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This week made one thing clear: small oversights can spiral fast. Tools meant to save time and reduce friction turned into easy entry points once basic safeguards were ignored. Attackers didn't need novel tricks. They used what was already exposed and moved in without resistance. Scale amplified the damage. A single weak configuration rippled out to millions. A repeatable flaw worked again and again. Phishing crept into apps people rely on daily, while malware blended into routine system behavior. Different victims, same playbook: look normal, move quickly, spread before alarms go off. For defenders, the pressure keeps rising. Vulnerabilities are exploited almost as soon as they surface. Claims and counterclaims appear before the facts settle. Criminal groups adapt faster each cycle. The stories that follow show where things failed—and why those failures matter going forward. ⚡ Threat of the Week Maximum Severity Security Flaw Disclosed in n8n — A maximum-severity vulnerability ...

A new wave of GoBruteforcer attacks has targeted databases of cryptocurrency and blockchain projects to co-opt them into a botnet that's capable of brute-forcing user passwords for services such as FTP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and phpMyAdmin on Linux servers. "The current wave of campaigns is driven by two factors: the mass reuse of AI-generated server deployment examples that propagate common usernames and weak defaults, and the persistence of legacy web stacks such as XAMPP that expose FTP and admin interfaces with minimal hardening," Check Point Research said in an analysis published last week. GoBruteforcer, also called GoBrut, was first documented by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 in March 2023, documenting its ability to target Unix-like platforms running x86, x64, and ARM architectures to deploy an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) bot and a web shell for remote access, along with fetching a brute-force module to scan for vulnerable systems and expand the botnet's reach. ...

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on two service providers that supply online criminal networks with the necessary tools and infrastructure to fuel the pig butchering-as-a-service (PBaaS) economy. At least since 2016, Chinese-speaking criminal groups have erected industrial-scale scam centers across Southeast Asia, creating special economic zones that are devoted to fraudulent investment and impersonation operations. These compounds are host to thousands of people who are lured with the promise of high-paying jobs, only to have their passports and be forced to conduct scams under the threat of violence. INTERPOL has characterized these networks as human trafficking-fuelled fraud on an industrial scale. One of the crucial drivers of the pig butchering (aka romance baiting) scams is service providers who supply the networks with all the tools to run and manage social engineering operations, as well as swiftly launder stolen funds and cryptocurrencies and move ill-gotten p...

The Iranian threat actor known as MuddyWater has been attributed to a spear-phishing campaign targeting diplomatic, maritime, financial, and telecom entities in the Middle East with a Rust-based implant codenamed RustyWater . "The campaign uses icon spoofing and malicious Word documents to deliver Rust based implants capable of asynchronous C2, anti-analysis, registry persistence, and modular post-compromise capability expansion," CloudSEK resetter Prajwal Awasthi said in a report published this week. The latest development reflects continued evolution of MuddyWater's tradecraft, which has gradually-but-steadily reduced its reliance on legitimate remote access software as a post-exploitation tool in favor of a diverse custom malware arsenal comprising tools like Phoenix, UDPGangster , BugSleep (aka MuddyRot), and MuddyViper . Also tracked as Mango Sandstorm, Static Kitten, and TA450, the hacking group is assessed to be affiliated with Iran's Ministry of Intelli...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday said it's retiring 10 emergency directives (Eds) that were issued between 2019 and 2024. The list of the directives now considered closed is as follows - ED 19-01: Mitigate DNS Infrastructure Tampering ED 20-02: Mitigate Windows Vulnerabilities from January 2020 Patch Tuesday ED 20-03: Mitigate Windows DNS Server Vulnerability from July 2020 Patch Tuesday   ED 20-04: Mitigate Netlogon Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability from August 2020 Patch Tuesday ED 21-01: Mitigate SolarWinds Orion Code Compromise ED 21-02: Mitigate Microsoft Exchange On-Premises Product Vulnerabilities ED 21-03: Mitigate Pulse Connect Secure Product Vulnerabilities   ED 21-04: Mitigate Windows Print Spooler Service Vulnerability   ED 22-03: Mitigate VMware Vulnerabilities ED 24-02: Mitigating the Significant Risk from Nation-State Compromise of Microsoft Corporate Email System   Stating that these directives were iss...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Thursday released an advisory warning of North Korean state-sponsored threat actors leveraging malicious QR codes in spear-phishing campaigns targeting entities in the country. "As of 2025, Kimsuky actors have targeted think tanks, academic institutions, and both U.S. and foreign government entities with embedded malicious Quick Response (QR) codes in spear-phishing campaigns," the FBI said in the flash alert. "This type of spear-phishing attack is referred to as quishing." The use of QR codes for phishing is a tactic that forces victims to shift from a machine that's secured by enterprise policies to a mobile device that may not offer the same level of protection, effectively allowing threat actors to bypass traditional defenses. Kimsuky, also tracked as APT43, Black Banshee, Emerald Sleet, Springtail, TA427, and Velvet Chollima, is a threat group that's assessed to be affiliated with North Korea's...

