Cloud security | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

This week didn’t produce one big headline. It produced many small signals — the kind that quietly shape what attacks will look like next. Researchers tracked intrusions that start in ordinary places: developer workflows, remote tools, cloud access, identity paths, and even routine user actions. Nothing looked dramatic on the surface. That’s the point. Entry is becoming less visible while impact scales later. Several findings also show how attackers are industrializing their work — shared infrastructure, repeatable playbooks, rented access, and affiliate-style ecosystems. Operations are no longer isolated campaigns. They run more like services. This edition pulls those fragments together — short, precise updates that show where techniques are maturing, where exposure is widening, and what patterns are forming behind the noise. Startup espionage expansion Operation Nomad Leopard Targets Afghanistan In a sign that the threat actor has moved beyond government targets, th...

Today’s “AI everywhere” reality is woven into everyday workflows across the enterprise, embedded in SaaS platforms, browsers, copilots, extensions, and a rapidly expanding universe of shadow tools that appear faster than security teams can track. Yet most organizations still rely on legacy controls that operate far away from where AI interactions actually occur. The result is a widening governance gap where AI usage grows exponentially, but visibility and control do not.  With AI becoming central to productivity, enterprises face a new challenge: enabling the business to innovate while maintaining governance, compliance, and security.  A new Buyer’s Guide for AI Usage Control argues that enterprises have fundamentally misunderstood where AI risk lives. Discovering AI Usage and Eliminating ‘Shadow’ AI will also be discussed in an upcoming virtual lunch and learn .  The surprising truth is that AI security isn’t a data problem or an app problem. It’s an interaction pro...

A new, critical security vulnerability has been disclosed in the n8n workflow automation platform that, if successfully exploited, could result in the execution of arbitrary system commands. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-25049 (CVSS score: 9.4), is the result of inadequate sanitization that bypasses safeguards put in place to address CVE-2025-68613 (CVSS score: 9.9), another critical defect that was patched by n8n in December 2025. "Additional exploits in the expression evaluation of n8n have been identified and patched following CVE-2025-68613," n8n's maintainers said in an advisory released Wednesday. "An authenticated user with permission to create or modify workflows could abuse crafted expressions in workflow parameters to trigger unintended system command execution on the host running n8n." The issue affects the following versions - <1.123.17 (Fixed in 1.123.17) <2.5.2 (Fixed in 2.5.2)

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a now-patched security flaw impacting Ask Gordon , an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant built into Docker Desktop and the Docker Command-Line Interface (CLI), that could be exploited to execute code and exfiltrate sensitive data. The critical vulnerability has been codenamed DockerDash by cybersecurity company Noma Labs. It was addressed by Docker with the release of version 4.50.0 in November 2025. "In DockerDash, a single malicious metadata label in a Docker image can be used to compromise your Docker environment through a simple three-stage attack: Gordon AI reads and interprets the malicious instruction, forwards it to the MCP [Model Context Protocol] Gateway, which then executes it through MCP tools," Sasi Levi, security research lead at Noma, said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Every stage happens with zero validation, taking advantage of current agents and MCP Gateway architecture." ...

Every week brings new discoveries, attacks, and defenses that shape the state of cybersecurity. Some threats are stopped quickly, while others go unseen until they cause real damage. Sometimes a single update, exploit, or mistake changes how we think about risk and protection. Every incident shows how defenders adapt — and how fast attackers try to stay ahead. This week’s recap brings you the key moments that matter most, in one place, so you can stay informed and ready for what’s next. ⚡ Threat of the Week Google Disrupts IPIDEA Residential Proxy Network — Google has crippled IPIDEA, a massive residential proxy network consisting of user devices that are being used as the last-mile link in cyberattack chains. According to the tech giant, not only do these networks permit bad actors to conceal their malicious traffic, but they also open up users who enroll their devices to further attacks. Residential IP addresses in the U.S., Canada, and Europe were seen as the most desirable. ...

