Welcome to our OCPL Fellows Feature series, brought to you by our current cohort of talented researchers. These pieces explore key challenges at the intersection of U.S.-China and global emerging technology competition.
Massive leaks of information stored in government-owned databases have become increasingly common in China throughout the 2020s.
Chinese hacktivists likely executed some of these leaks to call attention to the scope and pervasiveness of state surveillance.
Hackers in China have previously been prevented from organizing into groups and carrying out both nationalist and apolitical hacking. It is plausible that hackers would have little to lose by pivoting to hack to express dissent.
Introduction
What comes to mind when you think about data protection? Perhaps the right to privacy or cybersecurity, but almost certainly not “streaking.” However, Chinese netizens commonly use this term (裸奔, luǒbēn) to describe the sense of embarrassment an individual feels when their personal data has been unintentionally exposed. The use (and censorship) of this phrase has only increased as large-scale data leaks have risen dramatically in China throughout the 2020s.
When these data leaks occur, commentary is quickly taken down to prevent Chinese internet users from uncovering the scope of state surveillance practices. That’s partly because retrospective analysis of these incidents often reveals that they resulted directly from Chinese government bodies’ lax data management practices. These incidents have proved shameful for party leaders; while not directly acknowledging these leaks, high-ranking officials like the late Li Keqiang call for heightened “information security” standards in their aftermath.
Over the past year, Phishguard observed an increase in phishing campaigns leveraging Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) files as initial delivery vectors, with attackers favoring this format due to its flexibility and the challenges it presents for static detection.
SVGs are an XML-based format designed for rendering two-dimensional vector graphics. Unlike raster formats like JPEGs or PNGs, which rely on pixel data, SVGs define graphics using vector paths and mathematical equations, making them infinitely scalable without loss of quality. Their markup-based structure also means they can be easily searched, indexed, and compressed, making them a popular choice in modern web applications.
However, the same features that make SVGs attractive to developers also make them a highly flexible - and dangerous - attack vector when abused. Since SVGs are essentially code, they can embed JavaScript and interact with the Document Object Model (DOM). When rendered in a browser, they aren’t just images - they become active content, capable of executing scripts and other manipulative behavior. In other words, SVGs are more than just static images; they are also programmable documents.
The security risk is underestimated, with SVGs frequently misclassified as innocuous image files, similar to PNGs or JPEGs - a misconception that downplays the fact that they can contain scripts and active content. Many security solutions and email filters fail to deeply inspect SVG content beyond basic MIME-type checks (a tool that identifies the type of a file based on its contents), allowing malicious SVG attachments to bypass detection.
We’ve seen a rise in the use of crafted SVG files in phishing campaigns. These attacks typically fall into three categories:
Redirectors - SVGs that embed JavaScript to automatically redirect users to credential harvesting sites when viewed
Self-contained phishing pages - SVGs that contain full phishing pages encoded in Base64, rendering fake login portals entirely client-side
DOM injection & script abuse - SVGs embedded into trusted apps or portals that exploit poor sanitisation and weak Content Security Policies (CSPs), enabling them to run malicious code, hijack inputs, or exfiltrate sensitive data
Given the capabilities highlighted above, attackers can now use SVGs to:
Gain unauthorized access to accounts
Create hidden mail rules
Phish internal contacts
Steal sensitive data
Initiate fraudulent transactions
Maintain long-term access
Our telemetry shows that manufacturing and industrial sectors are taking the brunt of these SVG-based phishing attempts, contributing to over half of all targeting observed. Financial services follow closely behind, likely due to SVG’s ability to easily facilitate the theft of banking credentials and other sensitive data. The pattern is clear: attackers are concentrating on business sectors that handle high volumes of documents or frequently interact with third parties.
AhnLab SEcurity intelligence Center (ASEC) recently identified a phishing malware being distributed in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. SVG is an XML-based vector image file format commonly used for icons, logos, charts, and graphs, and it allows the use of CSS and JS scripts within the code. In November 2024, the ASEC Blog introduced SVG […]
In this post I’ll show you how I found a zeroday vulnerability in the Linux kernel using OpenAI’s o3 model. I found the vulnerability with nothing more complicated than the o3 API – no scaffolding, no agentic frameworks, no tool use.
