What's Changed

• Changelog for v0.53.0-preview.0 by @gemini-cli-robot in #28507
• Changelog for v0.52.0 by @gemini-cli-robot in #28508
• chore(release): bump version to 0.54.0-nightly.20260722.gf743ab579 by @gemini-cli-robot in #28510
• fix(caretaker): sanitize and wrap issue title in untrusted_context by @chadd28 in #28352
• chore(caretaker): update vitest to v3.2.4 and add package-lock.json files by @chadd28 in #28409
• fix(core): rotate session ID on model fallback to prevent stateful API errors by @amelidev in #28469
• feat(caretaker-triage): post comment before auto-closing issues by @chadd28 in #28411
• fix(core): enforce HTTPS for GoogleCredentialsAuthProvider to prevent cleartext leakage by @amelidev in #28517
• fix(core): filter out thought parts from getHistoryTurns when context management is disabled by @DavidAPierce in #28509

Full Changelog: v0.52.0-nightly.20260723.g9681621c6...v0.54.0-nightly.20260726.g3818efbbf

What's Changed

• Changelog for v0.53.0-preview.0 by @gemini-cli-robot in #28507
• Changelog for v0.52.0 by @gemini-cli-robot in #28508
• chore(release): bump version to 0.54.0-nightly.20260722.gf743ab579 by @gemini-cli-robot in #28510
• fix(caretaker): sanitize and wrap issue title in untrusted_context by @chadd28 in #28352
• chore(caretaker): update vitest to v3.2.4 and add package-lock.json files by @chadd28 in #28409
• fix(core): rotate session ID on model fallback to prevent stateful API errors by @amelidev in #28469
• feat(caretaker-triage): post comment before auto-closing issues by @chadd28 in #28411
• fix(core): enforce HTTPS for GoogleCredentialsAuthProvider to prevent cleartext leakage by @amelidev in #28517
• fix(core): filter out thought parts from getHistoryTurns when context management is disabled by @DavidAPierce in #28509

Full Changelog: v0.52.0-nightly.20260723.g9681621c6...v0.54.0-nightly.20260726.g3818efbbf

A double free vulnerability has been reported in the Windows Internet Key Exchange (IKEv2) service. The vulnerability is due to an error when processing fragments.

An unauthenticated, remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted packets to the target server. Successful exploitation could result in a crash of the IKEEXT service, or potentially arbitrary code execution.

The Vulnerability

Microsoft Windows is an operating system which includes both server and desktop components along with an easy-to-use GUI. All currently supported versions of Windows include Internet Key Exchange Protocol Extensions to support the Virtual Private Network (VPN) feature.

The VPN feature of Windows encrypts communication between hosts. ISAKMP is a negotiation protocol used by IPsec-enabled hosts to build a security association. It uses the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) Protocol in order to negotiate keys for encrypted communication. IKE has two versions: IKEv1 and IKEv2. IKE version 1 (IKEv1) and version 2 (IKEv2) messages have the following general format:

The type of payload is determined by the Next Payload header of the previous payload, or the Next Payload field in the header (in the case of the first payload).

IKEv2 supports message fragmentation as defined in RFC 7383. When IKEv2 messages exceed the path MTU, they may be split into multiple Encrypted Fragment payloads. Of interest to this report is the Encrypted Fragment (SKF) payload (type 0x35). The SKF payload format is defined as:

When an IKEv2 implementation receives fragments, it inserts each fragment into an ordered list and reassembles them once all fragments have been received. In the Windows implementation, the function IkeReinjectReassembledPacket() performs this reassembly.

A double-free vulnerability has been reported in the Windows IKE Extension library (ikeext.dll). The vulnerability is due to improper ownership handling of a heap-allocated blob pointer during IKEv2 fragment reassembly. During the IKE_SA_INIT exchange, a Security Realm Vendor ID payload causes IkeHandleSecurityRealmVendorId() to allocate a blob and store it in the MMSA (Main Mode Security Association) structure at offset 0x208. When a fragmented IKE_AUTH message is fully reassembled, IkeReinjectReassembledPacket copies MMSA fields at offsets 0x178 through 0x21F - including the blob pointer at 0x208 - into a local stack struct. This struct is then passed to IkeQueueRecvRequest, which shallow-copies it into a heap-allocated work item. While IkeQueueRecvRequest deep-copies the reassembly buffer at offset 0x10 in the struct, the Security Realm blob pointer at offset 0xC8 remains a shallow copy, aliasing the original at MMSA+0x208.

When the thread pool processes the queued work item, IkeDestroyPacketContext checks the blob pointer at offset 0xC8 and calls WfpMemFree to release it (first free). The MMSA structure still holds the original pointer to the same allocation at offset 0x208. When the MMSA is subsequently cleaned up through IkeCleanupMMNegotiation, the SA reference count is decremented via IkeDerefMMSA, eventually triggering IkeFreeMMSA, which frees the blob pointer at MMSA offset 0x208 - the same allocation already freed by IkeDestroyPacketContext (second free).

A remote, unauthenticated attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted IKE_SA_INIT message followed by two or more Encrypted Fragment (SKF) payloads containing an invalid IKE_AUTH message to the target server. The fragment reassembly path will shallow-copy the blob pointers, and the subsequent MMSA cleanup will trigger the double free. Successful exploitation could result in arbitrary code execution under the security context of the IKEEXT service (SYSTEM).

Source Code Walkthrough

The following code snippets were taken from IKEEXT.DLL file version 10.0.20348.2849 and decompiled with IDA Pro version 8.3. Comments added by TrendAI have been highlighted.

Detection Guidance

To detect an attack exploiting this vulnerability, the detection device must monitor and parse traffic on UDP ports 500 and 4500. The IKE general format, Payloads field, and the Encrypted Fragment (SKF) payload format can be seen above.

The detection device should monitor all incoming IKE traffic. Detection requires correlating two packets within the same IKE session: an IKE_SA_INIT request carrying the Microsoft Security Realm Vendor ID, followed by a fragmented IKE_AUTH request. Neither packet alone is malicious; both must be observed in sequence from the same source.

IKE_SA_INIT

At byte offset 17 of the UDP payload, the device should check for the three-byte sequence 20 22 08, which corresponds to the IKEv2 version identifier (0x20), the IKE_SA_INIT exchange type (0x22), and the Initiator flag (0x08). The device should then scan the remainder of the packet for the 16-byte sequence 68 6a 8c bd fe 63 4b 40 51 46 fb 2b af 33 e9 e8, which is the Microsoft Security Realm Vendor ID. If both conditions are met, the device should follow the guidance below.

