Malware | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new ransomware family called Osiris that targeted a major food service franchisee operator in Southeast Asia in November 2025. The attack leveraged a malicious driver called POORTRY as part of a known technique referred to as bring your own vulnerable driver (BYOVD) to disarm security software, the Symantec and Carbon Black Threat Hunter Team said. It's worth noting that Osiris is assessed to be a brand-new ransomware strain, sharing no similarities with another variant of the same name that emerged in December 2016 as an iteration of the Locky ransomware. It's currently not known who the developers of the locker are, or if it's advertised as a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS). However, the Broadcom-owned cybersecurity division said it identified clues that suggest the threat actors who deployed the ransomware may have been previously associated with INC ransomware (aka Warble). "A wide range of living off...

Most of this week's threats didn't rely on new tricks. They relied on familiar systems behaving exactly as designed, just in the wrong hands. Ordinary files, routine services, and trusted workflows were enough to open doors without forcing them. What stands out is how little friction attackers now need. Some activity focused on quiet reach and coverage, others on timing and reuse. The emphasis wasn't speed or spectacle, but control gained through scale, patience, and misplaced trust. The stories below trace where that trust bent, not how it broke. Each item is a small signal of a larger shift, best seen when viewed together. Spear-phishing delivers custom backdoor Operation Nomad Leopard Targets Afghanistan Government entities in Afghanistan have been at the receiving end of a spear-phishing campaign dubbed Operation Nomad Leopard that employs bogus administrative documents as decoys to distribute a backdoor named FALSECUB by means o...

A new malicious package discovered in the Python Package Index (PyPI) has been found to impersonate a popular library for symbolic mathematics to deploy malicious payloads, including a cryptocurrency miner, on Linux hosts. The package, named sympy-dev , mimics SymPy , replicating the latter's project description verbatim in an attempt to deceive unsuspecting users into thinking that they are downloading a "development version" of the library. It has been downloaded over 1,100 times since it was first published on January 17, 2026. Although the download count is not a reliable yardstick for measuring the number of infections, the figure likely suggests some developers may have fallen victim to the malicious campaign. The package remains available for download as of writing. According to Socket , the original library has been modified to act as a downloader for an XMRig cryptocurrency miner on compromised systems. The malicious behavior is designed to trigger only when ...

As many as 3,136 individual IP addresses linked to likely targets of the Contagious Interview activity have been identified, with the campaign claiming 20 potential victim organizations spanning artificial intelligence (AI), cryptocurrency, financial services, IT services, marketing, and software development sectors in Europe, South Asia, the Middle East, and Central America. The new findings come from Recorded Future's Insikt Group, which is tracking the North Korean threat activity cluster under the moniker PurpleBravo . First documented in late 2023, the campaign is also known as CL-STA-0240, DeceptiveDevelopment, DEV#POPPER, Famous Chollima, Gwisin Gang, Tenacious Pungsan, UNC5342, Void Dokkaebi, and WaterPlum. The 3,136 individual IP addresses, primarily concentrated around South Asia and North America, are assessed to have been targeted by the adversary from August 2024 to September 2025. The 20 victim companies are said to be based in Belgium, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, In...

The recently discovered sophisticated Linux malware framework known as VoidLink is assessed to have been developed by a single person with assistance from an artificial intelligence (AI) model. That's according to new findings from Check Point Research, which identified operational security blunders by malware's author that provided clues to its developmental origins. The latest insight makes VoidLink one of the first instances of an advanced malware largely generated using AI. "These materials provide clear evidence that the malware was produced predominantly through AI-driven development, reaching a first functional implant in under a week," the cybersecurity company said, adding it reached more than 88,000 lines of code by early December 2025. VoidLink, first publicly documented last week, is a feature-rich malware framework written in Zig that's specifically designed for long-term, stealthy access to Linux-based cloud environments. The malware is said...

LastPass is alerting users to a new active phishing campaign that's impersonating the password management service, which aims to trick users into giving up their master passwords. The campaign, which began on or around January 19, 2026, involves sending phishing emails claiming upcoming maintenance and urging them to create a local backup of their password vaults in the next 24 hours. The messages, LastPass said, come with the following subject lines - LastPass Infrastructure Update: Secure Your Vault Now Your Data, Your Protection: Create a Backup Before Maintenance Don't Miss Out: Backup Your Vault Before Maintenance Important: LastPass Maintenance & Your Vault Security Protect Your Passwords: Backup Your Vault (24-Hour Window) The emails are designed to steer unsuspecting users to a phishing site ("group-content-gen2.s3.eu-west-3.amazonaws[.]com/5yaVgx51ZzGf") that then redirects to the domain " mail-lastpass[.]com ." The company emphasiz...

