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SUPPLY CHAIN ATTACK SECRETLY INSTALLS OPENCLAW FOR CLINE USERS

A prompt-injection flaw in Cline allowed an attacker to steal an npm publish token and ship a version that silently installed OpenClaw on users' systems for about eight hours.

CHINESE HACKERS BYPASSED A U.S. GOVERNMENT VPN, RAISING NEW CYBERSECURITY CONCERNS

Chinese state-sponsored hackers repeatedly exploited Ivanti Connect Secure VPN zero-days to compromise federal agencies like the Pentagon, NASA, and CISA itself, prompting a mass government exodus from the platform.

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ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE: JAVA DESERIALIZATION THROUGH BROKEN CRYPTO IN OPENTEXT DIRECTORY SERVICES

Searchlight Cyber (Assetnote) discovered an unauthenticated Java deserialization vulnerability in OpenText Directory Services (OTDS) exploitable in its default configuration, stemming from a flawed HMAC signature verification where attacker-controlled length fields allowed truncating the signed message to begin at an injected payload. Exploitation required building a custom Deflate compressor with tailored Huffman codes to produce output restricted to valid modified UTF-8 bytes (0x01-0x7F) while remaining incompressible by zlib, enabling the payload to survive a double-compression pipeline intact. Organizations running OTDS should patch immediately, as a compromise could affect all integrated OpenText applications that rely on it for authentication.

FRENCH GOVERNMENT SAYS 1.2 MILLION BANK ACCOUNTS EXPOSED IN BREACH

France's Ministry of Economy disclosed that attackers used stolen official credentials to access FICOBA, the national bank account registry, exposing data on 1.2 million accounts, including IBANs, names, addresses, and some tax IDs. Operational banking access and balances were not exposed, but authorities warn of heightened phishing and scams.

CRITICAL INFRA HONEYWELL CCTVS VULNERABLE TO AUTH BYPASS FLAW

CISA warned of CVE-2026-1670 (CVSS 9.8), a missing authentication flaw in multiple Honeywell CCTV models that allows unauthenticated attackers to remotely change the password recovery email address, enabling full account takeover and unauthorized access to camera feeds. Affected models include the I-HIB2PI-UL and several SMB NDAA-compliant PTZ cameras deployed in commercial and critical infrastructure environments. Organizations should isolate these devices behind firewalls, restrict network exposure, and contact Honeywell for patch guidance.

RED VULNS RISING: EXAMINING CHINESE NATIONAL VULNERABILITY DATABASES

Bitsight analyzed China's two national vulnerability databases—CNNVD, overseen by the Ministry of State Security, and CNVD, operated by CNCERT—and found that while they largely mirror CVE publication, approximately 1,400 entries were published in Chinese databases before becoming public in CVE, often by several months. China's 2021 RMSV regulations tightened domestic vulnerability disclosure controls, including mandatory 48-hour reporting to the government and prohibitions on sharing PoC exploits. There was a notable decline in non-CVE vulnerability publications from CNVD after the regulation, although CNNVD has recently seen a resurgence. Security leaders should account for potential blind spots in Western vulnerability ecosystems, as some Chinese database entries lack CVE equivalents and may represent vulnerabilities unknown to Western defenders.

CLINEJECTION — COMPROMISING CLINE'S PRODUCTION RELEASES JUST BY PROMPTING AN ISSUE TRIAGER

A prompt-injected GitHub issue title could drive Cline's Claude-based triage bot to execute arbitrary commands in CI, then use GitHub Actions cache poisoning to hijack nightly build workflows and steal VS Code Marketplace, OpenVSX, and npm publishing tokens. This chain could have enabled a massive supply-chain attack on millions of developers via malicious extension or CLI updates.

