Week in review: Salesforce and ServiceNow portals exposed for 17 months, exploited Metabase 0-day
Incidents: Expanded malware detection, unpatched 5G flaws, and prolonged data breaches underscore ongoing security challenges.
Deep Analysis and Expert Commentary
The expansion of GitHub's Dependabot to eight ecosystems marks a significant step in combating supply chain attacks, though the scale—34 million repositories—poses immense operational challenges. The AI-discovered 5G vulnerabilities, particularly the 23 unpatched flaws, reveal critical gaps in telecom security, potentially exploitable for network disruption or data interception. The City-Forum campaign's exploitation of Salesforce and ServiceNow portals, operating undetected for 17 months, underscores the risks of misconfigured SaaS platforms and the need for continuous monitoring. Weak IAM configurations in cloud environments remain a top threat, with CISA's new mandates aiming to enforce baseline practices. The phase-out of email-validated certificates by AWS aligns with broader industry shifts toward more secure validation methods, but organizations must prepare for transitional hurdles.
Action Items
- Enable Dependabot malware alerts across all supported ecosystems to detect supply chain threats early.
- Audit and patch 4G/5G network software, prioritizing unpatched vulnerabilities identified by AI research.
- Review and tighten IAM configurations in cloud environments, adhering to CISA's baseline practices.
Original Article Brief Intro
Help Net Security · 2026-08-16 · Incidents: Expanded malware detection, unpatched 5G flaws, and prolonged data breaches underscore ongoing security challenges.
Related Terms and Notes
Malware Families
- IAM misconfigurations
Techniques / TTPs
- City-Forum — A long-running campaign exploiting misconfigured Salesforce and ServiceNow portals for data extraction.
- Supply Chain
Context Notes
- 5G vulnerabilities
- AWS certificates
- CISA
- City-Forum
- Dependabot — GitHub's tool for detecting vulnerable dependencies across multiple package ecosystems.
- IAM
- SaaS