Identity Security | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Most identity programs still prioritize work the way they prioritize IT tickets: by volume, loudness, or “what failed a control check.” That approach breaks the moment your environment stops being mostly-human and mostly-onboarded. In modern enterprises, identity risk is created by a compound of factors: control posture, hygiene, business context, and intent. Any one of these can perhaps be manageable on its own. The real danger is the toxic combination, when multiple weaknesses align and attackers get a clean chain from entry to impact. A useful prioritization framework treats identity risk as contextual exposure, not configuration completeness. 1. Controls Posture: Compliance and Security As Risk Signals, Not Checkboxes Controls posture answers a simple question: If something goes wrong, will we prevent it, detect it, and prove it? In classic IAM programs, controls are assessed as “configured / not configured.” But prioritization needs more nuance: a missing control is a risk ...

Security news rarely moves in a straight line. This week, it feels more like a series of sharp turns, some happening quietly in the background, others playing out in public view. The details are different, but the pressure points are familiar. Across devices, cloud services, research labs, and even everyday apps, the line between normal behavior and hidden risk keeps getting thinner. Tools meant to protect, update, or improve systems are also becoming pathways when something goes wrong. This recap gathers the signals in one place. Quick reads, real impact, and developments that deserve a closer look before they become next week’s bigger problem. ⚡ Threat of the Week Dell RecoverPoint for VMs Zero-Day Exploited — A maximum severity security vulnerability in Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines has been exploited as a zero-day by a suspected China-nexus threat cluster dubbed UNC6201 since mid-2024. The activity involves the exploitation of CVE-2026-22769 (CVSS score: 10.0), a ca...

With one in three cyber-attacks now involving compromised employee accounts, insurers and regulators are placing far greater emphasis on identity posture when assessing cyber risk.  For many organizations, however, these assessments remain largely opaque. Elements such as password hygiene, privileged access management, and the extent of multi-factor authentication (MFA) coverage are increasingly influential in how cyber risk and insurance costs are evaluated. Understanding the identity-centric factors behind these assessments is critical for organizations seeking to demonstrate lower risk exposure and secure more favorable insurance terms. Why identity posture now drives underwriting With the global average cost of a data breach reaching $4.4 million in 2025, more organizations are turning to cyber insurance to manage financial exposure. In the UK, coverage has increased from 37% in 2023 to 45% in 2025, but rising claims volumes are prompting insurers to tighten underwrit...

Cloud attacks move fast — faster than most incident response teams. In data centers, investigations had time. Teams could collect disk images, review logs, and build timelines over days. In the cloud, infrastructure is short-lived. A compromised instance can disappear in minutes. Identities rotate. Logs expire. Evidence can vanish before analysis even begins. Cloud forensics is fundamentally different from traditional forensics. If investigations still rely on manual log stitching, attackers already have the advantage. Register: See Context-Aware Forensics in Action ➜ Why Traditional Incident Response Fails in the Cloud Most teams face the same problem: alerts without context. You might detect a suspicious API call, a new identity login, or unusual data access — but the full attack path remains unclear across the environment. Attackers use this visibility gap to move laterally, escalate privileges, and reach critical assets before responders can connect the activity. To...

A new study has found that multiple cloud-based password managers, including Bitwarden, Dashlane, and LastPass, are susceptible to password recovery attacks under certain conditions. "The attacks range in severity from integrity violations to the complete compromise of all vaults in an organization," researchers Matteo Scarlata, Giovanni Torrisi, Matilda Backendal, and Kenneth G. Paterson said . "The majority of the attacks allow the recovery of passwords." It's worth noting that the threat model, per the study from ETH Zurich and Università della Svizzera italiana, supposes a malicious server and aims to examine the password manager's zero-knowledge encryption (ZKE) promises made by the three solutions. ZKE is a cryptographic technique that allows one party to prove knowledge of a secret to another party without actually revealing the secret itself. ZKE is also a little different from end-to-end encryption (E2EE). While E2EE refers to a method of secur...