DECRYPTING MULTIDESK PASSWORDS

MultiDesk RDP client's password encryption was reverse-engineered, revealing RC4 encryption with per-user keys stored in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MultiDesk\key registry hive across both legacy (v3.16) and modern (v14.0) versions. Version 3.16 used base64-encoded RC4 ciphertext with rdtsc-generated keys, while version 5+ introduced a salted key derivation scheme using CryptGenRandom, but remained fundamentally RC4-based. Pentesters should add MultiDesk.xml, MultiDesk.multidesk, and the associated registry keys to their internal recon checklists, as credential recovery is trivial with local admin or user-level access to the target machine.

THE MIMIKATZ MISSING MANUAL

Carlos Perez (DarkOperator) has publicly released "The Mimikatz Missing Manual," a comprehensive guide originally developed as private training material with direct input from Mimikatz author Benjamin Delpy, covering Windows identity, Kerberos, and PKI research. The manual spans seven parts, including LSASS credential extraction, Kerberos ticket forgery, DCSync/DCShadow persistence, and DPAPI abuse, with guidance tailored for red teams, blue teams, and security researchers. Available as a GitHub Pages site, it emphasizes not just command references, but the underlying Windows Security Authority internals being manipulated.

VENICE SECURITY (PRODUCT LAUNCH)

Venice Security provides an adaptive privileged access management platform that discovers identities and entitlements across cloud, on‑prem, and SaaS, grants just‑in‑time access only when needed, and automatically revokes standing privileges to reduce enterprise risk.

DATA-SHIELD IPV4 BLOCKLIST

The Data-Shield IPv4 Blocklist Community provides an official, curated registry of IPv4 addresses identified as malicious. Updated continuously, this resource offers vital threat intelligence to bolster your Firewall and WAF instances, delivering a robust, additional layer of security for your infrastructure.

CITIZEN LAB FINDS CELLEBRITE TOOL USED ON KENYAN ACTIVIST'S PHONE IN POLICE CUSTODY

Citizen Lab confirmed with high confidence that Cellebrite forensic extraction tools were used on Kenyan pro-democracy activist Boniface Mwangi's Samsung phone while in police custody following his July 2025 arrest, potentially enabling full data extraction including messages, passwords, and financial information. The findings follow a similar report of Cellebrite misuse in Jordan and coincide with Amnesty International's discovery of Intellexa's Predator spyware targeting an Angolan journalist via WhatsApp, marking the first confirmed Predator case against civil society in Angola. The cases highlight the growing global abuse of commercial surveillance tools against activists and journalists, with Predator's sophisticated anti-forensics capabilities including crash monitoring, recording indicator suppression, and granular operator control over failed deployments.

INTERPOL OPERATION RED CARD 2.0 ARRESTS 651 IN AFRICAN CYBERCRIME CRACKDOWN

An INTERPOL-led push across 16 African countries led to 651 arrests, $4.3 million recovered, and disruption of online scams causing over $45 million in losses. Authorities dismantled high-yield investment, mobile money, and fake loan schemes, seizing 2,341 devices and taking down 1,442 malicious IPs and domains, with victims identified both in Africa and abroad.

KEEPING GOOGLE PLAY & ANDROID APP ECOSYSTEMS SAFE IN 2025

Google reported blocking over 1.75 million policy-violating apps and banning 80,000 malicious developer accounts from Google Play in 2025, while Play Protect's real-time scanning identified more than 27 million new malicious apps from outside the store across 350 billion daily scans. Enhanced fraud protection expanded to 185 markets covering 2.8 billion devices, blocking 266 million risky sideloaded installation attempts. New defenses included in-call scam protection preventing users from being socially engineered into disabling Play Protect, and Android 16's one-line-of-code tapjacking protection for sensitive app screens.

FIREBASE MISCONFIGURATION EXPOSES 300M MESSAGES FROM CHAT & ASK AI USERS

A misconfigured Firebase database exposed approximately 300 million chat messages from 25 million users of Codeway's Chat & Ask AI app.

GERMANY'S NATIONAL RAIL OPERATOR DEUTSCHE BAHN HIT BY A DDOS ATTACK

A large-scale DDoS attack hit Deutsche Bahn on 17–18 February, knocking out bahn.de, the DB Navigator app, and core IT systems.

