CyberWire Daily - Too many flaws, not enough time.

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

NIST struggles with an NVD backlog. Cisco and Splunk ship critical patches. Researchers flag a systemic flaw in Anthropic’s MCP. ShinyHunters leak 13.5 million McGraw Hill accounts. Cargo theft goes cyber. A Tennessee hospital breach hits 337,000 patients. Two Americans are sentenced in a North Korean fake-IT-worker scheme. Our guest is Rob Allen, Chief Product Officer at ThreatLocker, describing security gaps addressed by zero trust. OpenAI lets security teams take off the training wheels.  Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our daily intelligence roundup, Daily Briefing, and you’ll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow CyberWire Daily on LinkedIn. CyberWire Guest On today’s Industry Voices segment we are joined by Rob Allen, Chief Product Officer at ThreatLocker, security gaps addressed by zero trust. If you enjoyed this conversation check out the full interview here. Selected Reading NIST Drops NVD Enrichment for Pre-March 2026 Vulnerabilities (Infosecurity Magazine) Cisco says critical Webex Services flaw requires customer action (Bleeping Computer) Splunk Enterprise Update Patches Code Execution Vulnerability (SecurityWeek) Systemic Flaw in MCP Protocol Could Expose 150 Million Downloads (Infosecurity Magazine) Data breach at edtech giant McGraw Hill affects 13.5 million accounts (Bleeping Computer) Freight Hacker Wields Code-Signing Service to Evade Defenses (GovInfo Security) Data Breach at Tennessee Hospital Affects 337,000 (SecurityWeek) US nationals behind DPRK IT worker 'laptop farm' sent to prison (Bleeping Computer) OpenAI Launches GPT-5.4 Cyber And It's Built Specifically for Defenders (TechGlow) Share your feedback. What do you think about CyberWire Daily? Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by completing our brief listener survey. Thank you for helping us continue to improve our show. Want to hear your company in the show? N2K CyberWire helps you reach the industry’s most influential leaders and operators, while building visibility, authority, and connectivity across the cybersecurity community. Learn more at sponsor.thecyberwire.com. The CyberWire is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Cyberwire Network, powered by N2K. Today's sponsor, Rapid 7, has an irresistible invitation for you SISOs and security practitioners out there. A free, two-day virtual summit, the subject, preemptive security. Join the Global Cybersecurity Summit on May 12th and 13th from wherever you like. A-list speakers will show you how organizations are disrupting attacks before they can blow towards. your day. You'll see how exposure management, MDR, and AI together let you

make the decisive move. Registration is open at Rapid 7.brighttalk.com. NIST struggles with an NVD backlog. Cisco and Splunk ship critical patches. Researchers flag a systemic flaw in Anthropics MCP. Shiny hunters

leak 13 and a half million McGraw Hill accounts. Cargo theft goes cyber. A Tennessee hospital breach hits over 300,000 patients. Two Americans are sentenced in a North Korean fake IT worker scheme. Our guest is Rob Allen, chief product officer at Threat Locker, describing security gaps addressed by zero trust. And OpenAI lets security teams take off the training wheels. It's Thursday, April 16, 26. I'm Dave Bittner, and this is your Cyberwire Intel briefing. Thanks for joining us here today it is great as always to have you with us. The U.S. National Vulnerability Database, the NVD,

operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST, is shifting to a risk-based prioritization model after a sharp surge in reported vulnerabilities outpaced its processing capacity. CVE submissions rose by 263 percent between 2020 and 2025 and early 20266. reporting is already about one-third higher than the same period last year. Although the NVD enriched nearly 42,000 CVEs in 2025, officials say the backlog continues to grow. Under the new approach, the NVD will stop enriching vulnerabilities reported before March 1st of this year, unless specifically requested. Priority will go to vulnerabilities affecting U.S. federal systems, software identified as critical under Executive Order 14,028, and entries on SISA's known-exploited

