Zero-day exploitation of Ivanti Connect Secure VPN vulnerabilities since as far back as December 2024.
On Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, Ivanti disclosed two vulnerabilities, CVE-2025-0282 and CVE-2025-0283, impacting Ivanti Connect Secure (“ICS”) VPN appliances. Mandiant has identified zero-day exploitation of CVE-2025-0282 in the wild beginning mid-December 2024. CVE-2025-0282 is an unauthenticated stack-based buffer overflow. Successful exploitation could result in unauthenticated remote code execution, leading to potential downstream compromise of a victim network.
"Recently, various intelligence and threat analysis teams have identified a concerning trend: North Korean state actors are infiltrating companies and organizations around the world in an attempt to facilitate the clandestine transfer of funds to support North Korea’s state apparatus. Specifically, these actors have favored the use of Astrill VPN to obscure their digital footprints while applying for remote positions."
"While it’s been several months since these articles were published, we continue to see reports from our customers of fraudulent re mote worker campaigns originating from Astrill VPN IP addresses."
Two Egyptians—exiled politician Ayman Nour and the host of a popular news program (who wishes to remain anonymous)—were hacked with Predator spyware, built and sold by the previously little-known mercenary spyware developer Cytrox. The phone of Ayman Nour was simultaneously infected with both Cytrox’s Predator and NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, operated by two different government clients.