veeam

De kwetsbaarheden betreffen meerdere softwarecomponenten van Veeam ONE, waaronder agents en services die met verhoogde privileges draaien, evenals systemen die rapporten delen via gedeelde links en backend databases gebruiken. De kwetsbaarheden maken het mogelijk dat gebruikers met verschillende privilege-niveaus of zelfs onbevoegde aanvallers acties uitvoeren die normaal niet toegestaan zijn. Dit omvat het uitvoeren van willekeurige code op servers of agent hosts, het lezen van arbitraire bestanden zonder authenticatie, het omzeilen van toegangscontroles op gedeelde rapportlinks, het uitvoeren van SQL-injectieaanvallen op backend databases, en het lokaal verhogen van privileges binnen specifieke servicecontexten zoals de Reporter service. Exploitatie kan leiden tot ongeautoriseerde toegang tot gevoelige data, manipulatie van systemen, en volledige compromittering van de getroffen systemen. Sommige kwetsbaarheden vereisen lokale toegang, terwijl andere op afstand en zonder authenticatie kunnen worden misbruikt.

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. He explains why corrective orders will likely outnumber large fines, when an AI agent working through a ticket queue counts as interacting with a person, and how security teams should handle simulated phishing that uses cloned voices. He also weighs where the first enforcement case could start, and the accountability question clients keep asking with no good answer yet. Article 50 breaches carry exposure up to 15 million euro or three percent of worldwide turnover. What is realistic first-year exposure? Do you expect monetary penalties, or corrective orders and withdrawal requirements? As we’ve seen with other EU regulations like NIS2 and GDPR, the real-world enforcement, including the fines, will be up to individual member countries to enforce, with procedures varying depending on the country. So, it’s difficult to estimate precisely what sort of exposure and penalties we’ll see during the first year. That being said, the first year of new regulation penalties can also often be treated as a bit of a ‘bedding in’ period. It’s more than likely that corrective orders will significantly outweigh the number of major financial penalties we see in this first year of enforcement. Especially for those organisations making a genuine effort to comply. Regulators are likely to look at proportionality, scale of impact, whether the breach was intentional or negligent, how quickly the organisation cooperated, and whether basic governance controls were already in place when making these decisions. That said, we do also often see one or two big headline-making fines to show regulators mean business, but if this does happen, I wouldn’t expect it to land in year one. In fact, in the first year, the bigger practical exposure may well be operational rather than financial. For an organisation, being ordered to suspend, relabel, change, or withdraw an AI-enabled process at speed could be far more disruptive than receiving a fine. In year one, the bigger risk likely won’t be the fine; it’ll be being told to stop using the system until you can prove it is compliant. Agentic systems interact with people indirectly, through a ticketing queue, a shared inbox, or a supplier’s procurement portal. Which of those count as interacting directly with a natural person, and have you had to tell a client that their agent crossed a line they did not know existed? For the EU AI Act, the channel is not decisive. A ticketing queue, shared inbox, or procurement portal does not automatically mean direct interaction with a person, but it can. The key question is whether the AI system itself is communicating with a natural person, or whether there is a human intermediary exercising meaningful review and control. Under the Act itself, the transparency obligation applies in those situations where a person is interacting with an AI system and needs to be informed that they’re dealing with AI, unless it’s made obvious by the circumstances. So, if an AI drafts a response and a human reviews and sends it, that is a very different risk profile from an AI agent autonomously replying to a customer, supplier, or employee. The latter can start to look like direct interaction, even if it happens through a ticketing system or procurement portal rather than a chatbot window. So, companies need to make deliberate choices to separate those agents that are internal and those that are customer-facing by setting up appropriate barriers for agents depending on their roles. And those same access and privacy controls should be present across the organisation, not just across the agents. Only then can you avoid any unintended access – it’s all well and good telling an agent ‘don’t go into this room’; you also need to put a lock on the door. Ultimately, the AI Act does not care whether the interaction happens in a chatbot window or a ticket queue. It cares whether the human is effectively dealing with the machine. Security teams run simulated phishing and vishing exercises, sometimes cloning an executive’s voice, and the exercise fails if the material carries a label. How have you advised those teams, and what does the internal documentation need to contain to justify the position? Exercises like these are not automatically exempt from the AI Act’s transparency requirements, and organisations shouldn’t just assume they are. Understandably, there’s a reluctance to label AI-generated phishing emails or cloned voices – it’s not much of an exercise if there’s a big flag all but announcing that it’s a test. But cloning an executive’s voice is particularly sensitive. If AI is used to make a real person appear to say something they did not say, that can quickly become a deepfake scenario. A security purpose does not automatically create an exemption, and “the exercise works better without disclosure” is not, by itself, a compliance justification. So, if organisations are deciding not to label these AI-generated elements of these exercises, they should be able to demonstrate that the legal basis and the risk of that decision have been carefully assessed. Going forward, for best practice around these exercises, I’d suggest security teams involve their legal and compliance departments early to document their reasoning as a minimum. I would also include privacy, HR, and, where relevant, works council or employee representative input, especially if the exercise uses a real person’s voice, image, or likeness. But in most cases, I would advise teams to consider alternatives such as fictional personas, synthetic voices that do not imitate real employees, prior general notice that simulations may use synthetic media, and immediate post-exercise disclosure. The goal is to preserve realism without normalising undisclosed executive impersonation inside the company. The documentation should be able to show the purpose of the exercise, the scope, what AI tools were used, whether any real person was imitated, what disclosure was provided and when, what personal data was processed, why the approach was necessary and proportionate, what safeguards were in place, and how employees were debriefed afterwards. What I normally tell security teams tasked with these kinds of exercises is: “A security objective does not magically turn an undisclosed deepfake into a compliant one. And If you have to clone the CEO’s voice to make the test work, legal should be in the room before anyone presses send.” As of mid-June, only nine of the twenty-seven member states had designated both a market surveillance authority and a notifying authority, twelve had partial designations, and six had neither. Where does the first Article 50 action originate: a regulator, a competitor complaint, a consumer group, or a defamation claim in a national court? It’s difficult to say for sure where that first Article 50 action is likely to come from. Formally, the first Article 50 action is most likely to come from a market surveillance authority, because that is where enforcement responsibility sits at national level. But practically, the trigger may come from somewhere else. Working backwards, defamation is probably the least likely at this early stage. But a defamation claim is possible, especially where synthetic audio or video damages someone’s reputation, but that is more likely to be a parallel legal route than the first clean Article 50 enforcement case. For those AI systems that could affect or interact with large numbers of people, consumer groups could be likely candidates for an early challenge. But regulator-led action seems the most likely, even if some markets are still setting these up. I would expect the first case to be regulator led on paper, but very possibly complaint-led in reality, triggered by a consumer group, competitor, employee, journalist, civil society organisation, or affected individual. What is the question your clients keep asking that has no good answer yet? The question I keep hearing is: How do we prove what an AI agent did, why it did it, and who was accountable? That is still a hard question with no real good answer yet. In cybersecurity and GRC, evidence matters. We need logs, approvals, identities, access controls, retention, and audit trails. But agentic AI can reason, retrieve data, generate content, and take actions across multiple systems. That means governance has to move from policy documents into technical controls. My advice to clients is to treat AI agents like privileged digital identities. Give them an owner, a defined role, least-privilege access, monitoring, approval gates, and a kill switch. The organisations that get this right will not just be more compliant. They will be more resilient. Another question I keep hearing is directly tied to using AI with security testing: Where does transparency end and security testing begin? Security teams need realistic simulations, but the AI Act pushes organisations toward disclosure when people interact with AI or are exposed to deepfakes. The hard part is designing exercises that remain realistic without crossing legal, ethical, or employee trust boundaries. Security teams want realism. Regulators want transparency. The challenge is designing exercises that satisfy both. And there are more questions out there that lack answers like: Who is ultimately accountable when an AI system causes harm, the vendor, the deployer, the business owner, or the executive team? How do we prove to regulators, customers, and the board that our AI governance is working in practice, not just documented in policy? How much business value are we willing to lose in order to stay compliant, transparent, and auditable when using AI at scale? Download: The high-performance team playbook

Veeam heeft meerdere kwetsbaarheden verholpen in Veeam Service Provider Console. De kwetsbaarheden bevinden zich in verschillende onderdelen van Veeam Service Provider Console. Een onbevoegde aanvaller kan zich voordoen als een beheerde agent binnen het systeem en daarmee de bijbehorende inloggegevens achterhalen. Daarnaast kan een aanvaller willekeurige bestanden schrijven op de managementserver, wat kan leiden tot het uitvoeren van remote code en het verkrijgen van verhoogde privileges. Verder kan een onbevoegde gebruiker een Denial-of-Service veroorzaken door overmatig geheugenverbruik te triggeren, wat de beschikbaarheid van de service beïnvloedt. Ten slotte is het mogelijk voor een onbevoegde aanvaller om tijdens de initiële fase van een beheerderssessie toegang te krijgen tot de proxied appliance API met Portal Administrator-privileges, door onvoldoende sessiebeheer en toegangscontrole.

HashiCorp, Veeam, and the Django Software Foundation have patched 11 vulnerabilities across Terraform MCP Server, Veeam Service Provider Console, and Django. The three most serious: An unauthenticated flaw in Veeam's console that hands over a managed agent's credentials, rated 9.5 A cross-tenant flaw in HashiCorp's MCP server that lets one user's Terraform token be reused for later users' requests, scored a maximum 10.0 on its CVE record A flaw in GeoDjango's spatial lookups that can write a file to disk and, on some setups, run code, reachable by a staff user with view permission on a registered model containing a spatial field Each has a fix available now. Operators should update Terraform MCP Server to version 1.1.0 or later, Veeam Service Provider Console to 9.3.0.35057, and Django to 6.0.8 or 5.2.17. Exposure is configuration-dependent: HashiCorp's bugs affect Streamable HTTP rather than stdio, Veeam's flaws affect version 9 builds before 9.3, and Django's documented admin attack path requires a staff account with view permission for a model containing a spatial field. None of the three advisories says the flaws are under active exploitation, and as of August 5, 2026, none of the eleven CVEs appears in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, and no public proof-of-concept has surfaced. Impersonate an agent, take its credentials Veeam Service Provider Console, the multi-tenant console that hosting firms and managed service providers use to run and monitor customer backups, got four fixes in build 9.3.0.35057, detailed in a security bulletin published August 4. Two are critical. Veeam released the build on July 29. The one to watch is CVE-2026-58073 (CVSS score: 9.5), which lets an unauthenticated attacker impersonate a managed agent and obtain that agent's credentials. Its CVSS vector rates attack complexity as high. The second critical flaw, CVE-2026-58072 (CVSS score: 9.0), is an arbitrary file write on the management server that can lead to remote code execution and requires a low-privilege account. The 9.5 reads as the worst of the two because it needs no login, but its high attack complexity is the reason the vector is not a straight-line exploit; unauthenticated here does not mean easy. Two high-severity bugs round out the set: CVE-2026-58067, an unauthenticated memory-exhaustion denial of service, and CVE-2026-58071, which exposes the proxied appliance API as Portal Administrator during a short window after an administrator session begins. All four affect VSPC 9.2.1.33875 and every earlier version 9 build. The fix is the upgrade to 9.3.0.35057. This is the second critical patch cycle for the console in roughly three months. In May, Veeam fixed CVE-2026-32998, a 9.4-rated remote code execution bug tied to alarm script execution. One tenant's token, reused for the next HashiCorp's Terraform MCP server, which connects AI assistants to Terraform over the Model Context Protocol, carries three related flaws in its Streamable HTTP transport, disclosed July 28 and fixed in version 1.1.0. HashiCorp released the fixed build on July 14, followed by version 1.2.0 on August 4. Deployments that run only in stdio mode, the local single-user setup, are unaffected. The bugs live in the multi-user HTTP mode meant for centralized, shared deployments, the configuration HashiCorp promoted when it made the server generally available in June. The most severe is CVE-2026-16498 (CVSS score: 10.0), a cross-tenant credential-reuse bug in stateless HTTP mode. The underlying MCP library does not assign unique session identifiers, and the server's credential cache relied on those identifiers to tell users apart. One user's Terraform token could therefore be reused for later users' requests regardless of the token they supplied. The root is an assumption about the layer beneath the tool: the server used those session identifiers to keep tenants apart, and in stateless mode the MCP library did not provide unique ones. A second flaw, CVE-2026-16496 (CVSS score: 8.9), is the stateful-mode version of the isolation failure. Stateful mode is the default when the server runs centrally. Its cache used the MCP session ID as its sole lookup key, without binding the cached client to the token that created it. That let a user who obtained another user's session ID run tool calls with that user's Terraform client and reach resources allowed by the victim's token. Juan Pablo Martinez Kuhn of Coinspect reported the flaw; HashiCorp found the other two internally. The third, CVE-2026-14869 (CVSS score: 8.6), is a server-side request forgery flaw. Request middleware rejected a client-supplied Terraform address when it arrived as an HTTP header but not when the same value came through a query parameter. An unauthenticated caller able to reach the Streamable HTTP listener could make the server send its configured bearer token to an attacker-controlled endpoint. Two things complicate reading the CVSS numbers as a priority order. They are not on one scale: Veeam scores on CVSS 4.0 and the HashiCorp records on 3.1, so the 9.5 and the 10.0 are not the same measurement. And the two isolation flaws land on different configurations: the 10.0 (CVE-2026-16498) affects stateless mode, which an operator has to enable deliberately, while the 8.9 (CVE-2026-16496) affects the stateful mode that is the default for a central deployment. Which of the two is in reach depends on how the server is configured, not on which carries the higher number. There is a discrepancy in the published affected-version ranges. HashiCorp's umbrella bulletin lists versions 0.2.1 through 1.0.0, while the individual CVE records begin at version 0.3.0. Both sources agree that version 1.1.0 is the first fixed release. The scores come from the CVE records HashiCorp assigned; the advisory itself lists none. Operators who cannot upgrade immediately should restrict network access to the Streamable HTTP listener to trusted users and treat MCP session IDs as sensitive values. Back in GeoDjango's raster path Django shipped 6.0.8 and 5.2.17 on August 4, with the same fixes applied to the main branch and the Django 6.1 release-candidate branch. The release covers four CVEs. Django rates their severity under its own security policy, and only one is rated high. That flaw, CVE-2026-15307, sits in GeoDjango, the framework's geographic-data layer. Spatial lookups accepted str and dict values and passed them to GDALRaster when they appeared to represent rasters. Depending on the raster driver, that could write a file to disk or make the Django process issue a network request. Writing a file to a location later imported by the application can result in remote code execution. The documented admin path is reachable by staff users with view permission on a registered model containing a spatial field. The fix disallows dict values and strings that are not valid GEOSGeometry values in spatial lookups, a backward-incompatible change. Direct model-field assignments still accept those types. The other three flaws are lower severity: a moderate stored cross-site scripting bug in the admin where unsafe URLField values could be rendered as links and execute when clicked (CVE-2026-15920); a moderate denial of service through deeply nested GEOMETRYCOLLECTION objects that could trigger a GEOS segmentation fault (CVE-2026-15830, now limited to 198 collections); and a low-severity memory-consumption denial of service in check_for_language() (CVE-2026-15337, now rejecting language codes longer than 500 characters). Older unsupported branches, including Django 5.1, 5.0, and 4.2, were not evaluated and may also be affected. Django's GIS code has already drawn attacker attention this year. In February, the project patched CVE-2026-1207, a SQL injection flaw in PostGIS raster lookups. CrowdSec reported exploitation in the wild: it released a detection rule on February 18, observed the first attacks on February 26, and subsequently saw steady probing aimed at locating PostGIS-backed Django deployments. That flaw required a PostGIS backend and user-controlled input to a specific lookup. The probing locates the kind of application without opening it. The new flaw's documented route needs a staff account, and fingerprinting a public site does not supply one, so the reconnaissance that found PostGIS-backed Django stops a step short of an actual way in. What carries over is the scrutiny on this code.

Aggiornamenti di sicurezza per prodotti Veeam Alert AL04/260805/CSIRT-ITA Sintesi Veeam ha rilasciato aggiornamenti di sicurezza per risolvere molteplici vulnerabilità, di cui tre con gravità “critica” e sei con gravità “alta”, nei prodotti Service Provider Console e ONE, rispettivamente console di gestione multi-tenant e piattaforma di monitoraggio, analisi e reporting che consente di controllare lo stato e le prestazioni degli ambienti virtuali, fisici e cloud. Tipologia Remote Code Execution Authentication Bypass Arbitrary File Write/Read Spoofing Security Restrictions Bypass Information Disclosure Privilege Escalation Denial of Service Prodotti e versioni affette Veeam Service Provider Console 9.x, versione 9.2.1.33875 e precedenti 13.x, versione 13.0.2.6723 e precedenti 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.

Spirals ransomware locks down victim systems in under 24 hours A previously unknown ransomware strain called Spirals was used last month in an attack against an IT services company in South Asia, where attackers went from initial access to data theft and encrypting the network in less than 24 hours, according to Symantec’s Threat Hunter Team. Spirals encrypts files quickly after gaining a foothold Spirals is written in Rust and encrypts files using a separate AES-128 key per file, each wrapped with an attacker-controlled ECDH P-256 public key. To speed up encryption, files larger than 5 MB are encrypted in chunks. Victims were left with a ransom note, RECOVERY_SECTION.log, directing them to a Tor negotiation site and threatening to leak stolen data within six days if no payment was made. The attackers gained initial access by compromising an internet-facing IIS web server and uploading an ASP.NET web shell. From there, they ran commands through the IIS worker process to open an interactive session, escalating privileges with a User Account Control (UAC) bypass, turning on Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), and creating a local account to maintain persistent access. Credential dumping and tunneling expanded the intrusion “Credential material was harvested by dumping the Security Account Manager (SAM) hive to a password-protected archive. Later, during WMI-based lateral movement activities, the attackers also dumped LSASS process memory on multiple machines using rundll32.exe and comsvcs.dll,” researchers explained. To keep multiple lines of communication open with the compromised network, they set up a reverse SOCKS proxy, a renamed copy of the Chisel tunneling tool disguised as chrome.exe, and a Cloudflare Tunnel client. Some of the tools used in the attack were hosted externally with .jpg file extensions, apparently to dodge basic file-type filtering. The operators then used PsExec, running as SYSTEM, to push the same PowerShell payload to a long list of hosts, hitting new targets every few seconds for about half an hour. “The payload was named bitsadmin.exe, likely to masquerade as the legitimate Windows utility associated with the Background Intelligent Transfer Service,” they noted. That payload disabled Windows Defender and stopped services tied to 23 backup, database, and virtualization products, including Veeam, VMware, Hyper-V, SQL Server, Oracle, and PostgreSQL, clearing the way for the ransomware to encrypt files. “While we have so far only seen this ransomware on one victim network, its capabilities and stealth point to the actors behind it being skilled operators who could easily launch more wide-ranging campaigns,” Symantec added. The company has shared indicators of compromise tied to the attack for organizations wanting to check their own environments for related activity.