Recently I’ve been auditing ksmbd for vulnerabilities. ksmbd is “a linux kernel server which implements SMB3 protocol in kernel space for sharing files over network.“. I started this project specifically to take a break from LLM-related tool development but after the release of o3 I couldn’t resist using the bugs I had found in ksmbd as a quick benchmark of o3’s capabilities. In a future post I’ll discuss o3’s performance across all of those bugs, but here we’ll focus on how o3 found a zeroday vulnerability during my benchmarking. The vulnerability it found is CVE-2025-37899 (fix here), a use-after-free in the handler for the SMB ‘logoff’ command. Understanding the vulnerability requires reasoning about concurrent connections to the server, and how they may share various objects in specific circumstances. o3 was able to comprehend this and spot a location where a particular object that is not referenced counted is freed while still being accessible by another thread. As far as I’m aware, this is the first public discussion of a vulnerability of that nature being found by a LLM.
Before I get into the technical details, the main takeaway from this post is this: with o3 LLMs have made a leap forward in their ability to reason about code, and if you work in vulnerability research you should start paying close attention. If you’re an expert-level vulnerability researcher or exploit developer the machines aren’t about to replace you. In fact, it is quite the opposite: they are now at a stage where they can make you significantly more efficient and effective. If you have a problem that can be represented in fewer than 10k lines of code there is a reasonable chance o3 can either solve it, or help you solve it.
Benchmarking o3 using CVE-2025-37778
Lets first discuss CVE-2025-37778, a vulnerability that I found manually and which I was using as a benchmark for o3’s capabilities when it found the zeroday, CVE-2025-37899.
CVE-2025-37778 is a use-after-free vulnerability. The issue occurs during the Kerberos authentication path when handling a “session setup” request from a remote client. To save us referring to CVE numbers, I will refer to this vulnerability as the “kerberos authentication vulnerability“.
The Likely Exploited Vulnerabilities (LEV) equations can help augment KEV- and EPSS-based remediation prioritization.
Researchers from CISA and NIST have proposed a new cybersecurity metric designed to calculate the likelihood that a vulnerability has been exploited in the wild.
Peter Mell of NIST and Jonathan Spring of CISA have published a paper describing equations for what they call Likely Exploited Vulnerabilities, or LEV.
Thousands of vulnerabilities are discovered every year in software and hardware, but only a small percentage are ever exploited in the wild.
Knowing which vulnerabilities have been exploited or predicting which flaws are likely to be exploited is important for organizations when trying to prioritize patching.
Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) lists such as the one maintained by CISA and the Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS), which relies on data to estimate the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited, can be very useful. However, KEV lists may be incomplete and EPSS may be inaccurate.
LEV aims to enhance — not replace — KEV lists and EPSS. This is done through equations that take into account variables such as the first date when an EPSS score is available for a specified vulnerability, the date of the most recent KEV list update, inclusion in KEV, and the EPSS score for a given day (measured across multiple days).
LEV probabilities can be useful for measuring the expected number and proportion of vulnerabilities that threat actors have exploited.
It can also be useful for estimating the comprehensiveness of KEV lists. “Previously, KEV maintainers had no metric to demonstrate how close their list was to including all relevant vulnerabilities,” the researchers explained.
In addition, LEV probabilities can help augment KEV- and EPSS-based vulnerability remediation prioritization — in the case of KEV by identifying higher-probability vulnerabilities that may be missing, and in the case of EPSS by finding vulnerabilities that may be underscored.
While in theory LEV could turn out to be a very useful tool for vulnerability prioritization, the researchers pointed out that collaboration is necessary, and NIST is looking for industry partners “with relevant datasets to empirically measure the performance of LEV probabilities”.
Malicious npm packages targeting React, Vue, Vite, Node.js, and Quill remained undetected for two years while deploying destructive payloads.
