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Multiple security vendors are sounding the alarm about a second wave of attacks targeting the npm registry in a manner that's reminiscent of the Shai-Hulud attack . The new supply chain campaign, dubbed Sha1-Hulud , has compromised hundreds of npm packages, according to reports from Aikido , HelixGuard , Koi Security , Socket , Step Security , and Wiz . The trojanized npm packages were uploaded to npm between November 21 and 23, 2025. "The campaign introduces a new variant that executes malicious code during the preinstall phase, significantly increasing potential exposure in build and runtime environments," Wiz researchers Hila Ramati, Merav Bar, Gal Benmocha, and Gili Tikochinski said. Like the Shai-Hulud attack that came to light in September 2025, the latest activity also publishes stolen secrets to GitHub, this time with the repository description: "Sha1-Hulud: The Second Coming." The prior wave was characterized by the compromise of legitimate packag...

This week saw a lot of new cyber trouble. Hackers hit Fortinet and Chrome with new 0-day bugs. They also broke into supply chains and SaaS tools. Many hid inside trusted apps, browser alerts, and software updates. Big firms like Microsoft, Salesforce, and Google had to react fast — stopping DDoS attacks, blocking bad links, and fixing live flaws. Reports also showed how fast fake news, AI risks, and attacks on developers are growing. Here's what mattered most in security this week. ⚡ Threat of the Week Fortinet Warns of Another Silently Patched and Actively Exploited FortiWeb Flaw — Fortinet has warned that a new security flaw in FortiWeb has been exploited in the wild. The medium-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-58034, carries a CVSS score of 6.7 out of a maximum of 10.0. It has been addressed in version 8.0.2. "An Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command ('OS Command Injection') vulnerability [CWE-78] in FortiWeb may allow an a...

New research from CrowdStrike has revealed that DeepSeek's artificial intelligence (AI) reasoning model DeepSeek-R1 produces more security vulnerabilities in response to prompts that contain topics deemed politically sensitive by China. "We found that when DeepSeek-R1 receives prompts containing topics the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) likely considers politically sensitive, the likelihood of it producing code with severe security vulnerabilities increases by up to 50%," the cybersecurity company said . The Chinese AI company previously attracted national security concerns, leading to a ban in many countries. Its open-source DeepSeek-R1 model was also found to censor topics considered sensitive by the Chinese government, refusing to answer questions about the Great Firewall of China or the political status of Taiwan, among others. In a statement released earlier this month, Taiwan's National Security Bureau warned citizens to be vigilant when using Chinese-m...

A recently patched security flaw in Microsoft Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) has been exploited by threat actors to distribute malware known as ShadowPad. "The attacker targeted Windows Servers with WSUS enabled, exploiting CVE-2025-59287 for initial access," AhnLab Security Intelligence Center (ASEC) said in a report published last week. "They then used PowerCat , an open-source PowerShell-based Netcat utility, to obtain a system shell (CMD). Subsequently, they downloaded and installed ShadowPad using certutil and curl." ShadowPad , assessed to be a successor to PlugX, is a modular backdoor widely used by Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups. It first emerged in 2015. In an analysis published in August 2021, SentinelOne called it a "masterpiece of privately sold malware in Chinese espionage." CVE-2025-59287 , addressed by Microsoft last month, refers to a critical deserialization flaw in WSUS that could be exploited to achieve remote code ...

The China-linked advanced persistent threat (APT) group known as APT31 has been attributed to cyber attacks targeting the Russian information technology (IT) sector between 2024 and 2025 while staying undetected for extended periods of time. "In the period from 2024 to 2025, the Russian IT sector, especially companies working as contractors and integrators of solutions for government agencies, faced a series of targeted computer attacks," Positive Technologies researchers Daniil Grigoryan and Varvara Koloskova said in a technical report. APT31, also known as Altaire, Bronze Vinewood, Judgement Panda, PerplexedGoblin, RedBravo, Red Keres, and Violet Typhoon (formerly Zirconium), is assessed to be active since at least 2010. It has a track record of striking a wide range of sectors, including governments, financial, and aerospace and defense, high tech, construction and engineering, telecommunications, media, and insurance. The cyber espionage group is primarily focused ...