Betti RHC, la prima graphic novel al mondo dedicata alla cybersecurity awareness, ha finalmente il suo sito ufficiale. Uno spazio tutto suo dove scoprire il progetto, sfogliare le copertine degli episodi e immergersi nel mondo di Betti: la giovane laureanda in informatica che, dopo la morte misteriosa del padre, si trasforma nell'hacker più potente del mondo. Una storia avvincente che, episodio dopo episodio, affronta una minaccia digitale diversa — dal phishing al ransomware, fino al cyberbullismo — e insegna a riconoscerla e a difendersi, senza che sembri mai una lezione. Sul sito trovate tutto ciò che rende Betti un progetto diverso dal solito: la sua filosofia, le anteprime delle tavole e il racconto di come nasce ogni volume. Perché dietro Betti RHC c'è solo lavoro umano: ogni tavola è disegnata interamente a mano dagli artisti del Gruppo Arte di Red Hot Cyber, senza alcun uso di intelligenza artificiale. E a garantire che ogni storia sia realistica e tecnicamente corretta c'è la supervisione degli hacker etici del gruppo HackerHood, che mantengono il racconto fedele al mondo reale della sicurezza informatica. C'è spazio anche per le aziende, che possono usare Betti come strumento di awareness diverso dai soliti corsi: acquistare i volumi, personalizzarli con il proprio brand o sponsorizzare nuovi episodi. E come primo regalo, l'episodio "Byte the Silence", dedicato al cyberbullismo, è scaricabile gratuitamente per uso personale. Perché la miglior difesa, in fondo, è una bella storia. 👉 Scopri tutto su https://betti.redhotcyber.com/

Week in review: Fortibleed campaign’s impact on orgs, Cisco Unified CM flaw exploited Here’s an overview of some of last week’s most interesting news, articles, interviews and videos: Encrypted DNS still tells an eavesdropper where to look Encrypted DNS runs across much of the Internet. DNS over TLS, HTTPS, and QUIC keep the contents of a query away from anyone watching a network link. The encryption covers the message inside each packet. The packet still carries plaintext headers, and those values mark a flow as DNS. Agent Beacon: Open-source telemetry layer for AI agents AI coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, and Claude Cowork run on developer laptops, CI jobs, cloud environments, where they edit files, run commands, and call outside tools. Beacon, an open-source project from Asymptote Labs, configures telemetry for those runtimes and writes a normalized record of what each agent does across local, CI, and cloud-agent surfaces. Who pays when you gate cyber-capable AI models? In this interview with Help Net Security, Jaya Baloo, COO & CISO at Aisle, examines the debate over restricting access to cyber-capable AI models. She lays out the strongest argument for gating these tools, then explains where it breaks down for security teams who depend on the same capabilities for defense. A $1,400 experiment in AI security auditing outperformed OpenAI’s Codex Security A research team has built a system that teaches AI agents to hunt for software bugs by writing the audit method down as plain text. The system, called EVOHUNT, keeps the underlying AI model fixed and improves only an external “playbook” that tells the agent how to work. GTA 6 early access offers are taking gamers’ crypto Scam websites are circulating across the internet with a pitch aimed at millions of gamers: a way to play Grand Theft Auto VI before its release. The pages promise early access for a few hundred dollars in cryptocurrency, ask buyers to enter a payment code, and claim the game will then unlock. Praxen: Open-source AI agent behavior verification Praxen is an open-source tool with a simple job: it checks whether an AI agent does what it claims to do. The tool takes an agent’s declared policy, looks at how the agent operates, and points out every spot where the two drift apart. Where IT meets OT and railway cybersecurity gets harder In this interview with Help Net Security, Jorge Aldegunde, Global Head of Railway Services at DNV, talks through what happens when old operational technology meets newer IT in monorail systems. He explains why open networks widened the attack surface, how teams decide whether to patch a signalling flaw without stopping trains, and who carries the liability. Scoring AI hackers when there is no answer key AI models are solving an increasing number of offensive cybersecurity benchmarks, making those tests less useful for evaluating the most advanced systems. Many rely on vulnerabilities that have already been publicly documented, allowing models to draw on existing knowledge. FrontierCyber, a benchmark from AI security lab Irregular, takes a different approach. It places models on real systems and measures how far they progress toward a security objective. The uptime questions every engineering leader should ask this week In this interview with Help Net Security, Mattias Geniar, CTO at Oh Dear, explains why most outages start quietly, as creeping latency or a slow rise in errors. He argues teams alert on the wrong things: absolute numbers instead of changes, isolated endpoints instead of real user outcomes. Healthcare leaders see a fatal cyber incident as inevitable Healthcare practices run on a chain of outside vendors. An EMR system holds clinical records, a billing platform processes claims, a telehealth tool supports remote visits, and a cloud provider stores data. Every one of those connections gives an outside company a path into the practice, and any one of them can break. According to Omega Systems’ 2026 Healthcare IT Landscape Report, the large majority of practices dealt with at least one operational disruption that traced back to a vendor or a vendor’s own supplier. Two CEOs on why security and AI readiness belong together SuperOps and Guardz are bundling PSA, RMM, MDM, and agentic SecOps into one offering for MSPs. In this Help Net Security Q&A, SuperOps CEO Arvind Parthiban and Guardz CEO Dor Eisner explain how a connected stack cuts the time and context lost to tool-switching, lowers costs against multi-vendor setups, and helps close the gap between average MSP margins of 8% and the 18% top performers reach. What the Fortibleed campaign means for organizations running FortiGate firewalls A massive credential-harvesting campaign targeting FortiGate firewalls has exposed thousands of organizations to potential network compromise, and a trove of attacker tools, scripts, and credentials left inadvertently exposed on a server has given researchers an unusually detailed look at how the operation worked. Cisco Unified CM flaw actively exploited to drop webshells (CVE-2026-20230) CVE-2026-20230, a server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerability affecting Cisco’s Unified Communications Manager (Unified CM), is being exploited to drop webshells and achieve remote code execution capability on the underlying server. Law enforcement hits StealC and Amadey malware networks Operation Endgame, the largest international law enforcement operation aimed at disrupting ransomware and cybercrime infrastructure across the world, has claimed its latest targets: StealC and Amadey. Mystery hackers use novel SharkLoader dropper against governments, software devs Kaspersky researchers have uncovered a previously unknown cyberattack campaign that has compromised government organizations and software development companies in multiple countries. Synology issues critical fix for MailPlus Server vulnerabilities Synology has has fixed critical vulnerabilities in MailPlus Server, a software package used to run private email infrastructure on Synology NAS devices. Details about the vulnerabilities are still under wraps. Product showcase: How to evaluate AI SOC platforms and where Prophet AI leads The agentic SOC market is crowded with vendors promising to automate alert triage, investigation, and response. The challenge is separating measurable operational gains from marketing claims. Prophet Security is an agentic AI SOC platform that autonomously triages, investigates, and responds to security alerts. It also helps strengthen detection and response programs by identifying tuning opportunities, uncovering detection gaps, and enabling natural-language threat hunting. 23 ClawHub plugins squatting official scopes expose AI registry security gaps In this Help Net Security video, Ax Sharma, Head of Research at Manifold Security, breaks down how 23 code-executing plugins ended up under ClawHub’s official @openclaw and @clawhub scopes while owned by unrelated accounts, why an official-looking scope is a supply chain risk even when the code isn’t malicious, and what the registry changed after the disclosure. What your next cyber insurance renewal will demand In this Help Net Security video, Michael Loewy, co-founder, Tide Foundation, explains how cyber insurance is rewriting security programs at renewal time. Hundreds of AI-powered iOS apps found exposing credentials Mobile app developers are packing AI features into everything from writing assistants to productivity tools and lifestyle apps. New research shows that securing access to those services remains a challenge. Researchers from Wake Forest University analyzed 444 iOS applications with LLM features and found 282 that exposed exploitable credentials or backend access mechanisms. Free, no-signup World Cup streams serve scams instead of football Researchers at Malwarebytes identified dozens of websites claiming to offer free access to FIFA World Cup matches. Instead of streaming games, the sites directed visitors through a chain of advertising pages designed to generate revenue for their operators. Phishing hides in routine Microsoft 365 workflows Attackers are abusing Outlook Groups and Microsoft 365 collaboration features to make phishing campaigns appear routine, according to Fortra. The attack begins when a target is added to or invited into an attacker-controlled Microsoft 365 Group. The group’s name, description, or welcome message is designed to create urgency, often using themes such as payroll updates, contract renewals, supplier requests, or mandatory training notices. Two Scattered Spider hackers plead guilty over Transport for London cyberattack Two members of the notorious hacker group Scattered Spider have pleaded guilty to charges related to a 2024 cyberattack on Transport for London (TfL) that resulted in £29 million in loss and recovery costs. Using Reddit to manipulate AI search results is surprisingly easy A Reddit comment that takes only a few seconds to write can end up influencing the answers generated by AI research tools. A Cornell Tech study found that a short snippet of user-generated text, sometimes as little as 13 words, was enough to affect the output of deep-research agents, AI systems that search the web, gather information from multiple sources, and generate reports with citations. LastPass customer data exposed through Klue supply chain attack LastPass disclosed that attackers used OAuth tokens compromised in a supply chain attack on Klue, a market intelligence platform that integrates with CRM and sales tools across organizations, to access customer data stored in its Salesforce environment. Phishing attack on healthcare firm Xsolis impacts 1.4 million people Healthcare technology company Xsolis confirmed that a phishing attack resulted in unauthorized access to its network. The company develops AI-powered software for hospitals, health systems, and health plans and serves more than 600 hospitals and health insurers. Algerian national accused of running cybercrime marketplaces extradited to US An Algerian national accused of running online marketplaces that sold phishing kits and fraud tools has been extradited from Spain to the United States to face bank fraud conspiracy charges. WhatsApp will warn users before they message a potential scammer WhatsApp is rolling out a warning screen on Android and iOS that appears before users open chats with unfamiliar phone numbers. Meta hopes that this new feature will help users avoid scammers. Hacker gets 18 months for attack that compromised 60,000 betting accounts A 21-year-old man known online as “Snoopy” was sentenced to 18 months in prison for his role in a scheme that hacked user accounts on a fantasy sports and betting website and sold access to them, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses. Stealthy new backdoor surfaces in attacks on multiple sectors A relatively new backdoor called Mistic has been deployed in multiple attacks since April 2026 targeting organizations in the insurance, education, IT, and professional services sectors, according to Symantec. A privacy-first take on local malware analysis Submitting a suspicious file to VirusTotal or MalwareBazaar uploads a copy to a searchable public repository. While these platforms help analysts quickly identify malicious files, they also allow threat actors to see when their tools have been detected by monitoring for matching hashes. In targeted attacks, uploaded samples may also contain sensitive victim data, exposing it to third-party systems. Burnyard, a research project from The Ohio State University takes aim at this condition. It runs suspicious binaries on the analyst’s own hardware and keeps each sample local for the duration of the analysis. Microsoft gives Windows 10 users an unexpected extra year of free security updates Microsoft has given Windows 10 users another year of free security updates, extending its consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) program until October 12, 2027. SIM-swapping gang busted in international police operation Officers from Poland’s Central Bureau for Combating Cybercrime (CBZC) arrested four suspected members of an organized cybercrime group accused of SIM swap attacks, cryptocurrency theft, and money laundering. Mirage2FA phishing kit uses HTML smuggling to steal Microsoft 365 credentials Mirage2FA, a phishing kit that combines short-lived HTML smuggling with obfuscated JavaScript loaders to deliver fake Microsoft 365 login pages and steal credentials during MFA prompts, has been identified by researchers at Fortra. The systemd 261 release brings a software TPM, new OS installer Linux distributions that ship systemd as their init system now have a new version to track. The systemd 261 update adds a cloud metadata subsystem, carries process state through kexec reboots, and continues a long-running effort to load external libraries on demand. Product showcase: Avira Security for iOS blends security, privacy, and device optimization Avira Mobile Security for iOS combines security, privacy, and device optimization tools in a single application. The app is also available for Android, macOS, and Windows devices. Only 7% of companies are ready for the AI agents they deployed Most organizations now run or pilot AI agents that operate on company data with limited human direction at each step, a share that reaches 88% in Veeam Software’s Data and AI Trust Gap report. The systems that are supposed to keep an eye on them have not caught up. Residential proxy SDKs are hiding in LG and Samsung smart TV apps Smart TVs in living rooms run small apps that show fish tanks, clocks, solitaire games, and slideshows of puppies. A share of those apps can also send other people’s internet traffic out through the home connection. Spur Intelligence scanned 6,038 apps across LG webOS and Samsung Tizen and found 2,058 that contain residential proxy software. OpenAI wants AI to fix vulnerabilities, not just find them OpenAI expanded Daybreak, its cybersecurity initiative that combines AI models, Codex Security, security researchers, maintainers, industry partners, and access controls to support vulnerability discovery and remediation. Organizations can use the initiative to identify, validate, and fix software vulnerabilities, while developers, maintainers, and security teams can use its tools to strengthen defensive security capabilities. Security testing was built for a slower world Software teams are pushing code into production faster than security testing can keep up. AI is accelerating development cycles and adding pressure to security programs that rely on periodic validation and manual penetration testing. The 2026 State of AI Security Testing report from Aikido Security found that 76% of organizations have had to stop, restrict, or roll back AI-driven behavior in the past 12 months. Google Workspace expands password reset alerts to all admins Google’s Alert Center, a dashboard in the Google Admin console that displays security and administrative alerts and helps administrators identify, investigate, and respond to issues affecting their organization, is expanding the “Super Admin password reset” alert into the “Admin password reset” alert. The feature is rolling out gradually and will be available to all Google Workspace customers. Anthropic’s Claude Tag gives AI agents independent identities Anthropic introduced an agent identity model for Claude Tag, its AI assistant designed for team collaboration in shared workspaces. The model gives Claude its own identity, permissions, and tool access, configured by administrators and tied to a workspace or channel. Most teams will ship AI-written infrastructure code with little review AI-assisted development has settled into everyday practice across software organizations, and developers using it move from idea to working code in hours. That code does not stay with the developers who prompt it. It flows downstream to the DevOps and platform teams who deploy and maintain it, and those teams are not getting the same speed boost. Best practices for AI in open-source work Free and open source software developers us AI coding assistants such as Claude Code, Copilot CLI, Antigravity, and OpenCode in their daily work. The Software Freedom Conservancy responded to that trend with a set of recommendations for contributors who use these tools, which it groups under the label LLM-gen-AI, meaning generative AI systems backed by LLMs. LLM security advice looks solid until you check the hard cases Plenty of people now type their security worries straight into a chatbot. A hacked account, a suspicious email, a stalker who might be tracking a phone, all of it lands in the same window someone would use to ask about dinner. A benchmark called HelpBench tests how well chatbots handle those moments, and the results give security professionals something to watch in what their users are being told. Google Wallet adds TSA Touchless ID for faster airport screening Google Wallet has joined the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) PreCheck Touchless ID program, allowing travelers to pass through security checkpoints using the TSA’s facial comparison technology. The system verifies identity by matching a live photo taken at a checkpoint with identity and flight information, reducing the need to present a physical ID. Modelplane: Open-source control plane for AI inference Organizations that run open-weight models on hardware they own operate GPU fleets spread across clouds, neoclouds, and on-premise data centers. Each fleet handles model placement, replica scaling, infrastructure provisioning, weight distribution, and traffic routing. Teams have built this coordination layer by hand, one operator at a time. Upbound, the company behind the Crossplane project, released Modelplane, an open-source control plane that manages fleet-wide coordination for AI inference. Ransomware gangs find Europe’s weakest link in third-party suppliers Ransomware attacks against European organizations increased during the first months of 2026, with third-party suppliers becoming a major entry point for attackers. Black Kite examined 2,066 ransomware incidents across 31 countries between January 2025 and April 2026 in its 2026 European Cyber Risk Report. Critical open-source projects get a new security framework Open source software projects are getting a new framework for handling security vulnerabilities as AI shortens the time between flaw discovery and exploitation. The Linux Foundation has launched Akrites, an industry initiative that brings together technology companies, financial institutions, security vendors, AI companies, and open source projects to support the remediation and disclosure of vulnerabilities affecting widely used open source software. Cybersecurity jobs available right now: June 24, 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. New infosec products of the month: June 2026 Here’s a look at the most interesting products from the past month, featuring releases from AISLE, Asimily, Blue Planet, depthfirst, Diligent, Drata, Elastic, Filigran, Flip, Hyland, IDnow, Legit Security, MazeBolt, Noma, Qodo, Ridge Security, Tigera, and WitnessAI.

