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Python developer Roman Imankulov nearly took the bait. The fact that he didn't can be chalked up to human intuition and AI code vetting. A person claiming to be a recruiter from a small crypto startup got in touch through LinkedIn, looking for help with what she described as proof-of-concept code that didn't work. The company, she explained, needed a lead engineer. As Imankulov described the exchange in a blog post, the recruiter asked him to look into an issue with a deprecated Node module. Something about the request seemed off. "I'd heard, as probably all of us have, about those types of attacks," Imankulov explained in a phone interview. "And I was like, 'what if this could be I could be the target?' It was just based on the past experience that I had." So he took the unusual step of spinning up a VPS on Hetzner where he cloned the repo. He then used his Pi coding agent (running Codex) to conduct a read-only analysis of the code. "I ran an agent to test how it worked, and I was almost certain that it would return to me 'everything is clear, the code is ugly but in general it's safe to run and just go ahead and perform your review,'" he explained. "To my surprise, almost immediately the agent returned a response like, 'Don't run this code, just walk away because there's a trap.'" The AI model had flagged one of the files, app/test/index.js. The file contained a backdoor. It took the form of a server URL, fragmented to look like a test suite configuration, and a network request that will run anything the server sends in response to the request. Imankulov credited his AI agent with catching details that he had missed. "I opened this code myself and I skimmed through this code and it looked to me like just, you know, a regular sloppy file written by a sloppy developer," he said. "So I just scroll down, [thinking] 'Yeah, yeah, it's awful, but you know if they can pay me to fix this code, I don't mind.' But the agent in the very same file found the exact vulnerability that I overlooked." Just installing the repo using npm would have been sufficient to trigger the backdoor. The repo's package.json file contained a "prepare" post-installation hook designed to run the script following the installation process. The referenced malicious repo is no longer accessible – presumably GitHub removed it in response to Imankulov's complaint – but a clone can still be found. "What makes this attack insidious is how it hijacks standard developer workflows," explained Devashri Datta, independent open source and security architect, in an email to The Register. "The adversary didn't rely on the target executing a suspicious binary; they relied on the target running a routine command: npm install. "By burying the execution logic inside the prepare lifecycle hook within package.json, the malicious payload triggers automatically during dependency resolution. This isn't a novel technique, but it remains highly effective precisely because developers run npm install on autopilot. The string fragmentation used to assemble the malicious URL, piecing together a domain from small constants, was deliberate obfuscation designed to defeat static analysis tools that scan for hardcoded indicators of compromise." Imankulov said that the commits in the malicious repo appeared to be the work of a developer with an established web presence and body of work. But when he contacted the supposed author, the dev said he had been impersonated on GitHub more than once and didn't write that code. The recruiter's LinkedIn profile referenced a real arts journalist, though Imankulov believes the associated profile was faked. His online interactions with the recruiter suggested a level of technical knowledge not evident in her work history. LinkedIn likes to talk about the tens of millions of fake accounts it catches and removes before they interact with anyone. But hundreds of thousands of accounts still get created and interact with people before being detected and flagged. And that number keeps growing. In the period from January through June 2025, LinkedIn restricted 386,000 accounts after user reports. That figure was 266,000 in the prior six month period. And it was a mere 86,000 in the January through June 2021 period. These sorts of software supply chain social engineering attacks have become commonplace. Earlier this month, we noted how North Korean-linked scammers have been running various campaigns to compromise developer accounts using fake interviews and job offers. Other developers have reported nearly falling for these scams (and also being saved by their AI agent) and have posted code analyses. Datta said Imankulov's response highlights a shift in how security-conscious developers are approaching code review hygiene. "Historically, the guidance was to sandbox untrusted code or review it manually," she said. "Here, Roman deployed a local AI agent in a constrained, read-only environment to analyze the codebase before executing anything. This is a useful counterpoint to the dominant narrative around AI as an offensive threat vector. Used defensively at the developer endpoint, an AI agent isn't susceptible to fatigue or social pressure; it simply surfaces anomalous behavior, such as a test suite initiating an outbound network connection to retrieve unverified