← threat actors
threat actor
JadePuffer
also tracked as storm 3168 3
5 stories · 5 in the wild · July 3, 2026 – September 30, 2026
evidence: 5 observed
how they got in
- stolen credentials 1 · Sep 29
- exposed service 1 · Jul 3
sectors
- technology 1 · Sep 29
- developers 1 · Jul 9
- government 1 · Jul 9
techniques
- lateral movement 3 · Sep 30
- privilege escalation 2 · Sep 30
- resource deletion 2 · Sep 29
- auth bypass 2 · Jul 9
- credential theft 1 · Sep 30
- credential access 1 · Sep 27
- data destruction 1 · Jul 3
- encryption 1 · Jul 3
attack phases seen
- Impact 3 · Sep 30
- Lateral movement 2 · Sep 30
- Initial access 2 · Jul 9
- Privilege escalation 1 · Sep 30
- Discovery 1 · Sep 29
- Credential access 1 · Sep 27
- Defense evasion 1 · Sep 27
- Reconnaissance 1 · Sep 27
what we reported, newest first, grouped by story
September 30, 2026
- Storm-3168, the operator behind the JadePuffer agentic ransomware case, compromised two Azure service principals in the same tenant over an 18-hour window in early June and used them for extensive Azure resource destruction and cloud credential collection. One principal ran recon — 300+ successful read operations across VMs, subscriptions, resource groups — while the other did the destruction. Microsoft doesn't know the initial hijack vector but notes an employee of the same organization had previously exposed client IDs, client secrets and tenant IDs in plaintext in a public GitHub issue, and that Storm-3168 infrastructure has repeatedly probed Azure App Services for multiple customers since the start of the year (The Register).
· Sep 30 · observed · as storm 3168 · Cloud & Identity
September 29, 2026
- JadePuffer (Microsoft: Storm-3168) used two compromised Azure service principals from the same tenant to map resources and then delete them — a destructive stage lasting seven minutes against more than 100 storage accounts plus Key Vaults, Function Apps, VMs and App Services, in an ~18-hour June operation. Azure resource locks and storage-account-level protections saved some accounts; SQL database deletion failed because the attacker used an unsupported API version. Credentials for one service principal had appeared in a public GitHub issue before the attack (BleepingComputer, The Hacker News). Roughly half an hour after the wipe, the actor returned for 30+ storage-key requests, most successful.
· Sep 29 · observed · via stolen credentials · as storm 3168 · Cloud & Identity
September 27, 2026
- Microsoft details Storm-3168 abusing compromised Azure service principals for reconnaissance, resource deletion and credential access, linking the activity to JADEPUFFER and publishing defender guidance (Microsoft).
· Sep 27 · observed · as storm 3168 · Cloud & Identity
Jul 7 – July 9, 2026
- CISA added actively-exploited Adobe ColdFusion (CVE-2026-48282), Langflow, and two Joomla extension flaws to its KEV catalog, giving federal agencies a Friday deadline. The Langflow auth bypass is the same flaw the LLM-driven JADEPUFFER operator exploited last week. BleepingComputer, The Hacker News
· Jul 9 · observed · Vulnerabilities & Exploits
July 3, 2026
- Sysdig says it captured the first documented case of agentic ransomware: an operator it dubs JADEPUFFER in which a large language model handled the entire chain — breaking into an internet-facing Langflow instance via CVE-2025-3248, stealing credentials, moving laterally, then encrypting and wiping a production database. Sysdig, The Hacker News.
· Jul 3 · observed · via exposed service · AI & Model Security