Only 7% of companies are ready for the AI agents they deployed Most organizations now run or pilot AI agents that operate on company data with limited human direction at each step, a share that reaches 88% in Veeam Software’s Data and AI Trust Gap report. The systems that are supposed to keep an eye on them have not caught up. That gap is the heart of the report. Most executives say their data problems are already holding their AI back. The issues are familiar ones: data that is out of date, data that contradicts itself, and data locked away in systems that do not talk to each other. An agent acting on shaky data does more than make a single mistake. It can repeat that mistake across thousands of decisions before anyone notices. Nobody is clearly in charge Responsibility for AI agents has no settled home. Some companies point to an innovation lead, some to engineering, some to the data team, and some to security. A fair number admit it is split across several groups with no real structure. When an agent does something wrong, there is often no one whose job it was to catch it. Ownership turns out to matter. Confidence in spotting a misbehaving agent goes up when the security chief owns the problem, and it drops when the responsibility is shared with no clear lead. Spreading the job around feels safe and tends to make outcomes worse. Leaders and their tech teams are looking at different maps CEOs are far more confident than their CISOs and CIOs that the company has a complete picture of every AI system in use. That matters because the CEO is usually the one setting the rules for compliance and risk. A leader working from an inventory that is missing pieces will make calls that rest on a gap they cannot see. The stakes here are rising with regulation. The EU AI Act carries real financial penalties for companies that deploy high-risk AI systems without the required oversight and record-keeping. Plenty of executives say the Act has changed how they invest, and many CEOs feel ready for it. Their technical teams are less sure. Shadow AI is already everywhere Almost every organization knows its employees are using AI tools that were never approved, and most leaders treat this as a problem. The common responses are training campaigns, access controls, and network monitoring. Staff who want a tool the company has not sanctioned can simply switch to a personal device and keep going. Only a quarter of organizations give all their employees approved tools to use, so people reach for whatever is available. The good news in the report is that the fix is within reach. A small group of companies has combined ambition, visibility, and governance, and nearly all of them report measurable business results from their AI work. Veeam CEO Anand Eswaran summed up the pattern in one line: “Most organizations don’t have an AI adoption problem; they have an AI trust problem.” The starting move for everyone else is unglamorous. Find out what data you hold, decide who owns it, and locate the gaps before an agent does.

Veeam heeft een kwetsbaarheid verholpen in Backup & Replication De kwetsbaarheid maakt het mogelijk voor een geauthenticeerde domeingebruiker om remote code uit te voeren op de Backup Server. Hierdoor kan een aanvaller met domeinreferenties de kwetsbaarheid benutten om controle te krijgen over backup-operaties. Dit betreft een kwetsbaarheid in de backup server software die invloed heeft op de integriteit en beschikbaarheid van backupdata.

Veeam has released security patches to address a critical flaw in its Backup & Replication software that could result in remote code execution. Tracked as CVE-2026-44963, the vulnerability carries a CVSS score of 9.4 out of a maximum of 10.0. "A vulnerability allowing remote code execution (RCE) on the Backup Server by an authenticated domain user," Veeam said in a Tuesday advisory. It credited watchTowr researcher Sina Kheirkhah for responsibly discovering and reporting the issue. It impacts Veeam Backup & Replication 12.3.2.4465 and all earlier versions of 12 builds. Veeam has noted that the vulnerability does not affect any version 13.x build of the backup software due to architectural changes introduced in version 13. The shortcoming has been addressed in Veeam Backup & Replication version 12.3.2.4854. In March 2026, Veeam resolved multiple critical vulnerabilities in Backup & Replication software that, if successfully exploited, could result in remote code execution. It's essential that users update to the latest version for optimal version, particularly given that prior vulnerabilities in the program have been exploited by bad actors, including ransomware groups.

Veeam: risolta vulnerabilità in Backup & Replication Alert AL09/260609/CSIRT-ITA Sintesi Veeam ha rilasciato aggiornamenti di sicurezza per risolvere una nuova vulnerabilità con gravità “critica” nel prodotto “Backup & Replication”, soluzione di backup, ripristino e replica dati per ambienti virtuali, fisici e cloud. Tipologia Remote Code Execution Prodotti e versioni affette Veeam Backup & Replication 12.x, versione 12.3.2.4465 e precedenti 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.

Veeam has released security updates to patch a critical Backup & Replication security flaw that can be exploited to gain remote code execution (RCE) on domain-joined backup servers. The vulnerability (tracked as CVE-2026-44963 and reported by WatchTowr security researcher Sina Kheirkhah) affects Veeam Backup & Replication (VBR) 12.3.2.4465 and all earlier version 12 builds, and was fixed in version 12.3.2.4854. While any domain user with low privileges can exploit this vulnerability, the flaw only impacts Veeam Backup & Replication installations that are joined to a domain. "A vulnerability allowing remote code execution (RCE) on the Backup Server by an authenticated domain user," Veeam said in a Tuesday advisory. "This vulnerability does not affect any version 13.x build of Veeam Backup & Replication due to architectural changes starting in version 13." However, unfortunately, many companies have joined their Veeam servers to a Windows domain, ignoring Veeam's long-standing best practices. While there are no reports of active exploitation, Veeam warned that attackers will often begin developing exploits as soon as patches are released. "It's important to note that once a vulnerability and its associated patch are disclosed, attackers will likely attempt to reverse-engineer the patch to exploit unpatched deployments of Veeam software," the company added. "This reality underscores the critical importance of ensuring that all customers use the latest versions of our software and install all updates and patches without delay." Often targeted in ransomware attacks Ransomware gangs have told BleepingComputer in the past that they always target Veeam backup servers because this allows them to steal sensitive data, move within breached networks, and block restoration efforts by deleting victims' backups. In recent years, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has flagged four Veeam Backup & Replication flaws as actively exploited in attacks, all of which have been abused by ransomware gangs. For instance, in November 2024, Sophos X-Ops reported that several ransomware operations, including the Akira, Fog, and Frag gangs, had weaponized another critical VBR RCE flaw (CVE-2024-40711). The financially motivated FIN7 threat group (which often collaborated with the Maze, Egregor, Conti, REvil, and BlackBasta ransomware groups) and the Cuba ransomware gang have also both been linked to attacks targeting VBR security flaws. Veeam's products are used by over 550,000 customers worldwide, including 82% of Fortune 500 companies and 74% of Global 2,000 firms. 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

Aggiornamenti di sicurezza per prodotti Veeam Alert AL06/260527/CSIRT-ITA Sintesi Veeam ha rilasciato aggiornamenti di sicurezza per risolvere tre vulnerabilità, di cui una con gravità “critica” e due con gravità “alta”, nei prodotti “Service Provider Console” e “Backup & Replication”, rispettivamente console di gestione multi-tenant e soluzione di gestione ed esecuzione di backup, ripristino e replica dei dati per ambienti fisici, virtuali e cloud. Tipologia Remote Code Execution Arbitrary File Write Privilege Escalation Prodotti e versioni affette Veeam Service Provider Console 9.x, versioni precedenti alla 9.2.0.33215 Veeam Backup & Replication 13.x, versioni precedenti alla 13.0.1.2067 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.

Veeam Intelligent ResOps unifies data context and recovery Veeam Software announced Veeam Intelligent ResOps, a new solution that unifies data context and recovery operations. As agentic AI accelerates change at machine speed, Intelligent ResOps gives teams the insight they need into their data to quickly understand impact and recover precisely – without broad rollbacks when something happens. When insights are disconnected from recovery, response slows and risk rises. Intelligent ResOps is the first resilience offering on the new Veeam DataAI Command Platform and helps organizations back up and retain data more intelligently, prioritize incident response with clear context on what changed (including AI-driven changes), and restore only the impacted data – reducing risk, disruption, and recovery time. Veeam Intelligent ResOps is the first of a new generation of resilience capabilities built for the Agentic AI era where data context, identity and AI activity are inseparable from AI. Microsoft 365, the world’s most popular SaaS application and where much of an organization’s sensitive, regulated data resides, is the first supported workload. At the core of Veeam Intelligent ResOps is the DataAI Command Graph. This unified intelligence layer continuously maps data, users, permissions, AI agents, activity, and protection status to deliver actionable context across environments. This context helps teams understand what data they have, what matters most, what’s at risk, and what’s protected so that they can act faster before, during, and after incidents. Intelligent ResOps is currently not a standalone offering, it is sold as an extension of the core Veeam resilience solutions on the Veeam DataAI Command Platform. It extends existing proven Veeam capabilities so that backup, recovery, and data decisions are based on context, not guesswork. “Too many enterprises are flying blind without clear visibility into what data they have, what changed, and what’s truly at risk,” said Rehan Jalil, President of Products and Technology at Veeam. “In this agentic AI era, resilience can’t be reactive. Veeam Intelligent ResOps is the only solution that connects data, identity, and AI context with recovery actions across production and backup, powered by the DataAI Command Graph, so organizations can quickly pinpoint impact and restore only what they need—nothing more.” Resilience operations need context, especially in the AI era As AI assistants and agents act on enterprise information at machine speed, a small mistake or a malicious action can cascade across thousands of files before teams even realize what happened. In those moments, resilience teams don’t just need restore points; they need connected intelligence that explains what changed, where it spread, whether the impacted data is sensitive, regulated, or ROT, who – or which agent – touched it, and what is protected versus exposed. Just as importantly, they need the confidence to restore exactly what should be restored and avoid reintroducing what shouldn’t. Veeam Intelligent ResOps is designed to operationalize that context, so resilience becomes proactive, measurable, and precise. New capabilities with Veeam Intelligent ResOps Veeam Intelligent ResOps adds an intelligence layer to resilience operations so teams can connect data context (what it is, who/what can act on it, and what changed) with protection state (what’s covered and recoverable). The result is faster, more informed decisions across preparedness, incident response, and recovery. Contextual intelligence: Identify what data is sensitive, regulated, business-critical, or redundant, obsolete, or trivial (ROT) to guide resilience decisions with real data context. Backup and recovery: Use connected intelligence to accelerate incident response and enable surgical recovery by restoring only what’s needed instead of performing broad, disruptive restores. Data lifecycle intelligence: Surface ROT hotspots, retention-risk exposure, and misaligned policies that increase risk and inflate backup footprints. AI trust and resilience: Gain visibility into AI agent activity and support investigation and rollback of unwanted agent-driven changes with Agent Commander. Intelligence agent: Ask Veeam as a built-in intelligence agent and receive natural-language insights about your data and AI to speed investigation, reporting, and day-to-day operational decisions. First supported workload: Microsoft 365 Microsoft 365 is the first supported workload for Veeam Intelligent ResOps, building on Veeam’s proven scale protecting 25 million Microsoft 365 users. Intelligent ResOps delivers shared context across production and backup for SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, and Exchange. Available as an add-on for Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365, it enables teams to: Get full context: Find sensitive, regulated, and ROT data across production and backup. Track every action: Understand user and CoPilot activity, including what AI agents can access, share, and expose. Recover in minutes: Restore only what’s needed, avoiding broad, slow restores. Introducing the Veeam DataAI Command Platform Veeam Intelligent ResOps is the first resilience offering on the Veeam DataAI Command Platform. It is where Data, Access, Identities, and AI converge in a single connected trust layer for AI. It spans production data and backup data, covering every agent, identity, and model across an organization’s entire IT estate. The platform is built on five integrated capabilities: DataAI Command Graph, DataAI Security, DataAI Governance, DataAI Compliance & Privacy, and DataAI Resilience.

Object First Fleet Manager simplifies distributed backup storage Object First released Object First Fleet Manager, a cloud-based service that simplifies the management of distributed Ootbi backup storage deployments for Veeam Software environments. Built for enterprises and service providers with distributed backup storage infrastructures, Fleet Manager is available to Ootbi users with active support contracts at no additional cost. As backup infrastructure becomes more complex, managing multiple locations, data centers, and clients creates significant operational overhead. According to Enterprise Strategy Group research, 96% of ransomware attacks target backup data, and visibility gaps across distributed backup environments put recovery at risk. Fleet Manager reduces operational complexity by bringing unified oversight across an organization’s Object First clusters into a single dashboard. Built on zero trust and in accordance with CISA’s Secure-by-Design principles, Fleet Manager monitors only telemetry data and has no access to backup data. This ensures that backups remain absolutely immutable, which means that no one, not even a privileged administrator or attacker, can modify or delete them. Additional Fleet Manager highlights: Centralized fleet view: Users have a single dashboard where they can monitor multi-cluster deployments, storage utilization, hardware health, and receive fleet-wide system alerts from services like Object First Honeypot. Secure remote access: Fleet Manager provides customers with a secure Zero Access, cloud-based service that reduces operational overhead with no additional hardware or software required. Cluster operations: Service providers and enterprises can securely monitor multiple customer environments with multitenant visibility, gaining insight into outages, overages, and threats. “At the core of resilience is protecting backup data from whatever comes your way, whether ransomware, outages, or physical events. Fleet Manager stands out by bringing consistent, centralized visibility across distributed environments, giving customers and partners greater control over their backup infrastructure. That consistency is a key differentiator and a critical enabler of faster, more reliable recovery,” said Rick Vanover, VP, Product Strategy, Veeam. “Resilience depends on knowing what’s always happening across your backup environment. Fleet Manager gives enterprises the visibility and control they need to protect their Veeam backup data, and service providers now have a powerful new way to scale their operations and deliver consistent, reliable service to every customer. The result is less complexity, less risk, and stronger outcomes for everyone,” noted David Bennett, CEO, Object First.

Threat actors are suspected to be exploiting a maximum-severity security flaw impacting Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA), according to Arctic Wolf. The cybersecurity company said it observed malicious activity starting the week of March 9, 2026, in customer environments that's consistent with the exploitation of CVE-2025-32975 on unpatched SMA systems exposed to the internet. It's currently not known what the end goals of the attack are. CVE-2025-32975 (CVSS score: 10.0) refers to an authentication bypass vulnerability that allows attackers to impersonate legitimate users without valid credentials. Successful exploitation of the flaw could facilitate the complete takeover of administrative accounts. The issue was patched by Quest in May 2025. In the malicious activity detected by Arctic Wolf, threat actors are believed to have weaponized the vulnerability to seize control of administrative accounts and execute remote commands to drop Base64-encoded payloads from an external server (216.126.225[.]156) via the curl command. The unknown attackers then proceeded to create additional administrative accounts via "runkbot.exe," a background process associated with the SMA Agent that's used to run scripts and manage installations. Also detected were Windows Registry modifications via a PowerShell script for possible persistence or system configuration changes. Other actions undertaken by the threat actors are listed below - Conducting credential harvesting using Mimikatz. Performing discovery and reconnaissance by enumerating logged-in users and administrator accounts, and running "net time" and "net group" commands. Obtaining remote desktop protocol (RDP) access to backup infrastructure (Veeam, Veritas) and domain controllers. To counter the threat, administrators are advised to apply the latest updates and avoid exposing SMA instances to the internet. The issue has been addressed in versions 13.0.385, 13.1.81, 13.2.183, 14.0.341 (Patch 5), and 14.1.101 (Patch 4).

