Unit 42 reports that a threat actor using the handle BUGSTER set up DeepSeek V4 as the reasoning engine of an AI-assisted cybercrime operation against organizations in India, including universities. AI-generated reconnaissance and scripts were used to brute-force a university website. In a separate intrusion, the actor exfiltrated a Mongo…
A supply chain campaign tracked as UNC7017 hijacked the update infrastructure of AOMEI Technology between April and July 2026 to distribute the CROSSROAD downloader and the SHINYROAD backdoor through AOMEI Backupper and AnyViewer update workflows. The attackers tampered with server configurations only briefly, then restored legitimate con…
Drupal published an advisory on October 14, 2026 for CVE-2026-108097, a critical remote code execution vulnerability in the Field UI module (fieldui) of Drupal core. The advisory gives it a risk score of 19/25, with basic attack complexity, no authentication required, and full confidentiality and integrity impact. Drupal core alone is not…
ScarlettGroup is an emerging data-extortion operation that appeared around September 2026 and gained visibility in October. It runs a Tor-based leak site with public countdown timers to pressure organizations over allegedly stolen data, according to Foresiet research. Its public activity centers on threatened disclosure, not confirmed fil…
Federal investigators examining ShinyHunters have uncovered potential links between the extortion group and executives at two ransomware negotiation firms, according to a KrebsOnSecurity report published on October 19. An executive at an unnamed U.S. consulting firm (reportedly 1,000+ employees) allegedly helped operate the group's extort…
A Chinese-speaking threat operator combined the agentic penetration-testing framework ARTEX with Claude Code, Codex and configurations requesting DeepSeek, GLM and Grok models to coordinate attacks on organizations worldwide. Recovered prompts dated August 4 to October 4, 2026 referenced targets in financial services, cryptocurrency, reta…