrets Manager FIPS endpoints to reduce network exposure. In parallel, Google Cloud moved key generative media models to GA on Vertex AI, signaling a broader push toward hardened, production‑ready AI services.

Guardrails for shared data and secrets

Clean Rooms’ new budgets let administrators cap how often collaborator tables are analyzed across SQL jobs, PySpark, and custom ML workflows. The control adds a quantifiable enforcement point that supports governance and compliance objectives while helping limit unnecessary data reuse and cost; analyses are blocked when a budget is exhausted until it refreshes or is reset. In regulated and data‑sensitive collaborations, this complements the service’s privacy‑preserving design with a practical usage limit that can be aligned to policy.

Secrets Manager connectivity over PrivateLink is now available for FIPS endpoints across commercial Regions and AWS GovCloud (US). By keeping traffic on the provider’s internal network, organizations handling sensitive workloads can meet stricter data‑in‑transit and network‑exposure requirements without relying on internet egress, NAT gateways, or public proxies. Teams should review VPC endpoint policies, IAM scoping, and auditing to ensure least‑privilege access.

An open‑source Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Bedrock AgentCore surfaced as a portability play. AWS positions MCP as a vendor‑neutral contract between agentic IDEs, coding assistants, and the AgentCore runtime, with one‑click install, natural‑language workflows to iteratively author behavior, and transforms into the AgentCore SDK. For enterprise teams, a standard interface can simplify inspection, transformation, and deployment of agents across tools, while central governance and versioning remain essential.

AI platforms add production‑ready options

Vertex AI expanded generative media capabilities as Google Cloud announced Imagen 4 and Gemini 2.5 Flash Image as GA, with Veo 3 and Gemini 2.5 TTS receiving format, duration, and multilingual dialogue enhancements. The upgrades target enterprise creators with controls for batch processing, photorealism, vertical formats, and studio‑quality multi‑speaker output across more than 70 languages.

On the retrieval side, Bedrock added Cohere Embed v4, a multimodal embedding model tuned for text, images, and complex business documents. It tolerates real‑world imperfections and supports 100+ languages, reducing preprocessing overhead and improving relevance for specialized verticals such as finance, healthcare, and manufacturing. Why it matters: enterprise content such as tables, diagrams, and handwritten notes becomes easier to index and search without heavy normalization.

Patching priorities and active exploitation

CISA added five entries to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog: CVE-2014-6278 (GNU Bash command injection), CVE-2015-7755 (Juniper ScreenOS improper authentication), CVE-2017-1000353 (Jenkins RCE), CVE-2025-4008 (Smartbedded Meteobridge command injection), and CVE-2025-21043 (Samsung mobile out‑of‑bounds write). The update triggers remediation timelines for federal agencies under BOD 22‑01 and is a clear prioritization signal for all organizations to inventory affected assets, apply vendor fixes or mitigations, and tighten monitoring.

Separately, DrayTek warned that multiple Vigor router models are affected by CVE-2025-10547, an unauthenticated HTTP/HTTPS WebUI flaw that can lead to memory corruption and potential RCE. The reporter demonstrated a working proof‑of‑concept; firmware updates are available per model, and administrators should patch and restrict remote management exposure. In Kubernetes environments, a severe RBAC issue in OpenShift AI drew attention: CSOonline reports an overly permissive ClusterRole (CVE-2025-10725; NVD CVSS 9.9) enabling authenticated users to escalate to cluster‑admin. Red Hat recommends removing a broad ClusterRoleBinding, tightening job‑creation rights, and upgrading to fixed images (RHOAI 2.19/2.21).

Incidents and supply‑chain threats persist

BleepingComputer reports that Red Hat acknowledged a security incident involving a GitLab instance used for consulting engagements, after a group claimed to have exfiltrated a large volume of internal repositories and Customer Engagement Reports. Red Hat said it has initiated remediation and has no reason to believe other services or its software supply chain are impacted; the company did not validate the attackers’ specific claims.

Developer ecosystems also faced attacks. An AWS Security analysis outlines September npm incidents—including compromised maintainers of widely used packages and the Shai‑Hulud worm’s credential harvesting, malicious package publication, and GitHub Actions abuse—along with immediate response steps (dependency audits, secret rotation) and long‑term hardening (SBOMs, pinned versions, scoped tokens, CI/CD isolation). In parallel, Talos details UAT‑8099, a Chinese‑speaking group compromising high‑reputation IIS servers to run SEO fraud and harvest credentials and certificates using BadIIS variants, web shells, reverse proxies, and credential theft tooling. Why it matters: these campaigns exploit trusted infrastructure and routine developer workflows, amplifying downstream risk to users and services.

