Palo Alto Fears China Retaliation – 2026-02-16

In this episode, the crew dives into reports that Palo Alto Networks allegedly avoided directly attributing a threat campaign to China over fears of retaliation—sparking a broader debate about corporate and government threat attribution, geopolitics, and whether attribution still matters in today’s cyber landscape. They also explore the escalating AI arms race, including Meta’s aggressive (and expensive) talent poaching, the growing rivalry between OpenAI and Anthropic, and what it all means for the future of the industry. Rounding out the episode, the team discusses the unintended consequences of the AI boom—like global hardware shortages stretching beyond GPUs to hard drives—and examines emerging prompt injection attack techniques, highlighting real-world examples and the growing security risks surrounding AI-powered tools. Join us LIVE on Mondays, 4:30pm EST. A weekly Podcast with BHIS and Friends. We discuss notable Infosec, and infosec-adjacent news stories gathered by our community news team. https://www.youtube.com/@BlackHillsInformationSecurity Chat with us on Discord! - https://discord.gg/bhis 🔴live-chat Chapters (00:00) - PreShow Banter™ — Threat Actor Age Range (05:37) - Palo Alto Fears China Retaliation – 2026-02-16 (11:28) - Story # 1: Exclusive: Palo Alto chose not to tie China to hacking campaign for fear of retaliation from Beijing, sources say (16:01) - Story # 2: Rent a Human (20:39) - Story # 3: OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger joining OpenAI, Altman says (24:31) - Story # 4: Western Digital runs out of HDD capacity: CEO says massive AI deals secured, price surges ahead (28:30) - Story # 5: GTIG AI Threat Tracker: Distillation, Experimentation, and (Continued) Integration of AI for Adversarial Use (30:32) - Story # 6: Data Exfil from Agents in Messaging Apps (32:15) - Story # 7: AMOS infostealer targets macOS through a popular AI app (39:25) - Story # 8: Discord Voluntarily Pushes Mandatory Age Verification Despite Recent Data Breach (46:11) - Story # 9: Vietnam bans unskippable online video ads longer than 5 seconds from next month (49:59) - Story # 10: SolarWinds Web Help Desk Exploitation - February 2026 (54:00) - Story # 11: Devilish devs spawn 287 Chrome extensions to flog your browser history to data brokers (58:13) - Story # 12: Snail mail letters target Trezor and Ledger users in crypto-theft attacks (01:00:59) - Eric's Workshop (01:01:31) - Jennifer's Workshop (01:04:36) - SOC Summit 2026 Links Story # 1: Exclusive: Palo Alto chose not to tie China to hacking campaign for fear of retaliation from Beijing, sources say Story # 2: Rent a Human Story # 3: OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger joining OpenAI, Altman says Story # 4: Western Digital runs out of HDD capacity: CEO says massive AI deals secured, price surges ahead Story # 5: GTIG AI Threat Tracker: Distillation, Experimentation, and (Continued) Integration of AI for Adversarial Use Story # 6: Data Exfil from Agents in Messaging Apps Story # 7: AMOS infostealer targets macOS through a popular AI app Story # 8: Discord Voluntarily Pushes Mandatory Age Verification Despite Recent Data Breach Story # 9: Vietnam bans unskippable online video ads longer than 5 seconds from next month Story # 10: SolarWinds Web Help Desk Exploitation - February 2026 Story # 11: Devilish devs spawn 287 Chrome extensions to flog your browser history to data brokers Story # 12: Snail mail letters target Trezor and Ledger users in crypto-theft attacks 01:01:00 - Eric’s Workshop 01:01:31 - Jennifer’s Workshop 01:04:37 - SOC Summit 2026 Creators & Guests Corey Ham - Host Wade Wells - Host Bronwen Aker - Host Ralph May - Host Ched "cheddar" Wiggins - Guest Jennifer Shannon - Guest Eric Kuehn - Guest Click here to watch a video of this episode. 🔗 Register for FREE Infosec Webcasts, Anti-casts & Summits  https://poweredbybhis.com Brought to you by: Black Hills Information Security  https://www.blackhillsinfosec.com Antisyphon Training https://www.antisyphontraining.com/ Active Countermeasures https://www.activecountermeasures.com Wild West Hackin Fest https://wildwesthackinfest.com Click here to view the episode transcript.