IKE_AUTH

For subsequent packets from the same source, the device should check bytes at offset 16 through 23 of the UDP payload. At offset 16, the four-byte sequence 35 20 23 08 identifies an Encrypted Fragment payload (SKF, type 0x35), IKEv2 version (0x20), IKE_AUTH exchange type (0x23), and Initiator flag (0x08). If found, the detection device should inspect offset 20 and search for the four-byte sequence00 00 00 01. If found the traffic should be considered malicious; an attack exploiting this vulnerability is likely underway.

Notes
• All multi-byte values should be treated as big endian.
• When detecting traffic on port 4500, IKE packets are prepended by a 4-byte non-ESP marker (\x00\x00\x00\x00), shifting all IKE header content offsets by 4.

Conclusion

This vulnerability was patched by Microsoft in the April 2026 release cycle. They do note two mitigations that could prevent exploitation while the patch is being tested and deployed. 

·      Block inbound traffic on UDP ports 500 and 4500 for systems that do not use IKE.

·      For systems that require IKE, configure firewall rules to allow inbound traffic on UDP ports 500 and 4500 only from known peer addresses.

These mitigations may be removed once the security patch is applied. The only way to fully remediate the vulnerability is to apply the update from the vendor.

Special thanks to Richard Chen and Lucas Miller of the TrendAI Research team for providing such a thorough analysis of this vulnerability. For an overview of TrendAI Research services please visit https://go.trendmicro.com/tis/vulnerabilities.html.

The threat research team will be back with other great vulnerability analysis reports in the future. Until then, follow the team on Twitter, Mastodon, LinkedIn, or Bluesky for the latest in exploit techniques and security patches.

For May 2026, Apple released 82 unique CVEs across the three macOS versions: 79 for macOS Tahoe 26.5, 45 for macOS Sequoia 15.7.7, and 42 for macOS Sonoma 14.8.7. Since Apple doesn’t provide CVSS scores or other severity information, we’re left to speculate on which of these bugs is the most severe. However, there are a couple that stand out.

-              CVE-2026-28819 (Wi-Fi) stands out as the strongest candidate for the most severe as it states, “An app may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges.” The combination of arbitrary code execution at the kernel level is about as bad as it gets on a severity scale. Plus, it affects all three macOS versions (Tahoe, Sequoia, and Sonoma).

-              CVE-2026-43668 (mDNSResponder) also piques my interest since, “A remote attacker may be able to cause unexpected system termination or corrupt kernel memory.” The remote attack vector with kernel memory corruption on all three OS versions makes this a serious one, especially since mDNSResponder is always running.

-              CVE-2026-28972 (Kernel) This one states that “An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination or write kernel memory.” An out-of-bounds write directly into kernel memory on all three OS versions. This one may also have implications in the upcoming Pwn2Own Berlin contest.

Here’s a look at all the bugs released by Apple this month:

CVE ID	Component	Impact	macOS Tahoe 26.5	macOS Sequoia 15.7.7	macOS Sonoma 14.8.7
CVE-2026-28991	Accelerate	An app may be able to cause a denial-of-service	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28988	Accounts	An app may be able to bypass certain Privacy preferences	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28959	APFS	An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28995	App Intents	A malicious app may be able to break out of its sandbox	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-1837	AppleJPEG	Processing a maliciously crafted image may lead to a denial-of-service	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28956	AppleJPEG	Processing a maliciously crafted media file may lead to unexpected app termination or corrupt process memory	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-39869	Audio	Processing an audio stream in a maliciously crafted media file may terminate the process	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28922	CoreMedia	An app may be able to access private information	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28936	CoreServices	Processing a maliciously crafted file may lead to unexpected app termination	Yes	No	Yes
CVE-2026-28918	CoreSymbolication	Parsing a maliciously crafted file may lead to an unexpected app termination	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28878	Crash Reporter	An app may be able to enumerate a user's installed apps	No	Yes	No
CVE-2026-28915	CUPS	An app may be able to gain root privileges	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43659	FileProvider	An app may be able to access sensitive user data	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28923	GPU Drivers	A malicious app may be able to break out of its sandbox	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28925	HFS	An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination or write kernel memory	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2025-43524	Icons	An app may be able to break out of its sandbox	No	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43661	ImageIO	Processing a maliciously crafted image may corrupt process memory	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28977	ImageIO	Processing a maliciously crafted file may lead to unexpected app termination	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28990	ImageIO	Processing a maliciously crafted image may corrupt process memory	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28978	Installer	A malicious app may be able to break out of its sandbox	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28992	IOHIDFamily	An attacker may be able to cause unexpected app termination	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28943	IOHIDFamily	An app may be able to determine kernel memory layout	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28969	IOKit	An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43655	IOSurfaceAccelerator	An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination or read kernel memory	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-43654	Kernel	An app may be able to disclose kernel memory	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28908	Kernel	An app may be able to modify protected parts of the file system	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28954	Kernel	A maliciously crafted disk image may bypass Gatekeeper checks	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28897	Kernel	A local user may be able to cause unexpected system termination or read kernel memory	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28952	Kernel	An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28951	Kernel	An app may be able to gain root privileges	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28972	Kernel	An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination or write kernel memory	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28986	Kernel	An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28987	Kernel	An app may be able to leak sensitive kernel state	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28983	LaunchServices	A remote attacker may be able to cause a denial of service	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28929	Mail Drafts	Replying to an email could display remote images in Mail in Lockdown Mode	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43653	mDNSResponder	An attacker on the local network may be able to cause a denial-of-service	Yes	No	Yes
CVE-2026-28985	mDNSResponder	An attacker on the local network may be able to cause a denial-of-service	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-43668	mDNSResponder	A remote attacker may be able to cause unexpected system termination or corrupt kernel memory	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43666	mDNSResponder	An attacker on the local network may be able to cause a denial-of-service	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28941	Model I/O	Processing a maliciously crafted file may lead to a denial-of-service or potentially disclose memory contents	Yes	Yes	No
CVE-2026-28940	Model I/O	Processing a maliciously crafted image may corrupt process memory	Yes	Yes	No
CVE-2026-28961	Network Extensions	An attacker with physical access to a locked device may be able to view sensitive user information	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28906	Networking	An attacker may be able to track users through their IP address	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28840	PackageKit	An app may be able to gain root privileges	No	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43656	Quick Look	Parsing a maliciously crafted file may lead to an unexpected app termination	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43652	Sandbox	An app may be able to access protected user data	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-39870	SceneKit	Processing a maliciously crafted image may corrupt process memory	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28846	SceneKit	A remote attacker may be able to cause unexpected app termination	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28993	Shortcuts	An app may be able to access user-sensitive data	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28848	SMB	A remote attacker may be able to cause unexpected system termination	Yes	Yes	No
CVE-2026-28930	Spotlight	An app may be able to access protected user data	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28974	Spotlight	An app may be able to cause a denial-of-service	Yes	Yes	No
CVE-2026-28996	Storage	An app may be able to access sensitive user data	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28919	StorageKit	An app may be able to gain root privileges	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28924	Sync Services	An app may be able to access Contacts without user consent	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-39871	TV App	An app may be able to observe unprotected user data	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28976	UserAccountUpdater	An app may be able to gain root privileges	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-43660	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may prevent Content Security Policy from being enforced	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28907	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may prevent Content Security Policy from being enforced	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28962	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may disclose sensitive user information	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-43658	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected Safari crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28905	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28847	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28904	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28955	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28903	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28953	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28902	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28901	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28913	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28883	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28958	WebKit	An app may be able to access sensitive user data	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28917	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28947	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected Safari crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28946	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected Safari crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28942	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected Safari crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28971	WebKit	A malicious iframe may use another website's download settings	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28944	WebRTC	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28819	Wi-Fi	An app may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28994	Wi-Fi	An attacker in a privileged network position may be able to perform denial-of-service attack using crafted Wi-Fi packets	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28914	zip	A maliciously crafted ZIP archive may bypass Gatekeeper checks	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28920	zlib	Visiting a maliciously crafted website may leak sensitive data	Yes	Yes	Yes

