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AI coding assistants have a habit of making things up. Ask one to fetch a popular tool, and it will sometimes hand back a real-sounding name for a project that does not exist. New research, which its authors call  HalluSquatting , turns that habit into an attack: work out the fake names an AI reliably invents, register them first, and wait for the assistant to fetch your trap on a user's behalf. Anyone whose AI assistant can fetch an outside resource and then run commands with little human review is exposed. In tests, that path led the assistant to run attacker-supplied code on the machine. Repeat it with a popular enough resource, and one planted name can reach many machines, which is why the researchers frame it as a way to assemble a botnet. How it works The attack chains two AI quirks. The first is a  hallucination : an AI making something up and presenting it as real. The second is a  prompt injection : a booby-trapped instruction that hijacks the AI, so i...

A new banking fraudulent operation is targeting customers of Mexican banks, fintech, payment processors, and cryptocurrency exchanges using ClickFix lures. The activity cluster, tracked by Elastic Security Labs under the moniker REF6045 , involves infecting victims through fake CAPTCHA verification pages that deceive them into running a malicious command that installs a PowerShell toolkit dubbed SCMBANKER . Some components of the malware date back to October 2025. "Once installed, the operator can see when a victim opens a banking session, lock the screen behind a fake bank warning, push the victims towards live phone interaction, redirect the browser, or replace account numbers copied to the clipboard," security researchers Jia Yu Chan and Salim Bitam said . "For a full takeover, they can also deploy a commercial remote-access tool." SCMBANKER is specifically designed to go after Mexico's financial ecosystem, with evidence pointing to the use of a large...

A Chinese threat actor tracked as UAT-7810 is actively refining its bespoke malware to expand its Operational Relay Box (ORB) network by breaking into internet-facing networking devices. According to findings from Cisco Talos, UAT-7810 is an advanced persistent threat (APT) actor that's responsible for maintaining and proliferating LapDogs , an ORB network that first came to light in June 2025. "UAT-7810 is most likely tasked with establishing Operational Relay Box (ORB) networks that can then be leveraged by associated secondary threat actors to conduct their own malicious attacks against high value targets," researchers Jungsoo An, Asheer Malhotra, Vanja Svajcer, and Brandon White said . One such China-nexus threat actor that has leveraged the infrastructure in its own attacks is UAT-5918 , which has been linked to cyber attacks targeting critical infrastructure entities in Taiwan since at least 2023 with an aim to establish persistent access within victim envir...

A new Android malware operation called RedWing is being rented out on Telegram as a ready-made bank-fraud service. It lets even low-skill criminals take over a victim's phone, steal their banking logins, and capture the one-time codes that protect their accounts. Zimperium's zLabs , which found the operation, says it looks like a new variant of Oblivion , a $300-a-month rent-a-malware tool documented earlier this year. RedWing is sold as a complete product, in subscription tiers with referral discounts, guides, and how-to videos, so a buyer needs no malware-writing skill. A Telegram bot builds each buyer a custom app on demand. Researchers say a substantial number of the resulting droppers and payloads currently evade conventional security tools. Infection starts with a phishing link that opens a fake app-store page. The kit's dropper builder can mimic Google Play, the Galaxy Store, and AppGallery, or build fully custom pages, complete with fake ratings, reviews, ...

A suspected China-aligned threat activity cluster has been observed exploiting Roundcube webmail software belonging to physics and engineering departments of U.S. and Canadian universities as part of a new campaign. The activity involves the exploitation of now-patched, critical security flaws in the open-source email solution, such as CVE-2024-42009 (CVSS score: 9.3), to siphon credentials, followed by either the deployment of a web shell for persistent access or a known post-exploitation tool called VShell . The emerging threat cluster is being tracked by Proofpoint under the moniker UNK_MassTraction . It was first detected in May 2026, specifically focusing on administrators and professors in departments with either national security ties or entities studying astrophysics and particle physics. "The emails targeting university departments used both compromised senders, as well as abused domains vulnerable to spoofing due to lax DMARC policy to send the emails," the ...

An Iranian hacking group affiliated with Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) has been wielding a previously undocumented modular command-and-control (C2) framework dubbed Cavern (aka Cav3rn) targeting Israeli organizations. The activity, which has primarily singled out IT providers and government sectors, has been attributed to a threat cluster tracked by Check Point Research under the moniker Cavern Manticore , which it said shares some level of tactical overlaps with MuddyWater and Lyceum , the latter of which is assessed to be a subgroup within OilRig . "The framework reflects a mature and adaptable toolset built around a shared .NET foundation, while using multiple compilation formats across different components, including .NET Framework, .NET Mixed-Mode C++/CLI, and .NET Native AOT ," the cybersecurity company said . "The compilation format itself becomes the anti-analysis layer that forces reverse engineers into multiple toolsets and me...

