Article
Top Tips to Improve Cybersecurity Today
Arete Analysis
By Kevin Baker
When I work with clients, I mention a good many things they can do to improve their security. Sometimes I’ll advise on an area I think they need to understand about their company. Sometimes I’ll suggest implementing specific security controls. Some things I propose are very important; others are “nice to haves.” And while my recommendations may change based on the attributes of the client company and the skill level of those involved in fighting the good fight, there are always six things I tell every client.
1: Clean up accounts
Clean up the accounts in your Windows domain by eliminating every account that doesn’t have a valid business purpose — and that includes both human identity and service (aka machine identity) accounts. Software on your servers uses service accounts to perform a specific function, often with a high level of privilege.
“Stale” accounts create unneeded risk and only up the chances of attackers succeeding in their mission. If you don’t understand why an account exists, either justify its existence or carefully remove it.
2: Ditch unnecessary data
Understand what sensitive data is for your company and locate every instance of what you deem sensitive across both your corporate and cloud environments. Most companies think they know where sensitive data is because they’ve asked the subject matter experts (SMEs). Nothing against SMEs, but the best practice is to examine and verify the file stores and network.
Rarely have I seen assumed inventory be accurate. What we think we have is usually orders of magnitude less than what is ultimately discovered.
As with stale accounts, stale data and unneeded or unknown copies of data create big risk. When a breach happens, the accumulation of stale data across file servers, public drives, and email clients will only make a bad day that much worse. So, if you don’t need it, get rid of it.
3: Use multifactor authentication
Passwords are no longer enough to guarantee protection and should be considered table stakes. Why? Because billions of passwords have been lost in breaches of high-profile companies, and people are prone to re-using passwords. A lost password in one place usually exposes multiple accounts and locations.
What’s more, supercomputing and artificial intelligence (AI) can eventually crack nearly every password. For this reason, multifactor authentication (MFA) is one of the best ways to protect your identity, your data, and your reputation. It’s well worth the time, effort, and expense to use MFA.
4. Make cybersecurity everyone’s responsibility
Step one in building an information security training program: Set expectations. Companies need to be clear with regards to employee responsibility around use of company systems and data. Though words cannot protect us directly, policies, standards, and guidelines are useful in setting a standard of due care that employees can clearly understand.
While there are many good security-awareness programs and resources available that teach social-engineering resistance and good security practices, they may not be worth the time or investment without a clear mandate from the company stating expectations of behavior and technical conditions.
Set a simple, but powerful policy: “Every employee is responsible for protecting the data entrusted to our company.”
5. Write an incident response plan
It’s an oft repeated phrase because it’s true: Breaches are not a matter of if, but when. So, don’t wait until it’s too late. Write an incident response plan now and don’t be caught flat-footed at a most critical moment.
And remember, security is not solely a technology problem, it’s also a business problem. IT plays a big role and may drive most of the actions during a breach, but they cannot effectively handle response alone. Everyone in the company is a stakeholder and every department should have a representative on the incident response (IR) team. Thus, make sure your plan assigns specific people to respond, including IT, management, and business representatives.
Inter-departmental communication is key to a swift response and should be part of what you practice. For example, who will talk to the news crews out front? Be sure to media-train personnel or have a crisis communication firm on speed dial. In fact, be sure to have all key contacts listed in your IR plan, including those for all related services or vendors. And regardless of how many venders you use, be sure to have clarity on the internal team as to who will coordinate the response and look after your company’s best interests.
Once you write your plan, practice it — again and again. You’ll improve every time, building muscle memory for fast detection and fast reaction to events that help ensure your success, not the bad guy’s. At a minimum, a good response will greatly minimize an event’s impact and, even if not wholly prevented, still add up to thousands of dollars saved.
6. Have a solid backup plan
Make sure you have a solid back up plan that includes offline copies.
Ransomware is a modern plague that’s costing the United States trillions of dollars per year. That money is going to fund organized crime, human trafficking, and terrorism. The bad actors will not stop what they are doing, and they will get around to you eventually.
As technology advanced, the use of backup tapes fell off, replaced by backups made to storage systems, the cloud, or both. If those online copies are protected by a Windows domain password, you will probably lose them. The first thing the threat actors will do is crack all the admin passwords and log into wherever you store those backups and encrypt them. Next, they’ll encrypt your endpoints, laptops and servers, and send a ransom note.
Expect to be attacked and prepare for it, not only by backing up your data, but also by having at least one offline copy of every critical system. An offline copy that cannot be accessed from any network will ensure that even if you are faced with a massive cleanup of encrypted systems, you’ll avoid having to pay a ransom.
