IT news

Proactive Preparation and Hardening Against Destructive Attacks: 2026 Edition

Written by: Matthew McWhirt, Bhavesh Dhake, Emilio Oropeza, Gautam Krishnan, Stuart Carrera, Greg Blaum, Michael Rudden UPDATE (March 13): Added guidance around abuse or misuse of endpoint / MDM platforms. Background Threat actors leverage destructive malware to destroy data, eliminate evidence of malicious activity, or manipulate systems in a way that renders them inoperable. Destructive cyberattacks can be a powerful means to achieve strategic or tactical objectives; however, the risk of repri

Look What You Made Us Patch: 2025 Zero-Days in Review

Written by: Casey Charrier, James Sadowski, Zander Work, Clement Lecigne, Benoît Sevens, Fred Plan Executive Summary Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) tracked 90 zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in-the-wild in 2025. Although that volume of zero-days is lower than the record high observed in 2023 (100), it is higher than 2024’s count (78) and remained within the 60–100 range established over the previous four years, indicating a trend toward stabilization at these levels. In 2025, we cont

On the Effectiveness of Mutational Grammar Fuzzing

Mutational grammar fuzzing is a fuzzing technique in which the fuzzer uses a predefined grammar that describes the structure of the samples. When a sample gets mutated, the mutations happen in such a way that any resulting samples still adhere to the grammar rules, thus the structure of the samples gets maintained by the mutation process. In case of coverage-guided grammar fuzzing, if the resulting sample (after the mutation) triggers previously unseen code coverage, this sample is saved to the

Federal Administrative Court dismisses BfDI's lawsuit

Ruling makes it more difficult for the BND to monitor data protection law

Coruna: The Mysterious Journey of a Powerful iOS Exploit Kit

Introduction Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) has identified a new and powerful exploit kit targeting Apple iPhone models running iOS version 13.0 (released in September 2019) up to version 17.2.1 (released in December 2023). The exploit kit, named “Coruna” by its developers, contained five full iOS exploit chains and a total of 23 exploits. The core technical value of this exploit kit lies in its comprehensive collection of iOS exploits, with the most advanced ones using non-public explo

A Deep Dive into the GetProcessHandleFromHwnd API

In my previous blog post I mentioned the GetProcessHandleFromHwnd API. This was an API I didn’t know existed until I found a publicly disclosed UAC bypass using the Quick Assist UI Access application. This API looked interesting so I thought I should take a closer look. I typically start by reading the documentation for an API I don’t know about, assuming it’s documented at all. It can give you an idea of how long the API has existed as well as its security properties. The documentation’s remark

Exposing the Undercurrent: Disrupting the GRIDTIDE Global Cyber Espionage Campaign

Introduction Last week, Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG), Mandiant, and partners took action to disrupt a global espionage campaign targeting telecommunications and government organizations in dozens of nations across four continents. The threat actor, UNC2814, is a suspected People's Republic of China (PRC)-nexus cyber espionage group that GTIG has tracked since 2017. This prolific, elusive actor has a long history of targeting international governments and global telecommunications orga

From BRICKSTORM to GRIMBOLT: UNC6201 Exploiting a Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines Zero-Day

Written by: Peter Ukhanov, Daniel Sislo, Nick Harbour, John Scarbrough, Fernando Tomlinson, Jr., Rich Reece Introduction Mandiant and Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) have identified the zero-day exploitation of a high-risk vulnerability in Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines, tracked as CVE-2026-22769, with a CVSSv3.1 score of 10.0. Analysis of incident response engagements revealed that UNC6201, a suspected PRC-nexus threat cluster, has exploited this flaw since at least mid-2024 to

BfDI once again recognized as an innovative supervisory authority

The Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI) has been awarded the “Most Innovative Regulator Award” as part of the “European Blockchain Sandbox” for the second time.

Version 1.3: Ivanti EPMM - Active attacks via zero-day vulnerabilities observed

GTIG AI Threat Tracker: Distillation, Experimentation, and (Continued) Integration of AI for Adversarial Use

Introduction In the final quarter of 2025, Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) observed threat actors increasingly integrating artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate the attack lifecycle, achieving productivity gains in reconnaissance, social engineering, and malware development. This report serves as an update to our November 2025 findings regarding the advances in threat actor usage of AI tools. By identifying these early indicators and offensive proofs of concept, GTIG aims to arm def

Bypassing Administrator Protection by Abusing UI Access

In my last blog post I introduced the new Windows feature, Administrator Protection and how it aimed to create a secure boundary for UAC where one didn’t exist. I described one of the ways I was able to bypass the feature before it was released. In total I found 9 bypasses during my research that have now all been fixed. In this blog post I wanted to describe the root cause of 5 of those 9 issues, specifically the implementation of UI Access, how this has been a long standing problem with UAC th

