Suspected China-Aligned Hackers Exploit Roundcube Flaws Against Universities
A suspected China-aligned threat activity cluster has been observed exploiting Roundcube webmail software belonging to physics and engineering departments of U.S. and Canadian universities as part of a new campaign. The activity involves the exploitation of now-patched, critical security flaws in the open-source email solution, such as CVE-2024-42009 (CVSS score: 9.3), to siphon credentials, followed by either the deployment of a web shell for persistent access or a known post-exploitation tool called VShell . The emerging threat cluster is being tracked by Proofpoint under the moniker UNK_MassTraction . It was first detected in May 2026, specifically focusing on administrators and professors in departments with either national security ties or entities studying astrophysics and particle physics. "The emails targeting university departments used both compromised senders, as well as abused domains vulnerable to spoofing due to lax DMARC policy to send the emails," the ...
ī Jul 07, 2026