Bad actors are leveraging browser notifications as a vector for phishing attacks to distribute malicious links by means of a new command-and-control (C2) platform called Matrix Push C2. "This browser-native, fileless framework leverages push notifications, fake alerts, and link redirects to target victims across operating systems," Blackfog researcher Brenda Robb said in a Thursday report. In these attacks, prospective targets are tricked into allowing browser notifications through social engineering on malicious or legitimate-but-compromised websites. Once a user agrees to receive notifications from the site, the attackers take advantage of the web push notification mechanism built into the web browser to send alerts that look like they have been sent by the operating system or the browser itself, leveraging trusted branding, familiar logos, and convincing language to maintain the ruse. These include alerts about, say, suspicious logins or browser updates, along with ...

A China-nexus threat actor known as APT24 has been observed using a previously undocumented malware dubbed BADAUDIO to establish persistent remote access to compromised networks as part of a nearly three-year campaign. "While earlier operations relied on broad strategic web compromises to compromise legitimate websites, APT24 has recently pivoted to using more sophisticated vectors targeting organizations in Taiwan," Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) researchers Harsh Parashar, Tierra Duncan, and Dan Perez said . "This includes the repeated compromise of a regional digital marketing firm to execute supply chain attacks and the use of targeted phishing campaigns." APT24, also called Pitty Tiger, is the moniker assigned to a suspected Chinese hacking group that has targeted government, healthcare, construction and engineering, mining, non-profit, and telecommunications sectors in the U.S. and Taiwan. The group is also known to engage in cyber operations wh...

Oligo Security has warned of ongoing attacks exploiting a two-year-old security flaw in the Ray open-source artificial intelligence (AI) framework to turn infected clusters with NVIDIA GPUs into a self-replicating cryptocurrency mining botnet. The activity, codenamed ShadowRay 2.0 , is an evolution of a prior wave that was observed between September 2023 and March 2024. The attack, at its core, exploits a critical missing authentication bug (CVE-2023-48022, CVSS score: 9.8) to take control of susceptible instances and hijack their computing power for illicit cryptocurrency mining using XMRig. The vulnerability has remained unpatched due to a " long-standing design decision " that's consistent with Ray's development best practices, which requires it to be run in an isolated network and act upon trusted code. The campaign involves submitting malicious jobs, with commands ranging from simple reconnaissance to complex multi-stage Bash and Python payloads, to an una...

Cybersecurity researchers have warned of an actively expanding botnet dubbed Tsundere that's targeting Windows users. Active since mid-2025, the threat is designed to execute arbitrary JavaScript code retrieved from a command-and-control (C2) server, Kaspersky researcher Lisandro Ubiedo said in an analysis published today. There are currently no details on how the botnet malware is propagated; however, in at least one case, the threat actors behind the operation are said to have leveraged a legitimate Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tool as a conduit to download an MSI installer file from a compromised site. The names given to the malware artifacts – Valorant, r6x (Rainbow Six Siege X), and cs2 (Counter-Strike 2) – also suggest that the implant is likely being disseminated using game-related lures. It's possible that users searching for pirated versions of these games are the target. Regardless of the method used, the fake MSI installer is designed to install Node...

This week has been crazy in the world of hacking and online security. From Thailand to London to the US, we've seen arrests, spies at work, and big power moves online. Hackers are getting caught. Spies are getting better at their jobs. Even simple things like browser add-ons and smart home gadgets are being used to attack people. Every day, there's a new story that shows how quickly things are changing in the fight over the internet. Governments are cracking down harder on cybercriminals. Big tech companies are rushing to fix their security. Researchers keep finding weak spots in apps and devices we use every day. We saw fake job recruiters on LinkedIn spying on people, huge crypto money-laundering cases, and brand-new malware made just to beat Apple's Mac protections. All these stories remind us: the same tech that makes life better can very easily be turned into a weapon. Here's a simple look at the biggest cybersecurity news happening right now — from the hidde...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new Android banking trojan called Sturnus that enables credential theft and full device takeover to conduct financial fraud. "A key differentiator is its ability to bypass encrypted messaging," ThreatFabric said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "By capturing content directly from the device screen after decryption, Sturnus can monitor communications via WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal." Another notable feature is its ability to stage overlay attacks by serving fake login screens atop banking apps to capture victims' credentials. According to the Dutch mobile security company, Sturnus is privately operated and is currently assessed to be in the evaluation stage. Artifacts distributing the banking malware are listed below - Google Chrome ("com.klivkfbky.izaybebnx") Preemix Box ("com.uvxuthoq.noscjahae") The malware has been designed to specifically single out financial inst...

