Year in Review: Rapid7 Cybersecurity Research

Welcome to 2023, a year that sounds so futuristic it is hard to believe it is real. But real it is, and make no mistake, threat actors are still out there, working hard to get into networks the world over. So, at the start of the new year, I am reminded of two particular phrases: Those who do not...

Easier URI Targeting With Metasploit Framework

Over the past year and a half, Metasploit Framework’s core engineering team in Belfast has made significant improvements to usability, discoverability, and the general quality of life for the global community of Framework users. A few of the enhancements we’ve worked on in MSF 6 include: A handy...

Creating coefficiency: DevOps, Security, and Compliance

Secure IaC Infrastructure-as-code IaC is a powerful partnership accelerator. As businesses and organizations scale into the cloud to realize its full production-enablement potential, security often struggles to keep up. The ultimate goal on the security horizon is, of course, to prevent risks and...

How to Implement Secure and Compliant IaC

Success lies in security True separation of developer and security teams is becoming a thing of the past. Today’s cloud environments enable deployments at previously unheard-of speed and scale; there simply isn’t time to build infrastructure, then code, then hand it all off for security...

The Evolution of DevOps in 2021

DevOps has long been a key tool in helping organizations reliably and rapidly deliver systems into production. While in the past, IT and software development teams suffered from lengthy processes and struggled to resolve incompatible priorities, now DevOps allows for easier collaboration, as well...

DevSecOps and the New Scope of Application Development

Hand in hand: Application development and application security As expectations of developers change, so too do those of security teams. It’s more of a collective effort than ever as business dependence on applications continues to grow. Security must shift further left into the software developme...

InsightIDR: 2020 Highlights and What’s Ahead in 2021

As we kick off 2021 here at Rapid7, we wanted to take a minute to reflect on 2020, highlight some key InsightIDR product investments we don’t want you to miss, and take a look ahead at where our team sees detection and response going this year. Rapid7 detection and response 2020 highlights Whenev...

Metasploit Wrap-Up 04/04/2025

New RCEs Metasploit added four new modules this week, including three that leverage vulnerabilities to obtain remote code execution RCE. Among these three, two leverage deserialization, showing that the exploit primitive is still going strong. The Tomcat vulnerability in particular CVE-2025-24813...

Metasploit Weekly Wrap-Up 10/04/2024

New module content 3 cups-browsed Information Disclosure Authors: bcoles and evilsocket Type: Auxiliary Pull request: 19510 contributed by bcoles Path: scanner/misc/cupsbrowsedinfodisclosure Description: Adds scanner module to retrieve CUPS version and kernel version information from cups-browsed...

The Dreaded Network Pivot: An Attack Intelligence Story

Rapid7 recently released our 2024 Attack Intelligence Report, a 14-month deep dive into the vulnerability and attacker landscape. The spiritual successor to our annual Vulnerability Intelligence Report, the AIR includes data from the Rapid7 research team combined with our detection and response a...

Manage Enterprise Risk at Scale with a Unified, Holistic Approach

The rapid pace of technological change and the attendant rise of cyber threats in both speed and number leave most organizations at a disadvantage. Historically, many firms faced this challenge simply by purchasing more technology in the hopes that the latest threat protection software would keep...

Multiple Vulnerabilities in South River Technologies Titan MFT and Titan SFTP [FIXED]

!Multiple Vulnerabilities in South River Technologies Titan MFT and Titan SFTP \FIXED\https://blog.rapid7.com/content/images/2023/10/vuln-disclosure-banner.jpeg As part of our continuing research project into managed file transfer risk, including JSCAPE MFT and Fortra Globalscape EFT Server, Rapi...

What’s New in InsightIDR: Q4 2022 in Review

As we continue to empower security teams with the freedom to focus on what matters most, Q4 focused on investments and releases that contributed to that vision. With InsightIDR, Rapid7’s cloud-native SIEM and XDR solution, teams have the scale, comprehensive contextual coverage, and expertly vett...

