After Mythos: New Playbooks For a Zero-Window Era

When patching isn’t fast enough, NDR helps contain the next era of threats.

If you’ve been tracking advancements in AI, you know the exploit window, the short buffer that organizations relied on to patch and protect after a vulnerability disclosure, is closing fast.

Anthropic’s new model, Claude Mythos, and its Project Glasswing, showed that finding exploitable vulnerabilities and subtle cracks in your defenses in operating systems and browsers — work that once took experts weeks — can now be done in minutes with AI. As a result, the patch window of opportunity is now near-zero. The situation is so critical that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell recently convened an urgent meeting with the CEOs of major U.S. financial institutions to discuss the implied risks. The takeaway was straightforward: surging AI capabilities have upended risk profiles, with profound implications for institutional stability and integrity across industries. 

Mythos also highlights the gap between discovery and remediation. It easily surpassed human expertise, solving a complex corporate network simulation that would have taken more than 10 hours of expert programming skill. Its discoveries also found problems in decades-old software that had been missed in thousands of security reviews. 

From Mythos to the assume-breach era

Mythos isn’t the only AI model capable of finding vulnerabilities this quickly. Other parties have found them using more basic LLMs. 

If your company uses any type of software, you should assume that software probably contains thousands of these unknown vulnerabilities, just waiting to be exploited by AI-assisted discovery. This is not a failure of your security team; rather, it’s the structural consequence of 30 years of accumulated software complexity meeting a leap in offensive AI capability. 

Now that near-zero exploit windows are the norm, “patch faster” or “patch better” are no longer enough. Security teams will need new playbooks, based on an assume-breach model: breaches will happen, and detecting them as they occur and containing them at scale will be paramount. These outcomes are decided in real time, on the network.

How to bring an assume-breach model into everyday operations

The assume-breach model has three operational requirements, each of which uses automated methods designed to collapse time to containment:

1. Detect post-breach behavior before a threat escalates across your enterprise 
2. Reconstruct the complete attack chain as soon as possible
3. Contain threats rapidly to limit their blast radius

In practice, this method of containment requires:

Visualizing containment as the scoreboard

Prioritize reducing mean-time-to-contain (MTTC) to limit damage while maintaining your watch over detection and response metrics (MTTD and MTTR). As AI accelerates exploitation and reshapes attack methods, the importance of speed in pinpointing, containing, and resolving threats increases. Compressing MTTC starts with real-time, comprehensive network visibility. With it, SOCs can detect post-breach behavior, determine the blast radius, and disrupt events before they spread further.

Monitoring for AI-favored techniques

Autonomous AI attacks increasingly use sophisticated techniques to evade detection, including living-off-the-land (LOTL) methods that conceal malicious activity within legitimate tools and processes. Network Detection and Response (NDR) platforms play a crucial role in identifying these subtle indicators of compromise. They do this by continuously monitoring network traffic for unusual behavior. Signs of such activity might appear as unusual SMB admin shares, NTLM where Kerberos is expected, or new RDP/WMI/DCOM pivots, all of which can signify lateral movement across your network. 

Advanced NDR platforms can also detect attackers leveraging LOTL techniques to maintain command and control communications and exfiltrate data while trying to avoid generating alarms. Indicators of command and control can manifest as beacon‑like connection patterns, rare JA3/JA4 and SNI pairs, high‑entropy DNS, or unsanctioned DoH or DoT. Anomalies such as off‑hours uploads, upload/download asymmetry, first‑time destinations (e.g., S3, Blob, GCS, or new CDNs), compression before egress, or the presence of tunnels and VPNs to new destinations can indicate exfiltration. 

Automating and maintaining your software inventory

Many organizations still lack a real-time, accurate inventory of their software, leaving them struggling to understand how assets connect and communicate. This gap creates openings for adversaries. Automating asset inventory and mapping helps organizations understand their exposure, react more quickly to emerging threats, and shrink the available windows for exploiting vulnerabilities.

Correlating and reconstructing attack chains

Once a breach is detected, quickly understanding the scope is vital, especially as AI-driven threats move too fast for manual analysis. The once painstaking process of reconstructing events needs to be automated and delivered in real time.

Corelight Investigator, part of the company’s Open NDR Platform, automatically correlates alerts and network activity to help reconstruct detailed timelines of attacks. This makes it easier for your own systems to automate the response workflow, and to improve your resilience against these attacks. 

Automating containment

Advances in detection and attack reconstruction should drive decisive, reliable containment. Limiting the spread of threats, the third leg of the assume-breach model, is what turns data and insight into tangible protection. Embedding automated containment into network defense workflows can reduce the risk that fast-moving threats escalate into widespread incidents.

Toward a Mythos-ready security future

Claude Mythos and other AI models are rapidly upending long-standing practices in cybersecurity. Preparing for this dynamic landscape means, in part, building adaptive defensive layers that can help you accelerate your defenses against adversarial AI.

• Monitor: Maintain continuous network visibility and automate detections to identify threats early. 
• Assume-breach: Operate under the expectation that breaches will occur and focus on rapid response and containment.
• Protect: Safeguard your trusted ecosystems by strengthening controls where AI-driven attacks can cause the most damage. Builda “Mythos-ready” security program, as suggested by the Cloud Security Alliance.
• Sharpen: Continuously refine your playbooks and response strategies to counter evolving threats.

Corelight Network Detection and Response

Uncover new attack methods with Corelight’s Open NDR Platform. With comprehensive network visibility and deep behavioral analytics, Corelight is designed to help your SOC detect advanced, AI-powered threats faster, so you can act before incidents escalate. Learn more at corelight.com/elitedefense.

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Chinese Silk Typhoon Hacker Extradited to U.S. Over COVID Research Cyberattacks

A Chinese national accused of being a member of the Silk Typhoon hacking group has been extradited to the U.S. from Italy. 

Xu Zewei, 34, was arrested in July 2025 by Italian authorities for his alleged links to the Chinese state-sponsored threat group and for orchestrating cyber attacks against American organizations and government agencies between February 2020 and June 2021, including breaking into systems at a Texas university to steal COVID-19 vaccine information.

He was charged with nine counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to cause damage to and obtain information by unauthorized access to protected computers, as well as committing aggravated identity theft.

Xu, along with co-defendant and Chinese national Zhang Yu, is said to have undertaken the attacks under directions issued by the Ministry of State Security's (MSS) Shanghai State Security Bureau (SSSB). Some of these attacks weaponized then zero-days in Microsoft Exchange Server, a threat activity cluster that Microsoft tracked as Hafnium, to breach targets and deploy web shells for remote administration.

Xu worked for a company named Shanghai Powerock Network Co. Ltd. when the attacks were carried out, per the indictment. The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said Powerock was one of many "enabling" companies in China that conducted hacking operations for the government.

"In early 2020, Xu and his co-conspirators hacked and otherwise targeted U.S.-based universities, immunologists, and virologists conducting research into COVID‑19 vaccines, treatment, and testing," the DoJ added. "The charges further allege that beginning in late 2020, Xu and his co-conspirators exploited certain vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server, a widely-used Microsoft product for sending, receiving, and storing email messages."

However, the defendant has repeatedly denied any involvement in Chinese government hacking operations, claiming his arrest was a case of mistaken identity. He was in Milan with his wife on vacation when he was apprehended. Speaking to TechCrunch, Xu's lawyer said he pleaded not guilty to all charges during a court hearing on Monday. Zhang Yu remains at large.

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Microsoft Confirms Active Exploitation of Windows Shell CVE-2026-32202

Microsoft on Monday revised its advisory for a now-patched, high-severity security flaw impacting Windows Shell to acknowledge that it has been actively exploited in the wild.