A streaming box should not need a threat model. Neither should a username field, a demo repo, a reset flow, or a browser permission prompt. That is the irritating part this week: the risky pieces were ordinary. Home devices became a routing cover. Clean code pulled dirt from a dependency. Identity shortcuts aged badly. AI systems trusted the wrong instructions. Same soft spot throughout: trust placed one layer too early. Below is the full recap, since this is apparently what counted as a normal week. ⚡ Threat of the Week NetNut Residential Proxy Network Disrupted — Google, in collaboration with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Lumen, and other partners, took action against the NetNut residential proxy network, also known as Popa, building upon its takedown of IPIDEA in January 2026. Google said it disabled Google accounts and associated Google services used by NetNut for malware command-and-control (C2) and updated Google Play Protect, in addition to disabling ...

A suspected China-nexus threat activity cluster has been observed targeting Indian taxpayers, tax professionals, and corporate finance teams to deliver a remote access trojan designed to steal sensitive data from compromised hosts. The multi-stage campaign, codenamed Operation DragonReturn by Seqrite Labs, involves sending spear-phishing emails impersonating the Income Tax Department of India. It was first observed on May 18, 2026. The activity, per the cybersecurity company, coincides with the annual income tax filing season in the country. "It is not opportunistic – the precision of the lure document, the use of real legal citations, bilingual content, and active payload rotation indicate a deliberate, resourced, and sustained threat operation focused exclusively on the Indian taxpayer ecosystem," security researchers Dixit Panchal and Soumen Burma said . The end goal of the campaign is assessed to be the deployment of malware for financial gain or sensitive data the...

Researchers at  Shandong University  have shown a fast new way to pull data off computers that are cut off from every network. The technique, called  TrojPix , tweaks on-screen pixels in ways the eye cannot see, so that the video cable carrying them radiates a faint radio signal a nearby receiver can decode. But TrojPix works only once malware is already on the target machine, so it is a way for stolen data to get out, not a way in. In the researchers' tests, TrojPix hit a peak throughput of 8.1 Mbps and reached as far as 208 meters, the two measured separately rather than together. Most air-gap covert channels crawl along at bits or kilobits per second; at 8.1 megabits, roughly a megabyte a second, TrojPix could move a 100 MB file in under two minutes. That turns the threat from leaking a password into moving whole files while the monitor looks switched off. Real-world range is another matter: a receiver still has to fight through walls, shielding, and noise. Th...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a novel Java-based remote access trojan (RAT) called QuimaRAT that's capable of targeting Windows, Linux, and macOS environments. According to LevelBlue, the cross-platform malware is advertised under a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) model, costing anywhere between $150 for one month to $1,200 for lifetime access. Other subscription tiers include $300 for three months, $500 for six months, and $700 for twelve months. "Built around a modular architecture, the RAT supports dynamic capability expansion through encrypted plugins that can be delivered, loaded, unloaded, and updated directly from its command-and-control (C2) infrastructure," the cybersecurity company said in an analysis of the malware. The malware author also advertises a builder capable of generating multiple output formats, including JAR, EXE, APP, SH, BAT, and VBS, indicating an attempt to help prospective customers package the client tailored for different enviro...

Scanners meant to catch malicious add-on "skills" for AI coding agents can be fooled by a few simple changes that leave the malware working, according to a  new study  from researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Their strongest trick slipped past every scanner tested more than 90% of the time, and the same team built a runtime checker that catches most of the disguised skills the scanners miss. Skills are small packages, usually a Markdown instruction file plus a few scripts, that agents such as Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, and OpenClaw load to pick up a new capability. Because a skill is just a bundle of files, the same one can run across different agents. And it runs with the agent's own access: your files, your terminal, your saved passwords. A bad one can steal credentials, copy source code, or install a backdoor. Most of what a public marketplace lists is uploaded by strangers with little vetting. The main defense so far has been th...

The North Korean threat actors linked to the Contagious Interview campaign have been observed publishing 108 unique packages and web browser extensions spanning npm, Packagist, Go, and Google Chrome as part of an ongoing activity referred to as PolinRider . "The campaign remains active, and new malicious packages are likely to continue appearing as threat actors compromise maintainer accounts, modify legitimate repositories, and publish infected package versions where they retain or obtain registry access," Socket security researcher Karlo Zanki said in an analysis published this week. The 162 malicious release artifacts span multiple release versions corresponding to 108 unique packages and extensions, including 19 npm libraries, 10 Composer packages, 61 Go modules, and one Google Chrome extension. Contagious Interview is the moniker assigned to a North Korea-aligned campaign that weaponizes job recruitment to target software developers and individuals working i...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a previously undocumented modular malware framework codenamed Avalon that's distributed by means of a multi-stage phishing chain capable of bypassing traditional security controls. Avalon combines credential collection, lateral movement, remote access, recovery disruption, and ransomware execution, bringing together diverse functions under one umbrella. The ransomware component has been internally named CrownX.  "The attack began with a spoofed legal document email directing recipients to a password protected archive on Proton Drive," Blackpoint Cyber researchers Nevan Beal and Sam Decker said . "Malicious content was embedded inside an ISO image rather than attached directly, reducing the likelihood of detection at the email layer." Should the email recipient interact with a document-themed Windows Shortcut ("Secure Document CA-283505.pdf.lnk") inside the mounted image, it triggers a staged malware s...

