By Walter Denmon

Security researchers have observed hackers linked to the notorious LockBit gang exploiting a pair of Fortinet firewall vulnerabilities to deploy ransomware on several company networks.

In a report published last week, security researchers at Forescout Research said a group it’s tracking dubbed “Mora_001” is exploiting the Fortinet firewalls, which sit on the edge of a company’s network and act as digital gatekeepers, to break in and deploy a custom ransomware strain they call “SuperBlack.”

One of the vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2024-55591, has been exploited in cyberattacks to breach the corporate networks of Fortinet customers since December 2024. Forescout says a second bug, tracked as CVE-2025-24472, is also being exploited by Mora_001 in attacks. Fortinet released patches for both bugs in January.

Sai Molige, senior manager of threat hunting at Forescout, told TechCrunch that the cybersecurity firm has “investigated three events in different companies, but we believe there could be others.”

In one confirmed intrusion, Forescout said it observed the attacker “selectively” encrypting file servers containing sensitive data.

“The encryption was initiated only after data exfiltration, aligning with recent trends among ransomware operators who prioritize data theft over pure disruption,” said Molige.

Forescout says the Mora_001 threat actor “exhibits a distinct operational signature,” which the firm says has “close ties” to the LockBit ransomware gang, which was last year disrupted by U.S. authorities. Molige said the SuperBlack ransomware is based on the leaked builder behind the malware used in LockBit 3.0 attacks, while a ransom note used by Mora_001 includes the same messaging address used by LockBit.

“This connection could indicate that Mora_001 is either a current affiliate with unique operational methods or an associate group sharing communication channels,” Molige said.

Stefan Hostetler, head of threat intelligence at cybersecurity firm Arctic Wolf, which previously observed exploitation of CVE-2024-55591, tells TechCrunch that Forescout’s findings suggest hackers are “going after the remaining organizations who were unable to apply the patch or harden their firewall configurations when the vulnerability was originally disclosed.”

Hostetler says the ransom note used in these attacks bears similarities to that of other groups, such as the now-defunct ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware gang.

By April Lanux

Complex problems cannot be solved if examined only through a narrow lens. Enter interdisciplinarity. It is now widely accepted that drawing on varied expertise and perspectives is the only way we can understand and tackle many of the most challenging issues we face, as individuals and as a species.

So, there is a growing movement towards more cross-disciplinary working in higher education, but it faces challenges. Interdisciplinarity requires a shift of mindset in an academy built on clear disciplinary distinctions and must compete for space in already overcrowded curricula.

We speak to two leading scholars in interdisciplinary research and teaching to find out why it is so important and how they are encouraging more academics and students to break out of traditional academic silos.

Gabriele Bammer is professor of integration and implementation sciences (i2S) at the Australian National University. Her books include Disciplining Interdisciplinarity, and she is inaugural president of the Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity.

To support progress in interdisciplinarity around the world, she runs the Integration and Implementation Insights blog and repository of theory, methods and tools underpinning i2S. She has held visiting appointments at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center at the University of Maryland and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany.

Kate Crawford is an international scholar of the social implications of artificial intelligence who has advised policymakers in the United Nations, the White House and the European Parliament on AI, and leads the Knowing Machines Project, an international research collaboration that investigates the foundations of machine learning. She is a research professor at USC Annenberg in Los Angeles, a senior principal researcher at MSR in New York, an honorary professor at the University of Sydney, and the inaugural visiting chair for AI and justice at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Her award-winning book, Atlas of AI, reveals the extractive nature of this technology while her creative collaborations such as Anatomy of an AI System with Vladan Joler and Excavating AI with Trevor Paglen explore the complex processes behind each human-AI interaction, showing the material and human costs. Her latest exhibition, Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power 1500-2025, opened in Milan in November 2023 and won the Grand Prize of the European Commission for art and technology.