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Hive Ransomware Has Made 100m To
Hive ransomware reportedly generated about $100 million in victim ransom payments, per the headline; details unconfirmed.
Infosecurity Magazine's headline indicates the Hive ransomware operation has made approximately $100 million. The full article text was unavailable, so the timeframe, data source, and context of the figure could not be verified. Hive is a known ransomware-as-a-service brand known for double extortion of corporate victims.
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TWINLOOT Abuses SharePoint and Teams to Steal Credentials and Move Across Networks
Ontinue disclosed TWINLOOT, a Python implant hiding C2 in SharePoint dead drops and Teams TURN relays, harvesting credentials and pivoting via reverse SOCKS5.
Ontinue's Cyber Defense Center identified TWINLOOT during a July 2026 campaign investigation: a modular, PyArmor-hardened Python implant (a 39 MB bootstrap-fat.pyc loader) whose entire C2 infrastructure lives inside trusted Microsoft services. Tasking flows through SharePoint Online file dead drops polled every 15 seconds via the Microsoft Graph API, while interactive operator access uses WebRTC DataChannels relayed by Microsoft Teams TURN servers; Graph traffic is driven by the victim's own headless Edge browser. The implant harvests Windows credentials with fake lock screens, offers a reverse SOCKS5 pivot for lateral movement to SMB, RDP, WinRM, and MSSQL, executes commands, and persists on hosts. Initial access is assessed to be Teams social engineering masquerading as IT support, prompting a PowerShell command to download the payload.
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Hackers Turn Windows Shadow Copies Into a Tool for Credential Theft and Ransomware
Attackers abuse Windows VSS shadow copies to delete recovery points before ransomware and to extract NTDS.dit/SAM credentials, demanding context-aware detection.
Threat actors are weaponizing the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for two purposes: destroying local recovery points via vssadmin.exe, wmic.exe, diskshadow.exe, wbadmin.exe, and bcdedit.exe before encryption, and accessing static copies of locked files such as NTDS.dit and SAM for credential theft. Ransomware families tied to shadow-copy removal include Akira, Black Basta, BlackCat, Conti, LockBit, Qilin, RansomHub, REvil, Ryuk, and WannaCry. Huntress's analysis of the Nightmare-Eclipse tool showed the BlueHammer technique chaining a Windows Defender timing issue with a VSS snapshot to dump the SAM database and decrypt NT hashes. Defenders should correlate VSS operations with parent process, hive access, and subsequent encryption activity, and maintain immutable off-host backups.
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Hackers Use LLMs to Generate Exploit Scripts and Automate Post-Exploitation Across Latin America
Unit 42 says Latin American attackers used LLMs to automate post-exploitation in campaigns hitting Mexican government, water utilities, and Brazilian financial firms.
Unit 42 identified two campaigns in Latin America whose operators used commercial LLMs (Claude, GPT-4.1) behind a self-hosted NextChat interface to generate and debug post-exploitation scripts. Cluster CL-CRI-1131 compromised a transportation organization, Mexican federal ministries, and water utilities in Mexico and Ecuador, using native Windows tools and Volume Shadow Copies to dump the SAM registry hive and NTDS.dit. Cluster CL-CRI-1163 targeted Brazilian financial organizations with job-themed phishing, custom RATs, and a Go-based reverse SOCKS5 tunneling utility called SockTz, with nine versions deployed within roughly two hours. Trend Micro tracks related AI-augmented activity as SHADOW-AETHER-040 and SHADOW-AETHER-064.
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Hackers Disable Endpoint Protection and Deploy Sliver Across Compromised Windows Domain
The Hunter's Ledger tracked campaign UTA-2026-024 using Sliver C2, Domain Admin account creation, and Ethereum-based C2 rotation to compromise a US organization's Windows domain.
The Hunter's Ledger tracked an intrusion at one unnamed US organization as UTA-2026-024, staged from exposed server 193.233.202.17 with a Sliver beacon. Operators created a non-expiring Domain Admin account, enabled RDP with NLA disabled, dumped SAM, SYSTEM and SECURITY hives plus LSASS memory, and disabled eight endpoint protection services. A Node.js implant resolved its C2 server from an Ethereum smart contract that rotated domains five times in five months, while SYSTEM scheduled tasks with backdated dates and DNS allowlist manipulation provided persistence. The infrastructure ties to a confirmed ransomware incident, but no encryptor deployment was proven in this intrusion.
