In today’s dynamic threat landscape, technical debt isn’t just a budgeting headache—it’s a growing national security risk. According to McKinsey, technical debt consumes up to 20% of engineering and DevOps capacity across large enterprises. For U.S. federal agencies—defense and civilian alike—the cost of carrying outdated, unsupported infrastructure goes far beyond inefficiency.

With the rise of CI/CD pipelines, cloud-native development, and globally distributed teams, sensitive credentials like API keys, tokens, and database passwords often slip into source code. Sometimes accidentally, sometimes under pressure to deploy fast. This is not a rare mishap. A recent study found that 34% of API security incidents involve sensitive data exposure. And according to Cyble, over 1.5 million.env files containing secrets have been discovered in publicly accessible environments.

When was the last time you updated your router? If you’re not sure, you’re not alone, and this uncertainty could pose a serious risk to your business. The FBI recently warned that malicious actors are targeting end-of-life (EOL) routers (network devices that manufacturers no longer support or update). These outdated routers are being hijacked by bad actors who use them as a stepping stone into networks, turning them into cybercriminal proxies. The threat is real, and it’s growing.

Netskope Threat Labs has discovered a campaign using fake installers to deliver the Sainbox RAT and Hidden rootkit. During our threat hunting activities, we encountered multiple installers disguised as legitimate software, including WPS Office, Sogou, and DeepSeek. These installers were mainly MSI files that were delivered via phishing websites. Both the phishing pages and installers were in Chinese, indicating that the targets are Chinese speakers.