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Microsoft releases emergency .NET patches for critical Brotli flaw

A vulnerability in Google’s Brotli data compression library, tracked as CVE-2026-111497 and dubbed Node2Shell, has led to security updates from Microsoft, the Node.js project and the maintainers of two Python packages. Node.js and the Python packages were patched last week, and Microsoft followed on October 25 with fixes for .NET, Visual Studio and PowerShell. Bun, Envoy and Istio have also been updated. Brotli is a popular choice for compressing data sent over the web, and its decoder is embedded in a long list of applications and libraries. Described as an out-of-bounds write, the bug impacts Brotli 1.0.3 through 1.2.0. Google gave it a CVSS v4 score of 9.2, which puts it in the critical category. Brotli versions 1.0.10, 1.1.1 and 1.2.1 contain the fix. The Node.js project said…

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Microsoft releases emergency .NET patches for critical Brotli flaw
Microsoft released emergency .NET security updates to patch a critical vulnerability known as Broccoli2Shell, also tracked as Node2Shell and HTTP2Shell. Tracked as CVE-2026-111497, this critical-severity flaw was found by Imperva Red Team and stems from an out-of-bounds write in the Brotli decoder, which expands data compressed using Google's widely used Brotli lossless compression algorithm. Successful exploitation lets unprivileged attackers use a maliciously crafted Brotli-compressed stream to trigger crashes or memory leaks and, in some cases, gain remote code execution on devices with vulnerable Brotli binaries or libraries. According to a Microsoft advisory published Sunday, attackers can also exploit this flaw to remotely escalate privileges on systems with unpatched .NET installations that use non-default configurations. "Applications may be affected if they process Brotli-compressed data through ASP.NET Core request decompression, HttpClient automatic response decompression, or the System.IO.Compression Brotli APIs," Microsoft said. "Brotli decompression is not enabled by default in an out-of-the-box .NET or ASP.NET Core install. Applications must manually opt in to ASP.NET Core request decompression or HttpClient response decompression, or they must manually invoke the Brotli decompression APIs provided by .NET." To address this flaw, Microsoft has released out-of-band (OOB) security updates for .NET 8, .NET 9, and .NET 10, along with .NET 11 Release Candidate 3, and advised "updating as soon as possible." While proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits for Broccoli2Shell have already been published on GitHub, no reports of malicious exploitation in the wild have emerged. A dedicated online portal tracking the flaw warns that updating the system Brotli library doesn't address the risk in apps that bundle their own copy of the library. Those who can't apply the updates immediately should block incoming Brotli-compressed requests using a proxy or firewall, or disable Brotli decoding until they can apply a patch. Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply. The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments. Get the report
bleepingcomputer.comOct 26, 2026extracted
Google: disponibile PoC per lo sfruttamento della CVE-2026-111497
Google: disponibile PoC per lo sfruttamento della CVE-2026-111497 Alert AL03/261026/CSIRT-ITA Sintesi Disponibile un Proof of Concept (PoC) per lo sfruttamento della CVE-2026-111497, presente nel decoder di Google Brotli, libreria open source ampiamente impiegata per la compressione e decompressione dei contenuti web e incorporata in numerosi prodotti e framework software, tra cui Node.js, DuckDB, Apache Arrow, .NET e diverse librerie Python. Tipologia Remote Code Execution Denial of Service Information Disclosure Descrizione e potenziali impatti Nel dettaglio, la vulnerabilità identificata tramite la CVE-2026-111497 - di tipo "Out-of-bounds Write" e con CVSS v4.0 pari a 9.2 - interessa la libreria Google Brotli e i prodotti che integrano tale componente. Tale vulnerabilità è dovuta a una gestione non adeguata del decoder Brotli durante l'elaborazione di flussi di dati compressi, che può determinare condizioni di scrittura fuori dai limiti della memoria allocata. Un attaccante remoto non autenticato potrebbe sfruttare tale vulnerabilità, mediante l'invio di contenuti Brotli opportunamente predisposti, al fine di compromettere la disponibilità del servizio, ottenere l'accesso ad informazioni sensibili e, in determinate circostanze, eseguire codice arbitrario sui sistemi target. Prodotti e/o versioni affette Google Brotli 1.0.x, dalla versione 1.0.3 alla 1.0.10 (esclusa) 1.1.x, versioni precedenti alla 1.1.1 1.2.x, versione precedenti alla 1.2.1 Azioni di mitigazione Ove non provveduto, si raccomanda di aggiornare tempestivamente i prodotti vulnerabili all’ultima versione disponibile.
