Editors Note: This is the final updated forecast in this series.. If you'd like to see the original 2 forecasts, checkout the # Appendix

Strategic Overview

TL;DR

Our final call: 11% UNC5221 gets publicly tied to a new 0-day before Dec 31. 🎯

Question

By Dec 31, 2025, will UNC5221 be publicly linked to exploiting at least one new zero-day in a non-Ivanti edge platform (e.g., VMware vCenter/ESXi, Citrix NetScaler, F5, Palo Alto, Fortinet)?

Executive Take

UNC5221 is a proven zero‑day user against edge appliances and now maintains long‑term BRICKSTORM footholds on VMware and F5 infrastructure, increasing its strategic 0‑day potential. But fresh CISA and F5‑related reporting through early December documents stealthy persistence and source‑code theft, not any newly exploited UNC5221 zero‑day. With only ~3 weeks left in 2025 and normal attribution delays, I now assess just an 11% chance that a Tier‑1 source will publicly tie a new zero‑day to UNC5221 before Dec 31.

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Forecast Card

• Question: By Dec 31, 2025, will UNC5221 be publicly linked to exploiting at least one new zero-day?

• Resolution Criteria:

  • Yes if, between Nov 3–Dec 31, 2025 (America/New_York), at least one qualifying primary publication explicitly attributes exploitation of a vulnerability that was zero‑day at time of first exploitation to UNC5221 (or a renamed/merged superset explicitly including UNC5221).
  • Qualifying sources (whitelist): Google Threat Intelligence/Mandiant, Microsoft MSTIC, CrowdStrike Intelligence, Palo Alto Unit 42, Cisco Talos, Rapid7/Recorded Future Insikt, or a U.S. government alert (e.g., CISA/NSA). Vendor advisories qualify only if they explicitly attribute to UNC5221 or cite a qualifying source doing so.
  • Exclusions: Secondary media paraphrases; research relying only on TTP overlap without explicit actor naming/mapping; publications outside the window. Publication date controls resolution, not exploitation date.

• Horizon: 2025‑12‑31, 23:59:59 America/New_York

• Probability (Now): 11% | Log-odds: ‑2.09

• Confidence in Inputs: Medium–High

• Base Rate: ≈7% for a ~23‑day window, from PRC espionage actors averaging ~1 zero‑day per cluster‑year (Poisson λ≈1/year → p≈1–e^(‑λ·23/365)≈6%; nudged to 7% for UNC5221’s above‑average zero‑day history).

Base-Rate & Conditional-Update Math (concise)

• Full-window prior (Nov 3–Dec 31): p₀ = 32% (from prior forecast)
• Treating events as approximately Poisson over the 59‑day window:
  • λ·T_full = −ln(1−p₀) ≈ −ln(0.68) ≈ 0.38
  • λ ≈ 0.38 / 59 ≈ 0.0064 per day
• Residual hazard for remaining ~23 days (Dec 8–31), before new intel:
  • p_resid ≈ 1 − exp(−λ·23) ≈ 1 − exp(−0.0064·23) ≈ 1 − exp(−0.147) ≈ 14–15%
• Update for negative evidence (no qualifying 0‑day attribution despite new BRICKSTORM/F5 and CISA reporting):
  • Apply a downward likelihood factor (LR≈0.7) to reflect that fresh, detailed reports still show no new 0‑day linked to UNC5221
  • 0.15 × 0.7 ≈ 0.105 → rounded and slightly extremized to 11%

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