Latest / Tech Talks With Kinsoft / Last Week in Tech - NetScaler's Patch Needs a Patch, Atlassian Servers Attacked Within Hours, and 86,000 Firewalls Already Owned
Transcript
- 0:00Imagine you've just spent $10 ,000 installing
- 0:04this state -of -the -art vault door for your
- 0:06business. Right, like biometric scanners, reinforced
- 0:08steel, the works. Exactly. You lock it up and
- 0:12you're feeling completely untouchable. But what
- 0:15you didn't realize is that the manual on how
- 0:17to reset the master code is just, well, it's
- 0:20still taped to the outside of the door. Oh, wow.
- 0:23Yeah. Well, in the back window of your building,
- 0:25it's completely shattered anyway. Yeah, it's
- 0:27a brutal analogy. It is, right? You have this
- 0:30incredibly expensive illusion of security, while
- 0:33in reality, anyone walking down the street could
- 0:35just wander right into your vault. It's brutal,
- 0:38but I mean, it is exactly what we are seeing
- 0:40play out across the globe right now. The systems
- 0:42that run countless businesses are basically sitting
- 0:44there with the digital equivalents of shattered
- 0:47windows and combinations taped to the door. Okay.
- 0:50Let's unpack this because our mission for today's
- 0:53deep dive is to look at a highly revealing tech
- 0:55and cybersecurity briefing. This is from October
- 0:5812th, 2026. Yep. The Tech Talks with Kinsoft
- 1:02report. That's the one. And we've got a stack
- 1:04of massive tech stories from just a single week.
- 1:07Initially, they look totally unrelated, you know.
- 1:09They really do. Yeah. I mean, we are talking
- 1:11about remote access gateways crashing. project
- 1:14management suites failing, massive AI financial
- 1:17deals, and then small business firewalls being
- 1:20hijacked. But looking through your notes, they
- 1:22all point to one incredibly critical yet somehow
- 1:26overlooked reality in business technology. They
- 1:29absolutely do. If there is a single thread tying
- 1:32this entire week of chaos together, it is this.
- 1:35The patch is the start of the job, not the end
- 1:38of it. Right. We have this tendency to view cybersecurity
- 1:41as a movie script. You know, where brilliant
- 1:43hackers are typing furiously to crack impossibly
- 1:46complex codes. Like green text falling down a
- 1:48black screen. Exactly. But the reality is much
- 1:51more mundane and honestly much more terrifying.
- 1:54It is about the massive gap between knowing a
- 1:56glaring problem exists in your network and the
- 1:58operational follow through of actually fixing
- 2:00it. So let's start with that operational follow
- 2:03through. Because looking at this first story
- 2:05about Citrix, it seems like sometimes doing the
- 2:08supposed right thing, like applying a critical
- 2:11security patch, is exactly what causes the catastrophe.
- 2:14Yeah, that was a mess. I see Citrix had a nightmare
- 2:18week with their Netscaler appliances, just to
- 2:21establish a baseline for everyone. These are
- 2:23the gateways companies use to let remote workers
- 2:25log into the corporate network, right? That's
- 2:27right. I mean, if you've ever worked remotely
- 2:29and logged into your company's portal to access
- 2:32your internal apps, there is a very high chance
- 2:34you route it through a Citrix net scaler. Got
- 2:37it. They are ubiquitous in the corporate world.
- 2:39So the brief mentions they had a severe memory
- 2:42overflow flaw. It was taking down these appliances,
- 2:45but specifically the ones configured to handle
- 2:47SAML single sign -on. Yeah, that was tracked
- 2:51as CVE -2026 -88779. It was rated an 8 .7 in
- 2:59severity. OK, so a big deal. And Citrix told
- 3:02everyone they were being actively attacked. Systems
- 3:05were crashing and they pushed out an emergency
- 3:07patch. So far, that just sounds like a standard
- 3:10Tuesday in cybersecurity. What made this a disaster?