We’ll continue these macOS updates if people find them useful. Stay tuned for the regularly schedule Patch Tuesday blog covering Adobe and Microsoft.

A remote code execution vulnerability exists in the HTTP Protocol Stack for Microsoft Internet Information Services implemented in HTTP.sys. The vulnerability is due to invalid validating incoming HTTP requests.

A remote, unauthenticated attacker can exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted HTTP packets to the target system. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability can result in a denial-of-service condition, or, in the worst case, code execution with kernel privileges.

The Vulnerability

HTTP.sys is the kernel-mode HTTP protocol driver in Microsoft Windows. It provides HTTP request parsing, response caching, and SSL/TLS termination for Internet Information Services (IIS) and other applications that register URL prefixes. The driver listens on configured TCP ports (commonly 80 for HTTP and 443 for HTTPS) and processes inbound HTTP/1.x and HTTP/2 requests at the kernel level.

When operating over HTTPS, HTTP.sys delegates TLS processing to the Windows Secure Channel (SChannel) provider. Inbound TCP data is decrypted on a per-record basis: each TLS record constitutes an independent unit of encryption and is decrypted separately by SChannel before being delivered to HTTP.sys as a distinct plaintext buffer. A single TLS 1.3 application data record has the following structure:

The decrypted payload of each TLS record is delivered independently to the HTTP parser via

UlHttpBufferReceiveEvent(), regardless of how many TLS records the underlying TCP connection coalesces into a single TCP segment. This behavior is distinct from plaintext HTTP connections, where the Windows TCP stack coalesces multiple segments into a single receive indication before the data reaches HTTP.sys.

The HTTP parser maintains a per-request state object that includes a dynamically grown buffer reference array. The capacity field stores the current number of allocated slots in the buffer reference array. The count field stores the number of slots currently in use. The ref_array_ptr field points to the dynamically allocated array of 8-byte buffer reference entries.

An integer overflow vulnerability exists in HTTP.sys. The vulnerability is due to insufficient bounds checking when growing a buffer reference array during HTTP/1.x header parsing. When HTTP.sys receives data for an HTTP/1.x request, it allocates a UL_REQUEST_BUFFER structure for each receive indication and tracks these buffers in the per-request reference array described above. The count field records the number of active buffer references, and the capacity field records the total number of allocated slots.

As the HTTP parser (UlpParseNextRequest()) processes header lines, it calls an inline buffer reference routine each time a new receive buffer is consumed. When count reaches capacity, the routine grows the array by reallocating it with five additional slots. The new allocation size is computed as 0x28 + capacity * 8, the contents of the existing array are copied via memmove using count * 8 as the copy length, and capacity is incremented by 5 as a 16-bit unsigned integer addition. No overflow check is performed on this addition.

After 13,107 growth events, capacity reaches 0xFFFB. The next growth adds 5, producing 0x10000, which truncates to 0x0000 in the 16-bit field. On the subsequent buffer reference addition, count (which is now 65,536 or greater) exceeds the zero capacity, triggering another growth. The allocation size computation 0x28 + 0 * 8 produces a 40-byte allocation, but the memmove copies count * 8 bytes (approximately 524,256 bytes) from the old buffer into the 40-byte allocation. This results in a kernel pool heap buffer overflow of over 500 kilobytes.

Each buffer reference corresponds to one receive buffer delivered to the HTTP parser. For plaintext HTTP connections, the Windows TCP stack coalesces received segments into large indications, and UlpMergeBuffers() further combines buffers within HTTP.sys. Over TLS connections, each TLS record is decrypted independently by SChannel and delivered as a separate buffer through UlHttpBufferReceiveEvent() into UlpCopyIndicatedData(). If each TLS record contains exactly one complete header line (terminated by CRLF), the HTTP parser fully consumes the buffer without setting the partial-parse flag, causing UlpAdjustBuffers() to advance to the next buffer via its non-merge path. This creates a 1:1 correspondence between TLS records sent and buffer references accumulated.

To trigger the overflow, an attacker crafts an HTTP request in which each header line is encapsulated in a separate TLS application data record. Given a minimum header line size of approximately 4 bytes and a required count of 65,536 buffer references, the total request size comes to roughly 262,144 bytes. The MaxRequestBytes registry value (at HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HTTP\Parameters) must be configured to a value of at least 262,144 bytes for the server to accept a request of this size. The default value of 16,384 bytes limits the request to approximately 4000 header lines, which is insufficient to trigger the overflow. As a mitigation, keeping MaxRequestBytes at or below 65,535 bytes represents the most conservative configuration to prevent this attack.