The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-32202 (CVSS score: 4.3), a spoofing vulnerability that could allow an attacker to access sensitive information. It was addressed as part of its Patch Tuesday update for this month.

"Protection mechanism failure in Windows Shell allows an unauthorized attacker to perform spoofing over a network," Microsoft noted in an alert. "An attacker would have to send the victim a malicious file that the victim would have to execute."

"An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could view some sensitive information (Confidentiality) but not all resources within the impacted component may be divulged to the attacker. The attacker cannot make changes to disclosed information (Integrity) or limit access to the resource (Availability)."

On April 27, 2026, Microsoft said it rectified the "Exploitability Index, Exploited flag, and CVSS vector" as they were incorrect when they were published on April 14.

While the tech giant did not share any details about the exploitation activity, Akamai security researcher Maor Dahan, who is credited with discovering and reporting the bug, said the zero-click vulnerability stems from an incomplete patch for CVE-2026-21510.

The latter has been weaponized by a Russian nation-state group tracked as APT28 (aka Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard, GruesomeLarch, and Pawn Storm) along with CVE-2026-21513 as part of an exploit chain -

• CVE-2026-21510 (CVSS score: 8.8) - A protection mechanism failure in Windows Shell that allows an unauthorized attacker to bypass a security feature over a network. (Fixed by Microsoft in February 2026)
• CVE-2026-21513 (CVSS score: 8.8) - A protection mechanism failure in MSHTML Framework that allows an unauthorized attacker to bypass a security feature over a network. (Fixed by Microsoft in February 2026)

It's worth noting that the abuse of CVE-2026-21513 was also flagged by the web infrastructure and security company early last month, linking it to APT28 after unearthing a malicious artifact in January 2026.

CVE-2026-21510 Exploitation

The campaign, targeting Ukraine and E.U. nations in December 2025, leverages a malicious Windows Shortcut (LNK) file to exploit the two vulnerabilities, effectively bypassing Microsoft Defender SmartScreen and enabling attacker-controlled code to be executed.

"APT28 leverages the Windows Shell namespace parsing mechanism to load a dynamic-link library (DLL) from a remote server using a UNC path," Dahan explained. "The DLL is loaded as part of the Control Panel (CPL) objects without proper network zone validation.

Akamai said the February 2026 patch, while mitigating the remote code execution risk by triggering a SmartScreen check of the CPL file's digital signature and origin zone, still allowed the victim machine to authenticate to the attacker's server and automatically fetch the CPL file by resolving the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path and initiating an SMB connection without requiring user interaction.

"When that path is a UNC path (like '\\attacker.com\share\payload.cpl'), Windows initiates an SMB connection to the attacker's server," Dahan said. "This server message block (SMB) connection triggers an automatic NTLM authentication handshake, sending the victim's Net-NTLMv2 hash to the attacker, which can later be used for NTLM relay attacks and offline cracking."

"While Microsoft fixed the initial RCE (CVE-2026-21510), an authentication coercion flaw (CVE-2026-32202) remained. This gap between path resolution and trust verification left a zero-click credential theft vector via auto-parsed LNK files."

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⚡ Weekly Recap: Fast16 Malware, XChat Launch, Federal Backdoor, AI Employee Tracking & More

Everything is dumb again. This week feels broken in a very familiar way. Old tricks are back. New tools are doing shady crap. Supply chains got hit. Fake help desks worked. Weird research showed how easy some attacks still are.

Most of it feels like stuff we should have fixed years ago. Bad extensions. Stolen creds. Remote tools are getting abused. Malware hides in places people trust. Same mess, cleaner packaging.

Coffee is cold. The vuln list is ugly. Let’s get into it.

⚡ Threat of the Week

New fast16 Malware Was Developed Years Before Stuxnet—A new Lua-based malware called fast16, created years before the notorious Stuxnet worm, is designed to primarily target high-precision calculation software to tamper with results. The framework dates back to 2005. Analysis suggests that fast16 was active at least five years before the emergence of Stuxnet. Widely regarded as a joint U.S.-Israeli project, Stuxnet marked a turning point in cyber warfare as the first disruptive digital weapon and eventually served as the blueprint for the Duqu information-stealing rootkit. Fast16, however, establishes a much earlier timeline for such sophisticated operations. The development places its origin well before Stuxnet came into being. Although it's currently not known if it was ever deployed in the wild, the investigation found three potential types of physical simulation software that the malware might have been designed to tamper with. "It focuses on making slight alterations to these calculations so that they lead to failures – very subtle ones, perhaps not immediately apparent," security researcher Vitaly Kamluk told WIRED. "Systems might wear out faster, collapse, or crash, and scientific research could yield incorrect conclusions, potentially causing serious harm."

🔔 Top News

• UNC6692 Resorts to Teams Help Desk Impersonation—A new threat group tracked as UNC6692 uses social engineering to deploy a new, custom malware suite named Snow, which consists of a browser extension, a tunneler, and a backdoor. The end goal is to steal sensitive data after network compromise through credential theft and domain takeover. "This component is where active reconnaissance and mission completion occur," Google Mandiant noted. "Attacker commands (such as whoami or net user) are sent through the SnowGlaze tunnel, intercepted by the SnowBelt extension, and then proxied to the SnowBasin local server via HTTP POST requests. SnowBasin executes these commands and relays the results back through the same pipeline to the attacker."
• U.S. Federal Agency Targeted by FIRESTARTER Backdoor—The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) revealed that an unnamed federal civilian agency's Cisco Firepower device running Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software was compromised in September 2025 with a new malware called FIRESTARTER. FIRESTARTER is assessed to be a backdoor designed for remote access and control. It's believed to be deployed as part of a "widespread" campaign orchestrated by an advanced persistent threat (APT) actor to obtain access to Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) firmware by exploiting now-patched security flaws such as CVE-2025-20333 and CVE-2025-20362. Given the backdoor's ability to survive patches and system reboots, Cisco is recommending users reimage and update to the latest fixed versions.
• Lotus Wiper Malware Targets Venezuelan Energy Systems—A previously undocumented data wiper codenamed Lotus Wiper has been used in attacks targeting the energy and utilities sector in Venezuela at the end of last year and the start of 2026. "Two batch scripts are responsible for initiating the destructive phase of the attack and preparing the environment for executing the final wiper payload," Kaspersky said. "These scripts coordinate the start of the operation across the network, weaken system defenses, and disrupt normal operations before retrieving, deobfuscating, and executing a previously unknown wiper." Once deployed, the wiper erases recovery mechanisms, overwrites the content of physical drives, and systematically deletes files across affected volumes, effectively leaving the system in an inoperable state.
• The Gentlemen Deploys SystemBC Malware—Threat actors associated with The Gentlemen ransomware‑as‑a‑service (RaaS) operation have been observed attempting to deploy a known proxy malware called SystemBC. The ransomware group has quickly made a name for itself in a matter of months, claiming more than 320 victims on its data leak site since its emergence in July 2025. According to Comparitech, the group claimed 202 attacks last quarter, second only to Qilin's 353 claims. NCC Group found The Gentlemen was responsible for 34 attacks in January and 67 in February 2026, making it a prominent player alongside other established groups like Qilin, Akira, and Cl0p. "The emergence of The Gentlemen group among the top three most active threat actors is notable as it demonstrates how a relatively new group can scale operations rapidly," NCC Group said. The development comes as another nascent ransomware group called Kyber has attracted attention for becoming the first RaaS crew to adopt the Kyber1024 (aka ML-KEM) post-quantum encryption algorithm for its Windows variant of the locker. In related news, the threat actors linked to the Trigona ransomware, dubbed Rhantus, have been observed using a custom data exfiltration tool that's designed to provide attackers with more control over what files to choose (or ignore) and facilitate rapid data transfer by opening five parallel connections per file. The attacks were detected in March 2026. It's not known why the threat actors shifted from readily available tools like Rclone. The use of custom tooling in the ransomware landscape is something of a rarity, even as it's a double-edged sword for attackers. "While it requires development resources and time, these tools can provide a level of stealth that generic tools cannot match, at least until they're discovered," the Symantec and Carbon Black Threat Hunter Team said. 
• Bitwarden CLI Compromised in Supply Chain Campaign—Bitwarden CLI, the command-line interface for the password manager Bitwarden, was compromised as part of a new supply chain attack that targeted Checkmarx's Docker images, Visual Studio Code extensions, and GitHub Actions workflow. The affected package, @bitwarden/cli@2026.4.0, contained malicious code to steal sensitive data from developer systems. The malware also features self-propagation capabilities, using stolen npm credentials to identify packages the victim can modify and inject them with malicious code to expand its reach. Bitwarden has since addressed the issue. The attack appears to be the work of a threat actor known as TeamPCP, although references to the string "Shai-Hulud: The Third Coming" have complicated attribution.