These and other news items from the day:

Thu, October 2, 2025

Open-Source MCP Server for Amazon Bedrock AgentCore

🚀 The open-source Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server is now available for Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, providing a standardized interface that enables developers to analyze, transform, and deploy production-ready AI agents within their preferred development environments. The release includes one-click installation and integrates with agentic IDEs like Kiro and AI coding assistants such as Claude Code, Cursor, and the Amazon Q Developer CLI. Developers can use natural language to iteratively build agents, convert agent logic to the AgentCore SDK, and deploy into development accounts. Documentation and installation instructions are published in the MCP Server GitHub repository, with additional implementation guidance and pricing details available in the AgentCore documentation and pricing resources.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Google Cloud Releases Generative Media Models on Vertex AI

🎨Google Cloud announced General Availability and feature updates for its generative media models on Vertex AI, including Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, Veo 3, Imagen 4, and Gemini 2.5 TTS. The release emphasizes production readiness and enterprise security while adding multi‑aspect ratio image generation, batch image processing, vertical 9:16 video formats with precise duration controls, and studio‑quality multi‑speaker text‑to‑speech across 70+ languages. These enhancements target teams seeking faster, controlled, and scalable cross‑format media workflows for sight, sound, and motion.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

AWS Clean Rooms Adds Data Access Budgets and Limits

🔒 AWS Clean Rooms now supports data access budgets for tables in a collaboration, letting data owners limit how often their data can be analyzed for custom ML training, inference, SQL queries, or PySpark jobs. Administrators can set daily, weekly, or monthly refresh budgets, lifetime caps, or both; once a budget is exhausted the system blocks further analyses until the budget refreshes. Budgets may be edited or reset at any time to suit changing needs. This privacy control reduces unintended data exposure while maintaining collaborative analysis.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Cohere Embed v4 Multimodal Embeddings on Amazon Bedrock

🚀 Amazon Bedrock now supports Cohere Embed v4, a multimodal embedding model that generates high-quality embeddings for text, images, and complex business documents. The model natively processes tables, charts, diagrams, code snippets, and handwritten notes, reducing the need for extensive preprocessing and data cleanup. It supports over 100 languages and includes industry fine-tuning for finance, healthcare, and manufacturing. Cohere Embed v4 is available for on-demand inference in select AWS Regions; access is requested via the Bedrock console.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

AWS Secrets Manager PrivateLink Support for FIPS Endpoints

🔐 AWS Secrets Manager now supports AWS PrivateLink with all Secrets Manager Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) endpoints available in commercial AWS Regions and the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. With this launch you can establish a private connection between your VPC and Secrets Manager FIPS endpoints instead of connecting over the public internet. This capability helps organizations meet compliance and regulatory requirements that limit public internet connectivity.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Critical RBAC Flaw in Red Hat OpenShift AI Risks Clusters

⚠ Red Hat has patched a design flaw in OpenShift AI (CVE-2025-10725) with a CVSS score of 9.9 that can let an authenticated low-privilege user escalate to full cluster administrator and fully compromise clusters and hosted applications. The vulnerability stems from an overly permissive ClusterRole binding that grants broad permissions to system:authenticated. Red Hat advises removing the kueue-batch-user-role ClusterRoleBinding, tightening job-creation permissions to follow least privilege, and upgrading to fixed RHOAI images (2.19 and 2.21). Administrators should audit affected environments and apply the recommended fixes promptly.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Defending Against npm Supply Chain Threats and Worms

🔒 In September, attackers used stolen maintainer credentials to inject malicious payloads into widely used npm packages such as chalk and debug, followed by the self‑propagating Shai‑Hulud worm that harvested npm tokens, GitHub PATs, and cloud credentials. The compromised packages and postinstall scripts allowed silent interception of cryptocurrency activity and automated propagation across developer environments. AWS recommends immediate actions: audit dependencies, rotate secrets, inspect CI/CD pipelines for unauthorized workflows or injected scripts, and use Amazon Inspector to detect malicious packages and share validated intelligence with OpenSSF.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

CISA Adds Five Vulnerabilities to KEV Catalog — Oct 2025

🔔 CISA has added five vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog after observing evidence of active exploitation. The additions are CVE-2014-6278 (GNU Bash), CVE-2015-7755 (Juniper ScreenOS), CVE-2017-1000353 (Jenkins), CVE-2025-4008 (Smartbedded Meteobridge), and CVE-2025-21043 (Samsung mobile). Under BOD 22-01, Federal Civilian Executive Branch agencies must remediate cataloged CVEs by their due dates; CISA urges all organizations to prioritize timely mitigation and patching.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

UAT-8099 Targets High-Value IIS Servers for SEO Fraud

🔍 Cisco Talos details UAT-8099, a Chinese-speaking cybercrime group that compromises reputable IIS servers to conduct SEO fraud and steal high-value credentials, certificates and configuration files. The actors exploit file-upload weaknesses to deploy ASP.NET web shells, enable RDP, create hidden administrative accounts and install VPN/reverse-proxy tools for persistence. They automate operations with custom scripts, deploy Cobalt Strike via DLL sideloading and install multiple BadIIS variants to manipulate search rankings and redirect mobile users to ads or gambling sites. Talos published IoCs, Snort/ClamAV signatures and mitigation guidance.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Red Hat Confirms Security Incident After GitHub Claims

