CTIPilot

Oracle PeopleSoft PeopleTools PSEMHUB pre-auth RCE (CVSS 9.8), zero-day exploited by UNC6240/ShinyHunters

cve · CVE-2026-35273

Coverage timeline
2
first 2026-06-11 → last 2026-07-01
Peak priority
critical
1 critical · 1 high
Sources cited
20
14 hosts
Sections touched
2
active-threats, deep-dive
Co-occurring entities
2
see Co-occurring entities below
ATT&CK techniques
8
pinned v19.2 · see below

ATT&CK techniques

8 techniques observed across 2 entries, derived from entry metadata and body evidence, never asserted without a published entry behind it · pinned to MITRE ATT&CK v19.2 · compare on the matrix · Navigator layer (JSON)

Initial Access TA0001

T1078Valid Accounts×1

Adversaries may obtain and abuse credentials of existing accounts as a means of gaining Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion. Compromised credentials may be used to bypass access controls placed on various resources on systems within the network and may even be used for persistent access to remote systems and externally available services, such as VPNs, Outlook Web Access, network devices, and remote desktop. Compromised credentials may also grant an adversary increased privilege to specific systems or access to restricted areas of the network. Adversaries may choose not to use malware or tools in conjunction with the legitimate access those credentials provide to make it harder to detect their presence.

Evidence: 2026-06-28/naic-breached-via-oracle-peoplesoft-zero-day-shinyhunters-pu · ATT&CK page ↗

T1078.004Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts×1

Valid accounts in cloud environments may allow adversaries to perform actions to achieve Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion. Cloud accounts are those created and configured by an organization for use by users, remote support, services, or for administration of resources within a cloud service provider or SaaS application. Cloud Accounts can exist solely in the cloud; alternatively, they may be hybrid-joined between on-premises systems and the cloud through syncing or federation with other identity sources such as Windows Active Directory.

Evidence: 2026-06-11/shinyhunters-oracle-peoplesoft-campaign-gadget-chain-access · ATT&CK page ↗

T1190Exploit Public-Facing Application×2

Adversaries may attempt to exploit a weakness in an Internet-facing host or system to initially access a network. The weakness in the system can be a software bug, a temporary glitch, or a misconfiguration.

Evidence: 2026-06-28/naic-breached-via-oracle-peoplesoft-zero-day-shinyhunters-pu · 2026-06-11/shinyhunters-oracle-peoplesoft-campaign-gadget-chain-access · ATT&CK page ↗

Persistence TA0003

T1078Valid Accounts×1

Adversaries may obtain and abuse credentials of existing accounts as a means of gaining Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion. Compromised credentials may be used to bypass access controls placed on various resources on systems within the network and may even be used for persistent access to remote systems and externally available services, such as VPNs, Outlook Web Access, network devices, and remote desktop. Compromised credentials may also grant an adversary increased privilege to specific systems or access to restricted areas of the network. Adversaries may choose not to use malware or tools in conjunction with the legitimate access those credentials provide to make it harder to detect their presence.

Evidence: 2026-06-28/naic-breached-via-oracle-peoplesoft-zero-day-shinyhunters-pu · ATT&CK page ↗

T1078.004Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts×1

Valid accounts in cloud environments may allow adversaries to perform actions to achieve Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion. Cloud accounts are those created and configured by an organization for use by users, remote support, services, or for administration of resources within a cloud service provider or SaaS application. Cloud Accounts can exist solely in the cloud; alternatively, they may be hybrid-joined between on-premises systems and the cloud through syncing or federation with other identity sources such as Windows Active Directory.

Evidence: 2026-06-11/shinyhunters-oracle-peoplesoft-campaign-gadget-chain-access · ATT&CK page ↗

Privilege Escalation TA0004

T1078Valid Accounts×1

Adversaries may obtain and abuse credentials of existing accounts as a means of gaining Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion. Compromised credentials may be used to bypass access controls placed on various resources on systems within the network and may even be used for persistent access to remote systems and externally available services, such as VPNs, Outlook Web Access, network devices, and remote desktop. Compromised credentials may also grant an adversary increased privilege to specific systems or access to restricted areas of the network. Adversaries may choose not to use malware or tools in conjunction with the legitimate access those credentials provide to make it harder to detect their presence.

Evidence: 2026-06-28/naic-breached-via-oracle-peoplesoft-zero-day-shinyhunters-pu · ATT&CK page ↗

T1078.004Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts×1

Valid accounts in cloud environments may allow adversaries to perform actions to achieve Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion. Cloud accounts are those created and configured by an organization for use by users, remote support, services, or for administration of resources within a cloud service provider or SaaS application. Cloud Accounts can exist solely in the cloud; alternatively, they may be hybrid-joined between on-premises systems and the cloud through syncing or federation with other identity sources such as Windows Active Directory.

