JavaScript | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

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 sandbox escape vulnerability has been disclosed in the popular vm2 Node.js library that, if successfully exploited, could allow attackers to run arbitrary code on the underlying operating system. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-22709 , carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of 10.0 on the CVSS scoring system. "In vm2 for version 3.10.0, Promise.prototype.then Promise.prototype.catch callback sanitization can be bypassed," vm2 maintainer Patrik Simek said . "This allows attackers to escape the sandbox and run arbitrary code." vm2 is a Node.js library used to run untrusted code within a secure sandboxed environment by intercepting and proxying JavaScript objects to prevent sandboxed code from accessing the host environment. The newly discovered flaw stems from the library's improper sanitization of Promise handlers , which creates an escape vector that results in the execution of arbitrary code outside the sandbox boundaries. "The critical...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a JScript -based command-and-control (C2) framework called PeckBirdy that has been put to use by China-aligned APT actors since 2023 to target multiple environments. The flexible framework has been put to use against Chinese gambling industries and malicious activities targeting Asian government entities and private organizations, according to Trend Micro. "PeckBirdy is a script-based framework which, while possessing advanced capabilities, is implemented using JScript, an old script language," researchers Ted Lee and Joseph C Chen said . "This is to ensure that the framework could be launched across different execution environments via LOLBins (living-off-the-land binaries)." The cybersecurity company said it identified the PeckBirdy script framework in 2023 after it observed multiple Chinese gambling websites being injected with malicious scripts, which are designed to download and execute the primary payload in order...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered two malicious Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code) extensions that are advertised as artificial intelligence (AI)-powered coding assistants, but also harbor covert functionality to siphon developer data to China-based servers. The extensions, which have 1.5 million combined installs and are still available for download from the official Visual Studio Marketplace , are listed below - ChatGPT - 中文版 (ID: whensunset.chatgpt-china) - 1,340,869 installs ChatGPT - ChatMoss（CodeMoss）(ID: zhukunpeng.chat-moss) - 151,751 installs Koi Security said the extensions are functional and work as expected, but they also capture every file being opened and every source code modification to servers located in China without users' knowledge or consent. The campaign has been codenamed MaliciousCorgi. "Both contain identical malicious code -- the same spyware infrastructure running under different publisher names," security researcher Tuval ...

A security vulnerability has been disclosed in the popular binary-parser npm library that, if successfully exploited, could result in the execution of arbitrary JavaScript. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-1245 (CVSS score: 6.5), affects all versions of the module prior to version 2.3.0 , which addresses the issue. Patches for the flaw were released on November 26, 2025. Binary-parser is a widely used parser builder for JavaScript that allows developers to parse binary data. It supports a wide range of common data types, including integers, floating-point values, strings, and arrays. The package attracts approximately 13,000 downloads on a weekly basis. According to an advisory released by the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC), the vulnerability has to do with a lack of sanitization of user-supplied values, such as parser field names and encoding parameters, when the JavaScript parser code is dynamically generated at runtime using the "Function" constructor. ...

Leaked API keys are no longer unusual, nor are the breaches that follow. So why are sensitive tokens still being so easily exposed? To find out, Intruder's research team looked at what traditional vulnerability scanners actually cover and built a new secrets detection method to address gaps in existing approaches.  Applying this at scale by scanning 5 million applications revealed over 42,000 exposed tokens across 334 secret types, exposing a major class of leaked secrets that is not being handled well by existing tooling, particularly in single-page applications (SPAs). In this article, we break down existing secrets detection methods and reveal what we found when we scanned millions of applications for secrets hidden in JavaScript bundles. Established secrets detection methods (and their limitations) Traditional secrets detection The traditional, fully automated approach to detecting application secrets is to search a set of known paths and apply regular expressions to ma...

The JavaScript (aka JScript) malware loader called GootLoader has been observed using a malformed ZIP archive that's designed to sidestep detection efforts by concatenating anywhere from 500 to 1,000 archives. "The actor creates a malformed archive as an anti-analysis technique," Expel security researcher Aaron Walton said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "That is, many unarchiving tools are not able to consistently extract it, but one critical unarchiving tool seems to work consistently and reliably: the default tool built into Windows systems." This leads to a scenario where the archive cannot be processed by tools like WinRAR or 7-Zip, and, therefore, prevents many automated workflows from analyzing the contents of the file. At the same time, it can be opened by the default Windows unarchiver, thereby ensuring that victims who fall victim to the social engineering scheme can extract and run the JavaScript malware. GootLoader is typically distrib...

