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Microsoft has revealed that it observed a multi‑stage intrusion that involved the threat actors exploiting internet‑exposed SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD) instances to obtain initial access and move laterally across the organization's network to other high-value assets. That said, the Microsoft Defender Security Research Team said it's not clear whether the activity weaponized recently disclosed flaws (CVE-2025-40551, CVSS score: 9.8, and CVE-2025-40536, CVSS score: 8.1), or a previously patched vulnerability (CVE-2025-26399, CVSS score: 9.8). "Since the attacks occurred in December 2025 and on machines vulnerable to both the old and new set of CVEs at the same time, we cannot reliably confirm the exact CVE used to gain an initial foothold," the company said in a report published last week. While CVE-2025-40536 is a security control bypass vulnerability that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to gain access to certain restricted functionality, CVE-2025-...

Cyber threats are no longer coming from just malware or exploits. They’re showing up inside the tools, platforms, and ecosystems organizations use every day. As companies connect AI, cloud apps, developer tools, and communication systems, attackers are following those same paths. A clear pattern this week: attackers are abusing trust. Trusted updates, trusted marketplaces, trusted apps, even trusted AI workflows. Instead of breaking security controls head-on, they’re slipping into places that already have access. This recap brings together those signals — showing how modern attacks are blending technology abuse, ecosystem manipulation, and large-scale targeting into a single, expanding threat surface. ⚡ Threat of the Week OpenClaw announces VirusTotal Partnership — OpenClaw has announced a partnership with Google's VirusTotal malware scanning platform to scan skills that are being uploaded to ClawHub as part of a defense-in-depth approach to improve the security of the agen...

Why do SOC teams keep burning out and missing SLAs even after spending big on security tools? Routine triage piles up, senior specialists get dragged into basic validation, and MTTR climbs, while stealthy threats still find room to slip through. Top CISOs have realized the solution isn’t hiring more people or stacking yet another tool onto the workflow, but giving their teams faster, clearer behavior evidence from the start. Here’s how they’re breaking the cycle and speeding up response without extra hiring. Starting with Sandbox-First Investigation to Cut MTTR at the Source The fastest way to reduce MTTR is to remove the delays baked into investigations. Static verdicts and fragmented workflows force analysts to guess, escalate, and re-check the same alerts, which drives burnout and slows containment. That’s why top CISOs are making sandbox execution the first step . With an interactive sandbox like ANY.RUN , teams can detonate suspicious files and links in an isolated environme...

The threat actor known as Bloody Wolf has been linked to a campaign targeting Uzbekistan and Russia to infect systems with a remote access trojan known as NetSupport RAT . Cybersecurity vendor Kaspersky is tracking the activity under the moniker Stan Ghouls . The threat actor is known to be active since at least 2023, orchestrating spear-phishing attacks against manufacturing, finance, and IT sectors in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. The campaign is estimated to have claimed about 50 victims in Uzbekistan, with 10 devices in Russia also impacted. Other infections have been identified to a lesser degree in Kazakhstan, Turkey, Serbia, and Belarus. Infection attempts have also been recorded on devices within government organizations, logistics companies, medical facilities, and educational institutions. "Given Stan Ghouls' targeting of financial institutions, we believe their primary motive is financial gain," Kaspersky noted. "That said, their hea...

Cybersecurity researchers have called attention to a "massive campaign" that has systematically targeted cloud native environments to set up malicious infrastructure for follow-on exploitation. The activity, observed around December 25, 2025, and described as "worm-driven," leveraged exposed Docker APIs, Kubernetes clusters, Ray dashboards, and Redis servers, along with the recently disclosed React2Shell (CVE-2025-55182, CVSS score: 10.0) vulnerability. The campaign has been attributed to a threat cluster known as TeamPCP (aka DeadCatx3, PCPcat, PersyPCP, and ShellForce). TeamPCP is known to be active since at least November 2025, with the first instance of Telegram activity dating back to July 30, 2025. The TeamPCP Telegram channel currently has over 700 members, where the group publishes stolen data from diverse victims across Canada, Serbia, South Korea, the U.A.E., and the U.S. Details of the threat actor were first documented by Beelzebub in December 2025...

BeyondTrust has released updates to address a critical security flaw impacting Remote Support (RS) and Privileged Remote Access (PRA) products that, if successfully exploited, could result in remote code execution. "BeyondTrust Remote Support (RS) and certain older versions of Privileged Remote Access (PRA) contain a critical pre-authentication remote code execution vulnerability," the company said in an advisory released February 6, 2026. "By sending specially crafted requests, an unauthenticated remote attacker may be able to execute operating system commands in the context of the site user." The vulnerability, categorized as an operating system command injection , has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2026-1731 . It's rated 9.9 on the CVSS scoring system. BeyondTrust said successful exploitation of the shortcoming could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to execute operating system commands in the context of the site user, resulting in unautho...