A remote unauthenticated attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a specially crafted HTTP/1.x request over a TLS connection to an affected server. Successful exploitation results in unexpected system termination due to a memory access exception in the context of the kernel. Under specific memory layout conditions, exploitation could result in arbitrary code execution in the context of the kernel.

Notes:

• The vulnerability is only reachable through HTTP/1.x header parsing over TLS connections. HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 use different parser paths that do not interact with the buffer reference array.

• Body data parsing (Content-Length or chunked transfer encoding) does not add entries to the buffer reference array. Only header parsing triggers buffer reference growth.

• At a sending rate of 10 milliseconds per TLS record, the overflow requires approximately 11 minutes to trigger.

Source Code Walkthrough

The following code snippet was taken from HTTP.sys version 10.0.26100.7705. Comments added by TrendAI Research have been highlighted.

In UlpParseNextRequest():

Detection Guidance

To detect an attack exploiting this vulnerability, the detection device must monitor and parse traffic on the TCP port 443.

The traffic on the affected port(s) is TLS-encrypted. The detection device must be able to decrypt the TLS traffic before applying the following detection method. The detection device should monitor for HTTPS connections.

An HTTP/1.x request [1] consists of a request line followed by zero or more header field lines, each terminated by CRLF. The following grammar defines the relevant structure:

Decrypted traffic inspection:

After decrypting the TLS session, the detection device must parse the HTTP/1.x request headers. The detection device must count the number of distinct header field lines present in a single HTTP request. If the number of header field lines in a single request exceeds 1,000, the traffic should be considered suspicious; an attack exploiting this vulnerability is likely underway.

Encrypted traffic heuristics:

Where decryption is not available, the detection device should inspect the pattern of TLS application data records within the encrypted session. If each TLS application data record contains a single short payload and the total number of such records on a single connection exceeds 1,000, the traffic should be considered suspicious; an attack exploiting this vulnerability is likely underway.

Notes:

• The preferred detection method (header line count) requires the ability to decrypt TLS traffic, for example through TLS inspection, a decrypting proxy, or possession of the server's private key. This method directly observes the attack indicator and produces low false-positive and false-negative rates.

• The TLS record heuristic operates on encrypted traffic and does not require decryption. This method is more prone to false positives (legitimate applications that send many small TLS records, such as interactive streaming sessions, may trigger the heuristic) and to false negatives (the threshold is based on observable record sizes rather than the actual header count that determines exploitability). Where possible, decrypted traffic inspection should be preferred.

• The attack requires approximately 11 minutes of sustained connection to accumulate sufficient header lines. Connection duration monitoring may serve as a supplementary detection heuristic.

Conclusion

This vulnerability was patched by Microsoft in the June 2026 release cycle. They note several mitigations that include editing the registry to ensure unpatched systems are not vulnerable to exploitation. However, the best method to ensure this bug has been fully remediated is to test and deploy the vendor-supplied patch.

Special thanks to Yazhi Wang and Jonathan Lein of the TrendAI Research team for providing such a thorough analysis of this vulnerability. For an overview of TrendAI Research services, please visit https://go.trendmicro.com/tis/vulnerabilities.html.

The threat research team will be back with other great vulnerability analysis reports in the future. Until then, follow the team on Twitter, Mastodon, LinkedIn, or Bluesky for the latest in exploit techniques and security patches.

Adobe Patches for July 2026

Adobe has now moved to a bimonthly release schedule, which means they will be releasing patches on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month. I’ll continue to cover the second Tuesday release here and update this blog should the fourth Tuesday release contain anything significant. I think this is a smart way to break up a monster release into something a bit more manageable. Apple has said they are taking a similar approach. We’ll see if other vendors follow their lead.

For the first part of the July release, Adobe released 12 bulletins addressing 88 unique CVEs in Adobe ColdFusion, Commerce, After Effects, Animate, Audition, Bridge, Creative Cloud Desktop Application, Experience Manager, Illustrator, Media Encoder, Premiere Pro, and the Content Credentials SDK.

Here’s this month’s overview table:

While nothing is under active exploit, I would prioritize the Cold Fusion and Commerce patches first. The patch for Cold Fusion even clocks in with a CVSS 9.9 bug. Beyond that, most of these updates are pretty straightforward. If you’re using these products, patch them. However, you can use you regular patch cadence here.

Microsoft Patches for July 2026

Here it is. The Mother of All Releases. To call this record-breaking is an understatement. How to count this mess is anyone’s guess, but I see new Microsoft 621 CVEs for the month of July. Some of these are in online services where no user action is required. They also list about 480 bugs in Chromium and Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) that I won’t cover here. Here’s how I put this in context. I looked at the last 20 years of Microsoft releases. The CVE count year-to-date exceeds all other years’ totals.

The products covered this month are also astonishing. There are patches for Windows and Windows components, Office and Office Components, Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based), Azure, .NET and Visual Studio, Github Copilot, Defender, Exchange Server, Hyper-V, Ages of Empire II, and Minecraft Server (really!). That phrase “Windows components” does some pretty heavy lifting here, too, as just about everything you’ve ever heard of is getting patched. All told, there are 63 rated Critical, six rated Moderate, one rated Low, with the rest rated Important in severity. Eight of these bugs were submitted through the ZDI program (more on that later). Two CVEs are listed as under active exploit while one other is listed as publicly known.

So how do we eat this elephant? One byte at a time (pun intended). Let’s start by looking a closer look at some of the more interesting updates for this month, starting with the bugs being exploited in the wild.

-    CVE-2026-56155 - Active Directory Federation Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
This is one of several AD FS being patched this month, but it’s the only one being actively exploited. It stems from insufficient access-control granularity and does require local access and low privileges to start, but AD FS is exactly the kind of identity infrastructure attackers love to pivot through once they're in. It can also be paired with an RCE as we often see in ransomware. Test and deploy this patch quickly.

-    CVE-2026-56164 - Microsoft SharePoint Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
The other bug being exploited in the wild this month is a modest CVSS 5.3 – but it shows why Moderate severity bugs still matter. It's a missing-authentication flaw, meaning an unauthenticated attacker can hit it over the network with no user interaction required. When something this reachable is being actively abused, patch it now and worry about the score later.

-    CVE-2026-57092 - Microsoft Windows VMSwitch Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
This patch rates the highest CVSS score for the month: a solid 9.9. It’s a use-after-free that lets a low-privileged attacker escalate to full host compromise across a VM boundary. We saw something like this demonstrated at Pwn2Own Berlin on ESXi, but it clearly isn’t alone. If you’re using VMSwitch in your Hyper-V deployments (and you likely are), test and deploy this one quickly.