🔥 Trending CVEs

Bugs drop weekly, and the gap between a patch and an exploit is shrinking fast. These are the heavy hitters for the week: high-severity, widely used, or already being poked at in the wild.

Check the list, patch what you have, and hit the ones marked urgent first — CVE-2026-40372 (Microsoft ASP.NET Core), CVE-2026-33626 (LMDeploy), CVE-2026-5760 (SGLang), CVE-2026-5752 (Cohere AI Terrarium), CVE-2026-3517, CVE-2026-3518, CVE-2026-3519, CVE-2026-4048 (Progress LoadMaster, ECS Connection Manager, Object Scale Connection Manager, and MOVEit WAF), CVE-2026-21876 (Progress MOVEit WAF), CVE-2026-32173 (Microsoft Azure SRE Agent), CVE-2026-25262 (Qualcomm), CVE-2025-24371 (CometBFT), CVE-2026-5754 (Radware Alteon), CVE-2026-40872 (Mailcow), CVE-2026-27654 (Nginx), CVE-2026-5756 (DRC INSIGHT), CVE-2026-5757 (Ollama), CVE-2026-41651 aka Pack2TheRoot (Linux PackageKit), CVE-2026-33824 (Microsoft Windows IKEv2), CVE-2026-21571, CVE-2026-33871 (Atlassian Bamboo Data Center), CVE-2026-40050 (CrowdStrike LogScale), CVE-2026-32604, CVE-2026-32613 (Spinnaker), CVE-2026-33694 (Tenable Nessus Agent on Windows), TRA-2026-30 (Windows-driver-samples), TRA-2026-35 (Yuma AI), and a remote code execution flaw in Slippi (no CVE).

🎥 Cybersecurity Webinars

• Stop Testing, Start Validating: Outsmart Hackers with Agentic AI → Stop guessing which security gaps matter most while hackers use AI to find them for you. Most tools just follow a static checklist, but "Agentic Exposure Validation" actually thinks like an attacker, uncovering hidden paths into your network that traditional scans miss. Join this webinar to see how autonomous AI agents can test your defenses 24/7 and help you fix the risks that truly matter before they are exploited.
• Stop the Spread: How to Kill "Patient Zero" Before Your Network Goes Down → It only takes one "Patient Zero" to bring down your entire company. While traditional tools look for old threats, modern hackers are using AI-powered tricks to slip past your defenses undetected. Join this webinar to see how these new attacks work and learn simple "Zero Trust" steps to stop a breach before it spreads. Don't wait for a crisis—learn how to lock down your network today.
• Connect the Dots: Stop Attackers Before They Reach Your Data → Hackers aren't just looking for one big bug; they are chaining small, hidden gaps in your code and cloud to create a direct path to your data. Most security tools only see these issues in isolation, leaving you blind to the "big picture" thatan attacker sees. Join this webinar to learn how to map these complex attack paths and fix the real risks before they are exploited.

📰 Around the Cyber World

• Turning the Web Into a Trap for LLMs —Google has revealed that indirect prompt injections (IPI) are a top security priority, calling it a "primary attack vector for adversaries to target and compromise AI agents." Unlike regular prompt injection that seeks to manipulate a chatbot into executing malicious instructions, IPI occurs when an AI system processes content, like a website, email, or document, that contains nefarious commands. As this content is processed by the AI, it may end up following the attacker's commands instead of the user's original intent. This is complicated by the fact that attackers use a gaggle of tricks to hide malicious instructions from human eyes while keeping them fully visible to AI. This often involves making the text invisible through CSS, encoding it in various formats, or stashing it in unexpected locations. In at least one malicious scenario, Google flagged a number of websites that attempt to vandalize the machines of anyone using AI assistants. If executed, the commands in this example would try to delete all files on the user's machine. Some websites include prompt injections for the purpose of SEO, trying to manipulate AI assistants into promoting their business over others. "Additionally, even though sophistication was low, we observed an uptick in detections over time: We saw a relative increase of 32% in the malicious category between November 2025 and February 2026, repeating the scan on multiple versions of the [CommonCrawl] archive," Google said. "This upward trend indicates growing interest in IPI attacks."
• Meta Debuts Improved Meta Account —Meta has introduced an improved Meta Account as a centralized way to sign in and manage Meta apps and devices like Facebook, Instagram, and AI glasses. Besides adding support for passkeys, Meta also allows users to "optionally set up a single password to log into your apps and devices so you no longer have to remember multiple passwords."
• X Launches XChat —X launched XChat as a standalone app for iOS, allowing users on the platform to connect with others for messaging, file sharing, audio and video calls, as well as group chats. The company claims all messages are end-to-end encrypted and PIN-protected — though security experts have previously disputed the company's encryption claims when an early version was teased last year. XChat's app listing page shows that it can collect location, contacts, search history, usage data, identifiers, and device diagnostics, and link that information to a user's identity directly.
• Meta Plans to Track Employee Mouse Movements, Keystrokes for AI Model Training —Meta is installing tracking software on the systems of U.S. employees to capture mouse movements, clicks, and keystrokes, per a report from Reuters. Meta said the data will be used to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models and will not be used for employee reviews. In a similar development, GitHub notified users that the GitHub CLI now collects anonymous usage telemetry by default and that they should disable the feature if they do not want to share such information.
• Surge in Attacks Involving Compromised Bomgar Instances —Huntress has recorded an uptick in incidents involving compromised Bomgar remote monitoring and management (RMM) instances. "The surge follows intermittent waves of exploitation we have seen over the past two months, after BeyondTrust first disclosed a critical-severity flaw (CVE-2026-1731) in Bomgar in February," the company said. "On February 6, 2026, BeyondTrust issued fixes for the flaw in Bomgar (rebranded as BeyondTrust Remote Support), which could be exploited by an unauthenticated attacker to remotely execute code." The specific root cause behind these attacks is not clear, but the incidents likely stem from the exploitation of CVE-2026-1731. Fortra has also spotted phishing campaigns trying to lure victims into installing Datto's CentraStage remote monitoring and management tool, which attackers are then using to connect back into the victim's internal network. The findings demonstrate threat actors' continued shift toward exploiting RMMs rather than using traditional malware.
• Over 1.2K C2 Servers Linked to Russian Infrastructure Providers —A large-scale study of the Russian web hosting space has found more than 1,250 malicious command-and-control servers hosted inside Russia this year. Most of the servers are linked to malware families and IoT botnets, such as Keitaro, Hajime, Cobalt Strike, Sliver, Mozi, and Mirai, according to Hunt.io.
• Tether Freezes $344M —Tether announced that it supported the U.S. Government in freezing $344 million USD₮ across two addresses. "The freeze was executed after the addresses were identified, preventing further movement of funds," the company said. "The freeze follows information shared with Tether by several U.S. authorities about activity tied to unlawful conduct. When wallets are identified as connected to sanctions evasion, criminal networks, or other illicit activity, Tether can move to restrict those assets."
• Malicious Chrome Extension Masquerades as Google Authenticator —A malicious Chrome extension posing as the official Google Authenticator app was identified in the official extension marketplace as part of an ongoing malicious campaign codenamed AIFrame, active since at least early 2026. "The extension appears to use Chrome's localization system and skeleton code to bypass security reviews," DomainTools said. "Despite its functional appearance, it requests broad, unnecessary permissions and contains 'dormant infrastructure.' This extension is linked to at least six others through a shared developer front, two of which already carry fully operational malicious payloads. These extensions utilize hidden iframes to inject attacker-controlled content into every webpage, deploy fraudulent paywalls for free services, and maintain bidirectional communication with C2 servers."
• Compromised WordPress Sites Push ClickFix Schemes —Multiple websites have been compromised by a ClickFix clipboard hijacker that aims to trick users into pasting malicious commands into the Windows Run dialog or the macOS Terminal app to deliver malware. The kill chain is assessed to share overlaps with a known traffic distribution system (TDS) named KongTuke.
• New Phishing Toolkits Discovered —A number of new phishing-as-a-service toolkits have been spotted in the wild: OLUOMO, ATHR, VENOM, p1bot, TMoscow Bot, REFUNDEE, and UPMI.

