Experimental MCP Server Exposed Asana Data; WordPress Motors Theme Exploited for Privilege Escalation; Linux Kernel Flaw Added to KEV

This is the proverbial tip of the iceberg for MCP attacks, this one being associated with a logic flaw yielding some level of cross-tenant access. Look for many, many more of these in coming years. And for our penetration testing friends out there - get smart on this stuff fast and integrate it into your testing regimen. You'll need it! This is especially important in verifying authorization of access when using AI features. In his keynote speech at the RSAC Conference this year, SANS Fellow Josh Wright spoke of "Authorization Sprawl.' AI features enabled with MCP are one way attackers can find and exploit authorization sprawl, as indicated in this Asana issue.

Ed Skoudis

The flaw allowed a user to access their allowed data types from other customers, due to incomplete access control enforcement. You need to have your Asana admin review logs for MCP access, review AI generated summaries/answers, and report immediately any data which appear to be from another organization. Review the recommendations from UpGuard (https://www.upguard.com/blog/asana-discloses-data-exposure-bug-in-mcp-server) before (re)integrating LLMs into sensitive workflows.

Lee Neely

CVE-2025-4322, privilege escalation/account takeover flaw, has a CVSS score of 9.8. In short, the plugin didn't properly validate a user before allowing a password change, so an arbitrary user could change any password, including the administrator password. If you're using the Motors theme, make sure you're on 5.6.68 or higher. Double check if your theme updates are automatic, your content providers may not wish those to update without oversight.

Lee Neely

Many WordPress themes and plugins are a constant source of concern with a myriad of vulnerabilities. If you run a WordPress site, make sure you strip out any themes and plugins that are not absolutely essential to the functionality of your site.

Ed Skoudis

WordPress risks have reached "crisis" proportions: https://www.techspot.com/news/108233-linux-foundation-steps-neutral-solution-wordpress-crisis.html. While the Linux Foundation has recognized the problem and while there are alternatives, the use of WordPress is so broad that it is likely to remain at crisis level for the foreseeable future.

William Hugh Murray

CVE-2023-0386, CVSS score 7.8, improper ownership flaw, had patches released in January 2023, and initial POC exploits appeared in May of 2023. While the description of the exploit is hard to follow, it's easy to perform and your Linux distro is likely included, so make sure you're running the latest supported kernel. Aside from the patch, one mitigation is to block the loading of the OverlayFS kernel module, but test as that can have operational impacts.

Lee Neely

It's disappointing that a vulnerability found and patched two years ago now finds its way onto the KEV list because of organization inaction. How does one expect to protect themselves when they don't take patch management seriously?

Curtis Dukes

The CLTC is proposing a mechanism for filling gaps in cyber security through the use of volunteer organizations and low-cost cybersecurity services, to achieve security goals, particularly for community organizations. Elements include not only how to organize and simplify over time, but also guidance for states to create a regional cyber support ecosystem. As one involved in multiple nonprofits with limited to no cybersecurity budget, having an organized approach to leverage available free, or nearly free, resources coupled with an overall approach is a big win.

Lee Neely

An excellent compilation of cause and effect for the cyber underserved. Nothing in the report is new but formally documenting it is a good thing. Until companies simplify cybersecurity and build secure-by-default products, it is going to take fiscal resources. Unfortunately, those are in short supply and tend to be influenced by changes in government (state and federal) administrations. Philanthropies are another option, but they tend to only fund for a year or two, and there are a growing number of non-profits that require sustained funding.

Curtis Dukes

These organizations are targets more collectively than individually. When breached, they finance the miscreants, serve as proxies to hide the source of attacks, and populate botnets. Their numbers inflate the attack surface of our infrastructure. Encouraging them to adopt strong authentication, and other efficient measures, is essential to our collective security.

William Hugh Murray

This is a good one for CISOs to use to make sure merger/acquisition decisions include possible future security liabilities. Relatively small issue here - but remember: Back in 2016, AOL learned of Yahoo's massive breach *after* making a $4.5B acquisition offer. That led to a $350M reduction in the offer, which was probably a low estimate of the real hard cost to AOL.

