All news with #palo alto networks tag

🔒 SonicWall has confirmed that an unauthorized actor accessed firewall configuration backup files stored in its cloud backup service for customers. The files include encrypted credentials and device configuration data; while encryption remains in place, SonicWall warned that possession of these backups could increase the risk of targeted attacks. The vendor says access was achieved via brute-force attacks and that suspicious activity was first detected in early September 2025. Working with Mandiant, SonicWall has issued remediation tools, published impacted device lists in the MySonicWall portal, and is notifying affected partners and customers.

🔍 Security researchers observed a roughly 500% surge in reconnaissance activity targeting Palo Alto Networks login portals on October 3, when GreyNoise recorded about 1,300 unique IP addresses probing its Palo Alto Networks Login Scanner tag versus typical daily volumes under 200. Approximately 91% of the IPs were US-based and 93% were classed as suspicious, with 7% confirmed malicious. GreyNoise also reported parallel scanning of other remote-access products including Cisco ASA, SonicWall, Ivanti and Pulse Secure, and noted shared TLS fingerprinting and regional clustering tied to infrastructure in the Netherlands. Analysts will continue monitoring for any subsequent vulnerability disclosures.

🔍 GreyNoise has observed a roughly 500% rise in IP addresses scanning Palo Alto Networks login portals, primarily emulating GlobalProtect and PAN-OS profiles. Activity peaked on October 3 with more than 1,285 unique IPs—typical daily scans are usually under 200—while most sources were geolocated to the United States with smaller clusters in the UK, Netherlands, Canada, and Russia. GreyNoise classified 91% of the IPs as suspicious and 7% as malicious, noting clusters with distinct TLS fingerprints and warning this reconnaissance could precede exploitation attempts; administrators should verify device exposure and monitoring.

🔍 GreyNoise observed a nearly 500% surge in IP addresses scanning Palo Alto Networks login portals on October 3, 2025, jumping from about 200 to roughly 1,300 unique IPs. The firm classified 93% of those IPs as suspicious and 7% as malicious, with most activity geolocated to the U.S. and smaller clusters in the U.K., the Netherlands, Canada and Russia. GreyNoise noted the traffic was targeted and structured and shared a dominant TLS fingerprint with recent Cisco ASA scans.

🔔 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.

🔎 Researchers at Palo Alto Networks have attributed two years of coordinated espionage to a previously unreported Chinese-aligned threat actor dubbed Phantom Taurus. The group targets government and telecommunications organizations across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, focusing on foreign ministries, embassies, geopolitical events and military operations to maintain persistent covert access. Its toolkit includes a new IIS web-server backdoor suite called NET-STAR, DNS- and remote-access tools, in-memory implants and a wide mix of dual-use utilities. Operators have shifted from Exchange mailbox harvesting via ProxyLogon and ProxyShell exploits to targeted SQL database searches and WMI-driven data extraction.

🔍 The 2025 Unit 42 Global Incident Response Report shows that 84% of investigated incidents involved activity across multiple attack fronts and 70% spanned at least three vectors, underscoring coordinated, multidomain campaigns. Attackers move laterally across cloud, SaaS, IT and OT, exploiting identities, misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. The report recommends unified telemetry, AI-driven behavioral analytics and stronger identity controls to improve detection and accelerate response.

🔍 Unit 42 documents a newly designated Chinese-aligned threat actor, Phantom Taurus, which uses a previously undocumented .NET malware suite called NET-STAR to target IIS web servers. The actor focuses on government and telecommunications organizations across the Middle East, Africa and Asia and has shifted from email theft to direct database exfiltration. The report outlines technical behaviors, in-memory fileless execution, and mitigation guidance for Palo Alto Networks protections.

🔎 This Unit 42 case study applies the Unit 42 Attribution Framework to link the Bookworm remote access Trojan to the Chinese APT group Stately Taurus by combining malware analysis, tooling, OPSEC, infrastructure, victimology, and timelines. Analysts highlighted embedded PDB paths, a UUID-based shellcode encoding technique, and co-occurrence with a custom tool named ToneShell. Overlapping C2 IPs and domains, consistent targeting in Southeast Asia, and closely aligned compile times supported a high-confidence attribution. Palo Alto Networks also lists protections across WildFire, NGFW, URL/DNS filtering, Cortex XDR, and incident response contact options.

🔍 Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 is tracking an SEO poisoning campaign dubbed Operation Rewrite that employs a native IIS implant called BadIIS. The module inspects User-Agent strings, identifies search engine crawlers, and fetches poisoned content from a remote C2 to inject keywords and links so compromised sites artificially rank for targeted queries. Unit 42 observed multiple tooling variants — lightweight ASP.NET handlers, a managed .NET IIS module, and an all‑in‑one PHP script — and reports a focus on East and Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam.

