Iran is muddying the waters.

0:00You're listening to the CyberWire Network, powered by N2K. When cyber threats strike, minutes matter. Booz Allen brings the same battle tested expertise trusted to protect national security to defend today's leading global organizations. They safeguard their data, strengthen enterprise resilience and mobilize in minutes across energy, healthcare, financial services, and manufacturing. Their teams don't just respond, they anticipate, outthink, and stay ahead of evolving threats. This is powerful protection for commercial leaders only from Booz Allen. See how your organization can prepare today at Booz Allen dot com slash commercial. Iran's Muddy Water breaches multiple U.S. organizations.

1:08The FBI probes a breach of wire-tap management systems, a China-linked threat actor targets South American telecoms. Cisco patches critical firewall flaws, CISA flags actively exploited bugs in hikvision cameras and rock well industrial systems. A House committee advances the controversial Kids Online Safety Bill. The FBI arrests a suspect accused of stealing millions and seized crypto from the U.S. Marshall service. Ben Yellen and Ethan Cook unpack the dispute between anthropic and the Pentagon and a wick of media worm reeks wide-spread wiki woes. It's Friday, March 6, 2026. I'm Dave Bittner, and this is your cyberwire Intel briefing.

2:17Thanks for joining us here today. It's great as always to have you with us. Iranian advance persistent threat group Muddy Water has infiltrated multiple organizations in the United States and allied regions according to researchers at Broadcom's Symantec and Carbon Black Threat Hunting Team. The activity targeted an aerospace and defense contractor, a U.S. bank and airport, a software company with operations in Israel and a non-governmental organization active in the U.S. and Canada. Researchers say the intrusions continued in recent days amid escalating tensions following U.S. and Israeli military strikes on Iran. During the campaign, the attackers deployed two back doors, Dindor and Fakeset both signed with certificates linked to the name Amy Shern and Donald Gay, the latter previously associated with Muddy Water Operations. The group also attempted to exfiltrate data from the software company's Israeli branch.

3:21Although the observed activity has been disrupted, researchers warned the attackers' existing foothold on U.S. and Israeli networks could enable further operations. Major technology firms and policy leaders are rallying behind AI developer Anthropic as its dispute with the Pentagon intensifies. The Information Technology Industry Council, which represents companies including Google, Apple and Microsoft, warned the defense department that labeling Anthropic a supply chain risk over a procurement disagreement could set a dangerous precedent for the tech industry and the defense industrial base. Separately, a bipartisan group of defense intelligence and technology policy experts urged Congress to investigate the Pentagon's actions, arguing Anthropic stance against using AI for mass domestic surveillance is reasonable. The White House has ordered agencies to phase out Anthropic technology within six months

4:24while seeking alternative AI providers willing to permit broader government use. Lawmakers, including Senator Ron Wyden, are also pressing AI companies about safeguards around government access to Americans' data. Analysts warned the dispute could complicate government systems that already rely on Anthropic models. Later in the show, Ben Yellen and Ethan Cook dig into the details of this dispute. Stick around for that. The FBI confirmed its investigating a breach involving systems used to manage surveillance and wire tap warrants. The agency said it detected suspicious activity on its networks and has since contained the incident, though officials declined to provide details about the scope or impact. According to reporting by CNN, the compromised systems are used to process court authorized wire tapping and foreign intelligence surveillance warrants. The FBI stated it used its technical capabilities to respond after identifying the activity,

5:26but did not say who may be responsible or whether sensitive information was accessed. Authorities have not confirmed whether the incident is linked to prior intrusions. In 2024, a Chinese state-backed hacking group Salt Typhoon reached U.S. government systems involved in handling lawful wire tap requests, though investigations have not tied that activity to the current case. A China-linked threat actor tracked as UAT-9244 has targeted telecommunications providers across South America since 2024, compromising Windows, Linux, and network edge devices according to Cisco Talos researchers. The activity cluster shows strong overlaps with tactics used by the famous Sparrow and Tropic Trooper groups, though researchers track it separately. The campaign deploys three previously undocumented malware families. Turn Door is a Windows-backed door delivered through DLL side-loading that enables remote code execution

6:32and persistence through scheduled tasks and registry changes. Peer Time is a multi-architecture Linux-backed door that uses the BitTorrent Protocol for command and control communications and appears designed for telecom and embedded systems. Brute Entry is a scanning and brute force tool that converts compromised machines into proxy nodes to search for new targets. Researchers say the activity shares victim profiles with the China-linked Salt Typhoon group, though no confirmed operational link has been established. Cisco has released security updates addressing 48 vulnerabilities across several firewall platforms, including Cisco Secure Firewall Adaptive Security Appliance, Secure Firewall Management Center, and Secure Firewall Threat Defense. The advisories include two critical flaws, both with a maximum CVSS score of 10, affecting the Secure Firewall Management Center management platform.