STATE DEPT. OFFICIAL SAYS POST-QUANTUM TRANSITION PLANS WILL OUTLIVE CURRENT LEADERSHIP

State Department official Gharun Lacy urged public and private sectors to coordinate post-quantum cryptography transitions as a collective ecosystem effort, warning that data harvesting threats from nation-state adversaries like China will outlive leadership cycles and require sustained cross-generational commitment toward the 2035 migration target.

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SUPPLY CHAIN ATTACK EMBEDS MALWARE IN ANDROID DEVICES

Keenadu is a firmware-level Android malware embedded via supply chain compromise that hijacks Android's Zygote process to inject itself into every app on infected devices. It affects 13,000 devices across Russia, Japan, Germany, Brazil, and the Netherlands. Operating as a multistage loader, Keenadu deploys modules targeting shopping platforms such as Amazon and Temu, monitors Chrome queries, and commits ad fraud. Organizations should cross-reference Kaspersky's published IoCs against managed Android fleets. Firmware-level infections require full firmware replacement, and system app infections are mitigated by disabling or replacing the compromised app.

SHINYHUNTERS ALLEGEDLY DROVE OFF WITH 1.7M CARGURUS RECORDS

Cybercrime gang ShinyHunters has claimed the theft of 1.7 million CarGurus corporate records, including personal and internal data, and is extorting the company with a February 20 deadline. The crew has chalked up 15 alleged breaches in 2026, hitting financial firms, retail brands, car marketplaces, and dating platforms, often via social engineering and SSO abuse.

STOP THE CAP: MAKING ENTRA ID CONDITIONAL ACCESS MAKE SENSE OFFLINE

CAPSlock is an offline Conditional Access Policy (CAP) analysis engine built on ROADrecon that simulates sign-in scenarios without generating tenant artifacts and distinguishes between definitively applied policies and signal-dependent ones. The tool addresses a critical gap in Entra ID assessments, overlapping CAPs create hard-to-reason enforcement behavior, particularly around MFA bypasses and platform-specific policy gaps, by modeling normalization, exclusion logic, and cumulative policy enforcement offline. Both red teamers and defenders should evaluate CAPSlock for CAP auditing workflows, with the caveat that pending AAD Graph deprecation will require elevated Microsoft Graph permissions for future policy collection.

CLICKFIX: STOPPED AT ⌘+V

This post details a lightweight macOS defense against ClickFix attacks — now integrated into BlockBlock v2.3.0 — that intercepts ⌘+V keystrokes via NSEvent global monitoring, pauses the terminal process with SIGSTOP, and prompts the user to review clipboard contents before execution. The approach works across major terminal emulators and is particularly effective given that most documented ClickFix campaigns — including recent campaigns by North Korean APT UNC1069 and LLM-propagated attacks — explicitly instruct victims to use the keyboard shortcut. Notable limitations include no coverage for right-click paste operations, a dependency on Accessibility permissions, and Apple's Endpoint Security framework lacking an equivalent ES_EVENT_TYPE_AUTH_PASTE event, making user-space interception the only practical approach.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE TRITON MALWARE FORK

A suspicious fork of the Triton macOS omg.lol client turns out not to be simple plagiarism, but a clumsy malware delivery attempt hosted on GitHub. The attacker floods the README with links to a Windows-only malware ZIP hidden in an Xcode asset path, then pads the GitHub contribution graph with fake backdated commits to appear legitimate. Sandbox analysis shows a multistage Windows infection chain using 7zip, LuaJIT, anti-analysis tricks, and C2 traffic masquerading as Microsoft and blockchain traffic.

ADWSDOMAINDUMP

ADWSDomainDump is an Active Directory domain dumper that uses ADWS (port 9389) instead of LDAP to enumerate AD objects, bypassing both Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and CrowdStrike Falcon detection.

NONO

Nono is a secure, kernel-enforced sandbox for AI agents, MCP, and LLM workloads. It features capability-based isolation with secure key management and blocking of destructive actions in a zero-trust environment.

