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Hackers have used a malware family called NeedyMantis to maintain long-term access to networks they had already breached, Microsoft said in a technical analysis. The malware has been seen in a small number of targeted intrusions at telecommunications organizations, universities, medical nonprofits, intergovernmental organizations, and government contractors. Its use goes back to at least October 2025. Microsoft found NeedyMantis while following up on indicators from Kaspersky's investigation into the  supply chain attack on DAEMON Tools . In that attack, official, signed installers for the DAEMON Tools Lite disk image program carried malicious code from April 8, 2026. The developer replaced them with a clean version on May 5. Microsoft tracks the activity tied to that attack as Storm-3069. It says Storm-3069 is one group that uses NeedyMantis, though it has not seen the malware itself spread through a supply chain attack. Defenders can check their networks using the fi...

RatHat's operators build and publish the Android banking trojan and control infected phones from a web console, according to security company Cleafy. Cleafy has  traced nearly 100 deployments  of that console since April 2026. It said this fits a malware-as-a-service model, in which each customer runs a separate copy. The console stores what the malware collects from each phone, including text messages and passwords entered into fake login screens overlaid on banking apps. Its latest version asks Google's Gemini AI model to estimate each victim's bank balance from those messages and sorts the phones into high-value and mid-value groups. Nothing in the samples Cleafy analyzed uses the model to move money. Its role is "deciding which victims are worth an operator's time," the company said. One Console, Three Versions The malware on victims' phones has changed little since late 2025, Cleafy said. The console behind it has been replaced. Samples f...

A domain used as harmless placeholder text showed up in roughly 1,700 repositories. Then somebody registered it and started serving malicious lures. That is the kind of week this was: forgotten assumptions turning into live attack surface. Elsewhere, weak service accounts, old bugs, exposed systems, phishing kits, and strangely easy exploit paths kept doing useful work for attackers. Nothing exotic. Mostly things nobody expected to matter anymore. Here’s the full recap of what mattered this week. ⚡ Threat of the Week Citrix Warns of Actively Exploited NetScaler ADC and Gateway Flaws — Citrix released patches to address multiple vulnerabilities, including CVE-2026-88771 and CVE-2026-88772, that have come under active exploitation. CVE-2026-88771 is an improper input validation vulnerability that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands, while successful exploitation of CVE-2026-88772 could allow for remote code execution or denial-of-service. CISA...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new botnet malware called Carbonato that's targeting exposed Docker daemons to deploy an open-source artificial intelligence (AI) agent framework called Hermes Agent . "The implant installs the framework unchanged, then overwrites its SOUL.md persona file," ThreatDown said . "The 39-line prompt directs it to execute tasks received through Telegram, maintain persistence, and collect credentials." At a high level, the botnet breaks into Docker daemons exposed without authentication on port 2375 and scans neighboring networks every five minutes to propagate further. On each host, it installs Hermes Agent with instructions to follow operators' Telegram commands. The cybersecurity company said it found the operation through an unauthenticated Docker registry that's been publicly accessible since May 2026. The staged data has been found to include details of the botnet and a separate campaign that d...

The Psychedelic Stealer malware distributed via compromised Ukrainian websites using ClickFix-style Cloudflare verification checks is part of a wider malware-as-a-service (MaaS) platform called Lunex . The new findings come from Ontinue, which described the activity as a four-stage attack chain aimed at targeting Ukrainian-speaking users. "The attack chain begins with a fake CAPTCHA page and culminates in the deployment of a fully-featured C2 agent," Ontinue threat researcher Rhys Downing said in a technical report. "The stealer extracts credentials and data from seven Chromium-based browsers, exfiltrates cryptocurrency wallets, and establishes persistent remote filesystem access through a PowerShell-based Native Messaging Host installed within the victim's browser." The infection makes use of bogus MSI installers delivered via ClickFix to trigger a series of actions, including delivering a loader dubbed LunexLoader that's designed to bypass User Ac...

Google is warning of renewed mass exploitation of a known security vulnerability in Oracle PeopleSoft as part of a campaign targeting multiple sectors globally. The ShinyHunters-linked activity involves the weaponization of CVE-2026-35273 (CVSS score: 9.8), a critical security flaw that could result in unauthenticated remote code execution. The vulnerability was first exploited as a zero-day in attacks against academic institutions to conduct reconnaissance, deploy remote access software like MeshCentral agent for persistence, move laterally over SSH, run a shell script to connect via SSH to other internal PeopleSoft machines using known username/password combinations, and steal data. At that time, Google-owned Mandiant said it initiated notifications to over 100 global organizations whose IP addresses matched vulnerable endpoints, most of them located in the U.S. "This new wave of activity stems from UNC6240 modifying its exploit to bypass web application firewall (WAF...