Socket's Threat Research Team discovered a collection of malicious npm packages that deploy attacks against widely-used JavaScript frameworks including React, Vue.js, Vite, Node.js, and the open source Quill Editor. These malicious packages have remained undetected in the npm ecosystem for more than two years, accumulating over 6,200 downloads. Masquerading as legitimate plugins and utilities while secretly containing destructive payloads designed to corrupt data, delete critical files, and crash systems, these packages remained undetected.
The threat actor behind this campaign, using the npm alias xuxingfeng with a registration email 1634389031@qq[.]com, has published eight packages designed to cause widespread damage across the JavaScript ecosystem. As of this writing, these packages remain live on the npm registry. We have formally petitioned for their removal.
Notably, the same account has also published several legitimate, non-malicious packages that function as advertised. This dual approach of releasing both harmful and helpful packages creates a facade of legitimacy that makes malicious packages more likely to be trusted and installed.
Dramatic revelations shed fresh light on investigation into whether Chinese tech firm tried to buy influence in EU politics.
Belgian security agents bugged a corporate box at the RSC Anderlecht football stadium that was being used by Chinese tech giant Huawei to schmooze members of the European Parliament.
They also listened into other conversations involving one of Huawei’s leading lobbyists, including in his car. The surveillance operations, confirmed by three people with close knowledge of the investigation, formed part of a wide-ranging probe into allegations of corruption that was first revealed in March. They contributed to the Belgian prosecutor’s decision, reported by POLITICO on Monday, to request that a group of MEPs have their immunities lifted so they can be investigated.
The extraordinary revelations are the latest chapter in a saga that combines concerns about the reach of China in European politics and how susceptible EU lawmakers are to bribery and shady lobbying practices, even after a string of similar scandals.
The Council today decided to impose additional restrictive measures against 21 individuals and 6 entities responsible for Russia’s destabilising actions abroad.
The Council has also broadened the scope to allow the EU to target tangible assets linked to Russia’s destabilising activities, such as vessels, aircraft, real estate, and physical elements of digital and communication networks, as well as transactions of credit institutions, financial institutions and entities providing crypto-assets services that directly or indirectly facilitate Russia’s destabilising activities.
Furthermore, in light of the systematic, international Russian campaign of media manipulation and distortion of facts aimed at destabilising neighbouring countries and the EU, the Council will now have the possibility to suspend the broadcasting licences of Russian media outlets under the control of the Russian leadership, and to prohibit them from broadcasting their content in the EU.
In line with the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the measures agreed today will not prevent the targeted media outlets and their staff from carrying out activities in the EU other than broadcasting, e.g. research and interviews.
Today’s listings include Viktor Medvedchuk, a former Ukrainian politician and businessman who, through his associates Artem Marchevskyi and Oleg Voloshin also listed today, controlled Ukrainian media outlets and used them to disseminate pro-Russian propaganda in Ukraine and beyond. Through secret financing of the “Voice of Europe” media channel - also listed today - and his political platform “Another Ukraine”, Medvedchuk has promoted policies and actions intended to erode the legitimacy and credibility of the government of Ukraine, in direct support of the foreign policy interests of the Russian Federation and disseminating pro-Russian propaganda.
Enterprise management solutions provider Serviceaide has informed the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that a data leak impacts the personal and medical information of nearly half a million Catholic Health patients.
California-based Serviceaide, whose solutions are used by organizations worldwide, discovered in November 2024 that an Elasticsearch database maintained for one of its customers, Buffalo, New York-based non-profit healthcare system Catholic Health, had been inadvertently made publicly available.
An investigation showed that the database had been exposed between September 19 and November 5, 2024.
While Serviceaide did not find any evidence that the information was exfiltrated, the company said it cannot definitively rule it out.
According to a data breach notice posted on the Serviceaide website, the exposed information varies for each individual, but it can include name, SSN, date of birth, medical record number, patient account number, medical information, health insurance information, prescription and treatment information, clinical information, healthcare provider details, email or username, and password.
Impacted individuals are being notified and offered 12 months of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection services.