Some weeks in security feel normal. Then you read a few tabs and get that immediate “ah, great, we’re doing this now” feeling. This week has that energy. Fresh messes, old problems getting sharper, and research that stops feeling theoretical real fast. A few bits hit a little too close to real life, too. There’s a good mix here: weird abuse of trusted stuff, quiet infrastructure ugliness, sketchy chatter, and the usual reminder that attackers will use anything that works. Scroll on. You’ll see what I mean. ⚡ Threat of the Week Google Patches 2 Actively Exploited Chrome 0-Days — Google released security updates for its Chrome web browser to address two high-severity vulnerabilities that it said have been exploited in the wild. The vulnerabilities related to an out-of-bounds write vulnerability in the Skia 2D graphics library (CVE-2026-3909) and an inappropriate implementation vulnerability in the V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine (CVE-2026-3910) that could result in out-of-bounds memory access or code execution, respectively. Google did not share additional details about the flaws, but acknowledged that there exist exploits for both of them. The issues were addressed in Chrome versions 146.0.7680.75/76 for Windows and Apple macOS, and 146.0.7680.75 for Linux. Detection Starts the Clock. Response Decisions Shape the Outcome When incidents escalate, early decisions determine containment and impact. Join this SANS IR Command Roundtable to learn how experienced teams avoid investigation drift, improve coordination, and execute faster response across cloud, enterprise, and operational environments. Watch the Webcast ➝ 🔔 Top News Meta to Discontinue Instagram E2EE in May 2026 — Meta announced plans to discontinue support for end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for chats on Instagram after May 8, 2026. In a statement shared with The Hacker News, a Meta spokesperson said, "Very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we're removing this option from Instagram in the coming months. Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can easily do that on WhatsApp." Authorities Disrupt SocksEscort Service — A court-authorized international law enforcement operation dismantled a criminal proxy service named SocksEscort that enslaved thousands of residential routers worldwide into a botnet for committing large-scale fraud. "The malware allowed SocksEscort to direct internet traffic through the infected routers. SocksEscort sold this access to its customers," the U.S. Justice Department said. The main thing to note here is that SocksEscort was powered by AVrecon, a malware written in C to explicitly target MIPS and ARM architectures via known security flaws in edge network devices. The malware also featured a novel persistence mechanism that involved flashing custom firmware, which intentionally disables future updates, permanently transforming SOHO routers into SocksEscort proxy nodes to blindside corporate monitoring. UNC6426 Exploits nx npm Supply Chain Attack to Gain AWS Admin Access in 72 Hours — A threat actor known as UNC6426 leveraged keys stolen following the supply chain compromise of the nx npm package in August 2025 to completely breach a victim's AWS environment within 72 hours. UNC6426 used the access to abuse the GitHub-to-AWS OpenID Connect (OIDC) trust and create a new administrator role in the cloud environment, Google said. Subsequently, this role was abused to exfiltrate files from the client's Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3) buckets and perform data destruction in their production cloud environments. KadNap Enslaves Network Devices to Fuel Illegal Proxy — A takedown-resistant botnet comprising more than 14,000 routers and other network devices has been conscripted into a proxy network that anonymously ferries traffic used for cybercrime. The botnet, named KadNap, exploits known vulnerabilities in Asus routers (among others), leveraging the initial access to drop shell scripts that reach out to a peer-to-peer network based on Kademlia for decentralized control. Infected devices are being used to fuel a proxy service named Doppelganger that, for a fee, tunnels customers' internet traffic through residential IP addresses, offering a way for attackers to blend in and make it harder to differentiate malicious traffic from legitimate activity. APT28 Strikes with Sophisticated Toolkit — The Russian threat actor known as APT28 has been observed using a bespoke toolkit in recent cyber espionage campaigns targeting Ukrainian cyber assets. The primary components of the toolkit are two implants, one of which employs techniques from a malware framework the threat actor used in 2010s, while the other is a heavily modified version of the COVENANT framework for long-term spying. COVENANT is used in concert with BEARDSHELL to facilitate data exfiltration, lateral movement, and execution of PowerShell commands. Also alongside these tools is a malware named SLIMAGENT that shares overlaps with XAgent. ️🔥 Trending CVEs New vulnerabilities show up every week, and the window between disclosure and exploitation keeps getting shorter. The flaws below are this week's most critical — high-severity, widely used software, or already drawing attention from the security community. Check these first, patch what applies, and don't wait on the ones marked urgent — CVE-2026-3909, CVE-2026-3910, CVE-2026-3913 (Google Chrome), CVE-2026-21666, CVE-2026-21667, CVE-2026-21668, CVE-2026-21672, CVE-2026-21708, CVE-2026-21669, CVE-2026-21671 (Veeam Backup & Replication), CVE-2026-27577, CVE-2026-27493, CVE-2026-27495, CVE-2026-27497 (n8n), CVE-2026-26127, CVE-2026-21262 (Microsoft Windows), CVE-2019-17571, CVE-2026-27685 (SAP), CVE-2026-3102 (ExifTool for macOS), CVE-2026-27944 (Nginx UI), CVE-2025-67826 (K7 Ultimate Security), CVE-2026-26224, CVE-2026-26225 (Intego X9), CVE-2026-29000 (pac4j-jwt), CVE-2026-23813 (HPE Aruba Networking AOS-CX), CVE-2025-12818 (PostgreSQL), CVE-2026-2413 (Ally WordPress plugin), CVE-2026-0953 (Tutor LMS Pro WordPress plugin), CVE-2026-25921 (Gogs), CVE-2026-2833, CVE-2026-2835, CVE-2026-2836 (Cloudflare Pingora), CVE-2026-24308 (Apache ZooKeeper), CVE-2026-3059, CVE-2026-3060, CVE-2026-3989 (SGLang), CVE-2026-0231 (Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR Broker VM), CVE-2026-20040, CVE-2026-20046 (Cisco IOS XR Software), CVE-2025-65587 (graphql-upload-minimal), CVE-2026-3497 (OpenSSH), CVE-2026-26123 (Microsoft Authenticator for Android and iOS), and CVE-2025-61915 (CUPS). 🎥 Cybersecurity Webinars Stop Guessing: Automate Your Defense Against Real-World Attacks → Learn how to move beyond basic security checklists by using automation to test your defenses against real-world attacks. Experts will show you why traditional testing often fails and how to use continuous, data-driven tools to find and fix gaps in your protection. You will learn how to prove your security actually works without increasing your manual workload. Fix Your Identity Security: Closing the Gaps Before Hackers Find Them → This webinar covers a new study about why many companies are struggling to keep their user accounts and digital identities safe. Experts share findings from the Ponemon Institute on the biggest security gaps, such as disconnected apps and the new risks created by AI. You will learn simple, practical steps to fix these problems and get better control over who has access to your company's data. The Ghost in the Machine: Securing the Secret Identities of Your AI Agents → As artificial intelligence (AI) begins to act on its own, businesses face a new challenge: how to give these "AI agents" the right digital IDs. This webinar explains why current security for humans doesn't work for autonomous bots and how to build a better system to track what they do. You will learn simple, real-world steps to give AI agents secure identities and clear rules, ensuring they don't accidentally expose your private company data. 📰 Around the Cyber World Fake Google Security Check Drops Browser RAT — A web page mimicking a Google Account security page has been spotted delivering a fully featured browser-based surveillance toolkit that takes the form of a Progressive Web App (PWA). "Disguised as a routine security checkup, it walks victims through a four-step flow that grants the attacker push notification access, the device's contact list, real-time GPS location, and clipboard contents—all without installing a traditional app," Malwarebytes said. "For victims who follow every prompt, the site also delivers an Android companion package introducing a native implant that includes a custom keyboard (enabling keystroke capture), accessibility-based screen reading capabilities, and permissions consistent with call log access and microphone recording." Forbidden Hyena Delivers BlackReaperRAT — A hacktivist group known as Forbidden Hyena (aka 4B1D) has distributed RAR archives in December 2025 and January 2026 in attacks targeting Russia that led to the deployment of a previously undocumented remote access trojan called BlackReaperRAT and an updated version of the Blackout Locker ransomware, referred to as Milkyway by the threat actors. BlackReaperRAT is capable of running commands via "cmd.exe," uploading/downloading files, spawning an HTTP shell to receive commands, and spreading the malware to connected removable media. "It carries out destructive attacks against organizations across various sectors located within the Russian Federation," BI.ZONE said. "The group publishes information regarding successful attacks on its Telegram channel. It collaborates with the groups Cobalt Werewolf and Hoody Hyena." Chinese Hackers Target the Persian Gulf region with PlugX — A China-nexus threat actor, likely suspected to be Mustang Panda, has targeted countries in the Persian Gulf region. The activity took place within the first 24 hours of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East late last month. The campaign used a multi-stage attack chain that ultimately deployed a PlugX backdoor variant. "The shellcode and PlugX backdoor used obfuscation techniques such as control flow flattening (CFF) and mixed boolean arithmetic (MBA) to hinder reverse engineering," Zscaler said. "The PlugX variant in this campaign supports HTTPS for command-and-control (C2) communication and DNS-over-HTTPS (DOH) for domain resolution." Phishing Campaign Uses SEO Poisoning to Steal Data — A phishing campaign has employed SEO poisoning to direct search engine results to fake traffic ticket portals that impersonate the Government of Canada and specific provincial agencies. "The campaign lures victims to a fake 'Traffic Ticket Search Portal' under the pretense of paying outstanding traffic violations," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said. "Submitted data includes license plates, address, date of birth, phone/email, and credit card numbers." The phishing pages utilize a "waiting room" tactic where the victim's browser polls the server every two seconds and triggers redirects based on specific status codes. Roundcube Exploitation Toolkit Discovered — Hunt.io said it discovered a Roundcube exploitation toolkit on an internet-exposed directory on 203.161.50[.]145. It's worth noting that Russian threat actors like APT28, Winter Vivern, and TAG-70 have repeatedly targeted Roundcube vulnerabilities to breach Ukrainian organizations. "The directory included development and production XSS payloads, a Flask-based command-and-control server, CSS-injection tooling, operator bash history, and a Go-based implant deployed on a compromised Ukrainian web application," the company said, attributing it with medium to high confidence to APT28, citing overlaps with Operation RoundPress. The toolkit, dubbed Roundish, supports credential harvesting, persistent mail forwarding, bulk email exfiltration, address book theft, and two-factor authentication (2FA) secret extraction, mirroring a feature present in MDAEMON. One of the primary targets of the attack is mail.dmsu.gov[.]ua, a Roundcube webmail instance associated with Ukraine's State Migration Service (DMSU). Besides the possibility of a shared development lineage, Roundish introduces four new components not previously documented in APT28 webmail activity, including a CSS-based side-channel module, browser credential stealer, and a Go-based backdoor that provides persistence via cron, systemd, and SELinux. The CSS injection component is designed to progressively extract characters from Roundcube's document object model (DOM) without injecting any JavaScript into the victim's page. The technique is likely used for targeting Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) tokens or email UIDs. Central to the Roundish toolkit is an XSS payload that's engineered to steal the victim's email address, harvest account credentials, redirect all incoming emails to a Proton Mail address, export mailbox data from the victim's Inbox and Sent folders, and gather the victim's complete address book. "The combination of hidden autofill credential harvesting, server-side mail forwarding persistence, bulk mailbox exfiltration, and browser credential theft reflects a modular approach designed for sustained access," Hunt.io said. "From a defensive perspective, password resets alone are not sufficient in cases like this. Mail forwarding rules, Sieve filters, and multi-factor authentication secrets must be audited and reset." Phishing Campaign Targeting AWS Console Credentials — An active adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) phishing campaign is using fake security alert emails to steal AWS Console credentials, per Datadog. "The phishing kit proxies authentication to the legitimate AWS sign-in endpoint in real time, validating credentials before redirecting victims and likely capturing one-time password (OTP) codes," the company said. "This campaign does not exploit AWS vulnerabilities or abuse AWS infrastructure." Post-compromise console access has been observed within 20 minutes of credential submission. These efforts originated from Mullvad VPN infrastructure. Malicious npm Packages Deliver Cipher stealer — Two new malicious npm packages, bluelite-bot-manager and test-logsmodule-v-zisko, were found to deliver via Dropbox a Windows executable designed to siphon sensitive data, including Discord totems, credentials from Chrome, Edge, Opera, Brave, and Yandex browsers, and seed files from cryptocurrency wallet apps like Exodus. from compromised hosts using a stealer named Cipher stealer. "The stealer also uses an embedded Python script and a secondary payload downloaded from GitHub," JFrog said. GIBCRYPTO Ransomware Detailed — A new ransomware called GIBCRYPTO comes with the ability to capture keystrokes and corrupt the Master Boot Record (MBR) so that any attempt to restart the system will cause the system to run into an error. The ransomware uses the Salsa20 algorithm for encryption. It's suspected to be part of Snake Keylogger, indicating the malware authors' attempts to diversify beyond information theft. The development comes as Sygnia highlighted SafePay's OneDrive-based data exfiltration technique during a ransomware attack after breaching a victim by leveraging a FortiGate firewall flaw and a misconfigured administrative account. "SafePay gained initial access by exploiting a firewall misconfiguration, which enabled them to obtain local administrative credentials," the company said. "They rapidly escalated discovery and enumeration activities to identify high-value targets for lateral movement, demonstrating a structured and methodical approach to mapping the environment. Within a matter of hours, SafePay escalated to domain administrator access." The attack culminated in the deployment of ransomware, encrypting more than 60 servers. Fraudulent Account Registration Activity Originating from Vietnam — A sprawling cybercrime ecosystem based in Vietnam has been linked to a cluster of fraudulent account registration activity on platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. In these attacks, attributed to O-UNC-036, the threat actors rely on disposable email addresses in order to execute SMS pumping attacks, also called International Revenue Sharing Fraud (IRSF). "In this scheme, malicious actors automate the creation of puppet accounts in a targeted service provider," Okta said. "Fraudsters use these account registrations to trigger SMS messages to premium rate phone numbers and profit from charges incurred. This activity can prove costly for service providers who use SMS to verify registration information in customer accounts or to send multi-factor authentication (MFA) security codes." O-UNC-036 has also been linked to a cybercrime-as–a-service (CaaS) ecosystem that provides paid infrastructure and services to facilitate online fraud. The web-based storefronts are hosted in Vietnam and specialize in the sales of web-based accounts. Hijacked AppsFlyer SDK Distributes Crypto Clipper — The AppsFlyer Web SDK was briefly hijacked to serve malicious code to steal cryptocurrency in a supply chain attack. The clipper malware payload came with capabilities to intercept cryptocurrency wallet addresses entered on websites and replace them with attacker-controlled addresses to divert funds to the threat actor. "The AppsFlyer Web SDK was observed serving obfuscated malicious JavaScript instead of the legitimate SDK from websdk.appsflyer[.]com," Profero said. "The malicious payload appears to have been designed for stealth and compatibility, preserving legitimate SDK functionality while adding hidden browser hooks and wallet-hijacking logic." The incident has since been resolved by AppsFlyer. Operation CamelClone Targets Government and Defense Entities — A new cyber espionage campaign dubbed Operation CamelClone has targeted governments and defense entities in Algeria, Mongolia, Ukraine, and Kuwait using malicious ZIP archives that contain a Windows shortcut (LNK) file, which, when executed, delivers a JavaScript loader named HOPPINGANT. The loader then delivers additional payloads for establishing C2 and exfiltrating data to the MEGA cloud storage service. "One interesting aspect of this campaign is that the threat actor does not rely on traditional command-and-control infrastructure," Seqrite Labs said. "Instead, the payloads are hosted on a public file-sharing service, filebulldogs[.]com, while stolen data is uploaded to MEGA storage using the legitimate tool Rclone." The activity has not been attributed to any known threat group. How Threat Actors Exfiltrate Credentials Using Telegram Bots — Threat actors are abusing the Telegram Bot API to exfiltrate data via text messages or arbitrary file uploads, highlighting how legitimate services can be weaponized to evade detection. Agent Tesla Keylogger is by far the most prominent example of a malware family that uses Telegram for C2. "In general, Telegram C2s appear to be most popular among information stealers, possibly due to Telegram's technically legitimate nature and because information stealers typically only need to exfiltrate data passively rather than provide complex communications beyond simple message or file transfers," Cofense said. Microsoft Launches Copilot Health — Microsoft has become the latest company after OpenAI and Anthropic to launch a dedicated "secure space" called Copilot Health that integrates medical records, biometric data from wearables, and lab test results to give personalized advice in the U.S. "Copilot Health brings together your health records, wearable data, and health history into one place, then applies intelligence to turn them into a coherent story," the company said. Like OpenAI and Anthropic, Microsoft emphasized that Copilot Health isn't meant to replace professional medical care. Rogue AI Agents Can Work Together to Engage in Offensive Behaviors — According to a new report from artificial intelligence (AI) security company Irregular, agents can work together to hack into systems, escalate privileges, disable endpoint protection, and steal sensitive data while evading pattern-matching defenses. What's notable is that the experiment did not rely on adversarial prompting or deliberately unsafe system design. "In one case, an agent convinced another agent to carry out an offensive action, a form of inter-agent collusion that emerged with no external manipulation," Irregular said. "This scenario demonstrates two compounding risks: inter-agent persuasion can erode safety boundaries, and agents can independently develop techniques to circumvent security controls. When an agent is given access to tools or data, particularly but not exclusively shell or code access, the threat model should assume that the agent will use them, and that it will do so in unexpected and possibly malicious ways." 🔧 Cybersecurity Tools Dev Machine Guard → It is a free, open-source tool that scans your computer to show you exactly what developer tools and scripts are running. It creates a simple list of your AI coding assistants, code editor extensions, and software packages to help you find anything suspicious or outdated. It is a single script that works in seconds to give you better visibility into the security of your local coding environment. Trajan → It is an automated security tool designed to find hidden vulnerabilities in "service meshes," which are the systems that manage how different parts of a large software application talk to each other. Because these systems are complex, it is easy for engineers to make small mistakes in the settings that allow hackers to bypass security or steal data. Trajan works by scanning these configurations to spot those specific errors and helping developers fix them before they can be exploited. Disclaimer: For research and educational use only. Not security-audited. Review all code before use, test in isolated environments, and ensure compliance with applicable laws. Conclusion There’s a lot packed in here, and not in a neat way. Some of it is the usual recycled chaos, some of it feels a little more deliberate, and some of it has that nasty “this is going to show up everywhere by next week” energy. Anyway — enough throat-clearing. Here’s the stuff worth your attention.

SecurityWeek’s weekly cybersecurity news roundup offers a concise overview of important developments that may not receive full standalone coverage but remain relevant to the broader threat landscape. This curated summary highlights key stories across vulnerability disclosures, emerging attack methods, policy updates, industry reports, and other noteworthy events to help readers maintain a well-rounded awareness of the evolving cybersecurity environment. Here are this week’s highlights: Google Cloud highlights faster cloud attacks in new threat report Google has released its Cloud Threat Horizons Report for the first half of 2026, drawing on data from the second half of 2025. The report shows threat actors now exploit software vulnerabilities more often than weak credentials for initial access, with the time from vulnerability disclosure to active attacks shrinking from weeks to days. Data theft remains the primary goal in most incidents, often achieved through identity compromise, vishing, or token theft, while living-off-the-land techniques and AI-assisted methods help attackers remain hidden and move quickly. Polish police identify seven minors selling DDoS tools Polish cybercrime investigators have identified seven minors, aged 12 to 16 at the time of the offenses, who distributed online software designed for launching DDoS attacks. The group targeted various popular websites, including auction platforms, sales sites, IT-related domains, hosting providers, and accommodation booking services. They operated as a coordinated team for profit and were fully aware of the illegal nature of their activities. US indicts third BlackCat ransomware negotiator US prosecutors have charged a third individual with acting as a negotiator for the BlackCat/Alphv ransomware gang. The defendant, Angelo Martino, worked as a ransomware negotiator for DigitalMint. Two other cybersecurity experts pleaded guilty to their role in the scheme a few months ago. US defense contractor suspected of creating Coruna exploits US military contractor L3Harris is believed to have developed at least some of the Coruna iOS exploits. The exploits were reportedly created by the contractor for legitimate US government purposes but ended up in the hands of Russian actors. The exploit leak may be related to the case of a former executive at L3Harris division Trenchant, who was recently jailed for selling Android and iOS exploits to Russia. Apple this week updated older iOS versions to address the Coruna exploits. Telus Digital data breach Telus Digital has confirmed a cybersecurity incident after ShinyHunters hackers claimed to have stolen around 1 petabyte of information from the company’s systems. Telus stated that it is actively investigating the breach, but did not share further details on the exact data involved or how the attackers gained access. N8n vulnerability exploited CISA has added a vulnerability in the open source workflow automation tool n8n to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2025-68613, allows remote code execution. Several critical n8n vulnerabilities were disclosed in recent months, but CVE-2025-68613 appears to be the first that has been exploited in the wild. There does not appear to be any public information about the attacks. New CrackArmor vulnerabilities in Linux AppArmor allow root privileges Researchers from Qualys uncovered nine vulnerabilities in the Linux security module AppArmor (collectively called CrackArmor) that could allow an unprivileged local user to escalate privileges and gain root access. The flaws exploit a “confused deputy” scenario, enabling attackers to manipulate security profiles through trusted tools such as Sudo or Postfix and bypass kernel protections. The issues, which date back to 2017, potentially expose millions of enterprise Linux deployments. Critical Veeam product vulnerabilities Veeam has released an advisory regarding several critical and high-severity vulnerabilities affecting its Backup & Replication product. The vulnerabilities can be exploited to bypass security features, escalate privileges, and remotely execute code. There is no evidence of in-the-wild exploitation, but it’s not uncommon for threat actors to target Veeam product vulnerabilities in their attacks. Global cybercrime crackdown An international law enforcement effort coordinated by Interpol dismantled more than 45,000 malicious IP addresses and servers used for phishing, malware, ransomware, and online fraud campaigns. The operation, known as Operation Synergia III and conducted between July 2025 and January 2026, involved authorities from 72 countries and resulted in 94 arrests, with another 110 suspects under investigation. Cybersecurity firms including Group-IB supported the effort by providing threat intelligence to help identify criminal infrastructure and coordinate global takedowns. AI-generated Slopoly malware found by IBM IBM security researchers have come across a new piece of malware dubbed Slopoly, which they believe was likely generated by AI. The malware was used in the later stages of an attack by a financially motivated cybercrime group named Hive0163, which is known for the use of the Interlock ransomware. “Although still relatively unspectacular, AI-generated malware such as Slopoly shows how easily threat actors can weaponize AI to develop new malware frameworks in a fraction of the time it used to take,” the IBM researchers said.