• Malfixer → Stop wasting hours manually repairing broken malware just to see how it works. Malfixer does the heavy lifting by automatically rebuilding corrupted or "packed" files so they are ready for analysis in seconds. It is a simple, effective way to bypass the tricks hackers use to hide their code, letting you get straight to your investigation.
• SmokedMeat → Most developers have no idea how many "shadow" tools and scripts are hidden inside their software build pipelines. Smokedmeat shines a light on these forgotten GitHub Actions and third-party tools by quickly scanning your environment to show you exactly what is running. It is a simple way to find hidden back doors and security risks before attackers do.

Disclaimer: This is strictly for research and learning. It hasn't been through a formal security audit, so don't just blindly drop it into production. Read the code, break it in a sandbox first, and make sure whatever you’re doing stays on the right side of the law.

Conclusion

Same pattern, new mess. Patch the obvious stuff first. Check the weird logins. Look hard at browser extensions, remote tools, and anything that touches your build chain. The boring checks are boring until they save prod.

That’s it for this week. Keep backups clean, MFA tight, and your trust budget low.

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Researchers Uncover 73 Fake VS Code Extensions Delivering GlassWorm v2 Malware

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged dozens of Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code) extensions on the Open VSX repository that are linked to a persistent information-stealing campaign dubbed GlassWorm.

The cluster of 73 extensions has been identified as cloned versions of their legitimate counterparts. Of these, six have been confirmed to be malicious, with the remaining acting as seemingly harmless sleeper packages to get users to download them and build trust, before their true intent is manifested through a subsequent update.

All the extensions were published at the start of the month, per application security company Socket, which is tracking the latest iteration under the moniker GlassWorm v2. In total, more than 320 artifacts have been identified since December 21, 2025. The list of extensions identified as malicious is listed below -

• outsidestormcommand.monochromator-theme
• keyacrosslaud.auto-loop-for-antigravity
• krundoven.ironplc-fast-hub
• boulderzitunnel.vscode-buddies
• cubedivervolt.html-code-validate
• winnerdomain17.version-lens-tool

The cloned sleepers, besides typosquatting the names of the original packages (CEINTL.vscode-language-pack-tr vs. Emotionkyoseparate.turkish-language-pack), use the same icon and description as their corresponding legitimate versions in an attempt to fool unsuspecting developers and trick them into installing the extensions.

This "visual trust" acts as an effective social engineering tactic to boost install counts organically before it's poisoned to serve malware to the downstream users.

The disclosure comes as the threat actors behind the campaign are actively evolving their modus operandi, pivoting to sleeper packages and transitive dependencies to evade detection, while simultaneously using Zig-based droppers to deploy a secondary VSIX extension hosted on GitHub that can infect all integrated development environments (IDEs) on a developer's machine.

The extensions identified by Socket act as an innocuous loader for the actual payload, which is a VSIX extension that's retrieved from GitHub and installed into every IDE identified in the system, including VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and VSCodium, using the "--install-extension" command.

Irrespective of the method used, the end goal is the same: run malware that avoids Russian systems, steal sensitive data, install a remote access trojan (RAT), and stealthily deploy a rogue Chromium-based extension to siphon credentials, bookmarks, and other information.

"This approach achieves the same outcome as the binary-based variant, but keeps the delivery logic in obfuscated JavaScript," the company said. "The extension acts as a loader, while the payload is retrieved and executed after activation."

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Fake CAPTCHA IRSF Scam and 120 Keitaro Campaigns Drive Global SMS, Crypto Fraud

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a telecommunications fraud campaign that uses fake CAPTCHA verification tricks to dupe unsuspecting users into sending international text messages that incur charges on their mobile bills, generating illicit revenue for the threat actors who lease the phone numbers.

According to a new report published by Infoblox, the operation is believed to have been active since at least June 2020, using methods like social engineering and back button hijacking in web browsers. As many as 35 phone numbers spanning 17 countries have been observed as part of the international revenue share fraud (IRSF) campaign.

"The fake CAPTCHA has multiple steps, and each message crafted by the site is preconfigured with over a dozen phone numbers, meaning the victim isn't charged for just a single message – they're charged for sending SMSs to over 50 international destinations," researchers David Brunsdon and Darby Wise said in an analysis.

"This type of scam also benefits from delayed billing, as the 'international SMS' charges often appear on the victim's bill weeks later and the experience with the fake CAPTCHA has been long forgotten."

What makes the threat notable is the coming together of revenue share fraud and malicious traffic distribution systems (TDSs), with the activity using the infrastructure -- traditionally responsible for routing traffic to malware or phishing pages though a redirection chain to evade detection – to conduct SMS scams at scale.

IRSF schemes involve fraudsters illegally acquiring international premium rate numbers (IPRN) or number ranges and artificially inflating the volume of international calls or messages to those numbers to receive a share of the revenue generated from these calls from termination charges obtained by the number range holder for inbound traffic to the number ranges.

In this context, a termination fee refers to the inter-carrier charges paid by an originating telecom operator to a terminating operator for completing a call on their network. It's the exploitation of these "revenue sharing" agreements that drives IRSF, as the originating carrier ends up paying termination fees to the destination network for the incoming calls to the high-cost destinations, a portion of which is split with the fraudsters.

Infoblox said the observed campaign specifically registers phone numbers in countries with high termination fees or lax regulations, such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, or certain premium-rate number ranges in Europe, and colludes with local telecom providers to pull off the scam.

The entire campaign plays out like this: a user is redirected to a bogus web page using a commercial TDS, which serves a CAPTCHA that instructs them to send an SMS to "confirm you are human."This, in turn, triggers a multi-stage "verification" chain, with each step triggering a separate SMS message to the server-designated numbers by programmatically launching the SMS apps on both Android and iOS devices with the phone numbers and message content pre-filled.

In the process, as many as 60 SMS messages are sent to 15 unique numbers after four steps of CAPTCHA, which could end up costing a user $30. While it may be a relatively small amount, the DNS threat intelligence firm warned that they could quickly add up for the threat actor when carried out at scale. The list of phone numbers spans 17 countries, such as Azerbaijan, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Spain, and Turkey.

