Cryptojacking, backdoors abound as fiends abuse Aviatrix Controller bug

A critical RCE in Aviatrix Controller (CVE-2024-50603) has been publicly disclosed and quickly weaponized: researchers observed exploitation between Jan 7–10 leading to deployment of Silver backdoors and XMRig cryptojacking. Default/high IAM privileges for many Aviatrix deployments create strong lateral-movement and privilege-escalation risk; ~681 controllers were publicly exposed per a Shodan scan. Patches and updated versions (7.2.4996 and CoPilot 4.16.1+) are available, and defenders are advised to patch and remove public access on port 443 where possible.