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Langflow’s AI Infrastructure Under Siege
A dangerous new campaign has emerged in the cybersecurity landscape, exploiting a critical vulnerability in Langflow—an AI workflow builder. According to Trend Micro Research, attackers are actively leveraging CVE-2025-3248, a severe remote code execution (RCE) flaw, to install a new variant of the Flodrix botnet. This malware is capable of launching large-scale distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, exfiltrating data, and compromising entire systems.
In a growing threat pattern, adversaries are using internet-scanning tools like Shodan to detect unpatched servers, injecting malicious scripts to trigger the flaw, and executing commands that lead to full system control. This exploitation chain also downloads Flodrix malware from remote servers, embedding itself into the server’s environment while evading detection using obfuscation techniques. CISA has acknowledged the severity of this attack, scoring the vulnerability at 9.8 on the CVSS scale and adding it to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) list in May.
Original
Trend Research has uncovered that cyber attackers are exploiting CVE-2025-3248—a critical code injection vulnerability in Langflow—to distribute the Flodrix botnet. Langflow, widely used for building agentic AI workflows, suffers from a flaw in its /api/v1/validate/code endpoint that enables unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary code remotely. Versions prior to 1.3.0 are affected.
Horizon3.ai researchers discovered the vulnerability, noting how easily attackers could gain shell access by inserting payloads into decorators—simple Python functions. Following public disclosure, a proof-of-concept exploit was released, and Trend Micro observed real-world usage of it to deploy malware. The attackers use reconnaissance scripts to scan for Langflow servers, exploit the flaw, then install the Flodrix botnet from a remote server.
Once embedded, Flodrix connects to command-and-control (C\&C) servers over TCP or the Tor network, enabling DDoS attacks and full system compromise. The malware also supports stealth functions: it deletes itself when run with bad parameters and avoids disrupting critical processes. This behavior points to a selective, highly adaptable botnet campaign.
Notably, Flodrix shows strong technical lineage from the LeetHozer botnet, but with evolved capabilities like process enumeration, encrypted communication, and advanced evasion. Flodrix terminates suspicious processes and sends kill reports back to its C\&C server. Analysts believe the malware is in active development and part of multiple simultaneous campaigns run by unidentified threat actors, possibly linked to the Moobot group.
What Undercode Say:
The Langflow CVE-2025-3248 incident highlights three critical dimensions in today’s cybersecurity paradigm: AI infrastructure vulnerability, ease of exploitability, and evolving botnet sophistication.
1. Weak Input Validation in AI Platforms
Langflow’s popularity as an agentic AI tool makes it an attractive target for attackers. Yet its input validation oversight—especially around code injection endpoints—makes it a textbook case of how innovation often outruns security. In modern AI workflows, especially open-ended platforms like Langflow, sandboxing and validation should be mandatory from version 0.1. This vulnerability shows how even non-mainstream AI tools are now threat vectors.
2. Open-Source Weaponization
The availability of a public PoC turned this from a security flaw into a full-blown attack campaign within days. That’s the double-edged sword of the open-source community: while transparency can accelerate patching and education, it also enables cybercriminals to mount scalable attacks at near-zero cost.
3. DDoS-as-a-Service Evolution
Flodrix’s ability to deliver dual-channel C\&C communication, self-delete, evade detection, and target process-specific applications signals that DDoS botnets are no longer “noisy nuisances”—they’re surgical instruments. With command encryption, artifact erasure, and environment profiling, this new Flodrix strain might represent a bridge to “stealth botnets” optimized for long-term persistence rather than splashy, brute-force attacks.
4. Target Profiling & Value Assessment
The reconnaissance phase (e.g., checking for environment variables, users, and directories like /tmp) suggests attackers are not randomly launching attacks—they’re profiling. This behavioral insight implies future targeted operations, perhaps against commercial AI deployments, data warehouses, or healthcare AI services using Langflow.
5. DevOps & Docker Abuse
The malware script is even named “docker”—a nod to its intended DevOps camouflage. The use of bash scripts that avoid killing system-critical processes reveals a strategic design: remain unnoticed, persist longer, and gather intelligence before triggering full exploitation.
6. Future Indicators of Malware Evolution
Flodrix’s current capabilities are already sophisticated—encrypted DDoS, stealth deletion, multi-system payloads, and process enumeration—but the modularity of its design hints that its creators are building a “malware-as-a-platform.” That could include ransomware modules, data theft tools, or privilege escalation features in future iterations.
7. Call to Action
Admins running Langflow should immediately update to version 1.3.0 and monitor systems for the Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) published by Trend Micro. Firewall rules, network monitoring for unusual TCP/UDP traffic (especially over port 50445), and system process audits are critical steps in mitigation.
🔍 Fact Checker Results:
✅ CVE-2025-3248 is officially listed in CISA’s KEV catalog with a CVSS 9.8 rating.
✅ Horizon3.ai and Trend Micro have both published valid exploit methods and active analysis.
✅ Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) and malware behavior have been corroborated by multiple researchers.
📊 Prediction:
As AI frameworks continue to be integrated into enterprise environments, attackers will increasingly target developer-friendly, low-security tools like Langflow. Expect a rise in similar exploitations of AI orchestration platforms in 2025–2026. We anticipate that future Flodrix variants will include modular ransomware capabilities and lateral movement tools, enabling network-wide infiltration in cloud-native environments. AI workflow builders will need not just patching but architectural redesigns to survive this new wave of exploit-driven botnets.
References:
Reported By: securityaffairs.com
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