vulnerability list. Other CVEs will still be listed but marked not scheduled. The NVD will also reduce duplicate severity scoring and limit re-analysis of modified CVEs, focusing resources on high-impact risks as vulnerability discovery accelerates, partly driven by AI-based tools. Cisco has released patches for four critical vulnerabilities affecting its WebEx services platform and identity services engine,

including a high-risk single-sign-on flaw. The WebEx issue stemmed from improper certificate validation in Control Hub integration and could allow unauthenticated remote attackers to impersonate users and access legitimate services. Although Cisco fixed, the flaw server side, customers using SSO must upload a new SAML certificate to prevent service disruption. Cisco also addressed three critical ISE vulnerabilities that could allow attackers with

administrative credentials to execute arbitrary operating system commands. In addition, 10 medium severity issues were patched, including flaws enabling authentication bypass, privilege escalation, and denial of service conditions. Cisco said it has no evidence of active exploitation so far. Splunk has released security updates addressing vulnerabilities in Splunk Enterprise, cloud platform, MCP server, and several third-party components. A high-severity flaw could allow low-privileged users to upload malicious files and achieve remote code execution due to improper handling of temporary files.

Another high severity issue exposed session and authorization tokens in clear text under limited access conditions. Splunk also patched two medium severity issues affecting username formatting and data model settings. No active exploitation has been reported. Users are urged to upgrade to supported fixed versions. Security researchers at OX Security have identified a critical systemic systemic, vulnerability in Anthropics' open-source model context protocol that could enable arbitrary command execution across affected systems. The issue stems from the protocol's STDIO interface, which executes commands even if a server process fails to start, potentially exposing sensitive

data, API keys, databases, and chat histories. Researchers say the behavior is embedded in MCP software development kits across multiple programming languages and may affect over 200 open source projects and up to 200,000 instances. Anthropic reportedly described the behavior as expected and placed responsibility for sanitization on developers. OX security issued more than 30 disclosures to affected projects. Experts warn organizations using MCP should treat the issue as a serious supply chain risk. The Shiny Hunter's extortion group has leaked data linked to 13.5 million McGraw-Hill user accounts after exploiting a misconfiguration in the company's Salesforce environment earlier this month. McGraw-Hill confirmed unauthorized access to a limited data set from a Salesforce-hosted

web page, but said its Salesforce accounts, courseware, customer databases, and internal systems were not affected. According to Have I Been Poned, more than 100 gigabytes of leaked files include email addresses, and in some cases, names, phone numbers, and physical addresses. The attackers had previously claimed to steal up to 45 million records and threatened to release them unless a ransom was paid. The exposed data could enable spearfishing targeting customers. Shiny hunters also reportedly leaked separate data from Rockstar Games' snowflake environment. Cybercriminal groups are increasingly targeting transportation and logistics firms with malware campaigns designed to enable cargo theft through credential compromise and remote system control.

According to ProofPoint, attackers commonly deploy remote monitoring and management tools after fishing victims with malicious visual basic script attachments disguised as broker agreements. These tools allow threat actors to access freight platforms, redirect shipments, and monetize stolen goods. In a recent campaign, researchers observed a small threat group using 13 PowerShell scripts to gather credentials, extract browser data, and search for financial assets, such as PayPal accounts and cryptocurrency wallets. The attackers also installed multiple RMM tools, including screen connect, pulseway, and simple help, emphasizing persistence and redundancy.

Notably, they used a fraudulent code-signing service to disguise malware installers and evade detection. Researchers estimate cargo theft cyberactivity contributes to roughly $35 billion in annual global losses, with multiple threat groups actively targeting the sector. Cookville Regional Medical Center in Tennessee disclosed a ransomware-related data breach, affecting more than 337,000 individuals after attackers accessed and stole files in July of last year. Compromise data may include names, social security numbers,

driver's license details, financial information, and medical records. The Rysita Ransomware Group later listed the data for sale for 10 Bitcoin, then reportedly released it publicly after failing to find a buyer. The hospital said it has no evidence of misuse so far, though identity theft risks remain significant. Two U.S. nationals have been sentenced to prison for helping North Korean remote IT workers fraudulently obtain jobs at more than 100 U.S. companies, including Fortune 500 firms.

