Search/Gunra Ransomware Gang Exploits Fortinet Flaws, Bypasses MFA
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Gunra Ransomware Gang Exploits Fortinet Flaws, Bypasses MFA

FBI, South Korea warn of Gunra ransomware gang targeting critical infrastructure The Gunra ransomware gang is breaching critical infrastructure organizations through vulnerabilities in popular brands of firewalls, the FBI and South Korea’s government warned on Monday. In a cybersecurity advisory, U.S. law enforcement agencies and South Korea’s National Policy Agency spotlighted the ransomware operation that emerged in April 2025 and is built using source code from the Conti ransomware that was leaked in 2022. “Gunra is another variant in the ongoing trend of ransomware attacks causing disruption and harm to U.S. and international organizations,” said Chris Butera, acting executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The…

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Gunra Ransomware Exploits Fortinet Flaws to Target Critical Infrastructure
Gunra ransomware actors are exploiting two Fortinet vulnerabilities to target government and critical national infrastructure organizations, a joint advisory issued by US and Republic of Korea authorities has warned. Gunra is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) which primarily exploits known vulnerabilities in internet-facing devices, including firewalls and VPN appliances, to gain initial access. Once in a network, affiliates conduct highly advanced persistence and lateral movement techniques, ultimately allowing for the stealthy exfiltration of large volumes of data from Microsoft 365 services. The advisory is authored by the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and other US government agencies alongside the Republic of Korea’s National Police Agency (KNPA), Gunra ransomware is based on leaked Conti ransomware source code in 2022, and was first observed in April 2025. In early 2026, the group developed a structured RaaS affiliate program advertised on dark web forums. It has also adopted new branding aliases, including operating under the name “Golden Community.” Legacy Fortinet Vulnerabilities Still Effective The FBI has observed Gunra specifically targeting two legacy Fortinet vulnerabilities. These are both authentication bypass vulnerabilities affecting specific FortiOS and FortiProxy versions: CVE-2024-55591 is a critical flaw which allows a remote attacker to gain super-admin privileges via crafted requests to Node.js websocket module CVE-2025-24472 is a high severity vulnerability which can allow a remote unauthenticated attacker with prior knowledge of upstream and downstream devices serial numbers to gain super-admin privileges on the downstream device, if the Security Fabric is enabled, via crafted CSF proxy requests Patches are available for both flaws. The advisory, published on August 10, also highlighted Gunra actors’ ability to establish persistence and achieve lateral movement in victim environments following initial access, largely using techniques to bypass authentication protocols. In one observed case, Gunra actors gained access to an administrator account for a secure socket layer (SSL)-VPN appliance by exploiting default credentials when account lockout controls were not present. They subsequently established connections between the compromised systems and an external attacker-controlled server by downloading the SSH tunnelling tool OpenSSH. In another example cited, the attackers enabled the continuous bypass of multi-factor authentication (MFA) by modifying authentication processing files on the corporate VDI authentication portal server. Commenting on the advisory, Jacob Krell, senior director, secure AI solutions and cybersecurity at Suzu Labs, noted that both vulnerabilities have been exploited by multiple ransomware groups, with victims often still able to be targeted even after applying fixes. “Patching fixes the entry point. It does nothing about an authentication backdoor already embedded in the MFA flow. I've seen organizations close the vulnerability and declare themselves clean while the attacker's persistence mechanism sat untouched in the auth stack,” he commented. Attackers Use Stealth to Exfiltrate Vast Volumes of Data Gunra actors are also adept at stealthy lateral movement and exfiltrating large volumes of data from victim environments before defenders are aware of their presence. This is designed to ensure an effective double-extortion strategy – forcing victims to pay both to have their files decrypted and for the exfiltrated data not to be published online. The advisory said that Gunra employs multiple stealth and defense impairment techniques to hinder detection and analysis while moving across networks using stolen credentials and authentication bypass techniques. This includes deleting system and network access logs and clearing command history. Notably, the group primarily conducts malicious activities and internal infrastructure reconnaissance between the hours of 10.00pm and 6.00am in the victim’s time zone, while administrators are typically offline. Roman Sannikov, global research coordinator at iCOUNTER, said that security teams should take particular note of Gunra’s “out of hours” activities. “If your detection coverage drops off overnight, that's exactly the gap this group, now also operating under the alias Golden Community, is built to exploit,” he said. The ransomware binary used by the group includes extensive filtering rules to focus only on files that are consistent with user data. This is to avoid dedicating encryption resources to non-critical files and streamline the collection of user-specific data, according to the advisory. The FBI has observed Gunra actors use a malicious executable to exfiltrate victim data from Microsoft OneDrive and SharePoint. In at least one case, the actors successfully exfiltrated up to tens of terabytes of data by generating compressed archives with sensitive data and exfiltrating the archives to the file-sharing service Mega. Gunra Ransom Demands in the 10s of Millions The group’s ransom notes generally start negotiations by demanding tens of millions of dollars, which the report described as “arbitrarily high.” Victims are typically given five to seven days to begin negotiations via a Tor-based negotiation portal. In some cases, the group has even attempted to communicate directly with management staff at victim organizations via email. Threats of data leaked being on Gunra’s data leak site are made if the victims fail to engage in negotiations or make a payment. Victims have spanned regions throughout the world, and multiple critical sectors, including healthcare, financial services, government organizations and critical manufacturing. Defending Against the Gunra Threat The advisory urged organizations to focus on three key areas to counter the tactics employed by Gunra. These are: Prioritizing patching known exploited vulnerabilities in internet-facing systems, including virtual private network (VPN) gateways and remote desktop protocol (RDP)-exposed infrastructure Implementing and testing offline, immutable backups stored in a physically separate, segmented location to ensure recoverability without ransom payment Segmenting networks to restrict lateral movement from an initially compromised device to other systems in the organization
infosecurity-magazine.comAug 12, 2026extracted
Gunra Ransomware Gang Exploits Fortinet Flaws, Bypasses MFA
The ransomware-as-a-service operation is finding success against critical infrastructure targets with leaked Conti code and old flaws in firewalls and VPN appliances.