acn.gov.itOct 26, 2026extracted
Microsoft Issues Emergency Patch Update for Critical .NET Buffer Overflow Flaw
Microsoft has released out-of-bound (OOB) security updates for its .NET developer platform, which includes a fix for a critical buffer overflow vulnerability. The tech giant published the updates for .NET versions 8, 9, 10, and 11 Release Candidate 3 on October 25. Platform users have been urged to apply the updates as soon as possible to reduce the risk of compromise. They contain patches for two newly disclosed vulnerabilities, as well as two flaws that were not fully addressed in Microsoft’s October Patch Tuesday rollout. Single updates are available for each of the affected .NET versions and .NET 11 RC2 users should update to RC3 to receive these fixes. .NET is a free, open-source framework that developers can use to build apps and cloud services. It is managed by Microsoft and is supported on Windows, Linux and macOS operating systems. Updates Address Critical Buffer Overflow Vulnerability One of the new vulnerabilities addressed is CVE-2026-111497, which affects .NET versions 8, 9, 10, and 11 across all operating systems. The vulnerability is contained in the Brotli decompression algorithm, which is used by .NET. It can allow an unauthenticated attacker to read or corrupt process memory, leading to information disclosure, denial of service or elevation of privilege. Microsoft said that applications may be affected if they process Brotli-compressed data through ASP.NET Core request decompression, HttpClient automatic response decompression or the System.IO.Compression Brotli APIs. The flaw has a critical CVSS Score of 9.2. Users of Google Brotli versions 1.0.3 through 1.2.0 also need to update any Brotli libraries or binaries to the latest available version. Brotli was designed by two engineers at Google in 2015 to allow developers to speed up algorithm compression for developers. Microsoft’s OOB update also addresses CVE-2026-114148, which can allow an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally by exploiting unsafe ownership metadata in affected .NET tarballs. CVE-2026-114148 affects .NET versions 7-11, but only for Linux systems. For .NET 10 and .NET 11, CVE-2026-114148 affects source-build tarballs only. For .NET 8 and .NET 9, it also affects ASP.NET Core distributions obtained through ASP.NET Core tarballs, including users who do not build .NET from source, the advisory noted. It has not been assigned a CVSS score at the time of writing but has been reserved by a CVE Numbering Authority (CNA). In addition, Microsoft has re-issued fixes for two vulnerabilities disclosed in its October 13 Patch Tuesday rollout. These are for CVE-2026-70197, a memory corruption flaw affecting .NET versions 8-11, and CVE-2026-102870, a code injection vulnerability affecting .NET 10 and 11. Remediation Guidance for Developers Microsoft issued advice for .NET users on how to update their applications and build environments in light of the updates. These include: Install the updated runtime for the .NET version for your framework-dependent application, then restart the application Rebuild and republish self-contained applications with the updated runtime Rebuild and redeploy containers using updated .NET container images Obtain the updated source-build artifacts for your .NET version and rebuild your packages to incorporate the tarball ownership fix For ASP.NET Core tarball users on .NET 8 and 9, update your installation using the refreshed ASP.NET Core Runtime tarball for your .NET version Image credit: II.studio / Shutterstock.com
infosecurity-magazine.comOct 26, 2026extracted
Node2Shell: Brotli Flaw Triggers Patching Across Microsoft, Node.js, Python Packages
A vulnerability in Google’s Brotli data compression library, tracked as CVE-2026-111497 and dubbed Node2Shell, has led to security updates from Microsoft, the Node.js project and the maintainers of two Python packages. Node.js and the Python packages were patched last week, and Microsoft followed on October 25 with fixes for .NET, Visual Studio and PowerShell. Bun, Envoy and Istio have also been updated. Brotli is a popular choice for compressing data sent over the web, and its decoder is embedded in a long list of applications and libraries. Described as an out-of-bounds write, the bug impacts Brotli 1.0.3 through 1.2.0. Google gave it a CVSS v4 score of 9.2, which puts it in the critical category. Brotli versions 1.0.10, 1.1.1 and 1.2.1 contain the fix. The Node.js project said specially crafted input can push data beyond the limits of a buffer used by the decoder. The resulting memory corruption could cause the process to crash or leak memory contents, and could also allow an unauthenticated attacker to run arbitrary code. Node.js credited the discovery to members of OpenAI Codex Security. According to OpenAI, the issue was uncovered during red-teaming work, after which the company notified the Brotli developers and the projects that rely on the library. OpenAI noted that the fix predates the disclosure. “This root cause issue was actually fixed in the Brotli source code in February, but it wasn’t known at the time that it gave rise to a security vulnerability and there was no more recent release of Brotli,” the AI company said. Code execution demonstrated on official Node.js image Imperva has shown that it can be exploited for code execution on the official Node.js 24.22.0 image for Linux arm64. Its researchers sent the malicious data both in a server response retrieved by the targeted application and in a request body processed by Express 5 or body-parser 2. “The proof did not succeed on every attempt. Our results establish code execution for the tested Linux arm64 build and application setups, and show how the fixed build handled the same inputs,” Imperva said. The security firm has not made its exploit public. Attacks only work if malicious Brotli data reaches the decoder, for instance through a library that unpacks compressed content on the application’s behalf. “Any application that passes attacker-controlled data to an affected Google Brotli decoder may be exposed. This includes compressed HTTP request bodies, responses fetched from untrusted servers, and compressed files,” OpenAI’s Patch the Planet initiative said in its advisory. No exploitation in the wild has been reported so far. A proof-of-concept exploit published on GitHub reportedly achieves code execution only against an intentionally weakened build, and some researchers argued the bug can only be used for denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Microsoft products and Python packages affected Microsoft’s October 25 updates include .NET runtime versions 8.0.33, 9.0.22 and 10.0.14, along with .NET 11 Release Candidate 3. Visual Studio 2019, 2022 and 2026, as well as PowerShell 7.4, 7.5 and 7.6, have also been updated. Microsoft has categorized CVE-2026-111497 as an elevation of privilege issue with a CVSS v3.1 base score of 8.1. It rates the flaw critical for .NET and Visual Studio and important for PowerShell, and its exploitability assessment is “Exploitation More Likely.” In Python’s case, the vulnerable decoder is built into two PyPI packages, Brotli and brotlicffi. They have been patched with the release of versions 1.2.1 and 1.2.1.0, respectively. As more affected software emerged, researchers began referring to the flaw as HTTP2Shell and Broccoli2Shell. A public tracker of software that bundles its own copy of the Brotli decoder lists several projects that are still unpatched, including DuckDB, Apache Arrow, 7-Zip-zstd, p7zip and EDK II. Its maintainers say the list is incomplete, and that not every configuration of these projects necessarily exposes the vulnerable code. Applying the updates also requires restarting affected services and rebuilding container images on top of a patched base, since processes that are already running keep using the vulnerable code. Related: Mirai Botnet Operators Join PHP2Shell Attacks as ASLR Bypass Exploits Emerge Related: Attackers Exploit Third Arista VCO Zero-Day in Four Months Related: LiteLLM Compromised in Fresh Supply Chain Attack
