The week in breach news

This week’s cyber incidents highlight a mix of exploited vulnerabilities, infrastructure attacks and corporate data breaches. Cisco warned users about two critical flaws in the Catalyst SD-WAN Manager, while the ransomware group Qilin claimed responsibility for an attack on the U.S. electric cooperative TVEC. Meanwhile, the Wikimedia Foundation faced a self-propagating malware incident, Dutch paint giant AkzoNobel confirmed a major breach and LexisNexis reported a cybersecurity incident in its Legal & Professional division.

North America

Cisco

Industry: Technology Exploit: Zero-day vulnerability

Cisco has warned users about two vulnerabilities in Catalyst SD-WAN Manager (formerly known as SD-WAN vManage) that are currently under active exploitation in the wild.

The vulnerabilities disclosed are:

  • CVE-2026-20122 (CVSS score: 7.1) – An arbitrary file overwrite vulnerability that could allow an authenticated remote attacker to overwrite arbitrary files on the local file system. Successful exploitation requires valid read-only credentials with API access on the affected system.
  • CVE-2026-20128 (CVSS score: 5.5) – An information disclosure vulnerability that could allow an authenticated local attacker to gain Data Collection Agent (DCA) user privileges on the affected system. Successful exploitation requires valid vManage credentials.

The company did not provide details about the scale of the attacks or the threat actors involved. The disclosure comes a week after Cisco reported that a critical vulnerability in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller and Catalyst SD-WAN Manager, tracked as CVE-2026-20127 with a CVSS score of 10.0, was exploited by a sophisticated threat actor known as UAT-8616 to establish persistent access to high-value organizations.

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How it could affect your business

Since these vulnerabilities are already being actively exploited, users should update to a fixed software release as soon as possible. Organizations should also restrict access from unsecured networks, place appliances behind a firewall, disable HTTP access for the Catalyst SD-WAN Manager administrator portal and turn off services such as HTTP and FTP when not required. Changing default administrator passwords and closely monitoring system logs for unexpected inbound or outbound traffic can also help detect suspicious activity early.

United States

Tennessee Valley Electric Cooperative (TVEC)

Industry: Energy & Natural Resources Exploit: Ransomware & Malware

Cybercriminals continue to target critical infrastructure, with the ransomware group Qilin claiming it breached Tennessee Valley Electric Cooperative (TVEC), a U.S. electric cooperative.

Based in Savannah, Tennessee, TVEC provides electric service to customers in Wayne and Hardin counties in West Tennessee. The cooperative has not publicly addressed the ransomware gang’s claims. However, based on the group’s previous attacks, the stolen data could include employee information, customer records or internal organizational documents.

The group has previously targeted other U.S. electric cooperatives, including Karnes Electric Cooperative and San Bernard Electric Cooperative, last year.

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How it could affect your business

Critical infrastructure organizations are increasingly being targeted by cybercriminals and nation-state actors seeking to disrupt essential services or steal sensitive operational data. To strengthen defenses, organizations should segment critical networks, deploy continuous monitoring for suspicious activity and regularly test their backup and disaster recovery plans to maintain operational resilience.

North America

Wikimedia Foundation

Industry: Nonprofit & Social Impact Exploit: Ransomware & Malware

The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that hosts Wikipedia, experienced a significant security incident on March 5 involving a self-propagating JavaScript worm.

The issue came to light after users noticed a surge of automated edits that inserted hidden scripts and vandalized random pages. The worm modified user scripts and defaced Meta-Wiki pages. According to Wikimedia’s Phabricator issue tracker, the attack appears to have begun when a malicious script hosted on Russian Wikipedia was executed, altering a global JavaScript script on Wikipedia with malicious code.

The malicious script, first uploaded in March 2024, is reportedly linked to scripts used in previous attacks targeting wiki projects.

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How it could affect your business

Self-propagating JavaScript worms are particularly dangerous because they exploit trust in open-source code and can spread automatically across developer environments. Organizations should tightly control third-party dependencies, enforce package integrity checks and monitor repositories for unusual changes to stop malicious code from spreading through the software supply chain.

United States

AkzoNobel

Industry: Manufacturing Exploit: Ransomware & Malware

The Dutch paint manufacturing giant AkzoNobel confirmed that hackers breached the network of one of its U.S. sites following a data leak from the Anubis ransomware gang.

AkzoNobel is a major paints and coatings company with well-known brands such as Dulux, Sikkens, International and Interpon under its corporate umbrella. The Anubis ransomware group claims to have stolen 170 GB of data from the company. Samples posted on its leak site reportedly include confidential agreements with high-profile clients, email addresses, phone numbers, private email correspondence, passport scans, material testing documents and internal technical specification sheets.

Meanwhile, the company stated that the impact appears limited and that it is taking appropriate steps to notify and support potentially affected parties.

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How it could affect your business

Ransomware groups like Anubis operate under a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model, lowering the bar for cybercrime and making it easier for even less-technical criminals to launch sophisticated attacks. To combat this growing ransomware threat landscape, organizations should implement proactive threat monitoring, maintain encrypted, regularly tested backups, and ensure systems can be restored quickly without relying on ransom payments.

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