darkreading.comAug 11, 2026extracted
US and South Korea warn of Gunra ransomware targeting govt agencies
U.S. federal agencies and South Korea's National Policy Agency warned government and critical infrastructure organizations worldwide to secure their systems against Gunra ransomware attacks. In a Monday joint advisory, they said . "Gunra first emerged in April 2025 as a sophisticated double-extortion ransomware variant derived from the leaked Conti1 ransomware source code," the authoring agencies said. "The FBI observed Gunra actors attempting to communicate directly with management staff at victim companies via email to solicit ransom payments with limited success." The ransomware gang has been observed attacking Fortinet firewalls to gain a foothold on their targets' networks using exploits targeting two critical authentication vulnerabilities (CVE-2024-55591 and CVE-2025-24472) in FortiOS and FortiProxy software. Gunra also exploits credential-exposure and Secure Shell (SSH) access control security flaws in internet-facing VPN gateways to gain remote access to victims' systems. Additionally, while their attacks first focused on Windows environments, the ransomware actors moved to cross-platform campaigns after introducing a Linux variant in mid-2025. Since January 2026, Gunra has also launched a dedicated ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) platform and begun recruiting initial access brokers to expand operations. "As of January 2026, Gunra launched a formal RaaS affiliate program on dark web forums, providing affiliates with access to a management panel, a configurable ransomware builder, cross-platform locker payloads, and structured affiliate documentation," the joint advisory says. "The FBI observed the group adopting new branding aliases (notably operating under the name Golden Community) to support this expansion. Gunra has further commercialized its platform by actively recruiting penetration testers and ethical hackers to serve as initial access brokers, offering a share of the ransom profits in exchange for enterprise network access." The U.S. and South Korean agencies advised network defenders to patch known exploited vulnerabilities in internet-facing systems as soon as possible, segment their networks to restrict lateral movement, and make offline backups of their data. 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.comAug 11, 2026extracted
Gunra Ransomware Exploits Fortinet and Schneider Electric Flaws to Breach Networks
Cybersecurity and intelligence agencies from South Korea and the U.S. warned of Gunra ransomware attacks targeting critical infrastructure sectors and organizations across the world. Targets of these attacks include healthcare and public health, financial services, government services and facilities, and professional and nonprofit services. "Gunra is another variant in the ongoing trend of ransomware attacks causing disruption and harm to U.S. and international organizations," CISA Acting Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity, Chris Butera, said. Attacks deploying the ransomware have leveraged security flaws in internet-facing Fortinet FortiOS and FortiProxy (CVE-2024-55591 and CVE-2025-24472) appliances to obtain initial access, and then deploy the Gunra ransomware as part of a double extortion model that combines data exfiltration and data encryption for maximum impact. Victims who refuse to pay up within five to seven days have their data published on a data leak site. According to data published on Ransomware.Live, Gunra has listed a total of 51 victims since emerging in the threat landscape in April 2025, with most of them from South Korea, Brazil, Spain, Thailand, and Hong Kong. What's notable about the threat actor is that the majority of the targets are located in Australia, East Asia, and Europe. Only three victims have been reported from Canada and the U.S. so far. "The group uses phishing as a main attack vector to deliver malicious pieces to their targets and carry out negotiations on a WhatsApp-themed chat Panel," security researcher Rakesh Krishnan said in an analysis published last year. "The group is capable of encrypting huge files (9TB) in a limited timeframe by using advanced stream cipher encryption such as Salsa20 or ChaCha20." The Conti-derived operation is said to have launched a formal RaaS affiliate program on dark web forums in January 2026, providing affiliates with access to a management panel, a configurable ransomware builder, cross-platform locker payloads, and structured affiliate documentation. The group offers both Windows and Linux variants of its locker, although an analysis released by Breakglass Intelligence in March 2026 identified a "catastrophic cryptographic weakness" in the Linux builds that made it possible to recover the encryption key and regain access to the files. Per the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Gunra has been observed adopting new branding aliases, such as Golden Community, to expand its operations, while simultaneously taking steps to monetize its platform by recruiting penetration testers and ethical hackers to serve as initial access brokers, who are offered a share of the ransom profits in exchange for enterprise network access. Attack chains are known to leverage Impacket libraries "psexec.py" and "smbclient.py" for lateral movement using the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. Another Impacket utility, "secretsdump.py," is used to conduct credential dumping against compromised domain controllers and