---
title: Operation Snowball: an exposed workspace shows a jailbroken DeepSeek Flash agent running a two-week intrusion into a European telecom with almost no human input | ctxsec
url: https://ctxsec.com/items/malbear-operation-snowball-jailbroken-deepseek-flash-agent-two-week-telecom-intrusion-broadworks
description: "Malbear Labs found an open directory holding about 70 session transcripts of a custom agent harness built on DeepSeek Flash, steered by a Chinese-speaking operator with two-word prompts like 'Go on' and 'Stop'. A 78,000-character jailbreak prompt treated any refusal as a malfunction; none were recorded. The agent entered a European telecom through CVE-2026-20320, the unauthenticated BroadWorks XSP XXE that CISA added to KEV on Nov 10, taking the platform's system identity private key and other keys, then exploited Liferay (CVE-2020-7961) and JBoss RichFaces (CVE-2013-2165), and adapted when EDR blocked it: switching from PwnKit to a sudo escape, writing a Perl tunnel to replace a blocked suo5, going script-only on Windows and Unicode-escaping JSP web shells to dodge signatures. Malbear reports subscriber billing records, dozens of credential sets and access to millions of patient records via a default-credential Oracle database."
status: "vendor research (Malbear Labs, Nov 8, 2026, from an exposed attacker workspace); outcomes are Malbear's reading of the transcripts, not confirmed by victims"
published: 2026-11-12
---

> Malbear Labs found an open directory holding about 70 session transcripts of a custom agent harness built on DeepSeek Flash, steered by a Chinese-speaking operator with two-word prompts like 'Go on' and 'Stop'. A 78,000-character jailbreak prompt treated any refusal as a malfunction; none were recorded. The agent entered a European telecom through CVE-2026-20320, the unauthenticated BroadWorks XSP XXE that CISA added to KEV on Nov 10, taking the platform's system identity private key and other keys, then exploited Liferay (CVE-2020-7961) and JBoss RichFaces (CVE-2013-2165), and adapted when EDR blocked it: switching from PwnKit to a sudo escape, writing a Perl tunnel to replace a blocked suo5, going script-only on Windows and Unicode-escaping JSP web shells to dodge signatures. Malbear reports subscriber billing records, dozens of credential sets and access to millions of patient records via a default-credential Oracle database.

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vendor research (Malbear Labs, Nov 8, 2026, from an exposed attacker workspace); outcomes are Malbear's reading of the transcripts, not confirmed by victims

2026-11-12 11:37 AM ET

### Operation Snowball: an exposed workspace shows a jailbroken DeepSeek Flash agent running a two-week intrusion into a European telecom with almost no human input

- **Why it matters:** the hunt can't look for a human operator's working hours or session timing; look for the agent's fast, repetitive, parallel activity instead.
- **Patch:** BroadWorks (Cisco's August fix for CVE-2026-20320; keep OCI port 2208 off the internet), EOL JBoss AS 6, Liferay 7.0, and the KEV entries in its toolkit (CVE-2022-22536 SAP ICM, CVE-2023-4966 CitrixBleed, CVE-2024-3400 PAN-OS).
- **Lessons from the transcripts:** signature-only AV (here OfficeScan with behavior monitoring off) was routed around in one session; BladeLogic RSCD (port 4750) reachable from app servers gave SYSTEM.
- See the hunt item for indicators.

Sources: [Malbear Labs: Operation Snowball: Inside an Autonomous AI Intrusion Campaign (Nov 8, 2026)](https://malbearlabs.com/posts/operation-snowball-inside-an-autonomous-ai-intrusion-campaign) · [Infosecurity Magazine: Jailbroken AI Agent Ran Two-Week Attack on European Telecom](https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/operation-snowball-ai-telecom/)