Gh0st RAT | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a previously undocumented threat group called  Unfading Sea Haze  that's believed to have been active since 2018. The intrusion singled out high-level organizations in South China Sea countries, particularly military and government targets, Bitdefender said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The investigation revealed a troubling trend beyond the historical context," Martin Zugec, technical solutions director at Bitdefender,  said , adding it identified a total of eight victims to date. "Notably, the attackers repeatedly regained access to compromised systems. This exploitation highlights a critical vulnerability: poor credential hygiene and inadequate patching practices on exposed devices and web services." There are some indications that the threat actor behind the attacks is operating with goals that are aligned with Chinese interests despite the fact that the attack signatures do not overlap wit...

Chinese-speaking users have been targeted by malicious Google ads for restricted messaging apps like Telegram as part of an ongoing malvertising campaign. "The threat actor is abusing Google advertiser accounts to create malicious ads and pointing them to pages where unsuspecting users will download Remote Administration Trojan (RATs) instead," Malwarebytes' Jérôme Segura  said  in a Thursday report. "Such programs give an attacker full control of a victim's machine and the ability to drop additional malware." It's worth noting that the activity, codenamed  FakeAPP , is a continuation of a  prior attack wave  that targeted Hong Kong users searching for messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram on search engines in late October 2023. The latest iteration of the campaign also adds messaging app LINE to the list of messaging apps, redirecting users to bogus websites hosted on Google Docs or Google Sites. The Google infrastructure is used to embed link...

As SaaS providers race to integrate AI into their product offerings to stay competitive and relevant, a new challenge has emerged in the world of AI: shadow AI.  Shadow AI refers to the unauthorized use of AI tools and copilots at organizations. For example, a developer using ChatGPT to assist with writing code, a salesperson downloading an AI-powered meeting transcription tool, or a customer support person using Agentic AI to automate tasks – without going through the proper channels. When these tools are used without IT or the Security team's knowledge, they often lack sufficient security controls, putting company data at risk. Shadow AI Detection Challenges Because shadow AI tools often embed themselves in approved business applications via AI assistants, copilots, and agents they are even more tricky to discover than traditional shadow IT. While traditional shadow apps can be identified through network monitoring methodologies that scan for unauthorized connections based on...