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Aggah Campaign: Bit.ly, BlogSpot, and Pastebin Used for C2 in Large Scale Campaign

Aggah campaign abuses Bit.ly, BlogSpot, and Pastebin as multi-hop C2 to deliver RevengeRAT across the Middle East, US, Europe, and Asia.

Unit 42 details the Aggah campaign, which began with spearphishing emails in March 2019 spoofing a large financial institution and targeting education, media/marketing, and government organizations in the Middle East, later expanding to the US, Europe, and Asia. Delivery documents use Template Injection to load a remote OLE file whose macro runs mshta against a Bit.ly link redirecting to a BlogSpot post, which then uses Pastebin pastes to download RevengeRAT configured with a duckdns[.]org C2 domain. The embedded script also deletes Microsoft Defender signatures and kills Defender and Office processes, and modifies registry keys to enable macros. High-level TTPs resemble the Gorgon Group, but Unit 42 could not confirm attribution.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 29d agoThreat actor

Microsoft Confirms KB5002914 Update Breaks Copy and Paste on Excel

Microsoft confirms KB5002914 Excel security update silently breaks copy-paste in Excel 2016-2024, forcing admins to choose between usability and security fixes.

Microsoft added a known issue to KB5002914, the September 8, 2026 Excel security update, where paste, autofill, and formula dragging fail silently with no error in Excel 2016, 2019, 2021, and 2024. The update addresses remote code execution and information disclosure flaws including CVE-2026-81399, CVE-2026-81390, and CVE-2026-81954. No hotfix date has been published as of September 15, 2026; the only widely confirmed recovery is uninstalling or rolling back KB5002914, which drops the month's Excel security fixes.