We provide guidance for preparing for and mitigating large-scale credential attacks, focusing on recent campaigns targeting security vendors' devices. The post Threat Brief: Mitigating Large-Scale Credential Attacks (Updated August 18) appeared first on Unit 42.
Security controls can block a familiar attack method while missing quieter ways to achieve the same objective. Picus Security's Blue Report 2026 shows how prevention rates can vary dramatically by technique and why behavioral testing is needed to uncover those gaps.
Microsoft says some users are experiencing issues searching in Microsoft 365 apps, including Outlook on the web, Outlook desktop, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive. According to an incident report seen by BleepingComputer and tracked under MO1456424 in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, the root cause is what Microsoft describes as a recent deployment that causes resource utilization problems. "Impact is specific to some users served through the affected infrastructure who are attempting to search for content in SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Outlook on the web, or Outlook desktop," Microsoft said. "Our investigation identified that a recent deployment introduced a resource utilization inefficiency issue, leading to impact." Microsoft says it has already developed a fix and deployed it to reduce resource pressure and restore service for all affected Microsoft 365 users.
GitLab patched a critical GraphQL flaw that let unauthenticated attackers remotely modify or delete public projects on self-managed servers. GitLab pushed out an emergency patch this week to address a critical flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-19478 (CVSS score of 9.4), that could let an attacker with zero credentials remotely modify or delete public projects and user data. “GitLab has remediated an issue that under certain conditions could allow an unauthenticated user to remotely modify or delete public projects and user data via a GraphQL directive.” reads the advisory. GitLab issued an emergency patch on August 17, five days after its regular update. The vulnerability impacts only self-managed installations, users should upgrade to versions 19.2.4, 19.1.6, 19.0.8, and 18.11.11. There’s a gap worth flagging for anyone still sitting on an older release. The available patches don’t cover the 18.2 through 18.10 branches, even though those versions technically fall inside the affected range. If you’re running anything in that window, staying put isn’t really an option; you’ll need to upgrade to a patched branch entirely rather than waiting for a fix that isn’t coming for your current one. hiimguardian reported the flaw through the company HackerOne bug bounty program. A second, less severe issue shipped in the same release. CVE-2026-19650 (CVSS score of 7.1), involves a cross-site request forgery weakness in how GitLab’s GraphQL handles multiplex queries, letting an unauthenticated attacker trigger mutations through GET requests due to improper validation. Unlike the critical flaw, this one needs a victim to actually interact with something, so it’s a real risk but a considerably narrower one. There’s no evidence either bug has been exploited in the wild yet, and no public proof-of-concept code has surfaced as of publication. That’s the good news. The less comforting part is GitLab’s own disclosure policy: full technical details typically go public on the company’s issue tracker 90 days after the patching release, which puts a working understanding of exactly how this bug functions squarely in mid-November, plenty of time for someone motivated enough to reverse-engineer the patch diff themselves before then. This is not the first serious GitLab issue in recent months. Last month, researchers released working exploit code for another remote-code-execution flaw affecting self-managed servers. Organizations running GitLab on their own infrastructure should therefore treat this patch as a priority, especially given the critical severity and the fact that the vulnerability requires no authentication or user interaction. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, GitLab)
Microsoft announced that it removed the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) tool from Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2, as well as from Windows 11 beta builds released this week. WMIC is a legacy built-in Windows command-line utility that helps interact with the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) system using text commands. This move is part of a process announced in September, when the company said that WMIC will be removed after upgrading to Windows 11 25H2 and later. Microsoft deprecated WMIC in Windows Server 2012 (in 2016) and Windows 10 21H1 (in 2021), and it converted it into a Feature on Demand (FoD) starting with Windows 11 22H2 (in 2022), and announced in January 2024 that it would be removed altogether after first disabling it by default. "Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) has been removed in this release. This change is part of the ongoing deprecation and removal of WMIC from Windows," Microsoft noted on Monday.