extract password hashes of user accounts from the NT Directory Services (NTDS) file. To cover up traces of malicious activity, the group is known to delete system/network access logs, clear command history, and primarily conduct malicious activities and internal infrastructure reconnaissance between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Data exfiltration from Microsoft OneDrive and SharePoint is accomplished by means of an executable named "main.exe." In select cases, the threat actors have been observed creating compressed archives containing terabytes of data and exfiltrating them to the MEGA file-sharing service. Besides collecting business-critical documents, the group is said to have connected to the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments of IT personnel and harvested sensitive documents containing system and network configuration information. "The Gunra actors then leveraged enterprise server credentials stolen from a system access control server to deploy ransomware to encrypt key assets, including database servers and network-attached storage (NAS) systems," the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said. In one case spotted by South Korea's National Police Agency (KNPA), the attackers have been spotted manipulating the network traffic control functionality of an SSL-VPN appliance to intercept credentials and session information transmitted by users authenticating to a corporate VDI authentication portal. These stolen session cookies were then used to conduct session hijacking and impersonate legitimate users to gain access to the internal network. To bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA), Gunra is said to have tampered with the authentication processing files on the corporate VDI authentication portal server such that it enabled successful authentication when a specific, Gunra-designated one-time password (OTP) value was entered. Some of the other detected behaviors are listed below - Gaining access to an administrator account for an SSL-VPN appliance by exploiting default credentials and then downloading OpenSSH from an attacker-controlled server to set up connections between compromised systems and maintain persistence within the victim environment. Relying on an unused account identified in the SSL-VPN administrative web console that had access to both the internet and internal corporate network, and modifying its configuration to sidestep the mandatory password change requirement and empty it for follow-on activities. Accessing a Hiware system access control server via SSH from a compromised virtual desktop and stealing a symmetric encryption key stored on the server so as to decrypt passwords for enterprise server accounts stored within the database and perform credential dumping of credentials associated with all enterprise servers. Deleting backup and archived data stored on backup infrastructure at both the primary data center and disaster recovery center before and after the ransomware deployment. The disclosure assumes significance in the face of a recent advisory from South Korea about a cyber campaign orchestrated by an unspecified state-sponsored threat group from 2025 through the first half of 2026 by exploiting vulnerabilities in an unidentified financial security software to distribute malware after tricking victims into visiting malicious URLs through spear-phishing and watering hole techniques. Interestingly, some of these incidents have also involved the exploitation of the same financial security software vulnerabilities to deploy Gunra ransomware and exfiltrate sensitive organizational information. Some of the watering hole attacks, per ENKI, have also exploited a zero-day vulnerability in AnySign4PC, causing malware to be installed and executed on systems with the certificate signing software installed when accessing the web page containing the exploit code. Some of the payloads distributed as part of the whole campaign include Struggle (aka SIGNBT 3.0) and Brandoor (aka COPPERHEDGE), both of which are known to be used by the Lazarus Group. "These commonalities suggest that although the state-sponsored threat group and the Gunra ransomware group appear to be separate threat actors with different ultimate objectives, they may have shared certain techniques, tools, and infrastructure or collaborated to a limited extent during the attacks," AhnLab said. While the exact origins of Gunra are unclear, this kind of collaboration between a North Korean nation-state group and a ransomware actor is not unheard of. As far back as October 2024, Palo Alto Networks Unit42 said it observed the Lazarus sub-cluster Andariel partnering with the Play ransomware crew. Andariel itself has a track record of deploying custom ransomware families like SHATTEREDGLASS, Maui, and H0lyGh0st in the past. At least since September 2025, the Lazarus Group and its related intrusion set Moonstone Sleet (aka Storm-1789) have also been attributed to attacks targeting South Korean and Middle East entities with Qilin and Medusa ransomware. To secure against Gunra ransomware, organizations are advised to keep all operating systems, software, and firmware up to date, prioritize patching known exploited vulnerabilities in internet-facing systems, enforce network segmentation, and ensure backups are immutable and stored in a physically separate location. (A previous version of the story incorrectly mentioned CVE-2024-5559 was exploited in Gunra ransomware attacks. The correct CVE is CVE-2024-55591. The error is regretted.)
