tp-link

In 2026, the owner of an ordinary home router, smart TV, or TV box is a prime target for cybercriminals. These devices are readily recruited into botnets and residential proxy networks , which we’ve covered before. Criminals “sublease” the infected device by letting outsiders pay to visit any website from the victim’s IP address, so it looks like the device’s owner is doing it. The service is in demand across all kinds of shady schemes: from ad fraud and spam campaigns to password bruteforcing and account hacking. In our previous post, we described how home routers get recruited into these proxy networks; today we’ll look at an even more vulnerable and equally ubiquitous category of devices: smart TVs and TV boxes. These appeal to criminals for two reasons. First off, unlike computers and phones, TVs are almost always plugged into power and connected to fast internet. A dark screen doesn’t mean the device is switched off. On top of that, the limited user interface and monitoring tools mean suspicious background processes can easily slip unnoticed past users. The threat is evolving and growing more aggressive. A recent study found that once proxyware turns up on a set-top box, the risks to its owner go well beyond having their traffic siphoned off. Anatomy of the infection The researchers focused on a popular TV box by SuperBox, which we already covered earlier in the post Is your TV box renting out your network? SuperBox’s marketing leans heavily on the promise of providing thousands of TV channels, with no subscription or monthly fees. But out of the box, the device can’t actually do anything of the sort. To get access to pirated content, you need to install the brand’s proprietary app store. Once you launch it and install additional apps, the promised TV channels do appear. Meanwhile behind the scenes, with no warnings or permission prompts, the device floods external sites with unauthorized requests. Network traffic spikes sharply. The researchers uncovered several alarming facts. First, the victim gets enrolled into as many as five botnets at once. The SuperBox runs clients for several proxyware networks simultaneously, which even try to compete with one another by blocking rival software from being installed. But the real shock was the attacks on the internal network. The TV box’s proxyware places no limits on what its paying clients can actually do on the network. They can reach not only external sites but also devices inside your home network. Normally, your home router and ISP settings protect you from outside attacks. But proxyware bypasses these barriers, because it operates from inside the network. During an experiment, the researchers confirmed that an attacker on the internet can easily leverage the infected set-top box to open the admin panel of a home router, such as a Linksys, which is supposed to be accessible only to its owner when connected to the home Wi-Fi network. This means hackers can try to steal data from other devices at the same household or even encrypt a home network storage (NAS). At the same time, flaws in SuperBox’s factory firmware let hackers remotely install and run any application with superuser privileges. The threat is anything but hypothetical. Over three weeks of monitoring, the test set-top box was hit by more than 1300 attacks through the home proxy network. Attackers installed three different types of malware, including a module for launching DDoS attacks. The malware uses several methods to gain a foothold in the system, and it survives reboots and power failures alike. How to tell if your set-top box is working for hackers If you have a cheap TV set-top box or Android TV from a little-known brand, it’s worth checking it for anomalies. The most reliable method is to review the network traffic. Use the statistics in your router’s control panel — note that some budget models may lack this feature. This feature is called Traffic Analyzer on Asus routers, Traffic Usage on TP-Link, and Traffic Monitor on Keenetic. Find your TV or set-top box in the device list and check the ratio of downloaded to uploaded data. They should consume a lot of traffic to download video while sending very little. If your box is quietly pushing gigabytes of data out or staying chatty on the network even while idle, that’s a telltale sign it’s infected. If traffic statistics aren’t available, look for indirect signs: The network and memory activity LEDs won’t stop blinking even though no one is using the device. The set-top box’s casing is constantly warm or hot. The interface lags behind the remote, and the box freezes at random moments that have nothing to do with heavy video playback. Your other devices (computers or phones) are seeing a real drop in internet speed. When trying to visit familiar sites over your home Wi-Fi, you’re constantly hit with a CAPTCHA, a sign your network may be compromised and flagged as a spam source. Your ISP’s tech support calls you asking about suspicious network loads. What to do with an infected device The best solution is to disconnect the device from the internet and dispose of it. If you have to keep using it, follow these steps to minimize the risks: Do a factory (hard) reset . Restore the set-top box to its original state. Take it offline before setting up. The first time you turn it on after a reset, skip the Wi-Fi setup step and don’t plug in the Ethernet cable. Block app installation. Go to Android settings and disable installation of apps from unknown sources. Be sure to turn off any debugging features if enabled: USB debugging, Wireless debugging, and ADB. Menu item names may differ depending on your Android version and device manufacturer. Isolate it on the network. Set up a guest Wi-Fi network on your router and connect the TV box to it. Enable Client Isolation in your router’s settings, if it has one. This will stop the box from seeing other devices on your home network, which protects your computers and network storage. Check for updates. Once the box is connected to the guest network, check for official firmware updates: manufacturers sometimes patch known vulnerabilities, though with lesser-known brands, you shouldn’t count on it. Your most reliable safeguards Buying cheap devices with pirate streaming features and installing software from shady sources is a surefire way to compromise your home network. Your IP address will become a source of malicious activity, which at best gets you blocked by your ISP and at worst puts you on law enforcement’s radar. What’s more, hackers can use the box as a launchpad to attack your home computers and NAS, which can lead to personal data theft or a ransomware attack. The best protection is to buy devices from trusted brands and pay for legal content. And to rule out someone hijacking control of your network, make sure your router’s admin panel and other home devices are protected with unique, strong passwords. To avoid having to remember them all, use reliable password managers such as Kaspersky Password Manager . Additionally, the Smart Home Monitor feature included in Kaspersky Premium lets you keep all your devices fully under control. There may be more things you don’t know about your smart home devices: Is your TV box renting out your network? Are your TV, smartphone, and smart speakers eavesdropping on you? Five rules to stop IP cameras from spying on you The hidden risks of cheap Android devices Is your router secretly working for foreign intelligence?

Aggiornamenti disponibili per TP-Link Archer AX55 v4 Alert AL02/260904/CSIRT-ITA Sintesi Aggiornamenti di sicurezza TP-Link sanano due vulnerabilità, di cui una con gravità "alta", presente in TP-Link Archer AX55 v4. Tale vulnerabilità, qualora sfruttata, potrebbe consentire ad un utente malintenzionato, con accesso alla rete locale e in presenza di specifiche configurazioni, di eseguire codice arbitrario e di compromettere la disponibilità del servizio sui sistemi interessati. Tipologia Remote Code Execution Denial of Service Prodotti e/o versioni affette Archer AX55 v4, versioni precedenti alla 1.2.1 Build 20260527 Azioni di mitigazione In linea con le dichiarazioni del vendor, si raccomanda di aggiornare i prodotti vulnerabili seguendo le indicazioni del relativo bollettino di sicurezza riportato nella sezione Riferimenti.

The boring parts caused most of the trouble. A router shipped ready to listen. A fake check turned the user into the installer. Trusted systems collected traffic and passwords, then cleaned the logs. Old bugs formed new attack chains. Even an AI agent decided its assigned task was optional. Elsewhere, fake apps, helpful support calls, cheap banking kits, exposed systems, and weak defaults kept things moving. Different attacks, same useful mistake: something familiar was trusted without a second look. Here is the week... ⚡ Threat of the Week U.S. Disrupts Chinese Proxy Network Enabling Cyber Espionage — The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) disrupted infrastructure associated with a technical quartermaster who sold reconnaissance, proxy management, and operational routing capabilities for Chinese cyber espionage activities. The QTYF group is said to have created and operated the QScan and QTRouter frameworks, which have been used to target U.S. critical infrastructure networks. It's employed by the China-based Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Company. Stop Scrambling, Start Governing: How IT Can Get a Grip on AI Spend Spiking AI bills have left IT teams scrambling. Leadership wants to know how much is being spent on AI, but getting an answer means checking five dashboards for data that’s stale by the time you read it. Read 1Password’s blog to learn how IT can manage AI spend across vendors, models, and teams. Learn More ➝ 🔔 Top News OpenAI Says Reward Hacking Drove AI Agents to Breach Hugging Face — OpenAI revealed that reward hacking was a key driver behind the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered hack of Hugging Face last month, adding that it found evidence of misaligned behavior as early as late May. The incident took place during cybersecurity evaluations of several OpenAI models, and it was mainly fueled by what it described as a "highly capable, internal-only research model" comparable in scale to GPT‑5.6 Sol. "The models, operating under reduced safeguards, took actions that were misaligned with the goals of their assigned tasks – they communicated through unauthorized channels, exploited vulnerabilities in shared infrastructure, gained internet access, and accessed third-party systems," it said. TerminalFix Uses Fake Cloudflare CAPTCHAs to Drop Reverse Tunnel Implant — A new ClickFix variant, dubbed TerminalFix, aims to trick users into running a malicious command in Windows Terminal or PowerShell instead of directing them to the Windows Run dialog. The campaign, targeting organizations across multiple sectors, leverages compromised websites as a starting point to serve fake Cloudflare CAPTCHA verifications that prompt unsuspecting site visitors to copy and execute a malicious PowerShell command. The attack chain, according to Microsoft, is a sophisticated multi-stage process that leverages DLL sideloading, steganographic payload extraction, extensive Active Directory reconnaissance, and a bespoke custom reverse-tunnel implant that grants the attacker persistent, network-level proxy access through the infected machine. PaperCut Flaws Under Attack — Threat actors are chaining together two new security flaws in PaperCut NG and MF to execute arbitrary code on susceptible instances. "CVE-2026-81578 allows you to bypass authentication, and from there, you can edit a configuration file to exploit CVE-2026-82078 and gain Remote Code Execution," Jake Knott, head of threat intelligence at watchTowr, told The Hacker News. Huntress said it observed limited exploitation on two customer environments, with the attackers executing Base64-encoded commands on the targeted server as part of post-exploitation activity to determine user account and operating system using a chained command "whoami & ver." China-Made ZBT Routers Ship with 2 Backdoors — A firmware analysis of ZBT Deep Orange 3G/4G/LTE Router uncovered two new backdoors called SPEAKINGSTONE (CVE-2026-74233, CVSS score: 9.3) and DARKLANTERN (CVE-2026-74232, CVSS score: 9.3). The development came after at least 21 firmware images from the Chinese company were found to contain another backdoor called ENDLESSDOORS (CVE-2026-66747, CVSS score: 9.3) that's designed to start automatically and attempt to beacon to Chinese command-and-control (C2) infrastructure as often as every 35 seconds. The two new backdoors predate ENDLESSDOORS. "SPEAKINGSTONE, like ENDLESSDOORS, is a phone-home implant that connects back to ZBT's cloud infrastructure and accepts remote commands," VulnCheck said. "DARKLANTERN is a backdoor that listens on the WAN and executes arbitrary commands. No authentication required. Both are written in Nim. Both communicate over UDP. Both are launched by the same binary, a connectivity watchdog called inetdetect." Fire Ant Targets Trusted Infrastructure in 2026 — The China-linked threat actor known as Fire Ant (aka UNC3886) has continued to remain active in 2026, going beyond hypervisors to target trusted infrastructure, including routers (including Cisco IOS XR routers), TACACS servers, authentication systems, and Linux management hosts to maintain covert access, collect credentials and traffic, and reach connected high-value environments. "The compromise impacted both the direct and third-party environments," Sygnia said. "Its trusted infrastructure relationships created potential reachability into connected external environments, including high-value networks and critical infrastructure. Fire Ant appeared to use this trusted position to explore access paths beyond the initially compromised environment." Compromised routers were used for covert connectivity, traffic collection, command-output manipulation, and suppression of logging. In addition, the threat actor used deployed long-lived implants across Linux management infrastructure, including Medusa rootkit-related components, custom SSH backdoors, Zabbix-masquerading malware (aka BridgeAgent) that acts as a pathway for actor-controlled access into connected environments, and packet-triggered backdoors. Another tool in Fire Ant's arsenal is TacTap, which is used for TACACS credential collection. "The actor also manipulated the evidence sources defenders depend on," Sygnia added. "It suppressed router logging, altered command output, captured administrative credentials, tampered with host logs, and deployed multiple persistent backdoors." ️🔥 Trending CVEs Bugs drop weekly, and the gap between a patch and an exploit is shrinking fast. These are the heavy hitters for the week: high-severity, widely used, or already being poked at in the wild. Check the list, patch what you have, and hit the ones marked urgent first — From CVE-2025-30237 through CVE-2025-30241, CVE-2025-15628, CVE-2026-9254, CVE-2026-16348, CVE-2026-78541 (TP-Link), CVE-2026-17106 aka CopyEscape (Docker), CVE-2026-70426 (Jenkins), CVE-2026-15307, CVE-2026-15337, CVE-2026-15830, CVE-2026-15920 (Django), CVE-2026-19598 (Pods), CVE-2026-19874 (Konami Metal Gear Online 3), CVE-2026-75149, CVE-2026-67618 (Marimo), CVE-2026-77775, CVE-2026-77776 (Headroom LLM Proxy), CVE-2026-0251 (Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect App), CVE-2026-59568, CVE-2026-59567, CVE-2026-59565 (Zscaler Client Connector), CVE-2026-69251, CVE-2026-73601, CVE-2026-69253, CVE-2026-69256, CVE-2026-73602, CVE-2026-69259, CVE-2026-69264, CVE-2026-73484, CVE-2026-69255, CVE-2026-70477, CVE-2026-73485, CVE-2026-73486, CVE-2026-73487, CVE-2026-70470, CVE-2026-69254 (Flowise), CVE-2026-19912, CVE-2026-19913 (Kaltura HTML5 Player Library), CVE-2026-79282, CVE-2026-79290, CVE-2026-79054, CVE-2026-79121, CVE-2026-79224, CVE-2026-79052, CVE-2026-79150, CVE-2026-78935, CVE-2026-79012, CVE-2026-79200 (Google Chrome), CVE-2026-77537, CVE-2026-77550, CVE-2026-77554 (Ubiquiti UniFi), CVE-2026-18431 (Avada WordPress theme), CVE-2026-7791 (Amazon Skylight Workspace Config Service), CVE-2026-73554 (DoltHub), CVE-2026-19516 (Grafana MCP), CVE-2026-75604, GHSA-2xp9-vwfh-vxw4 (Next.js), CVE-2026-65643 (cPanel and WebHost Manager), CVE-2026-76639, CVE-2026-76640 (Unitree G1 EDU), CVE-2026-18885, CVE-2026-18886, and CVE-2026-74820 (ServiceNow AI Platform). 🎥 Cybersecurity Webinars AI Can Build Attack Paths in Minutes. Is Your SOC Ready? → AI can now discover zero-days, generate working exploits, and chain full attack paths, often within minutes of disclosure. Learn how to assess your AI threat readiness and build the visibility, context, and response speed needed to keep pace. AI Finds Flaws Faster. Your Exposure Answers Can’t Take Days → AI is speeding up vulnerability discovery, but the answer that matters is still slow: Are we exposed? See how Tines unified SBOM, application, cloud, and vulnerability data into one view to assess exposure faster and execute human-reviewed response playbooks at machine speed. 📰 Around the Cyber World Play Ransomware Encryption — The closed ransomware group known as Play (aka PlayCrypt) has been found to employ a double extortion model, encrypting systems after exfiltrating data and threatening to publish stolen data on their Tor-hosted data leak site if ransom is not paid. In one incident observed in early 2026, the threat actor deployed SystemBC after gaining initial access, followed by reconnaissance, lateral movement, data exfiltration, and abusing SentinelOne's own legitimate removal tool to uninstall the product. "The threat actor gained initial access via a compromised SonicWall VPN, consistent with the group's well-documented pattern of exploiting external remote services," GuidePoint Security said. "What makes this case particularly instructive for defenders is the combination of three specific behaviors: Domain-wide tool staging via the SYSVOL share rather than per-host delivery, EDR removal using the victim's own SentinelOne uninstallation utility rather than a kernel-level driver exploit, and the recovery of a crash dump from a host where the encryptor failed to complete, an artifact that provides a rare forensic window into the encryption execution itself." Email Bombing and Quick Assist for Ransomware Deployment — ZeroBEC disclosed details of an email bombing campaign targeting at least 10 users inside an organization, causing them to receive about 3,000 messages per day. "The messages were not a conventional phishing blast. Many were genuine verification, registration, deployment, and inquiry confirmations generated after the victims' email addresses were submitted to unrelated public platforms," the email security company said. About a day and a half after the email flooding, some of the users were contacted via Microsoft Teams by attackers masquerading as IT help desk personnel to help them tackle the problem. One of the employees, who was a local administrator, granted Microsoft Quick Assist access, enabling the attackers to deploy Xray-core, a reverse proxy tool, and expand their access. "The credential-theft step was woven directly into social engineering," ZeroBEC said. "The attacker mimicked the installation of a Windows security update and launched a local credential prompt from the compromised endpoint. The victim, who was still listening to the person he believed was IT, entered domain credentials into that prompt. The tooling validated and captured the credentials and then uploaded the resulting credential/configuration artifacts to an external Microsoft Dev Tunnel." Through the reverse tunnel, the threat actor conducted domain reconnaissance and attempted NTLM relay against certificate enrollment, all hallmarks of pre-ransomware deployment. It's worth noting the modus operandi shares overlaps with that of Aurora ransomware. ValleyRAT Delivered via Rogue Installer — A malicious installer disguised as adware has been observed deploying a modified version of the Chinese desktop wallpaper management tool, QN Wallpaper, which then performs DLL sideloading to establish persistence on Windows systems by dropping a file to the Startup folder and ultimately launching ValleyRAT, a backdoor linked to a threat actor known as Silver Fox. The malware, besides taking steps to protect its process, can collect system information, reboot/shut down the computer, take screenshots, wipe logs, update command-and-control (C2) addresses, download additional modules, and send keylogger logs along with clipboard contents. Per Kaspersky telemetry, ValleyRAT and its related components have been detected more than 100,000 times, with more than 1500 unique users affected, mainly in China and India. Brazil Fines ByteDance $29.81M for Privacy Violation — Brazil's data protection authority, ANPD, fined TikTok's owner ByteDance 153.8 million reais ($29.81 million) for allegedly violating the country's General Data Protection Law. ANPD said that the local unit of China's ByteDance had processed personal data of teenagers aged 13 to 18 without a valid legal basis. The regulator estimated that TikTok may have processed the data of at least 8 million children during the review period. DeepMind Debuts Double-Blind AI Evaluations — Google's DeepMind division launched a pilot of double-blind AI evaluations with an aim to keep external evaluations in a cryptographic "box" to stop benchmark contamination and protect intellectual property. To that end, Google said it's partnering with the Singapore AI Safety Institute, OpenMined, AVERI, and MLCommons, to test a Gemini Flash Lite model against confidential benchmarks in a privacy-preserving environment to increase evaluation integrity. "By using Confidential Space within Google Cloud’s Confidential Computing portfolio, we can cryptographically verify that both the external evaluation data and the proprietary model remain private to their respective owners," DeepMind said. "The evaluator cannot see the Gemini model weights, and Google cannot see the evaluator’s test prompts." 34 Malware Families Targeting Banking Apps — Zimperium found 34 mobile malware families actively targeting more than 1,243 mobile banking and fintech apps across 90 countries globally. "The concentration of targeted applications across EMEA reflects where threat actors anticipate the highest return on investment, focusing heavily on the region's major financial centers," it said. Some of the active malware families in the EMEA region are TsarBot, CopyBara, HOOK, Nexus, Flubot, Eventbot, and MaliBot. Fake KYC Apps Target Indian Customers to Deliver Ghost Penal — A new malware-as-a-service (MaaS) operation on Telegram, dubbed Ghost Penal, is selling ready-made Android banking trojan kits impersonating five major Indian banks. "The operation supplies a two-stage dropper protected by a custom native packer, a public cloud database that receives stolen UPI PINs and device data with no authentication required, and a downstream channel that relays intercepted one-time passwords for immediate fraudulent use," iZOOlogic said. The toolkit costs $25 for a five-credit pack and $400 for a three-month unlimited plan. One of the droppers containing the malicious payload masquerades as a video-calling application, while requesting access to SMS and telephony features. "The payload’s real functionality, including SMS interception, WebView-based KYC phishing, and data exfiltration, is not present in a static scan of the installed application," the company added. "It is protected by a native library, internally named libdpt.so, that decrypts a hidden code section in memory using RC4, forks the process before executing that code as an anti-debugging measure, installs hooks on libc and on the ART runtime’s class loader, and splices a second, hidden DEX archive into the application’s running ClassLoader. The same mechanism is then used in reverse to remove the trace of that injection." Bauman University Leak Exposes Russia's Military Cyber Training Pipeline — Leaked Bauman University records have revealed a long-running program that trained about 250 career and reserve students for special intelligence, operational information-technical effects, and information-technology protection under Department No. 4. "The curriculum combined both offensive and defensive techniques for cyber defense, as well as offensive doctrine for active measures campaigns and GRU activities," DomainTools said. "Field placements then moved students from classroom instruction into military units and academies aligned with their specialties, giving them supervised exposure to intelligence operations and preparing them for military and government operations careers." Department No. 4 is assessed to be tied to the GRU, with identified graduates assigned to military units associated with APT28 and Sandworm. Pentagon's Anthropic Blacklisting Ruled Illegal — A U.S. judge blocked Anthropic's designation by the Pentagon as a supply chain risk earlier this year. "Though the Department of War is undisputedly free to select the AI vendor of its choice, the evidence demonstrates that the broad measures imposed on Anthropic were illegal and baseless," District Judge Rita Lin said. "The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics." Anthropic said it welcomed the ruling and it remained "focused on working productively with the government to harness AI for our national security so all Americans benefit from this technology." State of AI-Enabled Malware in August 2026 — Palo Alto Networks Unit 42's analysis of 405 malware samples that integrate AI in some capacity has found that only 12 of them reached a production environment, with about 97% existing only in sandboxes and on VirusTotal in the form of proof-of-concept and research code, security validating and testing, and AI-themed brand abuse. Among those that were detected in customer endpoints were FunkSec ransomware, a trojanized AI application called Recipe Lister, Oyster, Rhadamanthys Stealer, and a COM hijacking DLL. "For defenders, the practical takeaway is straightforward. Existing behavioral detection, cloud-based sandboxing and endpoint analytics catch these threats using the same mechanisms that stop conventional malware," it said. "The AI component does not evade detection. It changes how the code is authored, not how it executes." Rogue Pornographic Android Apps Lead to Financial Fraud — The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Center (I4C) warned that malicious Android applications masquerading as pornography apps under the names Night Play, Reloop, Kyss, Vimo, Rivo, Nexo, and Vixa are being used to disseminate a banking trojan capable of carrying out financial fraud. These bogus apps are circulated through Facebook and Instagram ads and instruct victims to sideload the APK file. "After installation, the app requests permissions that allow it to install additional applications and, by abusing accessibility permission, take control of the users' device, which may result in financial fraud," I4C said. "Some apps also install a VPN, which may be used to route internet traffic pertaining to malicious/criminal activity. The app may prevent users from uninstalling it through the device settings." Details about the KYSS malware were published by security researcher Rudra Ponkshe in July 2026, describing it as a trojan designed to perform overlay attacks against 19 targets across Japan and Latin America, as well as abuse Android's accessibility services to grant itself extensive permissions, exfiltrate photos and contacts, and issue commands for subsequent execution. Conclusion The useful lesson is not that every attack became smarter. It is that more of them arrived through things already trusted: shipped devices, familiar prompts, support tools, valid access, and systems meant to protect the network. That changes the question. “Is it working?” is no longer enough. Ask what else it can do, who else can reach it, and whether the evidence it produces can be trusted. Quiet systems deserve a second look.

Sanate vulnerabilità prodotti TP-Link Alert AL04/260825/CSIRT-ITA Sintesi Aggiornamenti di sicurezza sanano quattro vulnerabilità con gravità “alta” in diversi prodotti TP-Link. Tali vulnerabilità, qualora sfruttate, potrebbero consentire a un utente malintenzionato di eludere i meccanismi di autenticazione e di eseguire codice arbitrario con privilegi elevati sui sistemi interessati. Tipologia Arbitrary Code Execution Authentication Bypass Prodotti e versioni affette TP-Link Archer BE800 V1, versioni precedenti alla 1.4.2 Build 260708 BE3600 V1, versioni precedenti alla 1.2.6 Build 20260617 AX75 V1, versioni precedenti alla 1.1.6 Build 260716 TP-Link Deco XE75 V3, versioni precedenti alla 1.5.0 Build 20260603 Rel.14401 XE5300 V3.6, versioni precedenti alla 1.5.0 Build 20260603 Rel.14401 WE10800 V3.6, versioni precedenti alla 1.5.0 Build 20260603 Rel.14401 Azioni di mitigazione In linea con le dichiarazioni del vendor, si raccomanda di aggiornare i prodotti vulnerabili seguendo le indicazioni dei bollettini di sicurezza riportati nella sezione Riferimenti.

Aggiornamenti di sicurezza per prodotti TP-Link Alert AL02/260824/CSIRT-ITA Sintesi Aggiornamenti di sicurezza sanano 3 vulnerabilità con gravità “alta” in prodotti TP-Link. Tali vulnerabilità, qualora sfruttate, consentirebbero a un utente malintenzionato di eseguire codice arbitrario e compromettere la disponibilità del servizio sui sistemi interessati. Tipologia Arbitrary Code Execution Denial of Service Azioni di mitigazione In linea con le dichiarazioni del vendor, si raccomanda di aggiornare i prodotti vulnerabili seguendo le indicazioni del bollettino di sicurezza riportato nella sezione Riferimenti. Prodotti e/o versioni affette TL-MR6400 V7 tutte le versioni precedenti alla 1.9.0 build 260714

Vulnerabilità in Omada Gateways Alert AL01/260821/CSIRT-ITA Sintesi Rilevate nuove vulnerabilità, tra cui una con gravità "critica", in diversi prodotti Omada Gateways. Tale vulnerabilità, qualora sfruttata, potrebbe permettere a un utente malintenzionato l'esecuzione di codice arbitrario sui sistemi interessati. Tipologia Arbitrary Code Execution Prodotti e/o versioni affette TP-Link Omada Gateways ER7212PC, versioni precedenti alla 2.4.3 Build 20260722 Rel.40250 ER605, versioni precedenti alla 2.4.4 Build 20260630 Rel.14398 ER7206, versioni precedenti alla 2.3.5 Build 20260625 Rel.43136 ER7406, versioni precedenti alla 1.3.4 Build 20260625 Rel.43136 ER707-M2, versioni precedenti alla 1.4.4 Build 20260625 Rel.43063 ER7412-M2, versioni precedenti alla 1.2.0 Build 20260630 Rel.82947 ER8411, versioni precedenti alla 1.4.1 Build 20260708 Rel.64832 ER706W, versioni precedenti alla 1.2.11 Build 20260723 Rel.41567 ER706W-4G, versioni precedenti alla 1.2.6 Build 20260723 Rel.41321 ER706W-4G, versioni precedenti alla 2.1.11 Build 20260723 Rel.41624 ER706WP-4G, versioni precedenti alla 1.1.11 Build 20260723 Rel.41624 ER703WP-4G-Outdoor, versioni precedenti alla 1.1.7 Build 20260723 Rel.41712 DR3220v-4G, versioni precedenti alla 1.2.0 Build 20260630 Rel.82652 DR3650v, versioni precedenti alla 1.2.0 Build 20260630 Rel.83311 DR3650v-4G, versioni precedenti alla 1.2.0 Build 20260630 Rel.83347 ER603WP-4G-Outdoor, versioni precedenti alla 1.0.2 Build 20260723 Rel.43271 DR3150, versioni precedenti alla 1.0.1 Build 20260722 Rel.16854 ER701-5G-Outdoor, versioni precedenti alla 1.0.3 Build 20260723 Rel.40931 ER605W Azioni di mitigazione In linea con le dichiarazioni del vendor, si raccomanda di aggiornare i prodotti vulnerabili seguendo le indicazioni del bollettino di sicurezza riportato nella sezione Riferimenti. Di seguito sono riportate le sole CVE relative alle vulnerabilità con gravità “critica”:

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a previously undocumented Linux botnet family dubbed Evooo1Bot that derives its core functionality from the Mirai botnet source code and is equipped to turn internet-facing devices into SOCKS proxies. "While the malware reuses the DDoS engine from the publicly leaked Mirai source code, it extends the original framework with numerous capabilities, including encrypted C2 communications, an SSH brute-force scanner, a SOCKS relay module, a credential sniffer, and an integrated exploit arsenal targeting multiple known vulnerabilities," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs said. Evidence indicates that the botnet has been active in the wild since July 2026, exploiting known vulnerabilities in publicly-accessible devices to deliver the malware. Some of the security flaws weaponized by the botnet are below - CVE-2007-3010 - Alcatel OmniPCX Enterprise Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2016-6277 - NETGEAR Multiple Routers Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-14558 - Tenda AC7, AC9, and AC10 Routers Command Injection Vulnerability CVE-2019-14931 - Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. ME-RTU devices and INEA ME-RTU devices remote Command Injection vulnerability CVE-2020-10987 - Tenda AC1900 Router AC15 Model Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2021-46422 - Telesquare SDT-CW3B1 Command Injection vulnerability CVE-2022-37055 - D-Link Routers Buffer Overflow Vulnerability CVE-2024-29269 - Telesquare TLR-2005KSH Command Injection Vulnerability CVE-2025-10123 - D-Link DIR-823X Command Injection Vulnerability CVE-2025-55583 - D-Link DIR-868L B1 router Command Injection Vulnerability Successful exploitation leads to the execution of a loader shell script ("wget.sh") hosted on an external server ("91.92.40[.]118"), which then retrieves the botnet binary that's compatible with the device CPU architecture. The script subsequently clears Bash history to erase traces of the attack. Upon execution, the binary checks for the presence of analysis tools, sandboxes, and virtual environments, before establishing encrypted communications with a command-and-control (C2) server on port 443. The port choice is intentional as it allows the malware to blend in with expected HTTPS traffic at the network perimeter. Once the host is registered with the C2 server, it waits for further commands to take action. It supports a number of commands that allow an operator to install persistence mechanisms, update the binary, terminate the bot, upload/download files, launch an interactive shell, intercept HTTP Basic Authorization and Cookie headers, turn the host into a proxy node, launch an SSH brute-force scanner, trigger DDoS attacks over DNS, TCP, and UDP, and fire an HTTP-based exploit dispatcher for exploiting known flaws. The CVE attack module includes the ability to launch exploits for eight security flaws impacting Hikvision (CVE-2021-36260), Atlassian Confluence (CVE-2022-26134), WSO2 (CVE-2022-29464), Zyxel (CVE-2022-30525), TP-Link (CVE-2023-1389), PHP (CVE-2024-4577), D-Link (CVE-2024-10914), Kubernetes (CVE-2025-1974). The proxy component, on the other hand, transforms an infected router, firewall, IP camera, or other edge device into a SOCKS5 proxy that the threat actor can leverage as a network relay to conduct follow-on operations and evade detection. "This capability significantly increases the value of an infected host to attackers," Fortinet said. "The victim's IP address can be used to disguise malicious traffic, bypass geographic restrictions, or provide access to internal networks through an already compromised machine." "In larger botnets, the same functionality could also be used to build a distributed proxy infrastructure, enabling anonymous traffic forwarding or monetization through residential and enterprise proxy services."

