ZeroHour

Source: Check Point Research

11 stories in the last 30d

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).

Check Point Research · 1d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-72898CVE-2026-85880CVE-2026-81963+4 CVEs2· 1 read

PuzzleMask: Abusing Plain Prose as a Covert AI Attack Vector

Check Point details PuzzleMask, a plain-prose technique that bypasses LLM gatekeeper policy checks, letting hidden payloads reach target models unreviewed.

Check Point Research describes PuzzleMask, a prompt-crafting technique that hides policy-violating payloads inside plain-English prose wrappers, bypassing quick LLM-based policy checks without emojis, Base64, or invisible formatting. The researchers tested 23 automated prompts against gatekeepers including GPT-4o-mini, GPT-OSS-Safeguard 20b, Claude 3 Haiku, and Llama Guard 3, and all were classified as safe despite policies that flagged the plain versions. When submitted to GPT-5 in thinking-high mode with a Python interpreter, the target model extracted and acted on the payload in over 90% of trials. The technique is not itself a jailbreak but can carry a jailbreak prompt as payload; mitigations include input paraphrasing, hardened gatekeeper policies, and output monitoring.

Check Point Researchupdated · 4d agofirst · 5d agoAI safety & security 2 sources

The Shared Clipboard Inside the Sandbox: Cross-Account Data Leakage in ChatGPT

Check Point discovers cross-account data leakage in ChatGPT: isolated code-execution containers communicate via shared JFrog Artifactory, enabling covert Gmail exfiltration.

Check Point Research found a covert bidirectional channel between ChatGPT code-execution containers belonging to different accounts, which were supposed to be isolated from each other and the public internet. Both could reach the same internal JFrog Artifactory instance used for package delivery, whose exposed Item Management API allowed a 'shared clipboard' between containers. In a proof of concept, a hidden instruction in a shared conversation made ChatGPT retrieve email data from the victim's connected Gmail account and send it to the attacker's account while the victim received a normal answer. The same channel could exfiltrate conversation history and session files; OpenAI recently described a similar isolation weakness in its postmortem of the Hugging Face incident.

Check Point Research · 7d agoAI safety & security1

7th September – Threat Intelligence Report

Check Point weekly bulletin: exploited SonicWall SMA 1000 zero-days (CVE-2026-83548/49), JFrog Artifactory auth bypass, and a 2.8M-patient Baylor Genetics breach.

Check Point's weekly bulletin covers breaches including Thomson Reuters' C-Track platform (court records across 11 US states and Canada), Baylor Genetics (2.8M patients and employees, SSNs included), Hit casinos in Slovenia, and Dropbox (~5,000 accounts via abused Lenovo email verification). SonicWall patched two exploited SMA 1000 zero-days, including CVE-2026-83548, a CVSS 10.0 pre-authentication SSRF, while JFrog fixed exploited authentication bypass CVE-2026-82329 (CVSS 9.8). Malware and actor coverage includes Gambling Goblin, JSCeal, Mirage Kitten's NodeRabbit/PollCat campaign, and DPRK Contagious Interview macOS activity, plus a FalconFlank privilege-escalation PoC against CrowdStrike Falcon.

Gaming the system: how a Chinese-speaking actor turned Brazilian government sites into an SEO weapon

Check Point identifies Chinese-speaking group Gambling Goblin hijacking Brazilian government domains via malicious Apache modules for SEO-manipulated gambling phishing.

Check Point Research tracks a sustained campaign since mid-2025 against Brazilian government and educational organizations by Gambling Goblin, a Chinese-speaking cybercrime cluster linked to Earth Berberoka. Attackers compile and install malicious Apache modules that silently reverse-proxy visitors to phishing pages impersonating Google Play, Microsoft Store, and Amazon, chaining compromised high-reputation domains to inflate search rankings. The group deploys a heavily obfuscated Linux toolkit including DownPro, AlphaAgent, oRAT, a 3snake-based credential stealer, and SSH brute-forcers, with parallel phishing networks localized for Vietnamese, Spanish, and English victims.