OpenClaw (formerly Moltbot and Clawdbot) has announced that it's partnering with Google-owned VirusTotal to scan skills that are being uploaded to ClawHub, its skill marketplace, as part of broader efforts to bolster the security of the agentic ecosystem. "All skills published to ClawHub are now scanned using VirusTotal's threat intelligence, including their new Code Insight capability," OpenClaw's founder Peter Steinberger, along with Jamieson O'Reilly and Bernardo Quintero said. "This provides an additional layer of security for the OpenClaw community." The process essentially entails creating a unique SHA-256 hash for every skill and cross checking it against VirusTotal's database for a match. If it's not found, the skill bundle is uploaded to the malware scanning tool for further analysis using VirusTotal Code Insight . Skills that have a "benign" Code Insight verdict are automatically approved by ClawHub, while those marke...

Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (aka Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz or BfV) and Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) have issued a joint advisory warning of a malicious cyber campaign undertaken by a likely state-sponsored threat actor that involves carrying out phishing attacks over the Signal messaging app. "The focus is on high-ranking targets in politics, the military, and diplomacy, as well as investigative journalists in Germany and Europe," the agencies said . "Unauthorized access to messenger accounts not only allows access to confidential private communications but also potentially compromises entire networks." A noteworthy aspect of the campaign is that it does not involve the distribution of malware or the exploitation of any security vulnerability in the privacy-focused messaging platform. Rather, the end goal is to weaponize its legitimate features to obtain covert access to a victim's chats, along wi...

Cybersecurity researchers have taken the wraps off a gateway-monitoring and adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) framework dubbed DKnife that's operated by China-nexus threat actors since at least 2019. The framework comprises seven Linux-based implants that are designed to perform deep packet inspection, manipulate traffic, and deliver malware via routers and edge devices. Its primary targets seem to be Chinese-speaking users, an assessment based on the presence of credential harvesting phishing pages for Chinese email services, exfiltration modules for popular Chinese mobile applications like WeChat, and code references to Chinese media domains. "DKnife's attacks target a wide range of devices, including PCs, mobile devices, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices," Cisco Talos researcher Ashley Shen noted in a Thursday report. "It delivers and interacts with the ShadowPad and DarkNimbus backdoors by hijacking binary downloads and Android application updates....

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has ordered Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to strengthen asset lifecycle management for edge network devices and remove those that no longer receive security updates from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) over the next 12 to 18 months. The agency said the move is to drive down technical debt and minimize the risk of compromise, as state-sponsored threat actors turn such devices as a preferred access pathway for breaking into target networks. Edge devices is an umbrella term that encompasses load balancers, firewalls, routers, switches, wireless access points, network security appliances, Internet of Things (IoT) edge devices, software-defined networks, and other physical or virtual networking components that route network traffic and hold privileged access. "Persistent cyber threat actors are increasingly exploiting unsupported edge devices -- hardware and software that no longer receiv...

A previously undocumented cyber espionage group operating from Asia broke into the networks of at least 70 government and critical infrastructure organizations across 37 countries over the past year, according to new findings from Palo Alto Networks Unit 42. In addition, the hacking crew has been observed conducting active reconnaissance against government infrastructure associated with 155 countries between November and December 2025. Some of the entities that have been successfully compromised include five national-level law enforcement/border control entities, three ministries of finance and other government ministries, and departments that align with economic, trade, natural resources, and diplomatic functions. The activity is being tracked by the cybersecurity company under the moniker TGR-STA-1030 , where "TGR" stands for temporary threat group and "STA" refers to state-backed motivation. Evidence shows that the threat actor has been active since January ...

As you know, enterprise network security has undergone significant evolution over the past decade. Firewalls have become more intelligent, threat detection methods have advanced, and access controls are now more detailed. However (and it’s a big “however”), the increasing use of mobile devices in business operations necessitates network security measures that are specifically tailored to their unique operating patterns. Yes, enterprises have invested heavily in robust network security such as firewalls, intrusion detection, and threat intelligence platforms. And yes, these controls work exceptionally well for traditional endpoints—but mobile devices operate differently! They connect to corporate Wi-Fi and public networks interchangeably. They run dozens of apps with varying trust levels. They process sensitive data in coffee shops, airports, and home offices. The challenge isn't that organizations lack security—it's that mobile devices need security con...