#backdoor

Threat hunters have shed more light on a previously disclosed malware campaign undertaken by the China-aligned MirrorFace threat actor that targeted a diplomatic organization in the European Union with a backdoor known as ANEL. The attack, detected by ESET in late August 2024, singled out a Central European diplomatic institute with lures related to Word Expo, which is scheduled to kick off in

Confidential computing strengthens application security by providing isolation, encryption and attestation so data remains protected while in use. By integrating these security features with a scalable, high-performance artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) ecosystem, organizations can adopt a defense-in-depth approach. This is especially critical for regulated industries handling sensitive data, such as Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Protected Health Information (PHI), and financial information, enabling them to leverage AI with confidence.In this article, we expl

The UK, France, Sweden, and EU have made fresh attacks on end-to-end encryption. Some of the attacks are more “crude” than those in recent years, experts say.

Thorsten picks apart some headlines, highlights Talos’ report on an unknown attacker predominantly targeting Japan, and asks, “Where is the victim, and does it matter?”

UNC3886 hackers target Juniper routers with custom backdoor malware, exploiting outdated systems for stealthy access and espionage. Learn how to stay protected.

The China-nexus cyber espionage group tracked as UNC3886 has been observed targeting end-of-life MX routers from Juniper Networks as part of a campaign designed to deploy custom backdoors, highlighting their ability to focus on internal networking infrastructure. "The backdoors had varying custom capabilities, including active and passive backdoor functions, as well as an embedded script that

Lazarus Group targets developers with malicious npm packages, stealing credentials, crypto, and installing backdoor. Stay alert to protect your projects.

Microsoft today issued more than 50 security updates for its various Windows operating systems, including fixes for a whopping six zero-day vulnerabilities that are already seeing active exploitation.

### Summary PickleScan is vulnerable to a ZIP archive manipulation attack that causes it to crash when attempting to extract and scan PyTorch model archives. By modifying the filename in the ZIP header while keeping the original filename in the directory listing, an attacker can make PickleScan raise a BadZipFile error. However, PyTorch's more forgiving ZIP implementation still allows the model to be loaded, enabling malicious payloads to bypass detection. ### Details Python's built-in zipfile module performs strict integrity checks when extracting ZIP files. If a filename stored in the ZIP header does not match the filename in the directory listing, zipfile.ZipFile.open() raises a BadZipFile error. PickleScan relies on zipfile to extract and inspect the contents of PyTorch model archives, making it susceptible to this manipulation. PyTorch, on the other hand, has a more tolerant ZIP handling mechanism that ignores these discrepancies, allowing the model to load even when PickleSca...

### Summary PickleScan fails to detect malicious pickle files inside PyTorch model archives when certain ZIP file flag bits are modified. By flipping specific bits in the ZIP file headers, an attacker can embed malicious pickle files that remain undetected by PickleScan while still being successfully loaded by PyTorch's torch.load(). This can lead to arbitrary code execution when loading a compromised model. ### Details PickleScan relies on Python’s zipfile module to extract and scan files within ZIP-based model archives. However, certain flag bits in ZIP headers affect how files are interpreted, and some of these bits cause PickleScan to fail while leaving PyTorch’s loading mechanism unaffected. By modifying the flag_bits field in the ZIP file entry, an attacker can: - Embed a malicious pickle file (bad_file.pkl) in a PyTorch model archive. - Flip specific bits (e.g., 0x1, 0x20, 0x40) in the ZIP metadata. - Prevent PickleScan from scanning the archive due to errors raised by zipf...