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New research has found that organizations in various sensitive sectors, including governments, telecoms, and critical infrastructure, are pasting passwords and credentials into online tools like JSONformatter and CodeBeautify that are used to format and validate code. Cybersecurity company watchTowr Labs said it captured a dataset of over 80,000 files on these sites, uncovering thousands of usernames, passwords, repository authentication keys, Active Directory credentials, database credentials, FTP credentials, cloud environment keys, LDAP configuration information, helpdesk API keys, meeting room API keys, SSH session recordings, and all kinds of personal information. This includes five years of historical JSONFormatter content and one year of historical CodeBeautify content, totalling over 5GB worth of enriched, annotated JSON data. Organizations impacted by the leak span critical national infrastructure, government, finance, insurance, banking, technology, retail, aerospace, t...

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a new campaign that's leveraging a combination of ClickFix lures and fake adult websites to deceive users into running malicious commands under the guise of a "critical" Windows security update. "Campaign leverages fake adult websites (xHamster, PornHub clones) as its phishing mechanism, likely distributed via malvertising," Acronis said in a new report shared with The Hacker News. "The adult theme, and possible connection to shady websites, adds to the victim's psychological pressure to comply with sudden 'security update' installation." ClickFix-style attacks have surged over the past year, typically tricking users into running malicious commands on their own machines using prompts for technical fixes or completing CAPTCHA verification checks. According to data from Microsoft, ClickFix has become the most common initial access method, accounting for 47% of attacks. The latest camp...

The threat actor known as ToddyCat has been observed adopting new methods to obtain access to corporate email data belonging to target companies, including using a custom tool dubbed TCSectorCopy. "This attack allows them to obtain tokens for the OAuth 2.0 authorization protocol using the user's browser, which can be used outside the perimeter of the compromised infrastructure to access corporate mail," Kaspersky said in a technical breakdown. ToddyCat, assessed to be active since 2020, has a track record of targeting various organizations in Europe and Asia with various tools, Samurai and TomBerBil to retain access and steal cookies and credentials from web browsers like Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Earlier this April, the hacking group was attributed to the exploitation of a security flaw in ESET Command Line Scanner (CVE-2024-11859, CVSS score: 6.8) to deliver a previously undocumented malware codenamed TCESB.  Kaspersky said it detected in attacks that ...

2026 will mark a pivotal shift in cybersecurity. Threat actors are moving from experimenting with AI to making it their primary weapon, using it to scale attacks, automate reconnaissance, and craft hyper-realistic social engineering campaigns. The Storm on the Horizon Global world instability, coupled with rapid technological advancement, will force security teams to adapt not just their defensive technologies but their entire workforce approach. The average SOC already processes about 11,000 alerts daily, but the volume and sophistication of threats are accelerating. For business leaders, this translates to direct impacts on operational continuity, regulatory compliance, and bottom-line financials. SOCs that can't keep pace won't just struggle; they'll fail spectacularly. Solve these three core issues now, or pay dearly later. 1. Evasive Threats Are Slipping Through—And Getting Smarter Fast Attackers have mastered evasion. ClickFix campaigns trick employees into pas...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new campaign that has leveraged Blender Foundation files to deliver an information stealer known as StealC V2 . "This ongoing operation, active for at least six months, involves implanting malicious .blend files on platforms like CGTrader," Morphisec researcher Shmuel Uzan said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Users unknowingly download these 3D model files, which are designed to execute embedded Python scripts upon opening in Blender -- a free, open-source 3D creation suite." The cybersecurity company said the activity shares similarities with a prior campaign linked to Russian-speaking threat actors that involved impersonating the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to target the online gaming community and infect them with StealC and Pyramid C2. This assessment is based on tactical similarities in both campaigns, including using decoy documents, evasive techniques, and background execution of...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday issued an alert warning of bad actors actively leveraging commercial spyware and remote access trojans (RATs) to target users of mobile messaging applications. "These cyber actors use sophisticated targeting and social engineering techniques to deliver spyware and gain unauthorized access to a victim's messaging app, facilitating the deployment of additional malicious payloads that can further compromise the victim's mobile device," the agency said . CISA cited as examples multiple campaigns that have come to light since the start of the year. Some of them include - The targeting of the Signal messaging app by multiple Russia-aligned threat actors by taking advantage of the service's "linked devices" feature to hijack target user accounts Android spyware campaigns codenamed ProSpy and ToSpy that impersonate apps like Signal and ToTok to target users in the United Arab Emi...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered five vulnerabilities in Fluent Bit , an open-source and lightweight telemetry agent, that could be chained to compromise and take over cloud infrastructures. The security defects "allow attackers to bypass authentication, perform path traversal, achieve remote code execution, cause denial-of-service conditions, and manipulate tags," Oligo Security said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Successful exploitation of the flaws could enable attackers to disrupt cloud services, manipulate data, and burrow deeper into cloud and Kubernetes infrastructure. The list of identified vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2025-12972 - A path traversal vulnerability stemming from the use of unsanitized tag values to generate output filenames, making it possible to write or overwrite arbitrary files on disk, enabling log tampering and remote code execution. CVE-2025-12970 - A stack buffer overflow vulnerability in the Docker Metrics inp...