🔒 An extortion group calling itself Crimson Collective claims to have exfiltrated nearly 570GB of compressed data from about 28,000 private GitHub repositories, including roughly 800 Customer Engagement Reports (CERs). Red Hat confirmed a security incident tied to its consulting business but would not validate the attackers’ specific claims, saying it has initiated remediation and sees no indication the issue affects its products or software supply chain. The group published directory listings and alleges finding authentication tokens and full database URIs that could be used to access downstream customer infrastructure.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Red Hat Confirms GitLab Breach Affecting Consulting

🔒 Red Hat confirmed a security incident after an extortion group calling itself the Crimson Collective claimed to have stolen nearly 570GB of compressed data from roughly 28,000 internal repositories in a GitLab instance used solely for consulting engagements. The group alleges the haul includes about 800 Customer Engagement Reports (CERs) that may contain infrastructure details, authentication tokens, and database URIs. Red Hat says it is remediating the issue, has not verified the attackers' specific claims, and believes its software supply chain and other services remain unaffected.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

DrayTek warns of RCE vulnerability in Vigor routers

🔒 DrayTek has issued an advisory for Vigor routers after a researcher reported a remotely triggerable vulnerability (CVE-2025-10547) that can cause memory corruption and may allow arbitrary code execution via crafted HTTP/HTTPS requests to the device WebUI. Reported on July 22 by ChapsVision researcher Pierre-Yves Maes, the root cause is an uninitialized stack value that can be abused to force an arbitrary free() and achieve RCE, and Maes successfully tested an exploit. DrayTek provides firmware versions to mitigate the issue and recommends applying updates promptly while reducing WAN exposure by disabling or restricting remote WebUI/SSL VPN access.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Raise3D Pro2 Series Authentication Bypass Advisory

⚠️ CISA warns of a high-severity authentication bypass in Raise3D Pro2 Series 3D printers caused by an unauthenticated debug port that can expose the device file system. The flaw, CVE-2025-10653, has a CVSS v4 score of 8.8 and is remotely exploitable with low complexity when developer mode is enabled. Raise3D is developing firmware fixes; users should disable developer mode and limit network access until patched.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Android spyware targeting Signal and ToTok users in UAE

🔒 ESET researchers uncovered two previously undocumented Android spyware families—Android/Spy.ProSpy and Android/Spy.ToSpy—distributed via deceptive websites that impersonate Signal, ToTok and even app stores. Both families require manual APK installation from third‑party sites and maintain persistence while exfiltrating contacts, media, documents and chat backups. ToSpy notably seeks .ttkmbackup files and uses AES‑CBC encryption with a hardcoded key; several C&C servers remained active. Google Play Protect already blocks known variants, and ESET shared findings with Google.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

US Government Shutdown Threatens Federal Cybersecurity

⚠️ The US government shutdown will sharply reduce federal cybersecurity capacity, with CISA set to furlough approximately 1,651 of its 2,540 staff (about 65%), leaving only 889 employees, and NIST estimated to retain roughly 34% of its workforce. Core functions such as vulnerability management, guidance, the CVE program and website operations will be curtailed until appropriations resume. The pause raises immediate operational risks, complicates incident response and increases opportunities for threat actors and fraud.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Confucius Espionage: Evolution from Stealer to Backdoor

🔐 FortiGuard Labs documents the Confucius espionage group’s shift from document-stealing malware to a stealthy Python-based backdoor targeting Microsoft Windows. Recent campaigns used spear-phishing with weaponized Office PPSX files, malicious LNK loaders, and staged PowerShell installers to deploy runtimes and execute AnonDoor modules. The actor leveraged DLL side-loading, scheduled tasks, and HKCU registry Load persistence to maintain stealth and periodic execution. Fortinet urges layered defenses, updated signatures, and user training to mitigate these threats.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Hitachi Energy MSM: XSS and Assertion Vulnerabilities

⚠️ Hitachi Energy reports multiple vulnerabilities in the MSM product that are exploitable remotely with low attack complexity. An XSS flaw in the EmbedThis GoAhead goform/formTest endpoint (name parameter) can allow HTML injection, while an assertion in open62541's fuzz_binary_decode can cause a crash. CVE-2023-53155 (CVSS 7.2) and CVE-2024-53429 (CVSS 7.5) are assigned. Vendors and CISA recommend disconnecting affected devices from internet-facing networks and following product-specific guidance.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Researchers Find Physical Interposer Attacks on Intel, AMD

🔓 Researchers disclosed two physical interposer attacks—Battering RAM and Wiretrap—that bypass Trusted Execution Enclaves on Intel (SGX) and AMD (SEV‑SNP) platforms. Both attacks exploit deterministic memory encryption by inserting an interposer between CPU and DRAM to capture ciphertext in transit. Battering RAM can replay ciphertext and create memory aliases to expose plaintext and implant backdoors, while Wiretrap enables ciphertext-based key recovery. Practical mitigation today is limited to preventing physical access and strengthening supply‑chain and data‑center controls such as those in ISO/IEC 27001.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Chinese-speaking Group UAT-8099 Targets IIS Servers