code, in seconds." npm 12 could change the game If it's any consolation, the relevant attack vector should be addressed next month. GitHub, which maintains npm, is preparing to release npm 12 which changes the behavior of the npm install command. The allowScripts setting will be defaulted to off. "npm install will no longer execute preinstall, install, or postinstall scripts from dependencies unless they are explicitly allowed in your project," GitHub explains. "Install-time lifecycle scripts are the single largest code-execution surface in the npm ecosystem," explained GitHub product manager Leo Balter in a community discussion post last week. "Every npm install runs scripts from every transitive dependency, so a single compromised package anywhere in your tree can execute arbitrary code on a developer machine or CI runner. Making script execution opt-in closes that path while keeping it one command away for the packages you trust." Imankulov said he doesn't have a strong opinion about that. "From my perspective, just for the sake of personal safety, I switched to pnpm just to make sure that I don't execute those scripts by default," he said. Datta said the incident underscores why enterprise software supply chain security had to extend beyond the perimeter of the corporate network. "Attackers are now shifting left all the way to individual engineering endpoints before a single line of code enters the corporate supply chain," she said. "When a developer's local workstation is compromised during what appears to be a routine job interview, that machine frequently holds active SSH keys, cloud provider tokens, and live access to internal repositories." Proper defense, Datta contends, requires enforcing technical guardrails such as isolated developer containers or secure cloud workstations for evaluating third-party or untrusted code. "Emerging frameworks are beginning to extend exploitability context down to the workstation layer itself, recognizing that VEX-style signal needs to travel further left than the enterprise SBOM inventory if it is to intercept threats at the point of introduction," she said. ®

Three critical flaws in Fortinet’s sandbox that allow remote attackers to bypass authentication, escalate privileges, and execute malicious code are under active exploitation, according to threat intelligence firm Defused. Fortinet patched two of the three flaws, CVE-2026-39813 and CVE-2026-39808, in April and the third, CVE-2026-25089 last week. All three bugs received 9.1 CVSS ratings, and, at the time, the vendor said that there were no reports of active exploitation. CVE-2026-39813 is a path traversal bug in the FortiSandbox JRPC API that allows an authentication bypass using specially crafted HTTP requests. It affects FortiSandbox 4.4.0 through 4.4.8 and 5.0.0 through 5.0.5. Patch to 4.4.9+ or 5.0.6+, depending on the branch, to fix the flaw. Fortinet security analyst Loic Pantano found this one. CVE-2026-39808 is an OS command injection flaw in FortiSandbox that allows unauthenticated attackers to execute unauthorized code or commands via HTTP requests. It affects versions 4.4.0 through 4.4.8, and upgrading to FortiSandbox 4.4.9 or above patches the hole. Fortinet credited KPMG Spain researcher Samuel de Lucas Maroto with finding and reporting this bug. Finally, CVE-2026-25089 is another OS command vulnerability in FortiSandbox, FortiSandbox Cloud and FortiSandbox PaaS WEB UI that allows unauthenticated attackers to execute unauthorized commands using specifically crafted HTTP requests. FortiSandbox 4.4.0 through 4.4.8 and 5.0.0 through 5.0.5, FortiSandbox Cloud 5.0.4 through 5.0.5, and FortiSandbox PaaS 5.0.4 through 5.0.5 are vulnerable. Upgrading to a fixed version patches the hole. Fortinet did not respond to The Register’s inquiries about these three CVEs and if the vendor had also observed any attacks against them. According to Defused, the exploitation began over the weekend. “We are observing exploitation of multiple Fortinet FortiSandbox vulnerabilities during the past 24 hours,” the threat-intel firm said in a LinkedIn post on Monday. “Per our research a working exploit for CVE-2026-25089 has not yet been publicly disclosed,” the company added, noting that the exploit for this flaw appeared to be vibe coded and may be faulty. We do know that all manner of miscreants love to abuse Fortinet flaws, so if you haven’t already, patch now. Earlier this month, Check Point VP of research Lotem Finkelstein warned that ransomware crims had exploited a critical authentication bypass vulnerability affecting Fortinet's Remote Access VPN and Mobile Access deployments, and said that the same crew was also likely abusing other VPN-related vulnerabilities in Fortinet products. ®