thehackernews.comAug 11, 2026extracted
FBI, South Korea warn of Gunra ransomware gang targeting critical infrastructure
FBI, South Korea warn of Gunra ransomware gang targeting critical infrastructure The Gunra ransomware gang is breaching critical infrastructure organizations through vulnerabilities in popular brands of firewalls, the FBI and South Korea’s government warned on Monday. In a cybersecurity advisory, U.S. law enforcement agencies and South Korea’s National Policy Agency spotlighted the ransomware operation that emerged in April 2025 and is built using source code from the Conti ransomware that was leaked in 2022. “Gunra is another variant in the ongoing trend of ransomware attacks causing disruption and harm to U.S. and international organizations,” said Chris Butera, acting executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The agencies warned that Gunra actors have been exploiting CVE-2024-55591 and CVE-2025-24472 — two vulnerabilities affecting popular firewall products from Fortinet that CISA previously warned about — to gain privileged access to organizations, allowing them to steal and encrypt data before extorting organizations. Monday’s report included evidence gleaned from several incidents handled by the FBI and South Korea’s police agency. They found the group is targeting the healthcare, financial services and government sectors globally. In most cases, victims were given exorbitant ransom demands that were over $10 million dollars and told they had five to seven days to pay. “The FBI observed Gunra actors attempting to communicate directly with management staff at victim companies via email to solicit ransom payments with limited success,” the advisory said. Two weeks ago, researchers warned that some tools and infrastructure used by North Korea’s Lazarus Group appear to have been shared with Gunra as it targeted South Korean organizations. The FBI said it first observed the ransomware and its leak site in April 2025. By January, Gunra moved to a ransomware-as-a-service model and the group was seen on cybercriminals forums actively recruiting new members. In recent months, the FBI said it saw the group using new aliases, including the name “Golden Community,” as it has expanded and commercialized its platform by recruiting hackers to serve as initial access brokers. The group initially focused on Windows devices but began using a Linux variant that it created. The advisory noted that as of March, researchers found a weakness in Gunra’s Linux variant that allows defenders to “reconstruct the keys using file timestamps and recover files without paying the ransom.” Butera said CISA, the FBI and other agencies are sharing the advisory and other information with government organizations and industry groups to stop the group from continuing its attacks. The advisory comes as industry groups warn that ransomware incidents continue to increase, particularly those targeting critical industrial organizations. The cybersecurity firm Dragos said it identified 1,140 ransomware incidents affecting industrial organizations worldwide in the second quarter of 2026, a 12% increase compared to Q1. At least four of the attacks on industrial organizations last quarter were attributed to Gunra after the group was responsible for eight attacks in Q1. Jonathan Greig is a Breaking News Reporter at Recorded Future News. Jonathan has worked across the globe as a journalist since 2014. Before moving back to New York City, he worked for news outlets in South Africa, Jordan and Cambodia. He previously covered cybersecurity at ZDNet and TechRepublic.
therecord.mediaAug 10, 2026extracted
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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 .
3 shared
Sep 28, 2026
2026-013: Critical Vulnerability in F5 BIG-IP APM
History: 22/09/2026 --- v1.0 -- Initial publication Summary On 22 September 2026, F5 published an advisory addressing a critical vulnerability affecting its BIG-IP APM product. The vendor confirmed active exploitation in the wild [1]. CERT-EU recommends taking appropriate actions as soon as possible. Technical Details The vulnerability CVE-2026-94127, with a CVSS score of 9.8, is a heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability and allow unauthenticated attacker to achieve remote code execution (RCE) on the affected device [1]. Affected Products The vulnerability affects the following versions of BIG-IP APM if configured with an access policy and an OAuth profile on a virtual server [1]: 17.1.0 - 17.1.3 17.5.0 - 17.5.1 21.1.0 Recommendations CERT-EU recommends taking the following actions as soon as possible: Preserve forensic evidence. Apply the relevant hotfix. Check for signs of compromise (see the compromise assessment section). If any sign of compromise is detected, start the incident response process. Mitigation If patching cannot be applied immediately, F5 provides an iRule-based mitigation for the affected virtual server. To obtain it, F5 BIG-IP clients should contact the F5 support [1]. Compromise Assessment CERT-EU strongly advises to look for the following indicators of compromise provided by the vendor in its advisory [1]: At a high level, multiple OAuth authentication failures, followed by suspicious commands, shortly followed by a TMM SIGABRT is the combination that should lead to human review of the system. OAuth authentication failures: check /var/log/apm for repeated occurrences of the following, especially 10 or more from a single IP in a short window. err tmm1\[30975\]: 01990004:3: : Request UserInfo from Source ID (null) IP failed. Error Code (invalid\_token) Error Description (The access token is invalid.) - Increase of OAuth failure statistics. Run the following and look for an unexplained increase in total_failed : $ tmctl global_oauth_stat -s total_requests,total_userinfo_requests,total_failed - Audit log anomalies: if OAuth failures are observed, review /var/log/audit around those timestamps for suspicious commands. TMM core files: Presence of a TMM core file alone is not an indicator, but core files should be investigated. The vendor indicates that they have observed TMM entering a loop, which causes the SOD daemon to send a SIGABRT.