Ransoms often cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and may even run into the millions, so the cost of a solid disaster recovery plan, including offline copies, is peanuts by comparison.
Don’t make it easy on the bad guy
Like water, cybercriminals often take the path of least resistance. So, move, morph, and make your company a harder target to hit.
Want to see an immediate impact? Implement MFA. Want to harden your security over time? Find out and continue to track where your crown jewels reside.
These six steps are all within reach of every company. Start today, and get it done.
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Ransomware Trends & Data Insights: February 2026
After a slight lull in January, Akira and Qilin returned to dominating ransomware activity in February, collectively accounting for almost half of all engagements that month. The rest of the threat landscape remained relatively diverse, with a mix of persistent threats like INC and PLAY, older groups like Cl0p and LockBit, and newer groups like BravoX and Payouts King. Given current trends, the first quarter of 2026 will likely remain relatively predictable, with the top groups from the second half of 2025 continuing to operate at fairly consistent levels month to month.
Figure 1. Activity from the top 5 threat groups in February 2026
Throughout the month of February, analysts at Arete identified several trends behind the threat actors perpetrating cybercrime activities:
In February, Arete observed Qilin actively targeting WatchGuard Firebox devices, especially those vulnerable to CVE-2025-14733, to gain initial access to victim environments. CVE-2025-14733 is a critical vulnerability in WatchGuard Fireware OS that allows a remote, unauthenticated threat actor to execute arbitrary code. In addition to upgrading WatchGuard devices to the latest Firebox OS version, which patches the bug, administrators are urged to rotate all shared secrets on affected devices that may have been compromised and may be used in future campaigns.
Reports from February suggest that threat actors are increasingly exploring AI-enabled tools and services to scale malicious activities, demonstrating how generative AI is being integrated into both espionage and financially motivated threat operations. The Google Threat Intelligence Group indicated that state-backed threat actors are leveraging Google’s Gemini AI as a force multiplier to support all stages of the cyberattack lifecycle, from reconnaissance to post-compromise operations. Separate reporting from Amazon Threat Intelligence identified a threat actor leveraging commercially available generative AI services to conduct a large-scale campaign against FortiGate firewalls, gaining access through weak or reused credentials protected only by single-factor authentication.
The Interlock ransomware group recently introduced a custom process-termination utility called “Hotta Killer,” designed to disable endpoint detection and response solutions during active intrusions. This tool exploits a zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2025-61155) in a gaming anti-cheat driver, marking a significant adaptation in the group’s operations against security tools like FortiEDR. Arete is actively monitoring this activity, which highlights the growing trend of Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) attacks, in which threat actors exploit legitimate, signed drivers to bypass and disable endpoint security controls.
Sources
Arete Internal
Article
ClickFix Campaign Delivers Custom RAT
Security researchers identified a sophisticated evolution of the ClickFix campaign that aims to compromise legitimate websites before delivering a five-stage malware chain, culminating in the deployment of MIMICRAT. MIMICRAT is a custom remote access trojan (RAT) written in the C/C++ programming language that offers various capabilities early in the attack lifecycle. The attack begins with victims visiting compromised websites, where JavaScript plugins load a fake Cloudflare verification that tricks users into executing a malicious PowerShell script, further displaying the prominence and effectiveness of ClickFix and its user interaction techniques.
Not Your Average RAT
MIMICRAT displays above-average defense evasion and sophistication, including:
A five-stage PowerShell sequence beginning with Event Tracing for Windows and Anti-Malware Scan Interface bypasses, which are commonly used in red teaming for evading detection by EDR and AV toolsets.
The malware later uses a lightweight scripting language that is scripted into memory, allowing malicious actions without files that could easily be detected by an EDR tool.
MIMICRAT uses malleable Command and Control profiles, allowing for a constantly changing communication infrastructure.
The campaign uses legitimate compromised infrastructure, rather than attacker-owned tools, and is prepped to use 17 different languages, which increases global reach and defense evasion.
Analyst Comments
The ClickFix social engineering technique remains an effective means for threat actors to obtain compromised credentials and initial access to victim environments, enabling them to deploy first-stage malware. Coupled with the sophisticated MIMICRAT RAT, the effectiveness of this campaign could increase. Arete will continue monitoring for changes to the ClickFix techniques, the deployment of MIMICRAT in other campaigns, and other pertinent information relating to the ongoing campaign.