Two actions-cool GitHub Actions have been disabled for a second time after the repositories became accessible last week, months after they were compromised during the May 2026 Mini Shai-Hulud campaign . The affected GitHub Actions are listed below - actions-cool/issues-helper actions-cool/maintain-one-comment Visiting either of the repositories now shows the message: "Access to this repository has been disabled by GitHub Staff due to a violation of GitHub's terms of service. If you are the owner of the repository, you may reach out to GitHub Support for more information." "On September 16, 2026, both repositories became accessible again," Socket researcher Karlo Zanki said . "Their release tags were not cleaned up first. They still point to the malicious content introduced on May 18, so any workflow that references either action by a version tag resumed downloading and executing the payload on its next run." The two GitHub Actions work...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new version of PamStealer that ensures that the main payload can only be recovered using a server-side decryption chain. The latest artifacts, per Jamf Threat Labs, continue to rely on the same JavaScript for Automation (JXA) dropper mechanism, but modify the lure and the delivery method. "Where earlier variants embedded their payload key material directly in the JXA source, it now fetches a purpose-built decryption utility and completes a key exchange with the server before the payload can be unwrapped," security researcher Thijs Xhaflaire said in an analysis. "Without the server's cooperation, the payload cannot be recovered statically." A second major change is the choice of the decoy itself. While previous versions observed in July and August 2026 were observed using fake websites masquerading as Maccy, Scoppr, and Nancy Clipboard, victims are now lured through a bogus website ("wavel[.]app") advert...

This week, the dangerous stuff keeps arriving dressed as something boring. An update. A login box. A search answer. A coding tool. A link you have clicked a hundred times before. That is the thread running through the pile. Trusted paths get poisoned. Old bugs find new jobs. AI tools leak more than expected. Fake prompts look real enough. And some attacks barely need an exploit at all — just one weak setting or one person doing what the screen tells them. Nothing here looks especially dramatic. That is what makes it useful. The threats change every week. Subscribe, and we’ll alert you when each new ThreatsDay Bulletin is out.

The "third-party[.]com" domain, commonly used as a documentation placeholder, has been observed serving a ClickFix lure to Windows browsers while displaying a harmless decoy to other users. "third-party[.]com has been a generic documentation placeholder for years, the same role example.com plays," Manifold Security's Head of Research, Ax Sharma, said . "Unlike 'example[.]com,' third-party[.]com is not IANA-reserved . Anyone could register it, and someone did. Every doc, test, and skill that hard-coded it now points readers at attacker infrastructure." As of writing, the domain has been marked as malicious and unsafe on both VirusTotal and Google's Safe Browsing list . ClickFix is a social engineering attack technique in which either malicious or legitimate-but-compromised websites display error messages, browser alerts, or CAPTCHA verification prompts, tricking users into copying and executing hidden commands via the Windows Run d...

An active ClickFix campaign has been observed compromising legitimate Ukrainian business websites to inject bogus Cloudflare verification pages and trick victims into downloading a previously undocumented information stealer called Psychedelic . "When a visitor interacts with the page, the lure copies a Windows Installer command to the clipboard and instructs the visitor to paste it into the Windows Run dialog," Arctic Wolf Labs said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. The ClickFix chain uses an "msiexec.exe" command to fetch a Windows MSI installer that's used to deliver the stealer malware. The malicious tool is designed to harvest browser passwords, account tokens, and cryptocurrency-wallet data, set up scheduled-task persistence, and contact a command-and-control (C2) server for additional tasking. Some of the compromised websites include a hair-treatment clinic, a scale-model manufacturer, a specialist bookseller and publisher, a psy...

The logistics sector has become the target of a new malicious cyber campaign that distributes an Android spyware codenamed Corp MDM . According to Have I Been Squatted, the campaign uses fake Google Play pages branded as CEVA and TKW Logistics to distribute an Android Package Kit (APK) file that's dressed up as a system service. The delivered app has the package name "com.corp.mdm" Corp MDM is a "compact surveillance implant designed to exfiltrate newly received SMS content, divert calls, and maintain a hidden foreground service," security researcher Ben Folland said . The malware has been described as narrow by design, lacking in spyware functions typically observed in commercial Android spyware. It's suspected that the threat actor behind the campaign used artificial intelligence (AI) during the development phase, given the presence of bugs that interfere with its capabilities. In addition, the activity is said to be part of a broader campaign t...

ClickFix has become the most common way attackers get into enterprise networks, and it does it without an exploit, an attachment, or a file on disk. Our new global threat report traces the technique from a novelty in late 2023 to a subscription product with on-chain infrastructure and a state-sponsored user base, and explains why blocking malicious domains is no longer a useful defense. Read the full report here:   https://www.ctm360.com/reports/clickfix-beyond A particular kind of security problem no patch will close. ClickFix is one of them. The attack begins with a page that presents a problem the user believes is theirs to solve. A human verification check that will not complete. A browser that cannot render the page. A document that will not open. A Mac that is running low on storage. The page offers a remedy in the form of instructions, quietly writes the "fix" to the clipboard, and asks the user to open a system interface they already trust, paste, and press Ent...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed Go-based malware distributed via two Go Modules and two Terraform providers, marking the first time threat actors are using the centralized repository hosted by HashiCorp as a distribution vector for malicious payloads. According to Aikido , the list of Terraform providers and Go modules is below - gocommunity-io/dockerd (222 downloads) kreuzwenker/docker (1,449 downloads) gocommunity.io/orderedbtree gogets.dev/btreex The malware deployed through these packages demonstrates overlaps with Graphalgo , a campaign that was first documented by ReversingLabs earlier this February and attributed to North Korean (aka DPRK) threat actors. As part of this effort, prospective developers are approached via social platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, or through job offerings on forums by posing as non-existent Web3 companies, and then asked to complete a coding task by providing a benign GitHub repository that introduces the malicio...