securityweek.comOct 26, 2026extracted
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WSO2 and Adobe Commerce Flaws Exploited in Attacks, Added to CISA KEV
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday added two security flaws impacting Microsoft SharePoint and Mikrotik RouterOS to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerabilities in question are as follows - CVE-2026-65660 (CVSS score: 8.8) - A code injection vulnerability in Microsoft Office SharePoint that allows an authorized attacker to execute code over a network. CVE-2026-67279 (CVSS score: 6.9) - An improper enforcement of behavioral workflow vulnerability in Mikrotik RouterOS that could allow an unauthenticated client to open a session channel and send an exec request. As reported by The Hacker News earlier this week, CVE-2026-65660 was originally described by Microsoft as a spoofing vulnerability impacting SharePoint Server. The tech giant has since updated the advisory to state that it could be abused to obtain remote code execution. "As of 9/25/2026, Microsoft had reliable evidence of observed attacks against exploitation of this vulnerability," the Windows maker noted. Microsoft hasn't disclosed who was behind the exploitation efforts, when they started, how many organizations have been targeted, how many of them have been successful, and what attackers did once inside the vulnerable service. The second vulnerability to be added to the KEV catalog is CVE-2026-67279, which has been chained along with CVE-2026-86060, an argument injection flaw in the RouterOS login process, as part of an exploit codenamed MikroTrick. The exploit chain has been employed to take full administrative control of internet-exposed susceptible routers without the need for a password, per CERT Polska. "Combining the two vulnerabilities resulted in full unauthenticated access to the administrative console," the Polish cybersecurity agency said. "CVE-2026-67279 allowed an unauthenticated client to create a session channel, while CVE-2026-86060 allowed it to supply login with an attacker-controlled policy mask." In a separate analysis, Bishop Fox said it was able to reproduce the complete administrative takeover on vulnerable RouterOS 7.x builds. "MikroTrick combines two failures at different trust boundaries," security researcher Emilio Gallegos said. "The first allows an unauthenticated connection to reach functionality that RouterOS should expose only after login. The second causes the login process to treat data from that connection as a trusted administrative identity." "MikroTrick exposes a design risk in privileged software: a feature intended only for trusted local callers becomes a remote attack surface when an upstream component loses track of authentication state." It's worth noting that CISA added CVE-2026-86060 to its KEV catalog on September 11, 2026. Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies have time until September 28, 2026, to apply the necessary fixes.
9 shared
Oct 1, 2026
NetScaler zero-day exploitation escalates into mass attacks (CVE-2026-88771)
The public still doesn’t know who is abusing a critical Citrix vulnerability exploited as a zero-day weeks before disclosure, but we now know that the unknown digital intruders have used CVE-2026-88772 to break into government agencies, financial services firms, education organizations, and legal and professional services sectors across North America and Europe. And everyone agrees that the vendor took way too long to disclose the security holes. GreyNoise said it spotted an attempt to exploit CVE-2026-88771 against a Citrix NetScaler Gateway on September 24. Google researchers, meanwhile, said the CVE-2026-88772 campaign has been ongoing “since at least early September.” “Why Citrix took so long to disclose these vulnerabilities is a question only Citrix can answer,” Benjamin Harris, founder and CEO of exposure management firm watchTowr, told The Register. Citrix declined to answer The Register's questions about the scope of the attacks, and why it didn't alert the public about the CVEs under active exploitation until Sunday. “The vulnerabilities were discovered during incident response and forensic investigations at organizations already compromised, meaning both the exploitation and Citrix’s awareness of it predated public disclosure,” Harris said. “Citrix has a history of delaying the publication of vulnerabilities, even when they’re being exploited in the wild and affecting customers.” So if you use Citrix NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway appliances, and haven’t already applied the security updates, do that ASAP. But first, check your systems for signs of compromise, warns Mandiant Consulting CTO Charles Carmakal. “Given the active exploitation, NetScaler customers should prioritize examining their systems for compromise *before* upgrading/patching,” Carmakal said on LinkedIn. “If you find evidence of web shells or other malicious files, please preserve evidence and investigate the scope of the compromise. Patching alone may not eradicate the threat actor from your environment.” No attribution - yet Citrix disclosed eight CVEs on Sunday with the worst of the bunch – CVE-2026-88771 and CVE-2026-88772 – earning critical 9.5 CVSS scores. “Exploitation of CVE-2026-88771 and CVE-2026-88772 on unmitigated NetScaler deployments has been observed,” the vendor said. CVE-2026-88771 can allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands remotely. CVE-2026-88772 is a memory overflow vulnerability that can lead to remote code execution or denial of service when DTLS is enabled, as it is by default on VPN virtual servers. But by the time Citrix issued security advisories and warned customers about the vulnerabilities, they were already under attack. “No attribution has been made public, and we have yet to identify a clear trend among targets by industry or organization size,” Harris said. “Historically, NetScaler vulnerabilities have been exploited by both state-sponsored groups and ransomware operators.” WatchTowr on Tuesday published a technical writeup about CVE-2026-88772, plus a detection artifact generator for Citrix users to determine if they are vulnerable and to help with remediation. Also on Tuesday, Google’s threat intel businesses provided additional details about the exploitation campaign’s targets and the attacker’s custom malware. “We have observed