A new Mirai-based modular Linux botnet malware called Evooo1Bot has been targeting internet-facing gateway devices, turning them into SOCKS5 traffic relay nodes. The malware's capabilities extend beyond turning devices into proxy nodes and include credential theft, SSH brute-forcing, and launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Since at least July, Evooo1Bot has been targeting devices from Alcatel, NETGEAR, Tenda, Mitsubishi Electric, Telesquare, and D-Link across various regions by exploiting known vulnerabilities. “While the malware reuses the DDoS engine from the publicly leaked Mirai source code, it extends the original framework with numerous capabilities, including encrypted C2 communications, an SSH brute-force scanner, a SOCKS relay module, a credential sniffer, and an integrated exploit arsenal targeting multiple known vulnerabilities,” Fortinet researchers found. Newer builds include a separate vulnerability-exploitation module targeting Hikvision cameras, Atlassian Confluence, Zyxel firewalls, TP-Link routers, D-Link NAS devices, WSO2 products, Kubernetes ingress-nginx, and vulnerable PHP-CGI installations. However, Fortinet notes that some of the embedded exploits are not correctly implemented, leading to failed exploitation. When leveraging an exploit successfully, a script downloads one of the 12 available malware builds that match the host’s CPU architecture, then clears Bash history to wipe traces of the attack. Evooo1Bot uses encrypted command-and-control (C2) communications over port 443 and performs extensive checks for debuggers, security tools, sandboxes, virtual machines, containers, and honeypots before it launches on the infected device. Persistence is established through systemd, SysV init, shell profiles, and rc.local, while a cron job attempts to re-download the payload every five minutes. An interactive shell gives operators direct control over compromised systems, while file-transfer commands support uploads and downloads. The malware also features a credential sniffer module that monitors ‘/proc/net/tcp’ and attempts to capture HTTP Basic Authentication and Cookie headers. The SOCKS5 module supports direct listening and reverse-relay modes, allowing attackers to conceal malicious traffic, circumvent geographic restrictions, or potentially access networks through compromised systems. Fortinet says proxying sessions run independently, and multiple can be opened simultaneously, allowing monetization through residential proxy services if the botnet grows large enough. The SSH scanner module uses 150 username and password combinations for enterprise-oriented accounts, and performs post-login checks to avoid honeypots. Finally, the DDoS module that was inherited by Mirai supports 16 flood methods, including UDP, DNS, SYN, ACK, GRE, fragmented TCP, and an HTTP flood with customizable requests. To defend against botnet malware, keep your IoT devices’ firmware updated, replace default admin credentials, turn off remote access panels, and replace devices when the vendor no longer provides support for them. 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

For the latest discoveries in cyber research for the week of 10th August, please download our Threat Intelligence Bulletin. TOP ATTACKS AND BREACHES North Carolina Ports, the US authority operating the ports of Wilmington, Morehead City and others, has suffered a cyberattack that forced some operations onto manual processes. The authority claims it has contained the intrusion, but degraded systems caused delays while affected services were restored. Ryde, an electric scooter operator in Scandinavian countries, has disclosed a data breach affecting all 4.5 million customer accounts across Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Germany. Attackers copied phone numbers, email addresses, birth dates, partial payment card numbers, and payment histories. Full card numbers and ride histories were unaffected. Canadian hardware wallet maker Coinkite has disclosed a theft campaign exploiting a Coldcard firmware vulnerability, with at least 1,367 bitcoin worth about $88.6 million stolen from thousands of addresses. The company halted affected shipments, destroyed vulnerable inventory, and released patched firmware after confirming exploitation against customer wallets. Beacon, a UK provider of customer relationship management software for charities, has disclosed a data breach after attackers compromised an access key. The company notified around 1,500 nonprofit customers that database information, donation records, and stored attachments may have been downloaded. Payment and bank details were not affected. AI THREATS Check Point Research has demonstrated that Cloudflare Code Mode, which allows AI agents to write TypeScript against tools, inherited five vulnerabilities from the workerd runtime. The flaws could enable sandbox escape and cross-tenant data exposure. Cloudflare rated two issues Critical and fixed its managed Workers environment. Researchers have disclosed vulnerabilities in Google Gemini CLI and Anthropic Claude Code that could expose automation environments to code execution and API key theft. CVE-2026-12537, rated CVSS 10.0, affected Gemini CLI workflows, while CVE-2026-54316 affected Claude Code. Both vendors released patched versions. Researchers have detailed AI-enabled identity fraud kits that automate know-your-customer bypasses across banks, fintech companies, and cryptocurrency exchanges. Tools such as ProKYC can generate identity documents, selfie-with-ID images, spoofed location data, and synthetic video used against document, selfie, and liveness checks during remote onboarding. VULNERABILITIES AND PATCHES Cisco has released fixes for multiple critical vulnerabilities in Catalyst SD-WAN and IOS XE software disclosed on August 5. The highest-severity issues carry CVSS scores up to 9.9 and can enable privilege escalation, code execution, or system compromise. Cisco also addressed additional high and medium-severity flaws across network management products. WordPress has released version 7.0.3 to address CVE-2026-64638, a high-severity Core vulnerability known as XSS2Shell. The flaw can turn a failed login into pre-authentication cross-site scripting and, under specific conditions, remote code execution. Fixes were also backported for supported WordPress branches dating to version 4.7. TP-Link has addressed 15 vulnerabilities in its Omada provisioning ecosystem affecting controllers, network devices, mobile applications, and VIGI cameras. The flaws include device impersonation, credential exposure, and remote code execution risks during provisioning. 11 flaws received CVE identifiers, and patched firmware has been released for affected products. A vendor-installed backdoor has been identified across at least 20 Zbtlink router models sold under brands including Wiflyer and ZBT. The remote-management component contacts hardcoded servers and can accept unauthenticated commands with root privileges. Researchers reproduced the behavior by impersonating the vendor server and obtaining a root shell. THREAT INTELLIGENCE REPORTS Researchers have identified the Shai-Hulud CHAINDROP supply-chain campaign, which backdoored more than 400 npm packages after attackers compromised the maintainer of the widely used keyv library. The malware executes through a preinstall hook, steals developer tokens, and republishes modified packages, affecting an ecosystem with roughly 1.3 billion monthly downloads. Researchers have uncovered a campaign targeting large US financial firms in which callers impersonate coworkers or IT staff to capture passwords and multi-factor authentication codes through spoofed websites. The actors, tracked as UNC6671, then threaten victims with data leaks and have issued ransom demands ranging from $750,000 to $3 million. Researchers have revealed a macOS ClickFix campaign using more than 250 look-alike domains to distribute MacSync and Atomic Stealer malware. The operation evolved to fingerprint visitors before displaying malicious instructions, allowing attackers to target genuine macOS users while concealing the campaign from automated security scanners and analysis systems. Researchers have documented a campaign that uploaded nearly 800 malicious npm packages delivering cross-platform RAT and infostealer malware. The packages instructed developers to import them, activating the WEL1DROPPER downloader. It retrieved payloads through Cloudflare Workers or DNS TXT records, established persistence, and deployed additional malicious tools.

Week in review: Cisco fixes IMC bug, Patch Tuesday forecast, Black Hat USA 2026 Here’s an overview of some of last week’s most interesting news, articles, interviews and videos: Mapping the malware blast radius a single alert won’t show you In this interview with Help Net Security, Mike Wiacek, founder and CTO of Stairwell, explains Backstory, an AI agent that takes a single alert and works outward to map how far a malware campaign spread. He walks through the research behind the claim that each published sample hides an average of 2.4 undocumented variants, describes what counts as a related variant, and explains why Stairwell keeps every executable that runs on customer endpoints. Elastic Defend now covers 800+ vulnerable drivers, with automated troubleshooting and ARM support Attackers reaching for kernel access on a Windows machine bring a driver Microsoft already trusts. It is signed, it loads, and it carries a known flaw. That flaw gives them enough room to tamper with memory or disable the security software watching the host. Analysts got 19 minutes back every hour in Stellar Cyber’s agentic auto triage trials An analyst opening a queue on Monday morning will spend most of it on tickets that amount to nothing. Stellar Cyber’s Agentic Auto Triage closed 8,047 of those tickets on its own during customer trials, filing them as confident false positives. OWASP’s subtractive security project measures the attack paths you erased An attacker who talks a user into opening an attachment gets whatever that machine still permits: a service account with rights across the domain, an outbound route to anywhere, a scripting engine sitting there for the taking. Christopher Frenz wants those capabilities deleted before anyone writes a detection rule for them. Digital executive protection is a strategic imperative for CEOs In this interview with Help Net Security, Brian Hill, Field CISO, Client Advisory for BlackCloak, explains how attackers reach companies through the personal lives of executives. He describes a case where a draft report sat in an executive’s personal email with no multifactor authentication, and traders acted on it before the news went public. What stops attackers wrecking industrial plants is knowing how Engineers at an Israeli food producer spent most of a week rebuilding a refrigeration system after an intruder switched the gas cooler and receiver valves to manual and pinned them open. Liquid CO2 flooded the compressors and destroyed them. The replacement units did not match the originals, so the whole system had to be reworked and recharged with gas. That incident is one of roughly forty in Kaspersky ICS CERT’s quarterly roundup of attacks on industrial organizations covering the second quarter of 2026. 15 TP-Link Omada vulnerabilities let attackers hijack routers and intercept camera traffic TP-Link prints Omada router serial numbers on the device and packaging. Because the serials are sequential, guessing one and querying the Omada cloud reveals the device’s MAC address and model. For example, serials starting with 22460J500 map to ER605 routers, while 224608100 identifies ER7206 models. Forescout’s Vedere Labs used this behavior as part of an attack chain, one of several built from 15 vulnerabilities affecting TP-Link’s Omada networking platform. Code review used to be the only way to catch these bugs An automated system called NOVA read the source code of 3,915 open-source projects over two months and came back with 14,090 vulnerabilities, each one confirmed through the system’s validation pipeline. Vulnerability researchers at Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 built the system and checked its output against the public record afterward. Pre-auth RCE in enterprise Java hits Bonita and OFBiz servers A single unauthenticated web request let attackers reach an internal Bonita API and execute code on the server. The flaw affected Bonita BPM, widely used to automate workflows in banking, insurance, and government. Researchers at Novee discovered the pre-auth remote code execution vulnerability and presented their findings at Black Hat USA 2026. Cloudflare OS goes open source with a record of everything its agents read Cloudflare open sourced Cloudflare OS, the AI agent platform its employees had been using internally since May. The platform tracked every resource an agent accessed and carried that context into the agent’s outputs. When someone opened the output, Cloudflare OS verified they had permission to access the underlying data before revealing it. For example, a dashboard built from a sensitive database table remained hidden from users who lacked access to that table. August 2026 Patch Tuesday forecast: How do we deal with the patch apocalypse? July 2026 Patch Tuesday was record-setting in so many ways. The sheer volume of security patches for almost every product in the Microsoft portfolio was the highest ever and, of course, well over 600 CVEs were identified in the Security Updates Guide. ShieldFont fights AI scraping by handing crawlers the wrong words Isaque Seneda and Gabriel Abrucio built a web font that draws one set of words on screen and leaves a different set in the page’s source code. A person reading in a browser sees the writing as written. A scraper pulling the HTML gets different words in the same grammar, at the same URL, off the same bytes. What the first year of EU AI Act transparency enforcement could look like In this Help Net Security interview, Edwin Weijdema, Field CTO at Veeam, answers questions on Article 50 of the EU AI Act and what the first year of enforcement might bring. Browser security is where software, data, and AI meet In this interview with Help Net Security, Rui Ribeiro, CEO of Jscrambler, explains why the browser has become a security problem organizations do not control. Companies do not own the device, the extensions, or the network path, yet that is where application logic, third-party code, customer data, and AI meet during every customer interaction. Three in four AI-generated vulnerability patches leave something broken Ask a frontier model to patch a real vulnerability and it often produces code that looks convincing. It resembles a maintainer’s fix and may even pass tests, but researchers at 1Password found that only about one in four patches for six newly disclosed CVEs actually fixed the vulnerability. The rest often addressed only part of the issue or introduced new flaws. 200 accounts compromised in Swiss government’s Microsoft SharePoint breach Hackers exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft SharePoint servers belonging to Switzerland’s Federal Office of Information Technology, Systems and Telecommunication (BIT), compromising the login credentials of around 200 accounts. OpenAI drops ChatGPT text chat limits for free users, adds new safeguards for teens OpenAI has updated GPT-5.6 Sol, the model behind ChatGPT for Plus and Pro subscribers, and pushed a new model, GPT-5.6 Luna, out to everyone using the free tier. KindaRails2Shell threatens Ruby on Rails apps (CVE-2026-66066) A critical security vulnerability (CVE-2026-66066) in Ruby on Rails (aka Rails), one of the most widely used frameworks for building websites and web apps, may allow attackers to read sensitive files off a server and, in some cases, take full control of it. Attackers exploit N-able N-central flaw to reach managed endpoints (CVE-2026-18577) Attackers are exploiting an authentication bypass vulnerability (CVE-2026-18577) in N-able N-central, a remote monitoring and management (RMM) solution widely used by managed service providers, to gain access to managed endpoints. Bank of America impersonators weaponize ScreenConnect, then make it hard to remove A phishing campaign impersonating Bank of America (BoA) is underway, trying to trick Windows users into installing ScreenConnect remote access software and then making it difficult to uninstall it. AI agent deception moves from theory to reality in UK cyber tests “During a routine cyber evaluation, AI agents took sustained, unsanctioned action directed at real people and organisations,” UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI) disclosed on Tuesday. The agents’ actions included an attempted supply-chain attack that saw them create malicious pull requests and try to socially engineer an open-source maintainer into approving the malicious code (they refused). OWASP 2026 LLM Top 10: “The model will be fooled” The OWASP GenAI Security Project has released the 2026 edition of its Top 10 for LLM Applications and, for the first time, the list was influenced by real-world incidents. The two top entries – Prompt Injection and Sensitive Information Disclosure – remained constant, but the order shifted more than in past years below them. Critical Cisco IMC bug gives attackers root, PoC is out (CVE-2026-20200) Cisco has fixed a critical vulnerability (CVE-2026-20200) in its Integrated Management Controller (IMC), which allows an attacker to run commands as root through the controller’s web interface. The fix was part of Cisco’s August 5 advisory batch, and unlike the bugs squashed by the hardening releases for IOS XE and SD-WAN, this one has a public proof-of-concept exploit. AI cut phishing from hours to seconds, which is where DMARC and BIMI come in In this Help Net Security video, Mike Boyle, VP of Business Units at GMO GlobalSign, and Rahul Powar, CEO and founder of Red Sift, unpack the evolution of email security and why it matters for business trust. Photos: Black Hat USA 2026 Arsenal Help Net Security was at Mandalay Bay, where Arsenal ran alongside the Briefings. If you’ve never been, it’s the part of Black Hat that felt least like a conference and most like a workshop: a room full of stations where the people who built the tools stood behind laptops and demonstrated them. Everything on display was open source, and nearly all of it was available to download immediately. Chinese hacker used DeepSeek to launch autonomous cyberattacks on vulnerable servers A Chinese threat actor operating under the aliases “knaithe” and “KnYuan” used multiple LLMs to automate cyberattacks against internet-facing systems with limited human intervention. Researchers at Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 uncovered the operation after the threat actor’s AI agent misconfigured a file server, inadvertently exposing the entire infrastructure. Fake IRS letters direct crypto holders to bogus compliance portal Scammers are sending physical letters to cryptocurrency holders that copy the look of official IRS notices. The letters tell recipients they must enroll in something called a Digital Asset Compliance Portal before a deadline, or risk penalties. EU begins enforcing AI Act, putting AI models under the microscope Europe’s fight to regulate AI models moved from paper to practice on 2 August 2026, when the European Commission’s AI Office and national authorities began enforcing the AI Act. On the same date, new transparency rules took effect, requiring certain AI systems to tell users when they’re interacting with AI and when content has been generated or altered by it. Russian hackers abuse hotel Wi-Fi networks to steal Microsoft 365 credentials and deploy malware Midnight Blizzard, the Russian threat actor tied to the country’s foreign intelligence service, has spent months targeting users of public Wi-Fi networks at places like hotels and conference centers, according to new findings from Microsoft Threat Intelligence. AI developers targeted via trojanized GitHub repositories Cybercriminals are cloning popular GitHub repositories for AI tools and developer resources to distribute an infostealer, according to Netskope Threat Labs. Netskope came across the campaign while tracking a Windows-based MaaS infostealer, first reported in April 2026, that was spread through the ClickFix social engineering trick. Discounted Claude access bought on the gray market may expose every prompt you send More than half a dozen services advertised on underground forums and messaging platforms, offering discounted or “unlimited” token access to frontier AI models, were discovered by Okta. The trend is likely driven by Chinese users seeking access to AI models that are unavailable because of regulatory and provider restrictions. Snowflake hacker pleads guilty, faces up to 32 years in prison A Canadian man is facing decades in prison for hacking customer accounts at cloud storage provider Snowflake and stealing data from more than 165 organizations. Buying TikTok followers can expose users to scams and account theft Buying TikTok followers, likes, or views could do more than inflate engagement metrics. According to Malwarebytes, many services selling social media growth operate through deceptive practices that can expose customers to scams, stolen accounts, and financial loss. The market for artificial social media engagement also creates security risks for both buyers and other platform users. Product showcase: Guardio Mobile Security turns breach alerts into a recovery plan Guardio Mobile Security brings several protection features to iPhone and Android, allowing users to monitor exposed personal information, identify phishing attempts, and receive alerts about emerging threats from a single application. It is available on smartphones and tablets, while browser extensions support Chrome and Microsoft Edge on laptops and desktop computers. SkillSpector: NVIDIA’s open-source security scanner for AI agent skills SkillSpector is an open-source scanner from NVIDIA that reads an agent skill and tells you whether to install it. Point it at a directory, a zip file, a single SKILL.md, or a Git URL, and it returns a list of findings, a risk score, and recommendations. OpenAI reveals how criminals used ChatGPT to run scams OpenAI banned a coordinated network of ChatGPT accounts that likely originated in Cambodia’s Preah Sihanouk province, a region reports have linked to online scam compounds and human trafficking operations. The network used the company’s models to create and manage fake online personas, generate and translate messages sent to scam targets, produce promotional content for fraudulent schemes, and support daily operations. Qodana 2026.2 adds post-quantum crypto checks for JVM code Qodana 2026.2 shipped with new security inspections, published benchmark results, post-quantum cryptography checks, and coverage reporting that no longer has to be pointed at the reports. CISA lays out new guidance for using open-source software The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published the Open Source Software: Security Principles and Practices guide, which provides federal agencies with recommendations for managing the security of open source software, contributing to OSS projects, and evaluating open source AI systems. Microsoft shortens NuGet API key lifetime to improve supply chain security Microsoft is reducing the lifetime of new NuGet.org API keys from 365 days to 30 days starting August 17, 2026, to improve the security of NuGet, its package repository for .NET developers. API keys created before August 17 will remain valid until November 1, after which developers will need to generate new keys or switch to NuGet Trusted Publishing. Uptime Kuma 2.5.0 waits two weeks before trusting a new npm package Uptime Kuma checks whether a website, a Docker container, a DNS record, or a Steam game server is still answering, and pushes a message to Telegram, Slack, or email when one stops. The change with the widest reach in version 2.5.0 is that the project now sets a 14-day cooldown on npm updates to minimize supply-chain attacks. Your enterprise AI footprint is about three times bigger than your model list Organizations are building AI systems that combine models, agents and external tools instead of relying on standalone AI, according to Snyk’s latest State of Agentic AI Adoption report. The study analyzed 3,044 enterprise environments and 1.39 million code repositories to examine how enterprises are deploying AI. Future AGI: Open-source platform for shipping self-improving AI agents Future AGI is an open-source platform for tracing, evaluating, simulating, and guardrailing LLM agents, licensed Apache 2.0 and self-hostable. Self-hosted instances register with Future AGI on first boot and send an instance ID, a version string, a deployment type, and the email addresses and domains of active admin users. Cloudflare gives AI agents wallets with built-in spending controls Cloudflare’s Wallets will give AI agents running on its platform a human-readable wallet handle for paying APIs and online content within limits set by their creator. Handle reservations have opened, while the service will become available in the coming months. It will include two types of digital wallets: Account Wallets and Virtual Wallets. INTERPOL flags AI as the new engine of African cybercrime Africa’s growing digital economy is exposing governments, businesses and internet users to a rising wave of cybercrime. The continent recorded more than 1.1 billion mobile subscriptions and over $1.1 trillion in digital transactions in 2025, while more than 570 million people relied on the internet for banking, government services, healthcare and education. Top product launches at Black Hat USA 2026 Black Hat USA 2026 took place in Las Vegas, where vendors used the event to unveil technologies they hoped would shape the next year of cybersecurity. Here were the announcements that drew the most attention, and why they mattered for teams evaluating new security investments. Non-human identities are 91% of everything active in production A backup job fires at two in the morning. A scanner walks the same AWS account an hour later, a deployment pipeline assumes a role at four, and a logging agent runs straight through the night. Each of those actions carries a credential issued to a machine. Suppliers, logins, and AI tools are all becoming attack paths Cybercriminals and state-backed hacking groups are abusing trusted identities, cloud services, AI tools, and software supply chains to gain access while avoiding detection, according to CrowdStrike’s 2026 Threat Hunting Report. Microsoft extends zero trust deeper into enterprise AI Microsoft expanded its Zero Trust for AI strategy with updates to the Zero Trust Assessment tool and the Zero Trust Workshop. The additions help organizations assess security posture, prioritize remediation, and apply zero trust principles to AI agents and AI-assisted software development. Product showcase: Material unifies Google Workspace email, file & OAuth defense Here’s an uncomfortable truth: the attack that gets you probably won’t look like an attack. It’ll look like a normal login, file share, or permission request. Phishing, data loss, and OAuth abuse aren’t isolated problems, they’re different ways attackers exploit the same cloud workspace. Material Security secures Gmail, Drive, identities, and third-party apps as one surface, not four separate ones. Cybersecurity jobs available right now: August 4, 2026 We’ve scoured the market to bring you a selection of roles that span various skill levels within the cybersecurity field. Check out this weekly selection of cybersecurity jobs available right now.

Apparently, opening the thing is now enough. A repo can run before the first prompt, a package can hide among hundreds, and a harmless-looking PDF can finish the job. This week runs on cheap leverage: exposed servers, recycled bugs, poisoned agent instructions, remote-access tools dressed as support software, and trusted defaults doing attackers a favor. Nothing here is especially mystical. Just ordinary systems trusting slightly too much, slightly too early. The full list follows. The threats change every week. Subscribe, and we’ll alert you when each new ThreatsDay Bulletin is out. China-linked telecom riskThe U.S. Congress's bipartisan Select Committee on China has published a 49-page report named "Stranger Pings," highlighting the threat of China-controlled infrastructure in the U.S. telecommunications backbone. The Committee said the Salt Typhoon campaign could have been facilitated via a residual footprint that leaves open the door to future cyber operations against the U.S.: Chinese (aka People's Republic of China or PRC) telecom firms operating in the U.S. do not act independently and keep trusted positions inside U.S. communications infrastructure that Chinese threat actors can potentially abuse to preserve access and hide activity. "One PRC telecommunication provider included an 'Acceptable Use' Policy in contracts with U.S. companies," the Committee said. "This prohibited the broadcasting of political news against state laws of the PRC, the broadcasting of information in violation of PRC state security laws, and the broadcasting of information in violation of the 'social order and social stability.'" ClickOnce phishing chainThe threat actor known as SideWinder has adopted a new multi-stage attack chain that abuses ClickOnce application files delivered via phishing PDF documents to deliver Rust-based backdoors. The implants can establish persistence via registry modification, collect host intelligence, and accept remote commands over external servers hosted on free serverless platforms such as Cloudflare Workers. npm supply chain attackAn active malicious package campaign, dubbed "Flooding Dropper," has disclosed a large-scale campaign involving 846 software components. "The attacker appears to be automating parts of the npm account and package creation process, combining terms such as bigops and bnpl with other words and recurring version patterns, such as releases in the 35.x.y range," Sonatype said. "When installed, the packages download and execute a second-stage payload, using multiple delivery methods to improve the attack's chances of success. The packages also contain slightly modified payloads. While syntactically different, for example using different URL functions and variable names, the packages all execute the same behavior. Those changes can reduce the effectiveness of detections that depend on exact signatures, even when the underlying behavior remains closely related." The packages deliver a first-stage JavaScript loader that identifies the host operating system and delivers a compatible Windows, Linux, or macOS payload from a randomized set of hard-coded remote hosts and runs it as a detached background process. On Windows, the downloaded binary is another loader that performs checks for sandboxed and virtual environments, patches Event Tracing for Windows and Antimalware Scan Interface functions, establishes persistence via a scheduled task, and downloads and executes an encrypted payload. Coding agent execution riskNew research from Datadog has found that "Trusting a repository in a coding agent can allow repository-controlled code to run before you send the first prompt," causing seemingly harmless tasks like cloning a repository to be an attack vector. "Codex MCP configuration and Claude Code project environment settings created automatic code-execution paths without a model response or shell-command approval," Datadog said. "Treat project trust like running code. Open unfamiliar repositories in disposable environments without sensitive credentials, even if a quick manual review looks clean." Earlier this May, Datadog also highlighted the risks associated with Claude Code skills. "Agentic skills package instructions and context for coding agents," it said. "They are useful for repeatable workflows, but they also create a path for attacker-controlled instructions to enter a trusted agent session. The important detail is not only that a malicious skill can ask an agent to do something dangerous. It is that dynamic context commands run before the model sees the skill at all. When that happens, model-level prompt injection defenses never get a chance to intervene." AI-powered cyber attackA DeepSeek AI agent attacked the network of Tel Aviv-based AI cybersecurity firm Jesta Security in early July 2026 as part of an LLM-managed cyber attack campaign for proxyjacking and other follow-on attacks. The development is the latest example of how threat actors are relying on AI agents to break into third-party networks. "During our research on defense against AI attackers, we took our lab and stood it up in the field, behind US-based infrastructure," security researcher Lior Finkelshtein said. "We opened a port and waited for attackers to come to us. Within a week, we had logged over 300,000 attempts to break in: botnets, credential stuffing, the usual internet noise. And then something surfaced that did not fit the pattern." The activity has been linked to a Chinese threat actor. Jesta said it managed to steer the AI agent into extracting its own target list, identifying over 1,200 victim hosts that had been targeted in a similar manner. "The goal was proxyjacking: install a small SOCKS5 proxy, open it to the internet, and quietly turn a weakly secured rented server into an exit node for someone else's traffic and attacks," Jesta said. macOS malware upgradeA new version of the XCSSET malware (version 40) is targeting thousands of macOS users through compromised Xcode projects and GitHub repositories. "This version’s advanced architecture hides its core logic in memory space, reducing its digital footprint," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said. "V40 further enhances its detection evasion capabilities by combining polymorphic payload generation with fileless persistence and dynamic in-memory execution, while weakening a number of security mechanisms on the affected machine." The malware author, per Unit 42, has enhanced the ability of the malware to spread through open-source projects on GitHub and upgraded its worming capabilities. It can now infect all existing Xcode projects on a compromised system for maximum impact. The malware supports browser hijacking (specifically targeting Google Chrome) to inject JavaScript that can intercept web traffic, credential theft, clipboard monitoring, and data exfiltration capabilities. A new addition is a Telegram trojanizer that deletes the legitimate Telegram Desktop application on infected systems and replaces it with a malicious version with an intent to siphon victims' communications. The new version has been observed in two distinct attack waves in mid-April and in early May 2026. LLM pentesting lessonsNovee Security has published its learnings from training large language models (LLMs) for pentesting. This includes handling silent failures, having a weight-sync strategy, and how prefix breaks can cascade into performance drops in AI workloads. "An RL [Reinforcement Learning] pipeline is a complex system with many moving parts. And all of them are moving fast: the models, the harnesses, the frameworks, and the long tail of bugs in libraries we don't even own," it said. "Each lesson cost us real time and real money." One-click device compromiseA set of vulnerabilities affecting Samsung devices (CVE-2025-21079 and CVE-2025-58486) could be chained to result in remote system-level compromise triggered by clicking on a link delivered via an ad or a messaging application. "What distinguishes this entry from previous submissions is its focus on design oversights in Samsung's virtual assistant, Bixby, that enabled privilege escalation through a single auto-granted Android permission," researchers Dimitrios Valsamaras and Ken Gannon said. "Because this permission is implicitly approved in many Samsung applications, exploiting just one of them allowed us to issue unauthorized commands to Bixby." Because Bixby maintains interprocess communication channels with a wide range of applications, including system components, the issues could be exploited to force the agent to relay arbitrary commands to privileged services, effectively turning it into a bridge between unprivileged and system domains. The pair first demonstrated the vulnerabilities at the Pwn2Own Ireland hacking competition in October 2025, where they earned $50,000. The issues were fixed by Samsung late last year. App Store removal attackTelegram CEO Pavel Durov has blamed an extortionist planting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in a public chat to get the app briefly removed from Apple’s App Store earlier this week. "Because Telegram quickly removes illegal content from public groups using all kinds of moderation tools, the attacker had to resort to a technical trick," Durov said. "He inserted AI-modified illegal content by editing an old message in an active group chat. As a result the content was effectively hidden from the group’s members, preventing them from seeing/reporting it." The attacker is said to be someone who "demands ransom from group owners in exchange for not targeting their communities," with Durov stating these threat actors "use automated accounts to plant illegal content in public groups and then report it directly to Apple, attempting to trigger the removal of legitimate communities whose owners refused to pay them." More linked devicesSignal has rolled out the ability to link more devices with one phone number on the messaging app, including an Android phone or iPhone, going beyond iPads and computers. The feature is available in Signal Android v8.20 and Signal iOS v8.22. AI bug report floodApple has enforced caps on the number of open bug-bounty reports researchers can submit after being flooded with low-quality and sometimes entirely fabricated vulnerabilities hallucinated by AI. "While Apple now has a cap on the number of open submissions a researcher can have, researchers can request an increase to make sure Apple's security team doesn't miss a critical vulnerability," Financial Times reported. Domain takeover flawsTwo new Active Directory privilege escalation vulnerabilities, dubbed KerberLoss (CVE-2026-25177) and ResetNightmare (CVE-2026-27912), can cause identity confusion on domain controllers (DCs), with the latter enabling a low-privileged user to instantly gain Domain Admin privileges. Microsoft patched both flaws in March and April 2026. "Other than patches, organizations should stick to the principle of least privilege and monitor for abnormal additions of non-default permissions," Semperis said. "Tighter permissions can make these vulnerabilities more difficult to abuse." AI-powered scam farmsAn off-the-shelf, AI-enhanced scam phone farm can be acquired for a few thousand dollars, allowing aspiring three actors to design, launch, and automate common scams, including romance and adult-content scams, pig-butchering scams, and astroturfed social media accounts. "These scams are operated on phone farms sold as kits on open and dark web marketplaces, the farms are automated with AI interfaces, and the scams often use AI in their design and operation, significantly lowering the barrier to entry for would-be threat actors and commoditizing cybercrime," HUMAN Security said. The activity has been codenamed FunFoneFarm. A similar alert was issued by Group-IB earlier this March. The danger with such offerings is that they can enable low-cost scalable fraud operations. "It's an ecosystem, assembled from parts that are individually legal, openly sold, and often genuinely useful: commodity hardware, device-management software, cloud infrastructure, and general-purpose AI," it added. CTV ad fraud ringIn a related development, HUMAN also detailed a connected TV (CTV) device-spoofing ring called NewsJunkie that's disguised as premium local news content on major CTV platforms. The operation involved two spoofing vectors: SSAI CTV device spoofing and residential proxy CTV device spoofing. "At its peak, it accounted for hundreds of millions to nearly two billion invalid CTV bid requests per day per seller," it said. "One particular local news app generated more than 42.2 billion bid requests, approximately 360 times the volume of the next-highest regional news app, with only 185 reviews on the app store." Fake bank phishing chainAn active phishing campaign impersonating Bank of America (BoA) aims to trick Windows users into installing ScreenConnect remote access software and then making it harder to uninstall it. To evade detection, the malware disguises ScreenConnect as a service called Windows Security. "The subsequent phishing page delivers an AccountGuard.zip with a .vbs file that contains a large chunk of base64-encoded data," Huntress said. "The next phase of the attack then involves a complex chain of decoding scripts, and ends in the execution of arbitrary commands (with escalated privileges) in PowerShell. The goal of all this complexity is to download a Microsoft installer (.msi) for a custom ScreenConnect client and execute/install it with Administrator privileges without prompting the user for elevation. Additional payload components conceal the installed ScreenConnect client and remove the user's ability to uninstall or disable it easily." The development comes as the cybersecurity company warned of threat actors exploiting an SQL injection vulnerability to install a post-exploitation toolkit called khunt via a Java Source directly within an Oracle database. "A Java Source (a code-object that's stored directly in Oracle's database engine) allows developers to store and run Java code in the database as schema objects, but the threat actor abused this as a way to upload the toolkit directly into the database," Huntress said. "The toolkit included several objects, including khuntCmd and khuntHash, which essentially acted as purpose-built tools that were compiled and stored in the database, and enabled malicious functionalities like running OS commands and writing usernames/password data to a file. Threat actors used khunt to perform several malicious measures, including attempting to exfiltrate SAM, SECURITY, and SYSTEM registry hives." AI memory poisoningForcepoint has called attention to the growing risk of persistent memory poisoning, calling it an emerging attack class against AI assistants and agentic systems that store long-term memory items, user preferences, task history, or operational context across sessions. "Unlike normal prompt injection attacks that usually die when the session ends, memory poisoning survives," Forcepoint said. "The attacker's goal is to inject misleading or malicious memory items into an assistant's persistent memory layer so that an agent later retrieves and trusts these malicious items to perform unrelated future tasks." AI abuse tacticsSpeaking of AI systems, threat actors are increasingly misusing AI tools to create code with malicious capabilities, scale criminal operations and campaigns, and bug bounty or vulnerability research. While no novel encoding or evasion techniques have been observed, evidence shows that attackers are sticking to tried and tested methods to evade model guardrails. "We also found a lot of successful instances of actors using the Capture the Flag (CTF) or bug bounty labeling," Cisco Talos said. "This unlocked models to a variety of tasks, including vulnerability hunting and subsequent exploitation, without requiring any significant follow-up or additional vetting. Additionally, we saw actors leveraging task decomposition — splitting risky actions across multiple sessions and files — as an effective avenue to bypass guardrails. Building the components slowly and working through malicious components in a deliberate manner, breaking them apart sufficiently to evade the models' protections." AI workspace RCEA critical flaw (CVSS score: 9.9) in Odysseus, a privacy-focused AI workspace that provides an interface to talk to LLMs, can allow an authenticated non-admin user to execute OS commands with the privileges of the Odysseus process by smuggling an admin-only shell action onto a scheduled task across two ordinary API requests." The security flaw has been addressed in version 1.0.2. The process holds the application's data and credentials, including user password hashes and TOTP secrets, stored provider API keys, the database, and the SSH keys Odysseus uses to reach the remote machines it manages. "On any instance with self-service signup or a second user, one account became a foothold — API keys to spend, a mailbox to send from, and SSH keys to the machines Odysseus manages, plus a scheduler to persist in," Manifold Security said. There is no evidence the issue was exploited before the fix. Router takeover flawsForescout's Vedere Labs discovered a set of 15 security flaws impacting the zero-touch provisioning (ZTP) system in TP-Link Omada routers and other devices that could facilitate client-side code execution, information disclosure, device hijacking and spoofing, and compromise of encrypted communications. "Some vulnerabilities extend beyond Omada to other TP-Link products and services, including IP cameras, smart home IoT devices, mobile apps, and cloud accounts," the cybersecurity company said. "Findings include a chain of trust compromise from hard-coded cryptographic keys, sensitive information disclosures, and remote code execution." When combined with two previously disclosed vulnerabilities (CVE-2025-7850 and CVE-2025-7851), they can be weaponized by attackers to infiltrate networks through controllers and client devices. Besides applying the patches released by TP-Link, it's advised to avoid using the same password across all devices during provisioning, change device credentials and use strong, unique passwords, modify TP-Link ID credentials and enable multi-factor authentication where available, and rotate VPN keys and credentials that may have been exposed. Initial access broker exposedCloudSEK has exposed the operations of a Russian-speaking initial access broker, thanks to a publicly accessible server, revealing their targeting of internet-facing infrastructure across multiple sectors. "The operator exploited internet-facing appliances across a dozen-plus countries, harvesting credentials and achieving full Active Directory compromise across education, healthcare, finance, telecommunications, and government victims," CloudSEK said. In multiple confirmed cases, ransomware groups claimed the same organizations within weeks of the operator's access, indicating the operator supplies access upstream of extortion rather than conducting it directly." The threat actor has also been observed deploying the Sliver C2 framework against Ukrainian defense and aerospace targets and stealing source repositories and harvesting imagery from thousands of exposed IP cameras and RDP sessions. Bug bounty milestoneMicrosoft has announced that between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026, the company had paid more than $20 million in bug bounties to 562 researchers. There were 2,531 eligible vulnerability reports. The biggest reward was $200,000. "Every vulnerability reported through our bounty programs represents an opportunity to address risk before it can be exploited against customers," Microsoft said. The work of the research community plays a critical role in helping Microsoft stay ahead of emerging threats while strengthening the security of cloud services, AI systems, enterprise platforms, and consumer technologies. We also saw a notable increase in submission volume during the second half of the year, reflecting both strong engagement from the research community and the growing use of AI to support security research." AI insider threatBarracuda Networks has demonstrated a proof-of-concept (PoC) that shows how a compromised AI-enabled account can help "attackers discover sensitive information, identify targets, craft convincing communications, and advance an attack using access the victim already possesses." A single compromised employee account can escalate into CEO compromise and wire-transfer fraud using an AI agent like Copilot that's embedded into enterprise environments and connected to various Microsoft applications. Ransomware memory theftAn Interlock ransomware intrusion in March 2026 involved the use of the legitimate IR memory analysis tool Volatility3, underscoring how bad actors continue to leverage legitimate tools in attacks. The victim is said to have been infected via a ClickFix lure following a drive-by compromise, ultimately leading to the deployment of a RAT payload using PowerShell. The attackers then established persistence, conducted discovery operations, performed privilege escalation, and moved laterally across the network. The use of Volatility3 has been linked to attempts to extract domain credentials, as well as NTLM hashes and user account information from memory. "Interlock has evolved since mid-2024 into a multi-skilled threat increasingly willing to adapt its techniques and seek large targets," Sophos said. "The operators have been fairly aggressive about incorporating new techniques and abusing fresh vulnerabilities – evidence shows Interlock was making use of the CVE-2026-20131 Cisco zero-day a full two weeks before Cisco acknowledged it. The adoption of legitimate tools such as Volatility3 and WinPmem shows that this threat’s evolution continues." NuGet key hardeningMicrosoft has announced it's reducing the lifetime of new NuGet.org API keys issued starting August 17, 2026, from 365 days to 30 days. All existing API keys created before that date are scheduled for expiry on November 1, 2026, after which developers will need to generate new keys or switch to NuGet Trusted Publishing. The changes have been framed as a way to secure the NuGet ecosystem and follow similar moves by other package managers over the past year, as bad actors exploit API keys and Personal Access Tokens (PATs) in attacks. Smart contract C2 malwareAn affiliate of The Gentlemen ransomware operation has been observed deploying EtherRAT on Windows hosts. The malware uses the EtherHiding technique to read its C2 information from an Ethereum contract. "EtherRAT has no fixed command set. Any C2 response over ten characters is run as JavaScript inside a Node.js runtime, giving the operator arbitrary code execution and letting them extend capabilities without replacing the implant," Hunt.io said. The threat intelligence firm said it identified an exposed open directory at 193.233.202[.]17 that offered an insight into affiliate activities, including setting up a Windows domain for persistent access, credential theft, and lateral movement. "Lateral movement ran through remote scheduled tasks that downloaded and executed MSI payloads," it added. "Those installed EtherRAT, a persistent implant that pulls its C2 domains from an Ethereum smart contract instead of hardcoding them, while Sliver and Go reverse-shell binaries gave the operator additional command channels." AI prompt exfiltrationMitiga has outlined a stealthy security threat called PromptLogger where malicious natural-language instructions are hidden inside AI coding assistant configuration files (like .cursorrules or CLAUDE.md) to steal user prompts, environment variables, and sensitive credentials. PromptLoggers, similar to keyloggers, are instruction files that quietly record the prompts, responses, environment variables, tokens, and deployment details flowing through a coding agent, and then ship them to an attacker without the need for specialized malware. "There's no malware in any of this and nothing to detect on the endpoint," Mitiga said. "The agent already has the access, the context, and the network reach. The instruction file just tells it what to collect and where to send it." Encryption backdoor fightApple last month filed a new legal complaint with the U.K. Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) over the British government's legal demand for access to encrypted iCloud backups belonging to users in the country, according to the Financial Times. The iPhone maker has long argued that building any such backdoors would weaken security for all its customers. Credential theft shiftCrowdStrike's 2026 Threat Hunting Report has revealed that it tracked a 15-fold increase in device code phishing attempts in the past six months, indicating a shift in how attackers steal credentials to take over victim accounts. Although the technique was first documented in late 2020, it didn't catch the attention of threat actors until August 2024, when a Russian nation-state threat actor tracked as Storm-2372 began to incorporate the method. ClickFix malware luresA "single PDF factory" has staged more than 12,700 fake CAPTCHA documents on Webflow's content delivery network (CDN) that are disguised as upgrade guides to deliver malware. "Each document is a doorway into a traffic-distribution system (TDS) that sorts visitors and routes those that qualify to multiple buyers, malware distributors, and scam operators," Netskope said. "The operation has been running for more than 14 months, from the earliest sample we can date to lure domains registered this month, and it is still active." Users looking for upgrade guides on search engines or AI assistants are the target of these attacks. The campaign primarily targeted English-speaking users in the United States, India, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada. An early version of the campaign highlighted by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 in March 2025 lured users into installing an MSI for Legion Loader malware. Coldcard phishing lureA new opportunistic phishing campaign is exploiting public interest in the recently disclosed Coldcard wallet vulnerability and the suspected $130 million Bitcoin theft to trick users into installing ScreenConnect. "Emails impersonate Coldcard and purport to highlight a security audit relating to the incident," Proofpoint said. "Messages contain a URL that leads to a site impersonating Coldcard with a 'Start Hardware Audit' button." Once clicked, the button leads to a batch file hosted on GitHub, which drops an MSI file and ultimately installs ScreenConnect. "The site also features a 'Customer Service' chat box," the enterprise security company said. "If a user messages, a threat actor responds and walks through the steps to install ScreenConnect. Based on the chats we've examined, a real person (not AI) is likely operating the chat to instruct users on malware install." The incident underscores how threat actors continue to employ topical social engineering lures, in this case preying on people's fear to persuade them to take risky steps. As for the digital robberies themselves, at least a dozen different hackers are said to be targeting Bitcoin owners who use the Coldcard wallet. According to TRM Labs, there have been 207 hacks targeting cryptocurrency companies in the first six months of 2026, with a total loss of more than $950 million. The useful lesson is not that attackers suddenly became brilliant. It is that trust keeps accumulating in quiet places: package managers, project files, assistants, provisioning tools, remote access software, and forgotten systems nobody planned to revisit. Security still breaks at the handoff. Before the prompt. After the patch. Inside the default. Somewhere between “trusted” and “probably fine.” That gap is where this week lived, and it will be there next week too.