3 shared
Sep 25, 2026
Analyzing Sharepoint Exploits (CVE-2025-53770, CVE-2025-53771), (Wed, Jul 23rd)
On July 19–20, 2025, various security companies and national CERTs published alerts about active exploitation of on-premise SharePoint servers. According to the reports, observed attacks did not require authentication, allowed attackers to gain full control over the infected servers, and were performed using an exploit chain of two vulnerabilities: CVE-2025-49704 and CVE-2025-49706, publicly named “ToolShell”. Additionally, on the same dates, Microsoft released out-of-band security patches for the vulnerabilities CVE-2025-53770 and CVE-2025-53771, aimed at addressing the security bypasses of previously issued fixes for CVE-2025-49704 and CVE-2025-49706. The release of the new, “proper” updates has caused confusion about exactly which vulnerabilities attackers are exploiting and whether they are using zero-day exploits. Kaspersky products proactively detected and blocked malicious activity linked to these attacks, which allowed us to gather statistics about the timeframe and spread of this campaign. Our statistics show that widespread exploitation started on July 18, 2025, and attackers targeted servers across the world in Egypt, Jordan, Russia, Vietnam, and Zambia. Entities across multiple sectors were affected: government, finance, manufacturing, forestry, and agriculture. While analyzing all artifacts related to these attacks, which were detected by our products and public information provided by external researchers, we found a dump of a POST request that was claimed to contain the malicious payload used in these attacks. After performing our own analysis, we were able to confirm that this dump indeed contained the malicious payload detected by our technologies, and that sending this single request to an affected SharePoint installation was enough to execute the malicious payload there. Our analysis of the exploit showed that it did rely on vulnerabilities fixed under CVE-2025-49704 and CVE-2025-49706, but by changing just one byte in the request, we were able to bypass those fixes. In this post, we provide detailed information about CVE-2025-49704, CVE-2025-49706, CVE-2025-53770, CVE-2025-53771, and one related vulnerability. Since the exploit code is already published online, is very easy to use, and poses a significant risk, we encourage all organizations to install the necessary updates. The exploit Our research started with an analysis of a POST request dump associated with this wave of attacks on SharePoint servers. We can see that this POST request targets the “/_layouts/15/ToolPane.aspx” endpoint and embeds two parameters: “MSOtlPn_Uri” and “MSOtlPn_DWP”. Looking at the code of ToolPane.aspx, we can see that this file itself does not contain much functionality and most of its code is located in the ToolPane class of the Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages namespace in Microsoft.SharePoint.dll. Looking at this class reveals the code that works with the two parameters present in the exploit. However, accessing this endpoint under normal conditions is not possible without bypassing authentication on the attacked SharePoint server. This is where the first Microsoft SharePoint Server Spoofing Vulnerability CVE-2025-49706 comes into play. CVE-2025-49706 This vulnerability is present in the method PostAuthenticateRequestHandler, in Microsoft.SharePoint.dll. SharePoint requires Internet Information Services (IIS) to be configured in integrated mode. In this mode, the IIS and ASP.NET authentication stages are unified. As a result, the outcome of IIS authentication is not determined until the PostAuthenticateRequest stage, at which point both the ASP.NET and IIS authentication methods have been completed. Therefore, the PostAuthenticateRequestHandler method utilizes a series of flags to track potential authentication violations. A logic bug in this method enables an authentication bypass if the “Referrer” header of the HTTP request is equal to “/_layouts/SignOut.aspx”, “/_layouts/14/SignOut.aspx”, or “/_layouts/15/SignOut.aspx” using case insensitive comparison. The code displayed in the image above handles the sign-out request and is also triggered when the sign-out page is specified as the referrer. When flag6 is set to false and flag7 is set to true, both conditional branches that could potentially throw an “Unauthorized Access” exception are bypassed. On July 8, 2025, Microsoft released an update that addressed this vulnerability by introducing additional checks to detect the usage of the “ToolPane.aspx” endpoint with the sign-out page specified as the referrer. The added check uses case insensitive comparison to verify if the requested path ends with “ToolPane.aspx”. Is it possible to bypass this check, say, by using a different endpoint? Our testing has shown that this check can be easily bypassed. CVE-2025-53771 We were able to successfully bypass the patch for vulnerability CVE-2025-49706 by adding just one byte to the exploit POST request. All that was required to bypass this patch was to add a “/” (slash) to the end of the requested “ToolPane.aspx” path. On July 20, 2025, Microsoft released an update that fixed this bypass as CVE-2025-53771. This fix replaces the “ToolPane.aspx” check to instead check whether the requested path