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AI Analysis by The Wire
February 22, 2026 Focus: VULNERABILITIES / SUPPLY CHAIN / PHISHING INFRASTRUCTURE Impact: 9/10

Six Windows Zero-Days Under Active Attack, Starkiller PhaaS Breaks MFA, Cline Supply Chain Hit — Feb 22 Afternoon Edition

Microsoft's February Patch Tuesday just dropped a bombshell: six zero-days are being actively exploited in the wild right now. CVE-2026-21510 lets a single malicious link bypass Windows protections silently across all supported Windows versions. CVE-2026-21513 hits MSHTML, CVE-2026-21514 targets Word, CVE-2026-21533 escalates to SYSTEM via Remote Desktop Services, CVE-2026-21519 is another DWM privilege escalation (same component patched last month — attackers are clearly focused here), and CVE-2026-21525 is a VPN DoS that can drop corporate remote access. Patch now, no exceptions.

On the phishing front, Krebs is reporting on Starkiller — a new PhaaS that fundamentally breaks MFA. Instead of a static fake login page, it spins up a headless Chrome container that loads the REAL target site and acts as a live man-in-the-middle proxy. Every keystroke, MFA code, and session token passes through attacker infrastructure in real time. The platform even includes a live screen-streaming dashboard for operators. This isn't a phishing kit upgrade — it's MFA nullification as a service. Combined with the Roundcube CVSS 9.9 deserialization flaw (CVE-2025-49113) that was weaponized within 48 hours of disclosure and just hit the CISA KEV catalog, the attack surface today is exceptionally hot.

The developer supply chain took another hit: Cline CLI 2.3.0 was pushed via a compromised npm token on February 17, silently installing OpenClaw on developer machines via postinstall script. No malicious behavior confirmed beyond unauthorized installation, but the vector is textbook — compromised publish credentials, minimal file modification to evade diff-scanning, and a postinstall hook that most devs never audit. Separately, MIMICRAT (AstarionRAT) is a new C++ RAT delivered via ClickFix campaigns that bypasses ETW and AMSI before dropping a Lua-scripted shellcode loader communicating over HTTPS port 443 using web analytics traffic profiles. This one is built for stealth.

Impact Score
9/10
Key Stories
Microsoft Patches 6 Actively Exploited Zero-Days Including Windows Shell, MSHTML, Word, RDP, DWM, VPN
Krebs on Security
Starkiller PhaaS Uses Live Reverse Proxy to Steal MFA Tokens in Real Time
Krebs on Security / Abnormal AI
Cline CLI 2.3.0 Supply Chain Attack Installs OpenClaw via Compromised npm Token
BleepingComputer
Roundcube CVSS 9.9 RCE and CVSS 7.2 XSS Added to CISA KEV, Weaponized Within 48 Hours
The Hacker News
MIMICRAT ClickFix Campaign Bypasses ETW and AMSI With Lua Shellcode Loader Hiding in HTTPS Traffic
The Hacker News / Elastic Security Labs
Analyst Take
Today's threat stack is unusually dense. Six simultaneous zero-days in a single Patch Tuesday is not normal — it signals either accelerated exploitation timelines or stockpiling and simultaneous release by threat actors. The DWM component being hit again one month after last patch is a red flag; attackers are clearly finding the patch incomplete or finding adjacent bypasses. Starkiller is the story I'd watch most carefully — it commoditizes MFA bypass to the point where any mid-tier phishing operator can run it. The FIDO2/passkey transition can't come fast enough. The Cline supply chain hit is a reminder that AI coding tools are now a high-value soft target: developers trust postinstall hooks implicitly and rarely audit them. Expect more of these.