The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recently added five security vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. These flaws impact Advantive VeraCore and Ivanti Endpoint Manager (EPM), both of which have been actively exploited in real-world attacks. The vulnerabilities in Advantive VeraCore include an unrestricted file upload vulnerability (CVE-2024-57968), which allows attackers to upload files to unintended folders. Additionally, CVE-2025-25181 describes an SQL injection vulnerability that enables attackers to execute arbitrary SQL commands on the system. Meanwhile, Ivanti EPM has three absolute path traversal vulnerabilities (CVE-2024-13159, CVE-2024-13160, and CVE-2024-13161) that allow remote unauthenticated attackers to leak sensitive information from the system.
The exploitation of these VeraCore vulnerabilities has been attributed to a Vietnamese threat actor group known as XE Group. This group has been observed dropping reverse shells and web shells to maintain persistent remote access to compromised systems. XE Group’s activities suggest a high level of sophistication in exploiting these vulnerabilities. The exact scope and number of systems impacted by this group remain unclear, but the presence of reverse shells suggests the attackers are attempting to maintain long-term access to targeted environments. This kind of exploit could lead to significant data breaches if left unaddressed.
In contrast, the Ivanti EPM vulnerabilities currently have no public reports detailing how they are being actively exploited in the wild.
However, a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit was released by Horizon3.ai last month, which demonstrated how these vulnerabilities could be leveraged for unauthorized access. Horizon3.ai described these vulnerabilities as “credential coercion” bugs, which may allow an unauthenticated attacker to compromise servers. These flaws, if left unpatched, could provide attackers with significant control over impacted systems, leading to potential data loss or further security breaches.
The vulnerability reports also coincide with a warning from the threat intelligence firm GreyNoise, which highlighted the mass exploitation of CVE-2024-4577, a critical vulnerability in PHP-CGI.
GreyNoise noted a significant increase in attack activity against this flaw, particularly targeting countries such as Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Spain, and India. Notably, more than 43% of the IP addresses targeting CVE-2024-4577 over the past 30 days were from Germany and China. This widespread targeting suggests a coordinated attack campaign, likely using automated scanning tools to identify vulnerable systems across multiple countries. In light of these threats, CISA has urged Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to patch these vulnerabilities by March 31, 2025, to mitigate the risks of exploitation.