🔍 Unit 42 uncovered Operation Rewrite, a March 2025 SEO poisoning campaign that deploys a native IIS implant called BadIIS to manipulate search engine indexing and redirect users to attacker-controlled scam sites. The implant registers request handlers, inspects User‑Agent and Referer headers, and proxies malicious content from remote C2 servers. Variants include lightweight ASP.NET page handlers, a managed .NET IIS module, and an all-in-one PHP front controller. Organizations can detect and block activity with Palo Alto Networks protections and should engage incident responders if compromised.

🔍Three major cybersecurity vendors — Microsoft, SentinelOne and Palo Alto Networks — have declined to participate in the 2025 MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK Evaluations: Enterprise, citing a need to prioritize product development and innovation. Their exits, after strong 2024 performances, have sparked debate over the tests' scope and whether they encourage PR-driven preparation. MITRE says it will revive a vendor forum for 2026 to improve engagement.

🔒 Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 has been added to the UK's NCSC Cyber Incident Response scheme at the Enhanced Level, demonstrating certified capability to manage the most complex and impactful cyber incidents. The assurance verifies structured, government-benchmarked processes, strong investigative expertise, and a customer-focused retainer model tailored to regulatory and operational needs. This recognition underscores Unit 42's role in helping organisations reduce dwell time, contain threats faster, and strengthen long-term resilience.

🔍 SquareX’s Last Mile Reassembly (LMR) research, disclosed at DEF CON 32, shows how attackers split and reassemble malware inside the browser to evade Secure Web Gateways (SWGs). Palo Alto Networks has become the first major SASE vendor to publicly acknowledge this class of browser-assembled evasive attacks and announced enhancements to Prisma Browser. SquareX says LMR and related Data Splicing techniques exploit channels like WebRTC and gRPC, bypassing traditional SWG and DLP controls and underscoring the need for browser-native security.

🪱 Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 is investigating an active supply chain attack in the npm ecosystem driven by a novel self-replicating worm tracked as "Shai-Hulud." The malware has compromised more than 180 packages, including high-impact libraries such as @ctrl/tinycolor, and automates credential theft, repository creation, and propagation across maintainers' packages. Unit 42 assesses with moderate confidence that an LLM assisted in authoring the malicious bash payload. Customers are protected through Cortex Cloud, Prisma Cloud, Cortex XDR and Advanced WildFire, and Unit 42 recommends immediate credential rotation, dependency audits, and enforcement of MFA.

🔒Prisma AIRS offers unified, AI-native security across the full AI lifecycle, from model development and training to deployment and runtime monitoring. The platform focuses on five core capabilities—model scanning, posture management, AI red teaming, runtime security and agent protection—to detect and mitigate threats such as prompt injection, data poisoning and tool misuse. By consolidating workflows and sharing intelligence across Prisma, it aims to simplify operations, accelerate remediation and reduce total cost of ownership so organizations can deploy bravely.

🔒 Enterprises face a paradox: AI promises intelligent, automated access control, but hybrid complexity and legacy systems are blocking adoption. Teams report being buried in manual policy creation, vendor integrations and constant firefighting despite mature platforms like Palo Alto Networks, Netskope and Zscaler. AI-driven ZTNA shifts the model from policy-first to behavior-first, building behavioral baselines that generate context-aware policies and can wrap legacy apps without invasive changes. Success requires operational bandwidth, reliable data and a mindset shift to treat access control as a business enabler rather than a compliance burden.

🛡️ At Black Hat, Palo Alto Networks' NOC operates a zero-hour defense model that protects critical infrastructure while enabling controlled exploit training. Engineers from Cortex and Unit 42 collaborate with partners like Corelight to develop rapid detections, deploy contextual rules on PA-5430 firewalls, and automate responses via Cortex XSIAM. The environment balances visibility, segmentation and automated enforcement to stop external threats without disrupting sanctioned exercises.

🔒 Google Cloud and its partners announced a range of partner-built AI security solutions now available in the Google Cloud Marketplace. These integrations embed Gemini and Vertex AI into partner products — including CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, and others — to protect models, data, applications, and agents. The collaborations emphasize automated detection, incident response, DLP, identity protection, and agent monitoring to reduce mean time to detect and respond, helping customers adopt AI securely.

🔒 Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler and Cloudflare disclosed a supply-chain breach traced to the Salesloft Drift integration with Salesforce. The compromise exposed business contact information, account/contact/case/opportunity records and, in some instances, OAuth tokens and plaintext support-case content; attachments and files were reportedly not affected. Palo Alto's Unit 42 observed active searches of exfiltrated data and deletion of queries consistent with anti-forensics. Vendors are advising immediate token revocation, credential rotation and comprehensive review of Salesforce logs and SOQL query history.