U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) adds a Ray-Project Ray vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added a Progress LoadMaster vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-62593 (CVSS score of 9.4), to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. CVE-2025-62593 is a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in Ray, an AI compute engine. Versions before 2.52.0 insufficiently protected the Ray dashboard/API against browser-based attacks. Its defense relied on checking whether the HTTP User-Agent header started with “Mozilla”, but browsers can modify this header. By combining this weakness with DNS rebinding, an attacker could potentially execute arbitrary code on a developer’s machine simply by getting them to visit a malicious website or view a malicious advertisement while running Ray. The vulnerability affects Firefox and Safari. Ray 2.52.0 fixes the issue. “This vulnerability is due to an insufficient guard against browser-based attacks, as the current defense uses the User-Agent header starting with the string “Mozilla” as a defense mechanism. This defense is insufficient as the fetch specification allows the User-Agent header to be modified.” reads the advisory. “Combined with a DNS rebinding attack against the browser, and this vulnerability is exploitable against a developer running Ray who inadvertently visits a malicious website, or is served a malicious advertisement (malvertising).” “An attacker exploited a code injection vulnerability in Ray AI Compute Engine via a DNS rebinding attack, leading to remote code execution. This allowed the attacker to escalate privileges within the system, move laterally across the network, establish command and control channels, exfiltrate sensitive data, and ultimately disrupt operations.” reads the analysis published by Aviatrix. According to Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities, FCEB agencies have to address the identified vulnerabilities by the due date to protect their networks against attacks exploiting the flaws in the catalog. Experts also recommend that private organizations review the Catalog and address the vulnerabilities in their infrastructure. CISA orders federal agencies to fix the vulnerability by the end of this week, on August 20, 2026. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, CISA)
Evooo1Bot is a Mirai-based Linux botnet that hijacks routers and IoT devices for DDoS attacks, credential theft and criminal proxy services. Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs disclosed Evooo1Bot in mid-August, a previously undocumented Linux botnet that’s been active since July 2026. The bot borrows Mirai‘s DDoS engine but adds encrypted command-and-control communications, an SSH brute-force scanner, a credential sniffer, and a SOCKS5 proxy module on top. “FortiGuard Labs has been tracking a previously undocumented Linux botnet family, which we have named Evooo1Bot. The name derives from the hardcoded string “evooo1” found in every binary.” reads the report published by Fortinet. “While the malware reuses the DDoS engine from the publicly leaked Mirai source code, it extends the original framework with numerous capabilities, including encrypted C2 communications, an SSH brute-force scanner, a SOCKS relay module, a credential sniffer, and an integrated exploit arsenal targeting multiple known vulnerabilities.” The botnet targets 18 known CVEs, some of them dating back to 2007, including: CVE-2007-3010: Alcatel OmniPCX Enterprise Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2016-6277: NETGEAR Multiple Routers Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-14558: Tenda AC7, AC9, and AC10 Routers Command Injection Vulnerability CVE-2019-14931: Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. ME-RTU devices and INEA ME-RTU devices remote Command Injection vulnerability CVE-2020-10987: Tenda AC1900 Router AC15 Model Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2021-46422: Telesquare SDT-CW3B1 Command Injection vulnerability CVE-2022-37055: D-Link Routers Buffer Overflow Vulnerability CVE-2024-29269, Telesquare TLR-2005KSH Command Injection Vulnerability CVE-2025-10123, D-Link DIR-823X Command Injection Vulnerability CVE-2025-55583: D-Link DIR-868L B1 router Command Injection Vulnerability The bot communicates exclusively over port 443, which is intentional: the traffic blends into expected HTTPS flows at the network perimeter. After gaining initial access through one of its exploit modules or via brute-forced SSH credentials, the bot runs a loader script that clears Bash history to erase evidence of the intrusion before pulling the architecture-appropriate binary from an external server. The breadth suggests the operators are scanning opportunistically for anything unpatched rather than targeting specific organizations. “This capability significantly increases the value of an infected host to attackers. The victim’s IP address can be used to disguise malicious traffic, bypass geographic restrictions, or provide access to internal networks through an already compromised machine.” continues the report. “In larger botnets, the same functionality could also be used to build a distributed proxy infrastructure, enabling anonymous traffic forwarding or monetization through residential and enterprise proxy services.” Evooo1Bot stands out because of its proxy module. A network of compromised routers, cameras, and firewalls acting as SOCKS5 relays is a valuable commodity; operators can use it themselves to obscure attack traffic, or sell access to other criminals looking for residential or enterprise IP addresses that don’t trigger geographic blocks. “Unlike typical botnet commands that focus on downloading payloads or launching attacks, the !socks module turns an infected host into a SOCKS5 proxy that the operator can use as a network relay. It supports two operating modes. In direct mode, it opens a SOCKS5 listener on the infected host on the default TCP port 1080 and waits for incoming client connections. The implementation first attempts to create a dual-stack IPv6 listener and falls back to IPv4 if that fails. Each accepted client is then passed to the session handler for proxying.” continues the report. “The botnet also implements a reverse relay mode. Instead of exposing a listening port, the bot establishes an outbound encrypted connection to an operator-specified relay server. This persistent control channel listens for commands such as RELAY_NEW:<session_id>, which indicate that a new proxy session should be created.” After establishing C2 contact, the bot accepts commands covering the full post-compromise toolkit: file upload and download, interactive shell access, persistence installation, binary updates, HTTP Basic Auth and Cookie header interception, DDoS over DNS, TCP, and UDP, and the HTTP exploit dispatcher. The credential sniffer intercepts authentication headers in transit, so any HTTP Basic Auth credentials passing through an infected device can be captured without any additional effort from the operator. If you’re still running devices with unpatched firmware from the CVE list above, or if any of your edge hardware is using default SSH credentials, Evooo1Bot is already scanning for you. “Beyond traditional botnet functionality, it features encrypted C2 communications, multiple layers of string obfuscation using AES-256-CTR, ChaCha20, and XOR-based key derivation, as well as a 28-command remote administration interface.” concludes the report. “These capabilities place Evooo1Bot well beyond the technical baseline of conventional Mirai-derived malware.” Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, Evooo1Bot botnet)
Varonis Threat Labs has disclosed three vulnerabilities in Microsoft Copilot Personal that it said could allow a single click on a crafted link to silently pull data from connected apps and other information available to the victim's Copilot session. The flaws, which the researchers collectively named CoSnitch, turn in part on an undocumented URL parameter that the assistant itself surfaced
Security researchers at Anthropic and Switzerland's EPFL have demonstrated that self-propagating payloads can spread from one artificial intelligence (AI) agent to the next through the editable system prompt files that autonomous agent harnesses use to carry state between sessions. The work, released as a preprint on August 10, 2026, tests the technique in a simulated six-agent coding
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a previously undocumented Python implant framework dubbed TWINLOOT. "TWINLOOT is a modular, PyArmor-hardened Python implant designed to operate its entire command-and-control infrastructure inside trusted Microsoft services," Ontinue said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. "Tasking flows through SharePoint Online file
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