The internet never stays quiet. Every week, new hacks, scams, and security problems show up somewhere. This week's stories show how fast attackers change their tricks, how small mistakes turn into big risks, and how the same old tools keep finding new ways to break in. Read on to catch up before the next wave hits. Honeypot Traps Hackers Hackers Fall for Resecurity's Honeypot Cybersecurity company Resecurity revealed that it deliberately lured threat actors who claimed to be associated with Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters ( SLH ) into a trap, after the group claimed on Telegram that it had hacked the company and stolen internal and client data. The company said it set up a honeytrap account populated with fake data designed to resemble real-world business data and planted a fake account on an underground marketplace for compromised credentials after it uncovered a threat actor attempting to conduct malicious activity targeting its resou...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered three malicious npm packages that are designed to deliver a previously undocumented malware called NodeCordRAT . The names of the packages, all of which were taken down as of November 2025, are listed below. They were uploaded by a user named "wenmoonx." bitcoin-main-lib (2,300 Downloads) bitcoin-lib-js (193 Downloads) bip40 (970 Downloads) "The bitcoin-main-lib and bitcoin-lib-js packages execute a postinstall.cjs script during installation, which installs bip40, the package that contains the malicious payload," Zscaler ThreatLabz researchers Satyam Singh and Lakhan Parashar said. "This final payload, named NodeCordRAT by ThreatLabz, is a remote access trojan (RAT) with data-stealing capabilities." NodeCordRAT gets its name from the use of npm as a propagation vector and Discord servers for command-and-control (C2) communications. The malware is equipped to steal Google Chrome credentials, API tokens,...

Security teams are still catching malware. The problem is what they're not catching. More attacks today don't arrive as files. They don't drop binaries. They don't trigger classic alerts. Instead, they run quietly through tools that already exist inside the environment — scripts, remote access, browsers, and developer workflows. That shift is creating a blind spot. Join us for a deep-dive technical session with the Zscaler Internet Access team. They will reveal how to unmask "hidden-in-plain-sight" tactics, why traditional defenses fall short, and exactly what needs to change. Secure your spot for the live session ➜ In this session, experts will cover: "Living off the Land" Attacks: These use trusted system tools like PowerShell, WMI, or remote desktop. File-based detection often sees nothing wrong because, technically, nothing new was installed. Fileless "Last Mile" Reassembly Attacks: Obfuscated HTML and JavaScript can e...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of yet another maximum-severity security flaw in n8n , a popular workflow automation platform, that allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to gain complete control over susceptible instances. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-21858 (CVSS score: 10.0), has been codenamed Ni8mare by Cyera Research Labs. Security researcher Dor Attias has been acknowledged for discovering and reporting the flaw on November 9, 2025. "A vulnerability in n8n allows an attacker to access files on the underlying server through execution of certain form-based workflows," n8n said in an advisory published today. "A vulnerable workflow could grant access to an unauthenticated remote attacker. This could result in exposure of sensitive information stored on the system and may enable further compromise depending on deployment configuration and workflow usage." With the latest development, n8n has disclosed four critical vulnerabili...

