Decline in Rig Exploit Kit
Rig exploit kit activity dropped roughly 75% after the pseudo-Darkleech and EITest campaigns stopped using EKs, reflecting an overall decline in exploit kit activity.
Rig EK activity fell sharply in 2017: the pseudo-Darkleech campaign disappeared at the end of March, cutting Rig traffic about 50%, and the EITest campaign switched to tech support scams in late April, cutting another 50% in May. Broader causes include a shrinking browser target base, no major EK zero-day in over a year, and community takedowns of domain shadowing infrastructure. Criminals are shifting to malspam, social engineering schemes like fake HoeflerText notifications, and tech support scams.
Attackers plant remote access tools on compromised PaperCut servers
Attackers chained two PaperCut NG/MF zero-days for unauthenticated access, installing SimpleHelp and AnyDesk remote access tools on compromised servers.
An ongoing campaign exploits chained zero-days CVE-2026-81578 (improper access control) and CVE-2026-82078 (unsafe dynamic class loading) in internet-facing PaperCut NG and MF Application Servers, enabling authentication bypass and arbitrary Java bytecode execution. Post-compromise activity includes user and domain enumeration, payload download from sendit.sh, and silent installation of SimpleHelp and AnyDesk for redundant remote access; Defused observed CVE-2026-81578/CVE-2026-82078 exploit activity in honeypots since August 29, including data theft via Derby database dumps. Emergency patches were released August 28 and August 30, but 47% of roughly 2,500 PaperCut installs tracked by Huntress run v23 or older, for which no patch is available.