is in the list of paths allowed for use with the sign-out page specified as the referrer. This allowlist includes the following paths: “/_layouts/15/SignOut.aspx”, “/_layouts/15/1033/initstrings.js”, “/_layouts/15/init.js”, “/_layouts/15/theming.js”, “/ScriptResource.axd”, “/_layouts/15/blank.js”, “/ScriptResource.axd”, “/WebResource.axd”, “/_layouts/15/1033/styles/corev15.css”, “/_layouts/15/1033/styles/error.css”, “/_layouts/15/images/favicon.ico”, “/_layouts/15/1033/strings.js”, “/_layouts/15/core.js”, and it can contain additional paths added by the administrator. While testing the CVE-2025-49706 bypass with the July 8, 2025 updates installed on our SharePoint debugging stand, we noticed some strange behavior. Not only did the bypass of CVE-2025-49706 work, but the entire exploit chain did! But wait! Didn’t the attackers use an additional Microsoft SharePoint Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2025-49704, which was supposed to be fixed in the same update? To understand why the entire exploit chain worked in our case, let’s take a look at the vulnerability CVE-2025-49704 and how it was fixed. CVE-2025-49704 CVE-2025-49704 is an untrusted data deserialization vulnerability that exists due to improper validation of XML content. Looking at the exploit POST request, we can see that it contains two URL encoded parameters: “MSOtlPn_Uri” and “MSOtlPn_DWP”. We can see how they are handled by examining the code of the method GetPartPreviewAndPropertiesFromMarkup in Microsoft.SharePoint.dll. A quick analysis reveals that “MSOtlPn_Uri” is a page URL that might be pointing to an any file in the CONTROLTEMPLATES folder and the parameter “MSOtlPn_DWP” contains something known as WebPart markup. This markup contains special directives that can be used to execute safe controls on a server and has a format very similar to XML. While this “XML” included in the “MSOtlPn_DWP” parameter does not itself contain a vulnerability, it allows attackers to instantiate the ExcelDataSet control from Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Client.dll with CompressedDataTable property set to malicious payload and trigger its processing using DataTable property getter. Looking at the code of the ExcelDataSet’s DataTable property getter in Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Client.dll, we find the method GetObjectFromCompressedBase64String, responsible for deserialization of CompressedDataTable property contents. The data provided as Base64 string is decoded, unzipped, and passed to the BinarySerialization.Deserialize method from Microsoft.SharePoint.dll. Attackers use this method to provide a malicious DataSet whose deserialized content is shown in the image above. It contains an XML with an element of dangerous type "System.Collections.Generic.List1[[System.Data.Services.Internal.ExpandedWrapper2[...], System.Data.Services, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089]]", which allows attackers to execute arbitrary methods with the help of the well-known ExpandedWrapper technique aimed at exploitation of unsafe XML deserialization in applications based on the .NET framework. In fact, this shouldn’t be possible, since BinarySerialization.Deserialize in Microsoft.SharePoint.dll uses a special XmlValidator designed to protect against this technique by checking the types of all elements present in the provided XML and ensuring that they are on the list of allowed types. However, the exploit bypasses this check by placing the ExpandedWrapper object into the list. Now, to find out why the exploit worked on our SharePoint debugging stand with the July 8, 2025 updates installed, let’s take a look at how this vulnerability was fixed. In this patch, Microsoft did not really fix the vulnerability but only mitigated it by adding the new AddExcelDataSetToSafeControls class to the Microsoft.SharePoint.Upgrade namespace. This class contains new code that modifies the web.config file and marks the Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.ExcelDataSet control as unsafe. Because SharePoint does not execute this code on its own after installing updates, the only way to achieve the security effect was to manually run a configuration upgrade using the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard tool. Notably, the security guidance for CVE-2025-49704 does not mention the need for this step, which means at least some SharePoint administrators may skip it. Meanwhile, anyone who installed this update but did not manually perform a configuration upgrade remained vulnerable. CVE-2025-53770 On July 20, 2025, Microsoft released an update with a proper fix for the CVE-2025-49704 vulnerability. This patch introduces an updated XmlValidator that now properly validates element types in XML, preventing exploitation of this vulnerability without requiring a configuration upgrade and, more importantly, addressing the root cause and preventing exploitation of the same vulnerability through controls other than Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.ExcelDataSet. CVE-2020-1147 Readers familiar with previous SharePoint exploits might feel that the vulnerability CVE-2025-49704/CVE-2025-53770 and the exploit used by the attackers looks very familiar and very similar to the older .NET Framework, SharePoint Server, and Visual