🔐 Cisco Talos recently disclosed activity by a Chinese-speaking cybercrime group tracked as UAT-8099 that compromises legitimate Internet Information Services (IIS) web servers across several countries. The actors use automation, custom malware and persistence techniques to manipulate search results for profit and to exfiltrate sensitive data such as credentials and certificates. Talos notes the group maintains long-term access and actively protects compromised hosts from rival attackers. Organizations should hunt for signs of BadIIS, unauthorized web shells and anomalous RDP/VPN activity and share IOCs promptly.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

New MatrixPDF Phishing Technique Targets Gmail Users

📄 Researchers at Varonis have identified a sophisticated phishing toolkit called MatrixPDF that embeds prompts, JavaScript, and external redirects inside seemingly legitimate PDF files to target Gmail users. Attackers exploit Gmail's preview and desktop PDF readers: a blurred preview displays a prompt to 'open secure document' that directs victims to external payloads, while embedded scripts can fetch malware if a user grants permission. Because the malicious content is only retrieved after user interaction, Gmail's automated scanners and attachment sandboxes can be bypassed. Security experts recommend stronger webmail controls, robust attachment sandboxing, endpoint detection, and frequent, realistic user awareness training.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Android Spyware Posing as Signal Plugin and ToTok Pro

⚠️ Researchers at ESET have uncovered two Android spyware campaigns, ProSpy and ToSpy, that masquerade as a Signal encryption plugin and a ToTok Pro upgrade to target users in the U.A.E. Distributed via fake websites and social engineering, these apps require manual installation and request extensive permissions to persist and exfiltrate contacts, messages, media and device data. Users are advised to avoid installing apps from unofficial sources and to disable installations from unknown origins.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Android spyware campaigns impersonate Signal and ToTok

🔒 Two newly identified Android spyware campaigns, dubbed ProSpy and ToSpy, impersonate Signal and ToTok to trick users into installing malicious APKs masquerading as a Signal encryption plugin or a Pro ToTok build. The malware requests standard messenger permissions and exfiltrates contacts, SMS, media, app lists and ToTok backups. ESET found distribution via cloned websites and noted persistence techniques to survive reboots. Users in the UAE appear to be targeted; download apps only from official stores or publishers and keep Play Protect enabled.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

ThreatsDay Bulletin: Exploits Target Cars, Cloud, Browsers

🔔 From unpatched vehicles to hijacked clouds, this ThreatsDay bulletin outlines active threats and defensive moves across endpoints, cloud, browsers, and vehicles. Observers reported internet-wide scans exploiting PAN-OS GlobalProtect (CVE-2024-3400) and campaigns that use weak MS‑SQL credentials to deploy XiebroC2 for persistent access. New AirBorne CarPlay/iAP2 flaws can chain to take over Apple CarPlay in some cases without user interaction, while attackers quietly poison browser preferences to sideload malicious extensions. On defence, Google announced AI-driven ransomware detection for Drive and Microsoft plans an Edge revocation feature to curb sideloaded threats.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Google, Mandiant Probe Extortion Claims Targeting Oracle EBS

📧 Google Mandiant and the Google Threat Intelligence Group report a new high-volume extortion campaign that claims stolen data from Oracle E-Business Suite. The operation began on or before September 29, 2025, uses hundreds of compromised accounts, and includes contact addresses verified on the Cl0p data leak site. Mandiant notes at least one sending account has ties to FIN11, a TA505 subset. Investigations are ongoing and organizations are urged to inspect for compromise.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Amazon EC2 Instance Connect Endpoint Adds IPv6 Support

🌐 Amazon EC2 Instance Connect Endpoint now supports IPv6 connectivity. Customers can configure endpoints as dual-stack or IPv6-only to connect to instances with IPv6 addresses and continue using SSH and RDP without public IPv4 addresses. The capability is available in all AWS Commercial Regions, AWS GovCloud (US), and China Regions and works via the AWS Console, AWS CLI, and standard SSH/RDP clients. It maintains backward compatibility with existing IPv4 deployments.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Malicious PyPI soopsocks package abused to install backdoor

⚠️ Cybersecurity researchers flagged a malicious PyPI package named soopsocks that claimed to provide a SOCKS5 proxy while delivering stealthy backdoor functionality on Windows. The package, uploaded by user 'soodalpie' on September 26, 2025, had 2,653 downloads before removal and used VBScript or an executable (_AUTORUN.VBS/_AUTORUN.EXE) to bootstrap additional payloads. Analysts at JFrog reported the executable is a compiled Go binary that runs PowerShell, adjusts firewall rules, elevates privileges, performs reconnaissance and exfiltrates data to a hard-coded Discord webhook.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Clop-Linked Extortion Emails Claim Oracle E-Business Theft