COGENT SECURITY (PRODUCT LAUNCH)

Cogent Security is an agentic AI platform for vulnerability management that autonomously investigates, prioritizes, and orchestrates remediation of security issues.

PASSWORD MANAGERS LESS SECURE THAN PROMISED

ETH Zurich's Applied Cryptography Group demonstrated 25 total attacks across Bitwarden (12), LastPass (7), and Dashlane (6), collectively serving ~60 million users breaking their "zero-knowledge encryption" guarantees by operating a malicious server that deviates from expected client behavior during routine actions such as login, vault access, and sync. Attacks ranged from targeted vault integrity violations to full organizational vault compromise, requiring only lightweight server-impersonation tooling rather than significant computational resources, with the root cause attributed to feature-bloat complexity and reliance on obsolete 1990s-era cryptographic primitives. Security teams should evaluate password manager vendors against criteria of transparent vulnerability disclosure, third-party audits, and modern end-to-end encryption enabled by default, pending publication of full findings at USENIX Security 2026.

DUTCH SECRETARY OF DEFENSE THREATENS TO 'JAILBREAK' NATION'S F-35 JET FIGHTERS

Dutch defense chief Gijs Tuinman suggests F-35 fighter software could be “jailbroken,” raising sharp questions about European dependence on US control systems and cloud services. The question is whether there are hidden kill switches or how Lockheed's update and logistics infrastructure can effectively ground fleets.

FROM BRICKSTORM TO GRIMBOLT: UNC6201 EXPLOITING A DELL RECOVERPOINT FOR VIRTUAL MACHINES ZERO-DAY

Mandiant and GTIG described how UNC6201 exploited CVE-2026-22769 (CVSS 10.0), a hardcoded admin credential in Dell RecoverPoint's Apache Tomcat configuration located at /home/kos/tomcat9/tomcat-users.xml. This enabled unauthenticated deployment of WAR files via/manager/text/deploy and allowed root-level code execution. Persistence was maintained by hijacking convert_hosts.sh, which is run at boot via rc.local. GRIMBOLT, a C# backdoor replacing BRICKSTORM in September 2025, is compiled with native AOT to remove CIL metadata, making static analysis more difficult. It shares C2 infrastructure with its predecessor and introduces new lateral movement techniques in VMware, such as using "Ghost NICs" and iptables-based Single Packet Authorization on compromised vCenter appliances. Defenders should review /home/kos/auditlog/fapi_cl_audit_log.log for requests to /manager, search for GRIMBOLT using published YARA rules and IOCs, immediately apply Dell's patch, and monitor for changes to convert_hosts.sh.

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ANTHROPIC'S LATEST SONNET GETS BETTER AT USING COMPUTERS, AMID BOUTS OF EXISTENTIAL ANGST

Claude Sonnet 4.6 features improved computer use, enhanced prompt injection resistance, and a 200K default context window.

NOTEPAD++ FIXES HIJACKED UPDATE MECHANISM USED TO DELIVER TARGETED MALWARE

Notepad++ 8.9.2 introduces a double-lock update design that verifies both signed installers and signed XML from its update server to prevent hijacked updates.

POLISH AUTHORITIES ARREST ALLEGED PHOBOS RANSOMWARE AFFILIATE

A 47-year-old man was arrested in Poland's Małopolskie province as part of the Europol-led "Phobos Aetor" operation.

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HOW I "HACKED" CHATGPT ATLAS... AND WHY IT WASN'T PATCHED

A researcher discovered that ChatGPT Atlas's OWL architecture allows local attackers to replace the headless Chromium "OWL Host" with a malicious app, inheriting Atlas's macOS TCC privileges to silently access the microphone, camera, or other permissions previously granted by the user. OpenAI declined to patch the bug, citing Chrome's threat model, which excludes local attacks—a stance inherited downstream by Electron and Chromium forks that the researcher argues leaves macOS users fundamentally less secure. The unpatched vulnerability highlights a growing tension between Chrome's threat-model assumptions and macOS's TCC permission system, in which confused deputy attacks can bypass OS-level consent controls without user awareness.