Researchers are calling attention to the risks inherent in automated network device provisioning, using a world-leading device manufacturer as a case study.

Palo Alto Networks researchers have disclosed the details of new attack methods targeting passwordless authentication, showing how malware can hijack a passkey-protected account. Passkeys are increasingly adopted by tech giants and are widely recommended because they are more secure against phishing. The new attack methods, named ‘Pass-ta-key’ by Palo Alto Networks, focus on Google-synced passkeys. The security firm’s researchers showed how a threat actor could use the techniques to take over accounts without needing privilege escalation or user interaction. In a Pass-ta-key attack, malware already present on a Windows machine running Chrome can examine the browser’s local synchronization database to identify which online accounts the user has protected with passkeys, along with associated usernames and encrypted credential material. The malware recovers a device identity key that Chrome stores on disk or in memory. It then uses Windows cryptographic APIs to generate a signature over a challenge received from Google’s cloud authenticator service, without any biometric prompt, device unlock, or elevated privileges. The cloud service treats the signed request as coming from a legitimate trusted device. It returns a valid authentication assertion, which the attacker forwards to the target website to complete the login. In a more advanced variant, dubbed ‘Silver Pass-ta-key’, the malware forces Chrome into a device re-registration process. During a short window in that process, it registers its own user-verification key with the cloud authenticator. Once registered, the attacker can later authenticate from a completely different machine. The most severe technique, ‘Golden Pass-ta-key’, extracts a master secret that briefly appears in Chrome’s process memory during re-enrollment. Possession of this secret allows the malware to decrypt every synchronized passkey private key belonging to the account, enabling the attacker to decrypt future passkeys as well. Google has been notified and Palo Alto Networks’ blog post indicates that it has rolled out some mitigations. Related: Passkey Login Bypassed via WebAuthn Process Manipulation Related: TP-Link Omada ZTP Vulnerabilities Chain Into Full Network Takeover

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday warned that threat actors have been exploiting three vulnerabilities in IBM Langflow OSS, N-able N-central, and Apache Tomcat. Tracked as CVE-2026-9198 (CVSS score of 9.8), the Langflow OSS bug allows unauthenticated attackers to chain two API endpoints for remote code execution. It was disclosed on July 17, when IBM rolled out patches for it, in Langflow OSS version 1.10.1, warning that all default deployments are affected. “The vulnerability combined two distinct issues: an unauthenticated endpoint that issued superuser bearer tokens to any network caller, and a code validation endpoint that executed arbitrary Python code. An attacker could chain these vulnerabilities by first obtaining a superuser token from the auto-login endpoint, then using that token to submit malicious code to the validation endpoint,” IBM warned. Proof-of-concept (PoC) code targeting the security defect was published roughly a week after the public disclosure, and CISA added the CVE to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog on August 4. The N-able N-central bug flagged as exploited is tracked as CVE-2026-18556 (CVSS score of 7.4) and described as an authentication bypass. According to N-able, threat actors exploited the issue as a zero-day to gain administrative access and connect to systems managed through the remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform. The initial fix for CVE-2026-18556 was incomplete, and threat actors bypassed it. As the exploitation activity intensified at the end of July, N-able rolled out a hotfix, issuing CVE-2026-18577 for the patch bypass. Both CVE-2026-18556 and CVE-2026-18577 are now in CISA’s KEV list. Tracked as CVE-2026-34486 (CVSS score of 7.5), the third vulnerability added to the KEV catalog on Tuesday is an EncryptInterceptor bypass in Apache Tomcat that was patched in April. The flaw was introduced in March, with the patch for CVE-2026-29146, a padding oracle issue in EncryptInterceptor, an optional channel interceptor that encrypts messages transmitted between nodes in Tomcat clusters. “The fix moved one line of code. That line turned the encryption layer from fail-closed to fail-open, and opened a direct path to unauthenticated remote code execution on every cluster member,” StrigaAI, which identified the bug, explains. On deployments with EncryptInterceptor configured, only messages encrypted using a shared key should be decrypted and passed to the deserialization layer. Due to the bypass, however, upon failed decryption, the attacker-controlled code was forwarded up the interceptor chain unmodified. Last week, SOCRadar warned that CVE-2026-34486 had been exploited by a Chinese threat actor in attacks involving the Snowlight malware family, while Palo Alto Networks observed the vulnerability being exploited by Chinese hackers in an AI-enabled autonomous hacking campaign. In line with BOD 26-04 requirements, CISA is urging federal agencies to patch all three vulnerabilities by August 7. Related: TP-Link Omada ZTP Vulnerabilities Chain Into Full Network Takeover Related: Decades-Old BMC Vulnerability Exposes Thousands of Data Centers to Attacks Related: Recent SonicWall Vulnerabilities Exploited in Ransomware Attacks

15 TP-Link Omada vulnerabilities let attackers hijack routers and intercept camera traffic TP-Link prints the serial number of an Omada router on its packaging and on a label attached to the device. Those numbers run in sequence, and feeding a guessed one to the Omada cloud service returns the matching device’s MAC address and model. Serials beginning 22460J500 appear to be ER605 routers, and serials beginning 224608100 appear to be the ER7206. Forescout’s Vedere Labs researchers built that into an attack chain, one of several they assembled from 15 vulnerabilities in Omada, TP-Link’s networking line for small and medium businesses. An attacker who never touches the target network can end up holding the administrator’s cloud controller password, the shared password every device at a site uses, and a VPN tunnel into the internal network. Anyone running Omada routers, switches or access points is exposed. So are owners of TP-Link gear from four other product lines, which trust the same broken certificate chain. TP-Link has published advisories and patches for most of the findings. It declined to issue CVE identifiers for four of them and rated the sequential serial number issues low severity. What zero-touch provisioning does Zero-touch provisioning, or ZTP, exists so a network team can unbox 150 access points and not configure them by hand. A new device comes online, finds a provisioning server called a controller, and receives its settings, credentials and firmware from it. In Omada, that controller can be a cloud service, a small appliance, or software on a virtual machine. Central control means central failure. Compromise a controller and you inherit every device it manages. Omada groups devices into sites, and each site uses one username and password shared by all of its members, so a single credential covers a whole cluster of gear. Controllers also sit in a privileged spot on the network, often with firewall exceptions, which makes abuse hard to spot. The Forescout report puts it in terms most defenders will recognize, describing the technique as “living off the land within network infrastructure.” The chain, from serial number to VPN tunnel Batch-query the cloud API for guessed serials and you have a list of MAC addresses belonging to devices that have not yet been adopted by a controller. The attacker then races the real device, spoofing only its MAC address and sending the opening adoption message ahead of it, resending every 60 seconds until the cloud answers. Vedere Labs found a high success rate in testing and estimated that working 1,000 MAC addresses at once needs roughly 17 requests per second. Answering the cloud’s authentication challenge takes no secret at all. A new device signs it with the factory credentials admin/admin, so the attacker signs the same way. The cloud replies with the device’s configuration: the site username in cleartext, the site password as an unsalted MD5 hash, and sometimes VPN keys. Cracking the hash is optional, because the Omada protocol accepts the hash itself as proof of identity. The impersonated device then reports its firmware version to the controller, and nothing sanitizes that string. Put JavaScript in it and it runs in the administrator’s browser. Vedere Labs used it to draw a fake session-expired login box over the Omada dashboard, sending the stolen password to an attacker-run server. From that account, the attacker configures VPN tunnels into the internal network. Once inside, a previously disclosed flaw, CVE-2025-7850, lets them run commands on Omada devices as root. One certificate chain, five product families The certificate work is the finding with the longest reach. Omada’s hardware and software controllers ship with a TLS certificate and private key baked into the software, and that key is what proves a controller is genuine. Pull it off one controller and you can convince client devices that your machine is theirs. Cloud connections do run an extra identity check, but swapping the controller’s hostname for its IP address skips it. The same chain of trust sits behind VIGI cameras, Festa routers, and the Tapo and Kasa smart home lines. One set of certificates, five product families. Scale is where the numbers matter and where they need care. Vedere Labs counts more than 1,800 Omada controllers reachable from the internet, and those are meant to be firewalled, so the figure describes misconfiguration, not normal deployment. Forescout counted 1.1 million Google Play downloads for the Omada and Omada Guard apps, and more than 70 million for the other affected TP-Link apps. Downloads are not accounts, and the researchers say only that several million active accounts are plausible. Many of those apps share one TP-Link cloud login, so a compromised Omada account may reach the linked VIGI camera deployment. Device passwords stored on the routers themselves are MD5 hashed without salt, then encrypted with AES-256 using a key written into the source code. The key is the string who are you?. 426 days, and some of it will not be patched Vedere Labs reported everything in June 2025 and published 426 days later. Two of the flaws cannot be fixed in firmware. On day 240, TP-Link said addressing the predictable serials and the enumeration issue would require changes to device manufacturing, packaging, factory workflows, and distributor logistics, and that remaining work might not finish before the third quarter of 2026. Patching controllers and mobile apps is the first job, using advisories. After that, stop reusing one password across devices during provisioning, change device credentials, turn on MFA for the TP-Link ID, and rotate any VPN keys that a controller may have handed out. Local interception is what most of these attacks depend on, so 802.1X with NAC, port security, dynamic ARP inspection, wireless client isolation and segmentation all cut the attack surface directly. Download: The ultimate guide to network operations management

TP-Link has patched 15 vulnerabilities in the zero-touch provisioning (ZTP) mechanism of its Omada network devices that could be chained with previously disclosed flaws to achieve remote code execution (RCE). The flaws were uncovered by Forescout’s Vedere Labs researchers, who published the full details at the Black Hat USA security conference earlier today. Omada is TP-Link’s business networking product line that includes Wi-Fi access points, Ethernet and PoE switches, internet gateways, and VPN routers. They are typically used by small to medium-sized businesses, although TP-Link also markets pro-grade deployments for enterprises. ZTP is a way to deploy network devices without manually configuring each one on-site, allowing an IT team or managed service provider (MSP) to prepare everything remotely based on a predetermined configuration. Some of the 15 flaws Forescout discovered also impact various TP-Link products and services, such as IP cameras, smart home IoT devices, mobile applications, and cloud accounts. The issues include hard-coded cryptographic keys, information disclosure, remote code execution, device hijacking and spoofing, client-side code execution, and interception or compromise of encrypted communications. Forescout says attackers could combine the new flaws with two previously disclosed command-injection vulnerabilities to compromise Omada’s chain of trust and infiltrate networks. “The vulnerabilities fall into four impact categories: client-side code execution, information disclosure, device hijacking and spoofing, and compromise of encrypted communications,” Forescout explains. “Combined with two previously disclosed CVEs (CVE-2025-7850 and CVE-2025-7851), these flaws enable concrete attacks that let attackers infiltrate networks through controllers and client devices.” TP-Link’s advisory lists 15 newly disclosed flaws, of which 11 received the following identifiers: CVE-2025-9289 through CVE-2025-9293 CVE-2025-15544 CVE-2025-15627 through CVE-2025-15631 The remaining four findings did not receive a tracking number. They concern device adoption based only on knowing the serial number, default credentials used during initial adoption, predictable serial numbers, and files made available via unauthenticated temporary download links. In one attack scenario Forescout described, a remote attacker could enumerate predictable device serial numbers to obtain MAC addresses and identify devices awaiting adoption. The attacker could then impersonate one of those devices, exploit a race condition during cloud adoption, and authenticate using default credentials. This would cause the controller to disclose the device configuration, including a cleartext username, an unsalted MD5 password hash, and potentially VPN keys. The attacker could also inject JavaScript into the controller’s administrative interface to phish an administrator and steal their cloud-controller credentials. Having stolen the credentials, the attacker can then reconfigure managed devices, create VPN tunnels into the internal network, and exploit previously disclosed command-injection flaws to compromise network equipment. The flaws affect Omada Controllers, Gateways, Switches, Access Points, OLT platforms, Cloud services, and TP-Link mobile applications. Forescout reports identifying over 1,800 internet-accessible Omada controllers, despite such deployments generally not being intended for direct internet exposure. As for the Android applications, Omada and Omada Guard have 1.1 downloads on Google Play, while TP-Link apps collectively have 3 to 7 million active accounts. Users are advised to visit TP-Link’s Omada download portal to source the latest firmware images for their device model. Additionally, it is recommended to use strong, unique administrator credentials, enable multi-factor authentication (MFA), rotate all secrets when compromise is suspected, update mobile apps, and monitor network traffic for suspicious activity. 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