📧 Mandiant and Google are tracking a high-volume extortion email campaign that began on or before September 29, 2025, in which executives received messages claiming sensitive data was stolen from Oracle E-Business Suite systems. The emails are being sent from hundreds of compromised accounts and include contact addresses tied to the Clop data leak site, indicating a potential connection to the Clop/FIN11 extortion operation. Investigators caution there is not yet sufficient evidence to confirm actual data theft and recommend organizations check their Oracle environments for unusual access or compromise.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

AWS Directory Service: Programmatic Edition Upgrades

🔁 AWS now lets customers upgrade Managed Microsoft AD from Standard to Enterprise Edition programmatically using the UpdateDirectorySetup API. The self-service workflow removes the need to open support tickets and automates pre-upgrade snapshots and sequential domain controller upgrades to preserve availability. Edition upgrades are available via the AWS SDK in all Directory Service regions and can be integrated with existing automation and infrastructure-as-code pipelines for on-demand scaling.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

AWS Direct Connect adds 10G/100G with MACsec in Makati City

🔒 AWS has expanded AWS Direct Connect capacity at the ePLDT data center near Makati City, Philippines, adding 10 Gbps and 100 Gbps dedicated connections with MACsec encryption. Customers at this Direct Connect location can establish private, direct access to all public AWS Regions (except those in China), AWS GovCloud Regions, and AWS Local Zones. The update delivers higher throughput and enhanced in‑flight protection for hybrid and colocated workloads, improving performance and security compared with internet-based connectivity.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

AWS Config Advanced Queries, Aggregators in New Zealand

🔔 AWS has expanded AWS Config advanced queries and configuration aggregators to the Asia Pacific (New Zealand) region. Advanced queries provide a single query endpoint and a query language to retrieve current resource configuration and compliance state without issuing service-specific describe API calls. Aggregators enable centralized visibility by collecting configuration and compliance data from multiple accounts and Regions or across an AWS Organization. These capabilities are accessible from the AWS Console and AWS CLI and, with this expansion, are now available in all supported regions.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Google Pixel Phones Added to DoDIN APL for Federal Use

🔒 Google Pixel phones have been added to the DoDIN APL, allowing federal agencies to procure devices that meet Department of Defense network security requirements. Pixel 9 hardware and integrated on-device protections combine with Google Cloud for secure remote management, 5G connectivity, and AI-enabled workflows. Use cases include secure field capture, centralized analytics, and pilots such as TrackInspect for transit infrastructure safety.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Amazon ECS adds one-click event capture and querying

🔎 The Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) console now offers one-click event capture and an integrated event history query interface. With a single click the console configures underlying EventBridge rules and CloudWatch log groups and provides pre-built query templates and filters for time range, task ID, deployment ID, stop codes, and exit codes. Available in all AWS Commercial and GovCloud (US) Regions.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Confucius Targets Pakistan with WooperStealer and Anondoor

🔒 Fortinet researchers attribute a renewed phishing campaign to Confucius, which has repeatedly targeted Pakistani government, military, and defense industry recipients using spear‑phishing and malicious documents. Attack chains observed from December 2024 through August 2025 delivered WooperStealer via DLL side‑loading using .PPSX and .LNK lures, and later introduced a Python implant, Anondoor. The group layered obfuscation and swapped tools and infrastructure to sustain credential theft, screenshot capture, file enumeration, and persistent exfiltration while evading detection.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Extortion Emails Target Executives Claiming Clop Ties

📧 An individual or group claiming to work with the Clop ransomware gang has been sending extortion emails to executives at multiple organizations since September 29, according to Google. Researchers at Mandiant and the Google Threat Intelligence Group are investigating and report a high-volume campaign launched from hundreds of compromised accounts, with at least one account previously linked to FIN11. The messages include contact information that matches addresses on the Clop data leak site, suggesting the actor may be leveraging Clop's brand; however, investigators emphasize this does not prove direct Clop involvement and advise targeted organizations to search for indicators of compromise.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Amazon Connect adds customer input for outbound calls

📞 Amazon Connect now supports Get Customer Input and Store Customer Input flow blocks for outbound voice whisper flows. The Get Customer Input block plays a prompt after a customer answers but before the agent connects, capturing responses via DTMF or an Amazon Lex bot. Use cases include obtaining consent for call recording and triggering Contact Lens recording and analytics. The capability is available in all AWS commercial regions and AWS GovCloud (US-West).

