With a deep background in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and blockchain, Dominic Jainy has become a leading voice in dissecting how emerging technologies are weaponized in the cyber threat landscape. Today, we delve into the most pressing security incidents of the week, exploring everything from sophisticated supply-chain attacks and zero-day exploits to the fundamental security failures plaguing cloud and on-premise infrastructure. Our conversation will touch upon the stealthy tactics used to bypass endpoint defenses, the escalating war against developer environments, and the critical shift away from legacy authentication protocols.
The Notepad++ incident involved selectively redirecting users from a compromised update infrastructure. What does this attack reveal about the unique risks of software supply chains, and what specific validation checks should both developers and enterprise IT teams implement to defend against these targeted hijacks?
This attack is a chilling reminder that the trust we place in our everyday tools can be turned against us. What’s particularly insidious here is the selective nature of the redirect; it wasn’t a blanket attack but a targeted operation that likely ran from June to December 2025. This tells us the attackers were patient and precise, aiming to compromise specific users while remaining under the radar. The core vulnerability was a failure of validation in older versions of the software. For developers, the takeaway is crystal clear: you must treat your update infrastructure like a fortress. The move toward enforcing XMLDSig is the right one, as it cryptographically verifies the integrity and authenticity of the update package, making it immensely harder to spoof. On the enterprise side, IT teams can’t just blindly trust updates. They need to implement staged rollouts, monitor network traffic from updating clients for any suspicious redirects, and use application control to ensure only signed, verified executables are run. It’s a shared responsibility model, and this incident proves that a weak link anywhere in the chain can lead to a catastrophic breach.
We’ve seen state-sponsored actors exploit a Microsoft Office zero-day using techniques like COM hijacking and WebDAV to deliver malware. Can you explain how this specific combination bypasses typical endpoint defenses, and what immediate, beyond-patching, mitigation steps an organization should take when facing such a threat?
This is a classic example of a multi-layered evasion strategy, and it’s brutally effective. The attack, attributed to APT28, leverages legitimate Windows features to appear as normal system activity. It starts with a phishing document, but the magic is in the delivery. Using WebDAV for payload delivery is clever because it’s a standard protocol that many firewalls and security tools will allow. Then, COM hijacking is used for persistence. Instead of dropping an obvious malicious executable, the attacker modifies the registry to have a legitimate Windows component load their malware. To an EDR or antivirus tool, it just looks like a normal system process starting up. When you layer in the use of a legitimate cloud service like Filen.io for command and control, you have a threat that can slip right past conventional defenses. Beyond patching, the immediate response must be proactive. CERT-UA’s advice is spot-on: apply the recommended registry mitigations to break the attack chain. More importantly, security teams need to hunt for the specific Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) and block them at the network edge. This is a case where simply waiting for the patch is not enough; you have to actively disrupt the attacker’s TTPs.
Developer environments are increasingly targeted, with recent exploits in React Native’s Metro server and malware found in Open VSX extensions stealing SSH keys. How must security teams adapt their strategies to protect these sandboxes, and what are the first three steps to hardening them against compromise?
Developer environments have become the new frontier for attackers because they are a goldmine of sensitive data—source code, credentials, and API keys. The recent incidents show two distinct attack vectors: exploiting vulnerabilities in the development tools themselves, like the RCE in React Native’s Metro server, and poisoning the ecosystem with malicious extensions, as we saw with GlassWorm in the Open VSX marketplace where over 22,000 downloads occurred. Security teams have historically treated these environments as trusted sandboxes, but that mindset must change. They are now part of the critical attack surface. The first step to hardening them is strict network segmentation; developer servers must be isolated from the production network to prevent lateral movement. Second is implementing rigorous vetting and control over third-party components, whether it’s a public package or a VS Code extension. Finally, endpoint security needs to be tailored for these environments. Standard corporate EDR might not be configured to spot the subtle abuse of developer tools, so custom rules and monitoring for unusual process chains or network connections originating from these tools are essential.
Interlock ransomware reportedly exploited a gaming anti-cheat driver zero-day to disable EDR and antivirus tools. Could you elaborate on this “bring your own vulnerable driver” technique and discuss how security operations centers can effectively hunt for or prevent such sophisticated, kernel-level bypasses?
The “bring your own vulnerable driver” or BYOVD technique is one of the most sophisticated methods we see for bypassing security controls, and what Interlock ransomware did is a prime example. Attackers find a legitimately signed driver from a trusted vendor—in this case, a gaming anti-cheat driver—that has a known vulnerability. Because the driver is signed, the operating system trusts it and allows it to load with kernel-level privileges, the highest level of access in the system. The ransomware then exploits the vulnerability in that trusted driver to execute its own malicious code in the kernel. From there, it can simply turn off EDR and antivirus services, blinding the organization’s defenses before deploying the encryption payload. For a SOC, hunting this is incredibly difficult. It requires moving beyond looking for unsigned or suspicious drivers. The key is to establish a baseline of all drivers normally running in your environment. You can then hunt for deviations, such as the sudden appearance of a gaming driver on a production server. Monitoring for events related to security service tampering or termination is also crucial. If your EDR agent suddenly stops reporting, that should be an immediate, high-priority alert.