evidence that organizations in North America and Europe in the government, financial services, education, legal and professional services sectors were likely impacted by this exploitation campaign, which has been ongoing since at least early September,” Google Threat Intelligence Group and Mandiant said in an advisory. Custom malware After analyzing the intruder’s post-exploit toolkit, the malware hunters found never-before-seen malware used to establish persistent root access and proxy traffic into internal corporate networks. The custom malware includes WHIPSHOT, a PHP web shell, and SLAPSHOT, a TCP tunneling tool written in Python. WHIPSHOT is disguised as a Debian package and hides Base64-encoded command-and-control payloads in native HTTP headers. It functions as an HTTP transport bridge for SLAPSHOT, which accepts commands from WHIPSHOT and forwards arbitrary TCP streams to internal hosts. Supported commands include: open, which establishes an outbound TCP socket to a target host and port. push, which writes data to an open session. pull, which polls and reads data from an open session socket. exch, which sends and receives command-and-control data to and from an open session socket. close, which terminates a specified network session. ping, which performs a basic health-check verification. “In at least one observed intrusion, the threat actor routed traffic through this proxy to manually conduct internal reconnaissance and credential theft,” the threat intel teams noted. Google did not immediately respond to The Register’s questions about the campaign, including how many exploitation attempts and successful intrusions its threat hunters observed. Its advisory notes that the Citrix campaign “underscores the continued targeting of edge devices to gain initial access to victim networks, a trend that GTIG has tracked across a range of threat actors.” Security and networking vulnerabilities accounted for about half of enterprise-related zero-days in 2025, according to Google’s count. Attackers love edge devices - application delivery controllers, VPN gateways, and firewalls - because they provide direct access from the open internet to corporate networks, allowing attackers to bypass endpoint detection tools and other security layers. NetScaler, in particular, is notoriously buggy. Attackers exploited another critical NetScaler vuln in March. A year earlier, Citrix disclosed multiple zero-days in the same product. ®
8 shared
Oct 5, 2026
Cisco warns of new SD-WAN zero-day exploited in attacks
Attackers are exploiting a new critical zero-day flaw in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager, the system companies use to manage their Cisco SD-WAN networks, Cisco said in an advisory on September 30. The flaw, CVE-2026-76504, could allow a remote attacker with no login access to use the Manager's API as the admin user. Fixed releases are available, and there is no workaround. It carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of 10. It sits in the part of the Manager's API that handles login sessions. The Manager mishandles URI encoding in an HTTP request. A crafted request can therefore bypass an authentication rule intended to restrict access to a single API endpoint. The attacker needs no credentials, only the ability to send that request to the Manager's API. Managers exposed to the internet are at risk of compromise, according to Cisco. By default, the admin user holds the netadmin role, which is allowed to perform all operations on the device. Cisco said its Product Security Incident Response Team "became aware of active exploitation of this vulnerability" in September 2026. The flaw was found while Cisco's Technical Assistance Center (TAC) was handling a support case. The advisory does not say how many customers were attacked, when the attacks began, who carried them out, or what the attackers did with the access. Who Needs to Upgrade The flaw affects SD-WAN Manager regardless of how the system is configured. No other product is listed as affected. These are the first fixed releases for each release train: CVE-2026-76504 is separate from three Cisco SD-WAN flaws fixed earlier: CVE-2026-20182 in May, and CVE-2026-20245 and CVE-2026-20262 in June. A comparison of the advisories shows that the fixed releases for those flaws are all older than the ones in the table above. So a Manager last upgraded for the May or June fixes still needs this update. The table does not list the 20.10, 20.11, 20.13, 20.14, or 20.16 release trains, which Cisco's May advisory did list. The advisory also does not name Cisco SD-WAN Cloud-Pro or Cisco SD-WAN for Government (FedRAMP), two deployment types named in the May and June advisories. Cisco SD-WAN Cloud (Cisco Managed) is already fixed in release 20.15.605, and customers on it need to take no action. Until an on-prem Manager is upgraded, Cisco advises restricting access to it from unsecured networks such as the internet. Where internet access is required, only known, trusted hosts should be allowed in, and the control components should sit behind a firewall. Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Cloud Hosted environments already have this mitigation in place. The mitigation worked in a test environment, according to Cisco, which advises customers to assess its impact on their own networks before applying it. Cisco's SD-WAN hardening guide says administrative interfaces, such as ports 443, 22 and 830, should not be exposed directly to the internet. HTTPS access to the Manager should come only from a jump host or a management subnet. Checking for Signs of Compromise The signs of compromise Cisco describes involve j_security_check, the request path the Manager uses for session-based logins. In Cisco's example, one character of that path is URI-encoded, giving /%6a_security_check, where %6a stands for the letter j. Two log files are the places to look for j_security_check entries from unknown or unauthorized IP addresses: File: /var/log/nms/containers/service-proxy/serviceproxy-access.log File: /var/log/nms/vmanage-server.log, in particular entries for users whose names start with viptela-reserved- Names starting with viptela-reserved- belong to reserved system service accounts. Any one character in the request can be encoded, so %6a is only an example. The same entries can also appear during normal operation, and each match has to be checked against normal activity to avoid false positives. To help determine whether a Manager has been compromised, customers can open a Severity 3 case with Cisco TAC and include CVE-2026-76504 in the title. Cisco asks them to run request admin-tech on the Manager first, so the output file can be reviewed. The advisory includes no detection rule and does not say whether upgrading removes an attacker who already has access. Cisco's advisories for the May flaw and the first June flaw said an update alone would not resolve a confirmed compromise. They told customers to collect the admin-tech file before upgrading. CVE-2026-76504 follows a series of Cisco SD-WAN flaws flagged as exploited this year. As of September 30, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's (CISA) Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog listed eight Cisco SD-WAN flaws added in 2026.