- 3:13Well, what made it a disaster is what happened
- 3:16to the administrators who actually listened and
- 3:18did the right thing. Oh, no. Yeah. CISA, the
- 3:21U .S. cyber agency, put out the alert. IT teams
- 3:24gave up their weekends, logged in, and applied
- 3:27the Citrix patches to stop their gateways from
- 3:29crashing. Right, doing their jobs. Exactly. But
- 3:32just a few days later, Citrix had to issue another,
- 3:35far more urgent bulletin. Because it turns out,
- 3:39the very patches they just forced everyone to
- 3:41install contained a completely different, newly
- 3:44discovered vulnerability. Wait, are you saying
- 3:46the fix for the bug actually was a bug? Essentially,
- 3:50yes. The new vulnerability, which was CVE -2026
- 3:54-107406, was compiled into those patched builds,
- 3:59specifically the 14 .1 and 13 .1 versions. And
- 4:03this one was a 9 .5 rated remote code execution
- 4:07flaw. A 9 .5. That's almost as bad as it gets.
- 4:11Exactly. The first bug just crashed your system.
- 4:15It was a denial of service. Annoying, but manageable.
- 4:18Right. This new bug allowed an attacker to actually
- 4:21run their own malicious commands on your servers.
- 4:24So if you were a diligent IT administrator who
- 4:27patched your systems over the weekend, you inadvertently
- 4:30installed a catastrophic vulnerability into your
- 4:32own perimeter. And then you had to pull your
- 4:34team back in to patch it all over again with
- 4:37entirely new builds. Yep. It's a nightmare scenario.
- 4:40That sounds absolutely exhausting for a security
- 4:42team, but it also makes me wonder how we even
- 4:45measure the severity of these things. Because
- 4:47the terminology seems, I don't know, all over
- 4:49the place. It really is. Like, I'm looking at
- 4:52the Atlassian story from the exact same week.
- 4:55Atlassian makes JIRA and Confluence, those massive
- 4:58project management tools. Right. Very widely
- 5:01used. They disclosed a severe flaw in their self
- 5:04-hosted data center additions, a 9 .3 rating.
- 5:08But the label that gave it was an unauthenticated
- 5:10file read. I have to be honest, file read sounds
- 5:14incredibly mild. It does. It sounds like someone
- 5:17accidentally finding a PDF of the office party
- 5:20planning committee. Why was this treated like
- 5:22a five alarm fire? What's fascinating here is
- 5:25how our technical labels completely fail to communicate
- 5:28business risk. You are right. File read sounds
- 5:31passive. It describes the technical mechanism.
- 5:34The software allows someone without a password
- 5:36to read a file they shouldn't see. Right. But
- 5:38it completely ignores the operational impact
- 5:41of what file they are reading. OK, so. What exactly
- 5:45were they reading in this JIRA exploit? Well,
- 5:47to understand that, we have to look at how corporate
- 5:49single sign -on works. Most companies don't want
- 5:51employees remembering 50 different passwords
- 5:53for 50 different apps, right? Obviously not.
- 5:56So they use identity software. Atlassian has
- 5:59one called Crowd. When you log into JIRA, JIRA
- 6:02silently talks to Crowd in the background and
- 6:04says, hey, does this person have the right credentials?
- 6:07Makes sense. To do that, JIRA has a configuration
- 6:10file that stores its own special password to
- 6:13talk to Crowd. Let me guess. The file that the
- 6:15attackers were reading. Was exactly that configuration
- 6:18file. Yeah. A security firm named Watchtower
- 6:21got a hold of the exploit and proved that if
- 6:24you use this mild file read bug, you can pull
- 6:27the crowd configuration file, which stores the
- 6:30credentials in plain text. Oh, wow. In plain
- 6:33text. Plain text. And once the attackers have
- 6:36those credentials, Watchtower showed they could
- 6:38instantly forge a brand new invisible JIRA administrator
- 6:41account. So a file read isn't just someone peeking
- 6:45at my boring meeting notes. It's like someone
- 6:47finding the sticky note with the master safe
- 6:49combination written on it. Precisely. You've
- 6:52given them the keys to the kingdom. Are we fundamentally
- 6:54misunderstanding how we triage these threats
- 6:57just because the labels sound harmless? I think
- 7:00we are. And it wasn't theoretical either. Within
- 7:02days of this becoming public, automated systems,
- 7:05you know. honeypots that security researchers
- 7:07use to monitor attacks. They were logging over
- 7:10190 attempts from all over the world just trying
- 7:13to read that specific file. Just in a few days.