Evidence: 2026-06-11/shinyhunters-oracle-peoplesoft-campaign-gadget-chain-access · ATT&CK page ↗

Stealth TA0005

T1078Valid Accounts×1

Adversaries may obtain and abuse credentials of existing accounts as a means of gaining Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion. Compromised credentials may be used to bypass access controls placed on various resources on systems within the network and may even be used for persistent access to remote systems and externally available services, such as VPNs, Outlook Web Access, network devices, and remote desktop. Compromised credentials may also grant an adversary increased privilege to specific systems or access to restricted areas of the network. Adversaries may choose not to use malware or tools in conjunction with the legitimate access those credentials provide to make it harder to detect their presence.

Evidence: 2026-06-28/naic-breached-via-oracle-peoplesoft-zero-day-shinyhunters-pu · ATT&CK page ↗

T1078.004Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts×1

Valid accounts in cloud environments may allow adversaries to perform actions to achieve Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion. Cloud accounts are those created and configured by an organization for use by users, remote support, services, or for administration of resources within a cloud service provider or SaaS application. Cloud Accounts can exist solely in the cloud; alternatively, they may be hybrid-joined between on-premises systems and the cloud through syncing or federation with other identity sources such as Windows Active Directory.

Evidence: 2026-06-11/shinyhunters-oracle-peoplesoft-campaign-gadget-chain-access · ATT&CK page ↗

Lateral Movement TA0008

T1021Remote Services×1

Adversaries may use Valid Accounts to log into a service that accepts remote connections, such as telnet, SSH, and VNC. The adversary may then perform actions as the logged-on user.

Evidence: 2026-06-11/shinyhunters-oracle-peoplesoft-campaign-gadget-chain-access · ATT&CK page ↗

T1021.004Remote Services: SSH×1

Adversaries may use Valid Accounts to log into remote machines using Secure Shell (SSH). The adversary may then perform actions as the logged-on user.

Evidence: 2026-06-11/shinyhunters-oracle-peoplesoft-campaign-gadget-chain-access · ATT&CK page ↗

Collection TA0009

T1213Data from Information Repositories×1

Adversaries may leverage information repositories to mine valuable information. Information repositories are tools that allow for storage of information, typically to facilitate collaboration or information sharing between users, and can store a wide variety of data that may aid adversaries in further objectives, such as Credential Access, Lateral Movement, or Defense Evasion, or direct access to the target information. Adversaries may also abuse external sharing features to share sensitive documents with recipients outside of the organization (i.e., Transfer Data to Cloud Account).

Evidence: 2026-06-11/shinyhunters-oracle-peoplesoft-campaign-gadget-chain-access · ATT&CK page ↗

Command and Control TA0011

T1071Application Layer Protocol×1

Adversaries may communicate using OSI application layer protocols to avoid detection/network filtering by blending in with existing traffic. Commands to the remote system, and often the results of those commands, will be embedded within the protocol traffic between the client and server.

Evidence: 2026-06-11/shinyhunters-oracle-peoplesoft-campaign-gadget-chain-access · ATT&CK page ↗

Exfiltration TA0010

T1567Exfiltration Over Web Service×2

Adversaries may use an existing, legitimate external Web service to exfiltrate data rather than their primary command and control channel. Popular Web services acting as an exfiltration mechanism may give a significant amount of cover due to the likelihood that hosts within a network are already communicating with them prior to compromise. Firewall rules may also already exist to permit traffic to these services.

Evidence: 2026-06-28/naic-breached-via-oracle-peoplesoft-zero-day-shinyhunters-pu · 2026-06-11/shinyhunters-oracle-peoplesoft-campaign-gadget-chain-access · ATT&CK page ↗

Story timeline

  1. 2026-06-28NAIC breached via Oracle PeopleSoft zero-day; ShinyHunters publishes 3.1 TB of US insurance-regulatory data and rating-agency feeds pause
    active-threats
  2. 2026-06-11ShinyHunters Oracle PeopleSoft campaign: gadget-chain access, SSH default-credential lateral movement, mass exfiltration
    deep-dive

Where this entity is cited

  • deep-dive1
  • active-threats1

Source distribution

  • bleepingcomputer.com4 (20%)
  • securityweek.com3 (15%)
  • attack.mitre.org2 (10%)
  • cloud.google.com1 (5%)
  • content.naic.org1 (5%)
  • insurancebusinessmag.com1 (5%)
  • insurancejournal.com1 (5%)
  • nottingham.ac.uk1 (5%)
  • other6 (30%)

Co-occurring entities

Derived: referenced by the same focused operational entries (weekly summaries and report roundups don't count); ×N counts the shared entries.