Metasploit Weekly Wrap-UP

GLPI htmLawed PHP Command Injection Our very own bwatters-r7 wrote a module for an unauthenticated PHP command injection vulnerability that exists in various versions of GLPI. The vulnerability is due to a third-party vendor test script being present in default installations. A POST request to...

Don Spies and Kim Grauer on tracking illicit Bitcoin transactions

In this episode of Security Nation, we’re joined by Don Spies and Kim Grauer of Chainalysis. They discuss the relationship between ransomware and cryptocurrency and how Chainalysis leverages unique characteristics of the latter to combat the former. Stick around for our Rapid Rundown, where Tod a...

Attack Surface Analysis Part 2: Penetration Testing

In this three-part series, we’ll explore key considerations and strategies for choosing an attack surface analysis strategy, and the ways it can be used to increase awareness of both technical and process-related risks. This is the second installment in our 2021 series around attack surface...

How the Biden Administration's cybersecurity order will affect companies

“It is the policy of my Administration that the prevention, detection, assessment, and remediation of cyber incidents is a top priority and essential to national and economic security.” The Biden Administration recently issued Executive Order EO 14028, “Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity,” to...

MDR Vendor Must-Haves, Part 3: Ingestion of Other Technology Investments

This blog post is part of an ongoing series about evaluating Managed Detection and Response MDR providers. For more insights, check out our guide, “10 Things Your MDR Service Must Do.” By the time you’re ready to invest in a Managed Detection and Response MDR service, you’ve likely already invest...

Why More Teams are Shifting Security Analytics to the Cloud This Year

As the threat landscape continues to evolve in size and complexity, so does the security skills and resource gap, leaving organizations both understaffed and overwhelmed. An ESG study found that 63% of organizations say security is more difficult than it was two years ago. Teams cite the growing...

The Risky Business: Rapid7 Report Highlights Need for Improved Vulnerability Management Practices

Back in July, Rapid7 released its first-ever National / Industry / Cloud Exposure Report, otherwise known as “NICER.” This report had a big job: to assess not only the prevalence of known threats, but also to provide a geographic census of those threats. It tells the all-too-true story of...

Critical VMware vCenter Vulnerabilities Allow Authentication Bypass and Remote Code Execution (CVE-2026-59309, CVE-2026-59310)

Overview On July 29, 2026, Broadcom published security advisory VMSA-2026-0006 addressing multiple vulnerabilities in several VMWare products. Included in the advisory are two critical remotely exploitable vulnerabilities affecting VMware vCenter Server: CVE-2026-59309 and CVE-2026-59310. Both...

CVE-2026-16232: Critical Check Point SmartConsole Authentication Bypass Exploited in the Wild

Overview On July 22, 2026, Check Point published a security advisory for multiple vulnerabilities affecting Security Management, Multi-Domain Management, and firewall products. The most urgent of these is CVE-2026-16232, an authentication bypass in the SmartConsole login process classified as...

BPFdoor in Telecom Networks: Sleeper Cells in the Backbone

Executive overview The strategic positioning of covert access within the world’s telecommunication networks A months-long investigation by Rapid7 Labs has uncovered evidence of an advanced China-nexus threat actor, Red Menshen, placing some of the stealthiest digital sleeper cells the team has ev...

Critical Veeam Backup & Replication CVE-2025-23120

Update Friday, March 28, 2025: Security researchers at CODE WHITE GmbH have noted on social media that it is possible to bypass the patch for CVE-2025-23120. Rapid7 has not directly confirmed the patch bypass, but we are relatively confident in the validity of the finding. Customers should ensure...

Metasploit Weekly Wrap-Up 12/20/2024

New module content 4 GameOverlay Privilege Escalation and Container Escape Authors: bwatters-r7, g1vi, gardnerapp, and h00die Type: Exploit Pull request: 19460 contributed by gardnerapp Path: linux/local/gameoverlayprivesc AttackerKB reference: CVE-2023-2640 Description: Adds a module for...

