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Cybersecurity researchers have flagged several popular Google Chrome extensions that have been found to transmit data in HTTP and hard-code secrets in their code, exposing users to privacy and security risks. "Several widely used extensions [...] unintentionally transmit sensitive data over simple HTTP," Yuanjing Guo, a security researcher in the Symantec's Security Technology and Response team, said . "By doing so, they expose browsing domains, machine IDs, operating system details, usage analytics, and even uninstall information, in plaintext." The fact that the network traffic is unencrypted also means that they are susceptible to adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) attacks, allowing malicious actors on the same network such as a public Wi-Fi to intercept and, even worse, modify this data, which could lead to far more serious consequences. The list of identified extensions are below - SEMRush Rank (extension ID: idbhoeaiokcojcgappfigpifhpkjgmab) and P...

What do a source code editor, a smart billboard, and a web server have in common? They've all become launchpads for attacks—because cybercriminals are rethinking what counts as "infrastructure." Instead of chasing high-value targets directly, threat actors are now quietly taking over the overlooked: outdated software, unpatched IoT devices, and open-source packages. It's not just clever—it's reshaping how intrusion, persistence, and evasion happen at scale. ⚡ Threat of the Week 5Socks Proxy Using IoT, EoL Systems Dismantled in Law Enforcement Operation — A joint law enforcement operation undertaken by Dutch and U.S. authorities dismantled a criminal proxy network, known as anyproxy[.]net and 5socks[.]net, that was powered by thousands of infected Internet of Things (IoT) and end-of-life (EoL) devices, enlisting them into a botnet for providing anonymity to malicious actors. The illicit platform, active since 2004, advertised more than 7,000 online proxies daily, with infected ...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged three malicious npm packages that are designed to target the Apple macOS version of Cursor, a popular artificial intelligence (AI)-powered source code editor. "Disguised as developer tools offering 'the cheapest Cursor API,' these packages steal user credentials, fetch an encrypted payload from threat actor-controlled infrastructure, overwrite Cursor's main.js file, and disable auto-updates to maintain persistence," Socket researcher Kirill Boychenko said . The packages in question are listed below - sw-cur (2,771 downloads) sw-cur1 (307 downloads), and aiide-cur (163 downloads) All three packages continue to be available for download from the npm registry. "Aiide-cur" was first published on February 14, 2025. It was uploaded by a user named "aiide." The npm library is described as a "command-line tool for configuring the macOS version of the Cursor editor." The other two packages, ...

Artificial intelligence is driving a massive shift in enterprise productivity, from GitHub Copilot's code completions to chatbots that mine internal knowledge bases for instant answers. Each new agent must authenticate to other services, quietly swelling the population of non‑human identities (NHIs) across corporate clouds. That population is already overwhelming the enterprise: many companies now juggle at least 45 machine identities for every human user . Service accounts, CI/CD bots, containers, and AI agents all need secrets, most commonly in the form of API keys, tokens, or certificates, to connect securely to other systems to do their work. GitGuardian's State of Secrets Sprawl 2025 report reveals the cost of this sprawl: over 23.7 million secrets surfaced on public GitHub in 2024 alone. And instead of making the situation better, repositories with Copilot enabled the leak of secrets 40 percent more often .  NHIs Are Not People Unlike human beings logging into systems, ...

The North Korean threat actors behind the ongoing Contagious Interview campaign are spreading their tentacles on the npm ecosystem by publishing more malicious packages that deliver the BeaverTail malware, as well as a new remote access trojan (RAT) loader. "These latest samples employ hexadecimal string encoding to evade automated detection systems and manual code audits, signaling a variation in the threat actors' obfuscation techniques," Socket security researcher Kirill Boychenko said in a report. The packages in question, which were collectively downloaded more than 5,600 times prior to their removal, are listed below - empty-array-validator twitterapis dev-debugger-vite snore-log core-pino events-utils icloud-cod cln-logger node-clog consolidate-log consolidate-logger The disclosure comes nearly a month after a set of six npm packages were discovered distributing BeaverTail , a JavaScript stealer that's also capable of delivering a Python-b...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered several cryptocurrency packages on the npm registry that have been hijacked to siphon sensitive information such as environment variables from compromised systems. "Some of these packages have lived on npmjs.com for over 9 years, and provide legitimate functionality to blockchain developers," Sonatype researcher Ax Sharma said . "However, [...] the latest versions of each of these packages were laden with obfuscated scripts." The affected packages and their hijacked versions are listed below - country-currency-map (2.1.8) bnb-javascript-sdk-nobroadcast (2.16.16) @bithighlander/bitcoin-cash-js-lib (5.2.2) eslint-config-travix (6.3.1) @crosswise-finance1/sdk-v2 (0.1.21) @keepkey/device-protocol (7.13.3) @veniceswap/uikit (0.65.34) @veniceswap/eslint-config-pancake (1.6.2) babel-preset-travix (1.2.1) @travix/ui-themes (1.1.5) @coinmasters/types (4.8.16) Analysis of these packages by the software supply chain ...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new supply chain attack vector dubbed Rules File Backdoor that affects artificial intelligence (AI)-powered code editors like GitHub Copilot and Cursor, causing them to inject malicious code. "This technique enables hackers to silently compromise AI-generated code by injecting hidden malicious instructions into seemingly innocent configuration files used by Cursor and GitHub Copilot," Pillar security's Co-Founder and CTO Ziv Karliner said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. "By exploiting hidden unicode characters and sophisticated evasion techniques in the model facing instruction payload, threat actors can manipulate the AI to insert malicious code that bypasses typical code reviews." The attack vector is notable for the fact that it allows malicious code to silently propagate across projects, posing a supply chain risk. The crux of the attack hinges on the rules files that are used ...