External references

NVD · cve.org · CISA KEV

All cited sources (20)

Entries about Oracle PeopleSoft PeopleTools PSEMHUB pre-auth RCE (CVSS 9.8), zero-day exploited by UNC6240/ShinyHunters (2)

2026-06-28 · view entry permalink →

HIGHCVE-2026-35273exploitedupdated

NAIC breached via Oracle PeopleSoft zero-day; ShinyHunters publishes 3.1 TB of US insurance-regulatory data and rating-agency feeds pause

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) (the US standard-setting body governing all 50 state insurance regulators) confirmed on 2026-06-26 that an unauthorised party gained access to part of its environment on 2026-06-11 by exploiting an Oracle PeopleSoft vulnerability that was unknown to the vendor at the time, then used the PeopleSoft foothold to obtain credentials that pivoted into NAIC data-storage areas (NAIC, 2026-06-26). The flaw is reported as CVE-2026-35273, a critical unauthenticated remote-code-execution vulnerability in Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise PeopleTools 8.61 and 8.62 (Insurance Business Mag, 2026-06-24). NAIC states the access path has since been blocked and remediated and that the FBI plus external forensics are engaged. The extortion group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility on 2026-06-18 and by 2026-06-25 had published the data, which corroborating reporting puts at ~3.1 TB (TechRadar, 2026-06-26); the corpus is reported to include insurer statutory financial-reporting documents and files from major credit-rating agencies (Insurance Journal, 2026-06-25). NAIC says it has not confirmed ShinyHunters' claim to have taken SERFF, OPTins, UCAA, EDP and RDC, and that employee PII, EFT, policyholder and producer data were not accessed. The operationally significant consequence: several rating agencies paused their data feeds to NAIC, forcing it to temporarily suspend assigning investment-risk designations to insurer portfolios, a direct disruption to US insurance-sector solvency monitoring. The incident is reported as part of a broader PeopleSoft campaign affecting 100+ organisations (Insurance Business Mag, 2026-06-24).

Why it matters to us: Oracle PeopleSoft is widely deployed for HR/finance in European and Swiss public-sector and large enterprises; the kill chain here is T1190 (exploit a public-facing PeopleSoft app) → T1078 (abuse the obtained credentials/session to pivot to data stores) → T1567 (web-service exfiltration). Verify PeopleSoft patch status against the in-the-wild zero-day campaign, segment PeopleSoft data-bus/integration accounts to least privilege, and put DLP/volume alerting on bulk export from PeopleSoft repositories. EU/Swiss insurance supervisors (EIOPA, national NCAs) and reinsurers whose data is in the rating-agency corpus should treat affected feeds as potentially tampered until NAIC confirms integrity restoration.

Unauthorized access to a portion of the NAIC's environment was identified on June 11 via an Oracle PeopleSoft vulnerability. While in PeopleSoft, the unauthorized party was able to obtain information needed to gain temporary access to certain data storage areas.

Due to the incident, certain credit rating agencies have paused their data feeds and consequently, the NAIC has temporarily suspended assigning designations to insurer investments.

NAIC

UPDATE (originally covered 2026-06-28 as the NAIC breach): Nissan disclosed that current and former employees' data was exposed via CVE-2026-35273, the Oracle PeopleSoft PeopleTools pre-auth flaw exploited as a zero-day between 2026-05-27 and 2026-06-09 as part of the wider ShinyHunters campaign …

ctipilot v2 brief (migrated)
Updaterun 2026-07-01-af9e697dactionscvesevidenceregionssectorssourcestagsbody

Nissan disclosed that current and former employees' data was exposed via CVE-2026-35273, the Oracle PeopleSoft PeopleTools pre-auth flaw exploited as a zero-day between 2026-05-27 and 2026-06-09 as part of the wider ShinyHunters campaign (SecurityWeek, 2026-06-30). The exposure spans current and former employees in the US, Canada, Mexico and Brazil, potentially including Social Security numbers, banking/direct-deposit information and tax records.

