#1 Trusted Cybersecurity News Platform
Followed by 5.20+ million
The Hacker News Logo
Subscribe – Get Latest News
DevSecOps

Malware | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Category — Malware
Hackers Exploit Signal's Linked Devices Feature to Hijack Accounts via Malicious QR Codes

Hackers Exploit Signal's Linked Devices Feature to Hijack Accounts via Malicious QR Codes

Feb 19, 2025 Mobile Security / Cyber Espionage
Multiple Russia-aligned threat actors have been observed targeting individuals of interest via the privacy-focused messaging app Signal to gain unauthorized access to their accounts. "The most novel and widely used technique underpinning Russian-aligned attempts to compromise Signal accounts is the abuse of the app's legitimate 'linked devices' feature that enables Signal to be used on multiple devices concurrently," the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said in a report. In the attacks spotted by the tech giant's threat intelligence teams, the threat actors, including one it's tracking as UNC5792, have resorted to malicious QR codes that, when scanned, will link a victim's account to an actor-controlled Signal instance. As a result, future messages get delivered synchronously to both the victim and the threat actor in real-time, thereby granting threat actors a persistent way to eavesdrop on the victim's conversations. Google said UAC-...
New Snake Keylogger Variant Leverages AutoIt Scripting to Evade Detection

New Snake Keylogger Variant Leverages AutoIt Scripting to Evade Detection

Feb 19, 2025 Malware / Threat Intelligence
A new variant of the Snake Keylogger malware is being used to actively target Windows users located in China, Turkey, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Spain. Fortinet FortiGuard Labs said the new version of the malware has been behind over 280 million blocked infection attempts worldwide since the start of the year. "Typically delivered through phishing emails containing malicious attachments or links, Snake Keylogger is designed to steal sensitive information from popular web browsers like Chrome, Edge, and Firefox by logging keystrokes, capturing credentials, and monitoring the clipboard," security researcher Kevin Su said . Its other features allow it to exfiltrate the stolen information to an attacker-controlled server using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and Telegram bots, allowing the threat actors to access stolen credentials and other sensitive data." What's notable about the latest set of attacks is that it makes use of the AutoIt scripting language ...
4 Ways to Keep MFA From Becoming too Much of a Good Thing

4 Ways to Keep MFA From Becoming too Much of a Good Thing

Feb 11, 2025IT Security / Threat Protection
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) has quickly become the standard for securing business accounts. Once a niche security measure, adoption is on the rise across industries. But while it's undeniably effective at keeping bad actors out, the implementation of MFA solutions can be a tangled mess of competing designs and ideas. For businesses and employees, the reality is that MFA sometimes feels like too much of a good thing. Here are a few reasons why MFA isn't implemented more universally. 1. Businesses see MFA as a cost center MFA for businesses isn't free, and the costs of MFA can add up over time. Third-party MFA solutions come with subscription costs, typically charged per user. Even built-in options like Microsoft 365's MFA features can cost extra depending on your Microsoft Entra license. Plus, there's the cost of training employees to use MFA and the time IT takes to enroll them. If MFA increases help desk calls, support costs go up too. While these expenses are far less t...
Trojanized Game Installers Deploy Cryptocurrency Miner in Large-Scale StaryDobry Attack

Trojanized Game Installers Deploy Cryptocurrency Miner in Large-Scale StaryDobry Attack

Feb 19, 2025 Windows Security / Malware
Users who are on the lookout for popular games were lured into downloading trojanized installers that led to the deployment of a cryptocurrency miner on compromised Windows hosts. The large-scale activity has been codenamed StaryDobry by Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky, which first detected it on December 31, 2024. It lasted for a month. Targets of the campaign include individuals and businesses worldwide, with Kaspersky's telemetry finding higher infection concentrations in Russia, Brazil, Germany, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. "This approach helped the threat actors make the most out of the miner implant by targeting powerful gaming machines capable of sustaining mining activity," researchers Tatyana Shishkova and Kirill Korchemny said in an analysis published Tuesday. The XMRig cryptocurrency miner campaign employs popular simulator and physics games like BeamNG.drive, Garry's Mod, Dyson Sphere Program, Universe Sandbox, and Plutocracy as lures to initi...
cyber security

Level Up Your Cyber Skills at SANS 2025

websiteSANS InstituteCyber Security / Training
Master in-demand techniques at our largest training event in 2025. Explore 50+ courses. Train in person to claim your $769 savings!
Chinese Hackers Exploit MAVInject.exe to Evade Detection in Targeted Cyber Attacks