INDIAN PHARMACY CHAIN GIANT EXPOSED CUSTOMER DATA AND INTERNAL SYSTEMS

A misconfigured “super admin” interface at DavaIndia Pharmacy, part of Zota Healthcare, allowed anyone to create high-privilege accounts and access data on nearly 17,000 online orders across 883 stores, including names, contacts, addresses, and purchased medicines. Attackers could have altered pricing, discounts, and prescription requirements before the flaw, reported to CERT-In in August 2025, was quietly fixed.

HOW A SINGLE TYPO LED TO RCE IN FIREFOX

A single-character typo (using `&` instead of `|`) in a SpiderMonkey Wasm GC array refactoring commit introduced a use-after-free vulnerability in Firefox's renderer process, enabling arbitrary read/write primitives and full code execution. The bug caused out-of-line array forwarding pointers to be incorrectly zeroed during garbage collection, allowing attackers to reclaim freed memory via heap spraying, bypass ASLR through pointer leaks, and hijack control flow. The vulnerability affected only Firefox 149 Nightly and was patched within six days of the report. No release versions were affected.

INSIDE BASHE: THE INTERVIEW WITH THE RANSOMWARE GROUP KNOWN AS APT73

Bashe (formerly APT73) is a RaaS group rebranded around a Chinese mythological serpent identity. It operates with a 0.25 BTC affiliate entry fee as both a monetization and anti-infiltration measure, and collaborates with initial access brokers and disgruntled corporate insiders. The group claims full-stack encryption, EDR bypass capabilities, and centralized control over negotiation panels and data publication timers, while excluding healthcare, schools, and CIS countries from targeting. This pattern is consistent with norms in the Russian-speaking ransomware ecosystem. Their deliberate vagueness on technical specifics such as key management architecture, combined with profit-first rhetoric and a shifting geographic focus toward countries with higher payment rates, provides useful threat intelligence for defenders modeling RaaS operator behavior.

BREAKING EBPF SECURITY: HOW KERNEL ROOTKITS BLIND OBSERVABILITY TOOLS

Research has shown that kernel rootkits can systematically blind eBPF-based security tools by using ftrace to hook the data-delivery plumbing, BPF iterators, ring buffers, perf events, and map operations, rather than targeting the eBPF programs themselves. The Singularity rootkit selectively filters hidden processes and network connections at the kernel-to-userspace boundary, causing security tools to operate on a fabricated view of system state while believing they have complete visibility. The findings underscore that eBPF observability assumes a trusted kernel, and defenders must prioritize preventing kernel compromise through Secure Boot, signed module enforcement, and layered out-of-host detection rather than relying solely on kernel-level telemetry.

A STANDARDIZATION GUIDE TO PROMPT INJECTION

Lasso proposes a structured taxonomy for prompt injection, distinguishing between attacker intent (system prompt leakage vs. jailbreak) and text-based techniques, including instruction override, role-playing, and others. Each category includes concrete subtypes and examples to help practitioners more reliably detect, reason about, and defend against modern LLM prompt attacks.

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LAZYDLLSIDELOAD

LazyDLLSideload is a Rust-based tool for generating DLL proxy and sideload projects for red team engagements, automatically parsing PE export tables and producing ready-to-compile implants with payload embedding, string obfuscation, and dynamic invocation via dyncvoke. It supports two modes: sideload (pure DLL replacement with stub exports) and proxy (forwarding calls to the renamed original DLL while intercepting a specified function), with optional native syscall execution via NtCreateThreadEx for improved OPSEC.

PWNHUB

Hand‑curated offensive security toolkit, scripts, and writeups for ethical hackers, pentesters, and IT pros eager to level up.

VULNCHECK (PRODUCT LAUNCH)

VulnCheck provides a vulnerability intelligence platform that tracks vulnerability lifecycles and active exploitation, monitoring exploit code and payloads so security teams can identify, prioritize, and patch the CVEs that pose the most immediate, real-world risk.