-    CVE-2026-50522/58644 - Microsoft SharePoint Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
This matching pair of CVSS 9.8 bugs results from the deserialization-of-untrusted-data and are reachable without authentication or user interaction. CVE-2026-50522 was demonstrated during Pwn2Own Berlin, so it’s odd to see Microsoft list it as “Exploit Maturity Unknown” since we literally handed them a working exploit. Just another reason to do your own risk assessment and not rely 100% on the vendor. If you have any Internet accessible SharePoint servers, test and deploy this patch quickly.

-    CVE-2026-56190 - Remote Desktop Protocol Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
This patch covers an unauthenticated, network-reachable, no user interaction required bug. The root cause is a classic one: use of uninitialized resource (CWE-908), meaning specially crafted RDP traffic can interact with memory that was never properly initialized, letting an attacker corrupt memory and potentially steer code execution. RDP Servers are a common target, so audit your systems to see which are internet accessible and start from there.

-    CVE-2026-55008 - Microsoft Exchange Server Spoofing Vulnerability
Ignore the title here and treat this like the XSS bug it is. The vulnerability is listed as a CVSS 9.6 since it’s a stored cross-site scripting flaw in Outlook Web Access, with a scope-changed impact that lets it break out of the web app context entirely. An attacker sends a specially crafted email, and if the victim simply opens it in OWA, arbitrary JavaScript executes in their browser session — no attachment needed, no macro warning, just viewing the message does it. If you’re using OWA, test and deploy this one quickly.

-    CVE-2026-50518 - Windows DHCP Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
There are a couple of these DHCP RCE patches in this release, but the other has caveats while this one does not. Both are heap-based buffer overflows scoring CVSS 9.8, both unauthenticated and network-reachable. If you're running DHCP Server role on anything Internet-adjacent (you're not, right?), these move to the top of the list.

-    CVE-2026-56188 - Windows Server Network driver Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
Another Critical-rated bug, this one is caused by a race condition. It’s always fun to see a TOCTOU bug rated this high, since race conditions are notoriously finicky to exploit reliably. While it may prove tricky to exploit, this bug could allow an attacker to execute privileged code over the network without user interaction. Don’t let the race condition lull you to sleep on a wormable bug.

-    CVE-2026-55010 - Minecraft Bedrock Dedicated Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
File this in the “why not” category. This bug is a heap-based buffer overflow in Minecraft Bedrock Dedicated Server, also CVSS 9.8 and also unauthenticated RCE. Yes, your kid’s Minecraft server (it is your kid’s server, right?) is exposed to the same class of bug as your DHCP infrastructure. Patch it anyway.

Here’s the full list of CVEs released by Microsoft for July 2026:

** Indicates this CVEs has already been resolved by Microsoft, and no further action is needed by the end user.

I’ll do my best to summarize everything else in this release, but no promises. I’m only human after all.

Looking at the remaining Critical-rated patches, Office is its own weather system: fourteen Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Office RCEs clustered at CVSS 7.8, plus five Windows Media Foundation RCEs. Outside of the Preview Pane attack vector, they are individually unremarkable; collectively, patch Office and reboot. Always reboot. We’ve already mentioned DHCP some, but DHCP Server can't catch a break. Beyond the one already covered, add CVE-2026-56159, CVE-2026-48564, CVE-2026-50370, and DHCP Client cousin CVE-2026-54128. Five DHCP RCEs in one release. Rounding things out, Print Spooler (CVE-2026-58608), Windows TCP/IP (CVE-2026-54999), and a SQL Server RCE pair (CVE-2026-54117/54118) all receive patches, and all are rated a CVSS 8.8. VE-2026-55944 (Dynamics NAV/Business Central On-Prem RCE, 9.8) is the same deserialization flavor as the SharePoint pair; it’s unauthenticated, network-reachable, and easy to overlook since it's not SharePoint. CVE-2026-48561 (Microsoft Copilot RCE, 9.6) and CVE-2026-50380 (Windows GDI+ RCE, 9.6) round out the near-top tier. Don't forget CVE-2026-55040, a SharePoint Security Feature Bypass (9.1) — patch it in the same pass as the SharePoint RCE pair since it's the same product family. Identity and infrastructure get hit too: CVE-2026-54121 (AD Certificate Services EoP, 8.8) and CVE-2026-50444 (WSUS EoP, 8.8). The obscure Reliable Multicast Transport Driver (RMCAST) takes two RCEs (CVE-2026-54982, CVE-2026-54995), and CVE-2026-50474 gives Remote Desktop Client its own RCE, separate from the RDP one already covered. The rest is a long tail: Defender RCE x2, GDI+ again, Windows Media x2, Secure Kernel Mode EoP x2, and a second Hyper-V EoP. You can consider these “normal” as far as patch cadence goes.

That leaves us with 95 RCE to discuss. I would explain, but there is too much, so let me sum up. CVE-2026-55944 (Dynamics NAV/Business Central On-Prem, 9.8) is the same deserialization flavor as the SharePoint pair: unauthenticated, easy to miss since it's not SharePoint. CVE-2026-54990 (Remote Desktop Client), CVE-2026-49172 (Windows FTP Service), and CVE-2026-50447 (MSMQ) all hit 9.8 too, proof severity labels lag CVSS sometimes. CVE-2026-48561 (Copilot) and CVE-2026-50380 (GDI+) sit at 9.6.

The pattern worth watching: 14 Windows NTFS and 7 ReFS RCEs/ That makes 21 filesystem-driver bugs, an unusually large cluster suggesting a shared root cause. Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) contributes 21 more that are genuinely Microsoft's to patch, not Chromium re-listing noise. Remote Desktop Client racks up a second and third RCE (CVE-2026-50474, CVE-2026-58594), and Windows Admin Center picks up two (CVE-2026-56196/56197) — WAC exposure keeps creeping into these releases. Exchange Server (CVE-2026-55005) and AD Domain Services (CVE-2026-49178) both land at 8.8.

And because this release wouldn't be complete without it: CVE-2026-50663, an RCE in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. Yes, really. Patch your civilization anyway.

