Cloud security | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Modern apps move fast—faster than most security teams can keep up. As businesses rush to build in the cloud, security often lags behind. Teams scan code in isolation, react late to cloud threats, and monitor SOC alerts only after damage is done. Attackers don't wait. They exploit vulnerabilities within hours. Yet most organizations take days to respond to critical cloud alerts. That delay isn't just risky—it's an open door. The problem? Security is split across silos. DevSecOps, CloudSec, and SOC teams all work separately. Their tools don't talk. Their data doesn't sync. And in those gaps, 80% of cloud exposures slip through—exploitable, avoidable, and often invisible until it's too late. This free webinar ," Breaking Down Security Silos: Why Application Security Must Span from Code to Cloud to SOC ," shows you how to fix that. Join Ory Segal, Technical Evangelist at Cortex Cloud (Palo Alto Networks), and discover a practical approach to securing your apps from code to cl...

Data is the lifeblood of productivity, and protecting sensitive data is more critical than ever. With cyber threats evolving rapidly and data privacy regulations tightening, organizations must stay vigilant and proactive to safeguard their most valuable assets. But how do you build an effective data protection framework? In this article, we'll explore data protection best practices from meeting compliance requirements to streamlining day-to-day operations. Whether you're securing a small business or a large enterprise, these top strategies will help you build a strong defense against breaches and keep your sensitive data safe. 1. Define your data goals When tackling any data protection project, the first step is always to understand the outcome you want. First, understand what data you need to protect. Identify your crown jewel data, and where you THINK it lives. (It's probably more distributed than you expect, but this is a key step to help you define your protection ...

A new global phishing threat called " Meta Mirage " has been uncovered, targeting businesses using Meta's Business Suite. This campaign specifically aims at hijacking high-value accounts, including those managing advertising and official brand pages. Cybersecurity researchers at CTM360 revealed that attackers behind Meta Mirage impersonate official Meta communications, tricking users into handing over sensitive details like passwords and security codes (OTP). The scale of this operation is alarming. Researchers have already identified over 14,000 malicious URLs , a concerning majority of which —nearly 78%— were not blocked by browsers at the time the report was published. Cybercriminals cleverly hosted fake pages leveraging trusted cloud platforms like GitHub, Firebase, and Vercel, making it harder to spot the scams. This method aligns closely with recent findings from Microsoft, which highlighted similar abuse of cloud hosting services to compromise Kubernetes appli...

Organizations across industries are experiencing significant escalations in cyberattacks, particularly targeting critical infrastructure providers and cloud-based enterprises. Verizon's recently released 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report found an 18% YoY increase in confirmed breaches, with the exploitation of vulnerabilities as an initial access step growing by 34%.  As attacks rise in volume and impact, many organizations turn to security tools and compliance standards as their first line of defense. While both are important and necessary components to mitigating cyber risk, they alone are not a silver bullet solution. Effective security requires people, process, and technology, but people must serve as the primary drivers. Your tools and checklists are only as strong as the practitioners implementing them at scale.  This heightens the importance of investing in offensive operations training across every role in the security function. Too often, offensive operation...

The North Korea-linked threat actor known as Konni APT has been attributed to a phishing campaign targeting government entities in Ukraine, indicating the threat actor's targeting beyond Russia . Enterprise security firm Proofpoint said the end goal of the campaign is to collect intelligence on the "trajectory of the Russian invasion." "The group's interest in Ukraine follows historical targeting of government entities in Russia for strategic intelligence gathering purposes," security researchers Greg Lesnewich, Saher Naumaan, and Mark Kelly said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Konni APT , also known as Opal Sleet, Osmium, TA406, and Vedalia , is a cyber espionage group that has a history of targeting entities in South Korea, the United States, and Russia. It's operational since at least 2014. Attack chains mounted by the threat actor often involve the use of phishing emails to distribute malware called Konni RAT (aka UpDog) and redirect r...

Detecting leaked credentials is only half the battle. The real challenge—and often the neglected half of the equation—is what happens after detection. New research from GitGuardian's State of Secrets Sprawl 2025 report reveals a disturbing trend: the vast majority of exposed company secrets discovered in public repositories remain valid for years after detection, creating an expanding attack surface that many organizations are failing to address. According to GitGuardian's analysis of exposed secrets across public GitHub repositories, an alarming percentage of credentials detected as far back as 2022 remain valid today: "Detecting a leaked secret is just the first step," says GitGuardian's research team. "The true challenge lies in swift remediation." Why Exposed Secrets Remain Valid This persistent validity suggests two troubling possibilities: either organizations are unaware their credentials have been exposed (a security visibility problem),...