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Oct 5, 2026
FBI to ShinyHunters: 'We know how to find you'
Authorities in the Netherlands have arrested a 24-year-old convicted cybercriminal on suspicion of aiding in data thefts and extortions by the prolific hacker group ShinyHunters . In the days immediately following the suspect’s arrest, remaining ShinyHunters members dramatically escalated their attacks, stealing highly sensitive data from the FBI and extorting the Russian ransomware group Cl0p . According to three sources familiar with the matter, the Dutch man arrested by authorities this month is Pepijn van der Stap , a convicted cybercriminal from Almere and Lelystad in the Netherlands. Van der Stap was previously convicted in 2023 in connection with a string of data thefts and extortions that prosecutors said earned between €1.5 million and €2.7 million. At his trial in late 2023, van der Stap admitted that he lived a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde existence, secretly using the hacker handle “ Umbreon ” to extort victims and post their data on English language hacking communities like the now-defunct RaidForums and Breached. By day, however, van der Stap was working as a software engineer at the Amsterdam-based cybersecurity startup Hadrian , while volunteering at the Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure (DIVD), a nonprofit security research group. Pepijn van der Stap’s alter ego “Umbreon” selling a database on RaidForums, offering information on 2.3 million people from The Netherlands in September 2021. This user’s avatar is a depiction of the Pokemon character Umbreon. Image: KELA. Van der Stap confessed to his data theft and extortion activity, and was sentenced to four years in prison (one of which was suspended). During his trial, van der Stap opted to remain in custody for a time rather than at home, saying he could not find better treatment on the outside for his ongoing psychological issues, which he claimed included PTSD related to childhood trauma. He was released from prison in December 2025. In an interview with KrebsOnSecurity on September 9, 2026, Van der Stap cast himself as a reformed hacker who was trying to turn his life around and make a positive contribution to society. Van der Stap is currently employed as offensive security lead at the Dutch company Neo Security , which did not respond to requests for comment. Van der Stap said he was still dealing with civil lawsuits and restitution related to his previous cybercrime victims, and that he was trying his best to make amends. But not long after that interview, the Dutch hacker abruptly stopped replying to messages. Efforts by others close to him also repeatedly failed to elicit a response for the past two weeks. The LinkedIn profile for Pepijn van der Stap. According to two sources with knowledge of the matter, Van der Stap was arrested by Dutch authorities on or around September 16, and has been held in custody for questioning since. One source said a colleague of theirs personally witnessed Dutch authorities carting items out of Van der Stap’s residence. Authorities in the Netherlands have been asking the public for help in identifying the voice in a recorded telephone call from February 2026 in which a native Dutch-speaking ShinyHunters member social engineered their way into Odido , the nation’s largest mobile telecommunications provider. In that intrusion, ShinyHunters tricked an Odido employee into logging in at a spoofed website, and then used that access to steal data on more than 6.2 million Dutch people. Responding to Dutch news media, ShinyHunters confirmed that the suspect in the audio clip is indeed a member of the hacker collective. “Our team member has our full support – emotionally, mentally, and financially,” the hackers said. “Everything has been arranged, including a criminal defense lawyer. We do not look down on our staff and members; we take excellent care of them,” reads a statement ShinyHunters shared with NL Times . It remains unclear if the Dutch police have matched the Odido caller to a confirmed real-life identity. The Dutch police unit handling the Odido incident did not respond to requests for comment. The group also lashed out at the authorities in the Netherlands. “The Dutch police will need all the luck in the world – and everyone’s prayers – if they want to catch him before we carry out another large-scale data theft in the Netherlands,” the ShinyHunters statement said. “Frankly, the Dutch police are a big joke; they are incapable of doing anything. Incompetent. Irrelevant. Unimportant. Useless.” FBI, CL0P HACKS Just days after sources say Van der Stap was detained by Dutch authorities, ShinyHunters claimed credit for an unusually brazen breach at the FBI’s job application site apply.fbijobs.gov. According to reporting from 404 Media , the data stolen from the FBI site includes Social Security numbers and personal information on more than 5,000 officials. 404 Media and Reuters reported the FBI data included each person’s job title or team, such as special agent, threat intake examiner, major cybercrimes unit, and those investigating cyber threats from foreign state-backed actors. Reuters examined documents shared by ShinyHunters and found they included sensitive psychiatric and medical files of FBI staff. The FBI issued a brief statement confirming the hack. ShinyHunters said it gained access to the FBI site and other victims by exploiting a recently patched vulnerability (CVE-2026-35273) in PeopleSoft , a software-as-a-service platform from the software giant Oracle that is broadly used by companies to manage hiring and human resources, benefits and payroll. Oracle quickly issued a fix for the Peoplesoft vulnerability that ShinyHunters reportedly began exploiting as a zero-day in June, and at the time Mandiant released web application firewall rules intended for organizations who couldn’t apply the security update quickly enough. But on Friday, BleepingComputer reported that ShinyHunters used a URL-encoding trick to bypass Mandiant’s suggested web application firewall rules designed to mitigate the threat from the PeopleSoft flaw. In a report released Sept. 25, security experts at Mandiant and the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) confirmed that ShinyHunters had mass-exploited the PeopleSoft vulnerability to steal data from dozens of systems across a range of industries, including higher education, technology, healthcare, agriculture, transportation and government. Van der Stap’s former hacker alias Umbreon was hidden in plain sight throughout the imagery ShinyHunters used to spread news about the FBI hack: The defacement image that ShinyHunters left behind on the hacked FBI jobs site included an ASCII art design featuring the Pokemon character Umbreon. The message at the top read, “This site has been seized by ShinyHunters. rooting your systems since ’19 ;)” The image appears identical to a defacement message ShinyHunters used in their 2020 hack of the English-language cybercrime community Hackforums. The defacement message left by ShinyHunters on the FBI jobs site included an ASCII art rendition of the Pokemon character Umbreon. Image: Bleeping Computer. Multiple sources close to the ShinyHunters investigation said the group’s recent risky attacks against the FBI and one of Russia’s most venerated ransomware groups amounted to a major pivot away from the more measured tenor of the hacking gang’s operations. Those sources said the sudden shift came about after ShinyHunters was taken over by a teenage cybercriminal from Amman, Jordan who goes by the nickname Rey and operates as part of a cybercrime group called ScatteredLapsussHunters (SLSH), which experts say is an amalgamation of three hacking groups — Scattered Spider , LAPSUS$ and ShinyHunters . Those sources said Rey had an ongoing beef with the Dutch hacker over control of the ShinyHunters brand and data, and that the inclusion of the oversized Umbreon Pokemon image in the FBI jobs site defacement was likely an attempt by Rey to pin the hack on the Dutchman. Rey was first publicly identified by the