Chinese Hackers Exploit MAVInject.exe to Evade Detection in Targeted Cyber Attacks

Feb 18, 2025 Cyber Espionage / Malware
The Chinese state-sponsored threat actor known as Mustang Panda has been observed employing a novel technique to evade detection and maintain control over infected systems. This involves the use of a legitimate Microsoft Windows utility called Microsoft Application Virtualization Injector (MAVInject.exe) to inject the threat actor's malicious payload into an external process, waitfor.exe, whenever ESET antivirus application is detected running, Trend Micro said in a new analysis. "The attack involves dropping multiple files, including legitimate executables and malicious components, and deploying a decoy PDF to distract the victim," security researchers Nathaniel Morales and Nick Dai noted. "Additionally, Earth Preta utilizes Setup Factory, an installer builder for Windows software, to drop and execute the payload; this enables them to evade detection and maintain persistence in compromised systems." The starting point of the attack sequence is an execu...
New FrigidStealer Malware Targets macOS Users via Fake Browser Updates

New FrigidStealer Malware Targets macOS Users via Fake Browser Updates

Feb 18, 2025 Threat Intelligence / Malware
Cybersecurity researchers are alerting to a new campaign that leverages web injects to deliver a new Apple macOS malware known as FrigidStealer . The activity has been attributed to a previously undocumented threat actor known as TA2727, with the information stealers for other platforms such as Windows ( Lumma Stealer or DeerStealer ) and Android ( Marcher ). TA2727 is a "threat actor that uses fake update themed lures to distribute a variety of malware payloads," the Proofpoint Threat Research Team said in a report shared with The Hacker News.  It's one of the newly identified threat activity clusters alongside TA2726, which is assessed to be a malicious traffic distribution system (TDS) operator that facilitates traffic distribution for other threat actors to deliver malware. The financially motivated threat actor is believed to be active since at least September 2022. TA2726, per the enterprise security firm, acts as a TDS for TA2727 and another threat actor ca...
Debunking the AI Hype: Inside Real Hacker Tactics

Debunking the AI Hype: Inside Real Hacker Tactics

Feb 18, 2025 Artificial Intelligence / Cyber Defense
Is AI really reshaping the cyber threat landscape, or is the constant drumbeat of hype drowning out actual, more tangible, real-world dangers? According to Picus Labs' Red Report 2025 which analyzed over one million malware samples, there's been no significant surge, so far, in AI-driven attacks. Yes, adversaries are definitely continuing to innovate, and while AI will certainly start playing a larger and larger role, the latest data suggests that a set of well-known tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) are still dominating the field. The hype around artificial intelligence has certainly been dominating media headlines; yet the real-world data paints a far more nuanced picture of which malware threats are thriving, and why. Here's a glimpse at the most critical findings and trends shaping the year's most deployed adversarial campaigns and what steps cybersecurity teams need to take to respond to them. Why the AI Hype is Falling Short…at Least For Now While headl...
Winnti APT41 Targets Japanese Firms in RevivalStone Cyber Espionage Campaign

Winnti APT41 Targets Japanese Firms in RevivalStone Cyber Espionage Campaign

Feb 18, 2025 Malware / Network Security
The China-linked threat actor known as Winnti has been attributed to a new campaign dubbed RevivalStone that targeted Japanese companies in the manufacturing, materials, and energy sectors in March 2024. The activity, detailed by Japanese cybersecurity company LAC, overlaps with a threat cluster tracked by Trend Micro as Earth Freybug , which has been assessed to be a subset within the APT41 cyber espionage group, by Cybereason under the name Operation CuckooBees , and by Symantec as Blackfly. APT41 has been described as a highly skilled and methodical actor with the ability to mount espionage attacks as well as poison the supply chain. Its campaigns are often designed with stealth in mind, leveraging a bevy of tactics to achieve its goals by using a custom toolset that not only bypasses security software installed in the environment, but also harvests critical information and establishes covert channels for persistent remote access. "The group's espionage activities, ...
Cybercriminals Exploit Onerror Event in Image Tags to Deploy Payment Skimmers