Google-owned Mandiant on Friday said it identified an "expansion in threat activity" that uses tradecraft consistent with extortion-themed attacks orchestrated by a financially motivated hacking group known as ShinyHunters. The attacks leverage advanced voice phishing (aka vishing) and bogus credential harvesting sites mimicking targeted companies to gain unauthorized access to victim environments by collecting sign-on (SSO) credentials and multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes. The end goal of the attacks is to target cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to siphon sensitive data and internal communications and extort victims. The tech giant's threat intelligence team said it's tracking the activity under multiple clusters, including UNC6661, UNC6671, and UNC6240 (aka ShinyHunters), so as to account for the possibility that these groups could be evolving their modus operandi or mimicking previously observed tactics. "While this methodo...

CERT Polska, the Polish computer emergency response team, revealed that coordinated cyber attacks targeted more than 30 wind and photovoltaic farms, a private company from the manufacturing sector, and a large combined heat and power plant (CHP) supplying heat to almost half a million customers in the country. The incident took place on December 29, 2025. The agency has attributed the attacks to a threat cluster dubbed Static Tundra , which is also tracked as Berserk Bear, Blue Kraken, Crouching Yeti, Dragonfly, Energetic Bear, Ghost Blizzard (formerly Bromine), and Havex. Static Tundra is assessed to be linked to Russia's Federal Security Service's (FSB) Center 16 unit. It's worth noting that recent reports from ESET and Dragos attributed the activity with moderate confidence to a different Russian state-sponsored hacking group known as Sandworm. "All attacks had a purely destructive objective," CERT Polska said in a report published Friday. "Althoug...

This week’s updates show how small changes can create real problems. Not loud incidents, but quiet shifts that are easy to miss until they add up. The kind that affects systems people rely on every day. Many of the stories point to the same trend: familiar tools being used in unexpected ways. Security controls are being worked on. Trusted platforms turning into weak spots. What looks routine on the surface often isn’t. There’s no single theme driving everything — just steady pressure across many fronts. Access, data, money, and trust are all being tested at once, often without clear warning signs. This edition pulls together those signals in short form, so you can see what’s changing before it becomes harder to ignore. Major cybercrime forum takedown FBI Seizes RAMP Forum The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has seized the notorious RAMP cybercrime forum. Visitors to the forum's Tor site and its clearnet domain, ramp4u...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new malicious Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code) extension for Moltbot (formerly Clawdbot) on the official Extension Marketplace that claims to be a free artificial intelligence (AI) coding assistant, but stealthily drops a malicious payload on compromised hosts. The extension, named "ClawdBot Agent - AI Coding Assistant" ("clawdbot.clawdbot-agent"), has since been taken down by Microsoft. It was published by a user named "clawdbot" on January 27, 2026.  Moltbot has taken off in a big way, crossing more than 85,000 stars on GitHub as of writing. The open-source project, created by Austrian developer Peter Steinberger, allows users to run a personal AI assistant powered by a large language model (LLM) locally on their own devices and interact with it over already established communication platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Google Chat, Signal, iMessage, Microsoft Teams, and WebChat.

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed two new security flaws in the n8n workflow automation platform, including a crucial vulnerability that could result in remote code execution. The weaknesses, discovered by the JFrog Security Research team, are listed below - CVE-2026-1470 (CVSS score: 9.9) - An eval injection vulnerability that could allow an authenticated user to bypass the Expression sandbox mechanism and achieve full remote code execution on n8n's main node by passing specially crafted JavaScript code CVE-2026-0863 (CVSS score: 8.5) - An eval injection vulnerability that could allow an authenticated user to bypass n8n's python-task-executor sandbox restrictions and run arbitrary Python code on the underlying operating system Shachar Menashe, JFrog's vice president of security research, told The Hacker news that one of the reasons for CVE-2026-1470's high CVSS score despite requiring authentication is that "any user of n8n can exploit this issu...