Veeam: sanate vulnerabilità in Backup & Replication Alert AL02/260313/CSIRT-ITA Sintesi Veeam ha rilasciato aggiornamenti di sicurezza per sanare otto vulnerabilità, di cui cinque con gravità “critica” e tre con gravità “alta”, nel prodotto Backup & Replication, soluzione di backup, ripristino e replica dati per ambienti virtuali, fisici e cloud. Tali vulnerabilità, qualora sfruttate, potrebbero consentire a un utente malintenzionato autenticato di accedere a informazioni sensibili, elevare i propri privilegi utente, eludere le funzionalità di sicurezza, compromettere l’integrità delle informazioni salvate e di eseguire codice arbitrario sui sistemi interessati. Tipologia Remote Code Execution Information Disclosure Privilege Escalation Security Restrictions Bypass Arbitrary File Write/Read/Deletion Prodotti e versioni affette Veeam Backup & Replication 13.x, versioni precedenti alla 13.0.1.2067 12.x, versioni precedenti alla 12.3.2.4465 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.

Veeam has released security updates to address multiple critical vulnerabilities in its Backup & Replication software that, if successfully exploited, could result in remote code execution. The vulnerabilities are as follows - CVE-2026-21666 (CVSS score: 9.9) - A vulnerability that allows an authenticated domain user to perform remote code execution on the Backup Server. CVE-2026-21667 (CVSS score: 9.9) - A vulnerability that allows an authenticated domain user to perform remote code execution on the Backup Server. CVE-2026-21668 (CVSS score: 8.8) - A vulnerability that allows an authenticated domain user to bypass restrictions and manipulate arbitrary files on a Backup Repository. CVE-2026-21672 (CVSS score: 8.8) - A vulnerability that allows local privilege escalation on Windows-based Veeam Backup & Replication servers. CVE-2026-21708 (CVSS score: 9.9) - A vulnerability that allows a Backup Viewer to perform remote code execution as the postgres user. The shortcomings, which affect Veeam Backup & Replication 12.3.2.4165 and all earlier version 12 builds, have been addressed in version 12.3.2.4465. CVE-2026-21672 and CVE-2026-21708 have also been fixed in Backup & Replication 13.0.1.2067, along with two more critical security flaws - CVE-2026-21669 (CVSS score: 9.9) - A vulnerability that allows an authenticated domain user to perform remote code execution on the Backup Server. CVE-2026-21671 (CVSS score: 9.1) - A vulnerability that allows an authenticated user with the Backup Administrator role to perform remote code execution in high availability (HA) deployments of Veeam Backup & Replication. "It's important to note that once a vulnerability and its associated patch are disclosed, attackers will likely attempt to reverse-engineer the patch to exploit unpatched deployments of Veeam software," the company said in its advisory. With vulnerabilities in Veeam software having been repeatedly exploited by threat actors to carry out ransomware attacks in the past, it's essential that users update their instances to the latest version to safeguard against any potential threat.

Data protection company Veeam Software has patched multiple flaws in its Backup & Replication solution, including four critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities. VBR is enterprise data backup and recovery software that helps IT administrators to create copies of critical data for quick restoration following cyberattacks and hardware failures. Three RCE security flaws patched today (tracked as CVE-2026-21666, CVE-2026-21667, and CVE-2026-21669) allow low-privileged domain users to execute remote code on vulnerable backup servers in low-complexity attacks. The fourth one (tracked as CVE-2026-21708) allows a Backup Viewer to gain remote code execution as the postgres user. Veeam also addressed several high-severity security bugs that can be exploited to escalate privileges on Windows-based Veeam Backup & Replication servers, extract saved SSH credentials, and bypass restrictions to manipulate arbitrary files on a Backup Repository. These vulnerabilities were discovered during internal testing or reported through HackerOne and are resolved in Veeam Backup & Replication versions 12.3.2.4465 and 13.0.1.2067. Veeam also warned admins to upgrade the software to the latest release as soon as possible, since threat actors often begin developing exploits shortly after patches are released. "It's important to note that once a vulnerability and its associated patch are disclosed, attackers will likely attempt to reverse-engineer the patch to exploit unpatched deployments of Veeam software," the company warned. "This reality underscores the critical importance of ensuring that all customers use the latest versions of our software and install all updates and patches without delay." VBR servers targeted in ransomware attacks VBR is popular among managed service providers and mid-sized to large enterprises, even though ransomware gangs commonly target VBR servers because they can serve as a quick jumping-off point for lateral movement within breached networks, simplify data theft, and make it easy to block restoration efforts by deleting victims' backups. The financially motivated FIN7 threat group (which previously collaborated with the Conti, REvil, Maze, Egregor, and BlackBasta ransomware groups) and the Cuba ransomware gang have both been linked to past attacks targeting VBR vulnerabilities. Sophos X-Ops incident responders also revealed in November 2024 that Frag ransomware exploited another VBR RCE bug disclosed two months earlier and also used in Akira and Fog ransomware attacks starting in October 2024. Veeam says its products are used by more than 550,000 customers worldwide, including 74% of Global 2,000 firms and 82% of Fortune 500 companies. 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

Veeam heeft kwetsbaarheden verholpen in Veeam Backup & Replication. De kwetsbaarheden stellen een geauthenticeerde domeingebruiker in staat om op afstand code uit te voeren op de backupserver, wat kan leiden tot ongeautoriseerde controle over backupoperaties. Dit probleem is aanwezig in de backupserveromgeving en kan worden geëxploiteerd via geauthenticeerde toegang. Daarnaast kunnen geauthenticeerde gebruikers beperkingen omzeilen en de mogelijkheid krijgen om willekeurige bestanden binnen een backuprepository te manipuleren, wat kan leiden tot gegevensmanipulatie of -corruptie. Een aanvaller met beperkte rechten kan toegang krijgen tot opgeslagen SSH-credentials, wat kan leiden tot ongeautoriseerde toegang tot kritieke systemen. De kwetsbaarheid in de hoge beschikbaarheid van Veeam Backup & Replication kan worden geëxploiteerd door een geauthenticeerde gebruiker met de rol van Backup Administrator, wat kan leiden tot compromittering van het systeem. Verder kan een aanvaller met lokale toegang zijn privileges verhogen, wat de beveiligingscontext van backup- en replicatieprocessen in gevaar kan brengen. Tot slot kan een Backup Viewer op afstand code uitvoeren met de privileges van de 'postgres'-gebruiker, wat kan leiden tot ongeautoriseerde acties binnen de databaseomgeving.

As the cybersecurity market continues to mature, SecurityWeek’s annual M&A report provides an essential roadmap for understanding how corporate consolidation is reshaping the digital defense sector. SecurityWeek’s M&A tracker cataloged 426 deals in 2025, including 334 involving pure-play companies. The 2025 figure of 426 represents a 5% increase over 2024, signaling that the sector is once again on an upward trajectory after two years of consecutive decline. While the total number of deals is lower than the 2022 peak (455), the value and complexity of the deals appear to be higher. In addition, the market continues to move away from the ‘buying everything’ trend observed in 2021/2022 to a more strategic, international consolidation. Regional dynamics and global footprint The 2025 data shows that the market has become significantly more globalized. At 288 participations for 426 deals, the US remains involved in roughly 67% of all global cybersecurity M&A. This is a slight recovery from the 63% low in 2023, but still well below the 80% dominance seen in 2021. The UK saw a decline from 70 deals (2021) to 48 (2023). However, it rebounded to 67 in 2024 and maintained that momentum with 64 deals in 2025. The UK has solidified its position as the clear #2 global hub for cybersecurity M&A. After being overtaken in the rankings in 2024, Israel has reclaimed the 3rd position with 34 deals in 2025. Ireland and Sweden saw fewer than 10 deals in 2024 after a strong 2023. In 2025, they bounced back to 12 and 11 deals respectively. Capital allocation and valuation trends Financial details were disclosed for 74 deals for a total disclosed value of $92.5 billion. This includes 63 deals involving pure-play cybersecurity companies, with a total disclosed value of $84 billion. The total disclosed deal value has surged by approximately 82% year-over-year, which can largely be attributed to Google’s planned acquisition of cloud security giant Wiz for $32 billion. The industry has sustained its appetite for billion-dollar acquisitions, with 11 deals exceeding the $1 billion mark. In addition to Google-Wiz, seven deals involving pure-play cybersecurity firms surpassed $1 billion, including Palo Alto Networks acquiring CyberArk ($25B) and Chronosphere ($3.3B), ServiceNow’s acquisition of Armis ($7.7B) and Veza ($1B), Francisco Partners buying Jamf ($2.2B), Veeam Software acquiring Securiti AI ($1.7B), and Proofpoint acquiring Hornetsecurity ($1.8B). This suggests that large-scale platform consolidation is now a permanent fixture of the landscape. The $100M-$999M range was the primary engine of growth in 2025. This indicates that acquirers are focusing on mature, established cybersecurity companies rather than early-stage startups. This also suggests that the industry is currently in a phase of strategic scaling, where medium-sized specialized leaders are being swallowed by larger platforms to create all-in-one security suites. There has been a noticeable decline in the number of disclosed deals under $100M (down to 26 in 2025 from 32 in 2024). This implies that ‘tuck-in’ acquisitions of very small startups are either becoming less frequent or are less likely to have their financial terms disclosed compared to larger, more impactful deals. Sector deep-dive and domain expertise SecurityWeek data shows that 125 deals involved managed security solutions providers (MSSPs) in 2025, including 60 pure cybersecurity providers. This includes product distributors and companies that offer other products and services in addition to cybersecurity. While activity involving MSSPs has increased from 119 deals in 2024, it remains significantly lower than the 150+ seen in 2022 and 2023. After a sharp drop in 2024, the 2025 figure suggests the market has found its new normal. It is no longer in a freefall, but it hasn’t returned to the frantic buying spree of 2022-2023. The strategic value remains high as managed services continue to be the primary way small-to-medium enterprises consume security. While it’s important to keep track of MSSP deals, we are tracking them separately in an effort to get a better view of the other categories. Several core security sub-sectors experienced significant upward momentum in 2025, as acquirers seem to prioritize data sovereignty, identity integrity, and regulatory compliance. With 82 deals, GRC (governance, risk, and compliance) reached a five-year peak in 2025. While it has always been a top category (averaging 65 deals from 2021-2024), the jump to 82 suggests that companies are prioritizing regulatory requirements over purely technical defenses. Data protection recorded aggressive growth, surging from 44 deals in 2024 to 63 deals in 2025. This reflects an industry shift toward data-centric security. While still a smaller category, AI security is showing a clear upward trajectory. It recorded 8 deals in 2024 and has increased to 13 deals in 2025, mirroring the broader tech industry’s focus on securing LLMs and AI pipelines. After a significant slump in 2024 (dropping to 28 deals), identity has bounced back to 43 deals in 2025, returning to its historical levels from 2022 and 2023. While several sectors saw record growth, four categories experienced a cooling in M&A activity, reflecting a pivot away from reactive tools toward long-term governance and data resilience. One of them is incident response, which has seen a notable decline, dropping from a peak of 38 deals in 2024 to 25 deals in 2025. Private equity-led acquisitions have also cooled significantly. They spiked to 37 in 2023 but dropped to 18 in 2025, returning to the levels seen in 2021 and 2022. After a strong 2024 (16 deals), interest in companies specializing in industrial/OT cybersecurity appears to have leveled off, dropping back to 9 deals, the same number recorded in 2023. Application security saw a steady rise in M&A deals through 2024 (reaching 31), but dipped slightly to 26 in 2025. Two types of companies stand out for remaining steady throughout the years. Network security remains the most consistent category in the dataset. It has hovered almost exactly at the same level for four years, with roughly 40 deals announced every year between 2022 and 2025. The government contractors segment is also remarkably stable, consistently recording between 36 and 38 deals annually (except for a slight outlier of 43 in 2021). It sits at 36 deals for 2025. The 2025 data indicates a market shift away from reactive tools (incident response) and toward resilience and compliance infrastructure (GRC and data protection). While 2024 was a year of diversifying into specialized niches, 2025 appears to be a year of consolidation around the core pillars of governance and data privacy. Monthly summaries of 2025 cybersecurity M&A deals: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December. Methodology: The data was collected through news distribution services, Google searches and pitches from PR companies. The data includes companies that issued press releases announcing or mentioning acquisitions, as well as deals that have been privately reported to SecurityWeek. All deals that had a cybersecurity component have been taken into account for this study. Mergers and acquisitions that did not have an English-language announcement may not be included. The data could also include some deals that may have not been completed after they were announced. The GRC category includes governance, compliance, risk management, audit, assessment, vulnerability management, penetration testing, attack surface management, offensive security, and cyber insurance. Network security includes endpoint security, MDR, XDR, NDR, and SASE. Identity includes IAM, PAM, secure access, authentication, and authorization. Incident response includes SOAR, SIEM, SOC, and forensics. ‘Other (specialized)’ includes hardware, quantum, media and events, healthcare, brand protection, financial, online safety, SAP, recruiting, real estate, and automotive. Data protection includes encryption/cryptography, VPN, privacy, backup and blockchain. MSSP includes cybersecurity solution distributors and companies that do not develop their own products or solutions. The AI category only includes companies specializing in securing AI.

Veeam Agent Commander unifies AI risk detection, protection, and recovery Veeam Software announced Agent Commander, a unified solution to help organizations safely detect AI risk, protect AI systems, and undo AI mistakes, enabling them to proactively address AI-driven risks and securely scale AI agents everywhere. The first integration from Veeam’s acquisition of Securiti AI, Agent Commander combines the capabilities of both to give organizations visibility, control, and protection over their entire data and AI estate, with the ability to undo AI mistakes with precision and ease. Agent Commander will be available in a future release of the Securiti Data Command Center, bringing together Data Resilience and Data Security capabilities. “AI happens at machine speed, which means organizations must understand what data is being used, by what agent, and how in real-time. If an error occurs, organizations not only need to understand what data was impacted, but they also need the ability to undo any damage rapidly,” said Anand Eswaran, CEO of Veeam. “With Agent Commander, organizations know what data is powering AI, and it gives them the power to detect, protect, and, when necessary, undo AI actions with speed and precision. It represents the future of what’s expected from data security and data resilience, and it’s only possible with Veeam’s unified platform,” Eswaran continued. Trust is the biggest gap in AI infrastructure. Data risk and AI risk are converging into the same issue as AI agents scale. An agent is only as trustworthy as the data it can access and act on. Enterprise controls remain fragmented, with separate systems for protection, security, governance, and recovery. None provide unified visibility, control, or the ability to respond at the speed and scale AI requires. Sensitive data is being fed into models and acted upon in ways no one approved nor is tracking. As AI moves at machine speed an AI agent can access and act on sensitive data in seconds. Workflows that take hours to detect and days to remediate leave too much exposure at that velocity. Closing this gap requires a new layer of AI infrastructure: a unified control plane that delivers contextual visibility, policy-level enforcement, and surgical recovery, converging data resilience, data security, and AI risk management into one operational system. Agent Commander brings Veeam’s trusted data resilience together with Securiti AI’s Data Command Center. This unified platform gives organizations visibility into their AI environment, detects hidden risks and shadow AI, and provides comprehensive controls to protect data as it moves through AI systems. Agent Commander can instantly undo AI agent mistakes with precise rollbacks. With Agent Commander, teams can detect and fix threats faster and with less effort, enabling safe and rapid AI adoption. It provides the visibility and control needed to confidently scale AI, turning security into a true business accelerator. Trust is the missing layer in AI infrastructure At the core of Agent Commander is Veeam’s Data Command Graph, a real-time relational intelligence engine that maps live connections between data, identities, AI models, and autonomous agents across production and backup environments. Veeam sees what others can’t. The toxic combinations where compromised identities, exposed data, and autonomous agents intersect, and how those risks compound, cascade, and evolve in real time across the entire data and AI estate. Combined with Veeam’s enterprise-grade data resilience platform, it delivers: Detect AI risk with context: Identify shadow AI, sensitive data exposure, and risky agent behavior, with full visibility into downstream impact across systems and environments. Protect AI pipelines autonomously: Enforce granular, real-time controls across data, identities, and AI agents, independent of model providers, cloud platforms, and hybrid needs. Undo AI mistakes with precision: Reverse unwanted AI actions using precise, context-aware recovery, restoring trusted data without reverting entire systems. By converging relational AI intelligence with proven resilience infrastructure, Agent Commander establishes a new standard for trusted, recoverable AI at scale. “As AI becomes operational infrastructure, enterprises can no longer treat data protection, data and AI security, privacy, and governance as separate disciplines,” said Rehan Jalil, President of Products & Technology at Veeam. “Controlling AI risk is effectively impossible in siloed environments or without deep contextual intelligence across data, permissions, and autonomous agents. Agent Commander unifies control across production and backup to detect toxic combinations, enforce granular policy, and precisely reverse AI-driven actions. This is the foundation required to operate AI safely at enterprise scale.” “Acquisitions often raise the question of how combined strengths can create new customer value,” said Todd Thiemann, Principal Analyst, AIM & Data Security at Omdia. “Veeam’s announcement provides a clear roadmap for integrating capabilities and delivering enhanced solutions to organizations securing their data and AI estates. The focus on Agent Commander demonstrates Veeam’s commitment to provide both operational efficiency and comprehensive security for AI agents,” Thiemann concluded.