Multiple security vendors are sounding the alarm about a second wave of attacks targeting the npm registry in a manner that's reminiscent of the Shai-Hulud attack . The new supply chain campaign, dubbed Sha1-Hulud , has compromised hundreds of npm packages, according to reports from Aikido , HelixGuard , JFrog , Koi Security , ReversingLabs , SafeDep , Socket , Step Security , and Wiz . The trojanized npm packages were uploaded to npm between November 21 and 23, 2025. The attack has impacted popular packages from Zapier, ENS Domains, PostHog, and Postman, among others. "The campaign introduces a new variant that executes malicious code during the preinstall phase, significantly increasing potential exposure in build and runtime environments," Wiz researchers Hila Ramati, Merav Bar, Gal Benmocha, and Gili Tikochinski said. Like the Shai-Hulud attack that came to light in September 2025, the latest activity also publishes stolen secrets to GitHub, this time with the rep...

This week saw a lot of new cyber trouble. Hackers hit Fortinet and Chrome with new 0-day bugs. They also broke into supply chains and SaaS tools. Many hid inside trusted apps, browser alerts, and software updates. Big firms like Microsoft, Salesforce, and Google had to react fast — stopping DDoS attacks, blocking bad links, and fixing live flaws. Reports also showed how fast fake news, AI risks, and attacks on developers are growing. Here's what mattered most in security this week. ⚡ Threat of the Week Fortinet Warns of Another Silently Patched and Actively Exploited FortiWeb Flaw — Fortinet has warned that a new security flaw in FortiWeb has been exploited in the wild. The medium-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-58034, carries a CVSS score of 6.7 out of a maximum of 10.0. It has been addressed in version 8.0.2. "An Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command ('OS Command Injection') vulnerability [CWE-78] in FortiWeb may allow an a...

New research from CrowdStrike has revealed that DeepSeek's artificial intelligence (AI) reasoning model DeepSeek-R1 produces more security vulnerabilities in response to prompts that contain topics deemed politically sensitive by China. "We found that when DeepSeek-R1 receives prompts containing topics the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) likely considers politically sensitive, the likelihood of it producing code with severe security vulnerabilities increases by up to 50%," the cybersecurity company said . The Chinese AI company previously attracted national security concerns, leading to a ban in many countries. Its open-source DeepSeek-R1 model was also found to censor topics considered sensitive by the Chinese government, refusing to answer questions about the Great Firewall of China or the political status of Taiwan, among others. In a statement released earlier this month, Taiwan's National Security Bureau warned citizens to be vigilant when using Chinese-m...

A recently patched security flaw in Microsoft Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) has been exploited by threat actors to distribute malware known as ShadowPad. "The attacker targeted Windows Servers with WSUS enabled, exploiting CVE-2025-59287 for initial access," AhnLab Security Intelligence Center (ASEC) said in a report published last week. "They then used PowerCat , an open-source PowerShell-based Netcat utility, to obtain a system shell (CMD). Subsequently, they downloaded and installed ShadowPad using certutil and curl." ShadowPad , assessed to be a successor to PlugX, is a modular backdoor widely used by Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups. It first emerged in 2015. In an analysis published in August 2021, SentinelOne called it a "masterpiece of privately sold malware in Chinese espionage." CVE-2025-59287 , addressed by Microsoft last month, refers to a critical deserialization flaw in WSUS that could be exploited to achieve remote code ...

The China-linked advanced persistent threat (APT) group known as APT31 has been attributed to cyber attacks targeting the Russian information technology (IT) sector between 2024 and 2025 while staying undetected for extended periods of time. "In the period from 2024 to 2025, the Russian IT sector, especially companies working as contractors and integrators of solutions for government agencies, faced a series of targeted computer attacks," Positive Technologies researchers Daniil Grigoryan and Varvara Koloskova said in a technical report. APT31, also known as Altaire, Bronze Vinewood, Judgement Panda, PerplexedGoblin, RedBravo, Red Keres, and Violet Typhoon (formerly Zirconium), is assessed to be active since at least 2010. It has a track record of striking a wide range of sectors, including governments, financial, and aerospace and defense, high tech, construction and engineering, telecommunications, media, and insurance. The cyber espionage group is primarily focused ...