Serviceaide informed the HHS, according to the government organization’s incident tracker, that just over 483,000 individuals are impacted by the data breach.
It’s not uncommon for healthcare data breaches to impact hundreds of thousands of individuals, and some incidents affect millions and even tens of millions.
Arla Foods has confirmed to BleepingComputer that it was targeted by a cyberattack that has disrupted its production operations.
The Danish food giant clarified that the attack only affected its production unit in Upahl, Germany, though it expects this will result in product delivery delays or even cancellations.
"We can confirm that we have identified suspicious activity at our dairy site in Upahl that impacted the local IT network," stated an Arla spokesperson.
"Due to the safety measures initiated as a result of the incident, production was temporarily affected."
Arla Foods is an international dairy producer and a farmer-owned cooperative with 7,600 members. It employs 23,000 people in 39 countries.
The firm has an annual revenue of €13.8 billion ($15.5 billion), and its products, including the brands Arla, Lurpak, Puck, Castello, and Starbucks, are sold in 140 countries worldwide.
The company told BleepingComputer that it is currently working to resume operations at the impacted facility, which should bring results before the end of the week.
"Since then, we've been working diligently to restore full operations. We expect to return to normal operations at the site in the next few days. Production at other Arla sites is not affected."
Considering that the first reports about a disruption at Arla's production operations surfaced on Friday, it is bound to cause shortages in some cases.
"We have informed our affected customers about possible delivery delays and cancellations," explained Arla's spokesperson.
BleepingComputer has asked the firm if the attack involved data theft or encryption, both staples of a ransomware attack, but Arla declined to share any additional information at this time.
Meanwhile, there have been no announcements about Arla on ransomware extortion portals, so the type of attack and the perpetrators remain unknown.
Dear Friends, Neighbors, and Valued Cellcom/Nsight Customers,
Over the past five days, many of you have been impacted by a service disruption — and I want to begin by saying something simple, and deeply meant: I’m here.
While I’ve been closely involved from the very beginning, this is the first time I’m writing to you directly. That wasn’t because I didn’t want to — it was because I truly believed we’d be past this quickly. I stayed focused on the fix, confident that we’d be able to restore service fast.
We’ve always believed in being present, open, and accountable to the people we serve. That’s what this letter is about.
We experienced a cyber incident. While this is unfortunate, it’s not something we were unprepared for. We have protocols and plans in place for exactly this kind of situation. From the start, we’ve followed those plans — including engaging outside cybersecurity experts, notifying the FBI and Wisconsin officials, and working around the clock to bring systems safely back online.
The incident was concentrated on an area of our network separate from where we store sensitive information related to you, our Cellcom/Nsight family. We have no evidence that personal information related to you, your name, your addresses, your financial information, is impacted by this event.
Thanks to an incredible amount of hard work and tenacity, we achieved a major milestone last night. We are building on that success and expect to have the rest of service restored this week. Every part of this recovery is being handled with care and precision — we will not rush anything that compromises safety, security or trust.
For 115 years, as a company that began as a local telephone provider, we've understood that connection is everything. Generations of my family have had the privilege of serving generations of yours. We've grown and changed with the times, but our purpose has always remained the same: helping you stay connected to what matters most. We know this disruption has caused frustration and, for some, real hardship — and for that, I am truly sorry.
In the midst of it all, I’ve witnessed what makes this company special. Across the organization, people put mission ahead of role, put pride aside, and put the community first. We saw teams find creative solutions, take personal initiative, and step outside the bounds of job descriptions to make things right. That spirit — of care, urgency and accountability — has defined our response and will continue to shape our path forward.
To our employees — thank you. Your heart and grit during these trying days make me proud beyond words.
To our customers — thank you. Your patience, understanding and kindness mean the world to us. We’ve felt your support every step of the way, and we don’t take it for granted.
We know that gratitude alone isn’t enough — we’re taking responsibility. We’re covering the time you were without service, and then some.
Please know that we hear you, we appreciate you, and you have the very best team in the world on the case. I know we will be a better and stronger Cellcom/Nsight for this experience.