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Researcher Releases FalconFlank PoC Showing Privilege Escalation in CrowdStrike Falcon
Researcher Chaotic Eclipse released FalconFlank, a zero-day privilege escalation PoC abusing CrowdStrike Falcon's Office macro remediation; CrowdStrike is investigating and issued a tech alert.
Researcher Chaotic Eclipse published FalconFlank, a proof-of-concept zero-day local privilege escalation in CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor that abuses the Microsoft Office malicious macros remediation feature, tested on fully updated Windows 11 25H2 and Windows Server 2025. CrowdStrike said it is investigating, advised disabling the Microsoft Office File Suspicious Macro Removal policy, and pointed customers to a FalconFlank tech alert, noting cloud anti-malware protection remains active. The article also covers related PoCs from the same researcher: HardBreacher against Kaspersky (fixed via update), ShieldBreak (CVE-2026-69414) against Microsoft Defender, an unpatched patch bypass of CVE-2026-50656, GreenSection against NVIDIA, and PrettyPrague against Avast, which Gen Digital patched in versions 26.7.11086 and 26.8.11125.
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August 2026 Patch Tuesday forecast: How do we deal with the patch apocalypse?
August 2026 Patch Tuesday forecast urges risk-based triage as AI inflates CVE volume, flags actively exploited SharePoint RCE CVE-2026-50522 and LegacyHive Windows flaw.
July 2026 Patch Tuesday set records with over 600 CVEs, including 405 for Windows 11 and Server 2025, though only two were exploited zero-days and one was publicly disclosed. The author recommends prioritizing known-exploited and internet-facing vulnerabilities, matching patches to high-risk systems, and accelerating ring-based deployment toward Microsoft's suggested three-day turnaround. Notable items include actively exploited SharePoint RCE CVE-2026-50522 enabling machine key theft, the unassigned LegacyHive Windows User Profile Service flaw, and several end-of-servicing dates for Windows and Exchange.
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ShieldBreak Zero-Day PoC Claims Microsoft Defender Patch Bypass With SYSTEM Access
Researcher Chaotic Eclipse released ShieldBreak PoC, a claimed patch bypass for Microsoft Defender flaw CVE-2026-50656, now tracked as CVE-2026-69414.
Researcher Chaotic Eclipse released a PoC for ShieldBreak, a claimed full patch bypass of Microsoft Defender flaw CVE-2026-50656 (RoguePlanet), which can yield SYSTEM privileges. Independent researchers Kevin Beaumont and Will Dormann validated the exploit on Windows 11 25H2 and Windows Server 2025, noting it requires Defender to be enabled. Microsoft assigned CVE-2026-69414 (CVSS 7.8) with an 'Exploitation More Likely' assessment and is investigating, but has not yet released a patch. The article also notes CISA's KEV addition of the actively exploited Windows AFD.sys flaw CVE-2026-68820.
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ShieldBreak: New Windows Zero-Day Bypasses Microsoft’s RoguePlanet Patch
Researcher Chaotic Eclipse published a PoC bypassing Microsoft's CVE-2026-50656 Defender patch, enabling SYSTEM-level code execution on fully patched Windows systems.
Security researcher Chaotic Eclipse released a proof-of-concept for ShieldBreak, a Microsoft Defender zero-day that fully bypasses the patch for CVE-2026-50656 (RoguePlanet), a race condition in the Malware Protection Engine (mpengine.dll) allowing SYSTEM-level code execution. The PoC was tested on Windows 11 25H2 and Windows Server 2025 with a 100% success rate, and Windows 10 is also vulnerable though not supported by the PoC; the flaw may also leak 8 bytes of memory. Microsoft's MSRC had criticized the researcher's repeated uncoordinated disclosures, including YellowKey (BitLocker bypass), GreenPlasma, and LegacyHive (User Profile Service LPE).
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