Open-source workflow automation platform n8n has warned of a maximum-severity security flaw that, if successfully exploited, could result in authenticated remote code execution (RCE). The vulnerability, which has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2026-21877 , is rated 10.0 on the CVSS scoring system. "Under certain conditions, an authenticated user may be able to cause untrusted code to be executed by the n8n service," n8n said in an advisory released Tuesday. "This could result in full compromise of the affected instance." The maintainers said both self-hosted deployments and n8n Cloud instances are impacted. The issue impacts the following versions - >= 0.123.0 < 1.121.3 It has been addressed in version 1.121.3, which was released in November 2025. Security researcher Théo Lelasseux (@ theolelasseux ) has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw. Users are advised to upgrade to this version or later to completely address the vuln...

Non-human employees are becoming the future of cybersecurity, and enterprises need to prepare accordingly. As organizations scale Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud automation, there is exponential growth in Non-Human Identities (NHIs), including bots, AI agents, service accounts and automation scripts. In fact, 51% of respondents in ConductorOne's 2025 Future of Identity Security Report said the security of NHIs is now just as important as that of human accounts. Yet, despite their presence in modern organizations, NHIs often operate outside the scope of traditional Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems. This growing dependence on non-human users creates new attack surfaces that organizations must urgently prepare for. Without full visibility and proper oversight, NHIs may have over-permissioned standing access and static credentials, making them valuable targets for cybercriminals. To secure NHIs with the same precision as human identities, organizations must develop mo...

Threat actors engaging in phishing attacks are exploiting routing scenarios and misconfigured spoof protections to impersonate organizations' domains and distribute emails that appear as if they have been sent internally. "Threat actors have leveraged this vector to deliver a wide variety of phishing messages related to various phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platforms such as Tycoon 2FA ," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said in a Tuesday report. "These include messages with lures themed around voicemails, shared documents, communications from human resources (HR) departments, password resets or expirations, and others, leading to credential phishing." While the attack vector is not necessarily new , the tech giant said it has witnessed a surge in the use of the tactic since May 2025 as part of opportunistic campaigns targeting a wide variety of organizations across multiple industries and verticals. This includes a campaign that has employed spoofed e...

The Invisible Half of the Identity Universe Identity used to live in one place - an LDAP directory, an HR system, a single IAM portal. Not anymore. Today, identity is fragmented across SaaS, on-prem, IaaS, PaaS, home-grown, and shadow applications. Each of these environments carries its own accounts, permissions, and authentication flows. Traditional IAM and IGA tools govern only the nearly managed half of this universe - the users and apps that have been fully onboarded, integrated, and mapped. Everything else remains invisible: the unverified, non-human, unprotected mass of identities we call identity dark matter. Every new or modernized app demands onboarding - connectors, schema mapping, entitlement catalogs, and role modeling - work that consumes time, money, and expertise. Many applications never make it that far. The result is fragmentation: unmanaged identities and permissions operating outside corporate governance. And beyond the human layer lies an even larger challenge...

Popular artificial intelligence (AI)-powered Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code) forks such as Cursor, Windsurf, Google Antigravity, and Trae have been found to recommend extensions that are non-existent in the Open VSX registry, potentially opening the door to supply chain risks when bad actors publish malicious packages under those names. The problem, according to Koi , is that these integrated development environments (IDEs) inherit the list of officially recommended extensions from Microsoft's extensions marketplace. These extensions don't exist in Open VSX. The VS Code extension recommendations can take two different forms: file-based, which are displayed as toast notifications when users open a file in specific formats, or software-based, which are suggested when certain programs are already installed on the host. "The problem: these recommended extensions didn't exist on Open VSX," Koi security researcher Oren Yomtov said. "The namespaces were u...