This is a materially different victim profile from the previously-covered NAIC breach (employee HR/payroll PII rather than regulatory data) showing the campaign spreading across both regulatory-body and corporate-HR PeopleSoft deployments. As mitigation, Nissan restricted pay-slip viewing and direct-deposit changes to company-network/VPN-authenticated sessions and is offering credit/dark-web monitoring (BleepingComputer, 2026-06-29). ShinyHunters' self-reported scale of "over 300 PeopleSoft instances across ~100 organizations" is an unverified actor claim, attribute the claim, not confirmed fact. No new technical detail beyond victim-count expansion; the operative guidance from the 2026-06-28 NAIC item stands (patch CVE-2026-35273; remove internet-exposed PeopleSoft PeopleTools from public reachability).

incident28 Jun 05:05Zmulti-sourceOpen finding ↗

2026-06-11 · view entry permalink →

CRITICALCVE-2026-35273exploitedupdated

ShinyHunters Oracle PeopleSoft campaign: gadget-chain access, SSH default-credential lateral movement, mass exfiltration

ShinyHunters confirmed to BleepingComputer on 10 June 2026 that it had compromised Oracle PeopleSoft servers across approximately 300 instances at more than 100 organisations, with a heavy concentration in higher education (BleepingComputer, 2026-06-10). The University of Nottingham confirmed the same day that student and alumni data had been accessed in a security incident affecting its student-record system, opened a dedicated support line, and notified Action Fraud and the ICO (University of Nottingham, 2026-06-10). TechCrunch independently corroborated the scale of the campaign and the education-sector skew (TechCrunch, 2026-06-10).

Access and exploitation. ShinyHunters describes initial access as a "gadget chain" combining legacy PeopleSoft vulnerabilities with claimed zero-days; the actor stresses that exploitation is configuration-dependent and not universal across all internet-reachable instances. Oracle has not published a CVE for the specific flaws in this campaign and did not respond to press inquiries, so the precise initial-access vector remains attacker-asserted rather than vendor-confirmed, treat the "zero-day" framing with appropriate caution. The relevant entry surface is the externally reachable PeopleSoft web and application tier (PIA, Integration Broker, and REST/SAML/OAuth endpoints), mapped to T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application.

Post-access lateral movement. The better-evidenced (and more directly defender-actionable) phase is what follows initial access. The actor's tooling attempts SSH connections against common PeopleSoft/Oracle operating-system service accounts (psoft, oracle, linuxadm) using password and key-based fallback, then runs a shell script that performs bulk data retrieval and drops ransom notes into PeopleSoft web/application server directories (BleepingComputer, 2026-06-10). This maps to T1078.004 Valid Accounts: Cloud/default service accounts, T1021.004 Remote Services: SSH, and T1213 Data from Information Repositories, culminating in T1567 Exfiltration Over Web Service. Exfiltrated data categories stated by the actor include student and applicant records, financial-aid data, immigration status, health records, and contact details, the full sensitive payload of a campus-management deployment.

Detection and hunting concepts (no IOCs). Watch for SSH authentication attempts to PeopleSoft hosts using the psoft/oracle/linuxadm account names from external or unexpected source ranges; correlate against successful logons followed by interactive shell activity. On the application tier, alert on anomalous bulk-query volumes or out-of-hours mass record retrieval in PeopleTools security-audit logs, and on egress anomalies consistent with bulk data transfer to non-standard destinations (T1071). Treat the appearance of unexpected ransom-note text files in web/app server document roots as a high-confidence lateral-movement indicator and review authorized_keys and /etc/hosts for unauthorised additions.

Hardening / mitigation. Rename or disable the default psoft/oracle/linuxadm OS service accounts and enforce SSH key-only authentication; restrict PeopleSoft administrative interfaces to jump-host access and remove direct internet exposure of the management tier; enable PeopleTools security-audit logging if not already on; and apply any outstanding Oracle Critical Patch Update advisories for PeopleSoft, recognising that the campaign's specific CVEs are undisclosed so defence-in-depth around authentication and exposure is the dependable control. Public-sector and university SOCs running PeopleSoft Campus Solutions or HCM should audit external reachability of the web/app tier as the first action.

Mandiant and Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) have identified an active compromise and extortion campaign attributed to UNC6240 (ShinyHunters) targeting Oracle PeopleSoft application infrastructure. The activity was observed between May 27, 2026, and June 9, 2026 and is consistent with the exploitation of CVE-2026-35273, a critical remote code execution vulnerability (CVSS 9.8) in the Environment Management component.

Google/Mandiant GTIG

Google's Mandiant attributes it to the group it tracks as UNC6240, and dates the activity between May 27 and June 9. Oracle did not publish its advisory until June 10, so the bug was a zero-day the entire time.