cybersecurity firm KELA in March 2025. In advance of our November 2025 profile of Rey , KrebsOnSecurity messaged Rey’s father and asked for permission to interview his teenage son. Rey’s dad merely forwarded the message to his son, who admitted to participating in ransomware attacks and said he was trying to extricate himself from the SLSH hacker group. BLAMING UMBREON Immediately after news of the FBI jobs site hack was picked up in the media, Rey’s main account on Twitter/X (Ryan Moran/@rmoskovy) was taunting the Cl0p ransomware group and the FBI, crudely depicting them as the twin towers in New York being struck by planes labeled “cl0p drama” and “fbi breach claim.” In the foreground of the city is the giant Pokemon figure of Umbreon. A taunting meme uploaded to Twitter/X by Rey’s now-defunct account on Sept. 22. A giant float-sized version of the Pokemon character Umbreon can be seen in the bottom left. On Sept. 24, KrebsOnSecurity again contacted Rey’s dad, asking to interview him and his son for a story on Rey’s apparent ascendency as the head of ShinyHunters. Just hours after that request, Rey deleted his longtime Twitter/X account. Meanwhile, Rey’s dad, who works for the Royal Jordanian Airlines, has failed to respond to a half-dozen emailed requests for comment about his son’s alleged activities. Where does the bad blood between SLSH and ShinyHunters come from? According to a story in Wired this month, ShinyHunters and SLSH members briefly partnered earlier this year to help better monetize important stolen credentials collected by TeamPCP , an upstart group that was having great success compromising global code supply chains with malicious software but hadn’t been able to profit much from their stolen data (two alleged leaders of TeamPCP were arrested last month in Australia , and in an interview the TeamPCP leader claimed they made just $20,000). The Wired story noted how Mandiant had infiltrated TeamPCP and was secretly responsible for having the crime group’s stolen credentials burned so quickly: Mandiant was secretly feeding those credentials to the major cloud providers like Amazon and Microsoft, who quickly invalidated the stolen keys. Meanwhile, the formerly cooperating hacker groups began to blame one another for causing the credentials to become worthless. Wired’s Andy Greenberg reported that a few weeks after partnering with TeamPCP, “ShinyHunters went rogue, carrying out its own extortions with TeamPCP’s credentials but without giving the supply-chain hackers their cut.” Mandiant researcher Austin Larsen told KrebsOnSecurity earlier this month that ShinyHunters has been enjoying a successful extortion spree so far this year, and is on track to pull in nearly $100 million in extortion payments from cybercrime victims in 2026. Van der Stap claims he was never motivated by money and that his earlier hacker activity was driven by a desire to have the world’s most complete collection of stolen databases. Speaking with reporters from Bloomberg in 2024, Van der Stap said that singular focus in turn fueled his desire to carry out cyberattacks. “The hacking was very easy for me, and it wasn’t a compulsion,” he told Bloomberg . “My habit was collecting. Collecting data, organizing data, downloading data, creating folders.” DIVD, the nonprofit security research group where Van der Stap previously served as a volunteer, disclosed on LinkedIn last week that the organization was dealing with an internal cybersecurity incident that appears to have involved the malicious use of artificial intelligence. DIVD has released few details about that incident, but a spokesperson for the nonprofit told KrebsOnSecurity it does not appear related to ShinyHunters, nor are there any signs the matter involves the work of a previous volunteer. Update: 3:44 p.m. ET: Corrected Van der Stap’s age, which is 24 (not 23). Update, 4:54 p.m. ET: The Dutch police have confirmed the arrest of a 24-year-old in connection with the ShinyHunters investigation. In a statement on Twitter/X , the Dutch police said the man will appear on Tuesday, September 29 before the chambers of the Rotterdam District Court, and that will provide more information tomorrow.
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Oct 4, 2026
ShinyHunters Claim Hack of Rival Ransomware Gang Clop
Reportedly , the ShinyHunters extortion group breached the leak site of one of its competitors, the Clop ransomware gang. ShinyHunters is a financially motivated cybercrime and extortion group active since 2019. It is known for stealing large volumes of data and pressuring victims to pay, rather than necessarily deploying ransomware. One recent high-profile organization targeted by the group was Instructure, the maker of Canvas LMS. ShinyHunters claimed it stole 3.65 TB of data belonging to about 9,000 academic institutions . Clop, also written Cl0p, is a ransomware and data-extortion operation associated with large-scale exploitation of vulnerabilities in enterprise software and file-transfer platforms. In its recent campaign targeting PTC Windchill systems, it named more than 40 alleged victims, including Shell, Philips, Fiserv, Zebra Technologies, Ingersoll Rand, and Toast. At the time of writing, the Clop dark web leak site looks like this: Domain seized by ShinyHunters The rest of that page looks much the same as the ShinyHunters leak site, which includes this “Note to Cl0p”: “Note to Cl0p_- 21 Sep UPDATE: Every 24 hours you fail to engage with us the demands increase. The demand now includes a mandatory apology issued directly to me PUBLICLY . I am 3-0 against you rich and broke criminals. UPDATE, 20 Sep, 1:39 a.m ET: Dear Likhogray & Tarasov, tell your boss j0nny to wake the fuck up. Run those pockets. I want all the money you made off the EBS campaign plus more AND WITH INTEREST, before I start releasing information regarding the companies that paid you, how much, and to what Bitcoin address. My phone book contains all major financial media outlets. CLOCK IS TICKING! LETS GET THE BALL ROLLING! Be sure to bring an English interlocutor so you can comprehend my literacy in acquiring your bank account. 66 hours remaining. [19 Sep]: IF YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR BRAND AND NOT DIE BY MY HANDS: Email us from your official email at [email protected] and lets see how wealthy you really are. 2.333% of my networth is a 8 figure amount, I hope you can pay that much because that is the demand, negotiable. Get your bosses in front of the white board in the war room. Clock is ticking moron. Kindly excuse our unprofessionalism. Updated: 21 Sep 2026” BleepingComputer reports that the attack began Friday night when ShinyHunters exploited what it claims is an unauthenticated file-upload vulnerability in Grav CMS to upload a small text file to Clop’s site. Several hours later, ShinyHunters told BleepingComputer that it had “completely defaced” the site. The group claimed it could continue controlling the address: “We have their onion keys. So, if they kick us out it wouldn’t matter at all because we control the private keys to host the same exact onion URL.” You might expect groups that make their money by exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities to be more vigilant about their own systems, but it looks as though they sometimes let their guard down. According to ShinyHunters, this gang war began after ShinyHunters disrupted a Clop data-theft campaign. A Clop representative then allegedly threatened to identify ShinyHunters members and made violent threats against them. ShinyHunters explained: “During the Oracle EBS campaign they ran and stole from me last year, someone from cl0p personally messaged me and said, and I quote (translated from Russian): I have more money than you and all of your people combined, I’ll kill you soon.” The good news is that while they are after each other, they probably have less time to attack legitimate businesses. I’m grabbing a bag of popcorn and watching this one unfold. We’ll keep you posted. From reporting threats to removing them. Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your devices by  downloading Malwarebytes today .