Il supporto dell’AI costituisce un valore aggiunto per il crimine informatico, anche per i meno esperti. L’AI, in particolare quella generativa, è uno straordinario vettore per di illeciti cyber, come ha dimostrato il recente caso di un hacker criminale russo “principiante“. Sfruttando la GenAI, infatti, costui avrebbe violato centinaia di firewall. Dal caso, all’attenzione di un gruppo di analisti cyber, è emerso come il protagonista della vicenda abbia potuto con l’AI automatizzare ricognizione, parsing dei dati e movimenti laterali all’interno delle reti. L’azione è cominciata con una scansione sistematica delle interfacce di gestione esposte su varie porte. Dopo aver trovato un potenziale bersaglio, l’hacker criminale ha forzato l’accesso con un attacco “brute force“. Ha provato innumerevoli combinazioni di credenziali comunemente usate e deboli, fino a quando una ha funzionato. Una volta attivati, gli attacchi hanno consentito l’estrazione di configurazioni complete contenenti informazioni sensibili sugli utenti in possesso di VPN, sulle policy e sull’architettura interna. Una volta in possesso dei dati, li ha analizzati, decifrati e organizzati, utilizzando lo script Python. “Strumenti che mancano di robustezza“ C. J. Moses, CISO di Amazon Integrated Security ha spiegato: “L’analisi del codice sorgente rivela chiari indicatori di sviluppo assistito dall’AI. Ci sono tanti elementi che indicano questo aspetto. Tra questi, commenti ridondanti che si limitano a ripetere i nomi delle funzioni, un’architettura semplicistica con un’attenzione sproporzionata alla formattazione rispetto alla funzionalità“. Poi, ha aggiunto: “Pur risultando funzionali per il caso d’uso specifico dell’attore della minaccia, questi strumenti mancano di robustezza e falliscono in presenza di casi limite. Sono tutte caratteristiche tipiche del codice generato dall’AI e utilizzato senza un significativo processo di revisione e raffinamento”. La tempistica dell’operazione L’attaccante ha preso di mira in modo specifico anche i server Veeam Backup & Replication. Secondo gli analisti avrebbe proceduto a sfruttare vulnerabilità note del prodotto. Tutte le attività si sono svolte in un arco temporale molto ristretto, tra l’11 gennaio e il 18 febbraio 2026, un altro elemento indicativo del fatto che l’autore dell’attacco non fosse esperto. Nel corso delle operazioni, infatti, ha provato a sfruttare diverse Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE). Spesso però ha fallito quando i sistemi bersaglio risultavano aggiornati o adeguatamente rafforzati. Di fronte ad ambienti ben protetti, la tendenza era quella di “abbandonare il tentativo per spostarsi verso obiettivi più facili“.

A low-skilled cyber threat actor has been observed leveraging several generative AI (GenAI) tools to deploy a malicious campaign aimed at compromising Fortinet’s FortiGate firewall appliances. In an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Security blog published on February 20, CJ Moses, CISO of Amazon Integrated Security, shared findings about the campaign. Amazon Threat Intelligence assessed that the attacker was a Russian-speaking, financially motivated threat actor with limited technical capabilities. The threat actor used multiple commercial GenAI services to implement and scale well-known attack techniques throughout every phase of their operation. AWS assessed the campaign ran from January 11 to February 18, 2026, and compromised over 600 FortiGate devices across more than 55 countries. Amazon Threat Intelligence noted that AWS infrastructure was not involved in this campaign and that no exploitation of FortiGate vulnerabilities was observed. FortiGate Compromise: Attack Workflow Explained This campaign was deemed opportunistic rather than targeted. The threat actor scanned FortiGate management interfaces exposed to the internet and tried gaining access to them using commonly reused credentials. They developed AI-assisted Python scripts to parse, decrypt and organize these stolen configurations. Once VPN access to victim networks was gained, the threat actor deployed a custom reconnaissance tool, also likely developed with the use of AI services, with different versions written in both Go and Python. Indicators of AI involvement in this tool included redundant comments that merely restate function names, simplistic architecture with disproportionate investment in formatting over functionality, naive JSON parsing via string matching rather than proper deserialization and compatibility shims for language built-ins with empty documentation stubs. “While functional for the threat actor’s specific use case, the tooling lacks robustness and fails under edge cases – characteristics typical of AI-generated code used without significant refinement,” Moses noted. The post-VPN reconnaissance access tool workflow performed tasks such as ingesting target networks from VPN routing tables, classifying networks by size, running service discovery using gogo, an open-source port scanner, automatically identifying SMB hosts and domain controllers and integrating vulnerability scanning using Nuclei, an open-source vulnerability scanner, against discovered HTTP services to produce prioritized target lists. Once inside victim networks, the threat actor followed a standard approach leveraging well-known open-source offensive tools, including: Domain compromise using Meterpreter, an open-source post-exploitation toolkit, with the Mimikatz module to perform DCSync attacks against domain controllers, allowing the actor to extract NTLM password hashes from Active Directory Lateral movement by attempting to expand access through pass-the-hash/pass-the-ticket attacks against additional infrastructure, NTLM relay attacks using standard poisoning tools and remote command execution on Windows hosts Backup infrastructure targeting by deploying multiple tools for extracting credentials, including PowerShell scripts, compiled decryption tools and exploitation attempts leveraging known vulnerabilities in Veeam Backup & Replication servers Limited exploitation success (e.g. CVE-2019-7192, CVE-2023-27532, CVE-2024-40711) “However, a critical finding from this analysis is that the threat actor largely failed when attempting to exploit anything beyond the most straightforward, automated attack paths. Their own documentation records repeated failures: targeted services were patched, required ports were closed, vulnerabilities didn’t apply to the target OS versions,” Moses wrote. Threat Actor’s Multifaceted Use of GenAI The Amazon Threat Intelligence analysis revealed that the actor used at least two distinct commercial large language model (LLM) providers throughout their operations. It used AI for multiple tasks, including: Attack planning: generate comprehensive attack methodologies complete with step-by-step exploitation instructions, expected success rates, time estimates and prioritized task trees Multi-model operational workflow: for instance, one model served as the primary tool developer, attack planner, and operational assistant, while a second is used as a supplementary attack planner when the actor needs help pivoting within a specific compromised network Compromise planning tool: in one observed instance, the actor submitted the complete internal topology of an active victim (IP addresses, hostnames, confirmed credentials, and identified services) and requested a step-by-step plan to compromise additional systems they could not access with their existing tools Infrastructure building: beyond the reconnaissance framework, the actor’s infrastructure contains numerous scripts in multiple programming languages bearing hallmarks of AI generation, including configuration parsers, credential extraction tools, VPN connection automation, mass scanning orchestration and result aggregation dashboards Amazon Threat Intelligence said it expects cybercriminals with low-to-medium skill levels to continue leveraging commercial AI tools for malicious purposes in 2026. “Strong defensive fundamentals remain the most effective countermeasure: patch management for perimeter devices, credential hygiene, network segmentation and robust detection for post-exploitation indicators,” outlined Moses. The AWS Security blog also provided defenders with a long list of mitigation recommendations built around four pillars: FortiGate appliance audit, credential hygiene, post-exploitation detection and backup infrastructure hardening.

Over 600 Fortinet FortiGate firewall instances have been hacked in an AI-powered campaign that exploits exposed ports and weak credentials, AWS reports. The attacks, observed between January 11 and February 18, did not target known vulnerabilities. Instead, they focused on the exploitation of exposed device configurations across globally dispersed appliances. According to AWS, the campaign was carried out by an unsophisticated threat actor that relied on multiple commercial gen-AI services to implement known attack techniques. The hackers were seen scanning for management interfaces accessible via ports 443, 8443, 10443, and 4443, and using common credentials for initial access. “The campaign’s targeting appears opportunistic rather than sector-specific, consistent with automated mass scanning for vulnerable appliances,” AWS notes. In some cases, multiple FortiGate devices belonging to the same organization were compromised. AWS says that some IP clusters point either to managed service provider deployments or to large organizational networks. Compromised devices were identified across 55 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin and North America, and Europe. Following successful compromise, the hackers were seen leveraging open source offensive tools to extract NTLM password hashes, obtain complete domain credential databases, and move laterally through pass-the-hash/pass-the-ticket attacks. The attackers were also seen targeting Veeam Backup & Replication servers, likely to extract additional credentials and destroy backups in preparation for ransomware attacks. According to AWS, the hackers used at least two commercial LLMs to plan the attacks, generate tools, and assist with the operation, including duration and success rate assessments. “These plans reference academic research on offensive AI agents, suggesting the actor follows emerging literature on AI-assisted penetration testing. The AI produces technically accurate command sequences, but the actor struggles to adapt when conditions differ from the plan,” AWS notes. On the threat actor’s infrastructure, AWS identified multiple scripts likely generated using AI, used to parse configurations, extract credentials, automate VPN connections, perform mass scanning, and aggregate results. “The volume and variety of custom tooling would typically indicate a well-resourced development team. Instead, a single actor or very small group generated this entire toolkit through AI-assisted development,” AWS says. The attacks, it notes, were likely mounted by a financially motivated, Russian-speaking threat actor with low-to-medium technical capability, based on the extensive reliance on AI across all operational phases. Related: Mississippi Hospital System Closes All Clinics After Ransomware Attack Related: FBI: $20 Million Losses Caused by 700 ATM Jackpotting Attacks in 2025 Related: Fortinet Patches Exploited FortiCloud SSO Authentication Bypass

For the latest discoveries in cyber research for the week of 23rd February, please download our Threat Intelligence Bulletin. TOP ATTACKS AND BREACHES France’s Ministry of Economy has disclosed a data breach resulted from an unauthorized access to the national bank account registry FICOBA, impacting information tied to 1.2 million accounts. Exposed data includes names, addresses, account identifiers and, in some cases, tax-related identifiers. Officials said the intrusion involved compromised government credentials. Japanese tech giant Advantest Corporation was hit by a ransomware attack that resulted in the deployment of ransomware within portions of its network following unauthorized access by a third party on February 15. The incident may have impacted certain internal systems, and the potential compromise of customer or employee data remains unclear. University of Mississippi Medical Center, an academic healthcare system in Mississippi, has suffered a ransomware attack that forced closures across its clinic network and disrupted access to electronic medical records. The organization canceled elective procedures and shifted to manual processes. Systems were taken offline and no ransomware group claimed responsibility. Ukraine’s central bank, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), has faced a supply-chain incident affecting a contractor that runs its collectible coin online store. Exposed information includes customer registration data, such as names, emails, phone numbers, and delivery addresses. The bank indicated that payment information was not affected. AI THREATS Check Point Research unveiled a technique that repurposes AI assistants like Grok and Microsoft Copilot as covert C2 proxies by abusing web-browsing URL fetch features without authentication. Malware exfiltrates host data via query parameters and retrieves commands from AI-generated summaries through hidden WebView2, bypassing inspection of AI traffic. A Russian-speaking financially motivated threat actor leveraged commercial generative AI tools to conduct mass credential abuse of 600 FortiGate devices in 55 countries from January 11 to February 18, 2026. The attackers targeted Veeam servers, exploiting CVE-2023-27532 and CVE-2024-40711. Check Point IPS provides protection against this threat (Veeam Backup and Replication Insecure Deserialization (CVE-2024-40711)) Researchers uncovered a Shai-Hulud-like npm supply chain worm spreading via typosquatted packages, stealing developer and CI secrets, exfiltrating via GitHub API with DNS fallback, and propagating by poisoning workflows and git hooks, with MCP server injection targeting AI coding assistants and harvesting LLM API keys. VULNERABILITIES AND PATCHES Dell RecoverPoint for VMs, impacted by CVE-2026-22769 (CVSS 10.0) in versions before 6.0.3.1, has been exploited as a zero-day since mid-2024 by suspected Chinese group UNC6201. Attackers used hardcoded Tomcat credentials for unauthenticated root access, deploying SLAYSTYLE, BRICKSTORM, and the GRIMBOLT backdoor, and creating Ghost NICs to pivot and persist in VMware environments. Check Point IPS and Threat Emulation provide protection against this threat (Dell RecoverPoint For Virtual Machines Arbitrary File Upload (CVE-2026-22769); Trojan.Wins.SLAYSTYLE; Trojan.Wins.BRICKSTORM.ta.*; Trojan.Wins.GRIMBOLT) Grandstream GXP1600 series VoIP phones are affected by CVE-2026-2329, a critical unauthenticated stack-based buffer overflow in the web API allowing root RCE. Exploitation enables credential theft, SIP proxy reconfiguration, and covert call interception. Firmware version 1.0.7.81 fixes the issue. Check Point IPS provides protection against this threat (Grandstream GXP1600 Stack Overflow (CVE-2026-2329)) A flaw in Microsoft 365 Copilot allows the “Work Tab” Chat feature to summarize emails protected by confidentiality sensitivity labels, bypassing configured Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies. The code-level defect enables Copilot to access labeled content in Sent Items and Draft folders, exposing restricted data in AI-generated summaries. Google has patched CVE-2026-2441, a high-severity Chrome zero-day in the CSS component in Google Chrome prior to 145.0.7632.75, confirmed exploited in the wild. The use-after-free flaw can enable remote code execution within the browser sandbox via a crafted page. Check Point IPS provides protection against this threat (Google Chrome Use After Free (CVE-2026-2441)) THREAT INTELLIGENCE REPORTS Researchers have discovered Keenadu, an Android firmware backdoor delivered via supply chain compromise. It uses RC4-encrypted payloads, DexClassLoader, and permission bypass frameworks for ad fraud, search hijacking, and monetization, with links to Triada and BADBOX. Researchers analyzed Arkanix Stealer, a MaaS infostealer with Python and C++ implants, dynamic server side configuration, and modules including ChromElevator and HVNC. It uses phishing lures, steals from 22 browsers, Telegram and Discord and targets VPN, gaming and crypto wallets. Researchers have analyzed a spam campaign that abused Atlassian Jira Cloud notifications to bypass email filters by exploiting trusted atlassian.net sender domains with valid SPF and DKIM authentication. The attackers rapidly spun up trial instances and used Jira Automation alongside the Keitaro TDS to distribute localized lures targeting government and corporate sectors. Researchers identified a Booking.com-themed phishing campaign active since January 2026 that targets hotel partners and guests with a three-stage chain. It leveraged look-alike domains and IDN homographs, collected visitor fingerprinting with decoy pages, conducted partner account takeovers, and used WhatsApp lures to fake payment portals behind Cloudflare CAPTCHA.