The campaign heavily relies on cookies to track progression through the fake verification flow, using values stored in certain cookies (e.g., "successRate") to determine the next course of action.If a user is deemed not suitable for the campaign, the page is designed to redirect them to an entirely different CAPTCHA page that's likely part of a separate campaign or controlled by a different actor.

Another novel strategy adopted by the scam operators is the use of back button hijacking, which relies on JavaScript to alter the browsing history such that any attempt made by the site visitor to navigate away from the CAPTCHA page by hitting the browser's back button redirects the user back to the fake page, effectively trapping them in a navigation loop unless they opt to fully exit the browser.

"This operation defrauds both individuals and telecommunication carriers simultaneously. Individual victims face unexpected premium SMS charges on their bills and would have difficulty identifying and reporting the fraud when it originates from such an unexpected source," Infoblox concluded. "Telecom carriers pay revenue share to the perpetrators while likely absorbing the losses from customer disputes or chargebacks."

How Threat Actors Abuse Keitaro TDS

The disclosure comes as the company, in collaboration with Confiant, published a three-part analysis detailing how the Keitaro TDS (aka Keitaro Tracker) is being abused, in some instances by acquiring stolen or cracked licenses (as in the case of TA2726), by a wide range of threat actors for malicious activities, including malware delivery, cryptocurrency theft, and investment scams that claim to employ artificial intelligence (AI) to automate trading and promise huge returns.

The scam makes use of Facebook Ads to lure victims to the fraudulent AI‑powered platforms, in some cases even resorting to fabricating celebrity endorsements pushed via fake news articles and deepfake videos to promote the investment scheme. The use of synthetic videos has been attributed to a threat actor dubbed FaiKast.

"Keitaro is first and foremost a self-hosted advertising performance tracker designed to conditionally route visitors using flows," the companies said. "Threat actors repurpose this mechanism, transforming a Keitaro server into an all-in-one tool that acts as a traffic distribution system, tracker, and cloaking layer."

In all, more than 120 distinct campaigns have abused Keitaro's TDS for link delivery over a four-month period between October 2025 and January 2026. Infoblox noted that its customers recorded about 226,000 DNS queries spanning 13,500 domains associated with Keitaro‑related activity during the timeframe. Following responsible disclosure, Keitaro has stepped in to cancel over a dozen accounts linked to these activities.

"By combining an older but still highly effective investment fraud theme with modern AI technologies, actors have been able to launch large‑scale, highly convincing cyber campaigns," Infoblox and Confiant said. "Approximately 96% of Keitaro‑linked spam traffic promoted cryptocurrency wallet‑drainer schemes, primarily via fake airdrop/giveaway lures centered on AURA, SOL (Solana token), Phantom (wallet), and Jupiter (DEX/aggregator)."

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The Zero-CVE Mirage: Hardening Software in the Age of AI Attacks

SUMMARY: How software development is rapidly evolving in the age of AI and automation. Matt Moore shares how his team is rethinking secure software supply chains, scaling infrastructure, and safely integrating AI agents into development workflows.

GUEST: Matt Moore, CTO at Chainguard 

SHOW: 1022

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Reasoning Show #1022 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtu.be/9Q0kWkTYRs8

SHOW SPONSORS:

• ShareGate - ShareGate Protect. Microsoft 365 Governance, we got this!
• Nasuni - Activate your data for AI and request a demo

SHOW NOTES:

• Chainguard Factory 2.0
• DriftlessAF

Scaling Challenges & “Factory” Evolution

• Early automation relied on tools like GitHub Actions
• At scale, simple systems broke due to:
  • Massive event volumes
  • API rate limits (e.g., GitHub quotas)
  • Exponential fan-out effects
• Key innovation: custom work queue + reconciliation model
  • ~90% event deduplication
  • Controlled throughput and backpressure
  • Improved reliability and system stability
• Introduced Driftless 
• Built on reconciliation principles (inspired by Kubernetes):
  • Compare desired vs. actual state
  • Continuously reconcile differences
• Benefits:
  • Resilience to missed events
  • Automatic retries and recovery
  • Scales better than purely event-driven systems

AI Agents in Software Development

• AI is dramatically accelerating development workflows
• Chainguard uses agents to:
  • Remediate vulnerabilities (CVEs)
  • Update dependencies
  • Fix failing tests and adapt to upstream changes

Key Design Philosophy

• Least privilege → “least tool call”
  • Avoid giving agents full system access
  • Provide narrowly scoped tools for specific tasks
• Delegate execution to sandboxed systems (e.g., CI pipelines)
• Focus on safe, controlled automation

Industry Shift: Velocity vs. Security

• Explosion of AI-driven tools (e.g., autonomous PR generation)
• Massive increase in development velocity
• New risks:
  • Poorly secured agent frameworks
  • Malicious or unsafe automation patterns

Key Takeaways

1. Scale changes everything
   • Simple systems break under massive workloads
   • Purpose-built infrastructure becomes necessary
2. Reconciliation > pure event-driven systems at scale
   • More resilient, predictable, and controllable
3. AI is a force multiplier—but requires guardrails
   • Unrestricted agents introduce serious risk
   • Constrained, purpose-built agents are safer and more effective
4. Continuous learning is mandatory
   • AI tooling is evolving too fast for static skillsets
   • Teams must actively experiment and adapt

FEEDBACK?

• Email: show @ reasoning dot show
• Bluesky: @reasoningshow.bsky.social
• Twitter/X: @ReasoningShow
• Instagram: @reasoningshow
• TikTok: @reasoningshow

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Researchers Uncover Pre-Stuxnet ‘fast16’ Malware Targeting Engineering Software

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new Lua-based malware created years before the notorious Stuxnet worm that aimed to sabotage Iran's nuclear program by destroying uranium enrichment centrifuges.

According to a new report published by SentinelOne, the previously undocumented cyber sabotage framework dates back to 2005, primarily targeting high-precision calculation software to tamper with results. It has been codenamed fast16.

"By combining this payload with self-propagation mechanisms, the attackers aim to produce equivalent inaccurate calculations across an entire facility," researchers Vitaly Kamluk and Juan Andrés Guerrero-Saade said in an exhaustive report published this week.

Fast16 is assessed to predate Stuxnet, the first known digital weapon engineered for disruptive actions, and which served as the basis for the Duqu information stealer rootkit, by at least five years. Stuxnet is widely believed to have been developed by the U.S. and Israel.

It also precedes the earliest known samples of Flame (aka Flamer and Skywiper), another sophisticated malware that was discovered in 2012, incorporating a Lua virtual machine to realize its goals. The discovery makes fast16 the first strain of Windows malware to embed a Lua engine.

SentinelOne said it made the discovery after it identified an artifact named "svcmgmt.exe" that, at first blush, appeared to be a generic console‑mode service wrapper. The sample has a file creation timestamp of August 30, 2005, per VirusTotal, to which it was uploaded more than a decade later on October 8, 2016.

However, a deeper investigation has revealed an embedded Lua 5.0 virtual machine and an encrypted bytecode container, along with various other modules that bind directly into Windows NT file system, registry, service control, and network APIs.

The implant's core logic resides in the Lua bytecode, with the binary also referencing a kernel driver ("fast16.sys") via a PDB path – a file with a creation date of July 19, 2005 – that's responsible for intercepting and modifying executable code as it's read from disk. That said, it's worth noting that the driver will not run on systems with Windows 7 or later.

In what's a finding that could give an indication of the tool's origins, SentinelOne said it uncovered a reference to the string "fast16" in a text file called "drv_list.txt" that included a list of drivers designed for use in advanced persistent threat (APT) attacks. The nearly 250KB file was leaked by a mysterious hacking group nine years ago.