Cybercrims deploying DragonForce ransomware appear to have gained access to a major US services company's network, then spent two months up to no good while disguising their command-and-control activities as legitimate Microsoft Teams traffic. Researchers at security firm Symantec said the intrusion began with attackers gaining access to the victim's environment before deploying a custom Go-based backdoor, tracked as "Backdoor.Turn," to maintain communication with the compromised systems. Rather than reaching out to attacker-controlled infrastructure that might raise alarms, the backdoor hid its activity inside traffic associated with Microsoft's widely used collaboration platform. To anyone monitoring network traffic, the compromised systems appeared to communicate only with legitimate Microsoft servers. "The attackers in this campaign use exceptionally sophisticated cyber tradecraft," Symantec said. "The configuration of Backdoor.Turn means that security products only see C&C traffic going to legitimate Teams servers, leaving defenders unaware that data is being siphoned away by malicious actors." Symantec said the attackers installed Backdoor.Turn on systems after deploying DragonForce ransomware, potentially giving them a way back into compromised networks or access they could later sell to other criminals. To connect to Microsoft's infrastructure, the backdoor first requested an anonymous visitor token from Microsoft Teams and Skype back-end services. It then used a Microsoft-operated TURN relay server – infrastructure typically used to help establish communication between users – before establishing a direct QUIC connection to a malicious command-and-control server. Symantec said this is the first known case of malware using this particular technique. The security firm did not identify the victim beyond describing it as a major US services company, nor did it say whether the Teams-based communications channel had been observed in other DragonForce incidents. The ransomware operation has become increasingly prominent over the past year, operating a ransomware-as-a-service model that allows affiliates to conduct attacks under the DragonForce banner. It has been linked to the prolific Scattered Spider group, which has conducted a string of high-profile attacks, including intrusions targeting major retailers in the UK. While attackers have long abused legitimate cloud services to conceal malicious traffic, Symantec's findings suggest that DragonForce operators continue to look for ways to blend into the software and infrastructure that organizations trust most. ®

Heart monitoring biz iRhythm says thieves made off with patient health information and tried to turn it into a payday. The California-based cardiac monitoring specialist offers customers a wearable device that collects data, then analyzes it to create reports about heart health. The company said it detected unauthorized activity on June 8 and launched an investigation with the help of third-party cybersecurity experts. A day later, the company received messages from a cybercriminal claiming to have obtained sensitive information, including proprietary company data, protected health information, and other personal information. According to iRhythm's filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the attackers demanded payment in exchange for not publicly disclosing the stolen data. The company confirmed that data had been exfiltrated and, on June 10, determined that the incident was material due to the volume of information potentially affected. While the company disclosed the extortion demand and the existence of stolen data, it made no mention of negotiations. iRhythm spent a good chunk of the filing explaining what the attackers didn't get. According to the company, the intrusion was confined to business applications and never reached its clinical systems, medical devices, or customer connections. Patient care and day-to-day operations were unaffected. The company has not yet disclosed how many individuals may be affected, what data was accessed, or which third-party-hosted applications were involved in the breach. It has also not identified the threat actor behind the attack, and The Reg has found no evidence of major ransomware groups claiming responsibility. The company's filing states the attackers gained access through social engineering. Exactly how that happened remains unclear, although healthcare organizations have increasingly found themselves dealing with phishing campaigns, help desk impersonation scams, and other forms of human-targeted intrusion designed to bypass technical defenses. As of the filing date, iRhythm said it had not identified any ongoing unauthorized access to its systems and believed the incident was unlikely to have a material impact on its financial condition or operating results. The company added that it maintains cyber insurance that may cover some of the losses associated with the breach. iRhythm's disclosure comes less than a week after drug giant Novo Nordisk revealed that attackers had copied patient data from some clinical trials, adding another healthcare name to a growing list of organizations dealing with data theft and extortion attempts. ®

