Threat actor

Babuk

0 mentions in 7 days · 1 in 30 days · 1 total · first seen Aug 17, 2026 · last 29d ago

Timeline1 articles

Suspected China-Nexus Actor Exploits VMware vCenter Flaw, Deploys Babuk

QUIRSO attributes exploitation of VMware vCenter CVE-2026-59310 to a suspected China-nexus actor that hit 361 IPs in 47 countries, deploying backdoors and Babuk.

German incident response firm QUIRSOS assessed with moderate confidence that a suspected China-nexus actor, likely operating in UTC+08:00 hours, exploited VMware vCenter flaw CVE-2026-59310 (CVSS 9.8 directory traversal) beginning five days after Broadcom's July 29 patch. The campaign compromised 361 unique victim IPs across 47 countries, most in Germany, the US, Turkey, Iran, and France. The actor abused cron jobs, a XOR-obfuscated 'linuxFile' WebSocket backdoor with systemd/cron persistence, a JSP web shell, SSH authorized-keys manipulation, and a reverse SSH tool, with one Babuk deployment reported. A separate vCenter 'vcenter_admin' account creation consistent with CVE-2026-59309 exploitation was also observed from August 1.

The Hacker NewsAug 17, 16:59 UTC · 29d agoThreat actor in the wildCVE-2026-59310 CVE-2026-593091

Related CVEsby mentions

CVE-2026-593109.846%
Unauthenticated Path Traversal RCE in Broadcom VMware vCenter Server Syslog
CVE-2026-59310 is a directory traversal (CWE-22) vulnerability in the Syslog server component of VMware vCenter Server, rated critical at CVSS 9.8. It can be triggered over the network without authentication or user interaction, allowing a malicious actor with network access to vCenter to achieve arbitrary code execution. An attacker who exploits it gains code execution on the vCenter appliance, and reported campaigns show it has been used to establish persistent remote access and, by a suspected China-nexus actor, to deploy Babuk ransomware. Any organization running an affected version of vCenter Server is exposed, especially where the management interface is reachable from the internet; the available data does not specify affected version ranges. Exploitation is confirmed in the wild: CISA added the flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2026-08-18, it was reportedly exploited just five days after disclosure, and EPSS estimates a 45.9% probability of exploitation within 30 days (99th percentile).
· Broadcom (VMware) vCenter Server KEV ransomwarelarge
CVE-2026-593099.88%
VMware vCenter contains an authentication bypass vulnerability in the VMware Directory Service.
VMware vCenter contains an authentication bypass vulnerability in the VMware Directory Service. A malicious actor with network access to vCenter may exploit this issue to bypass authentication and gain unauthorized access to the system.
· vmware vcenter server—

Appears with

threat actor China-nexus threat actor 1 malware linuxFile 1 organization QUIRSO 1 product VMware vCenter 1 vendor Broadcom 1 vendor VMware 1

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