This week kept coming back to permission. A model crossed a boundary. A wallet trusted bad randomness. Webmail kept an intruder around. Public systems, package feeds, hotel networks, and login flows all gave away more than intended. Some of it was clever. Most of it was just access left lying around: old bugs, exposed gear, poisoned dependencies, weak defaults, and tooling that moved from forum chatter to real targets. The full weekly recap report follows. ⚡ Threat of the Week Anthropic Disclosed its Models Targeted 3 Organizations - Anthropic revealed that three of its models, including Claude Opus 4.7, Mythos 5, and an unnamed research model, breached three unnamed organizations during cybersecurity testing without its knowledge. The AI firm said the earliest incidents date back to April 2026, adding it made the discoveries after launching a "large-scale retrospective review" in response to the recent Hugging Face incident. "After reviewing 141,006 evaluation runs where Claude could have obtained internet access, we identified three incidents in which a model accessed the internet from within or while interacting with the evaluation environment of Irregular, one of our third-party evaluation partners, and then gained unauthorized access to the production infrastructure of three different organizations," it said. Mythos: Map Attack Paths to Collapse Lateral Breach Routes Access the Gartner® CTEM report to see how the Mythos platform continuously maps cross-domain attack paths and isolates key choke points to break active lateral movement to critical assets. Get the full report ➝ 🔔 Top News Coldcard Hardware Wallet Flaw Linked to $88.6M Bitcoin Theft - A vulnerability in Coldcard hardware wallet firmware is said to have been exploited to steal an estimated $88.6 million in Bitcoin from thousands of wallets whose seed phrases were generated using a flawed random number generator. "Coldcard firmware contains an RNG integration error that causes ngu.random to use MicroPython's deterministic Yasmarang fallback instead of the STM32 hardware RNG," Square Engineering said. "This does not mean every remote attacker can immediately recover every seed. Practical cost depends on available UID information, boot timing, prior RNG calls, and derivation cost." Russian Hackers Exploit Microsoft OWA Flaw to Maintain Mailbox Access - Russian threat actors exploited a security flaw in Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA), to target U.S. and European government entities, as well as the telecommunications, financial, hospitality, and aerospace sectors. The activity, which began on July 22, 2026, involves the weaponization of CVE-2026-42897 (CVSS score: 8.1), a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in OWA. It was flagged by Microsoft as having been exploited in attacks as far back as May 2026. The activity has been attributed to Laundry Bear. The new wave of exploitation revolving around CVE-2026-42897 culminates with the deployment of a previously unknown JavaScript browser-based implant codenamed OWAReaper that's specifically built for persistent access within Microsoft's webmail client. Critical Rails Flaw Leads to Arbitrary File Read - Ruby on Rails shipped patches for a critical Active Storage vulnerability (CVE-2026-66066, CVSS score: 9.5) that could let unauthenticated attackers read arbitrary files from application servers through crafted image uploads. The flaw can be exploited to expose Rails process environment and secrets such as secret_key_base, master key, database passwords, cloud storage credentials, and API tokens, which may enable remote code execution or lateral movement into connected systems. CVE-2026-66066 is exploitable when libvips is used, enabling an attacker to upload a specially crafted image to a vulnerable application and read arbitrary files on the server. A key prerequisite for the attack is that the server must allow image uploads from untrusted users. Additional details of the flaw have been released by the Rails team, along with tools to help assess vulnerable applications. "Because this vulnerability requires no authentication and targets the default image processor in modern Rails environments, it is essential to apply vendor patches and rotate secrets immediately," Akamai said. Coordinated Attacks Target 30+ Minnesota Water Systems - A coordinated cyber attack campaign targeted over 30 water systems in Minnesota on July 26 and 27, 2026. "The nature and extent of the impact varied by system, and the investigation is still determining how many experienced operational disruptions," Minnesota IT Services (MNIT) said. The activity has not been officially attributed to any known threat actor, although Iranian threat actors have been previously implicated in similar attacks targeting water facilities in the U.S. "At this time, there are no active requests from Minnesota communities for residents to modify their drinking water use," MNIT added. The development has prompted the U.S. government to issue an advisory, urging "critical infrastructure owners, operators, and integrators to remove publicly exposed PLCs and other operational technology (OT) from the internet as soon as possible." Threat actors targeting exposed PLCs have modified passwords to lock out operators and disconnected the PLCs by changing their IP addresses, resulting in boil water notices and sustained manual operations. Organizations are advised to disconnect the PLC from the internet, enable password protection and change default passwords, and allowlist IPs to only allow remote access from known engineering laptops or other critical OT assets. Censys said it identified 4,148 internet-exposed hosts that respond to EtherNet/IP and self-identify as Rockwell Automation/Allen-Bradley, with more than 70% of them located in the U.S. Similarly, there are 4,117 internet-exposed hosts that fingerprint as Siemens SIMATIC S7-1200 and 2,072 internet-exposed hosts that fingerprint as Schneider Electric hardware. Over the weekend, Michigan reported cyber attacks on nine of the state's water systems but an official told Associated Press that all systems were operating "safely." The campaign underscores the escalating threat to poorly protected operational technology (OT) assets from adversaries seeking to disrupt critical infrastructure services across the U.S. and elsewhere. Hijacked Wi-Fi Networks Lead to CornFlake Malware - Storm-2945, a sub-cluster associated with Midnight Blizzard (aka APT29), has been conducting "widespread but targeted traffic manipulation attacks" involving hospitality sector networks served by captive portals across the world. The campaign, ongoing since May 2026, has been codenamed CaptiveCrunch by Microsoft. This involves manipulating DNS and HTTP traffic from networks served by captive portals to redirect user traffic through actor-controlled infrastructure. "As part of the CaptiveCrunch campaign, Storm-2945 has leveraged their AitM position to redirect users through actor-controlled phishing infrastructure and has also delivered malware purporting to be browser or operating system updates in response to automated connectivity checks issued by users' browsers," Microsoft said. This includes a fully-featured Windows remote access trojan (RAT) called CornFlake with capabilities to conduct system enumeration, collect files and keystrokes, steal credentials and session tokens, conduct audio and video surveillance, monitor for removable media, and provide the threat actor a remote shell on infected systems. Also delivered via the trojan is a PowerShell-based infostealer called ChocoShell to harvest browser session cookies, saved passwords, Microsoft 365 Single Sign-On (SSO) tokens, and Wi-Fi credentials from compromised systems. The campaign is orchestrated via a web-based C2 panel called FruitStone. The infrastructure employs a variety of ClickFix techniques to trick the victim into downloading and executing the malware. There is also evidence indicating that the attackers are using similar ClickFix landings for Android devices to download and install an APK file. As of July 16, 2026, a portion of CaptiveCrunch landing pages have been found to redirect users to device code authentication flow experiences. ️🔥 Trending CVEs Bugs drop weekly, and the gap between a patch and an exploit is shrinking fast. These are the heavy hitters for the week: high-severity, widely used, or already being poked at in the wild. Check the list, patch what you have, and hit the ones marked urgent first - CVE-2026-48449 (Adobe Campaign Classic), CVE-2026-18556, CVE-2026-18577 (N-able N-central), CVE-2026-44827, CVE-2026-45804, CVE-2026-44513 (Hugging Face Diffusers), CVE-2026-17583 (Thermo Fisher Scientific), CVE-2026-66066 (Rails), CVE-2026-10702 (Mozilla Firefox), CVE-2026-60004, CVE-2026-58443 (Gitea), CVE-2026-63077, CVE-2026-59792, CVE-2026-59793, CVE-2026-59794, CVE-2026-59795, CVE-2026-59796 (JetBrains TeamCity), CVE-2026-61511 (vBulletin), CVE-2026-53264 (Linux Kernel), CVE-2026-53921 (OpenWrt), CVE-2026-64765, CVE-2026-64766, CVE-2026-64764, CVE-2026-64763, CVE-2026-43776, CVE-2026-43818, CVE-2026-28981 (Apple iOS and macOS), CVE-2026-66032, CVE-2026-66033, CVE-2026-66034, CVE-2026-66035 (libssh2), from CVE-2026-59686 through CVE-2026-59690 (Progress Kemp LoadMaster), from CVE-2026-66036 through CVE-2026-66041 (FFmpeg), CVE-2026-66398 (phpMyFAQ), CVE-2026-64645, CVE-2026-64649, CVE-2026-64642, CVE-2026-64641 (Next.js), CVE-2026-13385 (ASUS), from CVE-2026-16804 through CVE-2026-16807 (Google Chrome), CVE-2026-52824 (Kimai), CVE-2026-53565, CVE-2026-53566 (Citrix Secure Access Client for Windows and Citrix Endpoint Analysis Client for Windows), CVE-2026-9770, CVE-2026-13230 (TP-Link Kasa EC70 v4 and EC71 v4 smart cameras), CVE-2026-15682 (AnyDesk), CVE-2026-53481, CVE-2026-53483 (Dell PowerProtect Data Domain), CVE-2026-52886, CVE-2026-54758, CVE-2026-57233 (Notepad++), CVE-2026-57807 (miniOrange OAuth Single Sign On - SSO WordPress plugin), CVE-2026-28302, from CVE-2026-28304 through CVE-2026-28317, CVE-2026-28321 (SolarWinds Serv-U), CVE-2026-16771 (AT&T Arris BGW210-700), CVE-2026-13723 (Develar), CVE-2026-16637 (OPeNDAP Hyrax), CVE-2026-15969, CVE-2026-15971, CVE-2026-15974, CVE-2026-15976, CVE-2026-15977, CVE-2026-15978 (SGLang), CVE-2026-15657, CVE-2026-15658 (foreUP), CVE-2026-16503, CVE-2026-16504 (VPS.org), CVE-2026-48395, CVE-2026-48396 (Adobe Bridge), CVE-2026-5674 (PipeWire PulseAudio), CVE-2026-34909 (Ubiquiti UniFi OS), and CVE-2026-17059 (keycloak-services). 🎥 Cybersecurity Webinars AI Can Build Exploits in Minutes. Can Your Security Team Keep Up? → AI is collapsing the time between vulnerability disclosure and attack. Advanced models can now uncover flaws, generate working exploits, and chain them into complete attack paths at machine speed. This webinar presents a practical framework for gaining the visibility, context, and response speed needed to investigate and stop threats before attackers pull ahead. How to Control the Open-Source Security Debt Created by AI Coding Tools → Learn how AI coding tools are expanding unvetted open-source use, accelerating vulnerability backlogs, and weakening existing governance. This webinar shows how to measure the resulting remediation debt, connect it to breach, audit, and productivity risks, and identify which governance models can contain it without slowing development. 📰 Around the Cyber World Now-Patched Gitea Flaw Detailed - NoScope shared additional technical details of a security flaw in Gitea (CVE-2026-27771, CVSS score: 8.2) that was patched back in May 2026. The vulnerability allowed unauthenticated remote attackers to pull private container images from Gitea deployments without requiring an account, password, or other credentials. "Gitea's container registry implements the OCI Distribution Specification, which authenticates clients with a bearer token issued by a dedicated token service. On affected versions, that token service issued a valid, signed JWT to requesters presenting no credentials at all," NoScope said. "The token was honest about what it represented, carrying UserID: -1 and an empty Scope, but no registry read endpoint ever consulted those fields. Catalog listing, tag enumeration, manifest retrieval and blob download all accepted it. Any unauthenticated party on the internet could enumerate every container repository on an instance, including those marked private, and pull their layers." SQLite Critical CVEs or AI Slop? - JFrog said it uncovered a set of SQLite CVEs (CVE-2026-51302, CVE-2026-51303, CVE-2026-51300, CVE-2026-51297, CVE-2026-51296, and CVE-2026-51304) that seem to be instances of AI-generated slop making their way into official vulnerability feeds and receiving critical severity scores before technical validation. The analysis found that the advisories referenced functions that didn't exist in the affected SQLite versions, cited incorrect or impossible source code locations, included PoCs that failed to reproduce any vulnerability, and, most importantly, were not listed on SQLite's official CVE page. The findings show that organizations must take steps to distinguish legitimate vulnerabilities from questionable or AI-generated vulnerability reports before initiating unnecessary remediation, patching efforts, or automated security workflows. LegacyHive Flaw Detailed - LevelBlue published a technical breakdown of LegacyHive, a PoC released by Chaotic Eclipse (aka Nightmare-Eclipse) last month coinciding with the release of Microsoft's Patch Tuesday update. The vulnerability is a Local Privilege Escalation (LPE) vulnerability affecting Windows User Profile, a component responsible for loading and unloading Windows user profiles. On exploitation, LegacyHive can allow attackers to load other users' hives and gain access to application data and Windows Explorer history, among others. "For EDR platforms with visibility into native Windows APIs, the strongest signals are user-mode invocations of NtCreateDirectoryObjectEx and NtCreateSymbolicLinkObject," LevelBlue said. "These functions are rarely used outside system components, debugging tools, or specialized research utilities. Seeing both from the same process should immediately warrant investigation. Even without NT API telemetry, LegacyHive leaves a distinctive execution chain. The attack combines offline access to ntuser.dat or UsrClass.dat, modification of registry hives through Microsoft's Offline Registry API, batch oplock requests, and CreateProcessWithLogonW using LOGON_WITH_PROFILE. Each operation is legitimate in isolation but observing them together within a short time window is highly unusual and well suited for behavioral correlation by EDR and SIEM platforms." Chinese Military Taps Into U.S. Models - According to a new report from Reuters, Chinese military researchers have distilled cutting-edge models developed by U.S. companies OpenAI and Anthropic to train domestic AI systems to advance the country's defense capabilities. The report was based on a review of more than 80 Chinese academic papers and patents. Exposed Police Dashboard Lays Bare How China Tracks Foreigners - An internet-exposed police dashboard named "Dynamic Control Platform for Overseas Personnel" has revealed how law enforcement agencies in the country track over 700 foreigners, including those in the northern Chinese city of Zhangjiakou. "In total, it had entries for nearly 12,000 people, which included fugitives, people from Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as more than 300 foreign journalists," The New York Times reported. "Some of them had not been to Zhangjiakou." The dashboard displayed entries about people grouped by nationality, with their birth date, sex, marital status, address and occupation, and sometimes their religion. The leak was discovered by security researcher and journalist Marc Hofer. The system is believed to be developed by a Beijing company named Origin Dynamic, which filed a patent application in 2023 for a similar "information interface for non-Chinese citizens." The Problem of DangleGeddon - Cybersecurity researchers have once again warned of the risks posed by dangling DNS infrastructure across government, banking, automotive, manufacturing, and pharmaceutical sectors. A dangling DNS record is an active Domain Name System entry (DNS) that points to a resource no longer owned, used, or controlled by the original organization. This typically occurs when web applications, cloud storage, or virtual servers are deleted without first removing their corresponding CNAME or A records from the domain registrar. An attacker can leverage this behavior to claim that abandoned cloud service name or IP address, effectively hijacking a trusted subdomain. This, in turn, can permit the attacker to host malicious content and serve phishing pages or malware, inflict reputational damage by abusing the trusted brand's subdomain, steal user credentials to create convincing phishing pages that appear to be legitimate services, perform cookie theft, and bypass security controls if the legitimate brand's subdomain is allowlisted in security tools. In one case analyzed by Silent Push, an unspecified automotive company left a dangling DNS record pointing to a developmental application gateway hosted by an Azure virtual machine (VM). "This device can potentially be operationalized and passively receive stored XSS from internal scripts and API calls," it said. "Developers' credentials, like API keys and authentication headers, could be harvested for reuse to expand access into the company. In addition, the VM could serve as a platform for malware hosting with the coveted TLS lock." Microsoft Teams Vishing Leads to Chaos Ransomware - A Microsoft Teams voice phishing (vishing) campaign tracked as STAC4749 has used a "consistent set of IT-themed cloud domains and personas to gain remote access to victims' systems" between February and June 2026 in attacks targeting dozens of North American organizations. "Following initial access, STAC4749 operators deployed a modular post-exploitation toolset, including a custom loader and backdoor to maintain persistent, controlled access and support follow-on activity," Sophos said. "In several incidents, attackers later leveraged this access to deploy Chaos ransomware." IAB Uses Teams Phishing for Ransomware Attacks - A suspected initial access broker (IAB) for ransomware attacks has been observed using Teams vishing that convinces victims to launch a Quick Assist remote support session. The initial access is used to run PowerShell scripts to gather host information and deploy a Go-based backdoor dubbed GoGRPC. Four different versions of the backdoor have been spotted: Lep, Giver, Pet, and Kind. "These variants have overlapping capabilities but notable implementation differences," Zscaler said. "GoGRPC is actively evolving. Each variant modifies its payloads and capabilities, adding or removing functionality to better support the threat actor's objectives. Recent changes indicate an increased targeting of corporate environments, which may be tied to ransomware attacks." In some instances, the threat actor has also deployed a backdoor called BlindDoor, a Go-based reverse SOCKS proxy known as RevSocket, and a Python-based reverse SOCKS proxy referred to as PyGRPC. Arch Linux Disables AUR Package Adoption Amid Malware - Arch Linux has taken the step of temporarily disabling package adoption due to a surge in malicious takeovers of existing packages. "Due to the current influx of malicious package adoptions and follow-up commits made via the AUR, package adoption is currently disabled while we are handling the situation," the maintainers said. "We will send a follow-up once we're able to. In the meantime, feel free to report suspicious adoption events or commits that haven't been dealt with yet, and stay vigilant!" In June 2026, a separate campaign targeted AUR via more than 400 packages. New Dolphin X Infostealer Spotted - A new infostealer called Dolphin X uses an AI behavioral profiler to score and prioritize infected users based on their application usage, browsing activity, and installed software to identify high-value victims and maximize profits. The malware targets more than 300 applications and attempts to exfiltrate browser passwords, cryptocurrency wallets, SSH keys, and cloud tokens. Dolphin X has been advertised on the cybercrime underground by a vendor using the alias Kontraktnik since May 2026. A lifetime subscription ranges from $1,140 for basic access to $3,420 for the full-featured version. "A single archive can contain data from nine browsers, more than 100 wallet extensions, 65 desktop wallets, 10 password managers, and 30 cloud command-line tools," Varonis said. "This gives the malware potential access to everything from a victim's personal accounts to the credentials used to manage their employer's cloud environment." Attackers Turn to Microsoft's Trusted Login System for Phishing - Bad actors are increasingly abandoning fake Microsoft login pages in favor of abusing Microsoft's legitimate authentication infrastructure in phishing attacks, allowing them to bypass security controls. Check Point said it identified more than 200 phishing emails targeting users across approximately 120 organizations worldwide between June 25 and the second week of July 2026. "The messages impersonated Microsoft Teams task notifications from HR and directed recipients to a legitimate Microsoft sign-in page," it said. "Victims were then prompted to grant permissions to an attacker-controlled application, allowing the campaign to abuse Microsoft's trusted authentication flow while concealing its malicious intent." FBI Arrests Man Accused of Using Steam Games to Drain Victims' Crypto Wallets - The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Zyaire Wilkins, a 21-year-old Florida resident and student, of uploading fake video games that contained malware to Steam that, when downloaded and installed by unsuspecting gamers, stole their passwords and other valuable data, and drained their cryptocurrency wallets. Per the FBI, Wilkins and his accomplices are alleged to have infected around 8,000 victims, and then hacked around 80 cryptocurrency wallets to steal at least $220,000 worth of cryptocurrency. Turning Keystroke Noise to Text - A new study from a group of academics from Tohoku University has demonstrated a new acoustic side-channel attack that can reconstruct text typed on a laptop by just analyzing the sound of keystrokes. While prior attacks relied on collecting labeled recordings from the target keyboard beforehand or required specialized hardware, the latest eavesdropping attack enables stealthy eavesdropping in two real-world scenarios, including physical spaces (public and semi-public) and online meetings. The system works by first isolating individual keystrokes from an audio recording, grouping similar sounds together, and then using a Transformer-based language model to determine the most likely sequence of characters. "Our method combines unsupervised acoustic clustering with Transformer-based language model inference and iterative self-training, enabling stable character inference under highly uncertain acoustic-to-character mappings," the researchers said. "We demonstrate that the proposed method achieves over 99% reconstruction accuracy with only 100-150 observed keystrokes under a close-proximity recording setup using a smartphone placed near the target device, significantly outperforming prior unsupervised baselines in low-data regimes." Two Open-Source Software Supply Chain Attack Campaigns - Socket has flagged a fake corepack.org site that's impersonating Corepack, a Node.js tool for managing package managers, and using it as a lure to deliver an infostealer and proxyware to developers who download it. "The site has existed in some form since early 2026 as a low-quality, apparently AI-generated imitation, but it recently started serving executable downloads," Socket said. "Corepack is not distributed as a Windows installer, and the real project has no official website at corepack.org. Any download offered there should be treated as malicious." It's assessed that the site is AI-generated. In a related development, JFrog identified a massive set of 148 npm packages that are disguised as student web proxies, but hide mutable remote code execution vectors and a high-performance Wisp-compatible WebSocket traffic generator. "They were designed to silently enlist visiting browsers into distributed denial-of-service botnets while generating aggressive popunder advertising revenue," it said. Some aspects of the campaign were highlighted by SafeDep in late May 2026. AI linked to more than half of cybercrime in Africa - A new report from INTERPOL has found that AI is enabling 55% of reported cybercrimes across Africa, making attacks faster, more scalable, and increasingly difficult for victims and platforms to detect. This encompasses digital sextortion and online harassment, as well as sophisticated business email compromise (BEC) schemes. "The absence of real-time, inter-agency data sharing between banks, telecoms and law enforcement creates a dangerous blind spot in efforts to combat financial fraud," INTERPOL said. "This vulnerability is being exploited by criminals who have moved beyond simply stealing existing credentials to creating entirely synthetic identities. Combining real personal data with fabricated elements, these AI-generated digital personas can bypass even advanced biometric verification systems and have been used to open bank accounts, secure mobile loans and register SIM cards under false names." Security Risks of Exposed MCP Servers - Google-owned Wiz has warned that enterprises are exposing Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers to the internet, with some of them returning full tool catalog to an anonymous caller, fetching real data, and revealing a sensitive backend. "These expose sensitive data like employee PII and internal business records, write and delete operations on production systems, and in some cases code execution and access to cloud credentials," Wiz said. "The protocol's first widely-used version shipped without an authentication mechanism. The spec added OAuth 2.1 in March 2025, but nearly all the servers we found still run the original version and don't use it. The pattern is the same across most of them: backend credentials baked into the deployment, a managed cloud endpoint that's internet-reachable by default, no auth layer added on top." Nuclear-Sabotage Malware Benchmark Trick Most Frontier AI Models - A multi-stage reverse-engineering benchmark developed by SentinelOne tests "whether a model can keep a malware investigation trustworthy as new evidence repeatedly invalidates its earlier conclusions," in contrast to other AI benchmarks that test bounded tasks. Developed based on its own analysis of the Fast16 malware, the study found that "OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol was the only publicly available model to complete the full eight-stage investigation, giving concrete shape to what 'Frontier-class' capabilities offer analysts." That said, humans remain essential to define objectives, expose blind spots, and retain final publication authority. An Open Directory Reveals NGINX Rift and Ghost CMS Exploits - An exposed directory on a Singapore-hosted VPS, 165.154.236[.]93, has been found to stage exploits for NGINX Rift (CVE-2026-42945), a long-standing heap overflow, and a blind SQL injection in the Ghost Content API (CVE-2026-26980), alongside Splunk, PaperCut, Samba, WebLogic, and D-Link NAS tooling. "The recovered shell history from the directory recorded the attacker running the exploits against live external infrastructure, using out-of-band (OOB) DNS callbacks to verify execution, and using the same server to catch reverse shells," Hunt.io said. "Alongside the web exploits were a broader RCE toolkit and pre-staged install files for AdaptixC2 and SuperShell. The target list spanned eleven countries across five continents and leaned heavily toward high-value sectors: federal and state government, universities, healthcare and financial services." The activity is believed to be the work of a Chinese-speaking threat actor. CISA Issues Guidance to Isolate Vital Systems and Manage OSS Risks - The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued guidance to help critical infrastructure operators protect essential services from growing cyber threats and ensure continuity of operations during cyber incidents or geopolitical crises by maintaining robust isolation and recovery plans. "State-sponsored cyber actors target critical infrastructure for several nefarious reasons such as espionage or service disruption, often linked to broader geopolitical conflicts," CISA said. "During crises or conflicts, operators of critical infrastructure and network defenders may isolate essential operational technology (OT) systems as an emergency measure to prevent adversaries from executing cyberattacks, to contain ongoing threats, and to facilitate the restoration of compromised systems." The agency has also outlined considerations and best practices for federal entities to securely use, evaluate, and publish open-source software. "The guidance urges agencies to obtain sufficient transparency into all relevant components, including training data, of the AI system before deeming the product as OSS for risk management purposes," it said. "Only with transparency and access can agencies understand and study the software, analyze it for vulnerabilities, and remediate any found vulnerabilities or risks." RubyGems Cryptojacking Campaign - A set of 199 malicious gems published to RubyGems has been found to embed an identical XMRig cryptojacking payload to mine Monero cryptocurrency on developer systems. "Each gem is a trojanized copy of a popular, legitimate Ruby library," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said. "The payload uses a 5-hour delayed Thread.new{sleep 18000; ...} trigger to evade sandbox analysis." In addition to taking steps to achieve persistence via multiple methods, the malware uses SSH for lateral movement and is capable of infecting other ecosystems, including Node.js, Python, Docker, Git, and VS Code extensions. Mend.io, which also shared details of the campaign, said the payload is hidden inside a dotfile (lib/.threadpool.rb) that standard directory scans skip by default. Email Threat Landscape in Q2 2026 - Microsoft said phishing volume linked to the Tycoon 2FA phishing platform, including QR code phishing and CAPTCHA-gated phishing, fell 92% from pre-disruption averages in the second quarter of 2026 between April and June. However, the tech giant said it "observed continued growth in Teams-based social engineering, particularly voice phishing (vishing), with weekly malicious call attempts reaching nearly ten times the mid-2025 baseline by the end of the quarter." Microsoft said it detected approximately 7.6 billion email-based phishing threats throughout the quarter, with monthly volumes declining modestly from 2.7 billion in April to 2.4 billion in June. HTML and PDF attachments remained the two most common malicious payload types across the quarter, together accounting for roughly 60-70% of all payload-based attacks each month. In early June 2026, Microsoft said it detected a large-scale BEC campaign that reached more than 67,000 users across more than 42,000 organizations in under three hours, most of them in the U.S., with an aim to redirect salary payments to attacker-controlled bank accounts. 🔧 Cybersecurity Tools EMBA → Firmware is where critical bugs hide longest because it is opaque, fragmented, and painful to inspect manually. EMBA turns that black box into an actionable security report: it extracts embedded-device firmware, runs static and emulation-based analysis, builds an SBOM, and flags outdated components, insecure binaries, vulnerable scripts, and hard-coded credentials through a command-line workflow with web-based reporting. Built for penetration testers, product-security teams, and developers, it compresses days of firmware triage into a repeatable open-source process. GrantGuard → Every "always allow" click in Claude Code can leave behind a standing permission that remains long after the task ends, with pasted API keys, credential-store access, unrestricted git push, or destructive commands buried in rarely reviewed settings. GrantGuard is an open-source, local-only tool that finds these accumulated grants, classifies them by risk, and lets users remove unsafe permissions through a browser interface or CLI, without sending settings off-device or loading third-party runtime packages. Disclaimer: This is strictly for research and learning. It hasn't been through a formal security audit, so don't just blindly drop it into production. Read the code, break it in a sandbox first, and make sure whatever you're doing stays on the right side of the law. Conclusion The useful question is not whether a system is exposed. It is which quiet assumption lets it reach farther than intended: a default, a trusted workflow, an abandoned endpoint, or code nobody checked. That is where the next incident is probably waiting. Not in the loudest alert, but in the handoff everyone assumes belongs to someone else. Check the boundaries. Then check what crosses them.

Cybersecurity agencies from the United States and eight other countries have issued a joint warning that Russian state hackers are targeting vulnerable and poorly configured routers to infiltrate critical infrastructure networks. The joint advisory, co-authored by the NSA, FBI, and CISA, along with 15 other agencies from Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Estonia, Finland, France, and Italy, attributes the attacks to hackers from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Center 16. This hacking group (tracked as Berserk Bear, Energetic Bear, Crouching Yeti, Dragonfly, Ghost Blizzard, and Static Tundra) scans internet-connected IP address ranges for routers accepting default or common SNMP authentication strings, then issues commands using spoofed IP addresses to copy device configuration files and exfiltrate them via the Trivial File Transfer Protocol to actor-controlled servers. In August 2025, the FBI also warned that the same group has been targeting critical infrastructure using a critical vulnerability in the Smart Install feature of Cisco IOS and Cisco IOS XE software (tracked as CVE-2018-0171) since November 2021. The sectors most at risk from these attacks include energy, communications, defense industrial base, healthcare, financial services, defense, and state and local government services. "Centre 16 [..] has been seen hunting for vulnerable routers by scanning the internet for devices that still use default or weak Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) passwords and community strings," the UK National Cyber Security Centre warned on Monday. "Whilst the actor primarily uses SNMP scans to locate and compromise vulnerable routers, they have also exploited well-known vulnerabilities relating to Cisco devices, Cisco's Smart Install (SMI) feature and web-portal flaws to gain control of network devices." The authoring cybersecurity also provided mitigation measures to help network defenders harden their networks against these attacks, urging them to upgrade to SNMPv3, disable Cisco Smart Install, enforce strong unique passwords, block TFTP and SNMP traffic at edge firewalls, update software and firmware, and replace end-of-life devices. This advisory follows an international law enforcement operation that disrupted FrostArmada, a separate campaign attributed to APT28 (a Russian military intelligence group linked to GRU unit 26165, also tracked as Fancy Bear and Forest Blizzard) that had infected 18,000 routers across 120 countries by December 2025. Hackers altered DNS settings on compromised MikroTik and TP-Link small office/home office (SOHO) routers to redirect authentication traffic to attacker-controlled servers and steal Microsoft 365 logins and OAuth tokens. As part of a court-authorized operation, with support from the U.S. Department of Justice, the Polish government, and multiple cybersecurity companies, the FBI remotely removed malicious DNS settings to secure the compromised routers and forced them to connect to legitimate DNS resolvers. 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

A new two-stage malware family called RustDuck is hijacking home routers, IP cameras, Android boxes, and poorly secured servers, then stitching them into a network built to knock websites and online services offline. Researchers at QiAnXin's XLab have tracked it since February 2026, and say the real story is not how big it is today, but how fast it is changing. The end goal is a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack: flooding a target with junk traffic from the infected machines until it buckles. RustDuck is one more entrant in a crowded field, but it stands out for two reasons. It is being rewritten from the C programming language into Rust, and its newer versions go to unusual lengths to avoid being studied or shut down. How it spreads RustDuck does not lean on a single clever trick. It sprays a mix of old, well-known weaknesses and hopes one sticks. The first is the oldest in the book: devices left on the internet with weak or default passwords on their remote-login services (Telnet and SSH). Guess the password, walk in. The second is unpatched device bugs. XLab says RustDuck goes after exposed Android debugging interfaces and flaws in gear from TVT (DVRs and cameras), Ruijie, TP-Link, and ZTE, plus a handful of named, years-old vulnerabilities that still litter the internet: CVE-2017-17215, a remote code execution bug in Huawei HG532 routers that the original Mirai-style botnets abused back in 2017. CVE-2025-29635, a command-injection flaw in discontinued D-Link DIR-823X routers that Akamai watched Mirai variants exploit in March 2026. CISA added it to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities list the next month. CVE-2024-1781, a command-injection bug in Totolink X6000R routers, whose maker never responded to the disclosure. CVE-2018-8007, a remote code execution path in Apache CouchDB that an authenticated admin can abuse. The third path is web software. RustDuck also targets known holes in ThinkPHP, Jenkins, and Hadoop YARN, which stretches its reach from cheap home hardware to exposed server software. XLab counted more than 20 internet addresses spreading the malware, with the busiest at 176.65.139[.]204. What makes it tricky RustDuck installs in two stages: a small loader that decrypts and unpacks a heavier core module. That core is where the interesting engineering lives, and it is the part being rewritten in Rust. Rust binaries are generally tougher for analysts to take apart than the C that has powered device malware for years, and XLab says RustDuck's Rust core shows real depth in how it derives its keys, hides from analysis, and talks to its servers. The switch points to active development, not a quick re-skin of leaked code. The bigger tell is how hard the newer samples work to stay hidden. Before doing anything, RustDuck runs a checklist to decide whether it has landed in a security researcher's lab instead of on a real victim's device. It looks for analysis tools like Wireshark and gdb, for debuggers attached to its own process, for the fingerprints of a honeypot trap, even for virtual-machine hardware. Each hit adds points to a risk score. Cross a threshold, and the malware erases its traces and quits before anyone can watch it run. Two of those checks stand out. One quietly tries to reach an internet address that is reserved for testing and should never answer; if something replies, RustDuck knows it is inside a fake network built to fool malware, and bails. Another compares two clocks to catch sandboxes that speed up time to rush malware into showing its hand. Its communications are locked down to match. RustDuck encrypts its traffic with modern ciphers: ChaCha20-Poly1305 for the handshake, AES-GCM once it is taking commands. It derives its keys with HKDF-SHA256 and a Curve25519 exchange, rotates them every ten minutes, and dresses the connection up to look like ordinary encrypted web traffic so it blends in. Once a device checks in, the operators can send a short list of orders: start an attack, stop it, report status, switch to new control servers, or quietly upgrade the malware to a newer build. The control addresses lean on free dynamic-DNS services like duckdns.org, which is where the "Duck" in the name comes from. This fits a bigger pattern RustDuck is not the first botnet to reach for Rust. In April 2025, Fortinet documented RustoBot, a Rust-based botnet that spread through Totolink and other routers to run DDoS attacks, using the same recipe: cheap routers, a modern language, and flood traffic on demand. It also arrives in a brutal year for DDoS. The same kind of botnet, scaled up, has produced the biggest floods on record. AISURU and a cluster of related botnets, more than three million hijacked devices between them, drove attacks near 30 Tbps before a US-led operation tore down their infrastructure this spring. Next to that, RustDuck is tiny. The worry is the direction it is heading. One detail worth a second look: RustDuck's busiest delivery address, 176.65.139[.]204, sits in the same small block of addresses as the server behind a separate ADB-targeting DDoS botnet reported in spring 2026. That could be a coincidence or shared bulletproof hosting, and XLab does not link the two, but the overlap is the kind of thing worth checking. What to do There is no patch for RustDuck itself, because it is malware, not a single bug. Defense means closing the doors it walks through: Get remote-management interfaces off the public internet. Turn off Android Debug Bridge, Telnet, and SSH where they are not needed, and never leave them reachable with default passwords. Patch what you can, replace what you can't. CouchDB has fixed releases to upgrade to, but some of these routers are past end-of-life. For the D-Link DIR-823X, CISA's advice is to pull it from service rather than wait for a patch that isn't coming, and the Totolink maker never answered the disclosure. Unsupported gear has to be replaced, not fixed. Block the known indicators. XLab's report lists the malware's file hashes, control domains, and source addresses; feed them into your monitoring. RustDuck is a small botnet wearing the engineering of a serious one. Whether it grows into a real threat or fizzles out, the techniques it is testing, a Rust rewrite and a paranoid hide-from-researchers routine, are the parts other crews are most likely to borrow.

Sanata vulnerabilità prodotti TP-Link Alert AL01/260623/CSIRT-ITA Sintesi Aggiornamenti di sicurezza sanano una vulnerabilità con gravità “alta” in prodotti TP-Link. Tale vulnerabilità, qualora sfruttata, potrebbe consentire a un utente malintenzionato di eseguire codice arbitrario sui sistemi interessati. Tipologia Arbitrary Code Execution Prodotti e versioni affette TP-Link Routers Archer MR200(EN) V7, versioni precedenti alla 1.3.0 Build 250605 Archer MR200(EU) V8, versioni precedenti alla 1.5.0 Build 260605 Archer MR402(EU) V1, versioni precedenti alla 1.5.0 Build 260605 Archer VR2100(EU) V1, versioni precedenti alla EU_V1_260330 Archer C20 V5 Versioni precedenti alla EU_V5_260317 Versioni precedenti alla US_V5_260419 Archer C20 V6, versioni precedenti alla V6_260608 TL-MR6400(EU) V7, versioni precedenti alla 1.7.0 Build 260413 Azioni di mitigazione In linea con le dichiarazioni del vendor, si raccomanda di aggiornare i prodotti vulnerabili seguendo le indicazioni del bollettino di sicurezza riportato nella sezione Riferimenti.

Monday again. The weekend was meant to be quiet. It wasn't. Last week had poisoned packages, a broken AI helper, and a worm tearing through repos. The ugly part: basic tricks still worked. A chatbot got fooled. A bot token got leaked inside the malware. The same old mistakes showed up again. And while everyone chased the loud stuff, quieter attackers sat in inboxes for months, reading mail and stealing it bit by bit. Lots to cover. Grab coffee. Read up. ⚡ Threat of the Week Miasma Worm Hits 73 Microsoft GitHub Repositories in Supply Chain Attack - Microsoft's GitHub repositories became the latest to fall victim to the ongoing Miasma self-replicating supply chain attack campaign. The incident impacted 73 Microsoft repositories across four of its GitHub organizations, including Azure, Azure-Samples, Microsoft, and MicrosoftDocs. The development prompted GitHub to disable access to those repositories. Miasma is assessed to be a variant of the Mini Shai-Hulud worm that TeamPCP publicly released in mid-May 2026. Your VPN is Helping Attackers Move as Fast as AI The Zscaler ThreatLabz 2026 VPN Risk Report reveals a dangerous disconnect: while attackers use AI to move at machine speed, legacy VPNs are leaving defenders blind and exposed. When you can’t see what’s happening, response time collapses and the odds of containment drop with it. Get the Report ➝ 🔔 Top News Google Fixes Android Framework Flaw Under Exploitation - Google released patches for 124 security vulnerabilities impacting its Android operating system for the month of June 2026, including one high-severity flaw in the Framework component that has come under active exploitation. Tracked as CVE-2025-48595 (CVSS score: 8.4), the security flaw has been described as a case of privilege escalation without requiring any user interaction. The vulnerability impacts devices running Android versions 14, 15, 16, and 16 QPR2 (Quarterly Platform Release 2). Google has acknowledged there are indications that CVE-2025-48595 may be under "limited, targeted exploitation." As is typically the case, the tech giant did not reveal any specifics about who may have been behind the activity, the targets affected, and the scale of such efforts. U.S. Action Disrupts Investment Fraud Schemes - The U.S. Department of Justice announced the results of a sweeping action undertaken by government authorities and private sector companies to combat cyber-enabled and cryptocurrency fraud targeting Americans. The "Disruption Week" operation led to the takedown of millions of social media, email, and internet access accounts used by transnational cybercrime groups in Southeast Asia to defraud victims. Private sector entities voluntarily froze over $3.8 million in cryptocurrency involved in the laundering of funds stolen from Americans. The efforts are part of an ongoing U.S. government initiative called Scam Center Strike Force, which aims to dismantle transnational criminal organizations running cyber-enabled fraud and "pig butchering" (aka romance baiting) scams from compounds in Southeast Asia, along with the human trafficking and money laundering operations that fuel the illicit enterprise. China-Linked TA4922 Broadens Focus to Europe, Africa - A new Chinese-speaking cybercrime group has expanded its reach from East Asia into Europe and Africa, while rapidly overhauling the malware it employs to hack into corporate networks. The actor, tracked as TA4922, is financially motivated and focused on gaining remote access to victim systems for data theft, fraud, and the resale of access. Some elements of the threat actor's tactics overlap with Silver Fox and Void Arachne. Its operations are unusually varied, leveraging malware delivery, credential phishing, and credit card theft across different campaigns. While historical attacks targeted Japan, the actor has also targeted organizations in Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, and India, the U.K., Germany, Italy, and South Africa. The lures are localized, impersonating tax authorities, finance departments and human resources teams in the target's own language to distribute Atlas RAT, RomulusLoader, and SilentRunLoader through DLL side-loading techniques. OP-512 Targets Microsoft IIS Servers with Custom Web Shell Framework - A previously unreported threat cluster dubbed OP-512 has been observed targeting Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) servers to deploy a bespoke web shell framework. The espionage-focused activity has been assessed as originating from China. "OP-512 was highly likely conducting espionage through a compromised Internet Information Services (IIS) web server on an organization whose sector and geography align with China-linked intelligence priorities," ReliaQuest said. The web shell framework facilitates file management and authenticated command execution. Hackers Spied on a Stock Exchange Executive's Outlook Mailbox for 5 Months - Unknown threat actors managed to spy on a senior member of an unnamed global stock exchange for at least five months. There are still several unanswered questions, like who was behind it and how they obtained initial access. However, what's evident is that the attacker spent several months inside the Outlook mailbox and likely accessed sensitive information. The goal of the operation was most likely cyber espionage, but details are scant on which stock exchange was targeted. The earliest sign of malicious activity was observed on October 10, 2025. The attack led to the deployment of a mailbox stealer that ran in 2-4 week intervals to hoover up email data. The captured information was exfiltrated via Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive Personal, transferring only small batches at a time to avoid raising any red flags. The data exfiltration runs lasted through March 2026. ️🔥 Trending CVEs Bugs drop weekly, and the gap between a patch and an exploit is shrinking fast. These are the heavy hitters for the week: high-severity, widely used, or already being poked at in the wild. Check the list, patch what you have, and hit the ones marked urgent first - CVE-2026-28318 (SolarWinds Serv-U), from CVE-2026-39210 through CVE-2026-39217 (FFmpeg), CVE-2026-20245 (Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager), CVE-2026-20230 (Cisco Unified Communications Manager), CVE-2026-3300 (Everest Forms Pro plugin), CVE-2025-48595 (Google Android) CVE-2026-8501 (PCTCore64.sys), CVE-2026-10629 (Verizon IMS network), CVE-2026-7299 (Appsmith), CVE-2026-10621, CVE-2026-10622 (Collibra Agent), CVE-2026-0826 (HP Poly Voice), CVE-2026-8206 (Themeum Kirki - Freeform Page Builder, Website Builder & Customizer plugin), CVE-2026-23479, CVE-2026-23631 aka DarkReplica, CVE-2026-25243, CVE-2026-25588, CVE-2026-25589 (Redis), CVE-2026-49200, CVE-2026-49201 (Acer Wave 7 routers), CVE-2026-8874, CVE-2026-8876, CVE-2026-8878, CVE-2026-8879, CVE-2026-8881, CVE-2026-8888, CVE-2026-8889 (Securly), CVE-2026-10881, CVE-2026-10882, CVE-2026-10883 (Google Chrome), CVE-2026-41722, CVE-2026-41723, CVE-2026-41724 (Broadcom VMware Cloud Foundation Operations), CVE-2026-34908, CVE-2026-34909 (UniFi OS Server), CVE-2026-4372 (Hugging Face), CVE-2026-45495 (Microsoft Edge), CVE-2026-42253 (Apache ActiveMQ), CVE-2026-9614 (Ivanti ISTM), CVE-2026-48019 (laravel/framework), CVE-2026-5386 (KMW CCTV security cameras), CVE-2026-5509 (TP-Link Archer BE450 v1 and Archer BE7200 v1), CVE-2026-4387 (StrongDM), CVE-2026-8633 (IBM WebSphere), and CVE-2026-9739 (MCP Toolbox). 🎥 Cybersecurity Webinars Learn How to Validate What Your SIEM, EDR, and SOC Catch → Automated pentesting finds flaws. It doesn't prove your defenses caught them. Join Picus experts to learn where testing falls short, why "clean" reports can mislead, and how validation shows what your SIEM, EDR, and SOC actually detect. Stop AI-Powered Attacks Before They Spread → AI is making cyberattacks faster, harder to spot, and easier to scale. This webinar shows why old defenses fail against threats like Mythos-and how Zero Trust helps block movement, limit damage, and stop attacks before they grow. Learn How to Detect and Stop Risky AI Use in Real Time → AI tools are spreading through the workplace faster than security teams can control. Every pasted file, prompt, or piece of code can expose sensitive data to systems that the business never approved. This webinar shows how to detect risky AI use, stop leaks in real time, and keep company data out of uncontrolled AI tools. 📰 Around the Cyber World Five Eyes Warns of China Exploiting LinkedIn to Target Security Personnel - Chinese military intelligence services are using LinkedIn and other professional networking sites like Indeed and Upwork to recruit people with access to government, military, foreign policy, or sensitive economic information, the U.S. and its Five Eyes intelligence partners said in an advisory. The aim is to acquire privileged military, political and economic intelligence that can provide China with a strategic and tactical advantage over the Five Eyes, per the advisory. "These actors use an aggressive online recruitment strategy whereby intelligence officers or their affiliates pose as employees of private consultancies, think tanks, or human resources firms, and place online job advertisements for foreign policy and defense analysts," the agencies said. Bloomberg reported that China has been targeting Five Eyes nationals with security clearance, particularly those working in foreign affairs, security, and intelligence, and military personnel, including people stationed in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as journalists, academics, and think-tank employees with knowledge of unclassified information. Targets are offered payments in exchange for increasingly privileged information. Payments may arrive through a number of online platforms, including reputable services like PayPal, Zelle, and Wise, or via Western Union and cryptocurrency. Over 20K Accounts Likely Impacted in Instagram Attack Campaign - Meta has revealed that 20,225 Instagram accounts may have been impacted in a recent attack abusing an AI-powered support tool. The attacks involved compromising the accounts simply by asking Meta's chatbot to link their own email address to the targeted account. This enabled unauthorized third parties to reset the account password and take control of it. Many of the high-profile accounts were then sold on the dark web. The exploitation of the High Touch Support (HTS) tool was discovered on May 31, 2026. The filing published on Maine's Attorney General website lists April 17 as the date when the breach occurred, indicating the first unauthorized access may have occurred weeks before it was discovered. It's currently what personal information, if any, the threat actors may have accessed. The use of the tool has since been disabled. The development comes as a vulnerability was disclosed in Instagram's web-based password reset flow that exposed unredacted email addresses and phone numbers associated with user accounts when providing a user name as input. Hola Browser for Windows Compromised to Deliver Cryptocurrency Miner - Sophos discovered an XMRig cryptocurrency miner binary bundled within a certified version of the Hola Browser installer for Windows. Hola attributed the anomaly to a supply chain compromise affecting its "update distribution pipeline," which allowed the unauthorized payload to evade detection. "This was a supply chain compromise, and critically, no user data was accessed, exfiltrated, or compromised at any point during this incident affecting 0.1% of users," Hola said. "We have since completely rebuilt our distribution pipeline, implemented advanced code-signing verification, and introduced tighter access controls and continuous monitoring across our infrastructure." Malicious npm Packages Target Trusted Brands - A threat actor has been deploying dozens of malicious packages to npm targeting AI companies, luxury brands, and venture capital firms. These packages drop a new malware strain that impersonates an AI coding tool. The malicious code is launched by means of a post-install hook. "When the binary payloads are run, a terminal window pops up and prompts the user for user information and OpenAI or Anthropic API keys," OpenSourceMalware said. "Meanwhile, in the background, the malware is already harvesting ~/.local/share/stardrop/auth.json and other files for credentials." 2 npm Packages Deliver Epsilon Stealer - Two malicious npm packages, turbo-axios and faster-axios, targeted developers searching for the popular axios HTTP client. "Both are trojanized copies of the real axios source with a single addition: a postinstall hook that fetches and eval()s remote JavaScript," SafeDep said. "The chain terminates in Epsilon Stealer, a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) Electron infostealer that harvests browser credentials, crypto wallets, and messaging sessions, then opens a persistent WebSocket channel for arbitrary command execution." Malicious npm Package Leaks Own Telegram Bot Token - In a related development, OX Security flagged a malicious npm package named cms-store-ren that exfiltrates data to Telegram, while leaking its own bot API token in the process. "cms-store-ren is a malicious npm package that collects data from developers' machines and then sends them to a Telegram channel," OX Security said. "It also downloads a potentially malicious JavaScript file from a remote server and tries to execute it, although this behavior wasn't yet weaponized. The package acts as a downloader/loader whose primary purpose is to fetch and execute a second-stage payload while reporting successful infections back to the malicious actor." Fake Document Factory Taken Down in Spain - French and Spanish authorities, with support from Europol, dismantled an online marketplace selling fake identity documents to migrant smuggling rings operating in Europe to evade border controls, fraudulently obtain residence rights, and facilitate secondary movements within the region. The counterfeit document production facility, located in Alicante, Spain, led to one arrest and the seizure of approximately 800 forged European documents, document-production equipment, digital devices, a vehicle, and €1,580 in cash. "The search of the apartment, rented under a false name, uncovered a fully operational counterfeit document workshop, highlighting the industrial-scale production methods increasingly used by organised crime groups involved in document fraud," Europol said. Former IBM Executive Accuses Company of Covering Up Hacks - A former IBM cybersecurity executive accused the company of getting hacked three times in the previous decade by foreign governments and then covering up the breaches. William Barlow, who was IBM's vice president of threat intelligence until August 2019, said IBM concluded Chinese hackers breached its core network between 2013 and 2016, but that the software company went on to conceal the incidents and never publicly disclosed them. Breaches at two other IBM subsidiaries were also covered up in a similar manner, a lawsuit unsealed last week revealed. Gafgyt Botnet Variant Targets DD-WRT Router - A new variant of the Gafgyt botnet called C0XMO is now targeting DD-WRT router firmware by exploiting a stack buffer overflow vulnerability (CVE-2021-27137). "Unlike earlier versions, this malware separates its lateral movement into a standalone Python script," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs said. "This approach helps the attacker target various system architectures and device types more efficiently." The activity was discovered in March 2026 in connection with an attack targeting a Japanese technology firm. Once C0XMO is delivered and executed on the victim host, it sets up persistence, terminates competing processes and red teaming utilities, and then establishes a connection with a remote server to accept DDoS attack commands against specific targets. It also comes with a scanner to facilitate lateral movement via SSH, Telnet, Android Debug Bridge (ADB), and other HTTP-based exploits (e.g., CVE-2025-34054, CVE-2016-15047, CVE-2015-2051, CVE-2022-35914, and CVE-2021-27137). Malicious PyPI Package Drops Backdoor - Parsimonius, a malicious typosquat of the parsimonious Python package, "incorporated the legitimate parsimonious parsing functionality to avoid suspicion while simultaneously deploying a Telegram-based backdoor," Zscaler said. "Once installed, the backdoor provided attackers with remote access capabilities and facilitated the theft of sensitive data, including .env files and bot authentication tokens." The package racked up 2,474 downloads, prior to it being removed. VECT Ransomware Suffers From New Flaws - A new analysis of the Windows version of VECT ransomware has uncovered additional vulnerabilities that "can leave files renamed, partially encrypted, inconsistently modified, or damaged in ways the attacker's own decryptor cannot reliably reverse," Morphisec revealed. "These bugs change the recovery picture. A VECT incident does not necessarily produce one clean class of encrypted files. The same .vect suffix can represent several outcomes: a file that was only renamed, a file encrypted in a single pass, a large file with only selected regions modified, or a file left inconsistent by failed writes or shared-state races." Handala Brand Used for Physical and Influence Operations - Recorded Future has revealed that Iran's Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) has likely expanded the use of its Handala persona to include external physical and influence operations targeting U.S. and Israeli interests, bringing cyber, physical, and influence personas under a single umbrella. The threat intelligence company said it observed significant overlaps in the online activities of Handala Hack Team, a new Handala-branded persona named "Handala Popular Resistance Front," and three influence operations networks dubbed VIPEmployment, MOISIRAN, and Brave Israel. "Notably, the HPRF and the three influence operations networks all almost certainly share a modus operandi: their administrators solicit individuals to conduct physical attacks and espionage targeting U.S. and Israeli entities, on behalf of Iranian intelligence agencies, for a financial reward," Recorded Future said. "By encompassing these groups under the Handala brand, MOIS likely seeks to take advantage of Handala's global recognition to amplify its solicitation efforts." New Android Trojan OverlayPhantom Spotted - A new Android banking trojan referred to as OverlayPhantom has been observed targeting more than 180 apps across 10 countries via malicious URLs, aiming to steal credentials via fake overlays and real-time screen sharing. "The malware employs a two-stage infection chain, using a dropper application that impersonates trusted platforms, including the official Austrian government identity application, ID Austria, and the widely used consumer platform TikTok, to deceive victims into installing it," Cyble said. "Once deployed, OverlayPhantom masquerades as 'Google Play Services' and abuses Android's accessibility service to gain persistent, elevated control of the infected device." The malware is equipped to run over 30 remote commands to enable automated gestures, clipboard manipulation, credential theft, and data exfiltration. Targets of the malware include financial and cryptocurrency apps serving users in the U.S., Australia, Germany, France, Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and the U.K. Fake Copyright Infringement Notice Emails Lead to Credential Theft - Threat actors are using official-looking copyright removal requests to target Chrome extension developers, warning them of imminent removal and urging them to appeal by clicking on a link ("dmca-chrome-extensions[.]click") within 48 hours. "After you enter your extension's ID to 'verify' it, the page pulls in your extension's real name and icon," Malwarebytes said. "But it's all part of a phishing attack designed to steal your Google username and password." Other campaigns have been found to use pirated PC games and modified installers for franchises like Far Cry, Need for Speed, FIFA, and Assassin's Creed to distribute a Windows password-stealing malware; fake payment invoices that trick recipients into calling a bogus customer support agent as part of refund scams; counterfeit websites impersonating BlueWallet and OpenAI ChatGPT to deliver a macOS stealer and clipper. For Windows systems, the website mimicking ChatGPT is used to deliver a credential-stealing malware loader, while Mac users get Odyssey Stealer, a fork of Atomic Stealer (AMOS). Bypassing Malicious Skill Scanners - Trail of Bit said it was able to bypass ClawHub's malicious skill detector, Cisco's agent skill scanner, and scanners integrated into skills.sh to push rogue skills to public skill marketplaces and steal sensitive data from developer systems. One of the malicious skills used prompt injection to "convince the guard model that the malicious payload is nothing to worry about," the company said. "The skill tells the agent to configure its package managers (npm and yarn) to use an attacker-controlled registry, but dresses the subterfuge up in the language of corporate environment configurations and virtual private network access to convince the LLM analyzer the change is innocuous." The takeaway here is that trust can never be outsourced to a third-party scanner and that they cannot reliably detect malicious content in agent skills. To counter the risks, organizations are recommended to curate skill marketplaces for their employees and agents using trustworthy open-source collections. Phishing Campaigns Drop Remcos RAT - Payment slip-themed phishing emails are being used to distribute a link pointing an external file-hosting service like MediaFire, which triggers the download of a screen saver (.SCR) file, which kicks off a multi-stage chain that ends in the deployment of Remcos RAT by means of an AutoIt script after performing anti-analysis checks. The activity has been attributed by JUMPSEC to a threat group called BlackToad, which is likely an affiliate of the broader Nigerian e-crime ecosystem that's tracked as SilverTerrier with its own set of targeting lures and tradecraft. It also exhibits some infrastructure overlap with a cluster documented by Agoda Engineering as BoredFluff, which targeted hotel staff in 2024 through fake guest enquiries to deliver Remcos RAT through a malware loader named GuLoader. Pink, a New Com-Affiliated Actor - A new cybercrime brand called Pink (aka CL-CRI-1147), is leveraging vishing for initial access with the primary objective of data theft and extortion. It's assessed to be part of the broader Com ecosystem, embracing techniques similar to those of ShinyHunters and CL-CRI-1116 (Blackfile/Redact). The group's data leak site went live on May 31, 2026. "The threat actor leverages vishing for initial access, impersonating internal IT personnel to convince a user to input credentials into a phishing site, allowing the actor to gain access to the victim's account and MFA," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said. "After gaining access to the victim's account, the actor rapidly identifies and exfiltrates data from platforms like SharePoint and OneDrive, similar to other Com-affiliated groups." The threat actor has also been found to make use of compromised victim accounts to send their initial extortion email as well as internal Teams messages. According to Google, the activity maps to a threat group it calls UNC6671. 🔧 Cybersecurity Tools CAI → It is an open-source framework for building AI agents that help with cybersecurity work, from security testing and vulnerability discovery to defense automation. It supports 300+ AI models and includes built-in tools for tasks like reconnaissance, exploitation, privilege escalation, and security assessment. PMG → It is a free, open-source tool that blocks malicious open-source packages before they install. It sits in front of package managers like npm, pip, and Poetry, checks packages with SafeDep threat intelligence, and helps protect developers and AI coding agents from supply-chain attacks. Disclaimer: This is strictly for research and learning. It hasn't been through a formal security audit, so don't just blindly drop it into production. Read the code, break it in a sandbox first, and make sure whatever you're doing stays on the right side of the law. Conclusion That's the week. Nothing here is new. Same tricks. Same shortcuts. Same open inboxes. That's what makes it worse. Patch what matters first. Warn the people who click everything. Back up the important stuff. Then log off for a bit. It'll be messy again by next Monday.

