DFIR, deception, detection. Posts I wrote, intel my pipeline summarized, and redacted writeups from the fleet.
Malicious cyber threat actors are actively exploiting Cisco Catalyst SD-WANs globally, primarily targeting systems with internet-exposed management interfaces. Upon compromise, attackers add malicious rogue peers to the network, enabling them to escalate privileges to root and maintain persistent access. A coalition of international cybersecurity agencies has released a joint Hunt Guide, and Cisco has issued software updates to mitigate the threat.
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security has issued an alert regarding the active exploitation of CVE-2026-20127, a critical improper authentication vulnerability affecting Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller and Manager systems. Unauthenticated remote attackers can exploit this flaw to bypass peering authentication, gain administrative privileges, and add malicious rogue peers to the network configuration for long-term persistence.
Over the next two years, Russia is expected to escalate its hybrid warfare against NATO into a coordinated New Generation Warfare (NGW) campaign. This strategy integrates cyber operations, physical sabotage, influence campaigns, and airspace/maritime incursions to degrade European critical infrastructure and political unity while remaining below the threshold of conventional armed conflict.
Trail of Bits conducted an adversarial audit of Perplexity's Comet browser, discovering prompt injection vulnerabilities that allowed the exfiltration of private user data, such as Gmail emails. By leveraging techniques like fake system instructions, fake security mechanisms, and user impersonation, attackers could manipulate the AI assistant into accessing authenticated sessions and transmitting sensitive information to external servers via URL parameters.
A hybrid investment scam campaign is targeting users in Asia and globally by combining malvertising with pig butchering tactics. Threat actors use RDGA-generated domains and AI chatbots on popular messaging apps to automate social engineering, impersonate financial experts, and extract funds from victims.
A critical pre-authentication remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2026-1731) in BeyondTrust Remote Support and Privileged Remote Access is being actively exploited in the wild. The flaw allows unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary OS commands, necessitating immediate patching or isolation of self-hosted instances.
A joint research project by SentinelLABS and Censys discovered a massive, unmanaged network of over 175,000 publicly exposed Ollama instances. Many of these self-hosted AI models possess tool-calling and vision capabilities, creating significant security risks such as resource hijacking, prompt injection, and identity laundering through residential proxy abuse.
A critical argument injection vulnerability (CVE-2026-24061) in GNU InetUtils telnetd allows remote attackers to bypass authentication and achieve root access. The vulnerability occurs because the telnetd service passes the USER environment variable to the system login process without proper sanitization, enabling attackers to inject arguments such as '-f root'.
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security has issued an alert regarding multiple high-severity vulnerabilities in n8n workflow automation software. These flaws, including improper input validation and code injection, can be chained by unauthenticated attackers to achieve remote code execution, with public Proof-of-Concept exploits already available.
Russian-aligned threat actor RomCom, assessed to be GRU Unit 29155, utilized the SocGholish malware delivery framework to target a U.S. company supporting Ukraine. The attack chain leveraged fake browser updates to establish initial access, followed by the rapid deployment of a custom Python backdoor (VIPERTUNNEL) and a targeted Mythic Agent loader.
Arctic Wolf Labs has identified a cyber espionage campaign by the Chinese-affiliated threat actor UNC6384 targeting European diplomatic entities. The campaign exploits the ZDI-CAN-25373 Windows shortcut vulnerability to deliver malicious LNK files, ultimately deploying the PlugX RAT via DLL side-loading of legitimate Canon printer utilities.
CapeV2 is one of those tools that looks straightforward on paper and humbles you in practice. After several failed attempts over the years, I finally got a stable deployment running on July 8th 2025 — and have since rebuilt it cleanly multiple times. This guide is the consolidated walk-through I wish I'd had on the first attempt. It targets a bare-metal Ubuntu 24.04 host running KVM with a Windows 10 guest. If your setup differs, the structure should still apply; only paths and IPs will change.
AI Rush Opens New Attack Paths as Trusted Cloud Services Fuel Phishing The rush to adopt artificial intelligence is giving attackers two new advantages: convincing lures to trick users and poorly secured infrastructure to exploit. This week, multiple campaigns used fake websites for the Claude AI assistant to infect victims with password-stealing malware, while researchers revealed that commercial robots and AI connection protocols contain critical flaws that let hackers hijack them. Because organizations are deploying AI tools faster than they can secure them, attackers are finding easy entry points into corporate networks. In parallel, phishing campaigns are increasingly hijacking trusted cloud services like Amazon's email platform and Vercel's AI-powered website builder to send messages that bypass security filters entirely. A massive campaign targeting US employees used fake HR reviews to steal login sessions even when multi-factor authentication was enabled, and the breach of the Canvas learning platform exposed data on 275 million people that can now be used for highly convincing follow-up scams. These trends together suggest that traditional defenses are losing effectiveness because attackers are hiding inside the systems we already trust. Organizations should immediately patch the actively exploited Palo Alto Networks and Ivanti vulnerabilities flagged by CISA this week, require phishing-resistant authentication methods, and treat every AI tool and robot connected to their network as a high-risk device that needs strict monitoring.
AI Weaponization and Developer Supply Chain Attacks Redefine the Perimeter Attackers are aggressively targeting the software development process because compromising a single developer tool can unlock thousands of corporate networks. In parallel, artificial intelligence is collapsing the cost of attacks, allowing criminals to build convincing deepfakes and automated phishing campaigns in minutes. As a result, traditional security like multi-factor authentication is increasingly bypassed using tricks that steal active login sessions rather than passwords. These trends together suggest that relying on perimeter defenses and basic hygiene is no longer enough, as attackers hide inside trusted cloud services and legitimate software updates. This matters because organizations are losing visibility into where their sensitive data actually lives, especially as AI tools create hidden pathways into company systems. Defenders must shift their focus to monitoring user behavior after login and securing the automated systems that build their software. Watch for unusual activity in your developer tools and implement stricter checks on third-party software.
AI Weaponization Collapses Trust as Identity Becomes the Perimeter Attackers are using artificial intelligence to make phishing and social engineering dramatically cheaper and more convincing, as seen in BlueNoroff's AI-generated deepfake meetings targeting Web3 executives and the Bluekit phishing platform's built-in AI assistant that crafts lures on demand. Because these AI tools can generate convincing scams and steal session cookies to bypass multi-factor authentication, traditional email filters and basic MFA are no longer sufficient barriers. In parallel, attackers are shifting from hacking infrastructure to hijacking identity and trust systems—installing legitimate remote-access tools via phishing, exploiting API authentication flaws like BOLA, and harvesting credentials through malicious AI browser extensions that spy on users in real time. This identity-focused shift compounds with the persistent exploitation of older vulnerabilities; groups like SHADOW-EARTH-053 still use years-old ProxyLogon flaws on unpatched Exchange servers, while CISA confirms CVE-2026-32202 (Microsoft Windows) and CVE-2026-41940 (cPanel) are already being exploited in the wild. Because AI models like Claude Mythos can now autonomously chain these vulnerabilities into working exploits at machine speed, defenders cannot rely on manual patching cadences to stay safe. These trends together suggest that the real perimeter is no longer the firewall but the identity layer, and defending it requires phishing-resistant authentication, automated response, and rigorous vetting of developer pipelines and third-party trust. Watch for AI-accelerated exploitation of unpatched systems and invest in identity-centric, machine-speed defenses before the next wave of automated attacks outpaces your team's response.