A Russian-speaking, financially motivated threat actor has been observed taking advantage of commercial generative artificial intelligence (AI) services to compromise over 600 FortiGate devices located in 55 countries. That's according to new findings from Amazon Threat Intelligence, which said it observed the activity between January 11 and February 18, 2026. "No exploitation of FortiGate vulnerabilities was observed—instead, this campaign succeeded by exploiting exposed management ports and weak credentials with single-factor authentication, fundamental security gaps that AI helped an unsophisticated actor exploit at scale," CJ Moses, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of Amazon Integrated Security, said in a report. The tech giant described the threat actor as having limited technical capabilities, a constraint they overcame by relying on multiple commercial generative AI tools to implement various phases of the attack cycle, such as tool development, attack planning, and command generation. While one AI tool served as the primary backbone of the operation, the attackers also relied on a second AI tool as a fallback to assist with pivoting within a specific compromised network. The names of the AI tools were not disclosed. The threat actor is assessed to be driven by financial gain and not associated with any advanced persistent threat (APT) with state-sponsored resources. As recently highlighted by Google, generative AI tools are being increasingly adopted by threat actors to scale and accelerate their operations, even if they don't equip them with novel uses of the technology. If anything, the emergence of AI tools illustrates how capabilities that were once off-limits to novice or technically challenged threat actors are becoming increasingly feasible, further lowering the barrier to entry for cybercrime and enabling them to come up with comprehensive attack methodologies. "They are likely a financially motivated individual or small group who, through AI augmentation, achieved an operational scale that would have previously required a significantly larger and more skilled team," Moses said. Amazon's investigation into the threat actor's activity has revealed that they have successfully compromised multiple organizations’ Active Directory environments, extracted complete credential databases, and even targeted backup infrastructure, likely in a lead-up to ransomware deployment. What's interesting here is that rather than devising ways to persist within hardened environments or those that had employed sophisticated security controls, the threat actor chose to drop the target altogether and move to a relatively softer victim. This indicates the use of AI as a way to bridge their skill gap for easy pickings. Amazon said it identified publicly accessible infrastructure managed by the attackers that hosted various artifacts pertinent to the campaign. This included AI-generated attack plans, victim configurations, and source code for custom tooling. The entire modus operandi is akin to an "AI-powered assembly line for cybercrime," the company added. At its core, the attacks enabled the threat actor to breach FortiGate appliances, allowing it to extract full device configurations that, in turn, made it possible to glean credentials, network topology information, and device configuration information. This involved systematic scanning of FortiGate management interfaces exposed to the internet across ports 443, 8443, 10443, and 4443, followed by attempts to authenticate using commonly reused credentials. The activity was sector-agnostic, indicating automated mass scanning for vulnerable appliances. The scans originated from the IP address 212.11.64[.]250. The stolen data was then used to burrow deeper into targeted networks and conduct post-exploitation activities, including reconnaissance for vulnerability scanning using Nuclei, Active Directory compromise, credential harvesting, and efforts to access backup infrastructure that align with typical ransomware operations. Data gathered by Amazon shows that the scanning activity resulted in organizational-level compromise, causing multiple FortiGate devices belonging to the same entity to be accessed. The compromised clusters have been detected across South Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, West Africa, Northern Europe, and Southeast Asia. "Following VPN access to victim networks, the threat actor deploys a custom reconnaissance tool, with different versions written in both Go and Python," the company said. "Analysis of the source code reveals clear indicators of AI-assisted development: redundant comments that merely restate function names, simplistic architecture with disproportionate investment in formatting over functionality, naive JSON parsing via string matching rather than proper deserialization, and compatibility shims for language built-ins with empty documentation stubs." Some of the other steps undertaken by the threat actor following the reconnaissance phase are listed below - Achieve domain compromise via DCSync attacks. Move laterally across the network via pass-the-hash/pass-the-ticket attacks, NTLM relay attacks, and remote command execution on Windows hosts. Target Veeam Backup & Replication servers to deploy credential harvesting tools and programs aimed at exploiting known Veeam vulnerabilities (e.g., CVE-2023-27532 and CVE-2024-40711). Another noteworthy finding is the threat actor's pattern of repeatedly running into failures when trying to exploit anything beyond the "most straightforward, automated attack paths," with their own documentation recording that the targets had either patched the services, closed the required ports, or had no vulnerable exploitation vectors. With Fortinet appliances becoming an attractive target for threat actors, it's essential that organizations ensure management interfaces are not exposed to the internet, change default and common credentials, rotate SSL-VPN user credentials, implement multi-factor authentication for administrative and VPN access, and audit for unauthorized administrative accounts or connections. It's also recommended to isolate backup servers from general network access, ensure all software programs are up-to-date, and monitor for unintended network exposure. "As we expect this trend to continue in 2026, organizations should anticipate that AI-augmented threat activity will continue to grow in volume from both skilled and unskilled adversaries," Moses said. "Strong defensive fundamentals remain the most effective countermeasure: patch management for perimeter devices, credential hygiene, network segmentation, and robust detection for post-exploitation indicators." Update In a separate research, Cyber and Ramen also disclosed details of the same campaign, highlighting the threat actor's use of DeepSeek and Anthropic Claude to generate the attack plans. A prior exposure of the same server in December 2025 has revealed that the earlier instance hosted a copy of an offensive AI framework known as HexStrike AI. "DeepSeek is used to generate attack plans from reconnaissance data," an anonymous threat researcher behind the security blog said. "Claude's coding agent produced vulnerability assessments during the intrusions and was configured to execute offensive tools on the victim systems. A previously unreported model context protocol (MCP) server acts as a bridge to the language models, maintaining a knowledge base which grows with each target." The server, 212.11.64[.]250, has been found to host over 1,400 files across 139 subdirectories. This included CVE exploit code, FortiGate configuration files, Nuclei scanning templates, Veeam credential extraction tools, and BloodHound collection data. Also present among the exposed files was a custom Model Context Protocol (MCP) server named ARXON to process scan results and reconnaissance data, invoke DeepSeek to generate attack plans, and leverage scripts to modify victim infrastructure. Another custom tool used by the attacker is a Go-based orchestrator called CHECKER2 for parallel VPN scanning and target processing. "What sets this activity apart is the integration of LLMs: a (likely) single operator managing simultaneous intrusions across multiple countries with analytical support at every stage," the researcher said. "Language models only assisted a low-to-average skilled actor in removing the number of targets one person can work at any given time." (The story was updated after publication to include additional details of the campaign from Cyber and Ramen.)

Article updated at the bottom with additional technical details about this campaign. Amazon is warning that a Russian-speaking hacker used multiple generative AI services as part of a campaign that breached more than 600 FortiGate firewalls across 55 countries in five weeks. A new report by CJ Moses, CISO of Amazon Integrated Security, says that the hacking campaign occurred between January 11 and February 18, 2026, and did not rely on any exploits to breach Fortinet firewalls. Instead, the threat actor targeted exposed management interfaces and weak credentials that lacked MFA protection, then used AI to help automate access to other devices on the breached network. Moses says the compromised firewalls were observed across South Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, West Africa, Northern Europe, and Southeast Asia, among other regions. An AI-powered hacking campaign Amazon says it learned about the campaign after finding a server hosting malicious tools used to target Fortinet FortiGate firewalls. As part of the campaign, the threat actor targeted FortiGate management interfaces exposed to the internet by scanning for services running on ports 443, 8443, 10443, and 4443. The targeting was reportedly opportunistic rather than against any specific industries. Rather than exploiting zero-days, as we commonly see targeting FortiGate devices, the actor used brute-force attacks with common passwords to gain access to devices. Once breached, the threat actor extracted the device's configuration settings, which include: SSL-VPN user credentials with recoverable passwords Administrative credentials Firewall policies and internal network architecture IPsec VPN configurations Network topology and routing information These configuration files were then parsed and decrypted using what appears to be AI-assisted Python and Go tools. "Following VPN access to victim networks, the threat actor deploys a custom reconnaissance tool, with different versions written in both Go and Python," explained Amazon. "Analysis of the source code reveals clear indicators of AI-assisted development: redundant comments that merely restate function names, simplistic architecture with disproportionate investment in formatting over functionality, naive JSON parsing via string matching rather than proper deserialization, and compatibility shims for language built-ins with empty documentation stubs." "While functional for the threat actor's specific use case, the tooling lacks robustness and fails under edge cases—characteristics typical of AI-generated code used without significant refinement." These tools were used to automate reconnaissance on the breached networks by analyzing routing tables, classifying networks by size, running port scans using the open-source gogo scanner, identifying SMB hosts and domain controllers, and using Nuclei to look for HTTP services. The researchers say that while the tools were functional, they commonly failed in more hardened environments. Operational documentation written in Russian detailed how to use Meterpreter and mimikatz to conduct DCSync attacks against Windows domain controllers and extract NTLM password hashes from the Active Directory database. The campaign also specifically targeted Veeam Backup & Replication servers using custom PowerShell scripts, compiled credential-extraction tools, and attempted to exploit Veeam vulnerabilities. On one of the servers found by Amazon (212[.]11.64.250), the threat actor hosted a PowerShell script named "DecryptVeeamPasswords.ps1" that was used to target the backup application. As Amazon explains, threat actors often target backup infrastructure before deploying ransomware to prevent the restoration of encrypted files from backups. The threat actors' "operational notes" also contained multiple references to trying to exploit various vulnerabilities, including CVE-2019-7192 (QNAP RCE), CVE-2023-27532 (Veeam information disclosure), and CVE-2024-40711 (Veeam RCE). The report says that the attacker repeatedly failed when attempting to breach patched or locked-down systems, but instead of continuing to try to gain access, they moved on to easier targets. While Amazon believes the threat actor has a low-to-medium skill set, that skill set was greatly amplified through the use of AI. The researchers say the threat actor utilized at least two large language model providers throughout the campaign to: Generate step-by-step attack methodologies Develop custom scripts in multiple programming languages Create reconnaissance frameworks Plan lateral movement strategies Draft operational documentation In one instance, the actor reportedly submitted a full internal victim network topology, including IP addresses, hostnames, credentials, and known services, to an AI service and asked for help spreading further into the network. Amazon says the campaign demonstrates how commercial AI services are lowering the barrier to entry for threat actors, enabling them to carry out attacks that would normally be outside their skill set. The company recommends that FortiGate admins not expose management interfaces to the internet, ensure MFA is enabled, ensure VPN passwords are not the same as those for Active Directory accounts, and harden backup infrastructure. Google recently reported that threat actors are abusing Gemini AI across all stages of cyberattacks, mirroring what Amazon observed in this campaign. Custom AI toolset powers breaches Separate research published yesterday on the Cyber and Ramen security blog provides additional technical details about how AI and large language models were incorporated directly into the intrusion campaign. The researcher shared that the misconfigured server at 212.11.64[.]250, also found by Amazon, exposed 1,402 files, including stolen FortiGate configuration backups, Active Directory mapping data, credential dumps, vulnerability assessments, and attack planning documents. "The server at 212.11.64[.]250:9999, hosted on AS4264 (Global-Data System IT Corporation, Zurich, Switzerland), contained 1,402 files across 139 subdirectories," explained the threat researcher. "Folders within the directory included CVE exploit code, FortiGate configuration files, Nuclei scanning templates and Veeam credential extraction tools. Two folders named claude-0 and claude contained over 200 files between the two, including Claude Code task outputs, session diffs, and cached prompt states." "A folder titled fortigate_27.123(full IP redacted) held configuration data and credentials from what appeared to be a compromised FortiGate appliance." Included in the exposed files was a custom Model Context Protocol (MCP) server named ARXON, which acted as a bridge between reconnaissance data and commercial large language models. The researcher said they were unable to find any public references to ARXON, indicating it was likely a custom MCP framework created by the threat actor. An MCP server acts as an intermediary layer that ingests data, feeds it into language models, and then uses the generated output with other tools. In this campaign, the ingested data was used to automate post-compromise analysis and attack planning. A separate Go tool called CHECKER2 is a Docker-based orchestrator that was used to scan thousands of VPN targets in parallel, with logs showing more than 2,500 potential targets across 100+ countries. According to the researcher, reconnaissance data collected from compromised FortiGate appliances and internal networks was fed into ARXON, which then queried large language models such as DeepSeek and Claude to generate structured attack plans. These attack plans included instructions for gaining Domain Admin, suggested locations to search for credentials, recommended exploitation steps, and guidance on spreading laterally to other devices. In some cases, Claude Code was configured to execute offensive tools on its own, including Impacket scripts, Metasploit modules, and hashcat, without requiring the threat actor to approve each command. The researcher notes that the operation evolved over several weeks, with the attacker initially using an open-source HexStrike MCP framework and, about eight weeks later, moving to the automated, customized ARXON system. This report shares Amazon's assessment that generative AI is being used as a multiplier, allowing attackers to scale intrusions more efficiently. The researcher similarly warns that defenders should prioritize patching edge devices and auditing unusual SSH activity and VPN account creation. CronUp security researcher Germán Fernández also found a different server exposing a directory containing what appear to be AI-generated tools targeting FortiWeb. While these tools do not appear to be part of the FortiGate campaign, they once again show how threat actors are continuing to use AI tools to power their attacks. Update 2/21/26: Added more technical details from Cyber and Ramen security blog and Germán Fernández. 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

AI-augmented threat actor accesses FortiGate devices at scale Commercial AI services are enabling even unsophisticated threat actors to conduct cyberattacks at scale—a trend Amazon Threat Intelligence has been tracking closely. A recent investigation illustrates this shift: Amazon Threat Intelligence observed a Russian-speaking financially motivated threat actor leveraging multiple commercial generative AI services to compromise over 600 FortiGate devices across more than 55 countries from January 11 to February 18, 2026. No exploitation of FortiGate vulnerabilities was observed—instead, this campaign succeeded by exploiting exposed management ports and weak credentials with single-factor authentication, fundamental security gaps that AI helped an unsophisticated actor exploit at scale. This activity is distinguished by the threat actor’s use of multiple commercial GenAI services to implement and scale well-known attack techniques throughout every phase of their operations, despite their limited technical capabilities. AWS infrastructure was not observed to be involved in this campaign. Amazon Threat Intelligence is sharing these findings to help the broader security community defend against this activity. This investigation highlights how commercial AI services can lower the technical barrier to entry for offensive cyber capabilities. The threat actor in this campaign is not known to be associated with any advanced persistent threat group with state-sponsored resources. They are likely a financially motivated individual or small group who, through AI augmentation, achieved an operational scale that would have previously required a significantly larger and more skilled team. Yet, based on our analysis of public sources, they successfully compromised multiple organizations’ Active Directory environments, extracted complete credential databases, and targeted backup infrastructure, a potential precursor to ransomware deployment. Notably, when this actor encountered hardened environments or more sophisticated defensive measures, they simply moved on to softer targets rather than persisting, underscoring that their advantage lies in AI-augmented efficiency and scale, not in deeper technical skill. As we expect this trend to continue in 2026, organizations should anticipate that AI-augmented threat activity will continue to grow in volume from both skilled and unskilled adversaries. Strong defensive fundamentals remain the most effective countermeasure: patch management for perimeter devices, credential hygiene, network segmentation, and robust detection for post-exploitation indicators. Campaign overview Through routine threat intelligence operations, Amazon Threat Intelligence identified infrastructure hosting malicious tooling associated with this campaign. The threat actor had staged additional operational files on the same publicly accessible infrastructure, including AI-generated attack plans, victim configurations, and source code for custom tooling. This inadequate operational security provided comprehensive visibility into the threat actor’s methodologies and the specific ways they leverage AI throughout their operations. It’s like an AI-powered assembly line for cybercrime, helping less skilled workers produce at scale. The threat actor compromised globally dispersed FortiGate appliances, extracting full device configurations that yielded credentials, network topology information, and device configuration information. They then used these stolen credentials to connect to victim internal networks and conduct post-exploitation activities including Active Directory compromise, credential harvesting, and attempts to access backup infrastructure, consistent with pre-ransomware operations. Initial access: Mass credential abuse The threat actor’s initial access vector was credential-based access to FortiGate management interfaces exposed to the internet. Analysis of the actor’s tooling supported systematic scanning for management interfaces across ports 443, 8443, 10443, and 4443, followed by authentication attempts using commonly reused credentials. FortiGate configuration files represent high-value targets because they contain: SSL-VPN user credentials with recoverable passwords Administrative credentials Complete network topology and routing information Firewall policies revealing internal architecture IPsec VPN peer configurations The threat actor developed AI-assisted Python scripts to parse, decrypt, and organize these stolen configurations. Geographic distribution The campaign’s targeting appears opportunistic rather than sector-specific, consistent with automated mass scanning for vulnerable appliances. However, certain patterns suggest organizational-level compromise where multiple FortiGate devices belonging to the same entity were accessed. Amazon Threat Intelligence observed clusters where contiguous IP blocks or shared non-standard management ports indicated managed service provider deployments or large organizational networks. Concentrations of compromised devices were observed across South Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, West Africa, Northern Europe, and Southeast Asia, among other regions. Custom tooling: AI-generated reconnaissance framework Following VPN access to victim networks, the threat actor deploys a custom reconnaissance tool, with different versions written in both Go and Python. Analysis of the source code reveals clear indicators of AI-assisted development: redundant comments that merely restate function names, simplistic architecture with disproportionate investment in formatting over functionality, naive JSON parsing via string matching rather than proper deserialization, and compatibility shims for language built-ins with empty documentation stubs. While functional for the threat actor’s specific use case, the tooling lacks robustness and fails under edge cases—characteristics typical of AI-generated code used without significant refinement. The tool automates the post-VPN reconnaissance workflow: Ingesting target networks from VPN routing tables Classifying networks by size Running service discovery using gogo, an open-source port scanner Automatically identifying SMB hosts and domain controllers Integrating vulnerability scanning using Nuclei, an open-source vulnerability scanner, against discovered HTTP services to produce prioritized target lists. Post-exploitation methodology Once inside victim networks, the threat actor follows a standard approach leveraging well-known open-source offensive tools. Domain compromise: The threat actor’s operational documentation details the intended use of Meterpreter, an open-source post-exploitation toolkit, with the mimikatz module to perform DCSync attacks against domain controllers. This allowed the actor to extract NTLM password hashes from Active Directory. In confirmed compromises, the attacker obtained complete domain credential databases. In at least one case, the Domain Administrator account used a plaintext password that was either extracted from the FortiGate configuration through password reuse or was independently weak. Lateral movement: Following domain compromise, the threat actor attempts to expand access through pass-the-hash/pass-the-ticket attacks against additional infrastructure, NTLM relay attacks using standard poisoning tools, and remote command execution on Windows hosts. Backup infrastructure targeting: The threat actor specifically targeted Veeam Backup & Replication servers, deploying multiple tools for extracting credentials, including PowerShell scripts, compiled decryption tools, and exploitation attempts leveraging known Veeam vulnerabilities. Backup servers represent high-value targets because they typically store elevated credentials for backup operations, and compromising backup infrastructure positions an attacker to destroy recovery capabilities before deploying ransomware. Limited exploitation success: The threat actor’s operational notes reference multiple CVEs across various targets (CVE-2019-7192, CVE-2023-27532, and CVE-2024-40711, among others). However, a critical finding from this analysis is that the threat actor largely failed when attempting to exploit anything beyond the most straightforward, automated attack paths. Their own documentation records repeated failures: targeted services were patched, required ports were closed, vulnerabilities didn’t apply to the target OS versions, . Their final operational assessment for one confirmed victim acknowledged that key infrastructure targets were “well-protected” with “no vulnerable exploitation vectors.” AI as a force multiplier Amazon Threat Intelligence analysis revealed that the actor uses at least two distinct commercial LLM providers throughout their operations. AI-generated attack planning: The threat actor used AI to generate comprehensive attack methodologies complete with step-by-step exploitation instructions, expected success rates, time estimates, and prioritized task trees. These plans reference academic research on offensive AI agents, suggesting the actor follows emerging literature on AI-assisted penetration testing. The AI produces technically accurate command sequences, but the actor struggles to adapt when conditions differ from the plan. They cannot compile custom exploits, debug failed exploitation attempts, or creatively pivot when standard approaches fail. Multi-model operational workflow: Amazon Threat Intelligence identified the actor using multiple AI services in complementary roles. One serves as the primary tool developer, attack planner, and operational assistant. A second is used as a supplementary attack planner when the actor needs help pivoting within a specific compromised network. In one observed instance, the actor submitted the complete internal topology of an active victim—IP addresses, hostnames, confirmed credentials, and identified services—and requested a step-by-step plan to compromise additional systems they could not access with their existing tools. AI-generated tooling at scale: Beyond the reconnaissance framework, the actor’s infrastructure contains numerous scripts in multiple programming languages bearing hallmarks of AI generation, including configuration parsers, credential extraction tools, VPN connection automation, mass scanning orchestration, and result aggregation dashboards. The volume and variety of custom tooling would typically indicate a well-resourced development team. Instead, a single actor or very small group generated this entire toolkit through AI-assisted development. Threat actor assessment Based on comprehensive analysis, Amazon Threat Intelligence assesses this threat actor as follows: Motivation: Suspected financially motivated, based on widespread, indiscriminate targeting and low sophistication Language: Russian-speaking, based on extensive Russian-language operational documentation Skill level: Low-to-medium baseline technical capability, significantly augmented by AI. The actor can run standard offensive tools and automate routine tasks but struggles with exploit compilation, custom development, and creative problem-solving during live operations AI dependency: Extensive reliance across all operational phases. AI is used for tool development, attack planning, command generation, and operational reporting across multiple commercial LLM providers Operational scale: Broad. Compromised devices across dozens of countries, with evidence of sustained operations over an extended period Post-exploitation depth: Shallow. Repeated failures against hardened or non-standard targets, with a pattern of moving on rather than persisting when automated approaches fail Operational security: Inadequate. Detailed operational plans, credentials, and victim data stored without encryption alongside tooling Amazon’s response Amazon Threat Intelligence remains committed to helping protect customers and the broader internet ecosystem by actively investigating and disrupting threat actors. Upon discovering this campaign, Amazon Threat Intelligence took the following actions: Shared actionable intelligence, including indicators of compromise, with relevant partners Collaborated with industry partners to broaden visibility into the campaign and support coordinated defense efforts Through these efforts, Amazon helped reduce the threat actor’s operational effectiveness and enabled organizations across multiple countries to take steps to disrupt the efficacy of the campaign. Defending your organization This campaign succeeded through a combination of exposed management interfaces, weak credentials, and single-factor authentication—all fundamental security gaps that AI helped an unsophisticated actor exploit at scale. This underscores that strong security fundamentals are powerful defenses against AI-augmented threats. Organizations should review and implement the following. 1. FortiGate appliance audit Organizations running FortiGate appliances should take immediate action: Ensure management interfaces are not exposed to the internet. If remote administration is required, restrict access to known IP ranges and use a bastion host or out-of-band management network Change all default and common credentials on FortiGate appliances, including administrative and VPN user accounts Rotate all SSL-VPN user credentials, particularly for any appliance whose management interface was or may have been internet-accessible Implement multi-factor authentication for all administrative and VPN access Review FortiGate configurations for unauthorized administrative accounts or policy changes Audit VPN connection logs for connections from unexpected geographic locations 2. Credential hygiene Given the extraction of credentials from FortiGate configurations: Audit for password reuse between FortiGate VPN credentials and Active Directory domain accounts Implement multi-factor authentication for all VPN access Enforce unique, complex passwords for all accounts, particularly Domain Administrator accounts Review and rotate service account credentials, especially those used in backup infrastructure 3. Post-exploitation detection Organizations that may have been affected should monitor for: Unexpected DCSync operations (Event ID 4662 with replication-related GUIDs) New scheduled tasks named to mimic legitimate Windows services Unusual remote management connections from VPN address pools LLMNR/NBT-NS poisoning artifacts in network traffic Unauthorized access to backup credential stores New accounts with names designed to blend with legitimate service accounts 4. Backup infrastructure hardening The threat actor’s focus on backup infrastructure highlights the importance of: Isolating backup servers from general network access Patching backup software against known credential extraction vulnerabilities Monitoring for unauthorized PowerShell module loading on backup servers Implementing immutable backup copies that cannot be modified even with administrative access AWS-specific recommendations For organizations using AWS: Enable Amazon GuardDuty for threat detection, including monitoring for unusual API calls and credential usage patterns Use Amazon Inspector to automatically scan for software vulnerabilities and unintended network exposure Use AWS Security Hub to maintain continuous visibility into your security posture Use AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager to maintain patching compliance across EC2 instances running network appliances Review IAM access patterns for signs of credential replay following any suspected network device compromise Indicators of compromise (IOCs) This campaign’s reliance on legitimate open-source tools—including Impacket, gogo, Nuclei, and others—means that traditional IOC-based detection has limited effectiveness. These tools are widely used by penetration testers and security professionals, and their presence alone is not indicative of compromise. Organizations should investigate context around matches, prioritizing behavioral detection (anomalous VPN authentication patterns, unexpected Active Directory replication, lateral movement from VPN address pools) over signature-based approaches. If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, contact AWS Support.

