28 January 2026
China's Digital Ninjas Feast on WinRAR Bug While Lurking in US Cloud Providers for Over a Year
Red Alert: China's Daily Cyber Moves
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This is your Red Alert: China's Daily Cyber Moves podcast.
Hey listeners, Ting here, your go-to cyber sleuth on all things China hacking chaos. Buckle up, because the past few days have been a red-hot frenzy of Beijing's digital ninjas probing US defenses like it's Black Friday at the data buffet.
Let's rewind the tape to January 27th: Bleeping Computer dropped a bombshell that Mustang Panda—those sly Chinese espionage pros aka Earth Preta—unleashed an upgraded COOLCLIENT backdoor, sniping government and telecom targets in Asia and Russia, but make no mistake, their tentacles stretch to US soil too. This bad boy slurps keystrokes, clipboard gold, files, even HTTP proxy creds via TCP commands from shady C2 servers. They pair it with TONESHELL for persistence and QReverse RAT for shell access and screenshots—classic post-exploitation jazz to burrow deep.
Fast-forward to today, January 28th, 2026: Google Threat Intelligence Group just lit the fuse, confirming Chinese—and Russian—hackers are feasting on CVE-2025-8088, that critical WinRAR path traversal bug with a juicy CVSS 8.8 score. Patched back in July 2025 with version 7.13, but nah, these crews ignore patches like expired coupons. They craft malicious RAR archives that slip payloads straight into your Windows Startup folder—boom, persistence on reboot. RomCom kicked it off as zero-day on July 18th with SnipBot malware, but now it's nation-states hitting US gov agencies and enterprises for espionage. Financial crooks pile on with RATs and stealers, turning your endpoints into data piñatas.
Meanwhile, Mandiant's Charles Carmakal is sounding alarms on a rampant Chinese crew breaching US software devs and law firms—think cloud providers like those powering American corps. They've lurked undetected for over a year, swiping proprietary code to hunt vulns deeper. FBI's knee-deep investigating, calling it a five-alarm fire rivaling Russia's SolarWinds heist. CISA and FBI urge immediate scans: hunt WinRAR logs, Windows Event ID 4688 for rogue processes, monitor Startup folders, patch now, sandbox archives, and lock down with Group Policy. No user perms on startups, folks—least privilege or bust.
Timeline's brutal: Summer 2025 trade war spikes, hackers hit Wiley Rein lawyers' emails; Italian cops nab a Chinese vaccine thief linked to intel ops. Escalation? If Trump 2.0 goes offense-first per Matthew Ferren's Council on Foreign Relations warn, China just rebuilds their 50-to-1 hacker horde faster. Picture Salt Typhoon vibes—already spied UK PM aides' phones under Johnson, Truss, Sunak—now eyeing US critical infra for crisis pre-positioning. Defend hard: segment networks, EDR everywhere, or we're handing Xi the keys.
Witty tip: Treat every RAR like a Trojan horse—quarantine first, or join the compromised club. Stay vigilant, listeners!
Thanks for tuning in—subscribe for more cyber spice. This has been a Quiet Please production, for more check out quietplease.ai.
For more http://www.quietplease.ai
Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOta
This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI
Hey listeners, Ting here, your go-to cyber sleuth on all things China hacking chaos. Buckle up, because the past few days have been a red-hot frenzy of Beijing's digital ninjas probing US defenses like it's Black Friday at the data buffet.
Let's rewind the tape to January 27th: Bleeping Computer dropped a bombshell that Mustang Panda—those sly Chinese espionage pros aka Earth Preta—unleashed an upgraded COOLCLIENT backdoor, sniping government and telecom targets in Asia and Russia, but make no mistake, their tentacles stretch to US soil too. This bad boy slurps keystrokes, clipboard gold, files, even HTTP proxy creds via TCP commands from shady C2 servers. They pair it with TONESHELL for persistence and QReverse RAT for shell access and screenshots—classic post-exploitation jazz to burrow deep.
Fast-forward to today, January 28th, 2026: Google Threat Intelligence Group just lit the fuse, confirming Chinese—and Russian—hackers are feasting on CVE-2025-8088, that critical WinRAR path traversal bug with a juicy CVSS 8.8 score. Patched back in July 2025 with version 7.13, but nah, these crews ignore patches like expired coupons. They craft malicious RAR archives that slip payloads straight into your Windows Startup folder—boom, persistence on reboot. RomCom kicked it off as zero-day on July 18th with SnipBot malware, but now it's nation-states hitting US gov agencies and enterprises for espionage. Financial crooks pile on with RATs and stealers, turning your endpoints into data piñatas.
Meanwhile, Mandiant's Charles Carmakal is sounding alarms on a rampant Chinese crew breaching US software devs and law firms—think cloud providers like those powering American corps. They've lurked undetected for over a year, swiping proprietary code to hunt vulns deeper. FBI's knee-deep investigating, calling it a five-alarm fire rivaling Russia's SolarWinds heist. CISA and FBI urge immediate scans: hunt WinRAR logs, Windows Event ID 4688 for rogue processes, monitor Startup folders, patch now, sandbox archives, and lock down with Group Policy. No user perms on startups, folks—least privilege or bust.
Timeline's brutal: Summer 2025 trade war spikes, hackers hit Wiley Rein lawyers' emails; Italian cops nab a Chinese vaccine thief linked to intel ops. Escalation? If Trump 2.0 goes offense-first per Matthew Ferren's Council on Foreign Relations warn, China just rebuilds their 50-to-1 hacker horde faster. Picture Salt Typhoon vibes—already spied UK PM aides' phones under Johnson, Truss, Sunak—now eyeing US critical infra for crisis pre-positioning. Defend hard: segment networks, EDR everywhere, or we're handing Xi the keys.
Witty tip: Treat every RAR like a Trojan horse—quarantine first, or join the compromised club. Stay vigilant, listeners!
Thanks for tuning in—subscribe for more cyber spice. This has been a Quiet Please production, for more check out quietplease.ai.
For more http://www.quietplease.ai
Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOta
This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI