Today, we’re joined by Dominic Jainy, an IT professional with deep expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and blockchain, who brings a unique perspective to the world of cybersecurity. He has a sharp interest in how cutting-edge technologies are applied—and subverted—in the digital battleground. We’ll be exploring a recent, critical vulnerability that exposed just how sophisticated and patient modern threat actors have become.
Our conversation will delve into the anatomy of a zero-day exploit that allowed attackers to gain complete control over virtualized environments. We’ll examine the deliberate evolution of their malware, making it significantly harder for defenders to analyze and detect. We’ll also uncover the clever, almost invisible techniques used for moving laterally within a network and discuss why attackers are so focused on the blind spots in our defenses, like edge appliances. Finally, we’ll break down a particularly cunning method used to hide command-and-control communications in plain sight.
The CVE-2026-22769 vulnerability involved hard-coded credentials in Dell’s RecoverPoint for VMs. Can you walk us through how an actor like UNC6201 would typically exploit this to deploy a web shell and achieve root access? What does this reveal about securing administrative interfaces?
It’s a classic, almost painfully simple, path to total compromise. Imagine finding a key labeled “admin” just lying on the doormat of a fortress. That’s what a hard-coded credential is. The threat actor, UNC6201, would have scanned for these specific Dell appliances and simply authenticated to the Apache Tomcat Manager instance using that known, built-in credential. Once they were in, it was game over. They used a specific management endpoint, /manager/text/deploy, to upload their own web shell, a nasty piece of code they called SLAYSTYLE. From that moment on, they could execute commands on the underlying operating system with root privileges, the highest level of access possible. This whole incident is a glaring reminder that administrative interfaces, even on internal-facing appliances, are prime targets and must never rely on static, unchangeable credentials.
Attackers evolved their malware from BRICKSTORM to GRIMBOLT, which uses native AOT compilation. What specific challenges does this create for security analysts in terms of reverse engineering and detection? Can you provide any examples of how this improves a backdoor’s ability to evade defenses?
The jump from BRICKSTORM to GRIMBOLT is a significant leap in operational security for the attacker. When malware is compiled using native ahead-of-time, or AOT, compilation, it’s converted directly into machine code before it’s even executed. This strips away a lot of the intermediate language and metadata that analysts rely on to deconstruct and understand what the code is doing. It’s like trying to understand a novel by only looking at the raw ink on the page, without the structure of words and sentences. This makes reverse engineering incredibly difficult and time-consuming. GRIMBOLT becomes much stealthier because it “blends in with the system’s own native files,” looking less like a foreign piece of software and more like a legitimate part of the operating system. This chameleon-like quality makes it far more likely to slip past automated security tools that are hunting for anomalies.
The use of temporary virtual network interfaces, or “Ghost NICs,” for lateral movement is a noteworthy tactic. Could you elaborate on how this technique works in a virtualized environment and explain the steps forensic investigators must take to uncover evidence of such transient activity?
This “Ghost NIC” tactic is exceptionally clever and exploits the dynamic nature of virtualized environments. After compromising a virtual machine, the attacker can programmatically create a new virtual network interface card, or NIC. This NIC connects the compromised machine to a different network segment, perhaps one with access to sensitive internal servers or even SaaS environments. They use this temporary bridge to pivot, exfiltrate data, or deploy more malware, and once they’re done, they simply delete the NIC. Poof, it’s gone. For forensic investigators, this is a nightmare. The primary evidence of the connection has vanished. To uncover this, they can’t just look at the final state of the machine. They have to dig deep into hypervisor logs, vCenter event logs, and network flow data from the surrounding infrastructure, searching for faint electronic whispers of a connection that existed for maybe a few hours or even minutes. It requires correlating data from multiple sources to piece together that a ghost was ever there.
Threat groups consistently target edge appliances and virtualization platforms that often lack traditional EDR agents. Why is this such an attractive blind spot for attackers? What alternative monitoring strategies or tools should organizations implement to gain visibility into the security posture of these systems?
Attackers are strategic; they hit you where you’re weakest, and for many organizations, that’s the edge. These appliances—virtualization managers, firewalls, VPN concentrators—are the gatekeepers of the network, yet they’re often black boxes. They run proprietary operating systems that don’t support standard endpoint detection and response, or EDR, agents. This creates a massive visibility gap. For an attacker, compromising one of these devices is like becoming the invisible gatekeeper; they can watch all the traffic, remain undetected for long periods, and choose the perfect moment to strike deeper into the network. To counter this, organizations must shift their focus. You need network-level monitoring that analyzes traffic to and from these devices for anomalies. You should leverage specialized security solutions built for virtual environments and OT systems, and aggressively log everything these appliances do, shipping those logs to a central system where they can be continuously analyzed for any signs of compromise.
Attackers were observed using iptables commands to redirect traffic based on specific HEX strings, essentially creating a hidden backdoor. Can you detail how this redirection mechanism works on a technical level and what kind of network traffic analysis is required to detect such sophisticated C2 channels?
This is a beautifully deceptive technique for command and control. The attackers used the built-in Linux firewall, iptables, to create a secret listening post. First, they set up a rule to monitor all incoming traffic on the standard HTTPS port, 443, for a very specific HEX string—a sort of secret knock. When a packet with this string arrived, another rule would trigger, adding the source IP address to an approved list. Then, for the next 300 seconds, any further connections from that “approved” IP to port 443 would be silently redirected to a different port, 10443, where their GRIMBOLT backdoor was actually listening. To an outside observer or a basic firewall log, it just looks like normal web traffic. Detecting this requires sophisticated network traffic analysis. You can’t just look at port numbers; you have to perform deep packet inspection to find that anomalous HEX string and correlate flows to spot the unusual redirection from port 443 to 10443 happening for a single IP for a short, five-minute window.
What is your forecast for nation-state attacks on edge infrastructure and virtualization management planes?
I believe we’re seeing the new frontline in cyber warfare. Nation-state actors will double down on targeting edge devices and virtualization planes because the return on investment is just too high. These systems are the central nervous system of modern IT infrastructure. Compromising them provides not only a durable, stealthy foothold but also the ability to manipulate the very fabric of an organization’s network. As we saw with groups like Voltzite moving beyond data theft to actually manipulating engineering workstations, the next step is causing real-world, physical consequences. The barrier between digital access and kinetic impact is dissolving, and these often-overlooked edge systems are the key to crossing it. We can expect to see more zero-days burned on these targets and more sophisticated, bespoke malware designed to live silently within them for months or even years.