Between 2021 and 2024, Kizya Wang and Xinjiang Wang generated over $5 million for the North Korean government by enabling workers to use stolen identities from more than 80 Americans. The scheme involved shell companies, fake websites, financial accounts, and hosting company-issued laptops inside the United States to mask foreign access to corporate networks. Prosecutors said the operation exposed U.S. systems and supported North Korea's weapons programs.

Kaysia Wang received a 108-month sentence, and Zhijing Wang received 92 months. Authorities continue pursuing additional suspects tied to the operation. Coming up after the break, my conversation with Rob Allen from Threat Locker. We're describing security gaps addressed by zero trust. And OpenAI let security teams take off the training wheels. Stay with us. And now a word from our sponsor, Arcova. formerly Morgan Franklin Cyber.

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because no one should navigate complexity alone. Learn why leading global enterprises, surprises trust Arcova at www.arcova.com. That's A.R.C-O-V-A.com. No, it's not your imagination. Risk and regulation really are ramping up, and these days customers expect proof of security before they'll even do business. That's where Vanta comes in. Vanta automates your compliance process and brings compliance, risk, and customer trust together on one AI-powered platform. So whether you're getting ready for a SOC2 or managing an enterprise governance risk and compliance program,

Vanta helps keep you secure and keeps your deals moving. Companies like Ramp and Writers spend 82% less time on audits with Vanta. That means less time chasing paperwork and more time focused on growth. For me, it comes down to this. Over 10,000 companies from startups to large enterprises trust Vanta to help prove their security. Get started at vanta.com slash cyber. Rob Allen is chief product officer at Threat Locker. I caught up with him at the RSAC 2026 conference

for this sponsored industry voices conversation about security gaps addressed by zero trust. So I said, look, how about we'll go looking for RMM tools? We'll see how many different ORM tools are running in an environment. They had seven different remote access tools running in their environment and that's a perfect example of lingering access

because it was like it was logged me in, it was AniDesk, it was go-to, assist, it was, they had Team Viewer running on nearly a quarter of their machines. Now that's as I said a great example of lingering access. So at some point, some third party had said, look I need Team Viewer

to get into your machine to fix a piece of software. It gets installed and it sits there forever as a potential way into that network. Right. So very simply, what we can do with our policies is we can set them based on time. So we can say, look, you need to run team view? That's fine. You can run it for two days.

After which point, you won't be able to run it anymore. So basically, you just expire policies. They don't need to be there forever. We are coming to you from the show floor at RSAC 2026. And I am pleased to have joining me here, Rob Allen, who is the chief product officer at Threat Locker. Rob, welcome back. It's good to see you.

Good to see, Dave. Yeah. I know that Threat Locker has some product announcements, like some new things that you're introducing at the show here. And I want to kind of go through the motivation for those sorts of things. So help me and our audience understand.

I know that Threat Locker has been using or implementing, enabling zero trust at the application level. Yes. But you've taken it to a couple of more levels now. Explain to me what it is and why. Sure. I mean, there's

fundamentally two problems we're trying to solve and that's very often how we get to solutions, how we get to products, is, well, what's the problem we're trying to solve? So the first problem we're trying to solve is VPNs. And VPNs being a really bad idea. And people thinking that VPNs make them safe and make them secure, when realistically having a VPN port open to the internet is just one more port open to the internet, which makes your environment less secure.

I've spoken to so many customers, prospects, unfortunate individuals who have had compromises that have come from a VPN, whether it be compromised credentials, and a lot of cases it's vulnerabilities and firewalls. Fundamentally, as I said, every port you leave open to the internet increases your attack surface in much the same way as every application

that you allow to run in your environment increases your attack surface. So that's the problem we were trying to solve and the solution to it is effectively zero trust network access. So it's the ability to allow people externally access resources internally without having to have a port open to the internet.