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a new sophisticated tool called GoIssue that can be used to send phishing messages at scale targeting GitHub users. The program, first marketed by a threat actor named cyberdluffy (aka Cyber D' Luffy) on the Runion forum earlier this August, is advertised as a tool that allows criminal actors to extract email addresses from public GitHub profiles and send bulk emails directly to user inboxes. "Whether you're aiming to reach a specific audience or expand your outreach, GoIssue offers the precision and power you need," the threat actor claimed in their post. "GoIssue can send bulk emails to GitHub users, directly to their inboxes, targeting any recipient." SlashNext said the tool marks a "dangerous shift in targeted phishing" that could act as a gateway to source code theft, supply chain attacks, and corporate network breaches via compromised developer credentials. "Armed with this inform...

Three malicious packages published to the npm registry in September 2024 have been found to contain a known malware called BeaverTail, a JavaScript downloader and information stealer linked to an ongoing North Korean campaign tracked as Contagious Interview. The Datadog Security Research team is monitoring the activity under the name Tenacious Pungsan , which is also known by the monikers CL-STA-0240 and Famous Chollima. The names of the malicious packages, which are no longer available for download from the package registry, are listed below - passports-js, a backdoored copy of the passport (118 downloads) bcrypts-js, a backdoored copy of bcryptjs (81 downloads) blockscan-api, a backdoored copy of etherscan-api (124 downloads) Contagious Interview refers to a yearlong-campaign undertaken by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) that involves tricking developers into downloading malicious packages or seemingly innocuous video conferencing applications as part...

Threat actors affiliated with North Korea have been observed leveraging LinkedIn as a way to target developers as part of a fake job recruiting operation. These attacks employ coding tests as a common initial infection vector, Google-owned Mandiant said in a new report about threats faced by the Web3 sector. "After an initial chat conversation, the attacker sent a ZIP file that contained COVERTCATCH malware disguised as a Python coding challenge," researchers Robert Wallace, Blas Kojusner, and Joseph Dobson said . The malware functions as a launchpad to compromise the target's macOS system by downloading a second-stage payload that establishes persistence via Launch Agents and Launch Daemons. It's worth pointing out that this is one of many activity clusters – namely Operation Dream Job , Contagious Interview , and others – undertaken by North Korean hacking groups that make use of job-related decoys to infect targets with malware. Recruiting-themed lures have ...

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Roblox developers are the target of a persistent campaign that seeks to compromise systems through bogus npm packages, once again underscoring how threat actors continue to exploit the trust in the open-source ecosystem to deliver malware. "By mimicking the popular 'noblox.js' library, attackers have published dozens of packages designed to steal sensitive data and compromise systems," Checkmarx researcher Yehuda Gelb said in a technical report. Roblox is an online game platform and game creation system with nearly 80 million daily active users , and thus makes for an attractive target for threat actors. It was launched in September 2006 for Windows, before debuting in other platforms, including iOS, Android, Xbox One, Meta Quest, and PlayStation 4. Details about the activity were first documented by ReversingLabs in August 2023 as part of a campaign that delivered a stealer called Luna Token Grabber, which it said was a "replay of an attack uncovered two ...

In yet another sign that threat actors are always looking out for new ways to trick users into downloading malware, it has come to light that the question-and-answer (Q&A) platform known as Stack Exchange has been abused to direct unsuspecting developers to bogus Python packages capable of draining their cryptocurrency wallets. "Upon installation, this code would execute automatically, setting in motion a chain of events designed to compromise and control the victim's systems, while also exfiltrating their data and draining their crypto wallets," Checkmarx researchers Yehuda Gelb and Tzachi Zornstain said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The campaign, which began on June 25, 2024, specifically singled out cryptocurrency users involved with Raydium and Solana. The list of rogue packages uncovered as part of the activity is listed below - raydium (762 downloads) raydium-sdk (137 downloads) sol-instruct (115 downloads) sol-structs (292 downloads) sp...