The Hacker News

The activity was observed between May 27, 2026, and June 9, 2026 and is consistent with the exploitation of CVE-2026-35273, a critical remote code execution vulnerability (CVSS 9.8) in the Environment Management component

Mandiant/GTIG

CVE-2026-35273 is a critical remote code execution vulnerability (CVSS 9.8) in Oracle PeopleTools versions 8.61 and 8.62 that exploits a server-side request forgery flaw in the Environment Management component

Rapid7
Updaterun 2026-06-12-5ab9a319actionscvesentitiesevidenceimmediate_actionprioritysourcestagsbody

The initial-access vector that was attacker-asserted yesterday is now vendor-confirmed: Oracle assigned CVE-2026-35273 (CVSS 9.8), an unauthenticated RCE in the PeopleTools Environment Management Hub (PSEMHUB, versions 8.61/8.62), and published an out-of-band Security Alert with fixes (Oracle, 2026-06-10; SecurityWeek, 2026-06-11).

Mandiant GTIG formally attributes the campaign to UNC6240 (ShinyHunters), dating exploitation 27 May – 9 June (a zero-day for the full window) and details the post-exploitation chain: customised MeshCentral remote-management agents masquerading as Microsoft Azure components for persistence and C2, and a per-victim _fanout.sh lateral-movement script spraying SSH credentials against internal hosts harvested from /etc/hosts (T1190, T1021.004). Mandiant notified more than 100 organisations with exposed PSEMHUB endpoints; 68 % are higher-education institutions (Mandiant GTIG, 2026-06-11).

The University of Nottingham (confirmed as a victim yesterday) now quantifies the damage: roughly 40 GB exfiltrated covering ~455,000 individuals across its UK, Malaysia and China campuses, including names, contact details, ethnicity, disability, passport and tuition-payment data; the ICO says it is assessing the report (BleepingComputer, 2026-06-11; The Record, 2026-06-11; University of Nottingham, 2026-06-10). Action: see the § 0 callout, patch out-of-band and compromise-assess; yesterday's hardening guidance (default SSH service accounts, PSEMHUB exposure) stands.

Updaterun 2026-06-13-40b26572actionscvesevidenceregionssourcestagsbody

Mandiant and Google GTIG formally attribute the PeopleSoft Environment Management Hub exploitation campaign to UNC6240 (ShinyHunters) and confirm the activity ran from 27 May to 9 June 2026, predating Oracle's 10 June out-of-band advisory, establishing CVE-2026-35273 (CVSS 9.8) as a zero-day at time of exploitation (Mandiant/GTIG, 2026-06-11). The unauthenticated SSRF→RCE is reached via the /PSEMHUB/hub and /PSIGW/HttpListeningConnector endpoints in PeopleTools 8.61/8.62.

GTIG notified over 100 organisations whose endpoints correlated with exploitation; 68% are higher-education institutions. Post-exploitation, the actor deployed MeshCentral remote-management agents disguised as Azure binaries, used SSH fan-out scripts with PeopleSoft admin credentials for lateral movement, and exfiltrated to the ShinyHunters leak site (Rapid7, 2026-06-12). The University of Nottingham confirmed 454,600 student and alumni records were taken, including passport numbers (University of Nottingham; BleepingComputer, 2026-06-11). CISA added the CVE to KEV on 12 June. Swiss/EU universities running Campus Solutions should treat this as P1 (.

Updaterun 2026-06-16-38d638e1actionssourcestagsbody

ShinyHunters listed the Council of Europe (the 46-member Strasbourg human-rights body, of which Switzerland is a member) claiming 297 GB across ~429,000 files taken via the Oracle PeopleSoft Environment Management Hub zero-day CVE-2026-35273, and set a 16 June leak deadline (SecurityWeek, 2026-06-15). This is the first European intergovernmental institution named in the 100+-organisation PeopleSoft campaign previously covered as an education-sector wave.

The claimed dataset spans payroll for 10,000+ current and former staff (2011–2026), 14,000+ CVs, and HR records with names, dates of birth, addresses, bank-account, tax/social-security and medical data. The Council of Europe confirmed it "is currently investigating the matter and assessing the situation" and has not confirmed exfiltration (The Register, 2026-06-15; BleepingComputer, 2026-06-15). The vector, unauthenticated HTTP to the /PSEMHUB/hub servlet (T1190), is unchanged; treat any externally-reachable PeopleSoft Environment Management Hub as compromised pending forensic review and block perimeter access to /PSEMHUB/*. Confidence on the victim claim is MEDIUM pending Council of Europe confirmation (extortion-site claim).

threat11 Jun 05:00Zmulti-sourceOpen finding ↗