What makes this different from a VPN? How is it not just a VPN under a different name? So, I mean, generally speaking, a VPN involves something connecting to something that has, as I said, a port open. This doesn't involve that at all. It's all effectively, all the authentication, all the connections are done under the hood.

It's also done via the Threllocker agent, which is the same agents as providing application control, and network control and all of those other solutions that we already have in place. So yeah, that's the first problem that we're trying to solve. The other problem we're trying to solve is that of fishing and of MFA being good, but maybe not good enough insofar as it is not always effective. Token theft is a perfect example.

I actually did a podcast with somebody the week after, the day after Zero Trust World. I was telling him about this, and I said, well, we had our intent. entire everything compromised through exactly that, through token theft. So, and I mean, I can give you lots of other examples. We had a couple of our salespeople during the summer where they had their Office 365 accounts compromised. Now, fortunately, what happened when they did get compromised is that the attackers did what attackers usually do.

So they set up forwarding rules. So basically, that was something that is a common indicator of compromise. so our MDOR team, and they saw that, were able to jump on it, they were able to lock out the accounts, basically solve that problem. But the question is, what happens if they didn't do all of the things that attackers usually do? We actually did, as an exercise ourselves,

a targeted fishing campaign in the weeks coming up to Zero Trust World. Now, I have to admit, I'm not going to say it was unfair, but it was extremely well done. So we used AI to help us to generate it or to make it. We sent the emails from somebody who these emails would have been sent from, so the person who was organizing Zero Trust World.

And it was basically a, you've got sessions coming up at Zero Trust World, just review the files in the SharePoint, make sure everything is okay. Pretty believable, but also something that anybody really would be able to, I mean, the information in it was pretty obvious. They were all listed as speakers on the website. The person who's organizing it would probably be fairly well known. so it was something that anybody realistically could have done. But when we did that, we had five of our engineers,

so our most senior experienced and knowledgeable technical people internally, fall for it, put in their credentials, gave away their username and password, and also approved an MFA into their account. Wow. Five of our most senior experienced and knowledgeable technical people did that. Now, if it can happen to them, it can happen to anyone.

So again, the problem we're trying to solve there is, well, look, this is still a problem. MFA is good, but is it good enough? It doesn't solve all eventualities. So therefore, we introduce what we call zero trust cloud access, which is not dissimilar to zero trust network access, but fundamentally you're rooting your traffic to the likes of Office 365 or GitHub or Salesforce or whatever the cloud service that you choose to mention through us, through one or two IP addresses.

You can lock those services down to say only these IP addresses can connect. So it doesn't matter if you give your username and password away. It doesn't matter if somebody steals a token. It means that they will not be able to connect because the IP addresses that they will be connecting from are not going to be approved IP addresses. So two problems and two solutions. How do you handle someone's traveling?

They're not where they usually are. Again, it doesn't matter where you are. I mean, re-listen to you. It could be in Timbook 2. As long as you have a device or you have the device that's allowed to connect, you'll be allowed to connect.

It's going to root through us or broker that traffic through us more specifically. Help me understand that element of it, the device versus the identity, because that's an important distinction. It is. And it's actually, it's an interesting part. So the app, and I can show you the app

in the phone right now, it actually incorporates an element of identity in it as well, which is that I need to, in order to connect to the resource, I need to use FaceTime. So it does actually bring that identity aspect into it as well. So I am who I say I am, therefore I'm going to be able to connect with this resource. Let's talk about remote work.

I mean, ever since the pandemic, right? It is as natural, I think, as it ever, as much more than it was so before. How do we secure the folks who are remote on their own home networks? There's a perfectly good example. If you literally walk outside the door here and walk down there, you'll see 100 people sitting operating on laptops. Right. On a public Wi-Fi.

