sans
Apr 17, 2026 at 02:00
Latest cybersecurity news from CISA, Krebs on Security, and other trusted sources
Introduction
&#;x26;#;x5b;This is a Guest Diary by Alec Jaffe, an ISC intern as part of the SANS.edu Bachelor&#;x26;#;39;s Degree in Applied Cybersecurity (BACS) program &#;x26;#;x5b;1].
Starting March 10, 2026, my DShield sensor started getting probe for various AI models such as claude, openclaw, huggingface, etc. Reviewing the data already reported by other DShield sensors to ISC, the DShield database shows reporting of these probes started that day and has been active ever since.
This month&#;x26;#;39;s Microsoft Patch Tuesday looks like a record one, but let&#;x26;#;39;s look at it a bit closer to understand what is happening
Last week, I wrote about attackers scanning for various webshells, hoping to find some that do not require authentication or others that use well-known credentials. But some attackers are paying attention and are deploying webshells with more difficult-to-guess credentials. Today, I noticed some scans for what appears to be the "EncystPHP" web shell. Fortinet wrote about this webshell back in January. It appears to be a favorite among attackers compromising vulnerable FreePBX systems.
I spotted an interesting piece of JavaScript code that was delivered via a phishing email in a RAR archive. The file was called “cbmjlzan.JS” (SHA256:a8ba9ba93b4509a86e3d7dd40fd0652c2743e32277760c5f7942b788b74c5285) and is only identified as malicious by 15 AV's on VirusTotal[1].
In a previous diary [1], we looked to see how numbers were used within passwords submitted to honeypots. One of the items of interest was how dates, and more specifically years, were represented within the data and how that changed over time. It is often seen that years and seasons are used in passwords, especially when password change requirements include frequenty password changes. Some examples we might see today:
This is the seventh update to the TeamPCP supply chain campaign threat intelligence report,&#;x26;#;xc2;&#;x26;#;xa0;"When the Security Scanner Became the Weapon"&#;x26;#;xc2;&#;x26;#;xa0;(v3.0, March 25, 2026).&#;x26;#;xc2;&#;x26;#;xa0;Update 006&#;x26;#;xc2;&#;x26;#;xa0;covered developments through April 3, including the CERT-EU European Commission breach disclosure, ShinyHunters&#;x26;#;39; confirmation of credential sharing, Sportradar breach details, and Mandiant&#;x26;#;39;s quantification of 1,000+ compromised SaaS environments. This update consolidates five days of intelligence from April 3 through April 8, 2026.
One question that often comes up when I talk about honeypots: Are attackers able to figure out if they are connected to a honeypot? The answer is pretty simple: Yes!
Webshells remain a popular method for attackers to maintain persistence on a compromised web server. Many "arbitrary file write" and "remote code execution" vulnerabilities are used to drop small files on systems for later execution of additional payloads. The names of these files keep changing and are often chosen to "fit in" with other files. Webshells themselves are also often used by parasitic attacks to compromise a server. Sadly (?), attackers are not always selecting good passwords either. In some cases, webshells come with pre-set backdoor credentials, which may be overlooked by a less sophisticated attacker. 
In one of his recent diaries, Johannes discussed how open redirects are actively being sought out by threat actors[1], which made me wonder about how commonly these mechanisms are actually misused…
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