The cybercriminals in control of Kimwolf — a disruptive botnet that has infected more than 2 million devices — recently shared a screenshot indicating they’d compromised the control panel for Badbox 2.0, a vast China-based botnet powered by malicious software that comes pre-installed on many Android TV streaming boxes. Both the FBI and Google say they are hunting for the people behind Badbox 2.0, and thanks to bragging by the Kimwolf botmasters we may now have a much clearer idea about that.

Our first story of 2026, The Kimwolf Botnet is Stalking Your Local Network, detailed the unique and highly invasive methods Kimwolf uses to spread. The story warned that the vast majority of Kimwolf infected systems were unofficial Android TV boxes that are typically marketed as a way to watch unlimited (pirated) movie and TV streaming services for a one-time fee.

Our January 8 story, Who Benefitted from the Aisuru and Kimwolf Botnets?, cited multiple sources saying the current administrators of Kimwolf went by the nicknames “Dort” and “Snow.” Earlier this month, a close former associate of Dort and Snow shared what they said was a screenshot the Kimwolf botmasters had taken while logged in to the Badbox 2.0 botnet control panel.

That screenshot, a portion of which is shown below, shows seven authorized users of the control panel, including one that doesn’t quite match the others: According to my source, the account “ABCD” (the one that is logged in and listed in the top right of the screenshot) belongs to Dort, who somehow figured out how to add their email address as a valid user of the Badbox 2.0 botnet.

Badbox has a storied history that well predates Kimwolf’s rise in October 2025. In July 2025, Google filed a “John Doe” lawsuit (PDF) against 25 unidentified defendants accused of operating Badbox 2.0, which Google described as a botnet of over ten million unsanctioned Android streaming devices engaged in advertising fraud. Google said Badbox 2.0, in addition to compromising multiple types of devices prior to purchase, also can infect devices by requiring the download of malicious apps from unofficial marketplaces.

Google’s lawsuit came on the heels of a June 2025 advisory from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which warned that cyber criminals were gaining unauthorized access to home networks by either configuring the products with malware prior to the user’s purchase, or infecting the device as it downloads required applications that contain backdoors — usually during the set-up process.

The FBI said Badbox 2.0 was discovered after the original Badbox campaign was disrupted in 2024. The original Badbox was identified in 2023, and primarily consisted of Android operating system devices (TV boxes) that were compromised with backdoor malware prior to purchase.

KrebsOnSecurity was initially skeptical of the claim that the Kimwolf botmasters had hacked the Badbox 2.0 botnet. That is, until we began digging into the history of the qq.com email addresses in the screenshot above.

CATHEAD

An online search for the address 34557257@qq.com (pictured in the screenshot above as the user “Chen“) shows it is listed as a point of contact for a number of China-based technology companies, including:

–Beijing Hong Dake Wang Science & Technology Co Ltd.
–Beijing Hengchuang Vision Mobile Media Technology Co. Ltd.
–Moxin Beijing Science and Technology Co. Ltd.

The website for Beijing Hong Dake Wang Science is asmeisvip[.]net, a domain that was flagged in a March 2025 report by HUMAN Security as one of several dozen sites tied to the distribution and management of the Badbox 2.0 botnet. Ditto for moyix[.]com, a domain associated with Beijing Hengchuang Vision Mobile.

A search at the breach tracking service Constella Intelligence finds 34557257@qq.com at one point used the password “cdh76111.” Pivoting on that password in Constella shows it is known to have been used by just two other email accounts: daihaic@gmail.com and cathead@gmail.com.

Constella found cathead@gmail.com registered an account at jd.com (China’s largest online retailer) in 2021 under the name “陈代海,” which translates to “Chen Daihai.” According to DomainTools.com, the name Chen Daihai is present in the original registration records (2008) for moyix[.]com, along with the email address cathead@astrolink[.]cn.

Incidentally, astrolink[.]cn also is among the Badbox 2.0 domains identified in HUMAN Security’s 2025 report. DomainTools finds cathead@astrolink[.]cn was used to register more than a dozen domains, including vmud[.]net, yet another Badbox 2.0 domain tagged by HUMAN Security.