TP-Link: sanate vulnerabilità in Tapo C520WS v2 Alert AL04/260608/CSIRT-ITA Sintesi Aggiornamenti di sicurezza sanano 6 vulnerabilità, di cui due con gravità “alta”, nel prodotto TP-Link Tapo C520WS v2. Tali vulnerabilità, qualora sfruttate, potrebbero consentire ad un utente malintenzionato di compromettere la disponibilità del servizio o di eludere i meccanismi di sicurezza sui sistemi interessati. Tipologia Denial of Service Security Restrictions Bypass Prodotti e versioni affette Tapo C520WS V2, versioni precedenti alla 1.2.6 Build 260528 Azioni di mitigazione In linea con le dichiarazioni del vendor, si raccomanda di aggiornare i prodotti vulnerabili seguendo le indicazioni dei bollettini di sicurezza riportati nella sezione Riferimenti. Di seguito sono riportate le sole CVE relative alle vulnerabilità con gravità “alta”:

Rilevata nuova vulnerabilità in prodotti TP-Link Alert AL05/260528/CSIRT-ITA Sintesi Aggiornamenti di sicurezza sanano una vulnerabilità con gravità “alta” in prodotti TP-Link. Tale vulnerabilità, qualora sfruttata, potrebbe permettere a un utente malintenzionato di eseguire codice arbitrario sui sistemi interessati. Tipologia Arbitrary Code Execution Prodotti e versioni affette TP-Link Archer BE450 v1, BE7200 v1 Versioni precedenti alla 1.3.0 Build 20260416 Azioni di mitigazione In linea con le dichiarazioni del vendor, si raccomanda di aggiornare il prodotto vulnerabile seguendo le indicazioni del bollettino di sicurezza riportato nella sezione Riferimenti.

Ivanti, Fortinet, n8n, SAP, and VMware have released security fixes for various vulnerabilities that could be exploited by bad actors to bypass authentication and execute arbitrary code. Topping the list is a critical flaw impacting Ivanti Xtraction (CVE-2026-8043, CVSS score: 9.6) that could be exploited to achieve information disclosure or client-side attacks. "External control of a file name in Ivanti Xtraction before version 2026.2 allows a remote authenticated attacker to read sensitive files and write arbitrary HTML files to a web directory, leading to information disclosure and possible client-side attacks," Ivanti said in an advisory. Fortinet published advisories for two critical shortcomings affecting FortiAuthenticator and FortiSandbox, FortiSandbox Cloud, and FortiSandbox PaaS that could result in code execution - CVE-2026-44277 (CVSS score: 9.1) - An improper access control vulnerability in FortiAuthenticator that may allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute unauthorized code or commands via crafted requests. (Fixed in FortiAuthenticator versions 6.5.7, 6.6.9, and 8.0.3) CVE-2026-26083 (CVSS score: 9.1) - A missing authorization vulnerability in FortiSandbox, FortiSandbox Cloud, and FortiSandbox PaaS WEB UI that may allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute unauthorized code or commands via HTTP requests. (Fixed in FortiSandbox versions 4.4.9 and 5.0.2, FortiSandbox Cloud version 5.0.6, and FortiSandbox PaaS versions 4.4.9. and 5.0.2) SAP also shipped fixes for two critical vulnerabilities - CVE-2026-34260 (CVSS score: 9.6) - An SQL injection vulnerability in SAP S/4HANA CVE-2026-34263 (CVSS score: 9.6) - A missing authentication check in the SAP Commerce cloud configuration "The vulnerability is caused by an overly permissive security configuration with improper rule ordering, allowing an unauthenticated user to perform malicious configuration upload and code injection, resulting in arbitrary server-side code execution," Onapsis said about CVE-2026-34263. On the other hand, CVE-2026-34260 could be exploited by an attacker to inject malicious SQL statements and potentially impact the confidentiality and availability of the application. However, since the affected code only allows read access to data, the vulnerability does not compromise the integrity of the application. "It allows a low-privileged, authenticated attacker to inject malicious SQL code via user-controlled input, potentially exposing sensitive database information and crashing the application," Pathlock said. Patches have also been released by Broadcom for a high-severity flaw in VMware Fusion (CVE-2026-41702, CVSS score: 7.8) that could pave the way for local privilege escalation. The issue has been addressed in version 26H1. "VMware Fusion contains a TOCTOU (Time-of-check Time-of-use) vulnerability that occurs during an operation performed by a SETUID binary," Broadcom said. "A malicious actor with local non-administrative user privileges may exploit this vulnerability to escalate privileges to root on the system where Fusion is installed." Round off the list is a set of five critical vulnerabilities impacting n8n - CVE-2026-42231 (CVSS score: 9.4) - A vulnerability in the xml2js library used to parse XML request bodies in n8n's webhook handler that allows prototype pollution via a crafted XML payload, enabling an authenticated user with permission to create or modify workflows to achieve remote code execution on the n8n host. (Fixed in n8n versions 1.123.32, 2.17.4, and 2.18.1) CVE-2026-42232 (CVSS score: 9.4) - An authenticated user with permission to create or modify workflows could achieve global prototype pollution via the XML Node, leading to remote code execution when combined with other nodes exploiting the prototype pollution. (Fixed in n8n versions 1.123.32, 2.17.4, and 2.18.1) CVE-2026-44791 (CVSS score: 9.4) - A bypass for CVE-2026-42232 that could result in remote code execution on the n8n host. (Fixed in n8n versions 1.123.43, 2.20.7, and 2.22.1) CVE-2026-44789 (CVSS score: 9.4) - An authenticated user with permission to create or modify workflows could achieve global prototype pollution via an unvalidated pagination parameter in the HTTP Request node, leading to remote code execution on the n8n host. (Fixed in n8n versions 1.123.43, 2.20.7, and 2.22.1) CVE-2026-44790 (CVSS score: 9.4) - An authenticated user with permission to create or modify workflows could inject CLI flags on the Git node's Push operation, enabling an attacker to read arbitrary files from the n8n server and resulting in full compromise. (Fixed in n8n versions 1.123.43, 2.20.7, and 2.22.1) Software Patches from Other Vendors Security updates have also been released by other vendors over the past several weeks to rectify various vulnerabilities, including - ABB Adobe Amazon Web Services AMD Apple ASUS Atlassian Axis Communications AVEVA Canon Cisco CODESYS ConnectWise Dell Devolutions Drupal F5 Fortra Foxit Software Fujitsu GitLab GnuTLS Google Android and Pixel Google Chrome Google Cloud Grafana Hikvision Hitachi Energy Honeywell HP HP Enterprise (including Aruba Networking and Juniper Networks) Huawei IBM Intel Jenkins Lenovo Linux distributions AlmaLinux, Alpine Linux, Amazon Linux, Arch Linux, Debian, Gentoo, Oracle Linux, Mageia, Red Hat, Rocky Linux, SUSE, and Ubuntu MediaTek Meta WhatsApp Microsoft Mitel Mitsubishi Electric MongoDB Moxa Mozilla Firefox, Firefox ESR, and Thunderbird NVIDIA OPPO Palo Alto Networks Phoenix Contact Phoenix Technologies Progress Software QNAP Qualcomm React Ricoh Samsung Schneider Electric Siemens Sophos Spring Framework Supermicro Synology Tenable TP-Link WatchGuard Zoom, and Zyxel

Google on Monday disclosed that it identified an unknown threat actor using a zero-day exploit that it said was likely developed with an artificial intelligence (AI) system, marking the first time the technology has been put to use in the wild in a malicious context for vulnerability discovery and exploit generation. The activity is said to be the work of cybercrime threat actors who appear to have collaborated together to plan what the tech giant described as a "mass vulnerability exploitation operation." "Our analysis of exploits associated with this campaign identified a zero-day vulnerability implemented in a Python script that enables the user to bypass two-factor authentication (2FA) on a popular open-source, web-based system administration tool," Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The tech giant said it worked with the impacted vendor to responsibly disclose the flaw and get it fixed in order to proactively disrupt the activity. It did not disclose the name of the tool. Although there is no evidence to suggest that Google's Gemini AI tool was used to aid the threat actors, GTIG assessed with high confidence that an AI model was weaponized to facilitate the discovery and weaponization of the flaw via a Python script that featured all hallmarks typically associated with large language model (LLM)-generated code. "For example, the script contains an abundance of educational docstrings, including a hallucinated CVSS score, and uses a structured, textbook Pythonic format highly characteristic of LLMs training data (e.g., detailed help menus and the clean _C ANSI color class)," GTIG added. The vulnerability, described as a 2FA bypass, requires valid user credentials for exploitation. It stems from a high-level semantic logic flaw arising as a result of a hard-coded trust assumption, something LLMs excel at spotting. "AI is already accelerating vulnerability discovery, reducing the effort needed to identify, validate, and weaponize flaws," Ryan Dewhurst, watchTowr's Head of Threat Intelligence, told The Hacker News in a statement. "This is today's reality: discovery, weaponization, and exploitation are faster. We're not heading toward compressed timelines; we've been watching the timelines compress for years. There is no mercy from attackers, and defenders don't get to opt out." The development comes as AI is not only acting as a force multiplier for vulnerability disclosure and abuse, but is also enabling attackers to develop polymorphic malware and conduct autonomous malware operations, as observed in the case of PromptSpy, an Android malware that abuses Gemini to analyze the current screen and provide it with instructions to pin the malicious app in the recent apps list. Further investigation of the backdoor has uncovered a broader set of capabilities to allow the malware to navigate the Android user interface and autonomously monitor and interpret real-time user activity to determine the next course of action using an autonomous agent module. PromptSpy is also equipped to capture victim biometric data to replay authentication gestures, such as a lock screen PIN or a pattern, to regain access to a compromised device. On top of that, it's capable of preventing uninstallation by making use of an "AppProtectionDetector" module that identifies the on-screen coordinates of the "Uninstall" button and serves an invisible overlay just over the button to block a victim's touch events and give the impression that the button is unresponsive. "While PromptSpy initializes using hardcoded default infrastructure and credentials, the malware is designed with high operational resilience, allowing adversaries to rotate critical components at runtime without redeploying the PromptSpy payload," Google said. "Specifically, the malware's command-and-control (C2) infrastructure, including the Gemini API keys and the VNC relay server, can be updated dynamically via the C2 channel. This configuration model demonstrates the developers anticipated defensive countermeasures and engineered the backdoor to maintain presence even if specific infrastructure endpoints are identified and blocked by defenders." Google said it took steps against PromptSpy by disabling all assets related to the malicious activity. No apps containing the malware have been discovered on the Play Store. Some other cases of Gemini-specific abuse spotted by Google are listed below - A suspected China-nexus cyber espionage group dubbed UNC2814 prompted Gemini by asking it to assume the role of a network security expert to trigger persona-driven jailbreaking and support vulnerability research into embedded device targets, including TP-Link firmware and Odette File Transfer Protocol (OFTP) implementations. The North Korean threat actor known as APT45 (aka Andariel and Onyx Sleet) sent "thousands of repetitive prompts" that recursively analyze different CVEs and validate proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits. A Chinese hacking group known as APT27 leveraged Gemini to speed up the development of a fleet management application with an aim to likely manage an operational relay box (ORB) network. A cluster of Russia-nexus intrusion activity targeted Ukrainian organizations to deliver AI-enabled malware dubbed CANFAIL and LONGSTREAM, both of which use LLM-generated decoy code to conceal their malicious functionality. Threat actors have also been found experimenting with a specialized GitHub repository named "wooyun-legacy" that's designed as a Claude code skill plugin featuring over 5,000 real-world vulnerability cases collected by the Chinese vulnerability disclosure platform WooYun between 2010 and 2016. "By priming the model with vulnerability data, it facilitates in-context learning to steer the model to approach code analysis like a seasoned expert and identify logic flaws that the base model might otherwise fail to prioritize," Google explained. Elsewhere, a suspected China-aligned threat actor is said to have deployed agentic tools like Hexstrike AI and Strix in an attack targeting a Japanese technology firm and a major East Asian cybersecurity platform to conduct automated discovery with minimal human oversight. Google also said it continues to see information operations (IO) actors from Russia, Iran, China, and Saudi Arabia using AI for common productivity tasks like research, content creation, and localization, even as it called out China-affiliated threat activity from UNC6201 that involved the use of a publicly available Python script to automatically register and immediately cancel premium LLM accounts. "This process highlights the methods adversaries leverage to procure high-tier AI capabilities at scale while insulating their malicious activity from account bans," GTIG pointed out. "Threat actors now pursue anonymized, premium-tier access to models through professionalized middleware and automated registration pipelines to illicitly bypass usage limits. This infrastructure enables large-scale misuse of services while subsidizing operations through trial abuse and programmatic account cycling." Another China-linked activity flagged by Google originates from UNC5673 (aka TEMP.Hex), which has employed various publicly available commercial tools and GitHub projects to likely facilitate scalable LLM abuse. The findings overlap with recent reports about a thriving grey market of API relay platforms that allow local developers in China to illicitly access Anthropic Claude and Gemini. These relay or transfer stations route access to the AI models through proxy servers that are hosted outside mainland China. The services are advertised on Chinese online marketplaces Taobao and Xianyu. In a study published in March 2026, academics from the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security found 17 shadow APIs that claim to provide access to official model services without regional limitations via indirect access. A performance evaluation of these services uncovered evidence of model substitution, exposing AI applications to unintended safety risks. "On high-risk medical benchmarks like MedQA, the accuracy of the Gemini-2.5-flash model drops precipitously, from 83.82% with the official API to approximately 37.00% across all examined shadow APIs," the researchers said in the paper. What's more, the proxy services can capture every prompt and response that passes through their servers, providing the operators with unlawful access to a goldmine of data that could then be used for fine-tuning models and conducting illicit knowledge distillation. In recent months, AI environments have also become the target of adversaries like TeamPCP (aka UNC6780), exposing developers to supply chain attacks and enabling attackers to burrow deeper into compromised networks for follow-on exploitation. "For example, threat actors with access to an organization’s AI systems could leverage internal models and tools to identify, collect, and exfiltrate sensitive information at scale or perform reconnaissance tasks to move deeper within a network," Google said. "While the level of access and particular use depends heavily on the organization and the specific compromised dependency, this case study demonstrates the broadened landscape of software supply chain threats to AI systems."

For the first time, Google has identified a zero-day exploit believed to have been developed using artificial intelligence. The company published a new report on Monday summarizing its observations on the use of AI in the cyber threat landscape, drawing on data collected recently by Gemini, Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG), and Mandiant. One of the most notable findings is that a prominent cybercrime group leveraged AI to develop a zero-day exploit designed to bypass two-factor authentication (2FA) on an open source web-based system administration tool. The exploit was implemented in a Python script. The hacker group and the targeted tool have not been named, but Google said it worked with the impacted vendor to prevent mass exploitation, which appeared to be the threat actor’s plan. “Although we do not believe Gemini was used, based on the structure and content of these exploits, we have high confidence that the actor likely leveraged an AI model to support the discovery and weaponization of this vulnerability,” Google explained. It added, “For example, the script contains an abundance of educational docstrings, including a hallucinated CVSS score, and uses a structured, textbook Pythonic format highly characteristic of LLMs training data (e.g., detailed help menus and the clean _C ANSI color class).” Google highlighted that Chinese and North Korean state-sponsored threat actors have been particularly interested in leveraging AI for vulnerability discovery. A China-linked actor was observed deploying agentic tools such as Strix and Hexstrike in attacks targeting a Japanese tech firm and a major East Asian cybersecurity company. UNC2814, a Chinese group known for targeting telecoms and government organizations, used a persona-driven jailbreak — in which the AI is instructed to act as a senior security auditor — to enhance vulnerability research on embedded devices, including TP-Link firmware with OFTP implementations. According to Google, the North Korean group tracked as APT45 sent out thousands of repetitive prompts to recursively analyze CVEs and validate PoC exploits. “This results in a more robust arsenal of exploit capabilities that would be impractical to manage without AI assistance,” Google said in its report. The full report also covers autonomous malware operations, AI-augmented defense evasion, supply chain attacks, and threat actors pursuing premium access to LLMs. Related: Google: Half of 2025’s 90 Exploited Zero-Days Aimed at Enterprises Related: Vulnerability in Claude Extension for Chrome Exposes AI Agent to Takeover