John Pescatore

ICO is really watching protections of personal information. Make sure you're not only implementing MFA and robust access controls, but also properly obtaining permission for collection of the data you have. If you haven't checked your protection, disposal, and access controls on PII recently against all applicable privacy standards, GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, HIPAA, GLBA, COPPA, etc., it's time.

Lee Neely

Interesting ruling. Has MFA moved from a security best practice now to a mandatory cybersecurity requirement? Don't get me wrong, 23andMe failed the cybersecurity standard duty of care in protecting user data and should be held accountable. It would perhaps be helpful if there were a minimum set of requirements that every organization had to meet, such as IG1 of the CIS Critical Security Controls.

Curtis Dukes

If Microsoft can mandate Passkeys for all users, then there is no reason why we cannot use them for all public facing applications.

William Hugh Murray

The CMC has published a detailed methodology on how it categorizes breaches but I couldn't find any information on how they arrive at cost estimates. It seems odd to me to lump costs together by threat actor, since costs to a high-end department store are going to be very different than costs to a grocery chain, vs. being similar because the same bad guys launched the attack. We will now see AI engines start to 'learn' on this data and then other AI engines start to 'hallucinate' on those outputs,

John Pescatore

Scattered Spider appears to be behind both the M&S and Co-op breach, but not Harrods due to lack of data about that attack. The group leverages their English-speaking members to pull off advanced social engineering attacks obtaining unauthorized access. Not unlike a marketing campaign, this group focuses on a single target at a time. Rather than worry about you being a target or not, make sure that you're prepared for social engineering, to include fake IT support calls/emails. Ask what's trending in your email quarantine/spam filters, and reward reporting.

Lee Neely

One suspects that investors are interested in those numbers. That is to say they are "material."

William Hugh Murray

The information disclosed included names, driver's license numbers, and medical information. Victims are being given one year of credit monitoring services. Two things jump out: first, the investigation taking ten months; second, that they were successfully compromised twice within twelve months. I'm not unsympathetic Ð this had to be horrible for McLaren - and today's table stakes are such that you need to be expeditious in your investigation and comprehensive in your mitigations to maintain the confidence of both consumers and regulators.

Lee Neely

In spite of, or because of, HIPAA, leakage of healthcare data has reached troubling proportions. We need to prescribe essential and efficient measures to include strong authentication and isolation of clinical applications and data from such high risk applications as browsing and e-mail.

William Hugh Murray

CVE-2023-20198, CVSS score 10.0 and CVE-2023-20273, CVSS score 7.2, are being used together to obtain access and escalate privileges. CVE-2023-20198 was reported on the NIST KEV 10/16/2023, with a due date of 10/20/2023 due to exploit activity observed at that time. Cisco released software updates in October of 2023, and there isn't an effective workaround. Make sure that you're applying the updates to your boundary control and network equipment. Where services are critical, such as telecom, broadband or satellite, make sure that you have redundancy and fail-over, not only to support the required service level but also so you can patch without service interruption.

Lee Neely

Salt Typhoon's campaign has been very successful. It may well serve a strategic objective. It requires at least a tactical response.

William Hugh Murray

Nothing surprising from the joint announcement. You could argue that the miscreant was only targeting North American telco providers. But I suspect the reality is that the global ICT sector is the target for this nation-state attack.

Curtis Dukes

Historically, attackers have been quick to leverage vulnerabilities in Citrix NetScaler services, so rapid application of the fix is prudent. After applying the patches to your NetScaler devices, be sure to terminate any active ICA and PCoIP sessions to invalidate any possibly stolen session tokens. Session termination, using the kill sessions command, rather than a reboot, is required to prevent those sessions from being restored using existing tokens.

Lee Neely

They are working to remove expired/legacy drivers. Six-month notification will be provided to those whose drivers will be unpublished/expired. Partners with drivers which are removed can request they be republished but require a business justification. While not stated, those drivers will likely be expected to meet current security requirements, as Microsoft is stating compatibility and security are the core drivers, no pun intended, behind this project.

Lee Neely

Microsoft's commitments to being device-open and backwards-compatible proved to be popular among users and sound business for Microsoft. This move may reduce risk with a minimum of business disruption.

William Hugh Murray