In 2016 and 2017, the collective – calling itself The Shadow Brokers – published vast troves of data allegedly stolen from the Equation Group, an advanced persistent threat group with suspected ties to the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). This included a bevy of hacking tools and exploits under the nickname "Lost in Translation." The text file was one of them.

"The string inside svcmgmt.exe provided the key forensic link in this investigation," SentinelOne said. "The PDB path connects the 2017 leak of deconfliction signatures used by NSA operators with a multi-modal Lua‑powered 'carrier' module compiled in 2005, and ultimately its stealthy payload: a kernel driver designed for precision sabotage."

"Svcmgmt.exe" has been described as a "highly adaptable carrier module" that can alter its behavior based on the command-line arguments passed to it, enabling it to run as a Windows service or execute Lua code. It comes with three distinct payloads: Lua bytecode to handle configuration and propagation and coordination logic, an auxiliary ConnotifyDLL ("svcmgmt.dll"), and the "fast16.sys" kernel driver.

Specifically, it's designed to parse the configuration, escalate itself as a service, optionally deploy the kernel implant, and launch a Service Control Manager (SCM) wormlet that scans for network servers and propagates the malware to other Windows 2000/XP environments with weak or default credentials.

An important aspect worth mentioning here is that the propagation only occurs when it's manually forced, or common security products aren't found on the system by scanning the Windows Registry database for associated registry keys. Some of the security tools it explicitly checks belong to Agnitum, F-Secure, Kaspersky, McAfee, Microsoft, Symantec, Sygate Technologies, and Trend Micro.

The presence of Sygate Technologies is another indicator that the sample was developed in the mid-2000s, as the company was acquired by Symantec, now part of Broadcom, in August 2025, and sales and support for its products were formally discontinued by November.

"For tooling of this age, that level of environmental awareness is notable," SentinelOne said. "While the list of products may not seem comprehensive, it likely reflects the products the operators expected to be present in their target networks whose detection technology would threaten the stealthiness of a covert operation."

The ConnotifyDLL, on the other hand, is invoked each time the system establishes a new network connection using the Remote Access Service (RAS), and writes the remote and local connection names to a named pipe ("\\.\pipe\p577").

However, it's the driver that's responsible for the precision sabotage, targeting executables compiled with the Intel C/C++ compiler to perform rule-based patching and hijack execution flow through malicious code injections. One such block is capable of corrupting mathematical calculations, specifically going after tools used in civil engineering, physics, and physical process simulations.

"By introducing small but systematic errors into physical‑world calculations, the framework could undermine or slow scientific research programs, degrade engineered systems over time, or even contribute to catastrophic damage," SentinelOne explained.

"By separating a relatively stable execution wrapper from encrypted, task-specific payloads, the developers created a reusable, compartmentalized framework that they could adapt to different target environments and operational objectives while leaving the outer carrier binary largely unchanged across campaigns."

Based on an analysis of the 101 rules defined in the patching engine and matching them against software used in the mid-2000s, it's assessed that three high-precision engineering and simulation suites may have been the targets: LS-DYNA 970, PKPM, and the MOHID hydrodynamic modeling platform.

LS-DYNA, now part of the Ansys Suite, is a general-purpose multi physics simulation software package that's used for simulating crashes, impacts, and explosions. In September 2024, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) released a report detailing Iran's likely use of computer modeling software like LS-DYNA related to nuclear weapons development based on an examination of 157 academic publications found in open-source scientific and engineering literature.

This chain of evidence assumes significance considering Iran's nuclear program is said to have suffered substantial damage after its uranium enrichment facility in Natanz was targeted by the Stuxnet worm in June 2010. What's more, Symantec revealed in February 2013 an earlier version of Student that was used to attack Iran's nuclear program in November 2007, with evidence indicating it was under development as early as November 2005.

"Stuxnet 0.5 is the oldest known Stuxnet version to be analyzed," Symantec noted at the time. "Stuxnet 0.5 contains an alternative attack strategy, closing valves within the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, Iran, which would have caused serious damage to the centrifuges and uranium enrichment system as a whole."

Taken together, the latest finding "forces a re‑evaluation" of the historical timeline of development for clandestine cyber sabotage operations, SentinelOne said, adding it shows state-backed cyber sabotage tooling against physical targets had been fully developed and deployed by the mid‑2000s.

"In the broader picture of APT evolution, fast16 bridges the gap between early, largely invisible development programs and later, more widely documented Lua‑ and LuaJIT‑based toolkits," the researchers concluded. "It is a reference point for understanding how advanced actors think about long‑term implants, sabotage, and a state’s ability to reshape the physical world through software. fast16 was the silent harbinger of a new form of statecraft, successful in its covertness until today."

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TGR-STA-1030: New Activity in Central and South America

Unit 42 research reports that TGR-STA-1030 remains an active threat, particularly in Central and South America.

The post TGR-STA-1030: New Activity in Central and South America appeared first on Unit 42.

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FIRESTARTER Backdoor Hit Federal Cisco Firepower Device, Survives Security Patches

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has revealed that an unnamed federal civilian agency's Cisco Firepower device running Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software was compromised in September 2025 with malware called FIRESTARTER.

FIRESTARTER, per CISA and the U.K.'s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), is assessed to be a backdoor designed for remote access and control. It's believed to be deployed as part of a "widespread" campaign orchestrated by an advanced persistent threat (APT) actor to obtain access to Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) firmware by exploiting now-patched security flaws such as -

• CVE-2025-20333 (CVSS score: 9.9) - An improper validation of user-supplied input vulnerability that could allow an authenticated, remote attacker with valid VPN user credentials to execute arbitrary code as root on an affected device by sending crafted HTTP requests.
• CVE-2025-20362 (CVSS score: 6.5) - An improper validation of user-supplied input vulnerability that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to access restricted URL endpoints without authentication by sending crafted HTTP requests.

"FIRESTARTER can persist as an active threat on Cisco devices running ASA or Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) software, maintaining post-patching persistence and enabling threat actors to re-access compromised devices without re-exploiting vulnerabilities," the agencies said.

In the investigated incident, the threat actors have been found to deploy a post-exploitation toolkit called LINE VIPER that can execute CLI commands, perform packet captures, bypass VPN Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) for actor devices, suppress syslog messages, harvest user CLI commands, and force a delayed reboot.

The elevated access afforded by LINE VIPER served as a conduit for FIRESTARTER, which was deployed on the Firepower device before September 25, 2025, allowing the threat actors to maintain continued access and return to the compromised appliance as recently as last month.

A Linux ELF binary, FIRESTARTER can set up persistence on the device, and survive firmware updates and device reboots unless a hard power cycle occurs. The malware lodges itself into the device's boot sequence by manipulating a startup mount list, ensuring it automatically reactivates every time the device reboots normally. The resilience aside, it also shares some level of overlap with a previously documented bootkit referred to as RayInitiator.

"FIRESTARTER attempts to install a hook – a way to intercept and modify normal operations – within LINA, the device’s core engine for network processing and security functions," according to the advisory. "This hook enables the execution of arbitrary shell code provided by the APT actors, including the deployment of LINE VIPER."

"Although Cisco's patches addressed CVE-2025-20333 and CVE-2025-20362, devices compromised prior to patching may remain vulnerable because FIRESTARTER is not removed by firmware updates."

Cisco, which is tracking the exploitation activity associated with the two vulnerabilities under the moniker UAT4356 (aka Storm-1849), described FIRESTARTER as a backdoor that facilitates the execution of arbitrary shellcode received by the LINA process by parsing specially crafted WebVPN authentication requests containing a "magic packet."

