Author: anonymousmedia_tal70o

Ravie LakshmananMar 21, 2026Vulnerability / Threat Intelligence

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday added five security flaws impacting Apple, Craft CMS, and Laravel Livewire to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, urging federal agencies to patch them by April 3, 2026.

The vulnerabilities that have come under exploitation are listed below –

• CVE-2025-31277 (CVSS score: 8.8) – A vulnerability in Apple WebKit that could result in memory corruption when processing maliciously crafted web content. (Fixed in July 2025)
• CVE-2025-43510 (CVSS score: 7.8) – A memory corruption vulnerability in Apple’s kernel component that could allow a malicious application to cause unexpected changes in memory shared between processes. (Fixed in December 2025)
• CVE-2025-43520 (CVSS score: 8.8) – A memory corruption vulnerability in Apple’s kernel component that could allow a malicious application to cause unexpected system termination or write kernel memory. (Fixed in December 2025)
• CVE-2025-32432 (CVSS score: 10.0) – A code injection vulnerability in Craft CMS that could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code. (Fixed in April 2025)
• CVE-2025-54068 (CVSS score: 9.8) – A code injection vulnerability in Laravel Livewire that could allow unauthenticated attackers to achieve remote command execution in specific scenarios. (Fixed in July 2025)

The addition of the three Apple vulnerabilities to the KEV catalog comes in the wake of reports from Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG), iVerify, and Lookout about an iOS exploit kit codenamed DarkSword that leverages these shortcomings, along with three bugs, to deploy various malware families like GHOSTBLADE, GHOSTKNIFE, and GHOSTSABER for data theft.

CVE-2025-32432 is assessed to have been exploited as a zero-day by unknown threat actors since February 2025, per Orange Cyberdefense SensePost. Since then, an intrusion set tracked as Mimo (aka Hezb) has also been observed exploiting the vulnerability to deploy a cryptocurrency miner and residential proxyware.

Rounding off the list is CVE-2025-54068, whose exploitation was recently flagged by the Ctrl-Alt-Intel Threat Research team as part of attacks mounted by the Iranian state-sponsored hacking group, MuddyWater (aka Boggy Serpens).

In a report published earlier this week, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 called out the adversary’s consistent targeting of diplomatic and critical infrastructure, including energy, maritime, and finance, across the Middle East and other strategic targets worldwide.

“While social engineering remains its defining trait, the group is also increasing its technological capabilities,” Unit 42 said. “Its diverse toolset includes AI-enhanced malware implants that incorporate anti-analysis techniques for long-term persistence. This combination of social engineering and rapidly developed tools creates a potent threat profile.”

“To support its large-scale social engineering campaigns, Boggy Serpens uses a custom-built, web-based orchestration platform,” Unit 42 said. “This tool enables operators to automate mass email delivery while maintaining granular control over sender identities and target lists.”

Attributed to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), the group is primarily focused on cyber espionage, although it has also been linked to disruptive operations targeting the Technion Israel Institute of Technology by adopting the DarkBit ransomware persona.

One of the defining hallmarks of MuddyWater’s tradecraft has been the use of hijacked accounts belonging to official government and corporate entities in its spear-phishing attacks, and abuse of trusted relationships to evade reputation-based blocking systems and deliver malware. 

In a sustained campaign targeting an unnamed national marine and energy company in the U.A.E. between August 16, 2025, and February 11, 2026, the threat actor is said to have conducted four distinct waves of attack, leading to the deployment of various malware families, including GhostBackDoor and Nuso (aka HTTP_VIP). Some of the other notable tools in the threat actor’s arsenal include UDPGangster and LampoRAT (aka CHAR).

“Boggy Serpens’ recent activity exemplifies a maturing threat profile, as the group integrates its established methodologies with refined mechanisms for operational persistence,” Unit 42 said. “By diversifying its development pipeline to include modern coding languages like Rust and AI-assisted workflows, the group creates parallel tracks that ensure the redundancy needed to sustain a high operational tempo.”

Yesterday, I discovered a malicious Bash script that installs a GSocket backdoor on the victim’s computer. I don’t know the source of the script not how it is delivered to the victim.

GSocket[1] is a networking tool, but also a relay infrastructure, that enables direct, peer-to-peer–style communication between systems using a shared secret instead of IP addresses or open ports. It works by having both sides connect outbound to a global relay network. Tools like gs-netcat can provide remote shells, file transfer, or tunneling and bypass classic security controls. The script that I found uses a copy of gs-netcat but the way it implements persistence and anti-forensic techniques deserves a review.