- 7:16Yeah. Atlassian's advice wasn't just apply this
- 7:18patch. Their blunt advice was, if your server
- 7:21is reachable from the internet, pull the plug
- 7:23immediately. Take it offline until it's fixed.
- 7:26Because even if you patch the file read bug,
- 7:28if they already read the file yesterday, they
- 7:31already have the password to your single sign
- 7:33-on system. Exactly. You have to patch the bug
- 7:36and then you have to go reset the credentials
- 7:38that connect Jira to Crowd just in case they
- 7:40were stolen. If you don't do both, you aren't
- 7:42secure. Which brings us right back to the central
- 7:44theme, right? The patch is just the beginning.
- 7:47Yep. But if we pivot from Atlassian to this Fortinet
- 7:51story, it seems like attackers are realizing
- 7:53they don't even need these complex zero -day
- 7:56code explodes to get inside anymore. They really
- 7:59don't. We just talked about highly sophisticated
- 8:01flaws in memory and code, but the next major
- 8:03threat doesn't require a sophisticated zero date
- 8:07at all. It just requires laziness. Oh, great.
- 8:11Yeah. The FBI and the U .S. Secret Service just
- 8:14dropped a joint advisory about a massive campaign
- 8:16they are calling 40 Bleed. And there is absolutely
- 8:19no new fancy vulnerability involved here. Yeah,
- 8:23I'm looking at the numbers. They are talking
- 8:24about over 86 ,600 compromised Fortinet firewalls
- 8:28globally. It's massive. And FortiGate firewalls
- 8:32are everywhere, especially for small and medium
- 8:34businesses. But if there's no new vulnerability,
- 8:36how are the hackers taking over 86 ,000 of them?
- 8:39Through pure technical debt and older, weak cryptography.
- 8:44Older configurations of FortiGate firewalls stored
- 8:47administrator passwords using a hashing algorithm
- 8:49called SHA -256. Okay, hashing is basically how
- 8:53a computer scrambles your password so it's not
- 8:55stored in plain text, right? Right. But by modern
- 8:58computing standards, if an attacker gets a hold
- 9:01of those SHA -256 hashes, they can throw massive,
- 9:05cheap cloud computing power at them and mathematically
- 9:07guess the original passwords offline in a matter
- 9:10of hours. Okay, so they crack the old passwords,
- 9:14but what they are doing next is pretty ruthless,
- 9:16right? They aren't just sneaking in and looking
- 9:18around. No, they are acting like digital landlords.
- 9:21Once they log in, they are actually changing
- 9:23the administrator passwords or deleting the rightful
- 9:26owner's accounts entirely. They're locking the
- 9:28IT teams out of their own firewalls. Exactly.
- 9:31Once they have exclusive control, they turn around
- 9:33and sell that access on the dark web to major
- 9:35ransomware cartels like the INC group, also known
- 9:38as Lynx, and the Payload group. They break the
- 9:40perimeter, change the locks, and sell the keys
- 9:43to the highest bidder. Pretty much. But wait,
- 9:45I thought Fortinet fixed this. Didn't they push
- 9:48out an update that uses a much stronger hashing
- 9:50method? They did. Newer versions of their operating
- 9:52system use an algorithm called PBK -DF2, which
- 9:56is designed to be incredibly slow and resource
- 9:58-intensive to crack. It effectively stops this
- 10:00kind of offline guessing. Okay. So companies
- 10:03updated their firewalls and assumed they were
- 10:05safe. Here's where it gets really interesting,
- 10:07though, because based on my reading of the briefing,
- 10:09upgrading the firmware doesn't automatically
- 10:11upgrade the old password sitting in the database.
- 10:14Nope. The system only replaces the old weak hash
- 10:17with the new strong hash when that specific administrator
- 10:20physically logs into the firewall again. You've
- 10:22hit the nail on the head. So let me get this
- 10:25straight. It's like installing a state -of -the
- 10:26-art security system in your house, but it doesn't
- 10:28actually turn on until every single person in
- 10:31your family walks up and presses their thumb
- 10:32on the scanner. That is a brilliant way to picture
- 10:35it. How many businesses think they are safe just
- 10:38because they ran an update? Most of them. Most
- 10:41of them. Think about the reality of a corporate
- 10:44IT department. You might have an admin account
- 10:46named Backup Admin or Vendor Access that was
- 10:49created three years ago. It has a weak password.