This week’s security news is mostly about weak spots. Browsers, bots, sandboxes, AI systems, and email flows all show the same problem in different ways. Everything looks normal until someone tests a small gap and finds a way through. This is not one big break. It is small permissions, weak checks, open systems, and normal tools doing things they were allowed to do. That same pattern runs through the stories below.

Security firm Sysdig says it has found what it believes is the first ransomware attack run from start to finish by an AI agent. Its Threat Research Team calls the operator JADEPUFFER and says a large language model handled the whole job: breaking in, stealing credentials, moving deeper into the network, then encrypting and wiping a company's production database. Ransomware has always needed a skilled person somewhere in the loop, either at the keyboard or writing the script the malware follows. If a model can chain those steps on its own, the skill needed to run an attack drops to whatever it costs to rent an AI agent. The way in was an old, already-patched bug. JADEPUFFER exploited  CVE-2025-3248 , a missing-authentication flaw in  Langflow , an open-source tool for building AI apps and agent workflows. The flaw lets anyone who can reach the server run their own Python code on it, no login needed. Langflow boxes are a tempting target because they often sit ...

Attackers are hiding a data-stealing trojan inside fake exploit code aimed at the people who hunt bugs for a living. The malware, called ChocoPoC , travels in Python proof-of-concept (PoC) repositories on GitHub that claim to exploit hot new CVEs. Run one, and it quietly lifts your saved passwords, browser cookies, and files, then hands the attacker a shell on your machine.  YesWeHack and Sekoia  published their joint findings on July 1 and warned that, as of that report, the malware and its servers were still live, so do not run any of these PoCs. The trick is where the code sits. The visible PoC looks clean. The malware hides in a Python package that the PoC pulls in as a dependency, so it slips past a quick code review. How the trap works The bait is time pressure. When a big flaw drops, researchers race to test it and grab community PoCs to move fast. This campaign turns that habit into an infection route. The chain, in plain terms: You clone the repo and r...

Unknown threat actors are leveraging the ScreenConnect remote access tool as a way to deploy and execute AsyncRAT . Kaspersky said the activity is part of a "massive, multi-domain, multi-language" campaign that distributes malicious installer archives hosted on spoofed websites. These installers masquerade as popular software like OBS Studio, DNS Jumper, DS4Windows, and Bandicam, among others. The Russian cybersecurity company said it identified more than 90 domain names localized across 10 languages, including English, Russian, Chinese, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic. Some of these domains were set up between August 2025 and March 2026. "The malicious archives bundle a legitimate, signed Microsoft install.exe binary alongside a rogue install.res.1033.dll library," security researcher Denis Kulik said . "It is loaded onto the device via DLL side-loading and deploys the ScreenConnect service, which awaits further instructions from the thr...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new multi-stage malware delivery attack chain that uses social engineering and Blogger pages to deliver an information stealer called PureLogs . The activity has been codenamed VEIL#DROP by Securonix. It's suspected that the initial payloads are distributed either via spear-phishing or a drive-by compromise , which occurs when an unsuspecting user lands on a website (legitimate or otherwise) under the attacker's control. "The infection chain begins with a deceptively named JavaScript file masquerading as a document (e.g., transcript.pdf.js), which executes through Windows Script Host and launches PowerShell with execution policy bypasses enabled," researchers Akshay Gaikwad, Shikha Sangwan, and Aaron Beardslee said in a report shared with The Hacker News. At a high level, the PowerShell script is responsible for retrieving a next-stage payload hosted on Blogger ("htlwub00klocate.blogspot[.]com"), allowing the ...

A Brazilian banking trojan called Ousaban is going after Windows users who bank in Spain and Portugal.  Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs  identified the campaign in May 2026. It opens with a phishing PDF disguised as a corrupted file, checks that the visitor is really in Spain or Portugal, and hides its real payload inside an image. The goal is the usual one: steal banking logins and take over accounts. Ousaban sits quietly on a Windows PC and waits for the user to open a banking site. When a target bank loads, it can capture screenshots and keystrokes, tamper with the clipboard, show fake messages, and give the attacker remote control. Together, those are the tools for hijacking a live banking session and taking over an account. Ousaban watches for more than two dozen banks across the two countries, among them Banco Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank, Bankinter, and Caixa Geral de Depósitos. How the attack works It starts with a phishing PDF disguised as a corrupted file. Th...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new malware artifact generated using DeepSeek that constructed a novel attack path combining "unrealistic browser-malware concepts with a real browser capability" to turn it into a working ransomware technique that runs entirely inside the browser on both Windows and Android devices. "This is the first documented case where a frontier AI model independently bridged the gap between a theoretical browser-only ransomware risk and a practical, working attack chain – surfacing a novel attack path that defenders had previously dismissed as unfeasible due to browser sandboxing limits," Check Point said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. "The expertise needed to discover a new attack path is no longer the bottleneck, and defenders need to account for that shift now — before threat actors operationalize it at scale." The identified sample is a Python Flask application named " deepseek_python_20260125_da...