interactive

Rapid7's vulnerability research team reported that a security flaw in PostgreSQL was exploited as a zero-day vulnerability to infiltrate BeyondTrust's network in December, involving two zero-day vulnerabilities, CVE-2024-12356 and CVE-2024-12686, along with a stolen API key, leading to unauthorized access to 17 Remote Support SaaS instances. In early January, the U.S. Treasury Department disclosed a compromise of its network, with attackers using the stolen API key to access its BeyondTrust instance, linked to the Silk Typhoon cyber-espionage group. The attackers targeted critical offices within the Treasury, including CFIUS and OFAC, and accessed the Office of Financial Research systems. CISA added CVE-2024-12356 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on December 19, mandating federal agencies to secure their networks. On January 27, Rapid7 uncovered another zero-day vulnerability in PostgreSQL, CVE-2025-1094, which allows SQL injection attacks due to mishandling of invalid UTF-8 characters. Rapid7 found that exploiting CVE-2024-12356 for remote code execution requires CVE-2025-1094, and while BeyondTrust classified CVE-2024-12356 as command injection, Rapid7 suggests it is an argument injection vulnerability. They identified a method to exploit CVE-2025-1094 for remote code execution in BeyondTrust systems independently of CVE-2024-12356, noting that BeyondTrust's patch for CVE-2024-12356 does not resolve the root cause of CVE-2025-1094 but prevents exploitation of both vulnerabilities.