Warmly,
Brighid Riordan in cursive
Brighid Riordan
Microsoft’s head of security for AI, Neta Haiby, accidentally revealed confidential messages about Walmart’s use of Microsoft’s AI tools during a Build talk that was disrupted by protesters.
The Build livestream was muted and the camera pointed down, but the session resumed moments later after the protesters were escorted out. In the aftermath, Haiby then accidentally switched to Microsoft Teams while sharing her screen, revealing confidential internal messages about Walmart’s upcoming use of Microsoft’s Entra and AI gateway services.
Haiby was co-hosting a Build session on best security practices for AI, alongside Sarah Bird, Microsoft’s head of responsible AI, when two former Microsoft employees disrupted the talk to protest against the company’s cloud contracts with the Israeli government.
“Sarah, you are whitewashing the crimes of Microsoft in Palestine, how dare you talk about responsible AI when Microsoft is fueling the genocide in Palestine,” shouted Hossam Nasr, an organizer with the protest group No Azure for Apartheid, and a former Microsoft employee who was fired for holding a vigil outside Microsoft’s headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza.
Walmart is one of Microsoft’s biggest corporate customers, and already uses the company’s Azure OpenAI service for some of its AI work. “Walmart is ready to rock and roll with Entra Web and AI Gateway,” says one of Microsoft’s cloud solution architects in the Teams messages. The chat session also quoted a Walmart AI engineer, saying: “Microsoft is WAY ahead of Google with AI security. We are excited to go down this path with you.”
Akamai researcher Yuval Gordon discovered a privilege escalation vulnerability in Windows Server 2025 that allows attackers to compromise any user in Active Directory (AD).
The attack exploits the delegated Managed Service Account (dMSA) feature that was introduced in Windows Server 2025, works with the default configuration, and is trivial to implement.
This issue likely affects most organizations that rely on AD. In 91% of the environments we examined, we found users outside the domain admins group that had the required permissions to perform this attack.
Although Microsoft states they plan to fix this issue in the future, a patch is not currently available. Therefore, organizations need to take other proactive measures to reduce their exposure to this attack. Microsoft has reviewed our findings and approved the publication of this information.
In this blog post, we provide full details of the attack, as well as detection and mitigation strategies.
A person has been arrested in Switzerland as part of a ccordinated raid on 270 dark web sites in ten countries.
The international raid, dubbed “RapTor”, dismantled networks trafficking drugs, weapons and counterfeit goods. The suspects were identified during the dismantling of the dark web markets Nemesis, Tor2Door, Bohemia and Kingdom Markets.
Many of them made thousands of sales on illegal markets using encryption tools and cryptocurrencies to cover their tracks.
Officers seized more than 180 firearms, over two tonnes of drugs and €184 million in cash and cryptocurrencies during the operation, which included arrests in ten countries, including Germany, France, Austria, Britain and the United States.
Trend™ Research uncovered a campaign on TikTok that uses videos to lure victims into downloading information stealers, a tactic that can be automated using AI tools.
Threat actors are now using TikTok videos that are potentially generated using AI-powered tools to socially engineer users into executing PowerShell commands under the guise of guiding them to activate legitimate software or unlock premium features. This campaign highlights how attackers are ready to weaponize whichever social media platforms are currently popular to distribute malware.
This report details the observed tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), indicators of compromise (IoCs), and the potential impact of this trend.
An unknown actor has been continuously creating malicious Chrome Browser extensions since approximately February, 2024. The actor creates websites that masquerade as legitimate services, productivity tools, ad and media creation or analysis assistants, VPN services, Crypto, banking and more to direct users to install corresponding malicious extensions on Google’s Chrome Web Store (CWS). The extensions typically have a dual functionality, in which they generally appear to function as intended, but also connect to malicious servers to send user data, receive commands, and execute arbitrary code.
Critical vulnerabilities in Versa Concerto that are still unpatched could allow remote attackers to bypass authentication and execute arbitrary code on affected systems.
