14th September – Threat Intelligence Report
Check Point weekly digest: Microsoft's record 974-vuln Patch Tuesday ships two actively exploited Windows zero-days; IDScan.net, Mathspace, Revolut suffer breaches.
Microsoft's September 2026 Patch Tuesday addressed a record 974 vulnerabilities, including two actively exploited privilege-escalation zero-days, CVE-2026-85880 and CVE-2026-81963, plus 20 flaws allowing unauthenticated remote code execution. Disclosed breaches include IDScan.net (identity documents), Mathspace (over 1 million people via Metabase CVE-2026-72898), Revolut, and Florida DMV (ShinyHunters). GitLab fixed critical CVSS 10.0 path traversal CVE-2026-85706, and MikroTik fixed chainable RouterOS flaws CVE-2026-67276 and CVE-2026-86060. The report also covers the PuzzleMask LLM jailbreak technique, GoldFactory's Gigabud Android fraud, and the BlueMoon Chromium exploit chain (CVE-2026-85046).
Hackers Chain Chrome and Windows Zero-Days in New BlueMoon Exploit Kit Attacks
Multiple espionage actors, mostly China-nexus, are chaining Chrome V8 and Windows kernel zero-days (CVE-2026-85046, CVE-2026-85880) via the BlueMoon exploit kit against government and defense targets.
Proofpoint identified a new exploit kit dubbed BlueMoon chaining a Chromium V8 type-confusion RCE (CVE-2026-85046), a V8 sandbox escape, and a Windows kernel LPE (CVE-2026-85880). At least four distinct threat clusters, most with suspected China nexus, adopted the kit within days starting with TA412 (Violet Typhoon/APT31) on August 28, 2026. Both Chrome-side flaws were patch-gap zero-days with roughly a four-week exploitation window; the Windows LPE only works on Windows 10 and Server 2019/2022. TA412 used spearphishing posing as university interns to deliver the GemStone browser backdoor disguised as a Google Gemini extension; other clusters delivered ShadowPad via DLL sideloading and a Rust loader against targets in aerospace, government, and finance.
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.
U.S. CISA adds Metabase, Windows, and Cisco Secure Firewall flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.
CISA adds three actively exploited flaws—Cisco ASA/FTD DoS, Windows Winsock SYSTEM-level UAF, and Metabase SQL injection—to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.
CISA added CVE-2026-20349 (CVSS 8.6, heap inspection flaw crashing Cisco ASA/FTD via crafted HTTP requests to the Remote Access SSL VPN service), CVE-2026-68820 (CVSS 7.0, use-after-free in the Windows afd.sys Winsock driver allowing SYSTEM-privilege code execution, actively exploited per Microsoft) and CVE-2026-72898 (CVSS 10.0, unauthenticated SQL injection in Metabase) to the KEV catalog. Metabase disclosed its cloud service was attacked with the 0-day, giving the intruder a path to administrator rights and stored credentials for connected databases; cloud instances were patched while self-hosted deployments need urgent updates. Under BOD 22-01, federal civilian agencies must patch by August 14, 2026, except CVE-2026-68820, due August 25.