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- Cockpits, Credentials, and Copilot's Loose Lips
Cockpits, Credentials, and Copilot's Loose Lips
Airlines phished, edge devices breached, and AI quietly leaking secrets.
⏱️ ≈ 6 minute read
💡 “If you're not paying for the product, you are the product—even for your data’s safety.”
📬 This Week’s Clickables
📌 Big News – Scattered Spider hits airlines & Ivanti edge‑device attacks
🚨 Can’t Miss – AI phishing kits, Iranian smear ops, and a July 4th bomb hoax
🤖 AI in Cyber – Anthropic RCE, Langflow botnets, EchoLeak redux, and secure AI blueprints
🧪 Strange Cyber Story – The fireworks are a distraction—so are you
🚨 Big Stories
🕷️ Scattered Spider Targets North American Airlines
The Intro: Social engineering experts are shifting from casinos to cockpits—and airlines are vulnerable.
What Happened: FBI alerts confirm Scattered Spider has been targeting airline help desks & IT systems via voice‑based phishing—reports include WestJet, Hawaiian, and now Qantas. Attackers impersonate IT staff to reset MFA and gain access to core systems.
Why It’s Important: Airlines rely on real-time systems and vendor support—compromise here risks flight delays, data theft, or extortion. Phishing attacks timed during busy travel weekends make detection and response harder.
The Other Side: Though no large-scale disruption reported, the move signals a dangerous sector shift. Law enforcement notes that Scattered Spider is rapidly adapting its playbook across verticals.
The Takeaway: Enforce callback verification before granting MFA resets or remote access. Create security prompts unique to your environment.
TL;DR: From casinos to cockpits: voice phishing is now airborne.
More Reading:
🇨🇳 China-Linked “Houken” Exploits Ivanti Zero-Days in French Infrastructure
The intro: Edge appliances turned espionage gateway—France’s infrastructure under attack.
What happened: The Houken threat group (linked to UNC5174) exploited three Ivanti Cloud Appliance zero-days to infiltrate telecom, financial, and government networks in France. These flaws enabled unauthenticated access and command execution at the network perimeter.
Why it’s important: These systems often sit at network perimeters—compromise enables deep internal access. Ivanti appliances are commonly deployed across industries, making this a wake-up call for segmentation and patch hygiene.
The other side: French authorities restored systems swiftly, but other countries using Ivanti may still be at risk. CISA also issued guidance warning U.S. orgs to assess exposure.
The takeaway: Patch Ivanti devices immediately and monitor edge traffic for lateral movement. Assume exposed devices were already scanned or touched.
TL;DR: Edge device compromise is no longer fringe—it's frontline espionage.
Related reads:
🔥 Can’t Miss This Week
🛡️ Hackers abuse generative AI tool to create phishing sites in 30 seconds – Threat actors spin up phishing sites via v0 AI, including Okta clones. Takeaway: Move toward phishing-resistant auth and inspect embedded links.
🇮🇷 Iranian APT Plans Email-Based Smear Campaign Ahead of U.S. Election – FBI/CISA warn that Iran-linked actors are preparing to leak 100GB of sensitive emails tied to political figures. Takeaway: Monitor domains for politically motivated info-ops and prep pre-breach comms playbooks.
💥 Jaipur Airport Bomb Threat Hoax Sent via Email – A fake bomb threat sent via email triggered lockdown. Takeaway: Coordinate cyber + physical threat playbooks and investigate threat vectors end-to-end.
🤖 AI in Cyber
🛠️ Critical RCE in Anthropic’s MCP Inspector tool – CVE-2025-49596 lets attackers execute code via a flaw in Anthropic’s dev tool. Takeaway: Treat AI IDEs and internal tools like production assets—patch quickly.
🤖 Flodrix botnet exploits Langflow AI RCE – Botnet abuses Langflow to launch DDoS attacks. Takeaway: Restrict open-source AI platforms from public internet exposure.
🔒 New Cyberscoop blueprint for secure AI adoption – Deloitte and DarkReading issue a governance guide for enterprise AI. Takeaway: Follow emerging best practices for managing LLM access, monitoring, and incident response.
⚠️ EchoLeak hits again: detailed breakdown – Follow-up shows how Copilot RAG misconfigurations can silently expose data. Takeaway: Sandbox AI agents, minimize RAG reach, and log everything.
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🧟♂️ Strange Cyber
🎆 The Fireworks Are a Distraction—So Are You
Intro:
As Americans fire up grills and prep fireworks, attackers are prepping payloads—and they’re more likely to succeed when your team is off the clock.
What Happened:
A growing body of research from Cybereason, Darktrace, and IBM has confirmed a pattern: cyberattacks surge by 30–44% during holidays and long weekends, with July 4th being one of the most exploited. From ransomware deployment to phishing campaigns, attackers time their activity for peak distraction—when IR teams are skeleton-crewed and patch windows get deferred.
Why It’s Important:
Holiday attacks aren’t theoretical. REvil hit Kaseya on July 2, 2021, disrupting thousands. Healthcare providers, logistics firms, and even casinos have all seen holiday-timed intrusions that left them scrambling to respond during downtime.
The Other Side:
Some argue the attacks would’ve happened anyway—but security leaders agree: detection latency increases, response coordination drops, and dwell time lengthens over holidays.
The Takeaway:
Treat holiday coverage like a critical control—automated detection, extended on-call rotations, and fast triage escalation can cut response times even when the lights are low.
TL;DR:
Hackers love the 4th of July—because you’re watching fireworks, and they’re lighting fuses.
Further Reading:
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