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Multiple threat activity clusters with ties to North Korea (aka Democratic People's Republic of Korea or DPRK) have been linked to attacks targeting organizations and individuals in the Web3 and cryptocurrency space. "The focus on Web3 and cryptocurrency appears to be primarily financially motivated due to the heavy sanctions that have been placed on North Korea," Google-owned Mandiant said in its M-Trends report for 2025 shared with The Hacker News. "These activities aim to generate financial gains, reportedly funding North Korea's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program and other strategic assets." The cybersecurity firm said DPRK-nexus threat actors have developed custom tools written in a variety of languages such as Golang, C++, and Rust, and are capable of infecting Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. At least three threat activity clusters it tracks as UNC1069, UNC4899, and UNC5342 have been found to target members of the cryptocurren...

The Iran-nexus threat actor known as UNC2428 has been observed delivering a backdoor known as MURKYTOUR as part of a job-themed social engineering campaign aimed at Israel in October 2024. Google-owned Mandiant described UNC2428 as a threat actor aligned with Iran that engages in cyber espionage-related operations. The intrusion set is said to have distributed the malware through a "complex chain of deception techniques." "UNC2428's social engineering campaign targeted individuals while posing as a recruitment opportunity from Israeli defense contractor, Rafael," the company said in its annual M-Trends report for 2025. Individuals who expressed interest were redirected to a site that impersonated Rafael, from where they were asked to download a tool to assist with applying for the job. The tool ("RafaelConnect.exe") was an installer dubbed LONEFLEET that, once launched, presented a graphical user interface (GUI) to the victim in order to enter th...

Cybersecurity researchers have revealed that Russian military personnel are the target of a new malicious campaign that distributes Android spyware under the guise of the Alpine Quest mapping software. "The attackers hide this trojan inside modified Alpine Quest mapping software and distribute it in various ways, including through one of the Russian Android app catalogs," Doctor Web said in an analysis. The trojan has been found embedded in older versions of the software and propagated as a freely available variant of Alpine Quest Pro, a program with advanced functionality. The Russian cybersecurity vendor said it also observed the malware, dubbed Android.Spy.1292.origin, being distributed in the form of an APK file via a fake Telegram channel. While the threat actors initially provided a link for downloading the app in one of the Russian app catalogs through the Telegram channel, the trojanized version was later distributed directly as an APK as an app update. What m...

Phishing attacks remain a huge challenge for organizations in 2025. In fact, with attackers increasingly leveraging identity-based techniques over software exploits, phishing arguably poses a bigger threat than ever before.  Attackers are increasingly leveraging identity-based techniques over software exploits, with phishing and stolen credentials (a byproduct of phishing) now the primary cause of breaches. Source: Verizon DBIR Attackers are increasingly leveraging identity-based techniques over software exploits, with phishing and stolen credentials (a byproduct of phishing) now the primary cause of breaches. Source: Verizon DBIR Attackers are turning to identity attacks like phishing because they can achieve all of the same objectives as they would in a traditional endpoint or network attack, simply by logging into a victim's account. And with organizations now using hundreds of internet apps across their workforce, the scope of accounts that can be phished or targeted with s...

Multiple suspected Russia-linked threat actors are "aggressively" targeting individuals and organizations with ties to Ukraine and human rights with an aim to gain unauthorized access to Microsoft 365 accounts since early March 2025. The highly targeted social engineering operations, per Volexity, are a shift from previously documented attacks that leveraged a technique known as device code phishing to achieve the same goals, indicating that Russian adversaries are actively refining their tradecraft. "These recently observed attacks rely heavily on one-on-one interaction with a target, as the threat actor must both convince them to click a link and send back a Microsoft-generated code," security researchers Charlie Gardner, Josh Duke, Matthew Meltzer, Sean Koessel, Steven Adair, and Tom Lancaster said in an exhaustive analysis. At least two different threat clusters tracked as UTA0352 and UTA0355 are assessed to be behind the attacks, although the possibilit...