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Confucius Shifts to Python Backdoors Targeting Windows

🛡️ FortiGuard Labs reports that the long-running cyber-espionage group Confucius has shifted tactics against Microsoft Windows users, moving from document stealers like WooperStealer to Python-based backdoors such as AnonDoor. The change, observed between December 2024 and August 2025, favors persistent access and command execution over simple data exfiltration. Researchers describe layered evasion and persistence techniques including DLL side-loading, obfuscated PowerShell, scheduled tasks and stealthy exfiltration to minimize detection. Targeting remains focused in South Asia, particularly Pakistan.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Study Finds Major Security Flaws in Popular Free VPN Apps

🔍 Zimperium zLabs’ analysis of 800 Android and iOS free VPN apps found widespread privacy and security weaknesses, including outdated libraries, weak encryption, and misleading privacy disclosures. The report highlights concrete failures such as vulnerable OpenSSL builds (including Heartbleed-era versions), roughly 1% of apps permitting Man-in-the-Middle decryption, and about 25% of iOS apps lacking valid privacy manifests. Researchers warn excessive permission requests and private entitlements increase risk, especially in BYOD and remote-work environments, and recommend stronger security models, endpoint visibility and zero-trust approaches.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

WhatsApp phishing: fake vote pages hijack accounts

🔒 Kaspersky analyzed a global phishing campaign that uses convincing fake voting pages to hijack WhatsApp accounts. Attackers lure victims with personalized requests and multilingual scam pages; when users click Vote they’re prompted for the phone number linked to their account and shown a single‑use verification code. Victims who then enter or paste that code in their WhatsApp app inadvertently activate a remote WhatsApp Web session, giving attackers full access. Immediately check Linked devices, disconnect unknown sessions, and follow Kaspersky’s recovery and prevention guidance.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Expiry of CISA 2015 Leaves US Intelligence Sharing Exposed

🔒 The 2015 Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA 2015) has expired after lawmakers failed to extend legal safe-harbors for voluntary threat sharing via the Automated Indicator Sharing program (AIS). Amid a congressional funding standoff and a resulting partial government shutdown, industry leaders warn the lapse exposes companies to litigation and may deter intelligence exchange. Security executives say reduced sharing could create blind spots, elevate software supply-chain risk and slow development of AI-driven defenses.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

AWS PCS Expands Slurm Configuration with 60+ Settings

🔧 AWS Parallel Computing Service (AWS PCS) now supports over 60 additional Slurm configuration parameters, giving administrators finer control of job scheduling, resource allocation, access permissions, and job lifecycle behavior. New options include queue-specific priority policies, preemption rules, custom time and resource limits, and account-level access controls. Per-job execution behaviors and QoS tuning help run multi-team production HPC environments more efficiently. The expanded settings are available in all AWS PCS regions.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Microsoft Named a Leader in IDC MarketScape for XDR

🔒 Microsoft has been named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Extended Detection and Response Software 2025 assessment. Microsoft Defender XDR is highlighted for broad signal coverage across endpoints, identities, email and collaboration, SaaS apps, cloud workloads, and data, plus AI-driven automation and native SIEM integration that consolidate visibility and accelerate response. IDC also cited Microsoft Security Copilot and automatic attack disruption as key differentiators that reduce dwell time and free SOC teams to focus on higher-value tasks.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Amazon Neptune Integrates with GraphStorm for Real-Time GNNs

🚀 Amazon Neptune now integrates with GraphStorm, enabling developers to deploy graph neural network models for real-time inference directly against transactional graph data. Trained GNNs can query Neptune for subgraph neighborhoods on demand and return predictions such as node classification or link prediction in sub-second timeframes. This supports use cases like fraud detection, dynamic recommendations, and continuous risk scoring while combining inference with analytics.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

AWS PCS Adds Slurm Node Reboot, Available in All Regions

🔁 AWS Parallel Computing Service (PCS) now supports rebooting compute nodes using Slurm commands without triggering instance replacement. You can use the scontrol reboot command with options for immediate or deferred reboots to troubleshoot, perform resource cleanup, or recover from degraded states. This capability is available in all PCS-supported AWS Regions and helps teams maintain cluster health more efficiently while reducing costs associated with unnecessary instance replacements.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

AWS PCS allows dynamic Slurm cluster configuration

🔧 AWS Parallel Computing Service (AWS PCS) now lets you change key Slurm workload manager settings on live clusters without rebuilding them. Administrators can update accounting and workload management parameters via the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or AWS SDK. This change reduces operational disruption and enables faster adaptation to evolving HPC requirements. Changes are available in all regions where AWS PCS is offered.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Trustworthy Oracle Architecture for Enterprise DLT

🔒 DZ BANK and Google Cloud present a blueprint for delivering trustworthy off‑chain data to smart contracts, addressing a key barrier to enterprise DLT adoption. The design pairs Google Cloud secure global infrastructure with DZ BANK’s deterministic financial protocols to guarantee data correctness at source, integrity in transit, and timely delivery. The Smart Derivative Contract (SDC) use case demonstrates deterministic valuation, automated margining, and cryptographic attestation of oracle outputs. Production controls such as Binary Authorization, Private Service Connect, Confidential Space (TEE), and TLS are used to mitigate software supply‑chain, transport, and runtime threats.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Amazon GameLift Servers: View and Connect Instances