Metasploit Weekly Wrap-Up 11/22/2024

JetBrains TeamCity Login Scanner Metasploit added a login scanner for the TeamCity application to enable users to check for weak credentials. TeamCity has been the subject of multiple ETR vulnerabilities and is a valuable target for attackers. Targeted DCSync added to Windows Secrets Dump This...

5 key MDR differentiators to look for to build stronger security resilience

Organizations looking to address the skills gap and bring greater efficiency as their business grows and their attack surface sprawls are turning to MDR providers at an accelerated pace. We’ve seen predictions from top analyst firms signaling the rapid rate of adoption of an MDR provider by 2025...

Stories from the SOC Part 1: IDAT Loader to BruteRatel

Rapid7’s Managed Detection and Response MDR team continuously monitors our customers' environments, identifying emerging threats and developing new detections. In August 2023, Rapid7 identified a new malware loader named the IDAT Loader. Malware loaders are a type of malicious software designed t...

Rapid7’s Mid-Year Threat Review

It will come as little surprise to most people that cyber threats in 2023 have been rather prolific. From widely exploited vulnerabilities to high-profile ransomware and extortion campaigns, the first half of the year has seen more than its fair share of large-scale incidents. Rapid7’s 2023...

New InsightCloudSec Compliance Pack: Implementing and Enforcing ISO 27001:2022

James Alaniz and Diamond Fair contributed to this article. We’ve been on quite a roll lately releasing new compliance packs, along with iterative updates to others that we’ve supported for a while now. We’re not done yet, either! In this article, we’ll discuss our newly released compliance pack f...

Rapid7 Observes Use of Microsoft OneNote to Spread Redline Infostealer Malware

Author: Thomas Elkins Contributors: Matt Green, James Dunne, and Hernan Diaz Rapid7 routinely conducts research into the wide range of techniques that threat actors use to conduct malicious activity. One objective of this research is to discover new techniques being used in the wild, so we can...

Increasing The Sting of HIVE Ransomware

How malicious actors evade detection and disable defenses for more destructive HIVE Ransomware attacks. Rapid7 routinely conducts research into the wide range of techniques that threat actors use to conduct malicious activity. One objective of this research is to discover new techniques being use...

Evaluating the Security of an Enterprise IoT Deployment at Domino's Pizza

Recently, I had a great opportunity to work with Domino's Pizza to evaluate an internally conceived Internet of Things IoT-based business solution they had designed and deployed throughout their US store locations. The goal of this research project was to understand the security implications arou...

Hands-On IoT Hacking: Rapid7 at DefCon 29 IoT Village, Part 4

The first 3 installments of our series on Rapid7's hands-on exercise from the IoT Village at this year's DefCon covered how to set up a UART header, how to determine UART status and baud rate, and how to log into single-user mode on the device. In this final post, we'll discuss how to gain full...

A Matter of Perspective: Agent-Based and Agentless Approaches to Cloud Security, Part 1

When it comes to securing your cloud assets' activities at runtime, the first step is deciding how. There are enough possible solutions that you're likely to find yourself at a crossroads trying to decide between them. The factors that may affect your choice include: Friction level — How...

[Security Nation] Jonathan Cran on demystifying startup funding for security companies

!\Security Nation\ Jonathan Cran on demystifying startup funding for security companieshttps://blog.rapid7.com/content/images/2021/07/securitynationlogo.jpg In this episode of Security Nation, we’re joined by Jonathan Cran. We wade into uncharted territory with Jonathan, as he claims the title of...

[Security Nation] Jeff Man on Mapping the MITRE ATT&CK Framework Against PCI

!\Security Nation\ Jeff Man on Mapping the MITRE ATT&CK Framework Against PCIhttps://blog.rapid7.com/content/images/2021/05/securitynationlogo-1.jpg In this episode of Security Nation, we are joined by Jeff Man, who discusses his work mapping the MITRE ATT&CK Framework against PCI. Stick around f...

Building a Holistic VRM Strategy That Includes the Web Application Layer

Building security into your overall vulnerability risk management VRM strategy is a must-do in the age of the all-important web app. Between security and IT-Ops teams, there are a number of steps in the VRM process, including asset identification, enumeration, prioritization, and remediation. How...

