ARMORY CASTLE / Warp Panda (formerly UNC5221): BeyondTrust Remote Support zero-day and VMware ESX logging zero-day
Google GTIG / Mandiant (16 Oct): CVE-2026-102764, an unauthenticated arbitrary file upload in BeyondTrust Remote Support up to 26.2.3, exploited as a...
- Disclosed
What happened
- Google GTIG / Mandiant (16 Oct): CVE-2026-102764, an unauthenticated arbitrary file upload in BeyondTrust Remote Support up to 26.2.3, exploited as a zero-day from late August 2026. BeyondTrust patched (BT26-05) on 8 Oct, SaaS tenants by 9 Oct, disclosed 15 Oct.
- Techniques (GTIG): SAWFLY PHP webshell (mangoapi.php), SUID copy of /bin/sh as /usr/bin/dbus-authd, credential dump via the native bt-secrets CLI, NOPASSWD sudoers persistence surviving reboot, BARECLAW SOCKS5-over-WebSocket tunnel exposed through an edited haproxy.conf, heavy log deletion.
- Separately (THN, 29 Oct, citing CrowdStrike): Warp Panda exploited VMware ESX CVE-2026-41709 (insufficient logging, CVSS 2.7, fixed July 2026, CISA KEV 28 Oct) in early 2026 to hide admin actions, mainly against the US legal sector, alongside BRICKSTORM on vCenter.
- Attribution: GTIG calls ARMORY CASTLE a suspected PRC-nexus espionage actor. THN reports CrowdStrike’s Warp Panda name and lists ARMORY CASTLE / UNC5221 as aliases; the alias mapping is THN’s, not checked against CrowdStrike’s report.
Live scores
Live scores
CVE-2026-41709- EPSS
- 0.007
low predicted chance of attack - VEDAS
- 0.513
some exploit evidence - On CISA KEV
- Yes, since 2026-10-28
- Detection rule
- None yet
Thin horizontal line: the “likely” (EPSS 0.10) or “strong” (VEDAS 0.90) threshold. Shaded “no data” areas are periods when cve-scores did not publish. The vertical line is the day CISA added it to its exploited list.
Live scores
CVE-2026-102764- EPSS
- 0.190
likely to be attacked soon - VEDAS
- 0.555
some exploit evidence - On CISA KEV
- Yes, since 2026-10-16
- Detection rule
- None yet
Thin horizontal line: the “likely” (EPSS 0.10) or “strong” (VEDAS 0.90) threshold. Shaded “no data” areas are periods when cve-scores did not publish.
Sources
- https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/armory-castle-exploits-beyondtrust/
- https://thehackernews.com/2026/10/china-linked-hackers-exploited-vmware.html
This is a brief: a short, sourced summary from our incident tracking. Full advisories add commands to check whether you are affected.