This week, the shadows moved faster than the patches. While most teams were still triaging last month’s alerts, attackers had already turned control panels into kill switches, kernels into open doors, and open-source pipelines into silent delivery systems. The game has shifted from breach to occupation. They’re living inside SaaS sessions, pushing code with trusted commits, and scaling operations like legitimate businesses — except their product is chaos. And the underground is getting uncomfortably professional. Here’s the full weekly cybersecurity recap: ⚡ Threat of the Week cPanel Flaw Comes Under Attack—A critical flaw in cPanel and WebHost Manager (WHM) has come under active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-41940, could result in an authentication bypass and allow remote attackers to gain elevated control of the control panel. In some cases, the attacks have led to a complete wipe of entire websites and backups. Other attacks have deployed Mirai botnet variants and a ransomware strain called Sorry. Is Your Security Program Built on Compliance Theater or Measurable Maturity? If you can't measure your program's maturity, you can't improve it or defend its budget. The SANS Security Awareness & Culture Maturity Model™️ maps 5 stages of security culture development with concrete indicators, behavioral targets, and alignment to business risk priorities. Download Now — Free ➝ 🔔 Top News Cybercrime Groups Use Vishing for Data Theft and Extortion—Two cybercrime groups tracked as Cordial Spider and Snarky Spider are carrying out "rapid, high-impact attacks" operating almost within the confines of SaaS environments, while leaving minimal traces of their actions. The groups employ voice calls, text messages, and emails, directing targeted employees to phishing pages masquerading as their employer's legitimate single sign-on (SSO) page to capture credentials and provide attackers an entry point into systems, which they exploit for deeper access to victims' SaaS environments. The attacks also use the initial access hooks to remove and set up multi-factor authentication devices under their control and delete emails that would otherwise alert organizations of potential malicious activity. According to CrowdStrike, "These actors use vishing to bypass MFA and move laterally across entire SaaS ecosystems with a single authenticated session, masking their tracks through residential proxy networks to blend in as legitimate home user traffic. This is part of a larger trend of English-speaking ransomware crews that share similar playbooks but are branching off into their own distinct groups." Copy Fail Linux Flaw Exploited—The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added CVE-2026-31431, a vulnerability impacting various Linux distributions, to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation in the wild. It's described as a logic bug in the Linux kernel's authentication cryptographic template that allows an attacker to reliably trigger privilege escalation trivially by means of a 732-byte Python-based exploit. According to Theori and Xint, CVE-2026-31431 was the result of a series of unremarkable updates to the Linux kernel over the years, particularly one update from 2017 that was meant to speed up data encryption. As a result, all major Linux distributions from 2017 are impacted. What complicates matters is that Copy Fail works 100% of the time, unlike most local privilege escalation (LPE) bugs that tend to be probabilistic in nature. More worryingly, it leaves no traces on disk as exploitation occurs in memory and enables container escape from any pod in a Kubernetes cluster. TeamPCP's Supply Chain Attack Spree Continues—TeamPCP's extensive supply chain campaign continued last week, as the cybercriminal group compromised several packages across the npm, PyPI, and Packagist ecosystems in a "Mini Shai-Hulud" attack. TeamPCP has in recent months compromised the packages of several open source software projects, including Trivy, a security scanner maintained by Aqua Security, and KICS, a Checkmarx-developed tool for static code analysis. Amit Genkin, threat researcher at Upwind, said the latest string of attacks represents a shift, where they are not only more frequent but harder to detect because they weaponize legitimate CI/CD pipelines to push out poisoned versions under real identities, allowing the activity to blend in with normal development workflows. "Campaigns like Shai-Hulud take that further by using each compromised pipeline to spread to the next, turning credential theft into a scaling problem across environments," Genkin said. "For teams, the immediate priority is to check for the affected version and rotate any credentials tied to pipelines that may have run it, especially GitHub and cloud tokens. Longer term, this is a signal to reduce how broadly pipeline credentials are scoped and to add visibility into what's actually happening during installs and builds – because if you're relying on traditional scanning or known indicators, this type of activity is easy to miss." New Python Backdoor Enables Comprehensive Data Theft—A newly identified stealthy Python-based backdoor framework dubbed DEEP#DOOR provides attackers with persistent remote command execution and surveillance capabilities on Windows computers. Once active, the backdoor enables shell command execution, file manipulation, system and network reconnaissance, and surveillance operations such as keylogging, clipboard monitoring, screenshot capture, microphone and webcam access, and credentials and SSH key harvesting. Additionally, the malware can shift from data gathering to disruption and system manipulation, as it can overwrite the Master Boot Record, force system crashes, exhaust system resources by spawning numerous processes, and disable Microsoft Defender services. GitHub Flaw Leads to Remote Code Execution—Cybersecurity researchers from Wiz disclosed details of a critical security vulnerability impacting GitHub.com and GitHub Enterprise Server (CVE-2026-3854, CVSS score: 8.7) that could allow an authenticated user to obtain remote code execution with a single "git push" command. The vulnerability was severe enough that Microsoft rolled out a patch within six days of responsible disclosure. On GitHub.com, it allowed remote code execution on shared storage nodes, and on GitHub Enterprise Server, it granted full server compromise, enabling unauthorized access to all hosted repositories and internal secrets. "Exploitation could expose the codebases of nearly all of the world's biggest enterprises, making this one of the most severe SaaS vulnerabilities ever found," a Wiz spokesperson told The Hacker News. VECT 2.0 Ransomware's Flawed Encryption Makes Data Recovery Impossible—VECT 2.0 ransomware has been found to wipe large files instead of merely encrypting them, making recovery impossible, even for the attackers. VECT 2.0 is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) program that first appeared in December 2025. The group quickly grabbed headlines after it announced on BreachForums that it was partnering with TeamPCP, the threat group behind several supply chain attacks, such as Trivy, Checkmarx KICS, LiteLLM, and Telnyx, in March and April 2026. VECT also announced a partnership with BreachForums itself, promising that every registered forum user will become an affiliate and be granted use of the ransomware, negotiation platform, and leak site for operations. Beazley Security, in an analysis of the ransomware, said the VECT 2.0 RaaS panel covers the "full operational lifecycle an affiliate needs from payload generation through to payout." 🔥 Trending CVEs Bugs drop weekly, and the gap between a patch and an exploit is shrinking fast. These are the heavy hitters for the week: high-severity, widely used, or already being poked at in the wild. Check the list, patch what you have, and hit the ones marked urgent first — CVE-2026-41940 (cPanel and WebHost Manager), CVE-2026-31431 aka Copy Fail (Linux Kernel), CVE-2026-42208 (LiteLLM), CVE-2026-3854 (GitHub.com and GitHub Enterprise Server), CVE-2026-32202 (Microsoft Windows Shell), CVE-2026-26268 (Cursor), CVE-2026-35414 (OpenSSH), CVE-2026-6770 (Mozilla Firefox and Tor Browser), CVE-2026-42167 (ProFTPD), CVE-2026-24908, CVE-2026-23627, CVE-2026-24487 (OpenEMR), CVE-2026-6807 (GRASSMARLIN), CVE-2026-7363, CVE-2026-7361, CVE-2026-7344, CVE-2026-7343 (Google Chrome), CVE-2026-7322, CVE-2026-7323, CVE-2026-7324 (Mozilla Firefox), CVE-2026-6100 (CPython), CVE-2026-0204 (SonicWall), CVE-2026-35414 (OpenSSH), CVE-2026-42511 (FreeBSD), CVE-2026-40684, CVE-2026-40685, CVE-2026-40686, CVE-2026-40687 (Exim), CVE-2026-5402, CVE-2026-5403, CVE-2026-5405, CVE-2026-5656 (Wireshark), CVE-2026-42520, CVE-2026-42523, CVE-2026-42524 (Jenkins), CVE-2026-3008 (Notepad++), and CVE-2025-41658, CVE-2025-41659, CVE-2025-41660 (CODESYS). 🎥 Cybersecurity Webinars Learn to Spot Attack Paths Your AppSec Tools Completely Miss → Modern attackers chain tiny flaws across code, pipelines, and cloud into major breaches — while your AppSec tools stay blind. Join this free webinar with Wiz and The Hacker News to uncover the top real-world attack paths and learn exactly how to spot, map, and stop them fast. Practical insights to prioritize real risks and strengthen your entire software lifecycle. How to Match AI Attack Speed with Autonomous Exposure Validation → Struggling with AI attacks moving faster than your team can respond? Join this free webinar from Picus Security & The Hacker News to discover Autonomous Exposure Validation – how to automatically find real risks, test attack paths, and fix them in minutes, not weeks. Practical, no-fluff insights to stay ahead without burnout. Grab your spot now. Learn Latest AI Threats + Practical Ways to Kill Initial Access → Modern attackers are slipping past traditional defenses with AI-powered phishing, encrypted malware, and stealthy “Patient Zero” tactics. Want to stay ahead? Join this free webinar with Zscaler and The Hacker News to uncover the latest threat trends and practical Zero Trust strategies that actually stop initial compromise — before it becomes a full-blown breach. No fluff, just real insights to protect your organization. 📰 Around the Cyber World OpenAI Debuts Advanced Account Security —OpenAI launched Advanced Account Security, a set of opt-in protections for ChatGPT users "designed for people at increased risk of digital attacks, as well as for those who want the strongest account protections available." As part of the new program, the new controls strengthen sign-in protections, tighten account recovery, reduce exposure from compromised sessions, and give users more visibility into account activity. OpenAI has also partnered with Yubico to link two physical security keys, YubiKey C Nano and YubiKey C NFC, to ChatGPT accounts. That said, users can use any other FIDO-compliant security key, or use software-based passkeys for phishing-resistant authentication. Over 8.8K Ransomware Attacks in 2025 —Fortinet said it recorded 7,831 confirmed ransomware victims globally in 2025, skyrocketing from approximately 1,600 identified victims in 2024. "Availability of crime service kits like WormGPT, FraudGPT, and BruteForceAI contributed to this 389% increase year-over-year (YoY)," Fortinet said. "The top three targeted sectors include manufacturing (1,284), business services (824), and retail (682). Geographic concentration includes the U.S. (3,381), Canada (374), and Germany (291)." KidsProtect Android Surveillance Tool Marketed on the Web —A new Android surveillance tool called KidsProtect is being openly advertised on the clear web that gives an operator near-total secret control of a victim’s phone. "It can't be removed without the attacker's permission," Certo said. "From a web-based dashboard, an operator can secretly record calls, stream live audio from the device’s microphone, track GPS location in real time, read SMS messages and notifications from apps including WhatsApp and Viber, log keystrokes, access contacts and photos, and remotely trigger the front and rear cameras." Assessed to be the work of a Greek-speaking developer, it's available on a subscription basis starting from $60, allowing anyone to buy it, rebrand it, and start selling it as their own. New KYCShadow Android Malware Detected —An Android malware masquerading as a bank KYC verification application is being distributed via WhatsApp and primarily targeting users in India. "The application operates as a multi-stage dropper that installs a secondary payload and establishes persistent command-and-control (C2) communication," CYFIRMA said. "It combines native code obfuscation, Firebase-based remote execution, VPN-based traffic manipulation, and WebView-based phishing to systematically harvest sensitive user data." Phishing Campaign Targets Pakistan Orgs —A highly targeted spear-phishing campaign targeting the Punjab Safe Cities Authority and PPIC3 in Pakistan has been found to use legitimate-sounding government infrastructure projects as lures to deliver malware. "The email carried two malicious attachments: a Word document with a VBA macro dropper and a PDF with a fake Adobe Reader lure, both delivering payloads from a BunnyCDN-hosted malicious infrastructure," Joe Security said. "The attack chain establishes persistent remote access by abusing Microsoft's legitimate VS Code tunnel service, with exfiltration notifications sent via a Discord webhook — a sophisticated technique designed to evade network-level detection." Calendly-Themed Phishing Attacks on the Rise —Multiple threat clusters are leveraging Calendly-themed phishing to fingerprint site visitors and steal credentials and other data. "Behind the shared Calendly branding sits a diverse set of phishing kits, including API-driven frameworks, real-time Socket.IO applications, fake CAPTCHA chains, and Telegram-based exfiltration," urlscan said. Fraud Campaigns GovTrapand FEMITBOT Exposed —Threat actors have been observed deploying sophisticated tactics, including fake government portals, SMS phishing, and lookalike domains, to drive financial fraud and credential harvesting as part of an effort called GovTrap. The government impersonation scam mimics official portals with high accuracy, with links to the fake sites distributed via SMS or email. The end goal is to trick users into entering their personal and financial information, or make non-existent payments that are transferred through money mule accounts. The collected payment card details are abused to facilitate fraudulent transactions. Another threat cluster has leveraged FEMITBOT, a malicious infrastructure that abuses Telegram Mini Apps to scale global fraud campaigns and Android malware delivery. "By leveraging Telegram's native features, threat actors create highly convincing fake platforms across crypto, financial services, AI, and streaming sectors," CTM360 said. "Built on a modular, template-driven architecture, FEMITBOT enables rapid deployment, brand impersonation, and campaign optimization using real-time tracking and analytics." New PowerShell Desktop Stealer Spotted —A Pastebin-hosted PowerShell script disguised as "Windows Telemetry Update" comes with capabilities to steal Telegram Desktop session data via Telegram bot API exfiltration. "The script collects host metadata, including username, hostname, and public IP via api.ipify[.]org, then checks for Telegram Desktop and Telegram Desktop Beta tdata directories," Flare said. "If found, it terminates the Telegram process to release file locks, archives session material into 'TEMP\diag.zip,' and uploads the archive to the attacker-controlled operator chat via the Telegram Bot API sendDocument endpoint." Surge in Teams Phishing in 2026 —eSentire said it has observed an increase in Microsoft Teams-based phishing since early 2026, in which threat actors impersonate IT support and help desk personnel to trick users into granting remote access to their devices. "These phishing attacks have often been linked to email bombing, followed by threat actors reaching out to users under the guise of providing assistance to resolve an issue," eSentire said. "The objective of the attack is to trick the user into granting remote access to their device, and once obtained, threat actors will attempt to exfiltrate data and execute additional payloads to establish persistence or deploy ransomware." New KarstoRAT Malware Enables Data Theft —First spotted in early 2026, KarstoRAT is capable of system reconnaissance, audio and webcam monitoring, screenshot capture, key logging, and token theft. It also enables threat actors to download and run additional payloads, which could point to it being used for post-compromise control on infected machines. "KarstoRAT uses a command-and-control (C2) server that has a diverse set of open ports and services, indicating that it has a multi-purpose infrastructure created for C2 communication and payload distribution," LevelBlue said. "Threat actors use a fake Blox Fruits (a popular Roblox game) virtual marketplace as a lure to trick players into downloading malware that will install KarstoRAT into their machines." ClickUp Discloses Email Address Exposure —ClickUp said its client-side feature flag configuration exposed personally identifiable information. This included 893 customer email addresses that were embedded in feature flag targeting rules, along with one flag that improperly referenced a customer’s API token. "The exposure was limited to 893 customer email addresses used in feature flag targeting rules to control which users see specific features during rollouts," it said. "If your email address was among those included in a feature flag configuration, you have been directly contacted." The incident did not expose any other data. Finnish Authorities Arrest Alleged Scattered Spider Member —Finnish authorities arrested 19-year-old Peter Stokes (aka Bouquet), a dual U.S.-Estonian citizen, as he tried to board a flight to Japan. U.S. prosecutors have charged him as a key member of the notorious Scattered Spider hacking group, and he faces multiple counts of wire fraud, conspiracy, and computer intrusion. New Attacks Linked to Versatile Werewolf —The threat actor known as Versatile Werewolf (aka HeartlessSoul) has been linked to campaigns targeting Russian state structures and aviation companies via phishing emails with malicious archive attachments and malvertising campaigns to deliver a JavaScript trojan. The end goal is to obtain confidential data, particularly geospatial information. Alternatively, the threat actor is known to distribute malicious code using the legitimate SourceForge platform through a project called GearUP. Versatile Werewolf is believed to be active since at least September 2025. Some of the attachments have exploded ZDI-CAN-25373 to trigger the infection chain. The malvertising campaign uses fake domains ("battleflight[.]pro") to deliver bogus installers for aviation-related software to launch the same trojan. "The initial infection involves executing PowerShell commands or scripts designed to download a JavaScript loader from C2 servers," Kaspersky said. "This loader, in turn, loads and executes the main JS-RAT and its modules in memory, among which we found tools for data collection and exfiltration, keyloggers, screen capture tools, UAC bypass tools, and other payloads." The company noted that the domain "battleflight[.]pro" resolves to an IP address that also hosts fake domains linked to the GOFFEE APT. "Both groups actively use PowerShell payloads to deliver and execute malicious modules," it added. "GOFFEE also targets the public sector, which suggests the possibility of joint or coordinated campaigns." Cisco Unveils Model Provenance Kit —Cisco unveiled a new open-source tool, named Model Provenance Kit, to help organizations address potential issues associated with the use of third-party AI models. "Much like a DNA test reveals biological origins, the Model Provenance Kit examines both metadata and the actual learned parameters of a model (like a unique genome that comprises a model), to assess whether models share a common origin and identify signs of modification," Cisco said. "This, combined with a constitution that defines provenance linkages, is an important step toward providing evidence-based assurance that the AI you deploy is what it says it is." Abuse of Hugging Face and ClawHub for Malware Delivery —Threat actors are abusing legitimate AI platforms like Hugging Face and ClawHub for malware delivery, once again demonstrating how trust in AI ecosystems are being exploited. Acronis said it identified more than 575 malicious skills across 13 developer accounts that target both Windows and macOS systems with trojans, cryptocurrency miners, and AMOS stealer, a macOS-focused infostealer. "On Hugging Face, attackers leverage repositories to host payloads and act as staging infrastructure within multistep infection chains, distributing malware disguised as legitimate applications," Acronis said. European Authorities Bust Cryptocurrency Fraud Ring —Albanian and Austrian authorities dismantled a cryptocurrency investment fraud ring that caused estimated losses of more than €50 million ($58.5 million) to victims worldwide. The operation, which took place over two years, resulted in the arrest of ten individuals, the search of multiple premises, and the seizure of 891,735 in cash, 443 computers, 238 mobile phones, six laptops, and multiple storage devices. "The criminal network, allegedly operating several call centres in Tirana, Albania, is believed to have caused significant financial damage, totalling at least €50 million," Europol said. "The call centres were professionally set up and organized, resembling legitimate business structures featuring a clear division of roles and hierarchical management." The criminal network is estimated to have involved up to 450 employees across various departments. The scheme involved luring victims to seemingly legitimate online investment platforms through deceptive advertisements on social media or web searches, and coaxing them into making investments under the promise of huge returns. Victims were then assigned retention agents, who masqueraded as investment advisors and used remote access software to gain full control of their devices. "The fraudsters feigned professional expertise and employed psychological pressure to persuade victims to make additional investments, falsely claiming they would be profitable," Europol said. "In truth, the funds were never invested but were instead channelled into an intricate international money-laundering scheme, ultimately disappearing into the hands of the criminal organisation." In some cases, the fraudsters reached out to the victims again and offered help with recovering their stolen funds, only to demand a €500 entry fee and defraud them a second time. Flaws in EnOcean's SmartServer —Two security flaws have been disclosed in EnOcean's SmartServer IoT platform that affect version 4.60.009 and prior. According to Claroty: "CVE-2026-20761 allows remote attackers to send malicious, crafted LON IP-852 messages that result in arbitrary command execution on devices. CVE-2026-22885 allows remote attackers to send malicious, crafted IP-852 messages that bypass ASLR memory protections and leak memory." Successful exploitation of the flaws results in attackers obtaining control over building management and building automation systems running affected versions of this platform and legacy i.LON devices. Patches have been released for both vulnerabilities. Google Announces Android Credential Manager Update —Google has announced a new update to Android's Credential Manager that allows apps to automatically verify a user's personal Gmail address without requiring one-time passwords (OTPs) or email verification links. "Google now issues a cryptographically verified email credential directly to Android devices," the company said. "For users, this completely removes the need to manually verify their email through external channels. For developers, the API securely delivers these verified user claims for any scenario, whether you are building an account creation flow, a recovery process, or a high-risk step-up authentication." Nearly 8.8K Secrets Leaked Online —According to Truffle Security, 8,792 verified, unique secrets have been leaked online through web-based development environments. The tokens were found across 22 million public projects hosted on Cloud Development Environments (CDEs) such as CodePen, CodeSandbox, JSFiddle, and StackBlitz. Is There More to the Xygeni Compromise? —Multiple connections have been found between the compromise of the Xygeni vulnerability scanner on GitHub and a proxy botnet of hacked ASUS and TP-Link routers. Some of the TP-Link consumer routers have been compromised with Microsocks to unroll them to a residential proxy network. "These routers were also running a custom command-and-control beacon that was named ShadowLink," Ctrl-Alt-Intel said. "When we analysed the ShadowLink protocol, we found it was identical, down to a shared authentication secret, to the backdoor planted in the Xygeni GitHub Action used for that supply chain attack." Brazilian Anti-DDoS Firm Behind DDoS Attacks on ISPs —Huge Networks, a Brazilian tech company that specializes in protecting networks from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, has been enabling a botnet responsible for massive DDoS attacks against other internet service providers (ISPs) in the country, according to KrebsOnSecurity. The company has since said the malicious activity resulted from an intrusion first detected in January 2026 and claimed it was likely the work of a competitor. Canonical Target of Sustained DDoS Attack —Canonical disclosed its web infrastructure came under a "sustained, cross-border attack," knocking Ubuntu servers offline for several hours. A pro-Iranian hacktivist group known as the Islamic Cyber Resistance in Iraq, aka 313 Team, claimed responsibility for the attack on Telegram. The websites have since become operational. Last month, the group also disrupted access to the decentralized social media platform Bluesky. New Phishing Kit Bluekit Detailed —A new phishing kit named Bluekit is offering more than 40 templates targeting popular services and includes basic artificial intelligence (AI)-powered features for generating campaign drafts. Available templates can be used to target email accounts (Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, ProtonMail), cloud and enterprise services (iCloud and Zoho), developer platforms (GitHub), and cryptocurrency services (Ledger). What makes the kit stand out is the presence of an AI Assistant panel that supports multiple models, including Llama, GPT-4.1, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek, to help criminals draft phishing emails. It also has support for two-factor authentication, geolocation emulation, antibot cloaking, notifications, spoofing capabilities, voice cloning, and a mail sender. The development once again reinforces the broader trend of crimeware services integrating AI to streamline and scale their operations. Bluekit is the second kit to integrate AI features in as many months. In April 2026, Abnormal Security shed light on a cybercrime platform called ATHR that uses AI vishing agents, credential harvesting panels, and built-in phishing mailers to execute and scale telephone-oriented attack delivery (TOAD) attacks. North Korea Calls U.S. Cyber Threat Claims a Fabrication — North Korea's foreign ministry rejected U.S. accusations that the country poses a cyber threat, stating the U.S. was spreading false information about a non-existent cyber threat from North Korea for political purposes, per Reuters. The ministry said it "would actively take all necessary measures for defending the interests of the state and protecting the rights and interests of its citizens in cyberspace." 🔧 Cybersecurity Tools Model Provenance Kit → It is a free open-source Python tool from Cisco AI Defense that helps identify if a machine learning model is based on a known base model (like Llama, Mistral, GPT, etc.). It analyzes architecture, tokenizer, and weights to quickly compare two models or check against a database of ~150 popular base models. AutoFyn → It is an open-source tool from SignalPilot Labs that runs Claude AI in self-improving loops to optimize measurable goals. Give it a GitHub repo, a clear task (like security hardening, bug fixing, or performance optimization), and a time budget — it works in sandboxed rounds, tracks progress with real evaluations, learns from failures, and delivers improved code via PRs. Disclaimer: This is strictly for research and learning. It hasn't been through a formal security audit, so don't just blindly drop it into production. Read the code, break it in a sandbox first, and make sure whatever you’re doing stays on the right side of the law. Conclusion Stay sharp out there. The pace of attacks is accelerating, and the margin for delay is shrinking. Patch what you can today, verify your supply chains, tighten SaaS access, and treat every “routine” login or pipeline run as potentially hostile. Small habits now will save major headaches later. Until next Monday. Keep your defenses tight and your eyes open. The threats won’t wait — neither should we. See you in the next recap.

For the latest discoveries in cyber research for the week of 4th May, please download our Threat Intelligence Bulletin. TOP ATTACKS AND BREACHES Medtronic, a global medical device maker, has disclosed a cyberattack on its corporate IT systems. An unauthorized party accessed data, while the company reported no impact on products, operations, or financial systems. Threat group ShinyHunters claimed the theft of 9 million records, and Medtronic is evaluating what data was exposed. Vimeo, a global video hosting platform, has confirmed a data breach stemming from a compromise at analytics vendor Anodot. Exposed data included internal operational information, video titles and metadata, and some customer email addresses, while passwords, payment data, and video content were not accessed. Threat actors have abused the account creation process of the online trading platform Robinhood to launch a phishing campaign that used emails from Robinhood official mailing account. The emails contained links to phishing sites and passed security checks. Robinhood stated that no accounts or funds were compromised and has since removed the vulnerable “Device” field. Trellix, a major endpoint security and XDR vendor, was hit by a source code repository breach after attackers accessed a portion of its internal code. The company engaged forensic experts and law enforcement and claims it has found no evidence of product tampering, pipeline compromise, or active exploitation so far. AI THREATS Researchers pinpointed CVE-2026-26268, a flaw in Cursor’s coding environment that enables remote code execution when its AI agent interacts with a cloned malicious repository. The attack chains Git hooks and bare repositories to run attacker scripts, risking exposure of source code, tokens, and internal tools. Researchers exposed Bluekit, a phishing-as-a-service platform that bundles 40-plus templates and an AI Assistant using GPT-4.1, Claude, Gemini, Llama, and DeepSeek. The AI-assisted toolkit centralizes domain setup, realistic login clones, anti-analysis filters, real-time session monitoring, and Telegram-based exfiltration. Researchers demonstrated an AI-enabled supply chain attack in which Anthropic’s Claude Opus co-authored a code commit that introduced PromptMink malware into an open-source autonomous crypto trading project. The hidden dependency siphoned credentials, planted persistent SSH access, and stole source code, enabling wallet takeover. VULNERABILITIES AND PATCHES Microsoft has fixed a privilege escalation flaw in Microsoft Entra ID that allowed the Agent ID Administrator role for AI agents to take over any service account. Researchers published a proof-of-concept showing attackers could add credentials and impersonate privileged identities. cPanel has addressed CVE-2026-41940, a critical authentication bypass in cPanel and WHM that is being actively exploited in the wild as a zero-day, and allows full administrative control without credentials. Patches were issued on April 28, and Shadowserver observed 44,000 internet addresses scanning or attacking decoy systems. Check Point IPS provides protection against this threat (cPanel Authentication Bypass (CVE-2026-41940)) Google has released patches for a critical code execution flaw in the Gemini CLI and its GitHub Action that allowed outsiders to run commands on build servers in CI/CD pipelines. The issue automatically trusted workspace files during automated jobs, allowing malicious pull requests to trigger code execution. LiteLLM proxy versions 1.81.16 to 1.83.6 are affected by CVE-2026-42208, a critical SQL injection flaw used to manage large language model API keys. Attackers can read and potentially alter the proxy database, with exploitation attempts observed about 36 hours after disclosure. Check Point IPS provides protection against this threat (LiteLLM SQL Injection (CVE-2026-42208)) THREAT INTELLIGENCE REPORTS Check Point Research has revealed that the VECT 2.0 ransomware effectively acts as a data wiper across Windows, Linux, and ESXi. A critical encryption mistake discards required decryption information for files larger than 128 KB, making recovery impossible even after payment. Check Point Threat Emulation and Harmony Endpoint provide protection against this threat Researchers analyzed a Mirai-based botnet campaign targeting Brazilian internet providers, abusing TP-Link Archer AX21 routers via CVE-2023-1389 and open DNS servers for high-volume amplification attacks. Leaked files linked control activity to infrastructure and SSH keys associated with DDoS mitigation firm Huge Networks. Researchers uncovered a large-scale phishing campaign, dubbed AccountDumpling, that abuses Google AppSheet email services to hijack Facebook accounts. The operation was linked to Vietnam based attackers and is using cloned support pages, reward lures, and live 2FA collection, compromising over 30,000 users and monetizing stolen access through Telegram. Researchers documented a TeamPCP supply chain campaign that compromised four SAP npm packages used in cloud development workflows. The malicious installers harvested developer and cloud credentials across GitHub, npm, and major providers, enabling propagation and downstream compromises before the packages were removed.

A Brazilian tech firm that specializes in protecting networks from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks has been enabling a botnet responsible for an extended campaign of massive DDoS attacks against other network operators in Brazil, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. The firm’s chief executive says the malicious activity resulted from a security breach and was likely the work of a competitor trying to tarnish his company’s public image. For the past several years, security experts have tracked a series of massive DDoS attacks originating from Brazil and solely targeting Brazilian ISPs. Until recently, it was less than clear who or what was behind these digital sieges. That changed earlier this month when a trusted source who asked to remain anonymous shared a curious file archive that was exposed in an open directory online. The exposed archive contained several Portuguese-language malicious programs written in Python. It also included the private SSH authentication keys belonging to the CEO of Huge Networks, a Brazilian ISP that primarily offers DDoS protection to other Brazilian network operators. Founded in Miami, Fla. in 2014, Huge Networks’s operations are centered in Brazil. The company originated from protecting game servers against DDoS attacks and evolved into an ISP-focused DDoS mitigation provider. It does not appear in any public abuse complaints and is not associated with any known DDoS-for-hire services. Nevertheless, the exposed archive shows that a Brazil-based threat actor maintained root access to Huge Networks infrastructure and built a powerful DDoS botnet by routinely mass-scanning the Internet for insecure Internet routers and unmanaged domain name system (DNS) servers on the Web that could be enlisted in attacks. DNS is what allows Internet users to reach websites by typing familiar domain names instead of the associated IP addresses. Ideally, DNS servers only provide answers to machines within a trusted domain. But so-called “DNS reflection” attacks rely on DNS servers that are (mis)configured to accept queries from anywhere on the Web. Attackers can send spoofed DNS queries to these servers so that the request appears to come from the target’s network. That way, when the DNS servers respond, they reply to the spoofed (targeted) address. By taking advantage of an extension to the DNS protocol that enables large DNS messages, botmasters can dramatically boost the size and impact of a reflection attack — crafting DNS queries so that the responses are much bigger than the requests. For example, an attacker could compose a DNS request of less than 100 bytes, prompting a response that is 60-70 times as large. This amplification effect is especially pronounced when the perpetrators can query many DNS servers with these spoofed requests from tens of thousands of compromised devices simultaneously. The exposed file archive includes a command-line history showing exactly how this attacker built and maintained a powerful botnet by scouring the Internet for TP-Link Archer AX21 routers. Specifically, the botnet seeks out TP-Link devices that remain vulnerable to CVE-2023-1389, an unauthenticated command injection vulnerability that was patched back in April 2023. Malicious domains in the exposed Python attack scripts included DNS lookups for hikylover[.]st, and c.loyaltyservices[.]lol, both domains that have been flagged in the past year as control servers for an Internet of Things (IoT) botnet powered by a Mirai malware variant. The leaked archive shows the botmaster coordinated their scanning from a Digital Ocean server that has been flagged for abusive activity hundreds of times in the past year. The Python scripts invoke multiple Internet addresses assigned to Huge Networks that were used to identify targets and execute DDoS campaigns. The attacks were strictly limited to Brazilian IP address ranges, and the scripts show that each selected IP address prefix was attacked for 10-60 seconds with four parallel processes per host before the botnet moved on to the next target. The archive also shows these malicious Python scripts relied on private SSH keys belonging to Huge Networks’s CEO, Erick Nascimento. Reached for comment about the files, Mr. Nascimento said he did not write the attack programs and that he didn’t realize the extent of the DDoS campaigns until contacted by KrebsOnSecurity. “We received and notified many Tier 1 upstreams regarding very very large DDoS attacks against small ISPs,” Nascimento said. “We didn’t dig deep enough at the time, and what you sent makes that clear.” Nascimento said the unauthorized activity is likely related to a digital intrusion first detected in January 2026 that compromised two of the company’s development servers, as well as his personal SSH keys. But he said there’s no evidence those keys were used after January. “We notified the team in writing the same day, wiped the boxes, and rotated keys,” Nascimento said, sharing a screenshot of a January 11 notification from Digital Ocean. “All documented internally.” Mr. Nascimento said Huge Networks has since engaged a third-party network forensics firm to investigate further. “Our working assessment so far is that this all started with a single internal compromise — one pivot point that gave the attacker downstream access to some resources, including a legacy personal droplet of mine,” he wrote. “The compromise happened through a bastion/jump server that several people had access to,” Nascimento continued. “Digital Ocean flagged the droplet on January 11 — compromised due to a leaked SSH key, in their wording — I was traveling at the time and addressed it on return. That droplet was deprecated and destroyed, and it was never part of Huge Networks infrastructure.” The malicious software that powers the botnet of TP-Link devices used in the DDoS attacks on Brazilian ISPs is based on Mirai, a malware strain that made its public debut in September 2016 by launching a then record-smashing DDoS attack that kept this website offline for four days. In January 2017, KrebsOnSecurity identified the Mirai authors as the co-owners of a DDoS mitigation firm that was using the botnet to attack gaming servers and scare up new clients. In May 2025, KrebsOnSecurity was hit by another Mirai-based DDoS that Google called the largest attack it had ever mitigated. That report implicated a 20-something Brazilian man who was running a DDoS mitigation company as well as several DDoS-for-hire services that have since been seized by the FBI. Nascimento flatly denied being involved in DDoS attacks against Brazilian operators to generate business for his company’s services. “We don’t run DDoS attacks against Brazilian operators to sell protection,” Nascimento wrote in response to questions. “Our sales model is mostly inbound and through channel integrator, distributors, partners — not active prospecting based on market incidents. The targets in the scripts you received are small regional providers, the vast majority of which are neither in our customer base nor in our commercial pipeline — a fact verifiable through public sources like QRator.” Nascimento maintains he has “strong evidence stored on the blockchain” that this was all done by a competitor. As for who that competitor might be, the CEO wouldn’t say. “I would love to share this with you, but it could not be published as it would lose the surprise factor against my dishonest competitor,” he explained. “Coincidentally or not, your contact happened a week before an important event – one that this competitor has NEVER participated in (and it’s a traditional event in the sector). And this year, they will be participating. Strange, isn’t it?” Strange indeed.

A new Mirai-based malware campaign is actively exploiting CVE-2025-29635, a high-severity command-injection vulnerability affecting D-Link DIR-823X routers, to enlist devices into the botnet. CVE-2025-29635 allows an attacker to execute arbitrary commands on remote devices by sending a POST request to a vulnerable endpoint, triggering remote command execution (RCE). Akamai's SIRT, which detected the Mirai campaign in March 2026, reports that, although the flaw was first disclosed 13 months ago by security researchers Wang Jinshuai and Zhao Jiangting, this is the first time in-the-wild active exploitation has been observed. "The Akamai SIRT discovered active exploitation attempts of the D-Link command injection vulnerability CVE-2025-29635 in our global network of honeypots in early March 2026," reads Akamai's report. "This vulnerability exists in D-Link DIR-823X series routers in firmware versions 240126 and 24082, and allows an authorized attacker to execute arbitrary commands on remote devices by sending a POST request to the /goform/set_prohibiting endpoint via the corresponding function, which can trigger remote command execution." The researchers who discovered the flaw briefly published a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit on GitHub, but later retracted it. Akamai's observations show attackers are sending POST requests that change directories across writable paths, download a shell script (dlink.sh) from an external IP, and execute it. The script installs a Mirai-based malware named "tuxnokill," which supports multiple architectures. In terms of capabilities, it features Mirai's standard distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack repertoire, including TCP SYN/ACK/STOMP, UDP floods, and HTTP null. Akamai has also found that the threat actor behind this campaign also exploits CVE-2023-1389, impacting TP-Link routers, and a separate RCE flaw in ZTE ZXV10 H108L routers. The same attack pattern was observed across all of them, leading to the deployment of a Mirai payload. The impacted devices reached end of life (EoL) in November 2024, so it's likely the latest firmware available for the model does not address CVE-2025-29635. D-Link does not make exceptions when active exploitation is detected, so it's unlikely the vendor will provide a fixing patch now. BleepingComputer has contacted D-Link with questions about the reported activity and the status of the fix, and we will update this post as soon as we hear back. Meanwhile, users of routers that have reached EoL are recommended to upgrade to a newer model that enjoys active support with frequent security fixes, disable remote administration portals if not needed, change default admin passwords, and monitor for unexpected configuration changes. 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

A Mirai botnet is targeting discontinued D-Link routers impacted by a command injection vulnerability disclosed a year ago, Akamai reports. Tracked as CVE-2025-29635, the security defect exists because an attacker-controllable function value is copied without validation, and can be exploited through crafted POST requests. “The router extracts the value that ends up in the command buffer from the request body without checking which form field it came from,” Akamai notes. The observed exploitation attempts, it says, target the same code and trigger the same system call as a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit published last year on GitHub, which has since been removed. As part of the observed execution path, a shell script is loaded to download and run a payload that has numerous Mirai characteristics, including XOR encoding, a hardcoded console execution string, and a hardcoded downloader IP. The exploited issue exists in D-Link DIR-823X series router firmware versions 240126 and 24082. The affected devices were discontinued last year and no longer receive software updates from the vendor. “D-Link strongly recommends that this product be retired and cautions that any further use of this product may be a risk to devices connected to it,” the company warned in September. The hackers have been observed targeting TP-Link and ZTE router vulnerabilities as well, Akamai says. The threat actor behind the recently observed attacks appears not to have used vibe coding to build their payload. “Mirai malware campaigns continue to plague the industry, with much of the original source code continuing to be reused by various threat actors, both skilled and unskilled. The low barrier of entry and potential financial benefits are some of the incentives that may entice individuals to enter the botnet space and become a cyberthreat actor,” Akamai notes. Related: Evasive Masjesu DDoS Botnet Targets IoT Devices Related: Aisuru and Kimwolf DDoS Botnets Disrupted in International Operation Related: 174 Vulnerabilities Targeted by RondoDox Botnet Related: Aeternum Botnet Loader Employs Polygon Blockchain C&C to Boost Resilience

The US cybersecurity agency CISA on Monday expanded its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog with eight more flaws, including three that have not previously been flagged as exploited. The most recent of these is CVE-2026-20133, a high-severity information disclosure bug in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager that was patched in February. Insufficient file system access restrictions could allow an attacker to access the API of an affected system and read information on the underlying operating system. The CVE was disclosed in February alongside CVE-2026-20122 and CVE-2026-20128, two SD-WAN flaws that Cisco flagged as exploited in March. Now, CISA has added all three to the KEV list. The agency also warned that two security defects disclosed last year in Kentico Xperience and Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS), both leading to remote code execution (RCE), have been exploited in attacks. Tracked as CVE-2025-2749, the Kentico bug is described as a path traversal and arbitrary file upload issue that could allow attackers to execute content on the server remotely. The weakness exists because the Staging Sync Server of Kentico Xperience versions 13.0.178 and prior would upload arbitrary files to path-relative locations. Authentication is required for successful exploitation. In March last year, WatchTowr explained that hackers could chain three flaws in Kentico, including an authenticated RCE issue, to compromise deployments. Two of the weaknesses, tracked as CVE-2025-2746 and CVE-2025-2747, were added to CISA’s KEV catalog in October. The ZCS vulnerability that CISA added to KEV this week is CVE-2025-48700, an XSS bug in the Zimbra Classic UI that can be exploited to execute JavaScript code within the user’s session. Rooted in the insufficient sanitization of HTML content, the flaw can be triggered when the user opens a crafted message in the Classic UI. The other three flaws added to CISA’s KEV on Monday include CVE-2025-32975, a critical Quest KACE issue flagged as potentially exploited last month; CVE-2024-27199, a JetBrains TeamCity weakness exploited for over two years; and CVE-2023-27351, a PaperCut defect exploited since April 2023. CISA urges federal agencies to patch the Cisco and Zimbra vulnerabilities by April 23, and the other four issues by May 4. Related: Hackers Fail to Exploit Flaw in Discontinued TP-Link Routers Related: Recent Apache ActiveMQ Vulnerability Exploited in the Wild Related: Cursor AI Vulnerability Exposed Developer Devices Related: NIST Prioritizes NVD Enrichment for CVEs in CISA KEV, Critical Software