The Ripple cryptocurrency npm JavaScript library named xrpl.js has been compromised by unknown threat actors as part of a software supply chain attack designed to harvest and exfiltrate users' private keys. The malicious activity has been found to affect five different versions of the package: 4.2.1, 4.2.2, 4.2.3, 4.2.4, and 2.14.2. The issue has been addressed in versions 4.2.5 and 2.14.3. xrpl.js is a popular JavaScript API for interacting with the XRP Ledger blockchain, also called the Ripple Protocol, a cryptocurrency platform launched by Ripple Labs in 2012. The package has been downloaded over 2.9 million times to date, attracting more than 135,000 weekly downloads. "The official XPRL (Ripple) NPM package was compromised by sophisticated attackers who put in a backdoor to steal cryptocurrency private keys and gain access to cryptocurrency wallets," Aikido Security's Charlie Eriksen said . The malicious code changes have been found to be introduced by a...

Intro: Why hack in when you can log in? SaaS applications are the backbone of modern organizations, powering productivity and operational efficiency. But every new app introduces critical security risks through app integrations and multiple users, creating easy access points for threat actors. As a result, SaaS breaches have increased, and according to a May 2024 XM Cyber report, identity and credential misconfigurations caused 80% of security exposures. Subtle signs of a compromise get lost in the noise, and then multi-stage attacks unfold undetected due to siloed solutions. Think of an account takeover in Entra ID, then privilege escalation in GitHub, along with data exfiltration from Slack. Each seems unrelated when viewed in isolation, but in a connected timeline of events, it's a dangerous breach. Wing Security's SaaS platform is a multi-layered solution that combines posture management with real-time identity threat detection and response. This allows organizations to get a ...

Google on Tuesday revealed that it will no longer offer a standalone prompt for third-party cookies in its Chrome browser as part of its Privacy Sandbox initiative. "We've made the decision to maintain our current approach to offering users third-party cookie choice in Chrome, and will not be rolling out a new standalone prompt for third-party cookies," Anthony Chavez, vice president of Privacy Sandbox at Google, said . "Users can continue to choose the best option for themselves in Chrome's Privacy and Security Settings." Back in July 2024, the tech giant said it had abandoned its plans to deprecate third-party tracking cookies and that it intends to roll out a new experience instead that lets users make an informed choice. Google said feedback from publishers, developers, regulators, and the ads industry has made it clear there are "divergent perspectives" on making changes that could affect the availability of third-party cookies. In its...

Cybersecurity researchers have detailed a malware campaign that's targeting Docker environments with a previously undocumented technique to mine cryptocurrency. The activity cluster, per Darktrace and Cado Security , represents a shift from other cryptojacking campaigns that directly deploy miners like XMRig to illicitly profit off the compute resources. This involves deploying a malware strain that connects to a nascent Web3 service called Teneo, a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) that allows users to monetize public social media data by running a Community Node in exchange for rewards called Teneo Points , which can be converted into $TENEO Tokens. The node essentially functions as a distributed social media scraper to extract posts from Facebook, X, Reddit, and TikTok. An analysis of artifacts gathered from Darktrace's honeypots has revealed that the attack starts with a request to launch a container image " kazutod/tene:ten " from the ...

Cybersecurity researchers have detailed a now-patched vulnerability in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) that could have enabled an attacker to elevate their privileges in the Cloud Composer workflow orchestration service that's based on Apache Airflow. "This vulnerability lets attackers with edit permissions in Cloud Composer to escalate their access to the default Cloud Build service account, which has high-level permissions across GCP services like Cloud Build itself, Cloud Storage, and Artifact Registry," Liv Matan, senior security researcher at Tenable, said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The shortcoming has been codenamed ConfusedComposer by the cybersecurity company, describing it as a variant of ConfusedFunction , a privilege escalation vulnerability impacting GCP's Cloud Functions service that an attacker could exploit to access other services and sensitive data in an unauthorized manner. The disclosure comes weeks after Tenable detailed another pr...

As SaaS and cloud-native work reshape the enterprise, the web browser has emerged as the new endpoint. However, unlike endpoints, browsers remain mostly unmonitored, despite being responsible for more than 70% of modern malware attacks . Keep Aware's recent State of Browser Security report highlights major concerns security leaders face with employees using the web browser for most of their work. The reality is that traditional security tools are blind to what happens within the browser , and attackers know it. Key Findings: 70% of phishing campaigns impersonate Microsoft, OneDrive, or Office 365 to exploit user trust. 150+ trusted platforms like Google Docs and Dropbox are being abused to host phishing and exfiltrate data. 10% of AI prompts involve sensitive business content, posing risks across thousands of browser-based AI tools. 34% of file uploads on company devices go to personal accounts, often undetected. New Attack Patterns Bypass Traditional Defenses From phis...