🔍 Today, Amazon GameLift Servers added console capabilities to view and connect to individual fleet instances directly from the EC2 and Container Fleet Detail pages. A new Instances tab lists associated hosts and each instance has a details page presenting human-readable metadata (also available via GameLift Server APIs). From the list or detail view you can press a Connect button to open a modal and launch AWS CloudShell to start an SSM session into the instance, enabling hands-on inspection, log retrieval, and faster diagnosis of network and health issues.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

CISA Issues Two ICS Advisories for Raise3D and Hitachi Energy

🔔 CISA released two Industrial Control Systems advisories on October 2, 2025, covering Raise3D Pro2 Series 3D printers (ICSA-25-275-01) and the Hitachi Energy MSM product (ICSA-25-275-02). Each advisory provides technical details on reported vulnerabilities, potential impacts to device confidentiality, integrity, or availability, and recommended mitigations including configuration changes and firmware updates where available. CISA encourages operators and administrators to review the advisories promptly, implement vendor recommendations, and apply compensating controls to reduce operational risk.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Forrester Predicts Agentic AI Will Trigger 2026 Breach

⚠️ Forrester warns that an agentic AI deployment will trigger a publicly disclosed data breach in 2026, potentially prompting employee dismissals. Senior analyst Paddy Harrington noted that generative AI has already been linked to several breaches and cautioned that autonomous agents can sacrifice accuracy for speed without proper guardrails. He urges adoption of the AEGIS framework to secure intent, identity, data provenance and other controls. Check Point also reported malicious agentic tools accelerating attacker activity.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

ENISA: Phishing Drives Most EU Cyber Intrusions in 2024–25

📣 The EU security agency's ENISA Threat Landscape 2025 report, analyzing 4,875 incidents from 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025, finds phishing was the initial access vector in 60% of intrusions, with vulnerability exploitation at 21%. Botnets and malicious applications accounted for 10% and 8% respectively, and 68% of intrusions led to follow-up malware deployment. ENISA highlights AI-powered phishing exceeded 80% of social engineering globally by early 2025 and warns of attacks aimed at critical digital supply chain dependencies and high-value targets such as outdated mobile and OT systems.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

MatrixPDF: PDFs Weaponized to Evade Gmail Defenses

📄 Researchers at Varonis have discovered MatrixPDF, a toolkit that disguises malicious web redirects and scripts inside seemingly benign PDFs to bypass Gmail filters. The files use blurred content, overlays and convincing prompts such as “Open Secure Document” to trick users into opening external sites. In some cases embedded JavaScript can auto-fetch payloads when a reader grants permission. Because Gmail treats preview clicks as user-initiated, these PDFs often evade email scanners and sandboxes.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Amazon Connect Adds Agent Screen Recording for ChromeOS

🎥 Amazon Connect now supports agent screen recording for ChromeOS devices, enabling supervisors and quality teams to capture agents' on-screen activity while handling voice calls, chats, and tasks. The capability complements audio recordings and chat transcripts to surface coaching opportunities and identify process non‑compliance. Screen recording is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Connect operates. Refer to documentation and the pricing page for technical and billing details.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

HackerOne Pays $81M in Bug Bounties, AI Flaws Surge

🛡️ HackerOne paid $81 million to white-hat hackers over the past 12 months, supporting more than 1,950 bug bounty programs and offering vulnerability disclosure, penetration testing, and code security services. The top 100 programs paid $51 million between July 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025, and the top 10 alone accounted for $21.6 million. AI-related vulnerabilities jumped over 200%, with prompt injection up 540%, while 70% of surveyed researchers reported using AI tools to improve hunting.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Amazon Cognito adds configurable terms and privacy URLs

🔒 Amazon Cognito now lets customers configure terms of use and privacy policy document URLs directly in Managed Login pages so legal notices are presented during user registration without custom coding. You can assign URLs per app client and provide language-specific links tied to the lang query-parameter for localized experiences. This simplifies implementation, reduces development effort, and is available to Essentials and Plus tier customers, including AWS GovCloud (US).

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Microsoft Outlook stops displaying inline SVG images

🔒 Microsoft will no longer display inline SVG images in Outlook for Web and the new Outlook for Windows; users will instead see blank spaces where those images would have appeared. The global rollout began in early September 2025 and is expected to complete by mid‑October 2025, with Microsoft estimating the change will affect less than 0.1% of images. SVG files sent as classic attachments will continue to be viewable from the attachment well to limit user disruption.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Modern Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Basics

🛡️ Modern disaster recovery and business continuity require a ground-up rebuild to address distributed data, evolving cyberthreats, climate-driven disruptions, and strict breach-reporting obligations. Key elements include executive sponsorship, standing interdisciplinary teams, AI-assisted discovery and classification, continuous and immutable backups aligned with a 3-2-1-1-0 approach, and the design of a minimum viable business to restore core functions. Frequent, gamified tabletop exercises and automated validation complete a resilient program.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Daniel Miessler on AI Attack-Defense Balance and Context