There are close to 260 EoP bugs in this month’s release. Microsoft could have just published the EoPs and still had a record-setting month. As usual, most simply lead to local attackers executing their code at SYSTEM-level privileges or administrative privileges, so there’s not much to add without further technical details about the bugs themselves. What’s really frustrating is that 94 have no explicit privilege statement at all. Microsoft just says “elevate privileges” with no detail. By my count, that leaves around 25 bugs to consider. Some don’t elevate at all. The FAQ literally says the attacker just gets “the rights of the user running the affected application.” That covers Win32k, Clip Service, Search Service, MSMQ, and SharePoint. A few get a Low-to-Medium integrity bump. There are also a couple that lead to downgraded service accounts or arbitrary file deletion, but nothing else I’ve seen really stands out too much.

There are 20 Security Feature Bypass (SFB) bugs this month, and it's a genuinely mixed bag. CVE-2026-55040 leads at Critical, CVSS 9.1 as it’s weak authentication in SharePoint Server. Patch it in the same pass as the SharePoint RCE pair since it's the same product. The AI-coding-tool trend continues: GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio all land SFB bugs, mostly injection or path-traversal flavored. BitLocker is this month's lone publicly disclosed bug. It’s not exploited yet, but public disclosure is a countdown clock, not a free pass. It requires physical access, as does the bug in Microsoft XML. The firmware/boot cluster is worth a second look: Secure Boot, Boot Loader, and Key Guard all touch the trust chain below the OS. Meaning, despite a low CVSS score, “if this fails, nothing above it can be trusted” stakes. Rounding out the SFB patches, there are two .NET SFBs, two Windows Kernel SFBs, and a DNS/Cryptographic Services bringing up the rear.

The July release includes 31Spoofing bugs this month, and we’ve already covered the most important (Exchange). SharePoint Server accounts for another ten with almost all the same root cause: stored XSS letting an authenticated attacker spoof content in the browser. Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) contributes fifteen more spanning access-control failures, SSRF, type confusion, and UI misrepresentation. All genuinely Microsoft's to patch, not re-listed Chromium noise. The remaining six round out the usual suspects: a Windows NAT spoofing bug reachable from an adjacent network, a Bing app flaw on iOS, a PowerBI Report Server XSS issue, a .NET output-encoding bug, and an AD FS spoofing flaw. None publicly disclosed, none exploited, but with SharePoint's history this year, don't let "just Spoofing" lull you into deprioritizing the patch cycle.

Of 111 Information Disclosure bugs, the overwhelming majority of these simply result in info leaks consisting of unspecified memory contents or memory addresses. GitHub Copilot is the standout. Here, the bug insufficiently protected credentials, meaning actual secrets leak, not memory scraps. The Windows Admin Center flaw discloses data via improper authentication. A management console leaking to an unauthorized party is a bigger deal than it sounds. SharePoint uses SSRF to pull data server-side, and the Event Logging Service is a protection-mechanism failure, not a memory bug at all. Edge picks up three genuinely file-system-flavored disclosures — improper authorization, files/directories accessible to external parties, and link-following — plus Edge for Android exposing “private personal information” twice and two path-traversal bugs. The remaining 40+ are mostly one-line “exposure of sensitive information to an unauthorized actor” entries scattered across File Explorer, Push Notifications, Cryptographic Services, and Win32k.

Only 8 Tampering bugs this month, the smallest bucket, but a couple stand out. The top of the list is a WSUS bug, caused by an uncaught exception that lets an unauthenticated attacker tamper with the update service over the network. That’s your patch-management infrastructure itself being the target, which always deserves extra attention. Windows CNG (the crypto API) picks up a missing-cryptographic-step flaw, and Windows DNS Client shows up three separate times across the list, twice for improper access control and once for missing authentication on a critical function. DNS resolution having this many tampering paths in one release is worth flagging as a pattern rather than three unrelated bugs. The one genuinely different entry is Outlook Copilot, described simply as vulnerable to “malicious uses” enabling tampering over the network. That’s a fantastically vague phrasing for an AI-assistant feature, continuing this year's running theme of Copilot-branded features showing up somewhere in every release. Finally, a .NET link-following bug and a WSL2 kernel race condition receive patches. Both require local/authorized access to trigger.

Still with me? Good, because we have 35 DoS bugs to cover, and this is really an identity-infrastructure story more than a grab-bag. Active Directory Federation Services alone accounts for seven of them, all sitting at CVSS 7.5, all stack-based buffer overflows or infinite loops that let an unauthenticated attacker knock the service over the network. The .NET ecosystem is the other big cluster: .NET, .NET Framework, and ASP.NET Core/OData contribute nine bugs combined, almost all “allocation of resources without limits or throttling”.  HTTP.sys and HTTP/2 pick up the same flavor. LSASS shows up twice, which is always worth a second look given what that process actually holds. Rounding out the list are patches for Windows DHCP Server, SMB Server, Secure Channel, Hyper-V, and IKE Protocol each take a single hit, mostly requiring authorized or adjacent-network access rather than being wide open to the internet.

No new advisories are being released this month.

Looking Ahead

The next Patch Tuesday will be on August 11, just after Hacker Summer Camp in sunny Las Vegas. Should I survive the heat, I’ll be back then to give you my full thoughts on the release – no matter how large it may be. Until then, stay safe, happy patching, and may all your reboots be smooth and clean!

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Executive summary 

A group of Russian state-supported cyber actors has been targeting and compromising various Western government and commercial organizations using the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) software since at least July 2025. The Russian state-supported advanced persistent threat (APT) group’s activity is tracked in the cybersecurity community under several names (see Cybersecurity industry tracking), primarily as “LAUNDRY BEAR,” a name initially coined by the Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) and Defence Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) [1].

LAUNDRY BEAR’s targeting is almost certainly to gather sensitive information for the Russian Federation, with these actors primarily focusing on the covert acquisition of email data. Previous campaigns indicated LAUNDRY BEAR relied on unsophisticated initial access techniques—including password spraying, phishing, and pass-the-cookie—allowing the group to successfully run high-volume operations. The latest campaign targeting ZCS uses a novel exploit that was a zero-day vulnerability when first exploited and continues to be successfully exploited. The vulnerability, Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) CVE-2025-66376, was patched in November 2025. This demonstrates LAUNDRY BEAR’s intent and ability to deploy increasingly sophisticated technical capabilities.

