ODNI guidelines for handling commercially available data to be released ‘any day,’ DOD official says
Red Heron Hackers Exploit Critical Gitea RCE to Steal Source Code and Deploy Linux Rootkit
PRC-linked Red Heron exploits critical Gitea RCE CVE-2026-60004 to steal source code and deploy JITTERLY implant with SIXZUT LD_PRELOAD rootkit; victims span five countries.
Acronis Threat Research Unit attributes a campaign to Chinese-speaking threat actor Red Heron, which weaponized CVE-2026-60004, a CVSS 9.8 RCE in Gitea versions 1.17 through 1.27.0, patched in 1.27.1 on July 27, 2026. The actor built an automated exploitation framework after a public PoC appeared, scanned 1,386 internet-exposed Gitea instances across seven countries, and separately listed 477 Taiwan-based systems across defense, energy, elections, and AI sectors. Confirmed victims include organizations in Canada, Argentina, Taiwan, the US, and Sri Lanka, with a Canadian renewable-energy firm hit in 22 sessions and a Taiwanese industrial automation firm losing hundreds of repositories including SCADA/HMI tools. Red Heron deploys the JITTERLY Linux implant (30+ commands, AES-128-GCM, Adaptix-like protocol) and the SIXZUT LD_PRELOAD rootkit disguised as libglthread.so.2, and moved laterally into a Synology/Proxmox environment to steal VM backups.