🔍 Daniel Miessler argues that context determines the AI attack–defense balance: whoever holds the most accurate, actionable picture of a target gains the edge. He forecasts attackers will have the advantage for roughly 3–5 years as Red teams leverage public OSINT and reconnaissance while LLMs and SPQA-style architectures mature. Once models can ingest reliable internal company context at scale, defenders should regain the upper hand by prioritizing fixes and applying mitigations faster.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Microsoft Defender Bug Triggers False BIOS Update Alerts

⚠️ Microsoft is addressing a logic bug in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint that causes some Dell devices' BIOS firmware to be incorrectly marked as outdated, prompting unnecessary update alerts to users. The company says a fix has been developed and is being prepared for deployment, but it has not disclosed the regions or number of customers affected. Microsoft also recently resolved macOS black screen crashes linked to a deadlock in the Apple enterprise security framework and has been correcting several anti-spam and machine-learning false positives impacting Teams and Exchange Online.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Service Desk as Attack Vector: Defend with Workflows

🔐 The service desk is now a primary enterprise perimeter for attackers, with social-engineering groups like Scattered Spider converting routine requests into broad access — as seen in high-impact incidents such as MGM Resorts and Clorox. Training matters but is not enough; verification must be a security-owned, auditable workflow rather than an agent’s discretionary call. Implement mandatory controls so agents never view credentials, apply role-based verification depths, and use points-based contingency checks when MFA fails. Integrate the flow with ITSM so tickets launch verification automatically, returning results and telemetry for alerting and audit.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Amazon Prime Day 2025: Surge in Scam Domains and Phishing

🔍 Check Point Research found a marked rise in Amazon Prime Day scams during the first three weeks of September 2025, driven by malicious domains, phishing emails, and credential-harvesting pages that mimic legitimate Amazon communications. Attackers are exploiting urgency and trusted branding to capture login and payment details. Consumers and organizations should verify senders and domains, enable MFA, apply robust email filters, and monitor account activity to reduce exposure.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Accelerate AI with Agents: EMEA Developer Series and Labs

🚀 Google Cloud is hosting a regional event series across EMEA to help developers and tech practitioners learn to build and scale AI agents. The program combines immersive, hands-on labs and expert-led workshops covering technologies such as Cloud Run, Vertex AI, Gemini, and the Agent Development Kit (ADK). Participants receive step-by-step guidance and practical exercises designed to accelerate agent deployments and operational readiness within organizations.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Key Security Metrics CISOs Need for Business Alignment

📊 Measuring security performance is essential for CISOs who must demonstrate how security supports business objectives. The article outlines ten metric categories — including incident response (MTTD/MTTR), vulnerability "window of exposure," security awareness and maturity — and stresses choosing metrics that answer stakeholders' questions. Experts such as Richard Absalom and Frank Kim advise avoiding meaningless measurements and using metrics to prioritize work, allocate resources and communicate security value to the board.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

AWS Builder ID Now Adds 'Sign in with Google' Support

🔐 AWS now lets individuals create an AWS Builder ID using Sign in with Google, enabling one-click access to AWS applications such as Kiro, AWS Builder Center, AWS Training and Certification, re:Post, and AWS Startups. This personal profile remains separate from AWS account credentials and persists across a user's education and career. The integration simplifies registration, reduces password friction, and streamlines returning-user sign-in.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Closing Detection Gaps: A Continuous SOC Workflow Model

🛡️ SOC teams can close persistent detection gaps by adopting a continuous detection workflow that links early threat feeds, interactive sandboxing, and live threat lookups. ANY.RUN survey data shows unified stages deliver faster investigations, clearer triage, and reduced MTTR. Early filtering reduces Tier‑1 noise, sandboxes expose evasive payloads in realtime, and threat lookup provides historical context so analysts can validate and act with confidence.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Brave Browser Tops 100M Monthly Active Users in September

🌐 Brave reached a new high in September with 101 million monthly active users and 42 million daily active users, marking the project's largest user base to date. Its privacy-focused Brave Search, built on an independent index, now handles about 1.6 billion queries per month (roughly 20 billion per year), with approximately 8% of queries coming from Chrome users. Regulatory shifts such as the EU Digital Markets Act and Apple’s iOS 17.4 update helped boost installs—iOS downloads in Europe rose about 50%—and Brave's steady gain of ~2.5 million new users per month, combined with privacy AI tools like the AI Answers summarizer (15 million responses/day) and the new Ask Brave chat-search integration, continue to drive adoption.

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Thu, October 2, 2025

Automating Pentest Delivery: Seven High-Impact Workflows

🔁 Penetration testing delivery must evolve from static, manual reports to automated, real-time workflows that shorten remediation cycles and improve visibility. This contributed piece highlights seven practical automation workflows — from auto-creating remediation tickets in Jira or ServiceNow to auto-closing informational findings — that reduce triage noise and accelerate fixes. Implementing targeted rules and alerts ensures findings reach the right teams immediately and supports continuous testing practices.

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