Check Point Research · 13d agoThreat actor

Breaking the Seal: Static Deobfuscation of JSCeal’s Compiled V8 Bytecode

Check Point's hasherezade details static deobfuscation of JSCeal, a V8-bytecode stealer targeting cryptocurrency applications since March 2024.

JSCeal is an infostealer distributed as compiled V8 bytecode (.jsc) executed by a bundled Node.js runtime, aimed at cryptocurrency applications. Other vendors track the same family under the names WEEVILPROXY or MeadowLocust. Check Point Research has tracked the campaign since early 2024, with activity dating back to March 2024. The write-up presents a static approach to unpacking the bytecode without executing it.

Check Point Research · 15d agoMalware in the wild

31st August – Threat Intelligence Report

Manchester Airports Group disclosed a cyberattack exposing contact details of about 8.7 million customers across Manchester, Stansted, and East Midlands airports.

Manchester Airports Group, the UK operator of Manchester, London Stansted, and East Midlands airports, disclosed a cyberattack that exposed data belonging to roughly 8.7 million customers. Check Point's weekly threat intelligence bulletin reports the compromised information includes contact details. The disclosure appeared in Check Point's 31 August Threat Intelligence Report covering the week's top attacks and breaches.

Check Point Research · 15d agoData breach in the wild

24th August – Threat Intelligence Report

Latvia's Road Traffic Safety Directorate (CSDD) confirmed a breach exposing payment records of 1.2 million people and 200,000 organizations.

Latvia's Road Traffic Safety Directorate (CSDD) has confirmed a data breach affecting payment records of more than 1.2 million people, roughly two-thirds of the country's population, as well as 200,000 organizations. The disclosure was highlighted in Check Point Research's weekly threat intelligence bulletin for the week of August 24, 2026. The scale of exposure makes this one of the largest confirmed breaches reported in Latvia.

Check Point Research · 22d agoData breach

BTR Reforged: Weaponizing Defender’s Remediation Driver as a Kernel Operation Primitive

Check Point shows attackers can abuse Microsoft Defender's signed remediation driver for arbitrary Ring 0 file and registry operations without exploiting any vulnerability.

Check Point Research presents BTR Reforged, a technique that repurposes Microsoft Defender's trusted remediation driver into an attacker-controlled kernel operation primitive. The signed driver can be instructed to execute arbitrary file and registry operations from Ring 0 without exploits, vulnerabilities, or memory corruption. The work demonstrates how trusted security components can be turned into attacker primitives, which is relevant for defenders assessing driver abuse risks.

Check Point Research · 26d agoResearch

Thousands of Hacked WordPress Sites, One Operation: Unmasking StopAndProtect

Check Point uncovers the StopAndProtect ransomware operation infecting thousands of WordPress sites via ClickFix social engineering and PowerShell downloaders.

Check Point Research first observed the StopAndProtect ransomware family in mid-May 2026 and linked its infrastructure to thousands of hacked WordPress sites. The infection chain begins with ClickFix social engineering that prompts victims to run a PowerShell command, followed by two stages of additional downloaders. The research maps the shared infrastructure unifying the operation.

Check Point Research · 28d agoRansomware in the wild

17th August – Threat Intelligence Report

Colombia's Ministry of Justice suffered a ransomware attack disrupting drug-monitoring and legal public services, per Check Point's 17 August 2026 threat intelligence report.

Check Point Research's weekly threat intelligence bulletin for 17 August 2026 leads with a ransomware attack on Colombia's Ministry of Justice. The attack affected part of the ministry's technology infrastructure and disrupted public services related to illicit-drug monitoring and legal processes. Officials confirmed that some files were impacted; the bulletin also aggregates other cyber research and attack discoveries from the week.

Check Point Research · 29d agoRansomware