Three security issues, two of them critical, were publicly disclosed by researchers at the vulnerability management firm ProjectDiscovery after reporting them to the vendor and receiving no confirmation of the bugs being addressed.
Versa Concerto is the centralized management and orchestration platform for Versa Networks' SD-WAN and SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) solutions.
Three security issues, two of them critical, were publicly disclosed by researchers at the vulnerability management firm ProjectDiscovery after reporting them to the vendor and receiving no confirmation of the bugs being addressed.
Versa Concerto is the centralized management and orchestration platform for Versa Networks' SD-WAN and SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) solutions.
Threat actors are advancing AI strategies and outpacing traditional security. CXOs must critically examine AI weaponization across the attack chain.
The integration of AI into adversarial operations is fundamentally reshaping the speed, scale and sophistication of attacks. As AI defense capabilities evolve, so do the AI strategies and tools leveraged by threat actors, creating a rapidly shifting threat landscape that outpaces traditional detection and response methods. This accelerating evolution necessitates a critical examination for CXOs into how threat actors will strategically weaponize AI across each phase of the attack chain.
One of the most alarming shifts we have seen, following the introduction of AI technologies, is the dramatic drop in mean time to exfiltrate (MTTE) data, following initial access. In 2021, the average MTTE stood at nine days. According to our Unit 42 2025 Global Incident Response Report, by 2024 MTTE dropped to two days. In one in five cases, the time from compromise to exfiltration was less than 1 hour.
In our testing, Unit 42 was able to simulate a ransomware attack (from initial compromise to data exfiltration) in just 25 minutes using AI at every stage of the attack chain. That’s a 100x increase in speed, powered entirely by AI.
Recent threat activity observed by Unit 42 has highlighted how adversaries are leveraging AI in attacks:
Discover how to intercept data stolen by cybercriminals via Telegram bots and learn to use it to clarify related threat landscape.
While analyzing malware samples uploaded to ANY.RUN’s Interactive Sandbox, one particular case marked as “phishing” and “Telegram” drew the attention of our security analysts.
Although this analysis session wasn’t attributed to any known malware family or threat actor group, the analysis revealed that Telegram bots were being used for data exfiltration. This led us to apply a message interception technique for Telegram bots, previously described on the ANY.RUN blog.
The investigation resulted in a clear and practical case study demonstrating how intercepting Telegram bot communications can aid in profiling the threat actor behind a relatively obscure phishing campaign.
Key outcomes of this analysis include:
Examination and technical analysis of a lesser known phishing campaign
Demonstration of Telegram API-based data interception techniques
Collection of threat intelligence (TI) indicators to help identify the actor
Recommendations for detecting this type of threat
KrebsOnSecurity last week was hit by a near record distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that clocked in at more than 6.3 terabits of data per second (a terabit is one trillion bits of data). The brief attack appears to have been…
For reference, the 6.3 Tbps attack last week was ten times the size of the assault launched against this site in 2016 by the Mirai IoT botnet, which held KrebsOnSecurity offline for nearly four days. The 2016 assault was so large that Akamai – which was providing pro-bono DDoS protection for KrebsOnSecurity at the time — asked me to leave their service because the attack was causing problems for their paying customers.
Since the Mirai attack, KrebsOnSecurity.com has been behind the protection of Project Shield, a free DDoS defense service that Google provides to websites offering news, human rights, and election-related content. Google Security Engineer Damian Menscher told KrebsOnSecurity the May 12 attack was the largest Google has ever handled. In terms of sheer size, it is second only to a very similar attack that Cloudflare mitigated and wrote about in April.
After comparing notes with Cloudflare, Menscher said the botnet that launched both attacks bears the fingerprints of Aisuru, a digital siege machine that first surfaced less than a year ago. Menscher said the attack on KrebsOnSecurity lasted less than a minute, hurling large UDP data packets at random ports at a rate of approximately 585 million data packets per second.
“It was the type of attack normally designed to overwhelm network links,” Menscher said, referring to the throughput connections between and among various Internet service providers (ISPs). “For most companies, this size of attack would kill them.”