Right. So, and it's something that we already have a solution to, and so far as we've got network control. So network control, it's akin to NAC, basically, but it's probably the easiest network control policy to set up is one that blocks incoming access to things like workstations, laptops, etc. So basically when you're out and about, when you're here, when you go on the network,

you are effectively invisible to everything else that is on that network. I'm not going to say you're unhackable, but if you can't be seen, you can't be hacked. So that's a solution that's already in place to that problem. Plus, as I said, ZTNA and ZZCA, both allow those users,

whether they be at events like this, or at home or in Starbucks or wherever they happen to be, to access the resources that they need to be able to access. And this happens without additional or undue friction, how do you... Completely invisible to the user.

Completely invisible to the user. They don't need to know fundamentally because it all happens under the hood. All the policies are created. We've actually made the policy creation process much easier as well. So it's basically all wizard base. So you say, look, this is the cloud service

I want to allow. These are the users I want to allow access to it and it sets everything up for you. Help me understand and deny by default and why that is such an important element of this. Absolutely. I mean, denied by default is at the core of what we do. I mean, you can argue that both of what I just described to you are fundamentally denied by default. You're blocking access to your cloud services to everything except these people or these IP addresses.

But denied by default is the core of what we do. It is fundamentally what keeps you safe. It is what allows our customers to sleep at night knowing that ransomware isn't going to run, malware isn't going to run, bad things aren't going to happen because they're denying by default. But there is an important sort of part to deny by default or an exception to it which is permit by exception. So deny by default is what's going to keep you safe. Permits by exception is what allows businesses and people to continue to operate

and use the tools that they need to use. It's again, those two things must come together because you can just block everything, but you're going to break your machine because nothing's going to be allowed to run. And blocking everything, believe it or not, is incredibly easy. There's no difficulty to, there's no complexity to it, there's no nuance to it, it's just block everything. Brick your machine and move on. The permit by exception is the hard bit.

That's the tricky part and that's the bit that we spend most of our trying to solve. How do we permit by exception in a frictionless way? Well, let's walk through that. I mean, an organization is embracing this way of operating. Sure. How do they configure everything so that all the things, things that need to talk to each other can do so, as you say, in a frictionless way. Broadly speaking, they deploy an agent.

Okay. That's pretty much it. So what happens under the hood is you deploy an agent into your environment. Look, we've got a very comprehensive platform now, so it's not just one tool. It's actually probably 10 approaching 15 different things now, different components to what we do. Most customers will come to us for application control. That's the thing that they're most interested in at the beginning. Okay.

And then they'll very often figure out the other cool things that we do, and they'll end up sort of scaling up into those as well. But from an application control perspective, fundamentally just deploy an agent, do nothing. Let it learn. Sit back. Okay. Have a coffee.

Speaking of coffee, it's really hard to get a coffee here, by the way. My blood caffeine levels are getting dangerously low. I had to go to, there's one of the boots out there that has a coffee machine, and I end up to the guy who said, look, it's a medical emergency. I may die. Scared my bed. Yeah. I may die if I don't get coffee,

so this is a legitimate medical and emergency. But anyway, sorry, you deploy an agent, you sit back, you do nothing, you wait. What's happening in the background is we're effectively logging everything that's happening on that machine. All reads, writes, copies, moves, executes, all scripts, all executables, all Chrome extensions, edge extensions,

everything, basically that runs or happens on the machine. And what we do with that information during that initial period is we're going to create a picture. We're going to create a set of policies to allow the things that are present to continue to run once a threat lock has been in. secure it. Now, after a period and after we do what we call auto reviews, which are effectively look at all the things that would be denied if threat locker was enabled. So it's those weird

and wonderful pieces of software, things that change constantly. This file, every time it runs, it's different. That kind of stuff will stand out and then we'll have the opportunity to work with customers to create rules to allow those things to continue to operate again once threat lock are secured. But after that initial period, which typically is anywhere between, even for large organizations, is maybe four to eight weeks. Okay. They can then secure based on that policy list. So it means, okay, this is our environment right now. These are all the things that are running. We've created policies to allow these things to continue to run. We're going to lock it down so nothing new can get introduced. Nothing new can run without our approval. And then a lot of

cases people will then start paring back. So they'll go, okay, we're in this position now, but we've got five different remote access tools that are installed and running in our machines. I want to stop four of them from being able to run. So we just go in and we change a policy from permit to deny. That remote access tool now will not be allowed to run. And they do that for lots of different things, for Chrome extensions.

