Google warns that Armory Castle, a suspected PRC state-sponsored espionage actor, exploited the critical BeyondTrust Remote Support vulnerability CVE-2026-102764 (CVSS 9.3) in August 2026, well before BeyondTrust disclosed it on October 15. The actor escalated privileges to root and established persistent access on compromised appliances.…
The FBI has publicly called on remaining ShinyHunters members to surrender. Cyber division assistant director Brett Leatherman released a video thanking Dutch police for arresting a 24-year-old in Amsterdam. The FBI calls him "one of the alleged leaders" of the group, while Dutch police say only that he played a role. He is also suspected…
Between April and July 2026, the threat actor UNC7017 tampered with the AOMEI Backupper update infrastructure several times to deliver the CrossRoad downloader and the ShinyRoad modular backdoor. Each tampering window lasted only five to ten minutes before reverting to authentic files. This made the campaign hard to detect and suggests it…
Between April and July 2026, a threat actor tracked as UNC7017 compromised AOMEI update and notification infrastructure and used it to push malware to users of AOMEI Backupper. The attackers briefly altered two configuration files and restored them within minutes to evade detection. The campaign was uncovered by ManageEngine's Threat Anal…
Between May and July 2026, attackers tracked by Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) as UNC7017 altered files on AOMEI's own update servers for windows of 5 to 10 minutes. Any copy of AOMEI Backupper that checked for updates during a window downloaded and ran a backdoor. GTIG, Mandiant and ManageEngine's Threat Analysis Lab disclosed t…
CISA issued an alert on exploitation of critical zero-day vulnerabilities in Citrix NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway, noting confirmed malicious activity involving at least some of them. The alert references Citrix bulletins for CVE-2026-107406, CVE-2026-88779 and CVE-2026-88771 through CVE-2026-88778. Because NetScaler updates can be …
Unit 42 detailed a multi-stage intrusion in September 2024 against a telecommunications managed service provider, tracked as CL-STA-0954 (aka UNC5820). The attackers gained initial access by exploiting CVE-2024-47575 (FortiJump) on a central FortiManager and exfiltrated an archive with running configurations, credentials and private keys …
Dutch authorities arrested a 24-year-old, reportedly Pepijn van der Stap (alias "Umbreon"), around Sept. 16, 2026 on suspicion of aiding data thefts and extortions by ShinyHunters. Van der Stap was previously convicted in 2023 for data theft and extortion. Days after the arrest, remaining ShinyHunters members escalated, breaching the FBI …
An active supply chain attack is abusing a compromised credential for the ConnectWise Cloud Backup (formerly SkyKick) Microsoft 365 OAuth application, giving unknown actors access to customer tenants. Huntress confirmed unauthorized sign-ins in 173 partner/customer tenants, and Microsoft reports broad successful service principal authenti…
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…
Mandiant and GTIG attribute exploitation of the critical BeyondTrust Remote Support zero-day CVE-2026-102764 to Armory Castle (formerly tracked as UNC5221), a likely Chinese government-backed espionage group. BeyondTrust dates the first known exploitation to Aug. 29 and says it detected and contained the activity Sept. 28. Only a small nu…