This week’s recap shows how small gaps are turning into big entry points. Not always through new exploits, often through tools, add-ons, cloud setups, or workflows that people already trust and rarely question. Another signal: attackers are mixing old and new methods. Legacy botnet tactics, modern cloud abuse, AI assistance, and supply-chain exposure are being used side by side, whichever path gives the easiest foothold. Below is the full weekly recap — a condensed scan of the incidents, flaws, and campaigns shaping the threat landscape right now. ⚡ Threat of the Week Malicious Outlook Add-in Turns Into Phishing Kit — In an unusual case of a supply chain attack, the legitimate AgreeTo add-in for Outlook has been hijacked and turned into a phishing kit that stole more than 4,000 Microsoft account credentials. This was made possible by seizing control of a domain associated with the now-abandoned project to serve a fake Microsoft login page. The incident demonstrates how overlooke...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered what they said is the first known malicious Microsoft Outlook add-in detected in the wild. In this unusual supply chain attack detailed by Koi Security, an unknown attacker claimed the domain associated with a now-abandoned legitimate add-in to serve a fake Microsoft login page, stealing over 4,000 credentials in the process. The activity has been codenamed AgreeToSteal by the cybersecurity company. The Outlook add-in in question is AgreeTo , which is advertised by its developer as a way for users to connect different calendars in a single place and share their availability through email. The add-in was last updated in December 2022. Idan Dardikman, co-founder and CTO of Koi, told The Hacker News that the incident represents a broadening of supply chain attack vectors. "This is the same class of attack we've seen in browser extensions, npm packages, and IDE plugins: a trusted distribution channel where the content can change aft...

Intentionally vulnerable training applications are widely used for security education, internal testing, and product demonstrations. Tools such as OWASP Juice Shop, DVWA, Hackazon, and bWAPP are designed to be insecure by default, making them useful for learning how common attack techniques work in controlled environments. The issue is not the applications themselves, but how they are often deployed and maintained in real-world cloud environments. Pentera Labs examined how training and demo applications are being used across cloud infrastructures and identified a recurring pattern: applications intended for isolated lab use were frequently found exposed to the public internet, running inside active cloud accounts, and connected to cloud identities with broader access than required. Deployment Patterns Observed in the Research Pentera Labs research found that these applications were often deployed with default configurations, minimal isolation, and overly permissive cloud roles. T...

Are ransomware and encryption still the defining signals of modern cyberattacks, or has the industry been too fixated on noise while missing a more dangerous shift happening quietly all around them? According to Picus Labs’ new Red Report 2026, which analyzed over 1.1 million malicious files and mapped 15.5 million adversarial actions observed across 2025, attackers are no longer optimizing for disruption. Instead, their goal is now long-term, invisible access. To be clear, ransomware isn’t going anywhere, and adversaries continue to innovate. But the data shows a clear strategic pivot away from loud, destructive attacks toward techniques designed to evade detection, persist inside environments, and quietly exploit identity and trusted infrastructure. Rather than breaking in and burning systems down, today’s attackers increasingly behave like Digital Parasites. They live inside the host, feed on credentials and services, and remain undetected for as long as possible. Public attent...

Microsoft has revealed that it observed a multi‑stage intrusion that involved the threat actors exploiting internet‑exposed SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD) instances to obtain initial access and move laterally across the organization's network to other high-value assets. That said, the Microsoft Defender Security Research Team said it's not clear whether the activity weaponized recently disclosed flaws (CVE-2025-40551, CVSS score: 9.8, and CVE-2025-40536, CVSS score: 8.1), or a previously patched vulnerability (CVE-2025-26399, CVSS score: 9.8). "Since the attacks occurred in December 2025 and on machines vulnerable to both the old and new set of CVEs at the same time, we cannot reliably confirm the exact CVE used to gain an initial foothold," the company said in a report published last week. While CVE-2025-40536 is a security control bypass vulnerability that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to gain access to certain restricted functionality, CVE-2025-...