XAVIER

A cached copy of astrolink[.]cn preserved at archive.org shows the website belongs to a mobile app development company whose full name is Beijing Astrolink Wireless Digital Technology Co. Ltd. The archived website reveals a “Contact Us” page that lists a Chen Daihai as part of the company’s technology department. The other person featured on that contact page is Zhu Zhiyu, and their email address is listed as xavier@astrolink[.]cn.

Astute readers will notice that the user Mr.Zhu in the Badbox 2.0 panel used the email address xavierzhu@qq.com. Searching this address in Constella reveals a jd.com account registered in the name of Zhu Zhiyu. A rather unique password used by this account matches the password used by the address xavierzhu@gmail.com, which DomainTools finds was the original registrant of astrolink[.]cn.

ADMIN

The very first account listed in the Badbox 2.0 panel — “admin,” registered in November 2020 — used the email address 189308024@qq.com. DomainTools shows this email is found in the 2022 registration records for the domain guilincloud[.]cn, which includes the registrant name “Huang Guilin.”

Constella finds 189308024@qq.com is associated with the China phone number 18681627767. The open-source intelligence platform osint.industries reveals this phone number is connected to a Microsoft profile created in 2014 under the name Guilin Huang (桂林 黄). The cyber intelligence platform Spycloud says that phone number was used in 2017 to create an account at the Chinese social media platform Weibo under the username “h_guilin.”

The remaining three users and corresponding qq.com email addresses were all connected to individuals in China. However, none of them (nor Mr. Huang) had any apparent connection to the entities created and operated by Chen Daihai and Zhu Zhiyu — or to any corporate entities for that matter. Also, none of these individuals responded to requests for comment.

The mind map below includes search pivots on the email addresses, company names and phone numbers that suggest a connection between Chen Daihai, Zhu Zhiyu, and Badbox 2.0.

UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS

The idea that the Kimwolf botmasters could have direct access to the Badbox 2.0 botnet is a big deal, but explaining exactly why that is requires some background on how Kimwolf spreads to new devices. The botmasters figured out they could trick residential proxy services into relaying malicious commands to vulnerable devices behind the firewall on the unsuspecting user’s local network.

The vulnerable systems sought out by Kimwolf are primarily Internet of Things (IoT) devices like unsanctioned Android TV boxes and digital photo frames that have no discernible security or authentication built-in. Put simply, if you can communicate with these devices, you can compromise them with a single command.

Our January 2 story featured research from the proxy-tracking firm Synthient, which alerted 11 different residential proxy providers that their proxy endpoints were vulnerable to being abused for this kind of local network probing and exploitation.

Most of those vulnerable proxy providers have since taken steps to prevent customers from going upstream into the local networks of residential proxy endpoints, and it appeared that Kimwolf would no longer be able to quickly spread to millions of devices simply by exploiting some residential proxy provider.

However, the source of that Badbox 2.0 screenshot said the Kimwolf botmasters had an ace up their sleeve the whole time: Secret access to the Badbox 2.0 botnet control panel.

“Dort has gotten unauthorized access,” the source said. “So, what happened is normal proxy providers patched this. But Badbox doesn’t sell proxies by itself, so it’s not patched. And as long as Dort has access to Badbox, they would be able to load” the Kimwolf malware directly onto TV boxes associated with Badbox 2.0.

The source said it isn’t clear how Dort gained access to the Badbox botnet panel. But it’s unlikely that Dort’s existing account will persist for much longer: All of our notifications to the qq.com email addresses listed in the control panel screenshot received a copy of that image, as well as questions about the apparently rogue ABCD account.

Microsoft today issued patches to plug at least 113 security holes in its various Windows operating systems and supported software. Eight of the vulnerabilities earned Microsoft’s most-dire “critical” rating, and the company warns that attackers are already exploiting one of the bugs fixed today.

January’s Microsoft zero-day flaw — CVE-2026-20805 — is brought to us by a flaw in the Desktop Window Manager (DWM), a key component of Windows that organizes windows on a user’s screen. Kev Breen, senior director of cyber threat research at Immersive, said despite awarding CVE-2026-20805 a middling CVSS score of 5.5, Microsoft has confirmed its active exploitation in the wild, indicating that threat actors are already leveraging this flaw against organizations.

Breen said vulnerabilities of this kind are commonly used to undermine Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), a core operating system security control designed to protect against buffer overflows and other memory-manipulation exploits.