Talkin’ SMAC: Alert Labeling and Why It Matters

If you’ve ever worked in a Security Operations Center SOC, you know that it’s a special place. Among other things, the SOC is a massive data-labeling machine, and generates some of the most valuable data in the cybersecurity industry. Unfortunately, much of this valuable data is often rendered...

Upcoming Rapid7 Webcast: How Far Does Your VRM Strategy Go?

Web applications have been growing in complexity over the past several years, while also becoming the preferred method for attackers looking to capitalize on emergent technologies. This is a trend that will only persist and evolve, so it’s crucial to extend your web application testing strategy t...

Shifting Security Right: How Cloud-Based SecOps Can Speed Processes While Maintaining Integrity

When it comes to offloading security controls to the cloud, it may seem counterintuitive to the notion of “securing” things. But, when we consider the efficiency to be gained by shifting right with some security controls, it makes sense to send more granular, ground-up responsibilities to a trust...

Set New InsightVM Goals and Share with Your Team for Increased Visibility and More Efficient Execution

Since 2018, thousands of enterprises have utilized InsightVM’s Goals and SLAs feature to build their organization-specific security goals. Through Goals and SLAs, security teams ensure that they’re making progress toward their goals and service-level agreements SLAs at an appropriate pace, and th...

This One Time on a Pen Test: CSRF to Password Reset Phishing

Each year, Rapid7 penetration testers complete hundreds of internally and externally based penetration testing service engagements. This post is part of an ongoing series featuring testimonials of what goes on beneath the hoodie. For more insights, check out our 2020 Under the Hoodie report...

2021 Detection and Response Planning, Part 4: Planning for Success with a Cloud SIEM

This is the fourth and final installment of our series around 2021 security planning. Through this series, we talked to a previous CISO about how to tackle annual security planning, looked at driving more efficient threat detections, and also explored the benefits of greater SOC automation. In th...

2021 Detection and Response Planning, Part 3: Why 2021 Is the Year for SOC Automation

In this third installment of our series around 2021 security planning, we’re focused on SOC automation. In part one, we spoke with Rapid7 Detection and Response Practice Advisor, Jeffrey Gardner on tips and advice for ramping up annual security planning. In part two, we discussed how reliable,...

SMTP is the key: BPFDoor and AVERAT hitting the network edge

Overview Rapid7 tracked a set of Linux samples that blend into the software and device conventions of the telecom environments they target. The set spans a newly observed BPFDoor variant, a BPF Rekoobe build seen against South Korean targets, a dropper, and six builds of a Linux implant we track ...

Weekly Metasploit Update: Modules for SMB-to-Meterpreter, Peyara Remote Mouse RCE exploit, and more

It's Time to Upgrade Your SMB Session This week, Metasploit contributor Dean Welch has added an SMB to Meterpreter session upgrade module. It uses PsExec to facilitate the upgrade. Users can load the module with use windows/manage/smbtometerpreter and specify the session number they wish to...

Patch Tuesday - March 2025

Microsoft is addressing 57 vulnerabilities this March 2025 Patch Tuesday, which is a similar volume to last month. However, Microsoft has evidence of in-the-wild exploitation for as many as six of the vulnerabilities published today, and CISA KEV already lists all of them. Microsoft is also aware...

Metasploit Weekly Wrap-Up 10/18/2024

ESC15: EKUwu AD CS continues to be a popular target for penetration testers and security practitioners. The latest escalation technique hence the the ESC in ESC15 was discovered by Justin Bollinger with details being released just last week. This latest configuration flaw has common issuance...

Metasploit Weekly Wrap-Up 7/19/2024

GeoServer Unauthenticated RCE This week, contributor h00die-gr3y added an interesting exploit module that targets the GeoServer open-source application. This software is used to view, edit, and share geospatial data. Versions prior to 2.23.6, versions between 2.24.0 and 2.24.3 and versions betwee...