Threat actors have been abusing QEMU in campaigns leading to the deployment of ransomware and remote access tools, Sophos reports. A cross-platform open source machine emulator, QEMU allows users to run a guest VM on top of their operating system (VM host). Over the past years, security researchers documented several malicious campaigns using QEMU to establish covert communication channels and deploy backdoors, and Sophos now says it has observed an uptick in abuse since late 2025. As part of a campaign first observed in November 2025, tracked as STAC4713 and potentially linked to the PayoutsKing ransomware, threat actors used the machine emulator as a covert reverse SSH backdoor for payload delivery and credential harvesting. At first, the hackers targeted exposed SonicWall VPNs that lacked MFA for initial access, but later switched to exploiting CVE-2025-26399, a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in SolarWinds Web Help Desk. The attackers created a scheduled task to launch a QEMU VM with System privileges and to establish persistence. Upon launch, the virtual hard disk image creates a reverse SSH tunnel, providing the threat actors with direct access to the VM. Sophos observed the attackers creating a volume shadow copy snapshot, copying the Active Directory database and the SAM and SYSTEM hives to temporary folders, and performing network share discovery and file access using native Windows tools. The cybersecurity firm attributes the attacks to Gold Encounter, a closed hacking group operating the PayoutsKing ransomware. The gang is known to target VMware and ESXi environments for encryption. In February 2026, Sophos observed a second campaign abusing QEMU. Tracked as STAC3725, it has been relying on the exploitation of CVE-2025-5777 (the infamous CitrixBleed2 bug) for initial access and on a malicious ScreenConnect client to achieve persistence. Following the NetScaler exploitation, the attackers created a start service, installed the remote access tool to retrieve QEMU and a virtual disk image, and manually executed the attack within the VM. The hackers were observed deploying roughly a dozen tools and libraries, harvesting credentials, enumerating Kerberos usernames, performing Active Directory reconnaissance, staging payloads, and exfiltrating data. “Follow-on activity differed across intrusions, suggesting that initial access brokers originally compromised the victims’ environments and then sold the access to other threat actors,” Sophos notes. Organizations are advised to search for unauthorized QEMU installations, rogue scheduled tasks, unusual port forwarding rules, and monitor outbound SSH tunnels, which could reveal potential compromise. Related: Next.js Creator Vercel Hacked Related: Hackers Fail to Exploit Flaw in Discontinued TP-Link Routers Related: Microsoft Paid Out $2.3 Million at Zero Day Quest 2026 Hacking Contest Related: 100 Chrome Extensions Steal User Data, Create Backdoor

Hackers have been targeting a vulnerability in discontinued TP-Link routers for a year, so far failing to successfully exploit it, Palo Alto Networks reports. Tracked as CVE-2023-33538 (CVSS score of 8.8), the flaw is described as an authenticated command injection issue rooted in the lack of sanitization of the ssid1 parameter in HTTP GET requests. “An attacker could send commands to this parameter. This would allow remote attackers to submit special requests, resulting in command injection and theoretically leading to arbitrary system command execution on the Wi-Fi router,” Palo Alto Networks explains. The weakness impacts TP-Link’s TL-WR940N v2 and v4, TL-WR740N v1 and v2, and TL-WR841N v8 and v10 router models, the cybersecurity firm says. Proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code targeting the CVE has been publicly available for almost three years. In June last year, the US cybersecurity agency CISA added the bug to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, warning that it affects end-of-life (EoL) and end-of-service (EoS) products, and urging federal agencies to discontinue the use of these devices immediately. Now, Palo Alto Networks says the activity surrounding CVE-2023-33538’s exploitation that it has been tracking since June last year has involved Mirai-based payloads similar to the Condi IoT botnet binaries. The payload was designed to turn the infected devices into HTTP servers that would deliver malware binaries to requesting clients (other infected devices). Palo Alto Networks’ dive into the exploitation attempts has confirmed the existence of the underlying vulnerability, while uncovering errors in the exploit code that prevented attackers from successfully exploiting the CVE. Hackers, it says, attempted to exploit the bug without authentication, targeted the wrong parameter, and relied on a utility not present in the vulnerable devices’ BusyBox environment. “This demonstrates a common attack pattern of scanning and probing with incomplete or inaccurate exploit code, resulting in noisy but ultimately ineffective attacks,” the cybersecurity firm says. Successful exploitation of the command injection issue, Palo Alto Networks explains, could lead to denial-of-service (DoS) conditions or could allow attackers to achieve persistent access to the vulnerable devices. Related: Recent Apache ActiveMQ Vulnerability Exploited in the Wild Related: Cursor AI Vulnerability Exposed Developer Devices Related: 53 DDoS Domains Taken Down by Law Enforcement Related: 100 Chrome Extensions Steal User Data, Create Backdoor

Threat actors are exploiting security flaws in TBK DVR and end‑of‑life (EoL) TP-Link Wi-Fi routers to deploy Mirai-botnet variants on compromised devices, according to findings from Fortinet FortiGuard Labs and Palo Alto Networks Unit 42. The attack targeting TBK DVR devices has been found to exploit CVE-2024-3721 (CVSS score: 6.3), a medium-severity command injection vulnerability affecting TBK DVR-4104 and DVR-4216 digital video recording devices, to deliver a Mirai variant called Nexcorium. "IoT devices are increasingly prime targets for large-scale attacks due to their widespread use, lack of patching, and often weak security settings," security researcher Vincent Li said. "Threat actors continue exploiting known vulnerabilities to gain initial access and deploy malware that can persist, spread, and cause distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks." This is not the first time the vulnerability has been exploited in the wild. Over the past year, the security issue has been leveraged to deploy a Mirai variant as well as a distinct, relatively new botnet called RondoDox. In September 2025, CloudSEK also disclosed details of a large-scale loader-as-a-service botnet that has been distributing RondoDox, Mirai, and Morte payloads through weak credentials and old flaws in routers, IoT devices, and enterprise apps. The attack activity outlined by Fortinet involves the exploitation of CVE-2024-3721 to obtain and drop a downloader script, which then launches the botnet payload based on the Linux system's architecture. Once the malware is executed, it displays a message stating "nexuscorp has taken control." "Nexcorium has a similar architecture to the Mirai variant, including XOR-encoded configuration table initialization, watchdog module, and DDoS attack module," the security vendor said. The malware also includes an exploit for CVE-2017-17215 to target Huawei HG532 devices in the network and incorporates a list of hard-coded usernames and passwords for use in brute-force attacks targeting the victim's hosts by opening a Telnet connection. If the Telnet login is successful, it attempts to obtain a shell, set up persistence using crontab and systemd service, and connect to an external server to await commands for launching DDoS attacks over UDP, TCP, and SMTP. Once persistence is established on the device, the malware deletes the original downloaded binary to evade analysis. "The Nexcorium malware displays typical traits of modern IoT-focused botnets, combining vulnerability exploitation, support for multiple architectures, and various persistence methods to sustain long-term access to infected systems," Fortinet said. "Its use of known exploits, such as CVE-2017-17215, along with extensive brute-force capabilities, underscores its adaptability and efficacy in increasing its infection reach." The development comes as Unit 42 said it detected active, automated scans and probes attempting to exploit CVE-2023-33538 (CVSS score: 8.8), a command injection vulnerability impacting EoL TP-Link wireless routers, albeit using a flawed approach that doesn't result in a successful compromise. It's worth noting that the security flaw was added to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's (CISA) Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog in June 2025. The vulnerability affects the following models - TL-WR940N v2 and v4 TL-WR740N v1 and v2 TL-WR841N v8 and v10 "Although the in-the-wild attacks we observed were flawed and would fail, our analysis confirms the underlying vulnerability is real," researchers Asher Davila, Malav Vyas, and Chris Navarrete said. "Successful exploitation requires authentication to the router's web interface." The attacks, in this case, attempt to deploy a Mirai-like botnet malware, with the source code featuring numerous references to the string "Condi." It also comes equipped with the ability to update itself with a newer version and act as a web server to spread the infection to other devices that connect to it. Given that the affected TP‑Link devices are no longer actively supported, users are advised to replace them with a newer model and ensure that default credentials are not used. "For the foreseeable future, the security landscape will continue to be shaped by the persistent risk of default credentials in IoT devices," Unit 42 said. "These credentials can turn a limited, authenticated vulnerability into a critical entry point for determined attackers." Update In a new analysis published on April 21, Akamai said it identified threat actors exploiting a command injection vulnerability impacting end-of-life D-Link DIR-823X series routers (CVE-2025-29635, CVSS score: 8.8) to deploy a Mirai botnet variant named "tuxnokill" via a shell script. The activity was detected against its honeypots in early March 2026. In addition to CVE-2025-29635, the attack has been observed attempting to exploit two other vulnerabilities: CVE-2023-1389, which affects TP-Link Archer AX21 devices, and a ZTE ZXV10 H108L router remote code execution (RCE) exploit. The campaigns are part of a broader effort undertaken by various threat actors to exploit known vulnerabilities in unpatched and retired IoT hardware, stealthily conscript them into a botnet, and then use those botnets to launch DDoS attacks. "Mirai malware campaigns continue to plague the industry, with much of the original source code continuing to be re-used by various threat actors, both skilled and unskilled," the company said. "The low barrier of entry and potential financial benefits are some of the incentives that may entice individuals to enter the botnet space and become a cyberthreat actor." (The story was updated after publication on April 22, 2026, to include details of additional Mirai botnet activity.)

We identified active, automated scans and probes attempting to exploit CVE-2023-33538, a vulnerability in several end-of-life TP-Link Wi-Fi router models: TL-WR940N v2 and v4 TL-WR740N v1 and v2 TL-WR841N v8 and v10 The observed payloads are malicious binaries characteristic of Mirai-like botnet malware, which the exploits attempt to download and execute on vulnerable devices. We observed this activity after the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) June 2025 addition of this CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog. There has been some discussion of how impactful (or not) these active campaigns might have been. To address this, we conducted a deep-dive investigation by emulating the TP-Link TL-WR940N router. Using firmware emulation and reverse engineering, we analyzed whether the specific exploits observed in our telemetry could successfully use this vulnerability to deliver the payload on that device model. During our investigation, we uncovered two important facts about the attempted exploitation of this vulnerability: Although the in-the-wild attacks we observed were flawed and would fail, our analysis confirms the underlying vulnerability is real Successful exploitation requires authentication to the router's web interface This research demonstrates that while active botnet attacks leverage flawed exploit code, the underlying vulnerability remains a practical infection vector due to the widespread use of default internet of things (IoT) credentials. TP-Link gave the following recommendation, regarding the devices and vulnerability in question: We confirm that the affected TP‑Link devices are end‑of‑life, and no vendor patches are available. Our recommendation to customers is to replace these units with supported hardware and ensure that default credentials are not used. Palo Alto Networks customers are better protected from the threats discussed in this article through the following products and services: If you think you might have been compromised or have an urgent matter, contact the Unit 42 Incident Response team. CVE-2023-33538 was publicly reported in June 2023, affecting the aforementioned end-of-life TP-Link routers. Proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits for the different routers appeared earlier that month. The PoC exploits were removed from their original GitHub post but can be retrieved via Web Archive. According to the report, the /userRpm/WlanNetworkRpm endpoint contains a vulnerability in processing the ssid1 parameter sent through an HTTP GET request, because the parameter value is not sanitized when the Wi-Fi router processes it. Consequently, an attacker could send commands to this parameter. This would allow remote attackers to submit special requests, resulting in command injection and theoretically leading to arbitrary system command execution on the Wi-Fi router. Our telemetry systems detected active, large-scale exploitation attempts for CVE-2023-33538 around the time of the addition to the KEV catalog in June 2025. We observed multiple exploitation attempts similar to the example shown below in Figure 1. These were GET requests toward the /userRpm/WlanNetworkRpm.htm endpoint, attempting to execute multiple commands in the ssid parameter: The first command uses wget to download an Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) binary named arm7 from the IP address 51.38.137[.]113 into the /tmp directory. The next command executes chmod 777 on the arm7 binary to grant the file read, write and execute permissions. The last command executes the saved binary at /tmp/arm7 with the parameter tplink. This set of commands is commonly associated with botnets, such as Mirai. These HTTP GET requests use Basic Authentication with the admin:admin credential encoded in Base64 (YWRtaW46YWRtaW4= as shown in Figure 1). The arm7 binary found in our telemetry appears to be a Mirai variant. It is similar to the one used in the Condi IoT botnet, with multiple examples of the string condi in the file's code. Figure 2 shows an example of code from the arm7 binary showing the string condi2. In the main function's command processing loop, the arm7 binary waits for specific command sequences. The commands are received through the network socket connection. The data is stored in the buffer var_868 from the fd_serv function, which is the command-and-control (C2) server socket, as shown in Figure 3. After receiving data, the arm7 binary checks for specific byte patterns described below in Table 1. Table 1. Control commands for the arm7 binary. When the binary updates itself, it first calls the update_bins("top1hbt.arm") function as shown in Figure 4. For the update, the arm7 binary iterates through an arch_names array, which contains a total of eight additional architectures (e.g., top1hbt.arm6, top1hbt.mips) and updates accordingly. For each update, the arm7 binary: Removes any previously existing file Connects to the C2 server Sends HTTP GET requests Downloads a fresh malware binary The update_bins() function contains the IP address and port hard-coded as observed in disassembled code from the arm7 binary shown in Figures 5 and 6. In Figure 5, the value 0x71892633 in little-endian corresponds to the IP address 51.38.137[.]113 and 0x5000 in little-endian for TCP port 80. Figure 6 shows the same IP address and port presented as \x00\x50 for TCP port 80 and \x33\x26\x89\x71 for 51.38.137[.]113. The arm7 binary communicates with the C2 server at 51.38.137[.]113, which also hosts the binary itself. This IP address is also associated with the domain cnc.vietdediserver[.]shop, which is a known, malicious domain associated with Mirai-like botnet campaigns. As part of the botnet, a host infected with the arm7 binary will act as a web server, which requires starting the HTTP daemon, httpd. For this HTTP server start procedure, the arm7 binary checks whether the flag for httpd_started is not set, meaning the httpd_start() function shown in Figure 7 has not been executed. If the httpd_started is not set, the process generates a random value between 1024 and 65535 to use as a TCP port. It then calls httpd_start() to fork child processes. After that, the arm7 binary binds the TCP port number to a socket, listens for connections and performs a full binary update. When this happens, the process sets httpd_started flag value to 1. Finally, as an HTTP server, the infected botnet host serves malware binaries to requesting clients, which are other compromised devices. When the httpd_start() function is executed, it first forks a child process that immediately downloads fresh malware binaries for eight different CPU architectures, as shown in the function graph in Figure 8. After successfully retrieving updated malware binaries from the server at 51.38.137[.]113 and storing them locally, the process establishes an HTTP server on a randomly assigned port. The process then creates a listening socket that accepts incoming connections from other devices on the network. Although we were unable to retrieve updated malware files from the original C2 server, we observed other samples with the same top1hbt prefix from other C2 servers. As noted earlier, the exploit attempts to compromise a vulnerable TP-Link device and infect it with the arm7 version, similar to the malware binary shown below in Figure 9. The exploit attempt appears to contain errors. While the endpoint /userRpm/WlanNetworkRpm.htm is correct, this exploit is incorrectly attempting to inject malicious commands into the ssid parameter. The actual vulnerable parameter reported on the target system is ssid1. To reproduce and analyze the vulnerability, we acquired the TP-Link WR940N US V4 firmware from the vendor's support site. We then used the publicly available firmware-analysis-toolkit to extract and emulate the firmware, establishing the necessary environment for testing. Our analysis focused specifically on the TP-Link TL-WR940N router model. The firmware contains a 32-bit MIPS ELF binary named httpd. This binary is an HTTP daemon that runs a web server for certain TP-Link wireless routers. The daemon initializes various subsystems based on the router's operating mode and product ID, then starts an HTTP server to provide the web management interface typically accessed at the router's IP address. This httpd binary implements the router's web-based management interface. The interface provides configuration options such as: Wireless local area network (WLAN) Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Logging Diagnostics System utilities like ping and traceroute Our analysis of the httpd binary in the firmware reveals the exact execution flow that leads to the command injection vulnerability. The process begins when a request is sent to the /userRpm/WlanNetworkRpm.htm endpoint, at which point the HTTP_Handler() function receives the request and parses its parameters. It uses httpGetEnv() to extract the value of ssid1.Figure 10 shows this, from the decompiled code from offset 0x467588,using Binary Ninja. Then the HTTP_Handler() function calls the wlanNetworkSave() function at offset 0x467108 to handle new configurations. Figure 11 shows this from the decompiled code. The wlanNetworkSave() calls the parseWlanParams() function at offset 0x4667c0, as shown in Figure 12. The parseWlanParams() function iterates through parameters ssid1 to ssid4, because some routers support multiple SSID values. The function then copies the provided values into a new WLAN configuration structure using strncpy(). The flow then proceeds to the wlanBasicDynSet() function, which compares the new configuration with the previously saved one using memcmp(). If the wlanBasicDynSet() function detects any changes, like a new SSID value, the function calls wirelessConfigUpdate() to apply the changes. In addition to looping through the ssid1 to ssid4 parameters, the parseWlanParams() function also parses other WLAN configuration parameters such as region, chanWidth, channel and mode. Then, it validates and stores these values in the WLAN configuration structure as shown in the decompiled code. Figure 13 shows how the parseWlanParams()function calls httpGetEnv() to extract the SSID value, then calls strncpy() to copy the SSID value to the WLAN configuration structure. When wlanNetworkSave() calls swWlanBasicDynSet/wlanBasicDynSet (shown in Figure 14), it internally calls swWlanBasicCfgSet to save the WLAN configuration. It compares the old and the new WLAN configuration using memcmp(). If the configuration parameters have changed, it calls wirelessConfigUpdate(). The wirelessConfigUpdate() function compares the old and new SSID string values. This is the point where CVE-2023-33538 comes into play. Content sent through an HTTP request to the /userRpm/WlanNetworkRpm.htm endpoint using the ssid1 parameter is not checked or sanitized. If the new SSID string value is different from the existing SSID string value, the wirelessConfigUpdate() function injects the new, unsanitized SSID value in parameters for executeFormatCmd() to use in the "iwconfig %s essid %s" shell command, as Figure 15 shows. The execFormatCmd() function calls tp_SystemEx() to execute "iwconfig %s essid %s" with the injected content. This final function executes the resulting command using execve("/bin/sh"), as shown in Figure 16. This is the last step in successfully injecting and executing the commands seen in the injection attempt noted earlier in Figure 9. But since the exploit attempt in Figure 9 uses the ssid parameter instead of the ssid1 parameter, that specific attempt would not be successful. By examining this complete chain of events, we confirm the ssid1 parameter is vulnerable to command injection. This is because no part of this chain sanitizes the value of the ssid1 parameter before the value is passed to the system shell. While confirming the CVE-2023-33538 command injection vulnerability exists in the TP-Link firmware, our emulation also identified a critical constraint for exploitation: authentication. Using the open-source firmware analysis toolkit, we created a running instance of the router's environment, allowing us to interact with its web management panel. This process immediately revealed a crucial detail not specified in the original vulnerability report. An attacker must be authenticated to exploit it. After booting the emulator with the TP-Link router firmware, we were presented with the /bin/login binary, which prompts for credentials. As per the /etc/shadow file (Figure 17), the firmware contains the hash of the default credentials: root:sohoadmin Once logged in, we checked the BusyBox help menu (shown in Figure 18). We saw that the list of built-in commands was limited, which makes the command injection exploitation constrained. The firmware contained a limited version of BusyBox that does not support common Linux utilities such as wget, curl or vim. Figure 19 shows that these commands were not present in this BusyBox version. Once the firmware (including the web admin panel) was emulated, the toolkit created a bridged network interface. We used this to directly access the router interface and services shown in Figure 20. The login credentials for the web admin panel were different from the Linux login binary. As Figure 21 shows, we determined the panel default credentials by reading the web/dynaform/custom.js file. After login (admin:admin), the interface generated a session token that is reflected in the following URL: hxxp[:]//192.168.0[.]1/WCYCPJQAHXBRCQSC/userRpm/Index.htm As the session token was sufficiently random, it was not feasible to brute force or guess. The token can only be generated using valid credentials. Once a user enters a username and password to log in, the PCSubWin() function executes to perform the login and generates a session token as Figure 22 shows. During the login process, the PCSubWin() function (shown in Figure 23) generates a cookie by appending the username with the MD5 sum of the password and then Base64-encoding the combined string. This cookie is sent to the login endpoint, which responds with a session token. This session token is then responsible for maintaining an authenticated session in subsequent network requests. After generating the cookie, the web admin panel makes a request to the login endpoint, which responds with the URL with session cookie. Figure 24 shows the response with the session cookie from Burp Suite. CVE-2023-33538 presents a relatively straightforward exploitation path. Attackers can leverage this vulnerability by injecting their malicious payload into the Wireless Network Name (ssid1) field. This direct method of injection makes the vulnerability relatively easy to exploit, as it doesn't require complex bypasses or sophisticated techniques. The simplicity of this attack vector suggests that systems that allow user-defined input in network naming conventions, especially in wireless network configurations, are particularly susceptible. Further investigation into the specific mechanisms of how this field processes and renders input would be crucial to understanding the full scope of potential exploits. These exploits could range from denial-of-service (DoS) attacks to system compromise, depending on the underlying software's handling of the injected data. The simplest way to verify the command injection vulnerability is to insert the reboot command in the payload as demonstrated in Figures 25 and 26. A reboot command execution on an emulated router is not sufficient on its own to confirm a code execution vulnerability, because a reboot can also result from an emulator crash caused by an error. For that reason, it is important to test other payloads and attack options as well. One thing an attacker could try is to write commands to a file that will eventually cause their payload to be executed. The /etc/rc.d/rcS file is a strong candidate for writing, as it's a bash script executed during the boot process. To test this, we needed to verify the content of the rcS file before the attack attempt and then to review the content after the attack attempt (Figure 27). By reading this file before the attack attempt, we could confirm that it was used to load several critical modules during the boot process. Therefore, if an attacker overwrites this file with a malicious payload, it would be executed every time the router boots up. We used our crafted exploit that first generated the MD5 hash for the password and combined it with the username to generate the Base64-encoded string. In further communication with the router, this Base64-encoded string serves as the authorization cookie, as shown in Figure 28. With the authorization cookie obtained, it is sent to the userRpm/LoginRpm.htm?Save=Save endpoint, which returns the session token, as shown in Figure 39. To access any resource on the admin panel, it is critical to have both the authorization cookie and the session token. After acquiring the key, the PoC uses the key and authorization token to make a GET request to the /userRpm/WlanNetworkRpm.htm endpoint. As the vulnerability lies in the ssid1 parameter, the exploit combines the command string with a randomly generated SSID and performs a GET request as shown in Figure 30. Once the request is submitted, the router will respond with the status code 200 and eventually the injected command will be executed on the router. The exploit was run as shown in Figure 31. The exploit wrote a string into the /etc/rc.d/rcS file, which is a shell script that gets executed during the boot process. After the exploit execution, we saw the string reflected in the file (Figure 32), which confirmed the vulnerability. The presence of the string shows that the command injection is actually being processed. The command injection vulnerability, combined with the tftp utility, could open a door for an attacker to download a malicious file. From our emulation and exploitation results, we confirmed that the command injection vulnerability does exist for V4 firmware. However, due to the limited and restrictive nature of the firmware's BusyBox binary, most attacks were constrained. In addition, using some of the techniques mentioned above, combined with a file-transfer utility such as tftp, would allow a motivated attacker to potentially compromise the device further. Neither the public PoC for CVE-2023-33538 nor the attack attempts observed in our telemetry would successfully compromise the TP-Link router environment we analyzed. However, our deep dive into the firmware and its emulation reveals a significant gap between the theoretical vulnerability and its practical, real-world application. The attacks seen in the wild were flawed on multiple levels: They were unauthenticated They targeted the incorrect parameter (ssid instead of ssid1) They relied on the wget utility, which is not present in the firmware's limited BusyBox environment This demonstrates a common attack pattern of scanning and probing with incomplete or inaccurate exploit code, resulting in noisy but ultimately ineffective attacks. While these specific attempts would fail, the command injection vulnerability is real. We confirmed that an attacker who targets an environment with the default login credentials (admin:admin) can gain authenticated access and successfully inject commands into the ssid1 parameter. This access could easily lead to a DoS attack via a reboot command or it could be escalated to achieve persistence by overwriting system boot scripts. For the foreseeable future, the security landscape will continue to be shaped by the persistent risk of default credentials in IoT devices. These credentials can turn a limited, authenticated vulnerability into a critical entry point for determined attackers. Palo Alto Networks customers are better protected from the threats discussed above through the following products: Advanced Threat Prevention is designed to defend networks against both commodity threats and targeted threats. Advanced URL Filtering and Advanced DNS Security identify as malicious known URLs and domains associated with this botnet campaign. The Advanced WildFire machine-learning models and analysis techniques have been reviewed and updated in light of the indicators shared in this research. Cortex Xpanse Attack Surface Management provides visibility of exposed TP-Link routers on customer networks. Xpanse Internet Landscape Intelligence provides global visibility of exposed TP-Link routers and enables characterization of the C2 infrastructure and any host contacted by the malicious files listed in this article. The Device Security platform can leverage network traffic information to identify the vendor, model and firmware version of a device and identify specific devices that are affected by CVE-2023-33538. It also has an inbuilt machine learning-based anomaly detection that can alert the customer if a device exhibits non-typical behavior. If you think you may have been compromised or have an urgent matter, get in touch with the Unit 42 Incident Response team or call: North America: Toll Free: +1 (866) 486-4842 (866.4.UNIT42) UK: +44.20.3743.3660 Europe and Middle East: +31.20.299.3130 Asia: +65.6983.8730 Japan: +81.50.1790.0200 Australia: +61.2.4062.7950 India: 000 800 050 45107 South Korea: +82.080.467.8774 Palo Alto Networks has shared these findings with our fellow Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA) members. CTA members use this intelligence to rapidly deploy protections to their customers and to systematically disrupt malicious cyber actors. Learn more about the Cyber Threat Alliance. Malicious files from the activity: SHA256 hash: 3fbd2a2e82ceb5e91eadbad02cb45ac618324da9b1895d81ebe7de765dca30e7 - File size: 130.75 KB (133,888 bytes) - Filename: arm - File type: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1 (ARM), statically linked, stripped - File description: ELF binary archive downloaded from a malicious server SHA256 hash: 4caaa18982cd4056fead54b98d57f9a2a1ddd654cf19a7ba2366dfadbd6033da - File size: 126.75 KB (129,792 bytes) - Filename: arm5 - File type: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1 (ARM), statically linked, stripped - File description: ELF binary archive downloaded from a malicious server SHA256 hash: 9df711c3aef2bba17b622ddfd955452f8d8eb55899528fbc13d9540c52f13402 - File size: 139.93 KB (143,292 bytes) - Filename: arm6 - File type: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, EABI4 version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, stripped - File description: ELF binary archive downloaded from a malicious server SHA256 hash: 7bbb21fec19512d932b7a92652ed0c8f0fedea89f34b9d6f267cf39de0eb9b20 - File size: 175.60 KB (179,813 bytes) - Filename: arm7 - File type: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, EABI4 version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, with debug_info, not stripped - File description: ELF binary archive downloaded from a malicious server SHA256 hash: 00078aeeaca54b5d3c1237e964e9f956690b782e4ea160d81edc3c6b44e7f620 - File size: (1,731,152 bytes) - Filename: httpd - File type: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, MIPS, MIPS32 rel2 version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked - File description: ELF binary extracted from the firmware downloaded from TP-Link website SHA256 hash: 534b654531a6a540a144da9545ee343e1046f843d7de4c1091b46c3ee66a508b - File size: 169.72 KB (173,796 bytes) - Filename: mips - File type: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, MIPS, MIPS-I version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, stripped - File description: ELF binary archive downloaded from a malicious server SHA256 hash: 919f292a07a37f163f88527e725406187c8ecc637387ad24853fe49ce4e6ddf4 - File size: 114.81 KB (117,568 bytes) - Filename: sh4 - File type: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Renesas SH, version 1 (SYSV), statically link - File description: ELF binary archive downloaded from a malicious server SHA256 hash: c321933e4e5970ba7299fe21778dab9398994c22ca0ba0422c6cbc3fbb95ea26 - File size: 3.9 MB - Filename: wr940n_us_3_16_9_up_boot(160617).bin - File type: firmware 940 v4 TP-Link Technologies version 1.0, version 3.16.9, 4,063,744 bytes or less, at 0x200 865,629 bytes, at 0x100000 2,883,584 bytes - File description: Firmware downloaded from TP-Link website SHA256 hash: 56f21f412e898ad9e3ee05d5f44c44d9d7bcb9ecbfbdb9de11b8fa5a637aeef6 - File size: 136.30 KB (139,576 bytes) - Filename: x86_64 - File type: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, stripped - File description: ELF binary archive downloaded from a malicious server URLs: hxxp[:]//bot.ddosvps[.]cc/top1hbt[.]arm hxxp[:]//bot.ddosvps[.]cc/top1hbt[.]arm5 hxxp[:]//bot.ddosvps[.]cc/top1hbt[.]arm6 hxxp[:]//bot.ddosvps[.]cc/top1hbt[.]arm7 hxxp[:]//bot.ddosvps[.]cc/top1hbt[.]mips hxxp[:]//bot.ddosvps[.]cc/top1hbt[.]mpsl hxxp[:]//bot.ddosvps[.]cc/top1hbt[.]x86_64 hxxp[:]//bot.ddosvps[.]cc/top1hbt[.]sh4 hxxp[:]//51.38.137[.]113/arm hxxp[:]//51.38.137[.]113/arm5 hxxp[:]//51.38.137[.]113/arm6 hxxp[:]//51.38.137[.]113/arm7 hxxp[:]//51.38.137[.]113/x86_64 hxxp[:]//51.38.137[.]113/mips hxxp[:]//51.38.137[.]113/sh4 C2 servers: 51.38.137[.]113 cnc.vietdediserver[.]shop bot.ddosvps[.]cc

A number of critical vulnerabilities impacting products from Adobe, Fortinet, Microsoft, and SAP have taken center stage in April's Patch Tuesday releases. Topping the list is an SQL injection vulnerability impacting SAP Business Planning and Consolidation and SAP Business Warehouse (CVE-2026-27681, CVSS score: 9.9) that could result in the execution of arbitrary database commands. "The vulnerable ABAP program allows a low-privileged user to upload a file with arbitrary SQL statements that will then be executed," Onapsis said in an advisory. In a potential attack scenario, a bad actor could abuse the affected upload-related functionality to run malicious SQL against BW/BPC data stores, extract sensitive data, and delete or corrupt database content. "Manipulated planning figures, broken reports, or deleted consolidation data can undermine close processes, executive reporting, and operational planning," Pathlock said. "In the wrong hands, this issue also creates a credible path to both stealthy data theft and overt business disruption." Another security vulnerability that deserves a mention is a critical-severity remote code execution in Adobe Acrobat Reader (CVE-2026-34621, CVSS score: 8.6) that has come under active exploitation in the wild. That said, there are many unknowns at this stage. It is not clear how many people have been affected by the hacking campaign. Nor is there any information about who is behind the activity, who is being targeted, and what their motives could be. Also patched by Adobe are five critical flaws in ColdFusion versions 2025 and 2023 that, if successfully exploited, could lead to arbitrary code execution, application denial-of-service, arbitrary file system read, and security feature bypass. The vulnerabilities are listed below - CVE-2026-34619 (CVSS score: 7.7) - A path traversal vulnerability leading to security feature bypass CVE-2026-27304 (CVSS score: 9.3) - An improper input validation vulnerability leading to arbitrary code execution CVE-2026-27305 (CVSS score: 8.6) - A path traversal vulnerability leading to arbitrary file system read CVE-2026-27282 (CVSS score: 7.5) - An improper input validation vulnerability leading to security feature bypass CVE-2026-27306 (CVSS score: 8.4) - An improper input validation vulnerability leading to arbitrary code execution Fixes have also been released for two critical FortiSandbox vulnerabilities that could result in authentication bypass and code execution - CVE-2026-39813 (CVSS score: 9.1) - A path traversal vulnerability in FortiSandbox JRPC API that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to bypass authentication via specially crafted HTTP requests. (Fixed in versions 4.4.9 and 5.0.6) CVE-2026-39808 (CVSS score: 9.1) - An operating system command injection vulnerability in FortiSandbox that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute unauthorized code or commands via crafted HTTP requests. (Fixed in version 4.4.9) The development comes as Microsoft addressed a staggering 169 security defects, including a spoofing vulnerability impacting Microsoft SharePoint Server (CVE-2026-32201, CVSS score: 6.5) that could allow an attacker to view sensitive information. The company said it's being actively exploited, although there are no insights into the in-the-wild exploitation associated with the bug. "SharePoint services, especially those used as internal document stores, can be a treasure trove for threat actors looking to steal data, especially data that may be leveraged to force ransom payments using double extortion techniques by threatening to release the stolen data if payment is not made," Kev Breen, senior director of threat research at Immersive, said. "A secondary concern is that threat actors with access to SharePoint services could deploy weaponised documents or replace legitimate documents with infected versions that would allow them to spread to other hosts or victims moving laterally across the organization." Software Patches from Other Vendors In addition to Microsoft, security updates have also been released by other vendors over the past several weeks to rectify several vulnerabilities, including — ABB Amazon Web Services AMD Apple ASUS AVEVA Broadcom (including VMware) Canon Cisco Citrix CODESYS D-Link Dassault Systèmes Dell Devolutions dormakaba Drupal Elastic F5 Fortinet Foxit Software FUJIFILM Gigabyte GitLab Google Android and Pixel Google Chrome Google Cloud Grafana Hitachi Energy HP HP Enterprise (including Aruba Networking and Juniper Networks) Huawei IBM Ivanti Jenkins Lenovo Linux distributions AlmaLinux, Alpine Linux, Amazon Linux, Arch Linux, Debian, Gentoo, Oracle Linux, Mageia, Red Hat, Rocky Linux, SUSE, and Ubuntu MediaTek Mitel Mitsubishi Electric MongoDB Moxa Mozilla Firefox, Firefox ESR, and Thunderbird NETGEAR Node.js NVIDIA ownCloud Palo Alto Networks Phoenix Contact Progress Software QNAP Qualcomm Rockwell Automation Ruckus Wireless Samsung Schneider Electric Siemens SonicWall Splunk Spring Framework Supermicro Synology TP-Link WatchGuard, and Xiaomi

