The Backdoor That Waited Nine Years

Researchers disclosed a flaw in Microsoft 365 Copilot (the AI assistant built into Office) that let an attacker steal a victim's emails, calendar data, and indexed files with a single click. The attack chained three bugs together, including an AI-specific weakness in how Copilot's search tool indexes your data. What made it especially sneaky: the malicious link pointed to a real microsoft.com domain, so email security tools wouldn't flag it as suspicious. Microsoft patched it silently on the backend — no user update required. The flaw is tracked as CVE-2026-42824.

The Sniper Dz phishing-as-a-service platform is running active campaigns across the Middle East and North Africa. Fake Facebook posts impersonate local politicians offering free mobile data packages and government subsidies. Victims who click are funneled through shared phishing infrastructure into credential-harvesting pages. The campaign exploits trust in government brands and the appeal of something-for-nothing offers — a classic social engineering combination that works especially well in communities where mobile data costs are a real financial concern.

A China-linked group called Velvet Ant replaced legitimate copies of PAM and OpenSSH with backdoored versions. These modified programs worked perfectly as normal login software — but they also quietly recorded every credential entered at the login prompt, and accepted a hidden secret password that would silently let attackers in. Nine distinct variants were eventually found. The backdoors first appeared in 2016 and weren't discovered until this year — nearly a decade of undetected access on affected servers. The modified binaries passed routine security checks because they functioned correctly; only cryptographic file verification would have caught the swap.

A critical flaw in Splunk Enterprise — the log monitoring software used by large organizations to watch for security events — lets anyone on the internet run code on the server with no login required. The vulnerable endpoint is part of a PostgreSQL API service with no authentication controls. An attacker who hits this endpoint can perform file operations and execute arbitrary code. What makes this especially bad: Splunk is your security watchdog. Compromising it means the attacker can read all your security logs, delete evidence of their own presence, and watch your defenders in real time.

What you can do: Patch Splunk immediately — the fix is available. If you can't patch right now, ensure your Splunk instance is not reachable from the public internet. It should never be. Use a firewall or network policy to restrict access to internal networks only.

Three-bug chain in M365 Copilot allowed one-click exfiltration of emails, calendar events, and indexed files. The attack entry point was a link to a real microsoft.com subdomain, bypassing anti-phishing filters. Copilot's AI search became the data delivery mechanism.

Already patched on Microsoft's backend. No update needed — but review your connected apps at myapps.microsoft.com.

Unauthenticated remote code execution via an exposed PostgreSQL sidecar API endpoint. No credentials required. The flaw allows full file system access and code execution on the Splunk server.

Patch available. Apply immediately. Firewall Splunk from internet access as a baseline configuration — it should never be public-facing.

Not a traditional vulnerability — attackers physically replaced trusted binaries with backdoored versions. Any server running compromised PAM or OpenSSH copies allows silent access and credential theft. The attack requires prior access to plant the files but enables indefinite persistence afterward.

Verify binary integrity using package manager verification tools or cryptographic hashing. Rotate all credentials used on potentially affected servers.