7:34One vulnerability allows authentication bypass through crafted HTTP requests, potentially granting root access. The second involves insecure deserialization that could enable remote code execution. Cisco also patched 15 high severity and 31 medium severity flaws. The company says no workarounds exist and organizations should update to the patched versions immediately. Two long-standing vulnerabilities affecting HickVision cameras and Rockwell Automation Logics Industrial Systems are now high priority risks after being added to Cisco's known exploited vulnerabilities catalog. The first flaw with a CVSS score of 10 allows authentication bypass on certain HickVision IP cameras, potentially exposing device credentials, configurations, and images. The second, with a CVSS score of 9.8, enables attackers with network access

8:36to impersonate trusted engineering workstations in Rockwell Logics Environments. Cisco's KEV listing indicates active exploitation in the wild. Security teams are urged to patch vulnerable HickVision devices, reduce internet exposure, and apply network segmentation and other compensating controls for affected industrial control system environments. The House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act in a party line vote, triggering sharp debate over how aggressively Congress should regulate online platforms. Republicans say the bill would strengthen protections by empowering parents and requiring platforms to disable recommendation algorithms for minors by default. Democrats criticize the measure as too weak, arguing it lacks a duty of care that would force companies to proactively mitigate online harms and includes a knowledge standard that could allow tech firms to avoid responsibility.

9:39They also warned that provisions preempting some state laws could undermine ongoing legal actions against companies such as Meta and Roblox. The Committee also advanced Sami's law, which would alert parents to serious risks to children online and the App Store Accountability Act requiring parental consent for downloads by minors. Critics say the proposals could threaten privacy and free expression. John DeGito was arrested in St. Martin for allegedly stealing more than $46 million in seized cryptocurrency from the US Marshall Service, according to the FBI. FBI Director Cash Patel said the arrest was carried out with assistance from France's GIGN Tactical Police Unit. Authorities described DeGito as a government contractor. Though blockchain investigators Zach XBT claims he's the son of Dean DeGito, head of command services and support, a contractor managing seized assets for the Marshall Service.

10:45Investigators have not publicly explained how the cryptocurrency was transferred, but Zach XBT says the activity was uncovered after a dispute on telegram revealed wallet addresses linked to DeGito. The funds may include cryptocurrency seized after the 2016 Bitfinex hack. Following the revelations, CMDSS removed its website and social media presence, while authorities launched an investigation. Coming up after the break, Ben Yellen and Ethan Cook unpacked the dispute between anthropic and the Pentagon and a Wikimedia worm wreaks widespread wiki woes. Stay with us.

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13:56Ben Yellen is my co-host on the caveat podcast where we cover all things law and policy. He's joined by our N2K lead analyst Ethan Cook to unpack the fallout between the Pentagon and Anthropic. All right Ethan, it's the two of us again. We are without our fearless co-host Dave Bittner. We're taking over with us. Yes, we are. This is a hostile takeover. No, Dave is, Dave is I'm sure doing much more important things somewhere. But we are lucky in that we have a very exciting story to cover. And this is about what happened with the Pentagon and their contract with AI startup Anthropic. I don't know if you want to start by just kind of giving us a basic overview of what happened and then we can get into the details. Yeah, so obviously the Pentagon as with me, the other government branches contracts out with multiple AI providers, open AI, Anthropic, et cetera, using their AI services. And from what I understand, this all ties back to when the US abducted Maduro from Venezuela.