Cybercriminals Exploit Onerror Event in Image Tags to Deploy Payment Skimmers

Feb 18, 2025 Malware / Website Hacking
Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a credit card stealing malware campaign that has been observed targeting e-commerce sites running Magento by disguising the malicious content within image tags in HTML code in order to stay under the radar. MageCart is the name given to a malware that's capable of stealing sensitive payment information from online shopping sites. The attacks are known to employ a wide range of techniques – both on client- and server-side – to compromise websites and deploy credit card skimmers to facilitate theft. Typically, such malware is only triggered or loaded when users visit the checkout pages to enter credit card details by either serving a fake form or capturing the information entered by the victims in real time. The term MageCart is a reference to the original target of these cybercrime groups, the Magento platform that offers checkout and shopping cart features for online retailers. Over the years, such campaigns adapted their tactics by conce...
Microsoft Uncovers New XCSSET macOS Malware Variant with Advanced Obfuscation Tactics

Microsoft Uncovers New XCSSET macOS Malware Variant with Advanced Obfuscation Tactics

Feb 17, 2025 Endpoint Security / Malware
Microsoft said it has discovered a new variant of a known Apple macOS malware called XCSSET as part of limited attacks in the wild. "Its first known variant since 2022, this latest XCSSET malware features enhanced obfuscation methods, updated persistence mechanisms, and new infection strategies," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said in a post shared on X. "These enhanced features add to this malware family's previously known capabilities, like targeting digital wallets, collecting data from the Notes app, and exfiltrating system information and files." XCSSET is a sophisticated modular macOS malware that's known to target users by infecting Apple Xcode projects. It was first documented by Trend Micro in August 2020. Subsequent iterations of the malware have been found to adapt to compromise newer versions of macOS as well as Apple's own M1 chipsets. In mid-2021, the cybersecurity company noted that XCSSET had been updated to exfiltrate d...
⚡ THN Weekly Recap: Google Secrets Stolen, Windows Hack, New Crypto Scams and More

⚡ THN Weekly Recap: Google Secrets Stolen, Windows Hack, New Crypto Scams and More

Feb 17, 2025 Cyber Threats / Cybersecurity
Welcome to this week's Cybersecurity News Recap. Discover how cyber attackers are using clever tricks like fake codes and sneaky emails to gain access to sensitive data. We cover everything from device code phishing to cloud exploits, breaking down the technical details into simple, easy-to-follow insights. ⚡ Threat of the Week Russian Threat Actors Leverage Device Code Phishing to Hack Microsoft Accounts — Microsoft and Volexity have revealed that threat actors with ties to Russia are leveraging a technique known as device code phishing to gain unauthorized access to victim accounts, and use that access to get hold of sensitive data and enable persistent access to the victim environment. At least three different Russia-linked clusters have been identified abusing the technique to date. The attacks entail sending phishing emails that masquerade as Microsoft Teams meeting invitations, which, when clicked, urge the message recipients to authenticate using a threat actor-generated dev...
New Golang-Based Backdoor Uses Telegram Bot API for Evasive C2 Operations

New Golang-Based Backdoor Uses Telegram Bot API for Evasive C2 Operations

Feb 17, 2025 Threat Intelligence / Cyber Attack
Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a new Golang-based backdoor that uses Telegram as a mechanism for command-and-control (C2) communications. Netskope Threat Labs, which detailed the functions of the malware, described it as possibly of Russian origin. "The malware is compiled in Golang and once executed it acts like a backdoor," security researcher Leandro Fróes said in an analysis published last week. "Although the malware seems to still be under development it is completely functional." Once launched, the backdoor is designed to check if it's running under a specific location and using a specific name – "C:\Windows\Temp\svchost.exe" – and if not, it reads its own contents, writes them to that location, and creates a new process to launch the copied version and terminate itself. A notable aspect of the malware is that it uses an open-source library that offers Golang bindings for the Telegram Bot API for C2 purposes. This involves...
Android's New Feature Blocks Fraudsters from Sideloading Apps During Calls

Android's New Feature Blocks Fraudsters from Sideloading Apps During Calls

Feb 15, 2025 Mobile Security / Technology
Google is working on a new security feature for Android that blocks device owners from changing sensitive settings when a phone call is in progress. Specifically, the in-call anti-scammer protections include preventing users from turning on settings to install apps from unknown sources and granting accessibility access. The development was first reported by Android Authority. Users who attempt to do so during phone calls are served the message: "Scammers often request this type of action during phone call conversations, so it's blocked to protect you. If you are being guided to take this action by someone you don't know, it might be a scam." Furthermore, it blocks users from giving an app access to accessibility services over the course of a phone call. The feature is currently live in Android 16 Beta 2, which was released earlier this week. With this latest addition, the idea is to introduce more friction to a tactic that has been commonly abused by maliciou...
Expert Insights / Articles Videos
Cybersecurity Resources