Sources
MIMICRAT: ClickFix Campaign Delivers Custom RAT via Compromised Legitimate Websites
Article
Threat Actors Leveraging Gemini AI for All Attack Stages
State-backed threat actors are leveraging Google’s Gemini AI as a force multiplier to support all stages of the cyberattack lifecycle, from reconnaissance to post-compromise operations. According to the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG), threat actors linked to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Iran, North Korea, and other unattributed groups have misused Gemini to accelerate target profiling, synthesize open-source intelligence, identify official email addresses, map organizational structures, generate tailored phishing lures, translate content, conduct vulnerability testing, support coding tasks, and troubleshoot malware development. Cybercriminals are increasingly exploring AI-enabled tools and services to scale malicious activities, including social engineering campaigns such as ClickFix, demonstrating how generative AI is being integrated into both espionage and financially motivated threat operations.
What’s Notable and Unique
Threat actors are leveraging Gemini beyond basic reconnaissance, using it to generate polished, culturally nuanced phishing lures and sustain convincing multi-turn social engineering conversations that minimize traditional red flags.
In addition, threat actors rely on Gemini for vulnerability research, malware debugging, code generation, command-and-control development, and technical troubleshooting, with PRC groups emphasizing automation and vulnerability analysis, Iranian actors focusing on social engineering and malware development, and North Korean actors prioritizing high-fidelity target profiling.
Beyond direct operational support, adversaries have abused public generative AI platforms to host deceptive ClickFix instructions, tricking users into pasting malicious commands that deliver macOS variants of ATOMIC Stealer.
AI is also being integrated directly into malware development workflows, as seen with CoinBait’s AI-assisted phishing kit capabilities and HonestCue’s use of the Gemini API to dynamically generate and execute in-memory C# payloads.
Underground forums show strong demand for AI-powered offensive tools, with offerings like Xanthorox falsely marketed as custom AI but actually built on third-party commercial models integrated through open-source frameworks such as Crush, Hexstrike AI, LibreChat-AI, and Open WebUI, including Gemini.
Analyst Comments
The increasing misuse of generative AI platforms like Gemini highlights a rapidly evolving threat landscape in which state-backed and financially motivated actors leverage AI as a force multiplier for reconnaissance, phishing, malware development, and post-compromise operations. At the same time, large-scale model extraction attempts and API abuse demonstrate emerging risks to AI service integrity, intellectual property, and the broader AI-as-a-Service ecosystem. While these developments underscore the scalability and sophistication of AI-enabled threats, continued enforcement actions, strengthened safeguards, and proactive security testing by providers reflect ongoing efforts to mitigate abuse and adapt defenses in response to increasingly AI-driven adversaries.
Sources
GTIG AI Threat Tracker: Distillation, Experimentation, and (Continued) Integration of AI for Adversarial Use
Article
2025 VMware ESXi Vulnerability Exploited by Ransomware Groups
Ransomware groups are actively exploiting CVE‑2025‑22225, a VMware ESXi arbitrary write vulnerability that allows attackers to escape the VMX sandbox and gain kernel‑level access to the hypervisor. Although VMware (Broadcom) patched this flaw in March 2025, threat actors had already exploited it in the wild, and CISA recently confirmed that threat actors are exploiting CVE‑2025‑22225 in active campaigns.
What’s Notable and Unique
Chinese‑speaking threat actors abused this vulnerability at least a year before disclosure, via a compromised SonicWall VPN chain.
Threat researchers have observed sophisticated exploit toolkits, possibly developed well before public disclosure, that chain this bug with others to achieve full VM escape. Evidence points to targeted activity, including exploitation via compromised VPN appliances and automated orchestrators.
Attackers with VMX level privileges can trigger a kernel write, break out of the sandbox, and compromise the ESXi host. Intrusions observed in December 2025 showed lateral movement, domain admin abuse, firewall rule manipulation, and staging of data for exfiltration.
CISA has now added CVE-2025-22225 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, underscoring ongoing use by ransomware attackers.
Analyst Comments
Compromise of ESXi hypervisors significantly amplifies operational impact, allowing access to and potential encryption of dozens of VMs simultaneously. Organizations running ESXi 7.x and 8.x remain at high risk if patches and mitigations have not been applied. Therefore, clients are recommended to apply VMware patches from VMSA‑2025‑0004 across all ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion deployments. Enterprises are advised to assess their setups in order to reduce risk, as protecting publicly accessible management interfaces is a fundamental security best practice.
Sources
CVE-2025-22225 in VMware ESXi now used in active ransomware attacks
The Great VM Escape: ESXi Exploitation in the Wild
VMSA-205-004: VMware ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion updates address multiple vulnerabilities (CVE-205-22224, CVE-2025-22225, CVE-2025-22226)