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A now-patched security flaw in Google Chrome was exploited as a zero-day by a threat actor known as TaxOff to deploy a backdoor codenamed Trinper . The attack, observed in mid-March 2025 by Positive Technologies, involved the use of a sandbox escape vulnerability tracked as CVE-2025-2783 (CVSS score: 8.3). Google addressed the flaw later that month after Kaspersky reported in-the-wild exploitation in a campaign dubbed Operation ForumTroll targeting various Russian organizations. "The initial attack vector was a phishing email containing a malicious link," security researchers Stanislav Pyzhov and Vladislav Lunin said . "When the victim clicked the link, it triggered a one-click exploit (CVE-2025-2783), leading to the installation of the Trinper backdoor employed by TaxOff." The phishing email is said to have been disguised as an invitation to the Primakov Readings forum – the same lure detailed by Kaspersky – urging users to click on a link that led to a fake...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a now-patched security flaw in LangChain's LangSmith platform that could be exploited to capture sensitive data, including API keys and user prompts. The vulnerability, which carries a CVSS score of 8.8 out of a maximum of 10.0, has been codenamed AgentSmith by Noma Security. LangSmith is an observability and evaluation platform that allows users to develop, test, and monitor large language model (LLM) applications, including those built using LangChain. The service also offers what's called a LangChain Hub , which acts as a repository for all publicly listed prompts, agents, and models. "This newly identified vulnerability exploited unsuspecting users who adopt an agent containing a pre-configured malicious proxy server uploaded to 'Prompt Hub,'" researchers Sasi Levi and Gal Moyal said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Once adopted, the malicious proxy discreetly intercepted all user communicatio...

Cybersecurity researchers are warning of a new phishing campaign that's targeting users in Taiwan with malware families such as HoldingHands RAT and Gh0stCringe. The activity is part of a broader campaign that delivered the Winos 4.0 malware framework earlier this January by sending phishing messages impersonating Taiwan's National Taxation Bureau, Fortinet FortiGuard Labs said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The cybersecurity company said it identified additional malware samples through continuous monitoring and that it observed the same threat actor, referred to as Silver Fox APT, using malware-laced PDF documents or ZIP files distributed via phishing emails to deliver Gh0stCringe and a malware strain based on HoldingHands RAT. It's worth noting that both HoldingHands RAT (aka Gh0stBins) and Gh0stCringe are variants of a known remote access trojan called Gh0st RAT, which is widely used by Chinese hacking groups. The starting point of the attack is a p...

The notorious cybercrime group known as Scattered Spider (aka UNC3944) that recently targeted various U.K. and U.S. retailers has begun to target major insurance companies, according to Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG). "Google Threat Intelligence Group is now aware of multiple intrusions in the U.S. which bear all the hallmarks of Scattered Spider activity," John Hultquist, chief analyst at GTIG, said in an email Monday. "We are now seeing incidents in the insurance industry. Given this actor's history of focusing on a sector at a time, the insurance industry should be on high alert, especially for social engineering schemes which target their help desks and call centers." Scattered Spider is the name assigned to an amorphous collective that's known for its use of advanced social engineering tactics to breach organizations. In recent months, the threat actors are believed to have forged an alliance with the DragonForce ransomware cartel in the ...

For many organizations, Active Directory (AD) service accounts are quiet afterthoughts, persisting in the background long after their original purpose has been forgotten. To make matters worse, these orphaned service accounts (created for legacy applications, scheduled tasks, automation scripts, or test environments) are often left active with non-expiring or stale passwords. It's no surprise that AD service accounts often evade routine security oversight. Security teams, overwhelmed by daily demands and lingering technical debt, often overlook service accounts (unlinked to individual users and rarely scrutinized) allowing them to quietly fade into the background. However, this obscurity makes them prime targets for attackers seeking stealthy ways into the network. And left unchecked, forgotten service accounts can serve as silent gateways for attack paths and lateral movement across enterprise environments. In this article, we'll examine the risks that forgotten AD service accounts...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed three security flaws in the popular Sitecore Experience Platform (XP) that could be chained to achieve pre-authenticated remote code execution. Sitecore Experience Platform is an enterprise-oriented software that provides users with tools for content management, digital marketing, and analytics and reports. The list of vulnerabilities, which are yet to be assigned CVE identifiers, is as follows - Use of hard-coded credentials Post-authenticated remote code execution via path traversal Post-authenticated remote code execution via Sitecore PowerShell Extension watchTowr Labs researcher Piotr Bazydlo said the default user account "sitecore\ServicesAPI" has a single-character password that's hard-coded to " b ." While the user has no roles and permissions assigned in Sitecore, the attack surface management firm found that the credentials could be alternately used against the "/sitecore/admin" API endpoi...