Cyber threats are no longer coming from just malware or exploits. They’re showing up inside the tools, platforms, and ecosystems organizations use every day. As companies connect AI, cloud apps, developer tools, and communication systems, attackers are following those same paths. A clear pattern this week: attackers are abusing trust. Trusted updates, trusted marketplaces, trusted apps, even trusted AI workflows. Instead of breaking security controls head-on, they’re slipping into places that already have access. This recap brings together those signals — showing how modern attacks are blending technology abuse, ecosystem manipulation, and large-scale targeting into a single, expanding threat surface. ⚡ Threat of the Week OpenClaw announces VirusTotal Partnership — OpenClaw has announced a partnership with Google's VirusTotal malware scanning platform to scan skills that are being uploaded to ClawHub as part of a defense-in-depth approach to improve the security of the agen...

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)

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...

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...

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...

Security teams at agile, fast-growing companies often have the same mandate: secure the business without slowing it down. Most teams inherit a tech stack optimized for breakneck growth, not resilience. In these environments, the security team is the helpdesk, the compliance expert, and the incident response team all rolled into one. Securing the cloud office in this scenario is all about finding leverage: identifying the strategic control points that drive the most resilience without adding operational overhead. Google Workspace provides an excellent security foundation, but its native tooling has inherent limitations, and relying on the default configurations can cause headaches. To build a truly resilient program, there are some common-sense first steps teams can take to secure Workspace natively, before intelligently augmenting the platform where its capabilities fall short. Secure email, the primary attack vector and largest archive Email remains the most reliable target for ...

Gartner® doesn’t create new categories lightly. Generally speaking, a new acronym only emerges when the industry's collective "to-do list" has become mathematically impossible to complete. And so it seems that the introduction of the Exposure Assessment Platforms (EAP) category is a formal admission that traditional Vulnerability Management (VM) is no longer a viable way to secure a modern enterprise. The shift from the traditional Market Guide for Vulnerability Assessment to the new Magic Quadrant for EAPs represents a move away from the "vulnerability hose", i.e., the endless stream of CVEs, and toward a model of Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) . To us, this is more than just a change in terminology; it is an attempt to solve the "Dead End" paradox that has plagued security teams for a decade. In the inaugural Magic Quadrant report of this category, Gartner evaluated 20 vendors for their ability to support continuous discovery, ris...

Old Playbook, New Scale: While defenders are chasing trends, attackers are optimizing the basics The security industry loves talking about "new" threats. AI-powered attacks. Quantum-resistant encryption. Zero-trust architectures. But looking around, it seems like the most effective attacks in 2025 are pretty much the same as they were in 2015. Attackers are exploiting the same entry points that worked - they're just doing it better. Supply Chain: Still Cascading Downstream As the Shai Hulud NPM campaign showed us, supply chain remains a major issue. A single compromised package can cascade through an entire dependency tree, affecting thousands of downstream projects. The attack vector hasn't changed. What's changed is how efficiently attackers can identify and exploit opportunities. AI has collapsed the barrier to entry. Just as AI has enabled one-person software projects to build sophisticated applications, the same is true in cybercrime. What used to requi...

ServiceNow has disclosed details of a now-patched critical security flaw impacting its ServiceNow artificial intelligence (AI) Platform that could enable an unauthenticated user to impersonate another user and perform arbitrary actions as that user. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-12420 , carries a CVSS score of 9.3 out of 10.0. It has been codenamed BodySnatcher by AppOmni. "This issue [...] could enable an unauthenticated user to impersonate another user and perform the operations that the impersonated user is entitled to perform," the company said in an advisory released Monday. The shortcoming was addressed by ServiceNow on October 30, 2025, by deploying a security update to the majority of hosted instances, with the company also sharing the patches with ServiceNow partners and self-hosted customers. The following versions include a fix for CVE-2025-12420 - Now Assist AI Agents (sn_aia) - 5.1.18 or later and 5.2.19 or later Virtual Agent API (sn_va_as_ser...