15:04And there were some internal rumblings. This wasn't public yet between Anthropic and the Pentagon that Anthropic was not okay with some of the things that were being requested of. It's specifically the DOD's plan to use its AI services for both autonomous weapons systems as well as not surveillance of the US citizens. And they wanted very strict stipulations put in that were not go that their services were not going to be used for that. And apparently they were used in a way for the US incursion into Venezuela and that started this feather rustling. And from there, things kind of continued to get a little bit more stressful. Yeah, so going back a little bit, Anthropic signed a deal with the Pentagon, a contract back in the summer of last year. It was worth up to $200 million. And it was the first, it was going to be the first AI lab to deploy its models on the Pentagon's classified systems.

16:04This was a big deal at the time, got a lot of news coverage. And then what you're talking about kind of was a murmur happening below the radar kind of behind the scenes. Is that right? Yeah, so they have been working together. They've been building out this relationship. And this incident happened. And again, this was not public yet. This was a, there was some tension building. And then suddenly about a week ago, he really started spilling over into the public sphere with reports that the Pentagon was going to drop them. And that anthropic was not budging. And the Pentagon side of this story was that we asked them this hypothetical question, whether they would let us use their services for defense for missile defense programs to help like if someone launched a new got us or an ICBM that they could help we could use their AI services to help coordinated defense response effort, etc. Which anthropic, they the Pentagon characterizes their responses. Oh, yeah, just give us a call and we might help kind of you know is like, we'll see what happens.

17:09And whoops. And threat like to not like that characterization one bit. Yeah. So as with most things that happen these days, the major news came out in a post on truth social from the president of the United States. Sorry, the best news comes from it is. So that post said that anthropic was a woke company and was going to destroy. I'm paraphrasing here, but was going to destroy the war fighting powers of our Pentagon. And therefore, we are severing ties from anthropic and not only that all federal agencies, not just the Pentagon are prohibited from using anthropics technology. Anthropic and his view was trying to strong arm the Pentagon. He said that he would not be afraid to impose civil and criminal penalties if the company did not cooperate during their six month phase out period. So that's a key element of this.

18:10And then furthermore, later that same day, defense secretary slash fitness expert Pete Hegseth, formally designated anthropic as a supply chain risk to national security. So usually if something say supply chain risk to national security, it's going to be like a Russian or Chinese company that's a cog in our supply chain where we're concerned for national security purposes that they might do something to our products or services. So it's been used, for example, to restrict the company Huawei, which I know we've talked about on this podcast. It has not been used for an American based company like Anthropic. So as a result of this designation, Pentagon contractors of which there are a lot of I'm sure you've been to northern Virginia. It's beautiful. Yeah, contractor city contractor city. Yeah, they all have very nice offices on the way to Dallas Airport. And we are migrating away from the AI service cloud, which is Anthropics baby across our ecosystem. Anthropic was was not happy about it.

19:18They challenged this designated designation and court and we'll see what happens there. But then the Pentagon very quickly found their replacement. I think of us some information about how that happened. Yeah. So like you mentioned, Pentagon after they tried to come some deliberations that you know, but I think a headset put in a deadline. It was like by the end of the day, Friday, if Pentagon, if Anthropic didn't work in its decision and go along with them, they were dropping them and label them a supply chain risk. And we're not budgeting. Pentagon subsequently dropped them. And the very next day open AI gets a little ring and open AI. Hello, this is Sam Altman here. Exactly. Exactly. And they're they're requested to basically fulfill that whole that they the government has just made and you know, in walks the next person. They felt like when I was reading these stories, by the way, I was watching an episode of a real housewives or some reality TV show. Whereas, you know, I don't like you. I'm going to this person, you know, swapping who who can offer me the most.

20:23Oh, they felt very dramatic. The interesting thing that kind of came out to me was not just the swap and partnership. You know, I expected a swap. If they're going to drop in Anthropic, I expected them to switch somewhere. But the thing that I thought was most interesting was the sworn statements that they would from the U.S. government that they would not use their open AI's. And systems, it's actually BT, etc. For any mass surveillance or any weapons of automated weapons, which that kind of then brings this kind of question into back to the Anthropic side of things, which is, OK, if they're willing to sign that for open AI, then what's like is that kind of a shallow thing? What is going on here because it seems like everyone's contradicting each other. Yeah. And it just raises a bunch of questions like what is different about this agreement that made it acceptable to open AI and to the Pentagon. So there are a couple of really interesting elements to it. For one, and I am not an expert on this and you probably know more like I think at this point in their evolution cloud is a better AI model.