The year opened without a reset. The same pressure carried over, and in some places it tightened. Systems people assume are boring or stable are showing up in the wrong places. Attacks moved quietly, reused familiar paths, and kept working longer than anyone wants to admit. This week's stories share one pattern. Nothing flashy. No single moment. Just steady abuse of trust — updates, extensions, logins, messages — the things people click without thinking. That's where damage starts now. This recap pulls those signals together. Not to overwhelm, but to show where attention slipped and why it matters early in the year. ⚡ Threat of the Week RondoDox Botnet Exploits React2Shell Flaw — A persistent nine-month-long campaign has targeted Internet of Things (IoT) devices and web applications to enroll them into a botnet known as RondoDox. As of December 2025, the activity has been observed leveraging the recently disclosed React2Shell (CVE-2025-55182, CVSS score: 10.0) flaw as an initial...

Featuring: Cybersecurity is being reshaped by forces that extend beyond individual threats or tools. As organizations operate across cloud infrastructure, distributed endpoints, and complex supply chains, security has shifted from a collection of point solutions to a question of architecture, trust, and execution speed. This report examines how core areas of cybersecurity are evolving in response to that shift. Across authentication, endpoint security, software supply chain protection, network visibility, and human risk, it explores how defenders are adapting to adversaries that move faster, blend technical and social techniques, and exploit gaps between systems rather than weaknesses in any single control. Download the Full Report Here: https://papryon.live/article Authentication — Yubico Authentication is evolving from password-based verification to cryptographic proof of possession. As phishing and AI-driven impersonation scale, identity has become the primary control point...

Attack Surface Management (ASM) tools promise reduced risk. What they usually deliver is more information.  Security teams deploy ASM, asset inventories grow, alerts start flowing, and dashboards fill up. There is visible activity and measurable output. But when leadership asks a simple question, " Is this reducing incidents? " the answer is often unclear.  This gap between effort and outcome is the core ROI problem in attack surface management, especially when ROI is measured primarily through asset counts instead of risk reduction.  The Promise vs. The Proof Most ASM programs are built around a reasonable idea: you can't protect what you don't know exists. As a result, teams focus on discovery: domains and subdomains, IPs and cloud resources, third-party infrastructure, and transient or short-lived assets.  Over time, counts increase. Dashboards are trending upward. Coverage improves.  But none of those metrics directly answer whether the organization i...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a phishing campaign that involves the attackers impersonating legitimate Google-generated messages by abusing Google Cloud's Application Integration service to distribute emails. The activity, Check Point said, takes advantage of the trust associated with Google Cloud infrastructure to send the messages from a legitimate email address ("noreply-application-integration@google[.]com") so that they can bypass traditional email security filters and have a better chance of landing in users' inboxes. "The emails mimic routine enterprise notifications such as voicemail alerts and file access or permission requests, making them appear normal and trustworthy to recipients," the cybersecurity company said . Attackers have been observed sending 9,394 phishing emails targeting approximately 3,200 customers over a 14-day period observed in December 2025, with the affected organizations located in the U.S., Asia-Pac...

The first ThreatsDay Bulletin of 2026 lands on a day that already feels symbolic — new year, new breaches, new tricks. If the past twelve months taught defenders anything, it's that threat actors don't pause for holidays or resolutions. They just evolve faster. This week's round-up shows how subtle shifts in behavior, from code tweaks to job scams, are rewriting what "cybercrime" looks like in practice. Across the landscape, big players are being tested, familiar threats are mutating, and smaller stories are quietly signaling bigger patterns ahead. The trend isn't about one big breach anymore; it's about many small openings that attackers exploit with precision. The pace of exploitation, deception, and persistence hasn't slowed; it's only become more calculated. Each update in this edition highlights how the line between normal operations and compromise is getting thinner by the week. Here's a sharp look at what's moving beneath the surface of the cybersecurity world as 2026 begin...