- Firewalls are a common target for hackers, report claims
- Barracuda report finds that 90% of all ransomware incidents in 2025 will be exploited firewalls
- Some bugs were more than a decade old, so patch now
If you can protect just one device on your network today, make sure it’s the firewall, as a new report from Barracuda claims that almost all ransomware incidents begin with a compromised firewall instance.
The Barracuda Managed XDR Global Threat Report is based on Barracuda Managed
Researchers found that 90% of all ransomware incidents that took place in 2025 exploited firewalls through a vulnerability or compromised account. One in 10 vulnerabilities detected already had a known exploit, they added, meaning that in many cases they were targeting “low-hanging fruit.”
Old school flaws
One of the most painful conclusions of the report is the fact that the most detected vulnerability is 13 years old. CVE-2013-2566, a flaw discovered in 2013, is in an outdated encryption algorithm and is often found in legacy systems (old servers, embedded devices, applications).
Barracuda is not the only company sounding the alarm about broken firewalls, as recent Sophos research also showed that incidents involving network edge devices such as routers, VPNs and firewalls are becoming an increasing intrusion point, accounting for almost 30% of the initial compromises seen in the Sophos Annual Threat Report.
At the same time, new findings from the Searchlight Ransomware H2 2025 report claim that the number of active ransomware groups reached never-before-seen levels, and the victim growth rate doubled from 204.
In late 2025, SonicWall firewall devices with SSL-VPN enabled across multiple generations were reported to be vulnerable and targeted by the Akira ransomware group.
Confirmed victims are not widely published as corporate names, but security reports and advisories noted that dozens of organizations were affected, including cases where over 100 SSL-VPN accounts in ~16 customer environments were compromised and used for monitoring activities.
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