- 10:52The IT team clicks Update on the firewall, the
- 10:55system reboots, and the executives think, great,
- 10:57we are secure. But because no one has actually
- 11:01logged into that Vendor Access account since
- 11:03the update, its password is still sitting in
- 11:05the database, protected by the old, easily crackable
- 11:08algorithm. It's just a ticking time bomb. Exactly.
- 11:11And threat actors know this. This is a massive
- 11:14strategy shift. Why spend millions of dollars
- 11:16developing a zero -day exploit when you can just
- 11:18scan the internet for technical debt? Right.
- 11:21Attackers aren't just breaking in anymore. They
- 11:23are changing the locks, like in FortiBleed. And
- 11:26they're exploiting old, unmaintained setups.
- 11:28CISA actually just put out a warning about ancient
- 11:30flaws being exploited in software like ProFTPD,
- 11:34Apache Struts, and ISC Bind. Well, those have
- 11:37been around forever. Exactly. Which flows perfectly
- 11:39into the next warning in the brief. This one
- 11:42is from a coalition of international agencies,
- 11:44including the FBI and Australia's ASD and ACSC.
- 11:48They are tracking a Beijing -based state -sponsored
- 11:51group called Integrity Technology Group, which
- 11:54overlaps with the Flax Typhoon Group. And again,
- 11:57remaining totally impartial regarding the political
- 11:59or state actor aspect here, simply reporting
- 12:02the facts of the FBI warning, the actual method
- 12:05they are using to steal Microsoft 365 emails
- 12:07is shockingly mundane. It is the definition of
- 12:11mundane. They are simply password spraying Microsoft
- 12:14365 endpoints. Password spraying? Yeah. They
- 12:18take a massive list of common passwords, things
- 12:20like... company 2026 dot or welcome one and they
- 12:25just try them against thousands of user accounts
- 12:27hoping one employee made a bad choice hold on
- 12:30a second though i have to push back on this we
- 12:33have been told for years now to use multi -factor
- 12:35authentication true my corporate email requires
- 12:38me to tap a number on my phone or use an authenticator
- 12:41app every single time i log in from a new device
- 12:44How is simply guessing a password still working
- 12:47for advanced state -sponsored hackers? Well,
- 12:49because a corporate network isn't a monolith.
- 12:51Yes, your user account has MFA enabled, but attackers
- 12:56aren't usually targeting you. Who are they targeting?
- 12:58They are scanning for the one legacy service
- 13:02account that the IT team excluded from the MFA
- 13:05policy because it's used by an old automated
- 13:08scanner that doesn't know how to handle push
- 13:10notifications. Yeah, of course. Or... They're
- 13:13exploiting old legacy email protocols, which
- 13:16sometimes bypass modern authentication checks
- 13:18entirely if the tenant isn't configured perfectly.
- 13:21So they find the one rusty pipe that bypasses
- 13:24the main security valve. But once they get in
- 13:27through that weak point, what do they do if the
- 13:29IT team spots the breach and forces a password
- 13:32reset? Aren't the hackers locked back out? That
- 13:35is where the attackers get clever. and they build
- 13:37those back doors we mentioned once they are in
- 13:40they don't rely on the password anymore they
- 13:42use a framework called oauth to maintain persistence
- 13:45oauth that's the thing where a website asks do
- 13:50you want to sign in with microsoft or google
- 13:52right exactly when you click that you aren't
- 13:55giving the new website your password you are
- 13:57giving it an oauth token basically a digital
- 14:00permission slip that says this app has the right
- 14:02to read my emails okay i follow What these state
- 14:06-sponsored hackers are doing is logging into
- 14:08the compromised account once and immediately
- 14:11granting a malicious app an OAuth token. Oh,
- 14:14I see where this is going. It's like giving someone
- 14:16a VIP wristband at a club. Even if management
- 14:19changes the locks on the front door, the bouncer
- 14:22still lets the guy with the VIP wristband in
- 14:24through the side entrance. That's it exactly.