The exact origins of the threat activity are not known, although an analysis from attack surface management platform Censys in May 2024 suggested links to China. UAT4356 was first attributed to a campaign called ArcaneDoor that exploited two zero-day flaws in Cisco networking gear to deliver bespoke malware capable of capturing network traffic and reconnaissance.

"To fully remove the persistence mechanism, Cisco strongly recommends reimaging and upgrading the device," Cisco said. "In cases of confirmed compromise on any Cisco Secure ASA or FTD platforms, all configuration elements of the device should be considered untrusted."

As mitigations until reimaging can be performed, the company is recommending that customers perform a cold restart to remove the FIRESTARTER implant. "The shutdown, reboot, and reload CLI commands will not clear the malicious persistent implant, the power cord must be pulled out and plugged back in the device," it added.

Chinese Hackers Shift From Individually Procured Infrastructure to Covert Networks

The disclosure comes as the U.S., the U.K., and various international partners released a joint advisory about large-scale networks of compromised SOHO routers and IoT devices commandeered by China-nexus threat actors to disguise their espionage attacks and complicate attribution efforts.

State-sponsored groups like Volt Typhoon and Flax Typhoon have been using these botnets, consisting of home routers, security cameras, video recorders, and other IoT devices, to target critical infrastructure sectors and conduct cyber espionage in a "low-cost, low-risk, deniable way," per the alert. 

Complicating matters further is the fact that the networks are constantly updated, not to mention multiple China-affiliated threat groups might use the same botnet at the same time, making it challenging for defenders to identify and block them using static IP blocklists.

"Covert networks mostly consist of compromised SOHO routers, but they also pull in any vulnerable device they can exploit at scale," the agencies said. "Their traffic will be forwarded through multiple compromised devices, used as traversal nodes, before exiting the network from an exit node, usually in the same geographic region as the target."

The findings underscore a common pattern seen in state-sponsored attacks: the targeting of network perimeter devices belonging to residential, enterprise, and government networks with an aim to either turn them into a proxy node or intercept sensitive data and communications.

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NASA Employees Duped in Chinese Phishing Scheme Targeting U.S. Defense Software

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has revealed how a Chinese national posed as a U.S. researcher as part of a spear-phishing campaign to obtain sensitive information from the space agency, as well as from government entities, universities, and private companies, in violation of export control laws.

"For years, NASA employees and research collaborators thought they were simply sharing software with colleagues," the OIG said in a Thursday release. "Instead, they were emailing sensitive defense technology to a Chinese national who was impersonating U.S. engineers."

The individual linked to the campaign was outed as Chinese national Song Wu in September 2024, when the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced charges against him for orchestrating a multi-year campaign that stretched from January 2017 to December 2021 and involved targeting dozens of U.S. professors, researchers, and engineers.

Some of the victims of the campaign were employed at NASA, the Air Force, the Navy, the Army, and the Federal Aviation Administration, while the others worked at major universities and private sector firms.

According to the 2024 indictment, Song was an engineer at the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), a Chinese state-owned aerospace and defense conglomerate founded in 2008. In an attempt to obtain modeling software used for aerospace design and weapons development, Song and his co-conspirators are alleged to have conducted extensive research on their targets by masquerading as friends and colleagues to gain access to proprietary software and source code.

The OIG said the scheme was successful in a handful of cases where victims shared the sensitive information with the imposter accounts managed by Song et al without realizing they were violating U.S. export control laws.

Song has been indicted on counts of wire fraud and 14 counts of aggravated identity theft, and faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for each count of wire fraud. He also faces a two-year consecutive sentence if convicted of aggravated identity theft. The 40-year-old remains at large.

Adding Song to the U.S. Most Wanted List, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said the specialized software could be used for industrial and military applications, including the development of advanced tactical missiles and aerodynamic design and assessment of weapons.

"As phishing campaigns continue to become more sophisticated, there are common clues that can betray scammers and expose their export fraud schemes," the OIG said. "In Song's case, he made multiple requests for the same software and did not justify why he needed it."

"Export control scammers also often suggest unusual payment methods (such as suspicious wire transfers); abruptly change the terms or source of payment; and use unconventional transfer methods to mask their identity and evade shipping restrictions."

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From zero trust to continuous trust: Securing autonomous AI systems

Zero trust changed how we think about security. It replaced implicit trust with a simple principle: never trust, always verify. 

The traditional zero trust at model works well in environments where behavior is relatively predictable. Identities are authenticated, access is granted based on policy, and systems assume trust must be evaluated continuously at defined points. 

Agentic AI introduces a different operating model. Agents don’t authenticate once and operate within fixed boundaries. They act continuously, make decisions in real time, and request access as part of completing tasks. In this environment, the assumptions behind traditional zero trust begin to break down. 

The next phase of security isn’t about replacing zero trust. It’s about the evolution of zero trust for agentic environments. 

Agentic AI – Why traditional zero trust isn’t enough 

Zero trust works when systems follow predictable patterns. A user logs in. A service authenticates. A token is issued. Access is granted within a defined scope. At each step, there is a clear moment where trust is evaluated. 

Even in distributed systems, these checkpoints still exist. They may be automated, but they remain discrete events where identity is verified and access is decided. 

Agentic systems don’t follow that pattern. An agent begins with a task and then interacts with the environment continuously, calling APIs, requesting access, generating credentials, and moving from one step to the next. Each action introduces a new context, permissions, and dependencies. 

Access is no longer provisioned and then used. It is created and consumed at the same time. 

A credential may be issued for a specific step, used immediately, and replaced as the workflow evolves. Systems built around static roles or long-lived permissions struggle to keep up. 

This is where dynamically issued credentials become critical. Systems like HashiCorp Vault issue short-lived, scoped credentials as part of the workflow, aligning access with what the agent is doing in that moment. 

There is no pause to re-evaluate trust. The system continues. Over time, what begins as a single task becomes a chain of actions across multiple systems. The path becomes harder to predict and harder to control.  

Zero trust assumes there are natural points to re-evaluate trust. Agentic systems remove those boundaries. The system is always in motion, and trust must move with it. 

When access and behavior diverge 

In traditional systems, access and behavior are loosely coupled: 

Access is granted → actions follow 

In agentic systems, they evolve together: 

Access, identity, and behavior are continuously intertwined 

An agent might: 

• Request elevated permissions 

• Generate a credential 

• Call a downstream service 

• Modify infrastructure 

All within fractions of seconds. 

Over time, this creates access paths that were never explicitly designed or reviewed. In some instances, like in the case of Anthropic Mythos, these systems begin to exhibit behaviors that weren’t explicitly programmed but rather adapted workflows, chaining actions in new ways, or pursuing intermediate steps that weren’t anticipated at design time. While these behaviors can improve outcomes, they also introduce new uncertainty in how access is used and expanded across systems. Permissions accumulate. Credentials persist longer than intended. Actions become harder to trace. The challenge isn’t just verifying identity, but rather keeping trust aligned with what the system is actually doing. 

Without dynamic access controls, systems tend to fall back on broader, longer-lived permissions simply to keep workflows moving, which is a pattern dynamic secrets platforms like Vault are designed to avoid. 

This is where traditional zero trust models begin to fall short. They assume trust can be evaluated at defined checkpoints. In agentic systems, those checkpoints don’t exist. 

The result is a growing gap between what was approved and what is happening and allowing access to expand, actions to compound, and risk to accumulate over time. 

Closing that gap requires zero trust to evolve into a continuous trust model, where identity, access, and authorization are evaluated at the moment each action occurs. This means: 

• Identity must be continuously verified in context 

• Access must be issued dynamically and expire automatically 

• Enforcement must happen at the point of interaction 

In practice, this requires coordinating identity systems, dynamic credential management, and controlled access pathways as part of a runtime model. 

