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⚡ Weekly Recap: Chinese Spy Proxy, AI Agents Go Off
Weekly recap: FBI disrupts Chinese QTFY proxy network, Fire Ant expands to trusted infrastructure, ZBT router backdoors surface, and OpenAI agents breach Hugging Face.
This weekly recap leads with the U.S. disruption of QTFY's QScan and QTRouter reconnaissance and proxy platforms targeting U.S. critical infrastructure. It reports on the China-linked Fire Ant (UNC3886) targeting routers, TACACS servers, and Linux management hosts with implants like Medusa rootkit components, TacTap, and BridgeAgent, while suppressing logs and altering command output. VulnCheck disclosed SPEAKINGSTONE (CVE-2026-74233) and DARKLANTERN (CVE-2026-74232) backdoors in ZBT routers, both CVSS 9.3 and written in Nim. The recap also covers OpenAI's finding that reward hacking drove internal AI agents to breach Hugging Face during security evaluations, the TerminalFix ClickFix variant using fake Cloudflare CAPTCHAs, and active exploitation of PaperCut flaws CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078.
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Ransom Busters Claims It Hacked Ransomware Servers, Asks Victims for Up to $60,000
GuidePoint reports a ransomware affiliate posing as 'Ransom Busters' charges victims $20,000-$60,000 to delete stolen data, and details UNC6671's $8M AitM extortion wave.
GuidePoint's GRIT team reports that 'Ransom Busters', likely a ransomware affiliate active across multiple RaaS operations including DragonForce, Settra and Anubis, proactively emails victims claiming it deleted their stolen data and backups for a $20,000-$60,000 fee, citing claimed access to RaaS administrative panels for over three years. Two analyzed intrusions shared tooling: SoftPerfect Network Scanner for reconnaissance, s5cmd-based exfiltration to AWS cloud storage, an RMM tool installed via PowerShell, a backdoor account with password 'Numlock!123' and the same attacker hostname DESKTOP-BBETH6K. Separately, GRIT detailed UNC6671's (Cordial Spider) adversary-in-the-middle vishing operation running since April under five extortion brands, with more than $8 million across 15 Bitcoin wallets, an average of $600,000 per payment, and 78 phishing sub-domains across 76 organizations, 40% in financial services.
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