Unlike traditional phishing campaigns that persuade a user into taking an action, such as clicking a link or opening a file, LAUNDRY BEAR’s latest campaign leverages a view-based exploit that only requires a user to view a malicious email within a vulnerable version of the webmail service. Once viewed, the exploit attempts to exfiltrate the victim’s last 90 days of email communications, the organization email directory (i.e., Global Address List [GAL]), and other sensitive information to servers controlled by LAUNDRY BEAR. The exploit also attempts to establish persistent access to victim accounts through a variety of means as detailed in the Persistence and credential access section.

This Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) warns of this ongoing malicious threat activity and urges organizations to update their vulnerable software and implement additional mitigations to thwart these Russian state-supported actors’ continued success. The CSA is being released by the following authoring and co-sealing agencies:

• United States National Security Agency (NSA)
• United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
• Netherlands Defence Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD)
• Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD)
• United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
• United States Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA)
• United States Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3)
• United States Department of the Treasury
• United States Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS)
• Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ASD’s ACSC)
• Communications Security Establishment Canada’s (CSE’s) Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (Cyber Centre)
• New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NZ)
• United Kingdom National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-UK)
• Czech Republic National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NÚKIB)¹
• Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS)²
• Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service (EFIS)³
• Finnish Defence Intelligence (FDI)⁴
• Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (SUPO)⁵
• French General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI)⁶
• French National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI)⁷
• Italian External Intelligence and Security Agency (AISE)⁸
• Italian Internal Intelligence and Security Agency (AISI)⁹
• Security and Intelligence Service of the Republic of Moldova (SIS RM)¹⁰
• Polish Foreign Intelligence Agency (AW)¹¹
• The Military Counterintelligence Service of Poland (SKW)¹²
• Spain National Intelligence Centre (CNI)¹³
• Sweden National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-SE)¹⁴

The authoring agencies urge any organizations using ZCS to implement the recommendations listed within the Mitigations section of this advisory to reduce the risk associated with this activity. This CSA also includes specific remediations for organizations to implement if they discover the presence of the listed Indicators of compromise (IOCs).  

As more organizations update their ZCS software based on this CSA, LAUNDRY BEAR may discontinue the current campaign exploiting this vulnerability; however, based on the success of this and previous campaigns, it is very likely that the group will continue to target ZCS and other email systems used by organizations in Western countries. The actors will almost certainly continue to rely on email to engage potential victims by exploiting novel vulnerabilities and, when necessary, use social engineering techniques to assist with their efforts. The authoring agencies recommend organizations regularly update their mail service software and continuously monitor their email systems and emails for malicious activity.

For a downloadable list of IOCs, see:

• AA26-204A.stix.xml (STIX XML)
• AA26-204A.stix.json (STIX JSON)

Cybersecurity industry tracking

The cybersecurity industry provides overlapping cyber threat intelligence, indicators of compromise (IOCs), and mitigation recommendations related to these Russian state-supported cyber actors. While not exhaustive, the following are threat group names commonly used for these actors within the cybersecurity community:

• LAUNDRY BEAR
• Void Blizzard [2]
• CL-STA-1114 [3]
• TA488 (formerly UNK_PitStop) [4]

Note: Cybersecurity companies have different methods of tracking and attributing cyber actors, and this may not be a 1:1 correlation to the U.S. government’s understanding for all activity related to these groupings.

Background

Public advisories from Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD), Netherlands Defence Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD), and Microsoft highlighted these Russian state-supported advanced persistent threat (APT) actors in May 2025, calling them LAUNDRY BEAR and Void Blizzard respectively [1] [2]. Both advisories assessed that the group was engaged in malicious cyber activity as early as April 2024.  

The May 2025 advisories highlighted a cluster of activity targeting cloud-based email environments, including Microsoft Exchange in particular, and abusing legitimate APIs to perform data exfiltration in bulk [T1114.002]. The group relied on unsophisticated means of initial access, including procuring stolen credentials on criminal marketplaces [T1078], and using social engineering techniques to lure targets into interacting with a malicious site masquerading as a legitimate one. As of April 2025, one of these sites resembled a European Defence & Security Summit registration portal that required registrants to sign in to their Microsoft account to view. Once a user entered their Microsoft credentials into this malicious site, LAUNDRY BEAR’s modified version of the open source adversary emulation toolkit, Evilginx, intercepted the user’s credentials. LAUNDRY BEAR then used this authentication data, including passwords and session tokens, to access the compromised account and conduct mass email exfiltration, as well as harvest other information. This method of compromise is commonly known as an adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) technique [T1557].  

Beginning around July 2025, LAUNDRY BEAR shifted toward a more technical method of email compromise, highlighting their continued efforts to covertly acquire email communications from a variety of Western organizations of interest and deliver them to the Russian Federation. Using a custom-developed capability [T1587.001] named “Улей” or “Ulej” (Russian for beehive), LAUNDRY BEAR successfully targeted and exfiltrated sensitive user information from organizations who use the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) product [T1114]. Data LAUNDRY BEAR attempted to exfiltrate from compromised accounts included:

• Last 90 days of emails,
• Email address,
• Password [T1589.001],
• Global Address List (GAL) [T1087],
• Two-factor authentication (2FA) tokens, and
• Newly-created Application Passcode [T1098].

The covert and persistent nature of this activity, along with the absence of any known financial extortion, almost certainly indicates this group’s involvement in espionage activities with Russian government backing. Additionally, extensive Ukrainian targeting, prior to use against U.S. and other NATO allies, outlines an increasing trend within Russian cyber threat groups to target Ukrainian users first—both as a priority target and as a testbench for malicious cyber techniques before broader global deployment.

Targeting details

LAUNDRY BEAR has targeted and compromised users in various organizations, including those associated with:

• the Defense Industrial Base (DIB),  
• the federal and local government,
• education,
• energy,
• law enforcement,  
• media,  
• non-governmental organizations, and
• technology.

Technical details

Note: This advisory uses the MITRE ATT&CK® Matrix for Enterprise framework, version 19. This advisory also uses MITRE D3FEND^TM version 1.4.0¹⁵. See Appendix A and Appendix B for tables of the activity mapped to MITRE ATT&CK and D3FEND tactics, techniques, and countermeasures.

Ulej is a novel data exfiltration and aggregation capability, that currently (as of the publication of this report) supports a campaign specifically targeting users of ZCS webmail servers. This capability is used to exploit CVE-2025-66376 [Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')], but likely could be adapted to exploit other vulnerabilities. It exfiltrates emails and other sensitive user data from a victim’s system immediately after exploitation and stores the data in an actor-controlled unattributable virtual private server (VPS) [T1074.002] running LAUNDRY BEAR’s “Flowerbed” collection framework. The collected data is almost certainly further exfiltrated to internal network resources for review and long-term retention.