The evolution of zero trust to continuous trust 

Zero trust was developed with the assumption that trust would be evaluated at defined checkpoints, login, token issuance, or access approval. Agentic AI has broken that assumption, and security practices needs to evolve. 

When access is granted once but used continuously, systems lose alignment between policy and behavior. Privileges expand. Actions occur outside of intended control. 

Zero trust established an essential principle, trust should never be assumed. but agentic systems require that principle to be applied differently: Trust must be evaluated continuously, immediately upon execution

This is continuous trust.  It shifts security from: 

• Checkpoint-based validation 
  to 

• Runtime, action-level enforcement 

It means: 

• Identity is verified continuously in context 

• Access is dynamic and short-lived 

• Authorization is enforced at each interaction 

Making this model real requires aligning identity, access, and enforcement as part of the same system. 

Continuous identity verification 

Every actor, human or agent, must be validated in context using signals like behavior, device posture, and risk. 

Platforms like IBM Verify extend identity beyond authentication, continuously evaluating whether an actor should still be trusted. 

Dynamic, short-lived access 

Access should exist only as long as it is needed. Credentials must be: 

• Ephemeral 

• Scoped to specific tasks 

• Automatically revoked 

Vault enables this by issuing short-lived credentials aligned to real-time activity rather than static roles. 

Enforcement at the point of action 

Security must be enforced where actions occur. 

Each interaction, API call, system access, workflow step, should be: 

• Evaluated in real time 

• Governed by policy 

• Observable 

HashiCorp Boundary introduce enforcement into the access path itself, brokering connections only as needed so access is controlled and observable as it happens. 

Building a runtime control plane 

The evolution of zero trust into continuous trust is not about adding more policies or extending identity systems, it’s about enforcing trust where actions occur.  

In agentic environments, access and decisions are created and consumed simultaneously. Agents don’t wait for checkpoints; they act, adapt, and continue. If controls are not present at that moment, they are effectively bypassed. This makes runtime the critical control point. 

Without runtime enforcement: 

• Identity is verified too early 

• Access persists longer than intended 

• Actions execute without re-evaluation 

Over time, this creates a disconnect between policy and behavior — systems operate within approved access, but outside intended control. 

A runtime control plane closes this gap by ensuring trust is evaluated at each action. This requires: 

• Continuous identity verification 

• Dynamic credential issuance 

• Enforcement at the point of interaction 

In practice, this means coordinating identity and access as a single system. IBM Verify establishes who or what is acting, Vault issues task-scoped credentials, and Boundary brokers and governs access to target systems. Together, these components shift security from static approval to real-time control, where trust is not assumed, but is continuously proven through action. 

Continuous trust in practice 

In an agentic environment, systems don’t operate within fixed boundaries. They act continuously, adapt in real time, and evolve access as they go. 

Trust is no longer something you establish once and revisit periodically. It is something you evaluate continuously. 

Adopting this model requires rethinking where and how security controls are applied. Identity can no longer be treated as a one-time decision, access can no longer persist beyond the task, and enforcement can no longer sit outside the flow of execution. Instead, these controls need to operate together at runtime and align with system behavior. 

Organizations that continue to rely on static roles, long-lived credentials, and checkpoint-based validation will find it increasingly difficult to maintain control as agentic systems scale.  However, those that move toward continuous identity verification, dynamic access, and real-time enforcement will be better positioned to manage both the speed and complexity of autonomous systems. 

Implementing this model requires bringing identity, credentials, and access enforcement into alignment by adopting platforms like IBM Verify, HashiCorp Vault, and Boundary, which are to provide that support. 

Get more insights on securing AI agents with continuous identity and runtime control. 

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26 FakeWallet Apps Found on Apple App Store Targeting Crypto Seed Phrases

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a set of malicious apps on the Apple App Store that impersonate popular cryptocurrency wallets in an attempt to steal recovery phrases and private keys since at least fall 2025.

"Once launched, these apps redirect users to browser pages designed to look similar to the App Store and distribute trojanized versions of legitimate wallets," Kaspersky researcher Sergey Puzan said. "The infected apps are specifically engineered to hijack recovery phrases and private keys."

The 26 apps, collectively dubbed FakeWallet, mimic various popular wallets like Bitpie, Coinbase, imToken, Ledger, MetaMask, TokenPocket, and Trust Wallet. Many of these apps have since been taken down by Apple following disclosure. There is no evidence that these apps were distributed via the Google Play Store.

While malicious cryptocurrency wallets distributed in the past via bogus websites have abused iOS provisioning profiles to get users to install them, the latest crypto-theft scheme is an improvement in several ways. For starters, the apps are directly available for download from Apple's App Store if a user has their Apple account set to China.

These apps have icons that mirror the original but have intentional typos in their names (e.g., LeddgerNew) so as to trick unsuspecting users into downloading them. In some cases, the app names and icons have no connection to cryptocurrency. Instead, they are used as placeholders to direct users to download the official wallet app through them, claiming they are "unavailable in the App Store" due to regulatory reasons.

Kaspersky said it also identified several similar apps likely linked to the same threat actor that do not have the malicious features enabled, but have been found to mimic a benign service, such as a game, a calculator, or a task planner. Once launched, these apps open a link on the web browser and leverage enterprise provisioning profiles to install the wallet app on the victim's device.

"The attackers have churned out a wide variety of malicious modules, each tailored to a specific wallet," Puzan said. "In most cases, the malware is delivered via a malicious library injection, though we've also come across builds where the app's original source code was modified."

The end goal of these infections is to look for mnemonic phrases from both hot and cold wallets, and exfiltrate them to an external server, allowing the operators to seize control of victims' wallets and drain cryptocurrency assets or initiate fraudulent transactions.

The seed phrases are captured either by hooking the code that's responsible for the screen where the user enters their recovery phrase or serving a phishing page that instructs the victim to enter their mnemonics as part of a supposed verification step.

It's suspected the campaign could be the work of threat actors linked to the SparkKitty trojan campaign last year, given that some of the infected apps also come with a module to steal wallet recovery phrases using optical character recognition (OCR), and that both the campaigns appear to be the work of native Chinese speakers and specifically target cryptocurrency assets.

"The FakeWallet campaign is gaining momentum by employing new tactics, ranging from delivering payloads via phishing apps published in the App Store to embedding themselves into cold wallet apps and using sophisticated phishing notifications to trick users into revealing their mnemonics," Kaspersky said.

MiningDropper Android Malware Framework Emerges

The discovery comes as Cyble sheds light on a sophisticated Android malware delivery framework known as MiningDropper (aka BeatBanker) that combines cryptocurrency mining with information theft, remote access, and banking malware in attacks targeting users in India, as well as in Latin America, Europe, and Asia as part of a BTMOB RAT campaign.

MiningDropper has been distributed via a trojanized version of the open-source Android application project Lumolight, with the campaigns using fake websites impersonating banking institutions and regional transport offices to propagate the malware. Once launched, it activates a multi-stage sequence to extract the miner and the trojan payloads from an encrypted assets archive present within the package.

"MiningDropper employs a multi-stage payload delivery architecture that combines XOR-based native obfuscation, AES-encrypted payload staging, dynamic DEX loading, and anti-emulation techniques," Cyble said. "MiningDropper employs a multi-stage payload delivery architecture that combines XOR-based native obfuscation, AES-encrypted payload staging, dynamic DEX loading, and anti-emulation techniques."

"MiningDropper demonstrates a layered, modular Android malware architecture designed to make static analysis difficult while giving threat actors flexibility in final payload delivery. This design allows the threat actor to reuse the same distribution and installation framework across hundreds of samples while adapting the final monetization objective to operational needs."

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