Studio Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2020-1147. In fact, if we compare the exploit for CVE-2020-1147 and an exploit for CVE-2025-49704/CVE-2025-53770, we can see that they are almost identical. The only difference is that in the exploit for CVE-2025-49704/CVE-2025-53770, the dangerous ExpandedWrapper object is placed in the list. This makes CVE-2025-53770 an updated fix for CVE-2020-1147. Conclusions Despite the fact that patches for the ToolShell vulnerabilities are now available for deployment, we assess that this chain of exploits will continue being used by attackers for a long time. We have been observing the same situation with other notorious vulnerabilities, such as ProxyLogon, PrintNightmare, or EternalBlue. While they have been known for years, many threat actors still continue leveraging them in their attacks to compromise unpatched systems. We expect the ToolShell vulnerabilities to follow the same fate, as they can be exploited with extremely low effort and allow full control over the vulnerable server. To stay better protected against threats like ToolShell, we as a community should learn lessons from previous events in the industry related to critical vulnerabilities. Specifically, the speed of applying security patches nowadays is the most important factor when it comes to fighting such vulnerabilities. Since public exploits for these dangerous vulnerabilities appear very soon after vulnerability announcements, it is paramount to install patches as soon as possible, as a gap of even a few hours can make a critical difference. At the same time, it is important to protect enterprise networks against zero-day exploits, which can be leveraged when there is no available public patch for vulnerabilities. In this regard, it is critical to equip machines with reliable cybersecurity solutions that have proven effective in combatting ToolShell attacks before they were publicly disclosed. Kaspersky Next with its Behaviour detection component proactively protects against exploitation of these vulnerabilities. Additionally, it is able to detect exploitation and the subsequent malicious activity. Kaspersky products detect the exploits and malware used in these attacks with the following verdicts: UDS:DangerousObject.Multi.Generic PDM:Exploit.Win32.Generic PDM:Trojan.Win32.Generic HEUR:Trojan.MSIL.Agent.gen ASP.Agent.* PowerShell.Agent.*
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Jul 28, 2025
Cisco patches actively exploited email gateway zero-day (CVE-2026-76461)
Criminals are exploiting a critical Cisco Secure Email Gateway flaw that can turn a malicious email into root access. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-76461, carries a 9.8 CVSS score and affects physical and virtual Secure Email Gateway appliances regardless of their configuration. Cisco says there are no workarounds, so patching is the only fix. The bug lies in how Cisco's AsyncOS software handles incoming email. An attacker doesn't need to log in: they can send a booby-trapped message through a vulnerable gateway and, if the exploit works, run commands as root. Which is not exactly what you want from the box tasked with keeping nasty emails out. Cisco's Product Security Incident Response Team said it became aware of active exploitation in September, although the networking giant hasn't said who is behind the attacks, how long they have been going on, or how many organizations have been compromised. Cisco uncovered the bug while resolving a Technical Assistance Center support case. Signs suggest at least some Cisco cloud customers were caught up in the attacks. Cisco said it investigated devices belonging to its Secure Email Cloud service and directly contacted customers whose appliances showed indicators of possible compromise. It is now carrying out remediation and recovery work and says all of its Secure Email Cloud devices have been upgraded to AsyncOS 16.5.0-780. Admins running their own appliances have a little more work to do. Cisco recommends checking logs for signs of suspicious activity, but warns that finding nothing doesn't necessarily mean the system is clean. Once attackers have root access, Cisco says they could tamper with the logs and cover their tracks. Admins are also being told to check network and firewall logs for anything unusual, rather than relying on the gateway itself for answers. For virtual appliances suspected of being compromised, Cisco's recovery advice is fairly drastic: preserve the forensic evidence, deploy a fresh VM running fixed software, rebuild the configuration, and rotate credentials and cryptographic material. Cisco has fixed the bug in AsyncOS releases 15.5.5-014, 16.0.4-302 and 16.5.0-780, with customers strongly encouraged to move to the latter. There's still a decent-sized target pool out there. The Shadowserver Foundation was tracking more than 400 Cisco Secure Email Gateway appliances exposed to the internet as of Monday The flaw has also landed in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, with US federal civilian agencies ordered to remediate it by September 17. CVE-2026-76461 comes less than a year after attackers exploited another critical AsyncOS flaw, CVE-2025-20393, to break into Cisco Secure Email Gateway appliances and install persistence mechanisms. That bug eventually scored a perfect 10. For anyone still running an affected gateway, the message is fairly simple: the box designed to inspect hostile email can itself be pwned by one; attackers are already doing it, and there is no workaround to hide behind. ®
