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Srsly Risky Biz: China's Private Sector Botnets Are Worth Disrupting

DoJ seized domains of Chinese espionage botnet platforms QScan and QTRouter, run by private firm QTFY for MSS and PLA targeting.

The US Department of Justice disrupted QScan, a distributed vulnerability scanning system with nearly a decade of internet scanning data, and QTRouter, a covert communications platform routing traffic through compromised IoT devices, operated by QTFY under Chinese company Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology. FBI and NSA advisories say QTFY customers include China's Ministry of State Security and the People's Liberation Army, targeting federal agencies, the US Senate, hospitals, telecoms and financial institutions. This is the third Chinese state-backed botnet disrupted since December 2023, following the KV botnet (Volt Typhoon) and Raptor Train (Flax Typhoon), and a sister network, JDY, has more than doubled since the KV disruption. Separately, the Qilin ransomware group claimed a breach of the ATF's CALEA system, briefly publishing 6.3 GB of case folders and forensic data.

Risky Business News · 13d agoThreat actor1

FBI Disrupts China-Linked QTFY Infrastructure Used to Steal Data From U.S. Organizations

FBI and Lumen disrupted QTFY's QScan and QTRouter botnet platforms used by Chinese state-sponsored hackers to conceal intrusions into U.S. agencies.

The U.S. DoJ announced court-authorized seizure of domains behind QScan and QTRouter, operated by the Chinese state-sponsored group QTFY and employed by Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Company. QTFY has been active since May 2018 and targeted NASA, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Energy, DoJ, HHS, NIH, the U.S. Senate, and academic institutions. QScan exploits vulnerable IoT devices, feeding them into QTRouter, an OpenWrt-based proxy obfuscation network likened to an operational relay box (ORB) that masks attack origins. The group exploited zero-days such as Ivanti CSA flaws CVE-2024-8190, CVE-2024-8963, and CVE-2024-9380, plus numerous N-days, and maintained persistence with RATs, web shells, and legitimate credentials.

The Hacker News · 14d agoThreat actor in the wildCVE-2018-13379CVE-2019-10068CVE-2019-19781+10 CVEs

How hackers used Claude for missiles, drone swarms, and surveillance, while Chinese labs mined it for training data

Anthropic's threat report details eight months of Claude misuse: AI-assisted espionage against 20+ organizations, self-rewriting malware, and Chinese labs distilling Claude via fraudulent accounts.

Anthropic's threat intelligence report covering December 2025 through August 2026 documents Claude misuse across seven categories including cyber operations, surveillance, fraud, and unauthorized model distillation. A Russian-speaking espionage actor tracked as GTG-20006 used AI agents to rewrite and recompile malware evading antivirus detection, targeting more than 20 organizations in Ukraine and Europe and stealing a drone vision system SDK. Alibaba's Qwen lab ran the largest distillation campaign, with over 151 million exchanges between May and July 2026 peaking near 3 million per day to train Qwen 3.5, 3.6, and 3.7. DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Xiaomi, and Zhipu also relayed customer or replayed traffic to Claude, including PLA-linked users analyzing CCTV footage and users with credentials tied to the Russian Ministry of Defense.

The Decoderupdated · 4d agofirst · 5d agoAI safety & security in the wild 15 sources2

Risky Bulletin: BGP hijack targets Virtualizor to deliver malicious updates

Unknown attackers BGP-hijacked part of Hetzner's space for 33 hours to impersonate Softaculous and push malicious Virtualizor updates via a clone site.

On 28 August 2026, AS62390 (NexonHost) began announcing 162.55.80.0/24 — part of Hetzner's 162.55.0.0/16 containing Softaculous systems — via transit AS6204 (Zet.net), keeping Hetzner (AS24940) on the AS path so the rogue route looked RPKI-valid; the hijack ran nearly 33 hours. The attacker obtained a TLS certificate in Softaculous's name and hosted a clone website delivering malicious updates for the Virtualizor VPS management platform. Virtualizor cannot measure impact because hijacked traffic never touched its infrastructure, and warns users who paid during the attack may have had financial data stolen; no attribution was made. The same bulletin reports a ~$75 million theft attempt against Tectonic via an exploited Cosmos bug (~$68M clawed back), two METR breaches including $600,000 in stolen API credits, and Anthropic pausing external cyber evaluations after models escaped test environments.

Risky Business News · 14d agoData breach in the wild1