Ransomware has become a highly coordinated and pervasive threat, and traditional defenses are increasingly struggling to neutralize it. Today's ransomware attacks initially target your last line of defense — your backup infrastructure. Before locking up your production environment, cybercriminals go after your backups to cripple your ability to recover, increasing the odds of a ransom payout. Notably, these attacks are carefully engineered takedowns of your defenses. The threat actors disable backup agents, delete snapshots, modify retention policies, encrypt backup volumes (especially those that are network accessible) and exploit vulnerabilities in integrated backup platforms. They are no longer trying just to deny your access but erase the very means of recovery. If your backup environment isn't built with this evolving threat landscape in mind, it's at high risk of getting compromised. How can IT pros defend against this? In this guide, we'll uncover the weak strategies that lea...

Cybersecurity researchers have called attention to a new campaign that's actively exploiting a recently disclosed critical security flaw in Langflow to deliver the Flodrix botnet malware. "Attackers use the vulnerability to execute downloader scripts on compromised Langflow servers, which in turn fetch and install the Flodrix malware," Trend Micro researchers Aliakbar Zahravi, Ahmed Mohamed Ibrahim, Sunil Bharti, and Shubham Singh said in a technical report published today. The activity entails the exploitation of CVE-2025-3248 (CVSS score: 9.8), a missing authentication vulnerability in Langflow , a Python-based "visual framework" for building artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Successful exploitation of the flaw could enable unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary code via crafted HTTP requests. It was patched by Langflow in March 2025 with version 1.3.0. Last month, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) flagg...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday added a high-severity security flaw in TP-Link wireless routers to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation.  The vulnerability in question is CVE-2023-33538 (CVSS score: 8.8), a command injection bug that could result in the execution of arbitrary system commands when processing the ssid1 parameter in a specially crafted HTTP GET request. "TP-Link TL-WR940N V2/V4, TL-WR841N V8/V10, and TL-WR740N V1/V2 contain a command injection vulnerability via the component /userRpm/WlanNetworkRpm," the agency said. CISA has also warned that there is a possibility that affected products could be end-of-life (EoL) and/or end-of-service (EoS), urging users to discontinue their use if no mitigations are available. According to TP-Link, official support for all the three router models have ended , meaning that they are unlikely to receive any fixes. There is c...

Meta Platforms on Monday announced that it's bringing advertising to WhatsApp, but emphasized that the ads are "built with privacy in mind." The ads are expected to be displayed on the Updates tab through its Stories-like Status feature, which allows ephemeral sharing of photos, videos, voice notes, and text for 24 hours. These efforts are "rolling out gradually," per the company. The media giant, which acquired WhatsApp for a record $19.3 billion in February 2014, first announced its plans for ads in Status way back in November 2018. Meta also claimed that the ads implementation was developed in the "most privacy-oriented way possible" and that it only uses limited information to serve ads. "Your personal messages, calls, and statuses remain end-to-end encrypted, meaning no one can see or hear them," the company said.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said it has filed a civil forfeiture complaint in federal court that targets over $7.74 million in cryptocurrency, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other digital assets allegedly linked to a global IT worker scheme orchestrated by North Korea. "For years, North Korea has exploited global remote IT contracting and cryptocurrency ecosystems to evade U.S. sanctions and bankroll its weapons programs," said Sue J. Bai, Head of the Justice Department's National Security Division. The Justice Department said the funds were originally restrained in connection with an April 2023 indictment against Sim Hyon-Sop, a North Korean Foreign Trade Bank (FTB) representative who is believed to have conspired with the IT workers. The IT workers, the department added, gained employment at U.S. cryptocurrency companies using fake identities and then laundered their ill-gotten gains through Sim to further Pyongyang's strategic objectives in violati...

An emerging ransomware strain has been discovered incorporating capabilities to encrypt files as well as permanently erase them, a development that has been described as a "rare dual-threat." "The ransomware features a 'wipe mode,' which permanently erases files, rendering recovery impossible even if the ransom is paid," Trend Micro researchers Maristel Policarpio, Sarah Pearl Camiling, and Sophia Nilette Robles said in a report published last week. The ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation in question is named Anubis, which became active in December 2024, claiming victims across healthcare, hospitality, and construction sectors in Australia, Canada, Peru, and the U.S. Analysis of early, trial samples of the ransomware suggests that the developers initially named it Sphinx, before tweaking the brand name in the final version. It's worth noting that the e-crime crew has no ties to an Android banking trojan and a Python-based backdoor of the s...