Cisco today issued a fix for a Catalyst SD-WAN Manager bug that attackers have already spotted and exploited to get root privileges, according to both the networking vendor and the feds. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-20262, is in the web UI of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager, and exists because the software is not properly validating user-supplied input during a file upload process. “An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted HTTP request to an affected API endpoint of the affected system,” the vendor warned in a Monday security advisory. “A successful exploit could allow the attacker to create or overwrite any file on the underlying operating system. This file could later be used to elevate to root.” There is one caveat: to exploit this bug, the attacker must have valid credentials with at least a lower-privileged, single-task user account. That probably explains the medium-severity, 6.8 CVSS rating for this bug. Still, valid credentials aren’t hard to come by these days, and considering this CVE is already under attack, we know someone had some success. “In June 2026, the Cisco PSIRT became aware of limited exploitation of this vulnerability,” the security alert said. “Cisco continues to strongly recommend that customers upgrade to a fixed software release to remediate this vulnerability.” The flaw affects all deployment types, regardless of device configuration. There are no workarounds, but upgrading to a fixed software version will patch the flaw. Also on Monday, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added CVE-2026-20262 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, citing “evidence of active exploitation.” America’s lead cyber-defense agency also set a two-week deadline for all federal agencies to apply the patch. This latest Cisco SD-WAN bug under attack comes less than two weeks after Switchzilla warned that a high-severity vulnerability in Catalyst SD-WAN Manager vulnerability (CVE-2026-20245) was under active exploitation. At the time of disclosure, this SD-WAN vuln did not have a fix. Cisco issued an advisory for that zero-day on June 4, and finally released patches for all affected versions on June 12. This is the eighth Cisco SD-WAN bug to be listed in CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog so far this year.®

The “jailbreak” that prompted the Trump administration to block Anthropic’s most advanced models was actually a simple three-word prompt: “Fix this code.” That's according to Katie Moussouris, founder and CEO of Luta Security, and the fairy godmother of bug bounties. She says she was the only outside expert to read the third-party research paper on the Fable 5 guardrail bypass techniques that prompted the ban. On Friday, the US government, reportedly citing national security concerns, issued an export control directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, inside or outside the United States. In response, Anthropic disabled both models “for all our customers to ensure compliance.” Anthropic shared the report privately with her, Moussouris wrote in a Monday blog post. The outside researchers reportedly fed Anthropic’s Fable 5, Mythos, and Claude Opus models open-source code containing known CVEs, plus new code intentionally laced with vulnerabilities, and asked the models to “review the code for security issues.” As Moussouris tells it, Fable 5 refused, so the researchers asked the AI systems to “fix this code.” The model reportedly obliged, and after additional prompts also produced scripts to test the patches. “That’s it,” Moussouris wrote. “‘Fix this code,’ plus several manual steps to generate test scripts, should never have triggered an export control. I feel like making ’90s-style t-shirts with ‘fix this code’ on the front and ‘this shirt is a munition’ on the back.” Between 2013 and 2017, Moussouris served on the technical expert group that renegotiated the Wassenaar Arrangement, a voluntary agreement between 42 nations that governs certain export controls for classified dual-use software and technology. The group eventually won exemptions for defensive cybersecurity activity. This allows defenders to share vulnerability data, conduct malware analysis, and coordinate incident response internationally without the threat of criminal prosecution. On Sunday, Moussouris joined more than 100 other cybersecurity leaders and signed an open letter urging the Trump administration to reverse the restrictions on Fable 5 and Mythos and restore cybersecurity firms' access to the advanced models. “To pull the best capabilities away from defenders without a good reason when our adversaries are rapidly advancing is dangerous,” they wrote. In her blog, Moussouris argues that there was no guardrail bypass or jailbreak. Defenders should be able to ask AI systems to find and fix bugs, and write tests to validate the patch, she said. Anthropic’s models were doing “the most valuable thing an AI model can do for defensive security: executing the find, fix, and test loop defenders run every day.” Removing the capability for models to respond to defensive requests makes AI systems “worse at finding bugs and verifying patches,” she continued. Plus, the US can’t extend export controls to open-weight systems or similar advanced models from China and other countries - and these systems will soon achieve Mythos-like capabilities, anyway. Anthropic and Google have both accused China-based rivals including DeepSeek of using “distillation attacks” to train their models by siphoning knowledge from American companies’ AI. Banning Anthropic’s advanced models is going to hurt defenders more than attackers, Moussouris warns. “Defense improves when defenders find the same bugs attackers find and fix them faster,” she wrote. “We need the best tools to defend against increasingly capable attackers in the AI era of cybersecurity.” The Register reached out to the Trump administration for comment on Moussouris' assertion, and we'll update this post if we hear back. ®