21:26Yes, then chat GPT. I would say so. Now I don't pay for the good version of either of those. So neither do I. Any sponsors want to help us out with that. We can give you first hand knowledge, but. So that's kind of one element of it. But then this question of like what exactly did open AI agree to and why potentially should we be suspicious? So from what open AI said is they guaranteed safeguards to protect against domestic surveillance and to protect against the use of autonomous weapons systems, which if that sounds very familiar, it is. If you read between the lines, the difference is that open AI is accepting a legal framework that references existing laws and Pentagon policies. They're not looking for these contractual assurances that anthropic was looking for, which says like you need to come to us if you are intending to do these things. And we are going to be very protective of our models and institute our own human controls open AI is just like we promise we won't break any laws.

22:34Yes, here's chat GPT enjoy. And I think that level of cooperation is what the Pentagon was looking for the fact that this happened literally within hours of the anthropic deal falling through I can understand why people are suspicious about exactly what open AI may have agreed to. Yeah, and I think it just also raises a stability concern for me where if we're, you know, we are back in the summer taking a step back Trump released his AI action plan in the summer of 2025, which a key portion of that was investing in AI companies, American AI companies to boost innovation, secure defense, involvement defense projects, etc. And anthropic, as we have just said, is one of the top three and arguably the best AI developer in the states. And for us to alienate them. And, you know, almost create a sending single point of failure by going after open AI exclusively, I would have loved to see a dynamic where we use both.

23:41Right. Right. We're managed to have American ingenuity exactly and also make the two compete against each other. There's this dynamic where, you know, if and who knows maybe that this whole relationship becomes positive again and in six months anthropics back into where they were or whatever happens. That would be great. But if it doesn't, I kind of sit here and walk away going, the only group this really hurts is the US as a whole, it doesn't help competition. It doesn't advance innovation. It creates some really ethically gray zones with how the defense department can create use AI and because we're not really solving the problem. And it seems a little bit more like vibes vibes wall to power from vibes coding. It's like, well, maybe it's a legal rather than really kind of honing and ironing out these questions and release relationships. And I sit here and I wonder, I don't curious if you have any similar thoughts of where, where does this like leave other AI companies who aren't open AI and aren't anthropic.

24:46I mean, I think it puts the entire industry in a really difficult place. You are torn between wanting to win big government contracts, which all of them want to win. And your own stated ethical principles and companies have tried to tow this line forever. And generally, you know, there have been some hiccups here and there, but it's worked out. I mean, government agencies are able to come up with agreements that ensure the ethical use of these products. Here, though, we're talking about two very serious things, mass domestic surveillance. In a case you were not conscious during the Edward Snowden exposure era. That's something that's, yeah, that's quite controversial in this country. And then using autonomous weapons systems like that is so would never. Yeah, I mean, and that's like very, very serious business. So you saw that there was a bit of a revolt in the industry across the AI sector.

25:46So within these big companies, you saw 60 open AI employees who voluntarily resigned because they backed the. Anthropics original stance you saw people from employees from other companies writing open letters standing up for anthropic and expressing their dismay at what happened with open AI. So you also might be creating this divide within the industry between the people who write the contracts and the developers, the people who are building these products who don't want to see. The fruits of their work used to autonomously kill people and foreign conflicts or for mass domestic surveillance. And if you see a revolt on a large scale, then I think that could be extremely problematic for the industry. Yeah, it feels like this is almost a race to the bottom that like now the open AI has opened the store, right?

26:47It's like, okay, who's willing to cut corners and bend to military demands the most to get the contract. Rather than having that established set of principles of we won't engage in surveillance like we're just not going to. Or if it's surveillance, it has to be Congress approved and you know, legislatively, it's go through this whole process. And it feels like because there's such a lack of sorry word for maybe lack of existing laws having AI stipulations built into them. It feels like, you know, this is the prime time for someone who wants to take advantage of that lack of framework to do so. And that feels like what the guy and I would be surprised if the military has done that. I mean, like, I, you know, I'm not this is not like a pro or against, but the military takes the advantages that it's given. And if that is the this feels like a perfect opportunity to use a open AI for whatever or any AI system for that because they can walk away being. Well, look, there was a wall that prevents us.

