--- title: Iranian hackers disable ICS alarms, Claude artifact... description: A joint FBI/NSA/CISA/DOE advisory confirms Iranian state-backed hackers are inside US water and energy infrastructure, actively disabling shutdown processes... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/iranian-hackers-disable-ics-alarms-claude-artifact-hosts-sectoprat-in-malvertising-campaign-mzdewmgbn twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Iranian hackers disable ICS alarms, Claude artifact hosts SectopRAT in malvertising campaign | daily.dev og:description: A joint FBI/NSA/CISA/DOE advisory confirms Iranian state-backed hackers are inside US water and energy infrastructure, actively disabling shutdown processes... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/iranian-hackers-disable-ics-alarms-claude-artifact-hosts-sectoprat-in-malvertising-campaign-mzdewmgbn og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/mZdEwMGbN.png og:image:alt: Iranian hackers disable ICS alarms, Claude artifact hosts SectopRAT in malvertising campaign og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Iranian hackers disable ICS alarms, Claude artifact hosts SectopRAT in malvertising campaign **[Security Digest](https://daily.dev/sources/security_digest)** · 6 min read · 2 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A joint FBI/NSA/CISA/DOE advisory confirms Iranian state-backed hackers are inside US water and energy infrastructure, actively disabling shutdown processes and alarm systems so operators can't detect intrusions. Separately, a malvertising campaign abused Anthropic's own claude.ai platform to host a malicious artifact that was downloaded 7,100 times and delivered SectopRAT to at least 29 organizations. A nine-year-old XFS race condition (CVE-2026-64600) affecting over 16 million Linux systems now has a patch — apply it. Check Point's SmartConsole authentication bypass (CVE-2026-16232, CVSS 9.1) is being actively exploited and CISA ordered federal agencies to patch by July 25. ## Content **TLDR:** A joint FBI/NSA/CISA/DOE advisory confirms Iranian state-backed hackers are inside US water and energy infrastructure, actively disabling shutdown processes and alarm systems so operators can't detect intrusions. Separately, a malvertising campaign abused Anthropic's own claude.ai platform to host a malicious artifact that was downloaded 7,100 times and delivered SectopRAT to at least 29 organizations. A nine-year-old XFS race condition (CVE-2026-64600) affecting over 16 million Linux systems now has a patch — apply it. Check Point's SmartConsole authentication bypass (CVE-2026-16232, CVSS 9.1) is being actively exploited and CISA ordered federal agencies to patch by July 25. --- ## Iranian state hackers disable ICS alarms at US water and energy facilities A joint advisory from the FBI, NSA, CISA, and DOE confirms Iranian government-backed actors have been inside US water and energy infrastructure since at least February, targeting internet-exposed PLCs from Rockwell, Schneider Electric, and Siemens. The critical detail: they're not just watching — they're disabling shutdown processes and manipulating display data so operators see normal readings while safety mechanisms are silently off. CISA has since expanded the alert beyond Rockwell to cover a broader range of industrial kit, suggesting the initial scope was understated. The group Handala has claimed credit for a Stryker device wipe and a Cal Water breach. Practical guidance is blunt: remove internet-exposed PLCs, enforce phishing-resistant MFA on remote access, and audit identity and service-provider relationships. The advisory warns that potentially all internet-exposed ICS are at risk. [Read more](https://daily.dev/posts/v6xQa7KGs) ## FakeAgent malvertising campaign used a real claude.ai artifact to deliver SectopRAT to 29 organizations Huntress detailed a two-day campaign in July 2026 where attackers uploaded a malicious Claude Artifact directly to Anthropic's platform, giving the download link a legitimate claude.ai domain. The artifact was downloaded 7,100 times before Anthropic removed it. Victims searching for Claude Desktop on Bing hit a sponsored ad pointing to the spoofed artifact, which served ClaudeDesktop.exe — a legitimate JetBrains Chromium component repurposed to sideload a DLL deploying SectopRAT. The payload used VMProtect packing, a GPU-based anti-VM check, and decrypted its payload via a custom DirectX shader. C2 infrastructure used EtherHiding, embedding addresses inside Ethereum BNB Smart Chain transactions. Huntress linked the operator to at least ten other domains and a prior fake Docker Desktop campaign. The attack skipped lookalike domains entirely by abusing a trusted AI platform's artifact-hosting feature — a distribution vector that will only grow as users get comfortable downloading from AI platforms. [Read more](https://daily.dev/posts/uhwIALRh8) ## RefluXFS (CVE-2026-64600): nine-year-old XFS race condition gives local attackers root on 16+ million Linux systems Qualys TRU disclosed a race condition in the Linux kernel's XFS copy-on-write path, tracked as CVE-2026-64600. An unprivileged local user can overwrite any readable file — including protected system files — without triggering kernel log output, and on-disk modifications survive reboots. The exploit bypasses KASLR, SMEP, SMAP, SELinux, and seccomp because it