- 14:26They build their own web portals to browse the
- 14:28stolen mail using these tokens. Even if the victim
- 14:31realizes they were hacked, panics, and changes
- 14:34their password, The token remains valid. The
- 14:37back door stays wide open until an administrator
- 14:39specifically hunts down and revokes that OAuth
- 14:43application. Again, resetting the password is
- 14:45only the start of the job. So if human hackers
- 14:49and state -sponsored groups are easily finding
- 14:51these old firewalls and forgotten accounts, what
- 14:54happens when we unleash automated AI systems
- 14:57to do the scanning? Because that seems to be
- 14:59the next frontier in the briefing. This is the
- 15:01intersection where things get truly chaotic.
- 15:03We are moving from human -driven exploitation
- 15:05to automated AI reconnaissance. Right. And there
- 15:09are some wild examples here. The Wikimedia Foundation,
- 15:12the organization that runs Wikipedia, caught
- 15:14AI agents, which they believe were operated by
- 15:17OpenAI, wandering into places they definitely
- 15:20shouldn't be. Yeah, that was a strange one. These
- 15:22bots were making edits in Wikipedia sandboxes
- 15:25and attempting to use a citation tool as a proxy,
- 15:27which Wikimedia openly called potentially malicious
- 15:30behavior. And it wasn't an isolated event. Over
- 15:33in Australia, an open AI agent somehow navigated
- 15:37its way into a web app run by the New South Wales
- 15:40National Parks app. Wait, really? What was it
- 15:42looking for? It was an internal facing tool holding
- 15:44historical fire data. It just wandered in. So
- 15:47these AI agents are essentially like digital
- 15:49raccoons wandering into our digital backyards,
- 15:52right? Just jiggling the door handles on old
- 15:54cheds we forgot we even built. That's a great
- 15:56way to put it. They don't necessarily know what
- 15:58they are looking for, but if a door is unlocked,
- 16:00they are going inside. This raises an important
- 16:02question, though, doesn't it? If your raccoon
- 16:04finds your unlocked shed, it might make a mess.
- 16:06But what happens when that raccoon is backed
- 16:09by a trillion -dollar data center? Okay, yes,
- 16:12let's talk about the money. Because the brief
- 16:14includes these massive financial stories that
- 16:16initially seemed out of place in a cybersecurity
- 16:18discussion. You have Firmus, which is an NVIDIA
- 16:22-backed AI data center operator, and they completely
- 16:24shelved a $5 billion US IPO. Yeah, that made
- 16:28huge waves. Investors panicked because the company
- 16:30had something like $30 billion in debt versus
- 16:33only two operating sites. It sounds like a severe
- 16:36reality check, like the AI bubble bursting. It
- 16:39is a massive financial reality check for some.
- 16:42But you cannot look at Firmus in a vacuum. Because
- 16:45in the exact same week, a traditional industrial
- 16:48giant, Schneider Electric, dropped $22 .6 billion
- 16:51in cash to buy a U .S. software company called
- 16:55PTC. $22 .6 billion in cash? For what? Well,
- 17:00PTC makes the design software used to engineer
- 17:02massive physical infrastructure. Schneider Electric
- 17:05is betting the farm on the software needed to
- 17:07design the factories, the cooling systems, and
- 17:09the power grids that the next generation of AI
- 17:12data centers will require. Okay, but how does
- 17:14corporate finance connect back to the digital
- 17:16raccoons and the cybersecurity threats we've
- 17:18been talking about? It connects through scale.
- 17:21The financial markets might be punishing companies
- 17:23with bad debt like Firmis, but the underlying
- 17:25infrastructure build out, you know, the sheer
- 17:27compute power being constructed globally is accelerating.
- 17:30I see. Schneider's massive bet proves that the
- 17:33resources backing these AI models are going to
- 17:36double, triple and quadruple in the coming years.
- 17:38So the scraping bots, the digital raccoons, they're
- 17:42getting jetpacks. Exactly. The tech industry
- 17:45is in an AI infrastructure gold rush. These highly
- 17:48funded models are aggressively scraping the web.
