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The Nissan Red Hat Breach: A $4.5M Lesson in Third-Party Supply Chain Risk Management

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CyberDudeBivash ThreatWire - PowerShell, CVE, Supply Chain Risk

ThreatWire Deep-Dive: Stealth PowerShell Gov Targeting, CVE-2025-29970 SYSTEM EoP, and the Nissan–Red Hat Supply-Chain Wake-Up Call

Author: Cyberdudebivash (CyberDudeBivash) | Published: December 23, 2025
Official Hub: cyberdudebivash.com/apps-products | CVE/Intel Hub: cyberbivash.blogspot.comGovernment TargetingPrivilege EscalationSupply Chain RiskBlue Team Playbooks

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TL;DR (Executive Summary)

  • Stealth PowerShell gov targeting: Recent spear-phishing chains are using script-heavy loaders, living-off-the-land execution, and multi-stage payload delivery to reduce detection and maintain persistence in government environments.
  • CVE-2025-29970: A Microsoft Brokering File System use-after-free flaw enables local privilege escalation that can lead to SYSTEM-level control if chained with initial access.
  • Nissan–Red Hat supply-chain impact: Third-party/contractor-managed infrastructure can expose customer data even when core production systems aren’t directly compromised — a practical board-level lesson in vendor governance.

Table of Contents

1) New Stealthy PowerShell Scripts Targeting Government Agencies

Government networks remain a high-value target because they concentrate identity stores, diplomatic communications, financial systems, and interagency trust relationships. In recent operations, attackers increasingly avoid “loud” malware drops and instead use PowerShell-driven stages, script-based loaders, and LOLBins to blend into normal admin activity.

Observed intrusion pattern (defender view)

Initial access: Spear-phishing with weaponized attachments (SVG/HTML/Office lures) and social-engineering-driven clicks.

Execution: JavaScript or embedded script content triggers a PowerShell chain to fetch a downloader.

Payload delivery: Secondary components retrieved from legitimate platforms (for example, Discord/CDN-like hosting) to reduce reputation-based blocks.

Defense evasion: Obfuscation, command-line hiding, staging in user-writable paths, and process injection/hollowing in trusted binaries.

Case pattern example: SVG → JavaScript → PowerShell → downloader → RAT

One recent pattern described by multiple threat research write-ups uses a weaponized SVG attachment that starts a JavaScript-to-PowerShell chain. The chain pulls a downloader (reported as “Caminho” in some analyses), which then retrieves a RAT (reported as an open-source DCRAT variant hosted on Discord in at least one set of observations).

CyberDudeBivash defender note: The most reliable hunting signal isn’t “PowerShell exists” — it’s PowerShell used as a network-enabled loader from email-driven parent processes, with suspicious encoded commands, and rapid follow-on child processes (msbuild/rundll32/regsvr32) that don’t match your org baselines.

Immediate hardening checklist (gov & regulated orgs)

  • Enable enhanced PowerShell logging (Script Block, Module, Transcription) and centralize to SIEM.
  • Constrain PowerShell with policy where feasible (admin-only interactive, limit legacy versions).
  • Block outbound to risky “file-sharing/chat CDN” destinations unless explicitly required for business.
  • Enforce attachment protection: detonate SVG/HTML lures in sandbox; restrict high-risk file types.
  • Use identity controls: require phishing-resistant MFA for privileged roles and remote access.

Partner hardening recommendation: Endpoint protection with response telemetry (Kaspersky) can help validate script activity, persistence attempts, and process chains with investigative context.Back to Top

2) CVE-2025-29970: New Microsoft Brokering File System Flaw Grants SYSTEM Privileges

CVE-2025-29970 is a Microsoft Windows elevation-of-privilege issue in the Brokering File System (BFS) described as a use-after-free class bug. Practically, defenders should treat this as a “post-compromise accelerator”: it doesn’t usually provide initial access by itself, but it can turn a low-priv foothold into SYSTEM control when exploited locally.

Why this matters (real-world exploitation logic)

  • Most breaches begin with low privileges (phishing, stolen creds, web app user, local user).
  • Local privilege escalation lets attackers disable defenses, dump credentials, and persist at higher trust levels.
  • Chaining is the danger: a stealth PowerShell foothold + LPE = full workstation/server takeover.

What to do now

  1. Patch fast: prioritize Windows builds listed by Microsoft advisory guidance and your asset inventory.
  2. Hunt for exploitation attempts: unusual kernel driver interactions are hard, so pivot on outcomes: new SYSTEM services, unexpected scheduled tasks, security tool stoppage, LSASS access attempts.
  3. Reduce blast radius: remove local admin where possible; enforce least privilege and admin tiering.

CyberDudeBivash note: If your environment is experiencing frequent phishing + endpoint script activity, elevate this CVE’s patch priority because it can convert “annoying infection” into “domain-wide incident.”