operates below the level those defenses cover. XFS reflink is enabled by default on RHEL, CentOS, Oracle Linux, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, Amazon Linux, and Fedora, putting Qualys's estimate at over 16.4 million affected systems. A kernel patch was merged upstream on July 16. There are no practical workarounds short of disabling XFS reflink — patch and reboot. [Read more](https://daily.dev/posts/X8rKqx2i4) ## Check Point SmartConsole authentication bypass (CVE-2026-16232) actively exploited, CISA deadline July 25 Check Point disclosed CVE-2026-16232, a CVSS 9.1 authentication bypass in SmartConsole's login process affecting Security Management and Multi-Domain Management products. An unauthenticated remote attacker can obtain an application login token and gain full administrative privileges, enabling policy and configuration modification. Exploitation requires the Management Server IP to be internet-exposed without Trusted Client restrictions. Check Point confirmed active exploitation in the wild; CISA added it to the KEV catalog and ordered US federal agencies to patch by July 25. Jumbo Hotfixes are available for R81.20, R82, and R82.10. If immediate patching isn't possible, restrict Trusted Clients to known IPs and block unauthorized management access at the firewall. [Read more](https://daily.dev/posts/9p4shcSWR) --- ## Also notable - **Zimbra CVE-2025-66376 zero-click XSS exploited by Russian Laundry Bear since July 2025:** Russian state-sponsored group Laundry Bear exploited a stored XSS flaw in Zimbra Collaboration Suite via CSS @import directives in crafted HTML emails — opening or previewing the email was sufficient to exfiltrate 90 days of email history, steal CSRF tokens and 2FA scratch codes, and create persistent application passcodes. A joint advisory from 15 countries confirmed the campaign ran through February 2026; Zimbra patched in November 2025 with version 10.1.13. Patch immediately and revoke any unauthorized Zimbra application passcodes. [Read more](https://daily.dev/posts/LtxjVYNx9) - **Dolphin X infostealer uses AI profiler to rank compromised machines by attacker value:** Varonis Threat Labs analyzed Dolphin X, a Windows infostealer advertised on cybercrime forums that includes an AI Profiler scoring compromised machines by application usage, browser domains, and installed software — automating victim triage across claimed credential theft from 300+ applications including password managers, SSH keys, and cloud tokens. [Read more](https://daily.dev/posts/oXCca34tW) - **AgentForger: phishing link silently deploys rogue AI agent inside enterprise ChatGPT workspaces:** Zenity Labs detailed a now-patched OpenAI vulnerability where a single malicious link click deployed an autonomous agent into enterprise ChatGPT workspaces with no OAuth consent screen, self-configured to skip human approval, and capable of credential theft, employee impersonation, and launching further phishing — OpenAI patched four days after disclosure, but the broader governance gap (no visibility into what agents exist, what triggers them, or what they're doing) remains unsolved. [Read more](https://daily.dev/posts/F9tPObhlL) - **Dependabot now applies a three-day cooldown before opening version update PRs:** GitHub's Dependabot added a default three-day delay before opening version update pull requests, motivated by supply chain attacks where malicious package versions are published and caught within hours — the GitHub Advisory Database catalogs roughly 18 new malicious npm packages daily, and the window is configurable via dependabot.yml. [Read more](https://daily.dev/posts/aXDX2KsNf) - **Grok Build silently uploaded users' working directories including SSH keys and password databases:** xAI open-sourced Grok Build under Apache 2.0, but code inspection revealed it was silently uploading entire working directories — including SSH keys and password databases — to xAI's cloud, and portions of the codebase appear ported from OpenAI Codex and the open-source OpenCode project. [Read more](https://daily.dev/posts/hfSuKTTH5) ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Russians posing as Signal support to launch phishing raids](https://daily.dev/posts/russians-posing-as-signal-support-to-launch-phishing-raids-numtsppyp) · The Register · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Security briefing: August 2026](https://daily.dev/posts/security-briefing-august-2026-kxp9cfxfi) · Sysdig Blog · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#security](https://daily.dev/tags/security), [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux), [#claude](https://daily.dev/tags/claude) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/iranian-hackers-disable-ics-alarms-claude-artifact-hosts-sectoprat-in-malvertising-campaign-mzdewmgbn) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https://daily.dev/posts/iranian-hackers-disable-ics-alarms-claude-artifact-hosts-sectoprat-in-malvertising-campaign-mzdewmgbn","headline":"Iranian hackers disable ICS alarms, Claude artifact hosts SectopRAT in malvertising campaign","text":"A joint FBI/NSA/CISA/DOE advisory confirms Iranian state-backed hackers are inside US water and energy infrastructure, actively disabling shutdown processes and alarm systems so operators can't detect intrusions. 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