Threat actors are now leveraging trusted cloud platforms like Azure and AWS to host phishing kits, and even using AI to escalate privileges within breached AWS accounts. What makes these platforms so attractive for attackers, and what proactive monitoring should be in place to detect such abuse?
Cloud platforms are a double-edged sword. Their scale, reliability, and global presence make them ideal for businesses, but those same qualities make them incredibly attractive to attackers. When a phishing link comes from a domain associated with Azure or Google Firebase, it inherently looks more trustworthy to both users and automated security filters, increasing the campaign’s success rate. The AI-powered AWS breach is even more terrifying. It shows how attackers can automate privilege escalation at machine speed. They used Large Language Models to analyze stolen, low-privilege credentials and identify a path to admin access in under 10 minutes. Once inside, they could inject backdoors into Lambda functions or spin up costly GPU instances for their own purposes. To defend against this, proactive monitoring is non-negotiable. Organizations must be constantly scanning cloud logs for anomalous behavior, such as logins from rotating IP addresses, which suggests the use of anonymizing proxies. It’s also critical to implement the principle of least privilege with extreme prejudice. Permissions like UpdateFunctionCode in AWS should be heavily restricted and monitored, as they allow an attacker to alter serverless functions and create persistent backdoors.
With automated campaigns wiping thousands of misconfigured MongoDB instances and attackers exfiltrating NTDS.dit files from Active Directory, foundational infrastructure is clearly under fire. Walk me through the essential security posture changes needed to protect these critical data stores from both opportunistic and targeted attacks.
What we’re seeing is a brutal assault on the very foundations of enterprise IT: the databases and identity systems. The MongoDB attacks are largely opportunistic; automated bots are simply scanning the internet for unprotected instances on port 27017 and wiping them. It’s shocking that with over 200,000 servers vulnerable, 45% have already been hit. The fix here is fundamental security hygiene: never expose a database directly to the internet, enforce strong authentication like SCRAM, and implement strict firewall rules. The theft of the NTDS.dit file from Active Directory is far more targeted and far more devastating. This file is the crown jewels of a Windows network; it contains the password hashes for every user in the domain. Once attackers have it, they effectively own the entire identity system. Protecting it requires a defense-in-depth approach. First, limit who can log on to domain controllers. Second, deploy technologies like Microsoft’s Credential Guard to protect credential data in memory. Finally, you must have active monitoring in place to detect the tools used for this theft, like vssadmin or PsExec, being used on a domain controller. If you see those tools running, you have to assume a breach is in progress and immediately initiate your incident response plan, which should include resetting the KRBTGT account password twice.
Microsoft is officially planning to disable NTLM in future Windows releases to favor Kerberos. Can you describe the primary security benefits of this shift and outline the challenges organizations might face during the transition, especially regarding legacy applications?
This is a monumental and long-overdue step for Windows security. For decades, NTLM has been the Achilles’ heel of Active Directory, being notoriously vulnerable to relay and pass-the-hash attacks, which allow an attacker to impersonate users without even knowing their passwords. Kerberos, on the other hand, is a much stronger, modern authentication protocol that relies on tickets and mutual authentication, making it resistant to those types of attacks. The security benefit is a massive reduction in the attack surface for lateral movement and privilege escalation within an enterprise network. However, the transition will be a painful journey for many organizations. The biggest challenge lies with legacy applications and devices that were hard-coded to use NTLM and may not support Kerberos. Think of old manufacturing systems, custom-built internal applications, or even network printers. Microsoft is wisely phasing this out in three stages, with the first being an audit phase to help organizations identify where NTLM is still being used. The real work for IT teams will be hunting down these dependencies and either upgrading, replacing, or isolating them before NTLM is finally disabled by default.
What is your forecast for ransomware tactics over the next year?
I foresee ransomware evolving in two major directions: increasing sophistication in evasion and a deeper focus on data exfiltration as the primary leverage. The Interlock ransomware attack using a vulnerable driver to disable EDR is just the beginning. We’re going to see more threat actors adopt kernel-level bypass techniques to operate undetected for longer periods. They will invest heavily in zero-day exploits not just for initial access, but specifically for disabling security tools. Secondly, the extortion model will continue to shift away from pure encryption. Attackers know that many large organizations have robust backup strategies. Therefore, the threat of leaking sensitive exfiltrated data is becoming more potent than the threat of inaccessible systems. We will see ransomware gangs become more like data brokers, meticulously analyzing stolen data to maximize their extortion leverage and potentially selling it even if a ransom is paid. This makes data protection and leak prevention strategies more critical than ever.