Beyond the Battlefield: Threats to the Defense Industrial Base

Introduction In modern warfare, the front lines are no longer confined to the battlefield; they extend directly into the servers and supply chains of the industry that safeguards the nation. Today, the defense sector faces a relentless barrage of cyber operations conducted by state-sponsored actors and criminal groups alike. In recent years, Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) has observed several distinct areas of focus in adversarial targeting of the defense industrial base (DIB). While no

UNC1069 Targets Cryptocurrency Sector with New Tooling and AI-Enabled Social Engineering

Written by: Ross Inman, Adrian Hernandez Introduction North Korean threat actors continue to evolve their tradecraft to target the cryptocurrency and decentralized finance (DeFi) verticals. Mandiant recently investigated an intrusion targeting a FinTech entity within this sector, attributed to UNC1069, a financially motivated threat actor active since at least 2018. This investigation revealed a tailored intrusion resulting in the deployment of seven unique malware families, including a new set

Joint security notice (BfV and BSI) - Phishing via messenger services

Second BfDI think tank on the Data Act

The BfDI exchanged ideas with experts on the interaction between the GDPR and the Data Act.

A day as a data protection officer – BfDI takes part in Girls' Day

For the third time, our authority is offering places at Girls' Day. Girls aged 12 and over can gain insights into our technical areas and tasks on April 23, 2026.

Breaking the Sound Barrier, Part II: Exploiting CVE-2024-54529

In the first part of this series, I detailed my journey into macOS security research, which led to the discovery of a type confusion vulnerability (CVE-2024-54529) and a double-free vulnerability (CVE-2025-31235) in the coreaudiod system daemon through a process I call knowledge-driven fuzzing. While the first post focused on the process of finding the vulnerabilities, this post dives into the intricate process of exploiting the type confusion vulnerability. I’ll explain the technical details of

Version 1.2: Fortinet - Zero-day vulnerability endangers Fortinet solutions with SAML SSO

BfDI launches “ReguLab” sandbox: More clarity in data protection

At the beginning of 2026, the new “ReguLab” of the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI) will begin exchanging ideas with potential participants.

Bypassing Windows Administrator Protection

A headline feature introduced in the latest release of Windows 11, 25H2 is Administrator Protection. The goal of this feature is to replace User Account Control (UAC) with a more robust and importantly, securable system to allow a local user to access administrator privileges only when necessary. This blog post will give a brief overview of the new feature, how it works and how it’s different from UAC. I’ll then describe some of the security research I undertook while it was in the insider previ

Version 1.1: Cisco Secure Email solutions are under active attack

A 0-click exploit chain for the Pixel 9 Part 3: Where do we go from here?

While our previous two blog posts provided technical recommendations for increasing the effort required by attackers to develop 0-click exploit chains, our experience finding, reporting and exploiting these vulnerabilities highlighted some broader issues in the Android ecosystem. This post describes the problems we encountered and recommendations for improvement. Audio Attack Surface The Dolby UDC is part of the 0-click attack surface of most Android devices because of audio transcription in the

A 0-click exploit chain for the Pixel 9 Part 2: Cracking the Sandbox with a Big Wave

With the advent of a potential Dolby Unified Decoder RCE exploit, it seemed prudent to see what kind of Linux kernel drivers might be accessible from the resulting userland context, the mediacodec context. As per the AOSP documentation, the mediacodec SELinux context is intended to be a constrained (a.k.a sandboxed) context where non-secure software decoders are utilized. Nevertheless, using my DriverCartographer tool, I discovered an interesting device driver, /dev/bigwave that was accessible f

A 0-click exploit chain for the Pixel 9 Part 1: Decoding Dolby

Over the past few years, several AI-powered features have been added to mobile phones that allow users to better search and understand their messages. One effect of this change is increased 0-click attack surface, as efficient analysis often requires message media to be decoded before the message is opened by the user. One such feature is audio transcription. Incoming SMS and RCS audio attachments received by Google Messages are now automatically decoded with no user interaction. As a result, au

Version 1.0: MongoDB - Actively exploited vulnerability allows disclosure of sensitive data

Artificial intelligence: think about data protection right from the start

BfDI publishes handout on data protection and AI in authorities

Version 1.0: WatchGuard Firebox - Active exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability

Electronic patient record: Data protection strengthens trust and use

A current survey by the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI) shows: 95 percent of those with statutory health insurance are aware of the electronic patient file (ePA). However, it is currently only being used actively by a few people - particularly younger people under 40 and people with a higher level of education.

Welcome to the new Project Zero Blog

While on Project Zero, we aim for our research to be leading-edge, our blog design was … not so much. We welcome readers to our shiny new blog! For the occasion, we asked members of Project Zero to dust off old blog posts that never quite saw the light of day. And while we wish we could say the techniques they cover are no longer relevant, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to protect users against zero days. Our new blog will continue to shine a light on the capabilities of atta