Node.js has released updates to fix what it described as a critical security issue impacting "virtually every production Node.js app" that, if successfully exploited, could trigger a denial-of-service (DoS) condition. "Node.js/V8 makes a best-effort attempt to recover from stack space exhaustion with a catchable error, which frameworks have come to rely on for service availability," Node.js's Matteo Collina and Joyee Cheung said in a Tuesday bulletin. "A bug that only reproduces when async_hooks are used would break this attempt, causing Node.js to exit with 7 directly without throwing a catchable error when recursions in user code exhaust the stack space. This makes applications whose recursion depth is controlled by unsanitized input vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks." At its core, the shortcoming stems from the fact that Node.js exits with code 7 (denoting an Internal Exception Handler Run-Time Failure ) instead of gracefully handling the...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a major web skimming campaign that has been active since January 2022, targeting several major payment networks like American Express, Diners Club, Discover, JCB Co., Ltd., Mastercard, and UnionPay. "Enterprise organizations that are clients of these payment providers are the most likely to be impacted," Silent Push said in a report published today. Digital skimming attacks refer to a category of client-side attacks in which bad actors compromise legitimate e-commerce sites and payment portals to inject malicious JavaScript code that's capable of stealthily harvesting credit card information and other personal information when unsuspecting users attempt to make a payment on checkout pages. These attacks are classified under an umbrella term called Magecart , which initially referred to a coalition of cybercriminal groups that targeted e-commerce sites using the Magento software, before diversifying to other products and platf...

Users of the " @adonisjs/bodyparser " npm package are being advised to update to the latest version following the disclosure of a critical security vulnerability that, if successfully exploited, could allow a remote attacker to write arbitrary files on the server. Tracked as CVE-2026-21440 (CVSS score: 9.2), the flaw has been described as a path traversal issue affecting the AdonisJS multipart file handling mechanism. "@adonisjs/bodyparser" is an npm package associated with AdonisJS, a Node.js framework for developing web apps and API servers with TypeScript. The library is used to process AdonisJS HTTP request body . "If a developer uses MultipartFile.move() without the second options argument or without explicitly sanitizing the filename, an attacker can supply a crafted filename value containing traversal sequences, writing to a destination path outside the intended upload directory," the project maintainers said in an advisory released last week. ...

A critical security flaw has been disclosed in LangChain Core that could be exploited by an attacker to steal sensitive secrets and even influence large language model (LLM) responses through prompt injection. LangChain Core (i.e., langchain-core ) is a core Python package that's part of the LangChain ecosystem, providing the core interfaces and model-agnostic abstractions for building applications powered by LLMs. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-68664, carries a CVSS score of 9.3 out of 10.0. Security researcher Yarden Porat has been credited with reporting the vulnerability on December 4, 2025. It has been codenamed LangGrinch . "A serialization injection vulnerability exists in LangChain's dumps() and dumpd() functions," the project maintainers said in an advisory. "The functions do not escape dictionaries with 'lc' keys when serializing free-form dictionaries." "The 'lc' key is used internally by LangChain to mark ser...

The React team has released fixes for two new types of flaws in React Server Components (RSC) that, if successfully exploited, could result in denial-of-service (DoS) or source code exposure. The team said the issues were found by the security community while attempting to exploit the patches released for CVE-2025-55182 (CVSS score: 10.0), a critical bug in RSC that has since been weaponized in the wild . The three vulnerabilities are listed below - CVE-2025-55184 (CVSS score: 7.5) - A pre-authentication denial of service vulnerability arising from unsafe deserialization of payloads from HTTP requests to Server Function endpoints, triggering an infinite loop that hangs the server process and may prevent future HTTP requests from being served CVE-2025-67779 (CVSS score: 7.5) - An incomplete fix for CVE-2025-55184 that has the same impact CVE-2025-55183 (CVSS score: 5.3) - An information leak vulnerability that may cause a specifically crafted HTTP request sent to a vulnerable...

Threat actors with ties to North Korea have likely become the latest to exploit the recently disclosed critical React2Shell security flaw in React Server Components (RSC) to deliver a previously undocumented remote access trojan dubbed EtherRAT . "EtherRAT leverages Ethereum smart contracts for command-and-control (C2) resolution, deploys five independent Linux persistence mechanisms, and downloads its own Node.js runtime from nodejs.org," Sysdig said in a report published Monday. The cloud security firm said the activity exhibits significant overlap with a long-running campaign codenamed Contagious Interview , which has been observed leveraging the EtherHiding technique to distribute malware since February 2025. Contagious Interview is the name given to a series of attacks in which blockchain and Web3 developers, among others, are targeted through fake job interviews, coding assignments, and video assessments, leading to the deployment of malware. These efforts typi...

