This is your Red Alert: China's Daily Cyber Moves podcast.
Hey listeners, it's Ting here, your go-to gal for all things China cyber chaos—witty, wired, and watching the hackers like a hawk on Red Bull. Buckle up, because the past few days have been a non-stop ping-pong of PRC probes into US turf, and today, February 18, 2026, Dragos just dropped their annual threat report that's got my OT alarms blaring.
Flash back to early 2025: Volt Typhoon's cheeky cousin, Voltzite—Dragos calls them highly correlated with that Beijing-backed beast the US gov's been yelling about—started burrowing deeper into US energy grids. We're talking electric utilities, oil pipelines, and gas ops across the States. They hit Sierra Wireless AirLink devices as entry points, slipping into OT networks like ghosts in the machine. Once inside, they exfiltrated sensor data, snagged engineering workstation configs, and even grabbed alarm files showing how to slam the brakes on operations. In another op, they unleashed the JDY botnet to scan IP ranges and VPNs in energy, oil, gas, and defense sectors—prepping for data heists, Dragos assesses with moderate confidence. Robert M. Lee, Dragos CEO, nailed it in their briefing: these creeps aren't just peeking; they're embedding in the control loops for future blackouts.
But wait, there's more fresh heat. Mandiant and Google Threat Intelligence Group revealed today that UNC6201—a PRC-nexus crew overlapping with Silk Typhoon, aka UNC5221—has been exploiting a zero-day in Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines since mid-2024. That's CVE-2026-22769, a perfect 10/10 CVSS scorcher from a hardcoded admin password in Apache Tomcat. It grants root access, no auth needed. They've been dropping Brickstorm backdoors for lateral moves, then swapping in the stealthier Grimbolt—machine code that dodges static analysis—plus Slaystyle webshells. CISA added it to their KEV catalog, and just last week, CISA, NSA, and Canada's cyber center pushed new IOCs. Dozens of US orgs hit, dwelling over 400 days undetected, pivoting via "Ghost NICs" in VMware and iptables tricks. Initial access? Likely edge appliances like VPNs.
Timeline's brutal: Mid-2024 Dell exploits kick off; 2025 sees Voltzite ramp up in utilities while three new OT threat groups join the party, per Dragos, totaling 11 active last year. Escalation? If tensions spike—say, Taiwan Strait drama—these footholds could flip to wipers or disruptions, turning grids dark like Poland's near-miss in December 2025 from Russia's Electrum crew.
Defensive playbook, listeners: Patch Dell RecoverPoint NOW—it's fixed since 2024. Hunt for Brickstorm/Grimbolt IOCs via CISA alerts. Segment OT networks, ditch default creds on edge gear, deploy EDR where you can, and monitor AirLink routers religiously. FCC's yelling at telcos too—ransomware's up fourfold since 2021.
Stay vigilant, patch like your power depends on it—because it does.
Thanks for tuning in, listeners—subscribe for more cyber spice! This has been a Quiet Please production, for more check out quietplease.ai.
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