CyberXero Uses Claude Code in Campaign That Stole Over 628,000 Ukrainian Records
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a two-pronged artificial intelligence (AI)-augmented initial access campaign targeting WordPress sites, e-commerce platforms, and critical infrastructure entities in Ukraine.
The campaign is estimated to have resulted in confirmed exfiltration from four Ukrainian organizations, leading to the harvesting of more than 628,000 records tied to Ukrainian individuals.
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a two-pronged artificial intelligence (AI)-augmented initial access campaign targeting WordPress sites, e-commerce platforms, and critical infrastructure entities in Ukraine.
Palo Alto also released fixed versions that customers were urged to deploy to mitigate the threat, saying it had “become aware of limited exploit attempts on unpatched PAN-OS devices without mitigations applied.” The vulnerability was added to the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's (CISA) Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) list on May 29, with US federal agencies urged to apply remediation by June 1.
The global campaign specifically focuses on known security flaws like wp2shell (CVE-2026-63030 and CVE-2026-60137) and CVE-2026-4815 , an SQL injection vulnerability impacting the Support Board WordPress plugin, to seize control of WordPress sites.
CVE-2026-0257 is an authentication bypass vulnerability in PAN-OS GlobalProtect and Prisma Access that affects several Palo Alto Networks products, including PAN-OS versions 10.2.0, 11.1.0, 11.2.0 and 12.1.0 and two versions of Prisma Access (10.2.0 and 11.2.0).
SOCRadar said it discovered the operation after it identified an exposed open directory hosted at "46.21.250[.]135" that leaked the threat actor's live working directory associated with a Linux workstation, including AI session logs, scripts with plaintext tokens, exploitation toolkits, reconnaissance output, AI agent configurations, and exfiltrated victim data.
The opportunistic campaign aimed at WordPress and e-commerce platforms is designed for access and payment data, while the second campaign is a lot more targeted and geared towards deep reconnaissance and manual exploitation against Ukrainian energy and utilities, including a heating provider in Kharkiv.
The activity, which brings together commodity offensive tools like Cobalt Strike with an AI orchestration layer powered by Anthropic's Claude Code, has been attributed to a Russian-speaking, financially motivated initial access broker codenamed CyberXero .
The cyber threat detection provider warned in a social media advisories posted on October 9 that multiple groups, including the Qilin and Settra ransomware operations, are actively targeting CVE-2026-0257 to establish unauthorized VPN sessions and gain initial access to internal networks.
The attack architecture is based on a set of eight distinct nodes, including the threat actor's Linux workstation, a provisioning server, monetization infrastructure, payload staging servers, and a scanner that's responsible for identifying targets of interest.
What happened
The campaign is estimated to have resulted in confirmed exfiltration from four Ukrainian organizations, leading to the harvesting of more than 628,000 records tied to Ukrainian individuals.
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a two-pronged artificial intelligence (AI)-augmented initial access campaign targeting WordPress sites, e-commerce platforms, and critical infrastructure entities in Ukraine.
What changed
Palo Alto also released fixed versions that customers were urged to deploy to mitigate the threat, saying it had “become aware of limited exploit attempts on unpatched PAN-OS devices without mitigations applied.” The vulnerability was added to the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's (CISA) Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) list on May 29, with US federal agencies urged to apply remediation by June 1.
The global campaign specifically focuses on known security flaws like wp2shell (CVE-2026-63030 and CVE-2026-60137) and CVE-2026-4815 , an SQL injection vulnerability impacting the Support Board WordPress plugin, to seize control of WordPress sites.
Who is affected
CVE-2026-0257 is an authentication bypass vulnerability in PAN-OS GlobalProtect and Prisma Access that affects several Palo Alto Networks products, including PAN-OS versions 10.2.0, 11.1.0, 11.2.0 and 12.1.0 and two versions of Prisma Access (10.2.0 and 11.2.0).
SOCRadar said it discovered the operation after it identified an exposed open directory hosted at "46.21.250[.]135" that leaked the threat actor's live working directory associated with a Linux workstation, including AI session logs, scripts with plaintext tokens, exploitation toolkits, reconnaissance output, AI agent configurations, and exfiltrated victim data.
Why it matters
The opportunistic campaign aimed at WordPress and e-commerce platforms is designed for access and payment data, while the second campaign is a lot more targeted and geared towards deep reconnaissance and manual exploitation against Ukrainian energy and utilities, including a heating provider in Kharkiv.
The activity, which brings together commodity offensive tools like Cobalt Strike with an AI orchestration layer powered by Anthropic's Claude Code, has been attributed to a Russian-speaking, financially motivated initial access broker codenamed CyberXero .
Technical details
The cyber threat detection provider warned in a social media advisories posted on October 9 that multiple groups, including the Qilin and Settra ransomware operations, are actively targeting CVE-2026-0257 to establish unauthorized VPN sessions and gain initial access to internal networks.
The attack architecture is based on a set of eight distinct nodes, including the threat actor's Linux workstation, a provisioning server, monetization infrastructure, payload staging servers, and a scanner that's responsible for identifying targets of interest.
Alternatively, the vulnerability enrichment team at the US National Vulnerability Database (NVD), part of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), allocated the flaw a critical severity rating of 9.1.
Response
CyberXero is said to have deployed AI in two independent stages of the attack lifecycle - To get around model refusals, the threat actor has been observed using context-engineering and session-reset techniques, instructing the agent they were running an "authorized pentest on my own infrastructure." "Model safety controls act on the context of a session, not on the model weights, so a refusal in one session does not carry into the next," SOCRadar explained.
Despite these warnings, some systems appear to remain unpatched, with multiple threat intelligence teams reporting attempted exploitation of CVE-2026-0257 in recent months.
What security teams should do
Organizations running WordPress, Magento, or PrestaShop, or exposing Redis to the internet, are advised to check for rogue WordPress administrators, WSO web shells, and unexpected entries in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on Redis hosts.
Attribution
The Hacker News: Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a two-pronged artificial intelligence (AI)-augmented initial access campaign targeting WordPress sites, e-commerce platforms, and critical infrastructure entities in Ukraine.
Infosecurity Magazine: The cyber threat detection provider warned in a social media advisories posted on October 9 that multiple groups, including the Qilin and Settra ransomware operations, are actively targeting CVE-2026-0257 to establish unauthorized VPN sessions and gain initial access to internal networks.
What to watch next
Watch for new exploitation reports and updated indicators of compromise.
Watch for updated vendor guidance and fixed-version details.