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- Wednesday War Room – 02/11/2026
Wednesday War Room – 02/11/2026
This Wednesday's threat landscape is a blunt reminder that attackers do not need “new.” They need unpatched enterprise software, trusted remote-access tooling, and users downloading the wrong thing once.
J.W. Croley
February 11, 2026
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Ransomware is still here, but it is showing up with nicer evasion tricks and a longer attention span.
Let’s dive in.
Risk Level: Critical
Business Impact: Active exploitation + a broad patch set increases the odds of real-world compromise and forces hard prioritization across endpoint and server fleets.
What You Need to Know: Microsoft released February 2026 Patch Tuesday updates addressing 58 vulnerabilities, including six actively exploited zero-days and additional critical fixes.
Why This Matters:
“Actively exploited” means patch delay is measurable exposure, not theoretical risk.
Patch sprawl creates blind spots (VDI pools, kiosks, lab systems, “temporary” servers).
Attackers time campaigns around predictable enterprise patch lag.
Executive Actions:
🩹 Prioritize patching for internet-facing services, then privileged users, then broad endpoint fleets.
📊 Require a 48-hour compliance snapshot for exec, IT admin, finance, and dev workstations.
🧱 Reduce exploit value: tighten local admin, enforce least privilege, and restrict macro/script execution paths.
🔎 Hunt on lagging hosts for post-exploitation signals (new services, odd child processes, credential dumping behaviors).
Risk Level: Critical
Business Impact: Unauthenticated remote code execution against remote support infrastructure can become rapid lateral movement, credential theft, and full environment compromise.
What You Need to Know: BeyondTrust warned customers to patch a critical flaw in Remote Support and Privileged Remote Access, tracked as CVE-2026-1731 and documented in the vendor advisory BT26-02; BleepingComputer summarized exploitation risk and urgency in its BeyondTrust warning coverage.
Why This Matters:
Remote support platforms are privilege-adjacent by design, which makes them attacker gold.
Pre-auth RCE collapses your “trusted support channel” into an external attack surface.
If this gets hit, the incident scope expands fast (admins, endpoints, identity, and ticketing workflows).
Executive Actions:
🧯 Patch immediately and verify the updated build is actually deployed (not just “downloaded”).
🔒 Restrict access: no direct internet exposure, require VPN/allowlisting and strong admin controls.
👀 Monitor for abnormal process launches, unexpected child processes, and suspicious command execution from the appliance/server.
🔑 Rotate credentials tied to support tooling (service accounts, integration keys, admin creds) after patching.
Risk Level: High
Business Impact: Compromised endpoints can be repurposed as proxy exit nodes for criminal activity, masking attacker traffic and increasing fraud/abuse exposure tied to your IP space.
What You Need to Know: A malicious lookalike site is pushing a trojanized 7-Zip installer that installs a proxy component, effectively converting victim machines into residential proxy nodes.
Why This Matters:
“It’s just a utility download” is still one of the most reliable infection paths on earth.
Proxy malware increases downstream risk: account lockouts, fraud flags, and reputational damage from abuse traffic.
These infections often become a staging ground for credential theft or follow-on payloads later.
Executive Actions:
🚫 Block known malicious domains and lookalike downloads; restrict unsigned installer execution where possible.
🧩 Enforce software install controls: allowlisted sources and managed deployment for common tools.
🕵️ Hunt for suspicious proxy behavior (new services, odd listening ports, unusual outbound patterns).
📣 Push a user advisory: “Download utilities only from approved sources or internal software catalog.”
Leadership Insight:
This week is the same lesson from a different angle: the systems that “help you” are becoming the systems that hurt you when they are exposed, unpatched, or overly trusted.
Remote support, endpoint management consoles, and patch cycles are not operational details anymore; they are executive risk levers.
Speed wins. Exposure reduction wins…
And if you cannot verify the patch and configuration reality in days (not weeks), attackers will happily do the verification for you.
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Risk Level: High
Business Impact: Defense evasion increases ransomware success rates by neutralizing endpoint protections before encryption and data theft.
What You Need to Know: Researchers reported a new ransomware family, Reynolds ransomware, embedding a bring-your-own-vulnerable-driver (BYOVD) component to disable EDR tools as part of the attack chain.
Why This Matters:
BYOVD is the “adult” version of ransomware: it is built to win against defenses, not race them.
If driver-based tampering succeeds, you may lose visibility right when you need it most.
This increases the odds that the first sign of compromise is the ransom note.
Executive Actions:
🛡️ Enable and enforce driver protection controls where supported (block known vulnerable drivers).
🔎 Alert on suspicious driver loading, unsigned driver activity, and attempts to stop security services.
🧱 Tighten admin rights and restrict what can install drivers (especially on servers and critical workstations).
🧯 Validate offline/immutable backups and confirm restore time objectives are real, not optimistic.
Risk Level: Critical
Business Impact: Unauthenticated code execution against endpoint management infrastructure can lead to mass endpoint manipulation, policy tampering, and credential exposure.
What You Need to Know: Fortinet released fixes for a critical FortiClientEMS issue, CVE-2026-21643, described as a SQL injection vulnerability that can enable unauthenticated code execution in affected deployments.
Why This Matters:
Management planes are blast-radius multipliers: one compromise can affect thousands of endpoints.
SQLi-to-RCE is a familiar chain, but still devastating when it hits central infrastructure.
If endpoint policy engines get owned, security controls become attacker-controlled settings.
Executive Actions:
🩹 Patch FortiClientEMS immediately and confirm version compliance across all instances.
🔒 Restrict management interface exposure (internal-only, allowlisted admin access, strong auth).
🕵️ Review logs for unusual admin sessions, unexpected database queries, and configuration changes.
🚨 Treat abnormal policy pushes or agent update anomalies as an incident trigger, not “IT noise.”
Risk Level: High
Business Impact: Mobile spyware enables full surveillance (messages, calls, contacts, audio) and can become a gateway into corporate accounts through MFA fatigue, token theft, and session hijacking.
What You Need to Know: A commercial spyware platform dubbed ZeroDayRAT is being marketed via Telegram, claiming full remote control over compromised Android and iOS devices.
Why This Matters:
Mobile compromise is identity compromise: users approve prompts, handle MFA, and access sensitive apps from phones.
Spyware ecosystems scale quickly because they are sold like products, not run like “one-off” campaigns.
Execs and high-privilege users are the highest ROI targets for mobile surveillance and account takeover.
Executive Actions:
📱 Enforce MDM for corporate access: device posture checks, encryption, and app controls.
🔐 Require phishing-resistant MFA for privileged access and high-impact workflows.
🧠 Run a targeted awareness push for leadership: mobile threats, “unknown profiles,” and suspicious app installs.
🔎 Confirm incident response playbooks include mobile isolation, token/session invalidation, and account reset steps.
🩹 Patch critical management planes first (remote support, endpoint management, high-impact Windows fixes) and verify deployment within 48 hours
🔒 Remove direct internet exposure from admin consoles and require allowlisted access paths
🧩 Lock down software installation sources and restrict unsigned installers to reduce “utility download” infections
🛡️ Harden against ransomware evasion: driver protections, admin-right reduction, and backup restore validation
📱 Treat mobile security as identity security: MDM enforcement, phishing-resistant MFA, and rapid session invalidation
💡 If “we will patch it later” is still a strategy, the attacker thanks you for the extended trial period. 💡
J.W.
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