Reconnaissance

LAUNDRY BEAR uses the Ulej capability to exploit the CVE-2025-66376 vulnerability in organizations using ZCS. This campaign’s targeted victimology and limited exploitation capabilities likely indicate this group manually identifies and targets the victim organizations. LAUNDRY BEAR likely identifies organizations with public-facing Zimbra infrastructure by port scanning [T1595] and fingerprinting datasets easily procured through various commercial vendors [T1596.005].  

After identifying a target organization, the group likely compiles email addresses for individual users to target with the exploit [T1589.002] from datasets offered by commercial vendors [T1597.002], open source intelligence [T1593], or previously exfiltrated data [T1597].  

Resource development

The actors procure VPSs from a variety of providers [T1583.003], including those with Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements, and often use fabricated identities. LAUNDRY BEAR primarily uses Mullvad VPN [T1583] when interacting with these servers, further demonstrating the group’s intent to mask their identity and maintain operations security (OPSEC). After the server is provisioned, an automated process deploys the Docker containers necessary for Ulej’s Flowerbed framework [T1608], which then receives and aggregates the data Ulej exfiltrates. These servers are typically only used for 7-60 days before moving to new infrastructure.

Flowerbed framework

Flowerbed is a Python project that uses Docker for containerization. The project includes four different Docker containers:

• Catcher,
• Certbot,
• Nginx, and
• Gardener.

Catcher acts as both a DNS and HTTP server to receive and aggregate exfiltrated victim information [T1048]. For additional information on Catcher, refer to the Exfiltration section of this advisory. Flowerbed’s next container, Certbot, is based on one of the official Certbot containers, which allows for automated generation of Let’s Encrypt certificates using DNS challenges through Cloudflare. This certificate can then be used by the Nginx container, which serves as an HTTPS reverse proxy for Catcher, enabling Flowerbed to disguise some of its exfiltration activity through an encrypted communications channel [T1048.002]. The Nginx reverse proxy also validates that the Server Name Indicator (SNI) value contains “*.i.*” prior to forwarding the traffic to Catcher. If the SNI does not contain that string, the Nginx server returns a 444 error to the client. This is likely an attempt to reject non-Ulej connections. Finally, the Gardener container functions as a health check for the Catcher service. Gardener is a simple Python script that validates Catcher correctly receives and processes data.

The simplistic Flowerbed codebase has indications that artificial intelligence (AI) played a role in its development. This highlights how AI is increasingly being used to develop malicious capabilities [T1588.007]. The dependence on AI for a simple capability, such as Flowerbed, alongside a previous reliance on open source capabilities, such as Evilginx2 [T1588.002], likely indicates a lack of advanced technical knowledge within LAUNDRY BEAR, especially in relation to true software development capabilities.

Initial access

To gain initial access, LAUNDRY BEAR sends an email containing a malicious JavaScript payload to the target [T1566]. Through exploitation of CVE-2025-66376, this JavaScript payload is immediately executed once the user views the malicious email [T1203], such as the one shown in Figure 1, in the ZCS webmail platform. Since at least November 2025, LAUNDRY BEAR began sending these phishing emails from victim infrastructure through compromised accounts [T1199], as shown in the email metadata in Figure 2. These compromised accounts were likely previous victims of this, or another LAUNDRY BEAR, campaign and their use is intended to further obfuscate and frustrate anti-phishing tools and training.

According to the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), CVE-2025-66376 was initially published on 5 January 2026. This vulnerability allows for execution of a JavaScript payload included in email content due to improper sanitization of Cascading Style Sheet’s (CSS) @import directives within an email [5]. Because the activity attributed to this campaign began in July 2025—months before Synacor released a patch and the CVE was published—the payload initially exploited a zero-day vulnerability at that time [T1587.004].  

Utilization of a zero-day exploit within this campaign demonstrates the ability for even emerging threat groups like LAUNDRY BEAR to operationalize novel exploits into a highly successful capability.

Hidden in LAUNDRY BEAR’s email is a Base64 encoded payload within the “onload” field of a Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) element [T1027.017], as shown in Figure 3. Leading up to the inclusion of this payload in the SVG element are various instances of @import directives, as required to leverage CVE-2025-66376. This payload includes an XOR encrypted final script encoded in a Base64 inner payload (see Figure 3) [T1027.013]. The outer payload decodes and decrypts the inner payload using an XOR function and a hardcoded key and then executes the script contained within the inner payload containing the collection and exfiltration logic. By changing the key used for the XOR encryption of the inner payload or adding additional @import directives with non-functional code [T1027.010], LAUNDRY BEAR can easily generate new payloads that bypass basic threat detection signatures. This malicious payload attempts to collect and exfiltrate information in 12 asynchronous stages [T1119]. The stages in order of appearance within the payload are as follows:

1. sendStartPing,
2. gather_email,
3. gather_environment,
4. gather_2fa_codes,
5. gather_app_password,
6. gather_device_status,
7. gather_oauth_consumers,
8. gather_autocomplete_password,
9. enable_mail_protocols,
10. gather_gal,
11. sendArchives, and
12. sendFinishPing. 

Use of a zero-day exploit within this campaign demonstrates the ability for even emerging threat groups like LAUNDRY BEAR to operationalize novel exploits into a highly successful capability [T1587].

Persistence and credential access

To establish sustained persistence into the victim’s email account, the script attempts to modify account preferences and collect authentication information. Any collected credentials are later exfiltrated, as further described in the Exfiltration section below. Other campaigns attributed to LAUNDRY BEAR also demonstrated the group’s ability to circumvent multi-factor authentication through session token replay [T1550.004], and the Zimbra campaign follows a similar trend.

The script used in this campaign tries to discover the victim’s email address during the gather_email stage [T1087]. The script searches for this email address in two ways. First, it examines the batchInfoResponse variable, which an HTML script element on the webpage can define, for an email address. Even if the script finds an email address there, it also checks whether it acquired a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) token as described later in the Collection section of this advisory. If so, the script uses the “GetIdentitiesRequest” Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) command under the “ZimbraAccount” namespace to determine the victim’s email address [T1185] and then exfiltrates it. However, if the script does not have a CSRF token or the SOAP request fails, the script exfiltrates the email value recovered from the first method instead. If both attempts fail to capture the victim’s email, the script sends a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) payload with a key of “email” and value of null over HTTPS and does not attempt DNS exfiltration.