Bad actors are leveraging browser notifications as a vector for phishing attacks to distribute malicious links by means of a new command-and-control (C2) platform called Matrix Push C2. "This browser-native, fileless framework leverages push notifications, fake alerts, and link redirects to target victims across operating systems," Blackfog researcher Brenda Robb said in a Thursday report. In these attacks, prospective targets are tricked into allowing browser notifications through social engineering on malicious or legitimate-but-compromised websites. Once a user agrees to receive notifications from the site, the attackers take advantage of the web push notification mechanism built into the web browser to send alerts that look like they have been sent by the operating system or the browser itself, leveraging trusted branding, familiar logos, and convincing language to maintain the ruse. These include alerts about, say, suspicious logins or browser updates, along with ...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday added a critical security flaw impacting Oracle Identity Manager to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-61757 (CVSS score: 9.8), a case of missing authentication for a critical function that can result in pre-authenticated remote code execution. The vulnerability affects versions 12.2.1.4.0 and 14.1.2.1.0. It was addressed by Oracle as part of its quarterly updates released last month. "Oracle Fusion Middleware contains a missing authentication for a critical function vulnerability, allowing unauthenticated remote attackers to take over Identity Manager," CISA said. Searchlight Cyber researchers Adam Kues and Shubham Shah, who discovered the flaw, said it can permit an attacker to access API endpoints that, in turn, can allow them "to manipulate authentication flows, escalate privileges, and ...

Grafana has released security updates to address a maximum severity security flaw that could allow privilege escalation or user impersonation under certain configurations. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-41115 , carries a CVSS score of 10.0. It resides in the System for Cross-domain Identity Management ( SCIM ) component that allows automated user provisioning and management. First introduced in April 2025, it's currently in public preview. "In Grafana versions 12.x where SCIM provisioning is enabled and configured, a vulnerability in user identity handling allows a malicious or compromised SCIM client to provision a user with a numeric externalId, which in turn could allow for overriding internal user IDs and lead to impersonation or privilege escalation," Grafana's Vardan Torosyan said . That said, successful exploitation hinges on both conditions being met - enableSCIM feature flag is set to true user_sync_enabled config option in the [auth.scim] bl...

In a surprise move, Google on Thursday announced that it has updated Quick Share, its peer-to-peer file transfer service, to work with Apple's equipment AirDrop, allowing users to more easily share files and photos between Android and iPhone devices. The cross-platform sharing feature is currently limited to the Pixel 10 lineup and works with iPhone, iPad, and macOS devices, with plans to expand to additional Android devices in the future. In order to transfer a file from a Pixel 10 phone over AirDrop, the only caveat is that the owner of the Apple device is required to make sure their iPhone (or iPad or Mac) is discoverable to anyone – which can be enabled for 10 minutes. Likewise, to receive content from an Apple device, Android device users will need to adjust their Quick Share visibility settings to Everyone for 10 minutes or be in Receive mode on the Quick Share page, according to a support document published by Google. "We built Quick Share's interoperability...

Ever wonder how some IT teams keep corporate data safe without slowing down employees? Of course you have. Mobile devices are essential for modern work—but with mobility comes risk. IT admins, like you, juggle protecting sensitive data while keeping teams productive. That's why more enterprises are turning to Samsung for mobile security. Hey—you're busy, so here's a quick-read article on what makes Samsung Galaxy devices and Knox Suite really stand out. Security built in. Management simplified. Samsung Galaxy devices come with Samsung Knox built in at the manufacturing stage, creating a hardware foundation that extends visibility and control across your security infrastructure. Simplified management with Knox Suite: Samsung's all-in-one package to manage and secure work devices grants centralized control without the need for extra tools or workflows (that got your attention!). Integrated security: Samsung Knox is built into both hardware and software, giving multi-la...

A China-nexus threat actor known as APT24 has been observed using a previously undocumented malware dubbed BADAUDIO to establish persistent remote access to compromised networks as part of a nearly three-year campaign. "While earlier operations relied on broad strategic web compromises to compromise legitimate websites, APT24 has recently pivoted to using more sophisticated vectors targeting organizations in Taiwan," Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) researchers Harsh Parashar, Tierra Duncan, and Dan Perez said . "This includes the repeated compromise of a regional digital marketing firm to execute supply chain attacks and the use of targeted phishing campaigns." APT24, also called Pitty Tiger, is the moniker assigned to a suspected Chinese hacking group that has targeted government, healthcare, construction and engineering, mining, non-profit, and telecommunications sectors in the U.S. and Taiwan. The group is also known to engage in cyber operations wh...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has abandoned its lawsuit against SolarWinds and its chief information security officer, alleging that the company had misled investors about the security practices that led to the 2020 supply chain attack. In a joint motion filed November 20, 2025, the SEC, along with SolarWinds and its CISO Timothy G. Brown, asked the court to voluntarily dismiss the case. The SEC said its decision to seek dismissal "does not necessarily reflect the Commission's position on any other case." SolarWinds and Brown were accused by the SEC in October 2023 of "fraud and internal control failures" and that the company defrauded investors by overstating its cybersecurity practices and understating or failing to disclose known risks. The agency also said both SolarWinds and Brown ignored "repeated red flags" and failed to adequately protect its assets, ultimately leading to the supply chain compromise that came to li...