A critical security flaw has been disclosed in Grist‑Core , an open-source, self-hosted version of the Grist relational spreadsheet-database, that could result in remote code execution. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-24002 (CVSS score: 9.1), has been codenamed Cellbreak by Cyera Research Labs. "One malicious formula can turn a spreadsheet into a Remote Code Execution (RCE) beachhead," security researcher Vladimir Tokarev, who discovered the flaw, said . "This sandbox escape lets a formula author execute OS commands or run host‑runtime JavaScript, collapsing the boundary between 'cell logic' and host execution." Cellbreak is categorized as a case of Pyodide sandbox escape, the same kind of vulnerability that also recently impacted n8n ( CVE-2025-68668 , CVSS score: 9.9, aka N8scape). The vulnerability has been addressed in version 1.7.9, released on January 9, 2026. "A security review identified a vulnerability in the 'pyodide' ...

Security failures rarely arrive loudly. They slip in through trusted tools, half-fixed problems, and habits people stop questioning. This week’s recap shows that pattern clearly. Attackers are moving faster than defenses, mixing old tricks with new paths. “Patched” no longer means safe, and every day, software keeps becoming the entry point. What follows is a set of small but telling signals. Short updates that, together, show how quickly risk is shifting and why details can’t be ignored. ⚡ Threat of the Week Improperly Patched Flaw Exploited Again in Fortinet Firewalls — Fortinet confirmed that it's working to completely plug a FortiCloud SSO authentication bypass vulnerability following reports of fresh exploitation activity on fully-patched firewalls. "We have identified a number of cases where the exploit was to a device that had been fully upgraded to the latest release at the time of the attack, which suggested a new attack path," the company said. The activi...

If there’s a constant in cybersecurity, it’s that adversaries are always innovating. The rise of offensive AI is transforming attack strategies and making them harder to detect. Google’s Threat Intelligence Group , recently reported on adversaries using Large Language Models (LLMs) to both conceal code and generate malicious scripts on the fly, letting malware shape-shift in real-time to evade conventional defenses. A deeper look at these novel attacks reveals both unprecedented sophistication and deception.  In November 2025, Anthropic reported on what it described as the first known “AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign.” This operation featured AI integrated throughout the stages of attack, from initial access to exfiltration, which was executed largely autonomously by the AI itself.  Another recent trend concerns ClickFix-related attacks using steganography techniques (hiding malware within image files) that slipped past signature-based scans. Skillfully disguised ...

Microsoft has warned of a multi‑stage adversary‑in‑the‑middle ( AitM ) phishing and business email compromise (BEC) campaign targeting multiple organizations in the energy sector. "The campaign abused SharePoint file‑sharing services to deliver phishing payloads and relied on inbox rule creation to maintain persistence and evade user awareness," the Microsoft Defender Security Research Team said . "The attack transitioned into a series of AitM attacks and follow-on BEC activity spanning multiple organizations." As part of post-exploitation activity following initial compromise, the unknown attackers have been found to leverage trusted internal identities from the victim to carry out large‑scale intra‑organizational and external phishing in an effort to cast a wide net and widen the scope of the campaign. The starting point of the attack is a phishing email likely sent from an email address belonging to a trusted organization, which was compromised beforehand. A...

Most of this week’s threats didn’t rely on new tricks. They relied on familiar systems behaving exactly as designed, just in the wrong hands. Ordinary files, routine services, and trusted workflows were enough to open doors without forcing them. What stands out is how little friction attackers now need. Some activity focused on quiet reach and coverage, others on timing and reuse. The emphasis wasn’t speed or spectacle, but control gained through scale, patience, and misplaced trust. The stories below trace where that trust bent, not how it broke. Each item is a small signal of a larger shift, best seen when viewed together. Spear-phishing delivers custom backdoor Operation Nomad Leopard Targets Afghanistan Government entities in Afghanistan have been at the receiving end of a spear-phishing campaign dubbed Operation Nomad Leopard that employs bogus administrative documents as decoys to distribute a backdoor named FALSECUB by means o...