Threat Actors Weaponize HexStrike AI to Exploit Citrix Flaws Within a Week of Disclosure

"HexStrike AI, according to its website, is pitched as an AI‑driven security platform to automate reconnaissance and vulnerability discovery with an aim to accelerate authorized red teaming operations, bug bounty hunting, and capture the flag (CTF) challenges. Per information shared on its GitHub repository, the open-source platform integrates with over 150 security tools to facilitate network reconnaissance, web application security testing, reverse engineering, and cloud security."

"But according to a report from Check Point, threat actors are trying their hands on the tool to gain an adversarial advantage, attempting to weaponize the tool to exploit recently disclosed security vulnerabilities. "This marks a pivotal moment: a tool designed to strengthen defenses has been claimed to be rapidly repurposed into an engine for exploitation, crystallizing earlier concepts into a widely available platform driving real-world attacks," the cybersecurity company said."

"Discussions on darknet cybercrime forums show that threat actors claim to have successfully exploited the three security flaws that Citrix disclosed last week using HexStrike AI, and, in some cases, even flag seemingly vulnerable NetScaler instances that are then offered to other criminals for sale. Check Point said the malicious use of such tools has major implications for cybersecurity, not only shrinking the window between public disclosure and mass exploitation, but also helping parallelize the automation of exploitation efforts."

HexStrike AI is an open-source AI-driven security platform that automates reconnaissance and vulnerability discovery, integrates with over 150 security tools, and supports dozens of specialized AI agents for vulnerability intelligence, exploit development, attack chain discovery, and error handling. Threat actors are attempting to weaponize HexStrike AI to exploit recently disclosed vulnerabilities. Darknet cybercrime forums show claims of successful exploitation of three Citrix flaws and of flagging seemingly vulnerable NetScaler instances for sale. Check Point warns that malicious use shortens the time between public disclosure and mass exploitation, parallelizes automated attacks, reduces human effort, and enables automatic retrying of failed exploitation attempts.

Read at The Hacker News