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Sep 18, 2026
Check Point, Kaspersky, Tanium Patch Product Vulnerabilities
Attackers exploited a previously unknown flaw in Check Point's Security Management Server in a handful of targeted attacks on July 23, the company said. The flaw, CVE-2026-93616, allows an attacker who can access the server's web service to run scripts on it without logging in. Check Point released a fix on September 22 for the server that controls firewall policies for the Check Point gateways it manages. Separately, Check Point said attackers have been trying since September 12 to exploit a VPN flaw it fixed on September 9. The attempts, against a flaw tracked as CVE-2026-85102, have targeted customers of Spark, Check Point's firewall line for small businesses. When the fix came out, Check Point had no evidence the flaw was being exploited. CVE-2026-93616 is a path traversal bug in the management server's web service. The service does not properly limit which files and folders a request can reach. An attacker can use it to upload scripts to the server and then run them. Check Point rated it 9.8 out of 10 on the CVSS scale in the CVE record for the flaw. Check Point's advisory does not name the targets of the July attacks or the attackers, nor does it say what the attackers did after exploiting the flaw. Management Server Versions and Fix Check Point numbers the Jumbo Hotfix updates for each release by "Take." Its LivePatch channel, which pushes urgent fixes, uses a separate set of take numbers. The CVE record lists these versions as affected: R82.20 with no Jumbo Hotfix installed R82.10 with Jumbo Hotfix Take 44 or below R82 with Jumbo Hotfix Take 126 or below R81.20 with Jumbo Hotfix Take 166 or below R81.10 with Jumbo Hotfix Take 190 or below (end of support) R81, R80.40, R80.30, R80.20, R80.10 and R80 (all end of support) Check Point's advisory lists R82.20 as affected without the "no Jumbo Hotfix" condition. On September 16, Check Point fixed a separate flaw in the management server, CVE-2026-91843, through LivePatch. That update was LivePatch Take 28, or Take 29 on R82.20, according to a summary of Check Point's advisory by France's CERT Santé. Check Point says those LivePatch takes do not fix CVE-2026-93616. CVE-2026-85103, a VPN certificate flaw that Check Point fixed on September 9, affected both gateways and management servers. On R82.10, R82, and R81.20, the new flaw's affected list goes one take higher than that flaw's. So a server updated only enough to be outside that September flaw's range is still affected by CVE-2026-93616. The fixed builds, and Check Point's guidance on mitigation, hunting and indicators of compromise, are in support article sk1000171. Administrators of management servers should: Check the server's release and Jumbo Hotfix take against the list above. Install the fix listed in sk1000171. Use the hunting guidance and indicators of compromise in sk1000171 to look for signs of an attack. Installing the fix does not show whether the server was attacked before. Check Point's advisory names only Security Management as affected and does not say what network access an attacker needs. The Hacker News has asked Check Point about other affected products, the fixed builds, and the July attacks. Spark Firewalls Targeted Through VPN Flaw CVE-2026-85102 is in the way Check Point gateways check certificates while a VPN connection is being set up. It may let an attacker who has not logged in run code on the gateway. Fixes have been out since September 9 and are in support article sk1000117. The affected products are Security Gateway and Spark firewalls, whether centrally or locally managed, on R81 and R81.10 (both end of support), R81.10.x, R81.20, R82, R82.00.x and R82.10. The Netherlands' National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) says the flaw applies when these products use Site-to-Site VPN or Remote Access VPN. Check Point said the attempts came from anonymizing infrastructure, including VPN services and proxies, and used certificates with these subjects: Certificate subject: CN=vpn,OU=users,O=global Certificate subject: CN=vpn-user,OU=users,O=global Certificate subject: CN=vpnuser,OU=users,O=global The list is not complete, and other subjects may be in use. Administrators should check logs for any unusual certificate-based Mobile Access login, not only those with these subjects. They should also check what suspicious Mobile Access users do after logging in, which often includes scanning internal ports and services. Check Point says customers who installed the September 9 fix are protected, but its advisory does not say whether any attempt succeeded. For gateways that cannot be patched yet, the NCSC lists a Check Point workaround for Site-to-Site VPN: turn off the implied VPN rules and allow UDP ports 500 and 4500 only from specific peer IP addresses. The workaround does not apply to locally managed Spark firewalls. Mitigation steps from Check Point are in sk1000117.
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Sep 23, 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