Threat actors are leveraging bogus installers masquerading as popular software to trick users into installing malware as part of a global malvertising campaign dubbed TamperedChef . The end goal of the attacks is to establish persistence and deliver JavaScript malware that facilitates remote access and control, per a new report from Acronis Threat Research Unit (TRU). The campaign , per the Singapore-headquartered company, is still ongoing, with new artifacts being detected and associated infrastructure remaining active. "The operator(s) rely on social engineering by using everyday application names, malvertising, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and abused digital certificates that aim to increase user trust and evade security detection," researchers Darrel Virtusio and Jozsef Gegeny said. TamperedChef is the name assigned to a long-running campaign that has leveraged seemingly legitimate installers for various utilities to distribute an information stealer malware of...

A newly discovered campaign has compromised tens of thousands of outdated or end-of-life (EoL) ASUS routers worldwide, predominantly in Taiwan, the U.S., and Russia, to rope them into a massive network. The router hijacking activity has been codenamed Operation WrtHug by SecurityScorecard's STRIKE team. Southeast Asia and European countries are some of the other regions where infections have been recorded. Over the past six months, more than 50,000 unique IP addresses belonging to these compromised devices around the globe have been identified. The attacks likely involve the exploitation of six known security flaws in end-of-life ASUS WRT routers to take control of susceptible devices. All the infected routers have been found to share a unique self-signed TLS certificate with an expiration date set for 100 years from April 2022. SecurityScorecard said 99% of the services presenting the certificate are ASUS AiCloud, a proprietary service designed to enable access to local stora...

The threat actor known as PlushDaemon has been observed using a previously undocumented Go-based network backdoor codenamed EdgeStepper to facilitate adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) attacks. EdgeStepper "redirects all DNS queries to an external, malicious hijacking node, effectively rerouting the traffic from legitimate infrastructure used for software updates to attacker-controlled infrastructure," ESET security researcher Facundo Muñoz said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Known to be active since at least 2018, PlushDaemon is assessed to be a China-aligned group that has attacked entities in the U.S., New Zealand, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and mainland China. It was first documented by the Slovak cybersecurity company earlier this January, detailing a supply chain attack aimed at a South Korean virtual private network (VPN) provider named IPany to target a semiconductor company and an unidentified software development company in South Korea wi...

The malware authors associated with a Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) kit known as Sneaky 2FA have incorporated Browser-in-the-Browser (BitB) functionality into their arsenal, underscoring the continued evolution of such offerings and further making it easier for less-skilled threat actors to mount attacks at scale. Push Security, in a report shared with The Hacker News, said it observed the use of the technique in phishing attacks designed to steal victims' Microsoft account credentials. BitB was first documented by security researcher mr.d0x in March 2022, detailing how it's possible to leverage a combination of HTML and CSS code to create fake browser windows that can masquerade as login pages for legitimate services in order to facilitate credential theft . "BitB is principally designed to mask suspicious phishing URLs by simulating a pretty normal function of in-browser authentication – a pop-up login form," Push Security said. "BitB phishing pages repl...

Meta on Tuesday said it has made available a tool called WhatsApp Research Proxy to some of its long-time bug bounty researchers to help improve the program and more effectively research the messaging platform's network protocol. The idea is to make it easier to delve into WhatsApp-specific technologies as the application continues to be a lucrative attack surface for state-sponsored actors and commercial spyware vendors. The company also noted that it's setting up a pilot initiative where it's inviting research teams to focus on platform abuse with support for internal engineering and tooling. "Our goal is to lower the barrier of entry for academics and other researchers who might not be as familiar with bug bounties to join our program," it added . The development comes as the social media giant said it has awarded more than $25 million in bug bounties to over 1,400 researchers from 88 countries in the last 15 years, out of which more than $4 million were...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a cyber attack targeting a major U.S.-based real-estate company that involved the use of a nascent command-and-control (C2) and red teaming framework known as Tuoni . "The campaign leveraged the emerging Tuoni C2 framework, a relatively new, command-and-control (C2) tool (with a free license) that delivers stealthy, in-memory payloads," Morphisec researcher Shmuel Uzan said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Tuoni is advertised as an advanced C2 framework designed for security professionals, facilitating penetration testing operations, red team engagements, and security assessments. A "Community Edition" of the software is freely available for download from GitHub. It was first released in early 2024. The attack, per Morphisec, unfolded in mid-October 2025, with the unknown threat actor likely leveraging social engineering via Microsoft Teams impersonation for initial access. It's suspected that t...