guides – PwnDefend

FortiSIEM CVE-2025-64155 Exploitation Analysis

‘An improper neutralization of special elements used in an OS command (‘OS Command Injection’) vulnerability [CWE-78] in FortiSIEM may allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute unauthorized code or commands via crafted TCP requests.’

https://www.fortiguard.com/psirt/FG-IR-25-772

This analysis was conducted using data from Defused, enrichment from IPINFO and SHODAN and then analysis using an LLM (GROK) (so take the analysis with a pinch of salt):

Leadership

The danger of internet exposed RDP

There’s lots of things in cyber security to consider when looking at how to defend a network, and whilst the world goes mad about public wifi and juice jacking, the real threats are often far simpler. Imagine having say an Active Directory domain member, or even controller exposed to the internet with Remote Desktop Protocol? Might sound insane but this is a common route for entry for ransomware actors.

Defense

People and Passwords, why passkeys might change the game

This weekend at BSIDES London it was great to have the UK National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) (the UK’s technical authority on cyber security) give a talk about passkeys!

Threat Intel

Fortiweb – CVE-2025-58034

‘CVE-2025-58034 is an OS command injection vulnerability (CWE-78) in Fortinet FortiWeb, allowing an authenticated attacker to execute unauthorized code on the system through crafted HTTP requests or CLI commands. It affects versions including FortiWeb 8.0.0-8.0.1, 7.6.0-7.6.5, 7.4.0-7.4.10, 7.2.0-7.2.11, and 7.0.0-7.0.11. The vulnerability has a CVSSv3 score of 6.7 (medium severity) and has been observed exploited in the wild, prompting its addition to CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.’

Threat Intel

Analysing 1 Million Honeypot events with Defused Cyber Deception

A common perimeter firewall in organisations is the CISCO ASA. Back when I started in the industry we used to have CISCO PIX firewalls, the ASA was the next generation of these! Why is this important? Well its important to understand how common threat actors work, you will see from a while ago I wrote a review of the manual 2.0 by Bassterlord (a known cybercriminal), this is to help understand how attackers work, what real world cybercrime looks like so that we can enable people to help defend against these threats.

Education

Detecting ‘Dark Tunnels’ with Microsoft Defender using KQL

Detecting ‘Dark Tunnels’ is an important element to corporate security, much like detecting unauthorised RMM usage. But what is a dark tunnel?

according to GROK:

A dark tunnel (sometimes called a “dark pool tunnel” or simply a secure reverse tunnel in networking contexts) refers to a type of secure, outbound-only tunneling technology that allows private access to internal services, devices, or networks without exposing them to the public internet. The “dark” aspect emphasizes that the tunnel is hidden or invisible from external scanners—there’s no inbound port forwarding, firewall holes, or public IP exposure required. Instead, it relies on encrypted outbound connections from the internal resource to a cloud-based relay or peer-to-peer mesh, enabling zero-trust access (e.g., via authentication tokens or keys).
This approach is popular in DevOps, IoT, remote work, and cybersecurity for bridging on-premises or edge devices to the cloud securely, often bypassing NAT traversal issues or legacy VPN complexities.

Education

Windows Defender at my tunnel

I was doing some testing with Cloudflare tunnels this weekend and I woke up this morning to see if funny honeypot messages I had, I quickly checked if the site was online and found a cloudflare error message. This is a just an IIS instance running on a windows 11 PC (with no WIFI or Bluetooth) plugged into a test network (so if it gets pwn3d, it’s not going to impact anything important).

Breach

Ransomware kill chains are boring.. will we ever learn?

Are we stuck in a cyber world that never learns? are we doomed to suffer the same fate over and over again? Well, not if you take action, you can totally prevent events like this!

This is a fast post using an LLM to analyse the Capita redacted ICO report. Hopefully it will help people think about things and take the lessons and apply them in their own organisations.

Education

A threat to sanity – Cyber Myth: Juice Jacking

“Juice jacking” has become a modern cybersecurity myth — a catchy scare story built on a long-patched Android debugging issue and fueled by viral fear rather than facts. Despite years of warnings, there are no confirmed cases of real-world juice jacking attacks; the cost, effort, and low reward make it an impractical method for criminals. Yet the myth persists because it’s vivid, simple, and scary — everything our brains latch onto. The real danger is not the USB port at the airport, but the distraction such myths create. When people focus on imaginary threats, they waste precious attention that should go toward genuine risks like weak passwords, missing MFA, unpatched systems, and poor backups. So let’s take a bit of a deeper dive into this subject, because by it’s important to understand what to, and what not to focus on in my experience!

Education

Why a SOC Without Triage, Analysis, and Remediation Is…

In the world of cybersecurity, the term Security Operations Center (SOC) carries significant weight. It evokes images of highly skilled analysts working around the clock to detect, respond to, and mitigate cyber threats. However, not all SOCs live up to this expectation. If a SOC lacks core functions like triage, analysis, assessment, and remedial action, it’s not truly a SOC—it’s merely a contact center masquerading as one. Let’s explore why these functions are non-negotiable for a SOC and why their absence undermines the entire purpose of cybersecurity operations.