“By revealing where code resides in memory, this vulnerability can be chained with a separate code execution flaw, transforming a complex and unreliable exploit into a practical and repeatable attack,” Breen said. “Microsoft has not disclosed which additional components may be involved in such an exploit chain, significantly limiting defenders’ ability to proactively threat hunt for related activity. As a result, rapid patching currently remains the only effective mitigation.”

Chris Goettl, vice president of product management at Ivanti, observed that CVE-2026-20805 affects all currently supported and extended security update supported versions of the Windows OS. Goettl said it would be a mistake to dismiss the severity of this flaw based on its “Important” rating and relatively low CVSS score.

“A risk-based prioritization methodology warrants treating this vulnerability as a higher severity than the vendor rating or CVSS score assigned,” he said.

Among the critical flaws patched this month are two Microsoft Office remote code execution bugs (CVE-2026-20952 and CVE-2026-20953) that can be triggered just by viewing a booby-trapped message in the Preview Pane.

Our October 2025 Patch Tuesday “End of 10” roundup noted that Microsoft had removed a modem driver from all versions after it was discovered that hackers were abusing a vulnerability in it to hack into systems. Adam Barnett at Rapid7 said Microsoft today removed another couple of modem drivers from Windows for a broadly similar reason: Microsoft is aware of functional exploit code for an elevation of privilege vulnerability in a very similar modem driver, tracked as CVE-2023-31096.

“That’s not a typo; this vulnerability was originally published via MITRE over two years ago, along with a credible public writeup by the original researcher,” Barnett said. “Today’s Windows patches remove agrsm64.sys and agrsm.sys. All three modem drivers were originally developed by the same now-defunct third party, and have been included in Windows for decades. These driver removals will pass unnoticed for most people, but you might find active modems still in a few contexts, including some industrial control systems.”

According to Barnett, two questions remain: How many more legacy modem drivers are still present on a fully-patched Windows asset; and how many more elevation-to-SYSTEM vulnerabilities will emerge from them before Microsoft cuts off attackers who have been enjoying “living off the land[line] by exploiting an entire class of dusty old device drivers?”

“Although Microsoft doesn’t claim evidence of exploitation for CVE-2023-31096, the relevant 2023 write-up and the 2025 removal of the other Agere modem driver have provided two strong signals for anyone looking for Windows exploits in the meantime,” Barnett said. “In case you were wondering, there is no need to have a modem connected; the mere presence of the driver is enough to render an asset vulnerable.”

Immersive, Ivanti and Rapid7 all called attention to CVE-2026-21265, which is a critical Security Feature Bypass vulnerability affecting Windows Secure Boot. This security feature is designed to protect against threats like rootkits and bootkits, and it relies on a set of certificates that are set to expire in June 2026 and October 2026. Once these 2011 certificates expire, Windows devices that do not have the new 2023 certificates can no longer receive Secure Boot security fixes.

Barnett cautioned that when updating the bootloader and BIOS, it is essential to prepare fully ahead of time for the specific OS and BIOS combination you’re working with, since incorrect remediation steps can lead to an unbootable system.

“Fifteen years is a very long time indeed in information security, but the clock is running out on the Microsoft root certificates which have been signing essentially everything in the Secure Boot ecosystem since the days of Stuxnet,” Barnett said. “Microsoft issued replacement certificates back in 2023, alongside CVE-2023-24932 which covered relevant Windows patches as well as subsequent steps to remediate the Secure Boot bypass exploited by the BlackLotus bootkit.”

Goettl noted that Mozilla has released updates for Firefox and Firefox ESR resolving a total of 34 vulnerabilities, two of which are suspected to be exploited (CVE-2026-0891 and CVE-2026-0892). Both are resolved in Firefox 147 (MFSA2026-01) and CVE-2026-0891 is resolved in Firefox ESR 140.7 (MFSA2026-03).

“Expect Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge updates this week in addition to a high severity vulnerability in Chrome WebView that was resolved in the January 6 Chrome update (CVE-2026-0628),” Goettl said.

As ever, the SANS Internet Storm Center has a per-patch breakdown by severity and urgency. Windows admins should keep an eye on askwoody.com for any news about patches that don’t quite play nice with everything. If you experience any issues related installing January’s patches, please drop a line in the comments below.