Cybersecurity researchers have exposed what they say is an "industrial-scale, global cryptocurrency phishing operation" engineered to steal digital assets from cryptocurrency wallets for several years. The campaign has been codenamed FreeDrain by threat intelligence firms SentinelOne and Validin . "FreeDrain uses SEO manipulation, free-tier web services (like gitbook.io, webflow.io, and github.io), and layered redirection techniques to target cryptocurrency wallets," security researchers Kenneth Kinion, Sreekar Madabushi, and Tom Hegel said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. "Victims search for wallet-related queries, click on high-ranking malicious results, land on lure pages, and are redirected to phishing pages that steal their seed phrases." The scale of the campaign is reflected in the fact that over 38,000 distinct FreeDrain sub-domains hosting lure pages have been identified. These pages are hosted on cloud infrastructure lik...

61% of security leaders reported suffering a breach due to failed or misconfigured controls over the past 12 months. This is despite having an average of 43 cybersecurity tools in place. This massive rate of security failure is clearly not a security investment problem. It is a configuration problem. Organizations are beginning to understand that a security control installed or deployed is not necessarily a security control configured to defend against real-world threats. The recent Gartner® Report , Reduce Threat Exposure With Security Controls Optimization, addresses the gap between intention and outcome. We feel it discusses a hard truth: without continuous validation and tuning, security tools deliver a false sense of, well, security. In this article, we'll take a deep dive into why control effectiveness should be the new benchmark for cybersecurity success, and how organizations can make this shift. The Myth of Tool Coverage Buying more tools has long been considered the k...

Europol has announced the takedown of distributed denial of service (DDoS)-for-hire services that were used to launch thousands of cyber-attacks across the world. In connection with the operation, Polish authorities have arrested four individuals aged between 19 and 22 and the United States has seized nine domains that are associated with the now-defunct platforms. "The suspects are believed to be behind six separate stresser/booter services that enabled paying customers to flood websites and servers with malicious traffic — knocking them offline for as little as EUR 10," Europol said in a statement. The services, named cfxapi, cfxsecurity, neostress, jetstress, quickdown and zapcut, are said to have been instrumental in launching widespread attacks on schools, government services, businesses, and gaming platforms between 2022 and 2025.  Europol said the platforms offered "slick user interfaces," enabling malicious actors with little to no technical expertis...

Microsoft has warned that using pre-made templates, such as out-of-the-box Helm charts, during Kubernetes deployments could open the door to misconfigurations and leak valuable data. "While these 'plug-and-play' options greatly simplify the setup process, they often prioritize ease of use over security," Michael Katchinskiy and Yossi Weizman from the Microsoft Defender for Cloud Research team said . "As a result, a large number of applications end up being deployed in a misconfigured state by default, exposing sensitive data, cloud resources, or even the entire environment to attackers." Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes that allows developers to package, configure, and deploy applications and services onto Kubernetes clusters. It's part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). Kubernetes application packages are structured in the Helm packaging format called charts , which are YAML manifests and templates used to describe the Kuber...

Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) is the backbone of modern identity management, enabling secure access to the applications, data, and services your business relies on. As hybrid work and cloud adoption accelerate, Entra ID plays an even more central role — managing authentication, enforcing policy, and connecting users across distributed environments. That prominence also makes it a prime target. Microsoft reports over 600 million attacks on Entra ID every day. These aren't just random attempts, but include coordinated, persistent, and increasingly automated campaigns designed to exploit even small vulnerabilities. Which brings us to the core question: Are Entra ID's native protections enough? Where do they fall short — and what steps should you take to close the gaps and ensure you're covered? Understanding Entra ID At its core, Microsoft Entra ID is your enterprise identity and access management system. It defines how users prove who they are, what resources...

Let's be honest: if you're one of the first (or the first) security hires at a small or midsize business, chances are you're also the unofficial CISO, SOC, IT Help Desk, and whatever additional roles need filling. You're not running a security department. You are THE security department. You're getting pinged about RFPs in one area, and reviewing phishing alerts in another, all while sifting through endless FP alerts across the board. The tools meant to help are often creating more work than they solve. Security teams end up choosing between letting things slip or becoming the "Department of No." Chances are you inherited your company's Google Workspace. Thankfully, Google handles the infrastructure, the uptime, and the spam filtering. But while Google takes care of a lot, it doesn't cover everything, and it can be difficult for security teams to operationalize all of Google's underlying capabilities without significant engineering work. It's your job to se...