ai and ML AI slop is good for business if you know what you're doingYour irresponsibility is someone else's opportunity SAAS Salesforce partners not seeing meaningful revenue from Agentforce AI platform, report saysShow us the money ai and ml AI companies are burning books, advocates complain to FTCFahrenheit 203, the temperature GPUs stop gorging on literature DEVOPS Go updates may delight diehard gophers but displease AI overlordsv 1.27 expands generics to support methods EDGE AND IOT Waymo has designed a robocar chip to stay ahead of Tesla5 nm ML accelerators promise 1,000+ TOPS, ultra-low latency Security Russians are posing as Signal support to launch phishing attacksPLUS: US takes down Iranian propaganda sites; Marketing company asks 'Why Do We Have Your Information?' And more! Security Microsoft patches failed to fix on-prem SharePoint, which is now under zero-day attackPLUS: China upgrades smartphone surveillance tools; Ring eases anti-snooping stance; and more Black Hat and DEF CON DEF CON Franklin project enlists hackers to harden critical infrastructureVoting village reports have been so successful, says Jeff Moss, that the whole of DEF CON will now be included Security EQT buys majority share in Swiss cybersecurity biz AcronisWent at equivalent of $3.5B+ valuation for entire firm, though portion sold not specified Malware Month Ten years since the first corp ransomware, Mikko Hyppönen sees no end in sightOn the plus side, infosec's a good bet for a long, stable career FOSS smashed one Microsoft monopoly. After 20 years of failure, it's time to smash anotherWord up GNOME can look like Windows – and Flashback can do it without extensionsNew 'Simple-taskbar' is an option, but there's a simpler, stabler way A moment of silence, please, for the final release of Debian on x86-32New Debian versions hit FOSSland in the form of 13.6 and 12.15 Baddies caught exploiting extensions bugs with perfect 10 scores on vulnerable Joomla websitesFlaws in iCagenda, Balbooa Forms extensions can impact open source CMS that powers a million sites worldwide Frame: A new X11 server – implemented directly in assemblyJoins yserver, Phoenix, and of course XLibre – and outlier Arcan Cinnamon 6.8 will support Wayland – if you want itNext version of Linux Mint’s desktop has both kinds of display server

Betti RHC, la prima graphic novel al mondo dedicata alla cybersecurity awareness, ha finalmente il suo sito ufficiale. Uno spazio tutto suo dove scoprire il progetto, sfogliare le copertine degli episodi e immergersi nel mondo di Betti: la giovane laureanda in informatica che, dopo la morte misteriosa del padre, si trasforma nell'hacker più potente del mondo. Una storia avvincente che, episodio dopo episodio, affronta una minaccia digitale diversa — dal phishing al ransomware, fino al cyberbullismo — e insegna a riconoscerla e a difendersi, senza che sembri mai una lezione. Sul sito trovate tutto ciò che rende Betti un progetto diverso dal solito: la sua filosofia, le anteprime delle tavole e il racconto di come nasce ogni volume. Perché dietro Betti RHC c'è solo lavoro umano: ogni tavola è disegnata interamente a mano dagli artisti del Gruppo Arte di Red Hot Cyber, senza alcun uso di intelligenza artificiale. E a garantire che ogni storia sia realistica e tecnicamente corretta c'è la supervisione degli hacker etici del gruppo HackerHood, che mantengono il racconto fedele al mondo reale della sicurezza informatica. C'è spazio anche per le aziende, che possono usare Betti come strumento di awareness diverso dai soliti corsi: acquistare i volumi, personalizzarli con il proprio brand o sponsorizzare nuovi episodi. E come primo regalo, l'episodio "Byte the Silence", dedicato al cyberbullismo, è scaricabile gratuitamente per uso personale. Perché la miglior difesa, in fondo, è una bella storia. 👉 Scopri tutto su https://betti.redhotcyber.com/

Veeam announced on Tuesday that an update released for its Backup & Replication solution patches several vulnerabilities that can be exploited for remote code execution. The security holes impact Veeam Backup & Replication 13.0.1.180 and earlier, and they have been fixed with the release of version 13.0.1.1071 One of the vulnerabilities is CVE-2025-59470, which can be exploited by an attacker with ‘backup’ or ‘tape operator’ privileges for remote code execution as the ‘postgres’ user by leveraging specially crafted parameters. The flaw has a critical severity based on its CVSS score, but Veeam adjusted the severity to high because the roles required for exploitation are considered highly privileged. A high severity rating has also been assigned to CVE-2025-55125, which allows an attacker with ‘tape operator’ or ‘backup’ privileges to execute arbitrary code as root using malicious backup configuration files. CVE-2025-59469, another high-severity issue, requires the same types of privileges and enables an attacker to write files to the system as root. The last vulnerability, CVE-2025-59468, allows an attacker with ‘backup administrator’ privileges to perform remote code execution. All of these vulnerabilities were discovered internally by Veeam and there is no indication that they have been exploited in the wild. However, it’s important for organizations to address the flaws, as it’s not uncommon for threat actors to target Veeam Backup & Replication in their attacks. CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog includes four weaknesses found in the product in recent years, including CVE-2024-40711 and CVE-2023-27532, both exploited in ransomware attacks. Related: Veeam Patches Critical Vulnerability in Backup & Replication Related: Code Execution Vulnerabilities Patched in Veeam, BeyondTrust Products Related: Veeam Warns of Critical Vulnerability in Service Provider Console

Veeam released security updates to patch multiple security flaws in its Backup & Replication software, including a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability. Tracked as CVE-2025-59470, this RCE security flaw affects Veeam Backup & Replication 13.0.1.180 and all earlier version 13 builds. "This vulnerability allows a Backup or Tape Operator to perform remote code execution (RCE) as the postgres user by sending a malicious interval or order parameter," Veeam explained in a Tuesday advisory. However, the information technology company adjusted its rating to high severity because it can only be exploited by attackers with the Backup or Tape Operator roles. "The Backup and Tape Operator roles are considered highly privileged roles and should be protected as such. Following Veeam's recommended Security Guidelines further reduces the opportunity for exploitability," it added. Veeam released version 13.0.1.1071 on January 6 to patch CVE-2025-59470 and address two other high-severity (CVE-2025-55125) and medium-severity (CVE-2025-59468) vulnerabilities that enable malicious backup or tape operators to gain remote code execution by creating a malicious backup configuration file or sending a malicious password parameter, respectively. Veeam's Backup & Replication (VBR) enterprise data backup and recovery software helps create copies of critical data and applications that can be quickly restored following cyberattacks, hardware failures, or disasters. Veeam flaws targeted by ransomware gangs VBR is particularly popular among mid-sized to large enterprises and managed service providers, but it's also often targeted by ransomware gangs, since it can serve as a quick pivot point for lateral movement within victims' environments. Ransomware gangs have previously told BleepingComputer that they always target victims' VBR servers because it simplifies data theft and makes it easy to block restoration efforts by deleting backups before deploying ransomware payloads. The Cuba ransomware gang and the financially motivated FIN7 threat group (which had previously collaborated with the Conti, REvil, Maze, Egregor, and BlackBasta ransomware gangs) have also been linked to attacks targeting VBR vulnerabilities in the past. More recently, Sophos X-Ops incident responders revealed in November 2024 that Frag ransomware exploited another VBR RCE vulnerability (CVE-2024-40711) disclosed two months earlier. The same security flaw was also used in Akira and Fog ransomware attacks targeting vulnerable Veeam backup servers starting in October 2024. Veeam's products are used by over 550,000 customers worldwide, including 74% of Global 2,000 firms and 82% of Fortune 500 companies. 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

Veeam has released security updates to address multiple flaws in its Backup & Replication software, including a "critical" issue that could result in remote code execution (RCE). The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-59470, carries a CVSS score of 9.0. "This vulnerability allows a Backup or Tape Operator to perform remote code execution (RCE) as the postgres user by sending a malicious interval or order parameter," it said in a Tuesday bulletin. According to Veeam's documentation, a user with a Backup Operator role can start and stop existing jobs; export backups; copy backups; and create VeeamZip backups. A Tape Operator user, on the other hand, can run tape backup jobs or tape catalog jobs; eject tapes; import and export tapes; move tapes to a media pool; copy or erase tapes; and set a tape password. In other words, these roles are considered highly privileged, and organizations should already be taking adequate protections to prevent them from being misused. Veeam said it's treating the shortcoming as "high severity" despite the CVSS score, stating the opportunity for exploitation is reduced if customers follow Veeam's recommended Security Guidelines. Also addressed by the company are three other vulnerabilities in the same product - CVE-2025-55125 (CVSS score: 7.2) - A vulnerability that allows a Backup or Tape Operator to perform RCE as root by creating a malicious backup configuration file CVE-2025-59468 (CVSS score: 6.7) - A vulnerability that allows a Backup Administrator to perform RCE as the postgres user by sending a malicious password parameter CVE-2025-59469 (CVSS score: 7.2) - A vulnerability that allows a Backup or Tape Operator to write files as root All four identified vulnerabilities affect Veeam Backup & Replication 13.0.1.180 and all earlier versions of 13 builds. They have been addressed in Backup & Replication version 13.0.1.1071. While Veeam makes no mention of the flaws being exploited in the wild, it's essential that users promptly apply the fixes, given that vulnerabilities in the software have been exploited by threat actors in the past.

Veeam: risolte vulnerabilità in Backup & Replication Alert AL02/260107/CSIRT-ITA Sintesi Veeam ha rilasciato aggiornamenti di sicurezza per sanare quattro vulnerabilità, di cui una con gravità “critica” e due con gravità “alta”, nel prodotto Backup & Replication, soluzione di backup, ripristino e replica dati per ambienti virtuali, fisici e cloud. Tipologia Remote Code Execution Arbitrary File Write Prodotti e versioni affette Veeam Backup & Replication 13.x, versioni precedenti alla 13.0.1.1071 N.B. Si evidenzia che i prodotti elencati risultano vulnerabili solo alle condizioni descritte nel relativo bollettino di sicurezza. 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.

From AI to cyber risk, why IT leaders are anxious heading into 2026 Cybersecurity threats are shaping IT planning for 2026, with AI maturity and regulation emerging as another major source of disruption, according to a global survey from Veeam. Veeam surveyed 250 senior IT and business decision-makers worldwide to understand how they view risks, readiness, and priorities. Security threats top the list of disruptors When respondents ranked expected disruptors for 2026, cybersecurity threats placed first. Nearly half selected security incidents as their top concern. AI maturity and regulation followed at just over 20%. Workforce shortages and cloud complexity ranked lower. Concerns deepen when leaders assess their readiness. Many respondents said cyberattacks remain among the risks they feel least prepared to manage. Issues tied to AI and automation also ranked high in this category, reflecting uncertainty around how fast AI-driven threats may evolve. When the survey drilled into specific data risks, AI-generated attacks stood out. About 66% of respondents identified them as the most significant threat to data. Ransomware also remained prominent, with roughly half of leaders highlighting it as a major risk heading into 2026. Investment follows perceived risk Security priorities are shaping spending plans. Strengthening cybersecurity emerged as the most frequently selected initiative for the coming year. Data resilience followed closely, indicating strong interest in protecting and recovering information during disruptive events. More than half of respondents said they expect moderate to significant increases in budgets for data protection and resilience. These plans suggest leaders are directing resources toward areas they associate with operational stability and business continuity. Governance concerns are also influencing strategy. Data sovereignty and regulatory compliance ranked as important for most respondents. Many said these factors are already affecting how cloud architectures and data placement decisions are made, particularly in regions with evolving privacy and security requirements. Cloud growth strains visibility The survey highlights ongoing challenges tied to cloud and SaaS expansion. 60% of respondents said their visibility into where data resides has declined as environments become more distributed. This loss of insight complicates efforts to secure data and manage compliance obligations. Confidence in recovery remains limited. Only about 29% of leaders described themselves as very confident in their ability to recover data after a zero-day exploit. Most respondents reported moderate confidence, signaling continued concern about response and recovery capabilities during severe incidents. Views on ransomware policy The survey also explored opinions on ransomware payments. 70% of respondents said they support a ban on paying ransoms. About half expressed strong support for such a policy. These views suggest growing agreement among IT leaders that payment practices influence attacker behavior and broader risk levels. “Cybersecurity and AI are today’s reality, and accelerating in 2026. Organizations must prioritize data resilience and compliance while embracing innovation responsibly,” said Anand Eswaran, CEO of Veeam.

Betti RHC, la prima graphic novel al mondo dedicata alla cybersecurity awareness, ha finalmente il suo sito ufficiale. Uno spazio tutto suo dove scoprire il progetto, sfogliare le copertine degli episodi e immergersi nel mondo di Betti: la giovane laureanda in informatica che, dopo la morte misteriosa del padre, si trasforma nell'hacker più potente del mondo. Una storia avvincente che, episodio dopo episodio, affronta una minaccia digitale diversa — dal phishing al ransomware, fino al cyberbullismo — e insegna a riconoscerla e a difendersi, senza che sembri mai una lezione. Sul sito trovate tutto ciò che rende Betti un progetto diverso dal solito: la sua filosofia, le anteprime delle tavole e il racconto di come nasce ogni volume. Perché dietro Betti RHC c'è solo lavoro umano: ogni tavola è disegnata interamente a mano dagli artisti del Gruppo Arte di Red Hot Cyber, senza alcun uso di intelligenza artificiale. E a garantire che ogni storia sia realistica e tecnicamente corretta c'è la supervisione degli hacker etici del gruppo HackerHood, che mantengono il racconto fedele al mondo reale della sicurezza informatica. C'è spazio anche per le aziende, che possono usare Betti come strumento di awareness diverso dai soliti corsi: acquistare i volumi, personalizzarli con il proprio brand o sponsorizzare nuovi episodi. E come primo regalo, l'episodio "Byte the Silence", dedicato al cyberbullismo, è scaricabile gratuitamente per uso personale. Perché la miglior difesa, in fondo, è una bella storia. 👉 Scopri tutto su https://betti.redhotcyber.com/