It's a big concern because they are so dangerous and they have access to your passwords, a lot of cases. So we'll say, okay, I only want these Chrome extensions to be allowed to run. So I'm going to turn off or disable all the other ones. So you basically work backwards. I mean, if every environment, was absolutely clean from the start, it would make life so much easier.

But the reality is it's not. So most organizations have, I don't want to call them dirty environments, but dirty environments, complex environments, software that shouldn't be allowed to run, is being allowed to run. So they can work backwards from that to get into a position

where they know nothing that they don't want to be allowed to run is going to be allowed to run. Well, as I said, most of that is done under the hood. It's done. We do the heavy lifting. Well, Rob Allen is Chief Product Officer at Threat Allen. Sorry. Fred Allen.

Threat Allen. That would be cool. But no. Rob Allen is Chief Product Officer at Threat Locker. Rob, thanks so much for joining us. Pleasure, good to see you. Thank you very much. There's a lot more to this conversation than we have time to share here.

So please check out the full unedited interview. You can find a link to that in our show notes. Most environments trust far more than they should, and attackers know it. Threat Locker. solves that by enforcing default deny at the point of execution. With Threat Locker Allow listing, you stop unknown executables cold. With ring fencing, you control how trusted applications behave, and with Threat Locker DAC, Defense Against Configurations, you get real assurance that your environment is free of misconfigurations and clear visibility into whether you meet compliance standards.

Threat Locker is the simplest way to enforce zero-trust principles without the operational pain. It's powerful protection that gives SISO's real visibility, real control, and real peace of mind. Threat Locker make zero trust attainable, even for small security teams. See why thousands of organizations choose Threat Locker to minimize alert fatigue, stop ransomware at the source, and regain control over their environments. Schedule your demo at Threatlocker.com slash N2K today. When it comes to mobile applications, security, good enough, is a risk. A recent survey shows that 72% of organizations reported at

least one mobile application security incident last year, and 92% of responders reported threat levels have increased in the past two years. Guard Square delivers the highest level of security for your mobile apps without compromising performance, time to market, or user experience. Discover how Guard Square provides industry-leading security for your Android and iOS apps at www.gardsquare.com. And finally, for years, cybersecurity defenders have played a familiar game. Attackers need one open door. Defenders need to check every window, vent, and suspicious-looking broom closet. Now, OpenAI says it would like to loan defenders a better flashlight. Enter GPT5.4, Cyber, a specialized version of its flagship model built not for polite chatbot duties,

but for serious defensive work like malware analysis and binary reverse engineering. Tasks most AI tools usually avoid like awkward small talk at conferences. Access is restricted to verified professionals through OpenAI's trusted access for cyber program, part of a broader push to prepare defenders for faster arriving more capable AI on both sides of the keyboard. The timing is deliberate. Rival models are already uncovering decades-old vulnerabilities at scale, which suggests attackers will not be standing still. OpenAI's bed is simple.

Give more defenders sharper tools now before the next wave arrives uninvited. And that's the Cyberwire for, links to all of today's stories, check out our daily briefing at thecyberwire.com. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing world of cybersecurity. If you like our show, please share a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to Cyberwire at N2K.com. N2K's lead producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Trey Hester with original music and sound design by Elliot Peltzman.

Our contributing host is Maria Vermazas. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iben. Peter Kilpy is our publisher, and I'm Dave Bittner. Thanks for listening. We'll see you back here tomorrow. The Madamy Holmes bike for brain health supporting Baycrest returns on May 31st for its fifth anniversary with a new start and finish at the Aga Khan Museum. Join thousands of cyclists as we take over the DVP and Gardner Expressway

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