27:47There was nothing that said that we couldn't use this. There's a week and nothing illegal, you know, kind of a free blank check, so to speak. Yeah, and they're doing that under the color of the law, basically saying like we agree only to provide services in in a lawful manner consistent with the Pentagon's current laws and policies. That gets problematic for a couple of reasons. One, I mean, do we actually trust them considering that they made this agreement to really push back if they're given some type of illegal order. Given that they were able to come to the steel within hours of the anthropic deal falling through and then also there just a lot of gray areas, as you said, like this is an area of the law that's just not very developed. So they might say now that we're going to comply with all laws, but there are a lot of edge cases. And if their main goal is maintaining the status of their very lucrative contract, that creates a pretty perverse incentive structure, in my opinion. It sends a message to, you know, and if I'm happy to see people are resigning and standing up because like to me, I sit there from the AI community and this something has to be that come from internal rather than external.

28:55It needs to almost rebuke this because the law is I'm sure you're aware of you know Ben and your your days working both state and federal. It moves a little slow sometimes. It doesn't you don't say it's not the most updated. We've had AI for years now and we still have no federal AI framework from a legislative standpoint. So, you know, we have these massive holes that are anywhere close to getting formed and probably won't conform for the next at least two years. And this is the time where if you're going to kind of walk that gray zone where you're like, oh, well, technically not doing anything legal. I feel like if you have to caveat with the technically, it's really concerning and I feel like that's where we're heading to right now with this open a ideal and I hope that the rest of the AI community doesn't really engage in this dynamic. There is much more to this conversation between Ben Yellen and Ethan Cook. You can find that on the latest episode of caveat wherever you get your favorite podcasts. No, it's not your imagination risk and regulation really are ramping up in customers expect proof of security before they'll sign that deal. That's where Vanta comes in.

30:18Vanta automates your compliance process and brings compliance risk and customer trust together on one AI-powered platform. Whether you're preparing for SOC 2 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's not just faster compliance. That's more time for growth. Take it for me. If you're thinking about compliance, take the time to check out Vanta. Get started at vanta.com slash cyber. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed sponsor jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate seat. According to Indeed data, sponsor jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs.

31:19So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsor job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast, Terms and Conditions Apply. And finally, the Wikimedia Foundation had a brief but lively security scare when a self-propagating JavaScript worm began rewriting user scripts and vandalizing pages on Metawiki. Editors first noticed the chaos on Wikipedia's village pump as automated edits quietly slipped hidden loaders and oversized images on to random pages. A digital graffiti spree with surprisingly good uptime. The culprit appears to be a dormant script uploaded in 2024 and accidentally activated during a staff security review. Once executed, it behaved much like the mischievous worms of cybersecurity lore echoing the propagation tricks of the Morris worm in 1988 and the more flamboyant spread of code web and SQL slamer decades later.

32:29The script copied itself into user and global JavaScript files ensuring anyone loading the wiki might unknowingly help it travel further. Engineers quickly locked down editing, reverted changes and removed the code. The worm ran for about 23 minutes, altered roughly 4,000 pages and infected around 85 user scripts. Clean up is ongoing. And that's the CyberWire for links to all of today's stories check out our daily briefing at the CyberWire.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 cyberwireatentuk.com.

33:29NJK's lead producers Liz Stokes were mixed by Train Hester with original music and sound design by Elliott Peltzman. Our contributing host is Maria Vermozas, our executive producer is Jennifer Iben, Peter Kielpi as our publisher and I'm Dave Bitner. Thanks for listening. We'll see you back here next week. If you only attend one cybersecurity conference this year, make it RSAC 2026. It's happening March 23rd through the 26th in San Francisco, bringing together the global security community for four days of expert insights, hands-on learning and real innovation.

34:33I'll say this plainly, I never miss this conference. The ideas and conversations stay with me all year. Join thousands of practitioners and leaders tackling today's toughest challenges and shaping what comes next. Register today at rsaconference.com slash cyberwire26. I'll see you in San Francisco. Ryan Reynolds here from Mitt Mobile, the message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please for the love of everything goodness world, stop. With Mitt you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course if you enjoy overpay no judgments but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at MittMobile.com slash switch. A upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate for three months only. Then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra, see full terms at MittMobile.com.