A few weeks ago, I found a sample that used GSocket connectivity as a C2 channel. It makes me curious and I started to hunt for more samples. Bingo! The new one that I found (SHA256:6ce69f0a0db6c5e1479d2b05fb361846957f5ad8170f5e43c7d66928a43f3286[2]) has been detected by only 17 antivirus solutions on VT. The script is not obfuscated and even has comments so I think that it was uploaded on VT for “testing” purposes by the developper (just a guess)

Let’s have a look at the techniques used. When you execute it in a sandbox, you see this:

Note the identification of the tool (“G-Socket Bypass Stealth”) and the reference to “@bboscat”[3]

A GSocket client is downloaded, started and is talking to the following IP:

The malware implements persistence through different well-known techniques on Linux. First, a cron job is created:

Every top-hour, the disguised gs-netcat will be killed (if running) and restarted. To improve persistence, the same code is added to the victim’s .profile:

The malware itself is copied in .ssh/putty and the GSocket shared secret stored in a fake SSH key file:

The ELF file id_rsa (SHA256: d94f75a70b5cabaf786ac57177ed841732e62bdcc9a29e06e5b41d9be567bcfa) is the gs-netcat tool downloaded directly from the G-Socket CDN.

Ok, let’s have a look at an interesting anti-forensic technique implemented in the Bash script. File operations are not simply performed using classic commands like cp, rm, mv, etc. They are embedded in “helper” functions with a timestamp tracking/restoration system so the malware can later hide filesystem changes. Here is an example with a function that will create a file:

mk_file()
{
  local fn
  local oldest
  local pdir
  local pdir_added
  fn="$1"
  local exists

  # DEBUGF "${CC}MK_FILE($fn)${CN}"
  pdir="$(dirname "$fn")"
  [[ -e "$fn" ]] && exists=1

  ts_is_marked "$pdir" || {
    # HERE: Parent not tracked
    _ts_add "$pdir" ""
    pdir_added=1
  }

  ts_is_marked "$fn" || {
    # HERE: Not yet tracked
    _ts_get_ts "$fn"
    # Do not add creation fails.
    touch "$fn" 2>/dev/null || {
      # HERE: Permission denied
      [[ -n "$pdir_added" ]] && {
        # Remove pdir if it was added above
        # Bash ")
    return
  }

  touch "$fn" 2>/dev/null || return
  [[ -z $exists ]] && chmod 600 "$fn"
  true
}

Here are also two interesting function:

# Restore timestamp of files
ts_restore()
{
  local fn
  local n
  local ts

  [[ ${#_ts_fn_a[@]} -ne ${#_ts_ts_a[@]} ]] && { echo >&2 "Ooops"; return; }

  n=0
  while :; do
    [[ $n -eq "${#_ts_fn_a[@]}" ]] && break
    ts="${_ts_ts_a[$n]}"
    fn="${_ts_fn_a[$n]}"
    # DEBUGF "RESTORE-TS ${fn} ${ts}"
    ((n++))

    _ts_fix "$fn" "$ts"
  done
  unset _ts_fn_a
  unset _ts_ts_a

  n=0
  while :; do
    [[ $n -eq "${#_ts_systemd_ts_a[@]}" ]] && break
    ts="${_ts_systemd_ts_a[$n]}"
    fn="${_ts_systemd_fn_a[$n]}"
    # DEBUGF "RESTORE-LAST-TS ${fn} ${ts}"
    ((n++))

    _ts_fix "$fn" "$ts" "symlink"
  done
  unset _ts_systemd_fn_a
  unset _ts_systemd_ts_a
}

ts_is_marked()
{
  local fn
  local a
  fn="$1"

  for a in "${_ts_fn_a[@]}"; do
    [[ "$a" = "$fn" ]] && return 0 # True
  done

  return 1 # False
}

ts_is_marked() checks whether a file/directory is already registered for timestamp restoration, preventing duplicate tracking and ensuring the script’s anti-forensic timestamp manipulation works correctly. I asked ChatGPT to generate a graph that explains this technique:

Finally, because it’s fully based on Bash, the script will infect all UNIX flavors, MacOS included:

[[ -z "$OSTYPE" ]] && {
  local osname
  osname="$(uname -s)"
  if [[ "$osname" == *FreeBSD* ]]; then
    OSTYPE="FreeBSD"
  elif [[ "$osname" == *Darwin* ]]; then
    OSTYPE="darwin22.0"
  elif [[ "$osname" == *OpenBSD* ]]; then
    OSTYPE="openbsd7.3"
  elif [[ "$osname" == *Linux* ]]; then
    OSTYPE="linux-gnu"
  fi
}

[1] https://www.gsocket.io

[2] https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/6ce69f0a0db6c5e1479d2b05fb361846957f5ad8170f5e43c7d66928a43f3286/telemetry

???????[3] https://zone-xsec.com/archive/attacker/%40bboscat

Xavier Mertens (@xme)

Xameco

Senior ISC Handler – Freelance Cyber Security Consultant

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