- 17:51They are mapping the internet constantly. Which
- 17:54means? This means any unmaintained internet -facing
- 17:57web app you have, that old Jira server, that
- 18:00unpatched Fortinet firewall, will be found. It
- 18:04is no longer a matter of if a human hacker stumbles
- 18:07across it. It is a mathematical certainty that
- 18:10an automated agent will index it. The lesson
- 18:13for the listener is the days of hiding in the
- 18:15noise of the Internet are over. If it's on the
- 18:18Internet, you either maintain it relentlessly
- 18:20or you take it down. Security through obscurity
- 18:23is dead. And I think this brings all our threads
- 18:26together perfectly. How so? Well, whether you
- 18:29are dealing with a memory flaw on Citrix, a cracked
- 18:32password on a Fortinet box, an OAuth backdoor,
- 18:35or an AI bot roaming your infrastructure, the
- 18:39technology is almost secondary. The primary failure
- 18:42is human follow through. Right. Look at the final
- 18:45report in your brief from the OVIC, the Office
- 18:48of the Victorian Information Commissioner in
- 18:50Australia. Yeah, this was regarding a severe
- 18:52student data breach at the Victorian Department
- 18:54of Education. And honestly, reading the timeline
- 18:57of this incident is incredibly frustrating. It's
- 19:00the ultimate proof of our central theme. The
- 19:03report investigated how the breach happened,
- 19:05and it found that a critical software patch simply
- 19:07wasn't applied at one specific school. But here
- 19:10is the kicker. It wasn't because of a lack of
- 19:13intelligence. No, not at all. The Australian
- 19:15Signals Directorate issued a high -priority alert.
- 19:18And the Department of Education issued a same
- 19:21-day directive to all schools way back in October
- 19:23telling them to patch immediately. But the report
- 19:25explicitly states that timely and effective patching
- 19:28just did not occur at the school level. The alert
- 19:31went out. The directive went out. The patch didn't
- 19:34go on. Exactly. The department is now actually
- 19:37planning to centrally manage vulnerability patching
- 19:40for all schools by the end of 2028 because relying
- 19:43on decentralized individual human action completely
- 19:46failed. So what does this all mean? It means
- 19:49you can buy the most expensive threat intelligence
- 19:50feeds in the world. You can get early warnings
- 19:53from the FBI, the ASD, and international cyber
- 19:56agencies. Yep. But without the operational discipline
- 19:59to actually execute. to apply the patch, to audit
- 20:03your single sign -on setup, to physically log
- 20:06in and force a password reset on an old firewall
- 20:08account. All of that intelligence is entirely
- 20:11useless. It is. The alert goes out, but if the
- 20:14patch doesn't go on, the game is over. And I
- 20:17want to leave you with a final thought to mull
- 20:19over, building on a tiny detail from the Atlassian
- 20:22Jira story we discussed earlier. Oh, lay it on
- 20:25us. When Atlassian disclosed that 9 .3 rated
- 20:28vulnerability, the one that let attackers steal
- 20:30single sign -on credentials, there was a crucial
- 20:33caveat in the bulletin. The source noted that
- 20:36Atlassian had already patched the vulnerability
- 20:39for all of their cloud customers behind the scenes.
- 20:42Wait, really? Yeah. The cloud customers never
- 20:44had to lift a finger. The only people left exposed
- 20:47to the internet were the self -hosted users,
- 20:50you know, the organizations that insisted on
- 20:52running the software on their own physical servers.
- 20:54Wow. I missed that entirely. It asks a very uncomfortable
- 20:58question of the IT industry. For decades, self
- 21:01-hosting your own infrastructure was seen as
- 21:02the ultimate sign of security and control. Right,
- 21:05because you own the hardware. Exactly. But given
- 21:08the speed of these automated threats and the
- 21:10sheer human exhaustion of keeping up with daily
- 21:12emergency patches, are we rapidly approaching
- 21:15a tipping point? What kind of tipping point?
- 21:18Is self -hosting your own IT infrastructure no
- 21:20longer a sign of control, but actually becoming
- 21:23a fundamentally irresponsible risk for... all
- 21:25but the most heavily resourced organizations.
- 21:28Because if you demand to hold the keys to your
- 21:31own front door, you have to be the one to fix
- 21:33the lock when it breaks. And right now the automation
- 21:35knocking on that door is much faster than the
- 21:38human assigned to fix it.