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Sep 28, 2026
TeamPCP deploys Iran-targeted wiper in Kubernetes attacks
This is the second update to the TeamPCP supply chain campaign threat intelligence report, "When the Security Scanner Became the Weapon" (v3.0, March 25, 2026). Update 001 covered developments through March 26. This update covers developments from March 26-27, 2026. CRITICAL: Telnyx Python SDK Compromised on PyPI -- New WAV Steganography TTP TeamPCP compromised the telnyx Python SDK (670,000+ monthly downloads) on PyPI, publishing malicious versions 4.87.1 and 4.87.2 at approximately 03:51 UTC on March 27, 2026. No corresponding GitHub releases or tags exist for these versions -- the attacker used stolen PyPI credentials rather than a repository compromise. The most significant technical finding is a new TTP: WAV audio file steganography. Payloads are embedded inside .wav files, which blend naturally with Telnyx's purpose as a voice and telecom API provider. Platform-specific payloads are delivered: Windows: A persistent binary dropped to the Startup folder as msbuild.exe Linux/macOS: A credential harvester following the same pattern as the LiteLLM compromise Forensic analysis by Aikido Security, JFrog, and SafeDep confirms the same RSA-4096 public key and tpcp.tar.gz exfiltration pattern seen in the LiteLLM compromise. Both malicious versions have been quarantined by PyPI. Recommended action: Check your Python environments and CI/CD pipelines for telnyx versions 4.87.1 or 4.87.2. If found, treat all credentials accessible to that environment as compromised and rotate immediately. The last known-safe version is 4.87.0. Also search for .wav files in unexpected locations, msbuild.exe in Windows Startup folders, and outbound connections to known TeamPCP exfiltration domains. This confirms the "expansion to additional PyPI packages" watch item from Update 001. TeamPCP's PyPI campaign is not limited to LiteLLM -- they are actively working through stolen credentials to compromise additional high-value packages. CRITICAL: TeamPCP Partners with Vect Ransomware and BreachForums for Mass Affiliate Program TeamPCP has formally partnered with the Vect ransomware-as-a-service operation and BreachForums. Per Cybernews and Infosecurity Magazine, the announcement states that all approximately 300,000 registered BreachForums users will receive personal Vect affiliate keys. The operational model: TeamPCP provides initial access via compromised supply chain packages and stolen credentials, Vect provides encryption and extortion tooling, and BreachForums provides the operator base. Analysts assess this represents a fundamental shift from supply chain credential theft to industrialized ransomware deployment. If even a small fraction of 300,000 users activate, this could become one of the largest coordinated ransomware affiliate mobilizations observed. The convergence of supply chain compromise, ransomware-as-a-service, and dark web forum mobilization at this scale is, to the best of our knowledge, unprecedented. Recommended action: Organizations that were exposed to any phase of the TeamPCP campaign (Trivy, Checkmarx, LiteLLM, Telnyx) should assume their stolen credentials may now be distributed to a large affiliate network. Credential rotation is no longer optional -- it is urgent. Monitor for Vect ransomware indicators. HIGH: LAPSUS$ Claims 3GB AstraZeneca Breach Using TeamPCP Credentials LAPSUS$ is publicly claiming a 3GB breach of AstraZeneca, as reported by SecurityWeek and CSO Online. The claimed data includes internal code repositories, cloud infrastructure configurations (AWS, Azure, Terraform), Spring Boot configs, GitHub Enterprise user information, and employee data. LAPSUS$ is selling access via Session encrypted messaging. This is the first named victim claim from the TeamPCP/LAPSUS$ partnership, confirming the "named victim breach disclosures" watch item from Update 001. AstraZeneca has not confirmed or denied the breach as of publication time. Recommended action: Organizations should not wait for public victim disclosures to take action. If you were exposed to any TeamPCP-compromised component, assume credential theft occurred and rotate proactively. The extortion timeline is accelerating. HIGH: LiteLLM CEO's Personal GitHub Account Was the Compromise Vector ReversingLabs has published new intelligence identifying the specific mechanism behind the LiteLLM PyPI compromise: TeamPCP compromised Krish Dholakia's personal GitHub account (LiteLLM co-founder and CEO) on March 23-24. This was not a generic CI/CD token sweep -- the attacker specifically identified and targeted a named executive's account from the stolen credential trove harvested during the Trivy/Checkmarx phase. This detail refines the attack chain narrative. TeamPCP appears to be triaging stolen credentials for maximum impact, targeting package maintainers with PyPI publishing privileges rather than indiscriminately using every credential they harvested. MEDIUM: CISA KEV Remediation Deadline Correction -- April 8, Not April 3 Update 001 reported the CISA KEV remediation deadline for CVE-2026-33634 as April 3, 2026. The official CISA KEV catalog entry shows the actual deadline is April 8, 2026. This update corrects the previously reported date. Additionally, Help Net Security reports that CISA simultaneously added CVE-2026-33017 (Langflow unauthenticated RCE, affecting versions prior to 1.8.2) alongside the Trivy CVE in the same KEV update. The pairing of two AI/ML infrastructure tool vulnerabilities in a single KEV addition signals that CISA is treating AI toolchain supply chain security as a systemic risk category. Federal agencies now face remediation deadlines of April 8 for CVE-2026-33634 (Trivy) and April 9 for CVE-2026-33017 (Langflow). INFO: LiteLLM's Compliance Certifications Performed by Embattled Auditor TechCrunch reported on March 26 that LiteLLM's SOC2 and ISO 27001 certifications were performed by Delve, a YC startup currently under scrutiny for allegations of "rubber-stamped" compliance audits. This intersection of two Silicon Valley scandals raises questions about the effectiveness of third-party compliance certifications in the AI/ML supply chain ecosystem. HIGH: First Responder Publishes Full Attack Transcript With New IOCs FutureSearch has published the full forensic transcript from Callum McMahon, the engineer who first discovered the compromised LiteLLM package and coordinated the PyPI quarantine on March 24. McMahon used Claude Code to