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a new campaign dubbed JS#SMUGGLER that has been observed leveraging compromised websites as a distribution vector for a remote access trojan named NetSupport RAT . The attack chain, analyzed by Securonix, involves three main moving parts: An obfuscated JavaScript loader injected into a website, an HTML Application (HTA) that runs encrypted PowerShell stagers using "mshta.exe," and a PowerShell payload that's designed to download and execute the main malware. "NetSupport RAT enables full attacker control over the victim host, including remote desktop access, file operations, command execution, data theft, and proxy capabilities," researchers Akshay Gaikwad, Shikha Sangwan, and Aaron Beardslee said . There is little evidence at this stage to tie the campaign to any known threat group or country. The activity has been found to target enterprise users through compromised websites, indicative of a broad-strokes ...

As 2025 draws to a close, security professionals face a sobering realization: the traditional playbook for web security has become dangerously obsolete. AI-powered attacks, evolving injection techniques, and supply chain compromises affecting hundreds of thousands of websites forced a fundamental rethink of defensive strategies. Here are the five threats that reshaped web security this year, and why the lessons learned will define digital protection for years to come. 1. Vibe Coding Natural language coding, " vibe coding " , transformed from novelty to production reality in 2025, with nearly 25% of Y Combinator startups using AI to build core codebases. One developer launched a multiplayer flight simulator in under three hours, eventually scaling it to 89,000 players and generating thousands in monthly revenue. The Result Code that functions perfectly yet contains exploitable flaws, bypassing traditional security tools. AI generates what you ask for, not what you forget...

A maximum-severity security flaw has been disclosed in React Server Components (RSC) that, if successfully exploited, could result in remote code execution. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-55182, carries a CVSS score of 10.0. The vulnerability has been codenamed React2shell . It allows "unauthenticated remote code execution by exploiting a flaw in how React decodes payloads sent to React Server Function endpoints," the React Team said in an alert issued today. "Even if your app does not implement any React Server Function endpoints, it may still be vulnerable if your app supports React Server Components." According to cloud security firm Wiz , the issue is a case of logical deserialization that stems from processing RSC payloads in an unsafe manner. As a result, an unauthenticated attacker could craft a malicious HTTP request to any Server Function endpoint that, when deserialized by React, achieves execution of arbitrary JavaScript code on the server. ...

The North Korean threat actors behind the Contagious Interview campaign have continued to flood the npm registry with 197 more malicious packages since last month . According to Socket , these packages have been downloaded over 31,000 times, and are designed to deliver a variant of OtterCookie that brings together the features of BeaverTail and prior versions of OtterCookie. Some of the identified "loader" packages are listed below - bcryptjs-node cross-sessions json-oauth node-tailwind react-adparser session-keeper tailwind-magic tailwindcss-forms webpack-loadcss The malware, once launched, attempts to evade sandboxes and virtual machines, profiles the machine, and then establishes a command-and-control (C2) channel to provide the attackers with a remote shell, along with capabilities to steal clipboard contents, log keystrokes, capture screenshots, and gather browser credentials, documents, cryptocurrency wallet data, and seed phrases. It's worth notin...

The threat actors behind a malware family known as RomCom targeted a U.S.-based civil engineering company via a JavaScript loader dubbed SocGholish to deliver the Mythic Agent. "This is the first time that a RomCom payload has been observed being distributed by SocGholish," Arctic Wolf Labs researcher Jacob Faires said in a Tuesday report. The activity has been attributed with medium-to-high confidence to Unit 29155 of Russia's Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, also known as GRU. According to the cybersecurity company, the targeted entity had worked for a city with close ties to Ukraine in the past. SocGholish (aka FakeUpdates), linked to a financially motivated operator tracked as TA569 (aka Gold Prelude, Mustard Tempest, Purple Vallhund, and UNC1543), serves as an initial access broker, allowing other threat actors to drop a wide range of payloads. Some of its known customers are Evil Corp, LockBit, Dridex, and ...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a set of seven npm packages published by a single threat actor that leverages a cloaking service called Adspect to differentiate between real victims and security researchers to ultimately redirect them to sketchy crypto-themed sites. The malicious npm packages, published by a threat actor named " dino_reborn " between September and November 2025, are listed below. The npm account no longer exists on npm as of writing. signals-embed (342 downloads) dsidospsodlks (184 downloads) applicationooks21 (340 downloads) application-phskck (199 downloads) integrator-filescrypt2025 (199 downloads) integrator-2829 (276 downloads) integrator-2830 (290 downloads) "Upon visiting a fake website constructed by one of the packages, the threat actor determines if the visitor is a victim or a security researcher," Socket security researcher Olivia Brown said. "If the visitor is a victim, they see a fake CAPTCHA, eventually b...