A Chinese-speaking operator used the open-source AI agent framework Cairn to run autonomous attacks against more than 1,200 sites, reaching websites of over 100 companies, including Deere, SharkNinja and Cummins. Researcher Snorre Fagerland of NorForge found the operation around 2 October 2026 by scanning for about two dozen exposed Cairn…
GreyNoise reports that a single malicious cyber actor, tracked since 7 May 2026, is a suspected Chinese speaker working in UTC+8 and is the same as or related to Red Heron (reported by Acronis), based on the shared C2 domain, malware family, Gitea exploitation and other TTPs. The actor exploited the wp2shell WordPress chain (CVE-2026-6303…
Kaspersky ICS CERT reports that in Q2 2026 malicious objects were blocked on 19.15% of ICS computers, the lowest level since 2022. Regional rates ranged from 8.1% in Northern Europe to 27.9% in Africa. East Asia saw the largest increase (+2.0 pp). The biometrics sector (26.44%) again led all industries. Kaspersky products blocked malware …
X said it removed more than 13,000 accounts involved in three suspected foreign influence operations targeting US political debate ahead of the 3 November 2026 US midterm elections. The platform linked the operations to Iran, Russia and China. It said the networks used inauthentic accounts to post and amplify political content aimed at ca…
F5 Labs, using Efflux sensor telemetry, reports that CVE-2023-1389, an RCE in TP-Link Archer AX21 routers, was the most scanned-for CVE in December 2024 for the fifth consecutive month, with traffic far above any other tracked CVE. Other heavily scanned flaws include CVE-2022-24847 (GeoServer), CVE-2022-22947 (Spring Cloud Gateway), CVE-2…
F5 Labs published research on SparkRAT, a freely available, Go-based open-source Remote Access Trojan with a C2 server and builds for Windows, Linux and macOS. Public reporting since January 2023 shows use by a widening set of actors: Chinese-speaking groups, Winnti (APT41), Patchwork, TAG-100, suspected UAC-0194 against Ukraine, and Cybe…
This Foreign Affairs essay, co-written by Bruce Schneier and Seva Gunitsky, argues that AI offers autocrats two things: real-time monitoring of subordinates and replacement of human intermediaries. Examples include RT's AI-generated anchors, China's Zero Trust AI system and smart city oversight, Russia's Oculus censorship system and Melio…
This weekly recap covers several concurrent incidents. ConnectWise disabled seven application identities and suspended Cloud Backup after unknown actors abused them to compromise Microsoft 365 tenants. China-nexus Armory Castle (UNC5221 / Warp Panda) exploited BeyondTrust Remote Support flaw CVE-2026-102764 (CVSS 9.3) as a zero-day in lat…
TrendAI™ (Trend Micro) published its H1 2026 APT Activity Roundup on July 29, 2026. It finds nation-state actors used AI in more stages of the intrusion lifecycle than in any prior half-year the company has tracked. China-aligned actors used generative AI to refine exploits and iteratively build malware through "vibe coding", and one AI a…
In late August 2026, Sekoia's TDR team observed an attacker compromise an unauthenticated Flowise honeypot (emulating v2.2.8). The attacker harvested stored credentials, tried to plant a malicious chatflow with a callback to 154.217.251.226, and used prompt injection to turn the LLM agent into an offensive analysis assistant. The activity…
This SentinelOne weekly roundup covers three developments. The FBI arrested Edward Dubrovsky, a former CYPFER executive, on conspiracy and extortion charges. Kash Patel described him as a suspected co-conspirator of ShinyHunters, though he has not been officially named as one. The FBI says the group breached more than 140 organizations an…
F5 Labs honeynet telemetry shows overall hostile activity rising 55.5% month over month in June 2026, a return to the levels of the earlier-year spike. Highlighted is CVE-2024-44000, an unauthenticated account takeover flaw (CVSS 9.8, CWE-522) in the LiteSpeed Cache WordPress plugin, which rose by 1,128 to 2,603 attacks (8). Scanning is i…