perform real-time forensic analysis of the malicious litellm==1.82.8 package in an isolated Docker environment, producing what is likely the most detailed public record of this attack's execution. Key technical findings not previously documented in the campaign report: .pth file exploitation: The payload (litellm_init.pth , 34 KB) exploited Python's automatic.pth site-packages execution, triggering on every Python interpreter startup -- not just when LiteLLM was imported. This is a persistence mechanism that runs across all Python processes in the environment. C2 domain: models.litellm.cloud -- a typosquat of LiteLLM's legitimate infrastructure, used for HTTPS exfiltration with RSA encryption. Persistence path: ~/.config/sysmon/sysmon.py with systemd service registration. In McMahon's case, the write was interrupted at 0 bytes by a forced reboot. Kubernetes lateral movement: The payload attempted to create privileged alpine:latest pods and harvest service account tokens from/var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/token , usingnode-setup-* pod naming to blend with legitimate infrastructure. Multi-cloud credential sweep: A single payload targeted SSH keys, AWS/GCP/Azure credentials, Kubernetes tokens, .env files, database passwords, crypto wallets, and shell history simultaneously. Accidental fork bomb: The .pth auto-execution combined with subprocess spawning created exponential process multiplication -- each child Python process re-triggered the payload, causing resource exhaustion that inadvertently exposed the attack. The 72-minute timeline from detection to public PyPI quarantine demonstrates how AI-assisted forensic analysis dramatically accelerated incident response. This transcript is highly instructive for defenders studying the attack mechanics and should be reviewed by any team performing forensic analysis of TeamPCP-compromised environments. Recommended action: Search environments for the C2 domain models.litellm.cloud, the persistence path ~/.config/sysmon/sysmon.py, unexpected .pth files in site-packages directories, and node-setup-* pods in Kubernetes clusters. These IOCs supplement the indicators in the parent report. INFO: GitHub Announces Actions Security Roadmap in Response to Supply Chain Attacks GitHub has published a 2026 security roadmap for GitHub Actions that directly references the TeamPCP campaign. The blog post states: "incidents targeting projects like tj-actions/changed-file, Nx, and trivy-action show a clear pattern: attackers are targeting CI/CD automation itself." The roadmap introduces three categories of controls that, if implemented at the time of the Trivy compromise, would have materially altered the attack surface: Workflow dependency locking: A new dependencies: section in workflow YAML pins all direct and transitive action references to immutable commit SHAs. Hash mismatches stop execution before jobs run. This directly addresses the tag-rewriting TTP that TeamPCP used to redirect 76 trivy-action tags and all 91 ast-github-action tags to malicious commits. Public preview in 3-6 months. Policy-driven execution controls: Rulesets-based policies that restrict which actors can trigger workflows, which events are permitted, and which execution contexts can access secrets. Scoped secrets prevent a single compromised token from accessing all repository secrets. Public preview in 3-6 months. Egress firewall for hosted runners: Layer 7 network monitoring and enforcement for GitHub-hosted runners, restricting which external domains workflows can reach. This would have blocked the exfiltration to scan.aquasecurtiy[.]org andmodels.litellm.cloud . Public preview in 6-9 months. Analysts assess these controls represent the most substantive platform-level response to the GitHub Actions supply chain attack vector to date. However, the 3-9 month rollout timeline means organizations remain exposed to tag-rewriting and credential theft TTPs in the interim. Pinning actions to full commit SHAs remains the primary defensive measure until dependency locking reaches GA. Additional Intelligence Kaspersky publishes independent verification: Kaspersky published their own technical advisory characterizing this as a unified "trojanization" campaign, independently verifying the attack chain and broadening awareness to their enterprise customer base. GitGuardian draws "Shai Hulud" parallel: GitGuardian frames the campaign alongside the "Shai Hulud" attack pattern -- both targeting CI/CD pipelines to harvest secrets rather than attacking applications directly. Their analysis emphasizes that Aqua Security's non-atomic credential rotation was the root cause enabling the second compromise wave (Docker Hub images v0.69.5 and v0.69.6 on March 22). Corrections to Update 001 Aqua Security "additional findings" deadline: Update 001 stated "Aqua Security promised additional findings by end of day March 26" as a watch item. This was incorrect. On March 23, 2026, Aqua Security's blog stated they would "provide a further update, including additional findings, tomorrow end of day" -- meaning end of day March 24, not March 26. Aqua published their comprehensive incident report, "Trivy Supply Chain Attack: What Happened and What You Need to Know", on March 24 at 23:00 UTC, meeting their stated deadline. The report covers the full attack timeline, root cause (non-atomic credential rotation after the March 1 incident), and remediation details. This is no longer a watch item. CISA KEV remediation deadline: Also corrected in this update's MEDIUM finding above -- April 8, not April 3 as originally reported in Update 001. Watch Items Vect ransomware affiliate key distribution and first deployments linked to TeamPCP credentials Additional PyPI packages compromised via stolen credentials (telnyx confirms the pattern) AstraZeneca confirmation or denial of the LAPSUS$ breach claim Mandiant formal attribution report (BerriAI engagement announced, report pending) CISA standalone advisory or emergency directive (KEV entries issued, no dedicated advisory yet) Expansion to RubyGems, crates.io, or Maven Central (Endor Labs prediction, not yet confirmed) LiteLLM/BerriAI forensics completion and release resumption The full campaign report is available at sans.org/white-papers/when-security-scanner-became-weapon. A SANS Emergency Webcast replay is available at sans.org/webcasts/when-security-scanner-became-weapon. Updates to the report will be in the form of these ISC diaries.
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Mar 28, 2026