Why Security Teams Need To Start Earlier

Rapid7 published multiple posts covering active threats, critical vulnerabilities, tooling updates, and regulatory guidance. Key item: a sophisticated Dropping Elephant campaign uses a China-themed decoy to deliver a heavily reworked in-memory RAT via DLL side‑loading of a legitimate Microsoft binary (Fondue.exe) and Donut shellcode; attackers employ control‑flow flattening, runtime API reconstruction, and hardened C2 — defenders should prioritize behavioral and memory‑level detection (e.g., shortcut spawning PowerShell, files staged in C:\Users\Public\, suspicious scheduled tasks) rather than