Monday is back, and the weekend’s backlog of chaos is officially hitting the fan. We are tracking a critical zero-day that has been quietly living in your PDFs for months, plus some aggressive state-sponsored meddling in infrastructure that is finally coming to light. It is one of those mornings where the gap between a quiet shift and a full-blown incident response is basically non-existent. The variety this week is particularly nasty. We have AI models being turned into autonomous exploit engines, North Korean groups playing the long game with social engineering, and fileless malware hitting enterprise workflows. There is also a major botnet takedown and new research proving that even fiber optic cables can be used to eavesdrop on your private conversations. Skim this before your next meeting. Let’s get into it. ⚡ Threat of the Week Adobe Acrobat Reader 0-Day Under Attack — Adobe released emergency updates to fix a critical security flaw in Acrobat Reader that has come under active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability, assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2026-34621, carries a CVSS score of 8.6 out of 10.0. Successful exploitation of the flaw could allow an attacker to run malicious code on affected installations. It has been described as a case of prototype pollution that could result in arbitrary code execution. The development comes days after security researcher and EXPMON founder Haifei Li disclosed details of zero-day exploitation of the flaw to run malicious JavaScript code when opening specially crafted PDF documents through Adobe Reader. There is evidence suggesting that the vulnerability may have been under exploitation since December 2025. Your VPN is Helping Attackers Move as Fast as AI The Zscaler ThreatLabz 2026 VPN Risk Report reveals a dangerous disconnect: while attackers use AI to move at machine speed, legacy VPNs are leaving defenders blind and exposed. When you can’t see what’s happening, response time collapses and the odds of containment drop with it. Get the Report ➝ 🔔 Top News U.S. Warns of Hacking Campaign by Iran-Affiliated Cyber Actors — U.S. agencies warned of a hacking campaign undertaken by Iranian threat actors hitting industrial control systems across the U.S. that has had disruptive and costly effects. The attacks, ongoing since last month, targeted programmable logic controllers (PLCs) in the energy sector, water and wastewater utilities, and government facilities that are left exposed to the public internet with the apparent intention of sabotaging their systems. "In a few cases, this activity has resulted in operational disruption and financial loss," the agencies said. The activity has not been attributed to any particular group. The attacks are part of a wider pattern of escalating Iran-linked operations as the war led by the U.S. and Israel against Iran entered its sixth week. The U.S. and Iran have since agreed to a two-week ceasefire. Anthropic's Mythos Model is a 0-Day and Exploit Generation Engine — A closed consortium including tech giants and top security vendors is getting early access to a general-purpose frontier model that Anthropic says can autonomously discover software vulnerabilities at scale. Because there are concerns that frontier AI capabilities could be abused to launch sophisticated attacks, the idea is to use Mythos to improve the security of some of the most widely used software before bad actors get their hands on it. To that end, Project Glasswing aims to apply these capabilities in a controlled, defensive setting, enabling participating companies to test and improve the security of their own products. In early testing, Anthropic claims the model identified thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities across operating systems, web browsers, and other widely used software, not to mention devising exploits for N-day flaws, in some cases, under a day, significantly compressing the timeline typically required to build working exploits. "New AI models, especially those from Anthropic, have triggered a new set of actions for how we build and secure our products," Cisco, which is one of the launch partners, said. "While the capabilities now available to defenders are remarkable, they soon will also become available to adversaries, defining the critical inflection point we face today. Defensively, AI allows us to scan and secure vast codebases at a scale previously unimaginable. However, it also lowers the threshold for attackers, empowering less-skilled actors to launch complex, high-impact campaigns. Ultimately, AI is accelerating the pace of innovation for both defenders and adversaries alike. The question is simply who gets ahead of it and how fast." Law Enforcement Operation Fells APT28 Router Botnet — APT28 has been silently exploiting known vulnerabilities in small and home office (SOHO) routers since at least May 2025, and changing their DNS server settings to redirect victims to websites it controls for credential theft. The attack chain begins with Forest Blizzard gaining unauthorized access to poorly secured SOHO routers and silently modifying their default network settings so that DNS lookups for select websites are altered to direct users to their bogus counterparts. Specifically, the actor replaces the router's legitimate DNS resolver configuration with actor-controlled DNS servers. Since endpoint devices, such as laptops, phones, and workstations, automatically inherit network configuration from routers via the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), every device connecting through a compromised router unknowingly begins forwarding its DNS requests to Russian intelligence-controlled infrastructure. For a select subset of high-priority targets, Forest Blizzard escalated beyond passive DNS collection to active Adversary-in-the-Middle (AiTM) attacks against Transport Layer Security (TLS) connections. The compromised router redirects the victim's DNS query to the actor-controlled resolver. The malicious resolver returns a spoofed IP address, directing the victim's device to actor-controlled infrastructure instead of the legitimate service. Forest Blizzard then intercepts the underlying plaintext traffic – potentially including emails, credentials, and sensitive cloud-hosted content. The activity has gradually declined over the past few weeks. The operations are "likely opportunistic in nature, with the actor casting a wide net to reach many potential victims, before narrowing in on targets of intelligence interest as the attack develops," per the U.K. government. "The GRU provides fraudulent DNS answers for specific domains and services – including Microsoft Outlook Web Access — enabling adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) attacks against encrypted traffic if users navigate through a certificate error warning. These AitM attacks would allow the actors to see the traffic unencrypted." The operation fits into a series of disruptions aimed at Russian government hackers dating back to 2018, including VPNFilter, Cyclops Blink, and MooBot. Drift Protocol Links Hack to North Korea — Drift Protocol has revealed that a North Korean state-linked group spent six months posing as a trading firm to steal $285 million in digital assets. The attack has been described as a meticulously planned intelligence operation that began in fall 2025, when a group of individuals approached Drift staff at a major cryptocurrency conference, presenting themselves as a quantitative trading firm seeking to integrate with the protocol. Over the next couple of months, the group built trust through in-person meetings, Telegram coordination, onboarding an Ecosystem Vault on Drift, and made a $1 million deposit of their own capital. But once the exploit hit, the trading group vanished, with the chats and malware "completely scrubbed" to cover up the tracks. The Drift Protocol hack follows a pattern that is becoming increasingly frequent as this incident marks the 18th North Korea-linked act Elliptic has tracked in 2026. Bitter-Linked Hack-for-Hire Campaign Targets Journalists Across MENA — An apparent hack-for-hire campaign likely orchestrated by a threat actor with suspected ties to the Indian government targeted journalists, activists, and government officials across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The targets included prominent Egyptian journalists and government critics, Mostafa Al-A'sar and Ahmed Eltantawy, along with an anonymous Lebanese journalist. The spear-phishing attacks aimed to compromise their Apple and Google accounts by sending specially crafted links designed to capture their credentials. The attack has been found to share infrastructure overlaps with an Android spyware campaign that leveraged deceptive websites impersonating Signal, ToTok, and Botim to deploy ProSpy and ToSpy to unspecified targets in the U.A.E. While Bitter has not been attributed to espionage campaigns targeting civil society members in the past, the campaign once again demonstrates a growing trend of government agencies outsourcing their hacking operations to private hack-for-hire firms, which develop spyware and exploits for use by law enforcement and intelligence agencies to covertly access data on people's phones. 🔥 Trending CVEs Bugs drop weekly, and the gap between a patch and an exploit is shrinking fast. These are the heavy hitters for the week: high-severity, widely used, or already being poked at in the wild. Check the list, patch what you have, and hit the ones marked urgent first — CVE-2026-34621 (Adobe Acrobat Reader), CVE-2026-39987 (Marimo), CVE-2026-34040 (Docker Engine), CVE-2025-59528 (Flowise), CVE-2026-34976 (dgraph), CVE-2026-0049, CVE-2025-48651 (Android), CVE-2026-0740 (Ninja Forms – File Upload plugin), CVE-2025-58136 (Apache Traffic Server), CVE-2026-4350 (Perfmatters plugin), CVE-2026-32922, CVE-2026-33579, GHSA-9p3r-hh9g-5cmg, GHSA-g5cg-8x5w-7jpm, GHSA-8rh7-6779-cjqq, GHSA-hc5h-pmr3-3497, GHSA-j7p2-qcwm-94v4, GHSA-fqw4-mph7-2vr8, GHSA-9hjh-fr4f-gxc4, GHSA-hf68-49fm-59cq (OpenClaw), CVE-2026-29059, CVE-2026-23696, CVE-2026-22683 (Windmill), CVE-2026-34197 (Apache ActiveMQ), CVE-2026-4342 (Kubernetes), CVE-2026-34078 (Flatpak), CVE-2026-31790 (OpenSSL), CVE-2026-0775 (npm cli), CVE-2026-0776 (Discord Client), CVE-2026-0234 (Palo Alto Networks), CVE-2026-4112 (SonicWall), CVE-2026-5437 through CVE-2026-5445 (Orthanc DICOM Server), CVE-2026-30815, CVE-2026-30818 (TP-Link), CVE-2026-33784 (Juniper Networks Support Insights Virtual Lightweight Collector), CVE-2026-23869 (React Server Components), CVE-2026-5707, CVE-2026-5708, CVE-2026-5709 (AWS Research and Engineering Studio), CVE-2026-5173, CVE-2026-1092, CVE-2025-12664 (GitLab), CVE-2026-5860, CVE-2026-5858, CVE-2026-5859, from CVE-2026-5860 through CVE-2026-5873 (Google Chrome), CVE-2023-46233, CVE-2026-1188, CVE-2026-1342, CVE-2026-1346 (IBM Verify Identity Access and IBM Security Verify Access), CVE-2026-5194 (WolfSSL), and CVE-2026-20929 (Windows HTTP.sys). 🎥 Cybersecurity Webinars The Blueprint for AI Agent Governance: Identity, Visibility, and Control → As autonomous AI agents move from experimental "slideware" to production middleware, they’ve created a massive new attack surface: non-human identities. Join this webinar to cut through the vendor noise and get a practical blueprint for the three pillars of agent security—identity, visibility, and control. Learn how to establish hardware-backed agent identities and implement forensic AI proxies to govern your machine workforce before the "ghosts" in your system become liabilities. State of AI Security 2026: From Experimental Apps to Autonomous Agents → AI is evolving from static tools to autonomous agents, outstripping traditional security faster than ever. With 87% of leaders citing AI as their top emerging risk, the "wait and see" approach is officially over. Join us to dissect the 2026 State of AI Security and gain a battle-tested roadmap for securing model runtimes, preventing agentic data leaks, and governing your machine workforce in production. Validate 56% Faster: How AI Agents are Automating the Pentest Loop → Vulnerability backlogs are endless, but true exploitability is rare. Agentic Exposure Validation uses autonomous AI to safely test your defenses in real-time, proving which risks are real and which are just noise. Join us to learn how to automate your validation loop, prioritize the 1% of flaws that actually matter, and shrink your attack surface at machine speed. 📰 Around the Cyber World Fake Claude Website Drops PlugX — A fake website impersonating Anthropic's Claude to push a trojanized installer that deploys known malware referred to asPlugXusing a technique called DLL side-loading. The domain mimics Claude's official site, and visitors who download the ZIP archive receive a copy of Claude that installs and runs as expected," Malwarebytes said. "But in the background, it deploys a PlugX malware chain that gives attackers remote access to the system." While PlugX is known to be widely shared among Chinese hacking groups and delivered via DLL side-loading, its source code has circulated in underground forums, indicating that other threat actors could also be weaponizing the malware in their own attacks. Seized VerifTools Servers Expose 915,655 Fake IDs — In August 2025, a joint law enforcement operation between the Netherlands and the U.S. led to the takedown of a fake ID marketplace called VerifTools. Last week, Dutch police arrested eight suspects in a nationwide operation targeting users of the illicit platform as part of an identity fraud investigation. The male suspects, aged between 20 and 34, have been accused of identity fraud, forgery, and cybercrime-related offenses. In addition, nine suspects have been ordered to report to the police station. This includes seven men aged 18 to 35, and two girls aged 15 and 16. Further investigation into VerifTools has revealed that there were 636,847 registered users from February 2021 to August 2025, with 915,655 fake documents generated between May 2023 and August 2025. Investigators also found 236,002 document images linked to the U.S. that were purchased for about $1.47 million between July 2024 and August 2025. U.K. Government Threatens Tech Execs with Jail Time — The U.K. government said it submitted amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill that, besides criminalizing pornography depicting illegal sexual conduct between family members and adults roleplaying as children and prohibiting people from possessing or publishing such content, also aims to fine or imprison senior executives of companies who fail to remove people's intimate images that have been shared without consent. Optical Fibers for Acoustic Eavesdropping — New research from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Chinese University of Hong Kong has uncovered a critical side channel within telecommunication optical fiber that enables acoustic eavesdropping. "By exploiting the sensitivity of optical fibers to acoustic vibrations, attackers can remotely monitor sound-induced deformations in the fiber structure and further recover information from the original sound waves," a group of academics said in an accompanying paper. "This issue becomes particularly concerning with the proliferation of Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) installations in modern buildings. Attackers with access to one end of an optical fiber can use commercially available Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) systems to tap into the private environment surrounding the other end." Storm-2755 Conducts Payroll Pirate Attacks — Microsoft said it observed an emerging, financially motivated threat actor dubbed Storm-2755 carrying out payroll pirate attacks targeting Canadian users by abusing legitimate enterprise workflows. "In this campaign, Storm-2755 compromised user accounts to gain unauthorized access to employee profiles and divert salary payments to attacker-controlled accounts, resulting in direct financial loss for affected individuals and organizations," the company said. The tech giant also pointed out that the campaign is distinct from prior activity owing to differences in delivery and targeting.Particularly, this involves the exclusive targeting of Canadian users and the use of malvertising and search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning industry agnostic search terms like "Office 365" to lure victims to Microsoft 365 credential harvesting pages. Also notable is the use of adversary‑in‑the‑middle (AiTM) techniques to hijack authenticated sessions, allowing the threat actor to bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA) and blend into legitimate user activity. MITRE Releases F3 Framework to Fight Cyber Fraud — MITRE has released the Fight Fraud Framework (F3), which it described as a "first-of-its-kind effort to define and standardize the tactics and techniques used in cyber-enabled financial fraud." The tactics cover the entire attack lifecycle: Reconnaissance, Resource Development, Initial Access, Defense Evasion, Positioning, Execution, and Monetization. By codifying the tradecraft used to conduct fraud, the idea is to help financial institutions better understand, detect, and prevent fraud through a shared framework of adversary behaviors, it added. "Fraud actors often blend traditional cyber techniques with domain-specific fraud tactics, making a unified cyber-fraud framework essential," MITRE said. "F3 helps defenders connect technical signals to real-world fraud events, enabling a shift from reactive response to proactive defense." RegPhantom, a Stealthy Windows Kernel Rootkit — A new Windows kernel rootkit dubbed RegPhantom can give attackers code execution in kernel mode from an unprivileged user mode context without leaving any major visual evidence behind. "The malware abuses the Windows registry as a covert trigger mechanism: a usermode process can send an encrypted command through a registry write, which the driver intercepts and turns into arbitrary kernel-mode code execution," Nextron Systems said. "What makes this threat notable is the combination of stealth, privilege, and trust abuse. The driver runs as a signed kernel component, allowing it to operate at the highest privilege level on Windows systems. It does not rely on normal driver loading behavior for its payloads and instead reflectively maps code into kernel memory, making the loaded module invisible to standard tools that enumerate drivers. It also blocks the triggering registry write, wipes executed payload memory, and stores hook pointers in encoded form, which significantly reduces forensic visibility." The first sample of RegPhantom in the wild was detected on June 18, 2025. APT28's NTLMv2 Hash Relay Attacks Detailed — In more APT28 (aka Pawn Storm) news, the threat actor has been attributed to NTLMv2 hash relay attacks through different methods against a wide range of global targets across Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East between April 2022 and November 2023. The threat actor is known to break into mail servers and the corporate virtual private network (VPN) services of organizations around the world through brute-force credential attacks since 2019. "Pawn Storm has also been using EdgeOS routers to send spear-phishing emails, perform callbacks of CVE-2023-23397 exploits in Outlook, and proxy credential theft on credential phishing websites," Trend Micro said. Successful exploitation of CVE-2023-23397 allows an attacker to obtain a victim's Net-NTLMv2 hash and use it for authentication against other systems that support NTLM authentication. The vulnerability, per Microsoft, has been exploited as a zero-day since April 2022. Select campaigns observed in October 2022 involved the use of phishing emails to drop a stealer that scanned the system periodically for files matching certain extensions and exfiltrated them to the free file-sharing service, free.keep.sh. New RATs Galore — Trojanized FileZilla installers are being used to initiate an attack chain that leads to the deployment of STX RAT, a remote access trojan (RAT) with infostealer capabilities. Researchers have also discovered an active threat called DesckVB RAT, a JavaScript-based trojan that deploys a PowerShell payload, which subsequently loads a .NET-based loader directly into memory. "Once executed, the RAT establishes communication with a command-and-control (C2) server, enabling attackers to remotely control the compromised system, exfiltrate sensitive data, and carry out various malicious activities while maintaining a low detection footprint," Point Wild said. Some of the other newly discovered RATs include CrystalX or WebCrystal RAT (a new malware-as-a-service (MaaS) and a rebrand of WebRAT promoted on Telegram and YouTube with remote access, data theft, keylogging, spyware, and clipper capabilities), RetroRAT (a malware distributed via PowerShell and .NET loaders as part of a campaign named Operation DualScript for system monitoring, financial activity tracking, clipboard hijacking to route cryptocurrency transactions, and remote command execution), ResokerRAT (a malware that uses Telegram for C2 and receive commands on the victim machine), and CrySome (a C# RAT that offers full-spectrum remote operations on compromised systems, along with deeply integrated persistence, AV killer, and anti-removal architecture that leverages recovery partition abuse and offline registry modification). Phishing Campaign Delivers Remcos RAT in Fileless Manner — Phishing emails are being used to deliver Remcos RAT in what has been described as a fileless attack. "The attack chain is initiated through a phishing email containing a ZIP attachment disguised as a legitimate business document," Point Wild said. "Upon execution, an obfuscated JavaScript dropper establishes the initial foothold and retrieves a remote PowerShell script, which acts as a reflective loader. This loader employs multiple layers of obfuscation, including Base64 encoding, raw binary manipulation, and rotational XOR encryption, to reconstruct and execute a .NET payload entirely in memory." An important aspect of the campaign is the use of trusted system binaries to proxy malicious execution under the guise of legitimate processes. The final RAT payload is retrieved dynamically from a remote C2 server, allowing the threat actor to switch payloads at any time. Tycoon 2FA Switches Infrastructure and Uses ProxyLine — The operators of the Tycoon 2FA phishing kit have been observed increasingly relying on ProxyLine, a commercial datacenter proxy service, to evade IP and geo‑based detection controls following its return after the coordinated global takedown of its infrastructure last month. Following the takedown, threat actors have pivoted to new infrastructure providers like HOST TELECOM LTD, Clouvider, GREEN FLOID LLC, and Shock Hosting LLC. One provider that has witnessed continued use pre- and post-takedown is M247 Europe SRL. In addition, Gmail-targeted Tycoon 2FA campaigns have implemented WebSocket-based communication for real-time credential harvesting and reduced detection footprint compared to traditional HTTP POST requests. TeleGuard's Security Failings Exposed — TeleGuard, an app that's advertised as an "encrypted messenger [that] offers uncompromising data protection" and has been downloaded more than a million times, has been found to suffer from poor encryption that allows an attacker to trivially access a user’s private key and decrypt their messages. "TeleGuard also uploads users' private keys to a company server, meaning TeleGuard itself could decrypt its users' messages, and the key can also at least partially be derived from simply intercepting a user's traffic," security researchers told 404 Media. Google Brings E2EE to Gmail for Android and iOS — Google officially expanded support for end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to Android and iOS devices for Gmail client-side encryption (CSE) users. "Users with a Gmail E2EE license can send an encrypted message to any recipient, regardless of what email address the recipient has," Google said. The feature is currently limited to only Enterprise Plus customers with the Assured Controls or Assured Controls Plus add-on. Bad Actors Abuse GitHub and GitLab — Threat actors are turning to trusted services like GitHub and GitLab for spreading malware and stealing login credentials from unsuspecting users. About 53% of all campaigns abusing the GitHub domains have been found to deliver malware (e.g., XWorm, Venom RAT), whereas 64% of campaigns abusing GitLab domains deliver malware (e.g., DCRat). Select campaigns have also adopted a dual threat attack chain, leveraging GitHub or GitLab to trick users into downloading Muck Stealer, after which a credential phishing page automatically opens. "These Git repository websites are necessary and can'tbe blocked because of their use by enterprise software and normal business operations," Cofense said. "By uploading malware or credential phishing pages to repositories hosted on these domains, threat actors can generate phishing links that won'tbe blocked by many email-based security defenses like secure email gateways (SEG). GitHub and GitLab mark the latest trend in abuse of legitimate cloud collaboration platforms." FBI Extracts Signal Messages from iOS Notification History Database — The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) managed to forensically extract copies of incoming Signal messages from a defendant's iPhone, even after the app was deleted, by taking advantage of the fact that copies of the content were saved in the device's push notification database, 404 Media reported. The development reveals how physical access to a device can enable specialized software to run on it to yield sensitive data derived even from secure messaging apps in unexpected places. The problem is not limited to the Signal app, but one that stems from a more fundamental design decision regarding how Apple stores notifications. Signal already has a setting that blocks message content from displaying in push notifications. Users who are concerned about their privacy are advised to consider turning the option on. Multiple Flaws in IBM WebSphere Liberty — Multiple security flaws have been disclosed in IBM WebSphere Liberty, a modular, cloud-friendly Java application server, that could be exploited to seize control of affected systems. The vulnerabilities offer multiple pathways for attackers to move from network-level exposure or limited access to full server compromise, according to Oligo Security. The most severe is CVE-2026-1561 (CVSS score: 5.4), which enables pre-authenticated remote code execution in SSO-enabled deployments due to unsafe deserialization in SAML Web SSO. "IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty is vulnerable to server-side request forgery (SSRF)," IBM said. "This may allow [a] remote attacker to send unauthorized requests from the system, potentially leading to network enumeration or facilitating other attacks." 🔧 Cybersecurity Tools Betterleaks → It is the next-generation successor to Gitleaks, built to find exposed credentials with greater speed and accuracy. It eliminates the noise of false positives by moving beyond basic pattern matching to high-fidelity detection. Designed for modern CI/CD pipelines, it helps developers identify and fix leaked API keys and sensitive data before they become security liabilities. Supply Chain Monitor → This tool provides end-to-end visibility into your software supply chain by monitoring CI/CD pipelines for suspicious activity. It tracks build integrity, detects unauthorized changes, and surfaces vulnerabilities in real-time. By integrating directly with your existing workflows, it helps ensure that the code you ship hasn't been tampered with between the commit and production. Disclaimer: This is strictly for research and learning. It hasn't been through a formal security audit, so don't just blindly drop it into production. Read the code, break it in a sandbox first, and make sure whatever you’re doing stays on the right side of the law. Conclusion That’s the wrap for this Monday. While the headlines usually focus on the high-level nation-state drama, remember that most of these attacks still rely on someone, somewhere, clicking a "trusted" link or ignoring a basic patch. Whether it’s an AI-driven exploit engine or a fake trading firm, the goal is always to find the path of least resistance into your environment. Stay sharp, keep your edge devices updated, and don’t let the noise of the news cycle distract you from the basics of your own defense.

At the NDSS Symposium 2026 in San Diego in February, a group of respected researchers presented a study unveiling the AirSnitch attack, which bypasses the Wi-Fi client isolation feature — also commonly known as guest network or device isolation. This attack allows connecting to a single wireless network via an access point, and then gaining access to other connected devices, including those using entirely different service set identifiers (SSIDs) on that same hardware. Targeted devices could easily be running on wireless subnets protected by WPA2 or WPA3 protocols. The attack doesn’t actually break encryption; instead, it exploits the way access points handle group keys and packet routing. In practical terms, this means that a guest network provides very little in the way of real security. If your guest and employee networks are running on the same physical device, AirSnitch allows a connected attacker to inject malicious traffic into neighboring SSIDs. In some cases, they can even pull off a full-blown man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack. Wi-Fi security and the role of isolation Wi-Fi security is constantly evolving; every time a practical attack is made against the latest generation of protection, the industry shifts toward more complex algorithms and procedures. This cycle started with the FMS attacks used to crack WEP encryption keys, and continues to this day: recent examples include the KRACK attacks on WPA2, and the FragAttacks, which impacted every security protocol version from WEP all the way through WPA3. Attacking modern Wi-Fi networks effectively (and quietly) is no small feat. Most professionals agree that using WPA2/WPA3 with complex keys and separating networks based on their purpose is usually enough for protection. However, only specialists really know that client isolation was never actually standardized within the IEEE 802.11 protocols. Different manufacturers implement isolation in completely different ways — using Layer 2 or Layer 3 of network architecture; in other words, handling it at either the router or the Wi-Fi controller level — meaning the behavior of isolated subnets varies wildly depending on your specific access point or router model. While marketing claims that client isolation is perfect for keeping restaurant or hotel guests from attacking one another — or ensuring corporate visitors can’t access anything but the internet — in reality, isolation often relies on people not trying to hack it. This is exactly what the AirSnitch research highlights. Types of AirSnitch attacks The name AirSnitch doesn’t just refer to a single vulnerability, but a whole family of architectural flaws found in Wi-Fi access points. It’s also the name of an open-source tool used to test routers for these specific weaknesses. However, security professionals need to keep in mind that there’s only a very thin line between testing and attacking. The model for all these attacks is the same: a malicious client is connected to an access point (AP) where isolation is active. Other users — the targets — are connected to the same SSID or even different SSIDs on that same AP. This is a very realistic scenario; for example, a guest network might be open and unencrypted, or an attacker could simply get the guest Wi-Fi password by posing as a legitimate visitor. For certain AirSnitch attacks, the attacker needs to know the victim’s MAC or IP address beforehand. Ultimately, how effective each attack is depends on the specific hardware manufacturer (more on that below). GTK attack After the WPA2/WPA3 handshake, the access point and the clients agree on a Group Transient Key (GTK) to handle broadcast traffic. In this scenario, the attacker wraps packets destined for a specific victim inside a broadcast traffic envelope. They then send these directly to the victim while spoofing the access point’s MAC address. This attack only allows for traffic injection, meaning the attacker won’t receive a response. However, even that is enough to deliver malicious ICMPv6 routing advertisements, or DNS and ARP messages to the client — effectively bypassing isolation. This is the most universal version of the attack working on any WPA2/WPA3 network that uses a shared GTK. That said, some enterprise-grade access points support GTK randomization for each individual client, which renders this specific method ineffective. Broadcast packet redirection This version of the attack doesn’t even require the attacker to authenticate at the access point first. The attacker sends packets to the AP with a broadcast destination address (FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF) and the ToDS flag set to 1. As a result, many access points treat this packet as legitimate broadcast traffic; they encrypt it using the GTK, and blast it out to every client on the subnet, including the victim. Just like in the previous method, traffic specifically meant for a single victim can be pre-packaged inside. Router redirection This attack exploits an architectural gap between Layer 2 and Layer 3 security found in some manufacturers’ hardware. The attacker sends a packet to the access point, setting the victim’s IP address as the destination at the network layer (L3). However, at the wireless layer (L2), the destination is set to the access point’s own MAC address, so the isolation filter doesn’t trip. The routing subsystem (L3) then dutifully routes the packet back out to the victim, bypassing the L2 isolation entirely. Like the previous methods, this is another transmit-only attack where the attacker can’t see the reply. Port stealing to intercept packets The attacker connects to the network using a spoofed version of the victim’s MAC address, and floods the network with ARP responses claiming, “this MAC address is on my port and SSID”. The target network’s router updates its MAC tables, and starts sending the victim’s traffic to this new port instead. Consequently, traffic intended for the victim ends up with the attacker — even if the victim is connected to a completely different SSID. In a scenario where the attacker connects via an open, unencrypted network, this means traffic meant for a client on a WPA2/WPA3-secured network is actually broadcast over the open air, where not only the attacker but anyone nearby can sniff it. Port stealing to send packets In this version, the attacker connects directly to the victim’s Wi-Fi adapter, and bombards it with ARP requests spoofing the access point’s MAC address. As a result, the victim’s computer starts sending its outgoing traffic to the attacker instead of the network. By running both stealing attacks simultaneously, an attacker can, in several scenarios, execute a full MitM attack. Practical consequences of AirSnitch attacks By combining several of the techniques described above, a hacker can pull off some pretty serious moves: Complete bidirectional traffic interception for a MitM attack. This means they can snatch and modify data moving between the victim and the access point without the victim ever knowing. Hopping between SSIDs. An attacker sitting on a guest network can reach hosts on a locked-down corporate network if both are running off the same physical access point. Attacks on RADIUS. Since many companies use RADIUS authentication for their corporate Wi-Fi, an attacker can spoof the access point’s MAC address to intercept initial RADIUS authentication packets. From there, they can brute-force the shared secret. Once they have that, they can spin up a rogue RADIUS server and access point to hijack data from any device that connects to it. Exposing unencrypted data from “secure” subnets: Traffic that’s supposed to be sent to a client under the protection of WPA2/WPA3 can be retransmitted onto an open guest network, where it’s essentially broadcast for anyone to hear. To pull off these attacks effectively, a hacker needs a device capable of simultaneous data transmission and reception with both the victim’s adapter and the access point. In a real-world scenario, this usually means a laptop with two Wi-Fi adapters running specifically configured Linux drivers. It’s worth noting that the attack isn’t exactly silent: it requires a flood of ARP packets, it can cause brief Wi-Fi glitches when it starts, and network speeds might tank to around 10Mbps. Despite these red flags, it’s still very much a practical threat in many environments. Vulnerable devices As part of the study, several enterprise and home access points and routers were put to the test. The list included products from Cisco, Netgear, Ubiquiti, Tenda, D-Link, TP-Link, LANCOM, and ASUS, as well as routers running popular community firmware like DD-WRT and OpenWrt. Every single device tested was vulnerable to at least some of the attacks described here. Even more concerning, the D-Link DIR-3040 and LANCOM LX-6500 were susceptible to every single variation of AirSnitch. Interestingly, some routers were equipped with protective mechanisms that blocked the attacks, even though the underlying architectural flaws were still present. For example, the Tenda RX2 Pro automatically disconnects any client whose MAC address appears on two BSSIDs simultaneously, which effectively shuts down port stealing. The researchers emphasize that any network administrator or IT security team serious about defense should test their own specific configurations. That’s the only way to pinpoint exactly which threats are relevant to your organization’s setup. How to protect your corporate network from AirSnitch The threat is most immediate for organizations running guest and corporate Wi-Fi networks on the same access points without additional VLAN segmentation. There are also significant risks for companies using RADIUS with outdated settings or weak shared secrets for wireless authentication. The bottom line is that we need to stop viewing client isolation on an access point as a real security measure, and start seeing it as just a convenience feature. Real security needs to be handled differently: Segment the network using VLANs. Each SSID should have its own VLAN, with strict 802.1Q packet tagging maintained all the way from the access point to the firewall or router. Implement stricter packet inspection at the routing level — depending on the hardware capabilities. Features like Dynamic ARP Inspection, DHCP snooping, and limiting the number of MAC addresses per port help defend against IP/MAC spoofing. Enable individual GTK keys for each client, if your equipment supports it. Use more resilient RADIUS and 802.1X settings, including modern cipher suites and robust shared secrets. Log and analyze EAP/RADIUS authentication anomalies in your SIEM. This helps track many attack attempts beyond just AirSnitch. Other red flag events to watch for include the same MAC address appearing on different SSIDs, spikes in ARP requests, or clients rapidly jumping between BSSIDs or VLANs. Apply security at higher levels of the network topology. Many of these attacks lose their punch if the organization has universally implemented TLS and HSTS for all business application traffic, requires an active VPN for all Wi-Fi connections, or has fully embraced a Zero Trust architecture.

Palo Alto Networks and SonicWall have separately announced patches for multiple vulnerabilities across their products, including two high-severity bugs. Palo Alto Networks patched three flaws and rolled out third-party fixes for Cortex platforms, ADEM for Windows, PAN-OS, and products using a Chromium-based browser. The most severe of these security defects is CVE-2026-0234, an improper verification of a cryptographic signature issue in the Cortex XSOAR and Cortex XSIAM platforms’ integration of Microsoft Teams. Successful exploitation of the weakness allows attackers to access and tamper with protected resources, the company says. Patches were also released for medium-severity vulnerabilities in Autonomous Digital Experience Manager on Windows and Cortex XDR agent on Windows that could allow attackers to execute arbitrary code or disable the XDR agent. Additionally, the company incorporated nearly three dozen Chromium security fixes into its products and released fixes for multiple open source software CVEs impacting its products. Palo Alto Networks says it is not aware of any of these security defects being exploited in the wild. Additional information can be found on the company’s security advisories page. SonicWall rolled out patches for four vulnerabilities in the SMA1000 series firewalls, including a high-severity SQL injection bug tracked as CVE-2026-4112. Successful exploitation of this flaw, the company notes in its advisory, could allow attackers with read-only administrator privileges to obtain primary admin rights. The remaining three issues patched this week could allow remote attackers to enumerate SSL VPN user credentials or bypass TOTP authentication. SonicWall says it has no evidence that these vulnerabilities have been exploited in the wild, but urges users to update their SMA1000 series appliances as soon as possible. Related: Data Leakage Vulnerability Patched in OpenSSL Related: Severe StrongBox Vulnerability Patched in Android Related: Cisco Patches Critical and High-Severity Vulnerabilities Related: TP-Link Patches High-Severity Router Vulnerabilities