A Windows malware called CLOSEDQUORUM is built to take orders from a vote of up to four AI models instead of an attacker's server, Cisco Talos said on September 22. The models can choose to steal Windows credentials, saved browser passwords, and crypto wallet data. Talos has not seen this setup work from start to finish, and the public version of the malware does not work as it is. Talos found the malware with  CAIRN , an open-source tool it released the same day to hunt for malware that uses AI services. The malware is at least three months old, because Talos's analysis of the code is dated June 17, 2026. The researchers did not describe how the malware would get onto a victim's computer. It said clues in the code tied the developer to criminal forum posts about carding, the trade in stolen card data, dating to 2025. How the AI Vote Works Malware usually takes orders from a command-and-control (C2) server that the attacker runs. CLOSEDQUORUM instead asks up t...

Unknown threat actors have managed to compromise two legitimate MemTensor packages across the npm and Python Package Index (PyPI) repositories to push a platform-specific Go-based implant dubbed sckit designed for Windows, Linux, and macOS. According to reports from Aikido , SafeDep , Socket , and StepSecurity , the libraries in question below - @memtensor/memos-cloud-openclaw-plugin versions 0.1.21, 0.1.23 and 0.1.25 (versions 0.1.22 and 0.1.24 are clean) MemoryOS version 2.0.34 (project currently quarantined on PyPI) The malicious npm package versions include a "hidden Go payload into a legitimate AI memory integration. Versions 0.1.21, 0.1.23, and 0.1.25 contain code that launches the payload when the agent gateway starts and whenever the plugin handles a memory-recall event," StepSecurity said. "The launcher passes the host process environment and, during recall, the user's prompt text directly to the malicious executable."

A Chinese threat actor codenamed UTA0565 has been observed exploiting the recently disclosed Google Chrome-Microsoft Windows exploit chain as zero-days through fake websites. The attacks, detected on September 3 and 4, 2026, involved the chaining of two vulnerabilities in Chrome (CVE-2026-85046, CVE-2026-87491) and one impacting Windows Advanced Local Procedure Call (CVE-2026-85880) to break out of the browser's sandbox and achieve remote code execution. "UTA0565 masqueraded as various entities including media organizations and a non-governmental organization (NGO)," Volexity researchers Damien Cash and Tom Lancaster said in an analysis published this week. "Notably, this threat actor's campaigns differed from previously documented attacks by using multiple fake websites to deceive victims." One such campaign targeted Asian government entities with Chinese- and English-language phishing emails that urged recipients to support Hong Kong activist Cho...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a malicious npm package named "tw-pkgprobe-7731" that masquerades as a security tool targeting developers integrating Twilio into their applications, while stealthily attempting to harvest sensitive data. The package, named "tw-pkgprobe-7731," was first uploaded to the npm registry in mid-August 2026 by an npm account named "twdepprobe7731." In total, 11 versions of the package were published in quick succession on the same day over an approximately 45-minute time period. The npm user account no longer exists as of writing. "The first version of tw-pkgprobe-7731 posed as an authorized security research probe," ReversingLabs researcher Lucija Valentić said in a report published today. "Comments inside the package describe it as an 'Authorized bug-bounty research probe (Twilio HackerOne program)' that 'runs only inside Twilio's serverless packager sandbox' and ...

A malicious npm package named "indexed-btree" has been observed hiding its malicious behavior within application code rather than using lifecycle scripts, indicating that threat actors are likely shifting tactics in response to recent security controls . "Indexed-btree is a malicious npm package mimicking the legit sorted-btree package, an ordinary B-tree/indexing utility," Checkmarx said . "Unlike the common attacks we've seen in the supply chain space, this package does not rely on preinstall / postinstall at all. Instead, it runs entirely from application code at runtime." The package and the associated GitHub repository are no longer available for download from npm. However, statistics show the package was first uploaded to the registry on June 18, 2026, by an npm user named " charlessadler25 ," amassing millions of downloads in a short span of time . To make matters worse, the campaign may have generated illicit profits for the...

The threat actor known as SideCopy has been observed using spear-phishing lures to target academic institutions in India, expanding their strategic focus beyond government entities. "SideCopy campaign operations typically initiate through spear-phishing campaigns that leverage the abuse of mshta.exe to execute malicious scripts and circumvent standard security protocols," Trellix researchers Boggavarapu R S S Srinivas Gupta and Ravishankar N C said in a technical report. "This delivery mechanism facilitates the deployment of a remote access trojan (RAT), which serves as the central pillar of their offensive infrastructure." Active since at least 2019, SideCopy (aka TAG-140) is an advanced persistent threat (APT) group that originates from Pakistan, and shares overlaps with the Transparent Tribe cluster. Historically, the threat actor has primarily targeted Indian defense forces and government officials. In a report published in June 2026, Seqrite Labs a...