Training & capability building: Edureka security training can be used to upskill your team on patch prioritization, EDR triage, and incident response workflows.Back to Top

3) The Nissan–Red Hat Breach: A Third-Party Supply Chain Risk Lesson

Third-party exposure is one of the most underestimated breach paths in enterprise security. When infrastructure is operated by contractors, consultants, or service providers, the security boundary becomes “distributed” — meaning the weakest link might sit outside your direct control while still processing your customer or operational data.

What happened (high-level)

  • Red Hat publicly described unauthorized access to a GitLab instance used for internal consulting collaboration in select engagements, with data copied from that instance.
  • Reporting later connected the broader incident to downstream exposure for customers/partners, with Nissan confirming customer information exposure tied to the Red Hat breach.

The “$4.5M lesson” explained

The reason boards should pay attention: breach impact is not just “data theft” — it’s downtime, legal costs, regulatory reporting, customer churn, and remediation. Industry research repeatedly places average breach costs in the multi-million-dollar range globally (often around the mid-$4M level, varying by year and geography).

Vendor risk controls that actually reduce incidents

  1. Contractual minimums: logging retention, MFA requirements, encryption, incident notification timelines, and right-to-audit language.
  2. Data minimization: restrict what the vendor stores; segment customer records; eliminate “extra” copies in dev tooling.
  3. Continuous verification: periodic security reviews, evidence-based controls, and validation of access pathways.
  4. Secure dev collaboration: harden GitLab/GitHub instances, rotate secrets, and scan repos for credentials.

Practical lab & tooling procurement: Alibaba and AliExpress can be used to source lab servers, security test gear, and development infrastructure to build controlled vendor-testing environments.Back to Top

4) Detection Engineering: What to Hunt Today

PowerShell loader hunting (endpoint & SIEM)

  • PowerShell with suspicious flags: -enc, -EncodedCommand, hidden window style, bypass execution policy.
  • PowerShell spawned by unusual parents: outlook.exe, winword.exe, excel.exe, mshta.exe, wscript.exe, cscript.exe.
  • Network connections immediately after PowerShell start to uncommon destinations or newly seen domains.
  • Follow-on LOLBins: msbuild.exe, rundll32.exe, regsvr32.exe, installutil.exe with abnormal arguments.

Privilege escalation outcome signals (post-exploitation)

  • New services running as LocalSystem not deployed by your software management.
  • Security tool tampering events (service stop, driver unload attempts, exclusions created).
  • Credential access behavior: LSASS read attempts, new credential dump tool artifacts, unusual DPAPI access patterns.

Important: Don’t rely on a single indicator. Build a correlation story: email event → suspicious process tree → PowerShell network fetch → persistence → privilege escalation outcomes.

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5) CyberDudeBivash 30–60–90 Day Defensive Playbook

First 30 days (stabilize)

  • Patch high-risk Windows EoP vulnerabilities and enforce rapid patch SLAs for privileged endpoints.
  • Turn on PowerShell logging and process creation logging; centralize to SIEM.
  • Baseline parent-child process trees and alert on anomalies.

Next 60 days (reduce attack surface)

  • Reduce local admin; deploy privileged access workflows and admin tiering.
  • Segment vendor-managed systems and restrict cross-environment trust.
  • Review vendor Git repositories and collaboration systems for secrets leakage.

By 90 days (operationalize resilience)

  • Run tabletop exercises: “phish → PowerShell loader → LPE → lateral movement.”
  • Implement continuous vendor assurance checks (evidence-based controls).
  • Build detection-as-code, maintain triage playbooks, and track mean time to contain.

Need help? CyberDudeBivash provides threat analysis, incident response support, and automation-led security hardening. Visit: cyberdudebivash.com/apps-products

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6) FAQ

Is PowerShell itself “malware”?

No. PowerShell is a legitimate admin tool. The problem is when attackers use it as a stealth loader to download and run payloads.

Does CVE-2025-29970 give remote code execution?

It is described as a local elevation-of-privilege issue. Attackers generally need some level of local access first, then they can escalate privileges.

Why are vendor breaches so damaging?

Because vendors may store sensitive data, credentials, or infrastructure details outside your direct security controls, expanding the attack surface.

7) References

#CyberDudeBivash #ThreatWire #PowerShell #GovCybersecurity #SpearPhishing #LOLBins #EndpointSecurity #WindowsSecurity #CVE2025 #CVE202529970 #PrivilegeEscalation #SYSTEM #PatchManagement #BlueTeam #ThreatHunting #DetectionEngineering #SupplyChainSecurity #ThirdPartyRisk #VendorRiskManagement #IncidentResponse #ZeroTrust #SOC #SecurityOperations

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