The North Korean threat actors associated with the long-running Contagious Interview campaign have been observed using malicious Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code) projects as lures to deliver a backdoor on compromised endpoints. The latest finding demonstrates continued evolution of the new tactic that was first discovered in December 2025, Jamf Threat Labs said. "This activity involved the deployment of a backdoor implant that provides remote code execution capabilities on the victim system," security researcher Thijs Xhaflaire said in a report shared with The Hacker News. First disclosed by OpenSourceMalware last month, the attack essentially involves instructing prospective targets to clone a repository on GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket, and launch the project in VS Code as part of a supposed job assessment. The end goal of these efforts is to abuse VS Code task configuration files to execute malicious payloads staged on Vercel domains, depending on the oper...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new phishing campaign that exploits social media private messages to propagate malicious payloads, likely with the intent to deploy a remote access trojan (RAT). The activity delivers "weaponized files via Dynamic Link Library (DLL) sideloading, combined with a legitimate, open-source Python pen-testing script," ReliaQuest said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The attack involves approaching high-value individuals through messages sent on LinkedIn, establishing trust, and deceiving them into downloading a malicious WinRAR self-extracting archive (SFX). Once launched, the archive extracts four different components - A legitimate open-source PDF reader application A malicious DLL that's sideloaded by the PDF reader A portable executable (PE) of the Python interpreter A RAR file that likely serves as a decoy The infection chain gets activated when the PDF reader application is run, causing the rogue DLL to be sid...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a malware campaign that's targeting software developers with a new information stealer called Evelyn Stealer by weaponizing the Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code) extension ecosystem. "The malware is designed to exfiltrate sensitive information, including developer credentials and cryptocurrency-related data. Compromised developer environments can also be abused as access points into broader organizational systems," Trend Micro said in an analysis published Monday. The activity is designed to single out organizations with software development teams that rely on VS Code and third-party extensions, along with those with access to production systems, cloud resources, or digital assets, it added. It's worth noting that details of the campaign were first documented by Koi Security last month, when details emerged of three VS Code extensions – BigBlack.bitcoin-black, BigBlack.codo-ai, and BigBlack.mrbigblacktheme...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of an ongoing campaign dubbed KongTuke that used a malicious Google Chrome extension masquerading as an ad blocker to deliberately crash the web browser and trick victims into running arbitrary commands using ClickFix -like lures to deliver a previously undocumented remote access trojan (RAT) dubbed ModeloRAT. This new escalation of ClickFix, observed earlier this month, has been codenamed CrashFix by Huntress. KongTuke , also tracked as 404 TDS, Chaya_002, LandUpdate808, and TAG-124, is the name given to a traffic distribution system (TDS) known for profiling victim hosts before redirecting them to a payload delivery site that infects their systems. Access to these compromised hosts is then handed off to other threat actors, including ransomware groups, for follow-on malware delivery. Some of the cybercriminal groups that have leveraged TAG-124 infrastructure include Rhysida ransomware , Interlock ransomware , and TA866 (aka Asylu...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the web-based control panel used by operators of the StealC information stealer, allowing them to gather crucial insights on one of the threat actors using the malware in their operations. "By exploiting it, we were able to collect system fingerprints, monitor active sessions, and – in a twist that will surprise no one – steal cookies from the very infrastructure designed to steal them," CyberArk researcher Ari Novick said in a report published last week. StealC is an information stealer that first emerged in January 2023 under a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) model, allowing potential customers to leverage YouTube as a primary mechanism – a phenomenon called the YouTube Ghost Network – to distribute the malicious program by disguising it as cracks for popular software. Over the past year, the stealer has also been observed being propagated via rogue Blender Foundation files and a soc...

Ukrainian and German law enforcement authorities have identified two Ukrainians suspected of working for the Russia-linked ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) group Black Basta. In addition, the group's alleged leader, a 35-year-old Russian national named Oleg Evgenievich Nefedov (Нефедов Олег Евгеньевич), has been added to the European Union's Most Wanted and INTERPOL's Red Notice lists, authorities noted. "According to the investigation, the suspects specialized in technical hacking of protected systems and were involved in preparing cyberattacks using ransomware," the Cyber Police of Ukraine said in a statement.  The agency said the accused individuals functioned as "hash crackers," who specialize in extracting passwords from information systems using specialized software. Once the credential information was obtained, members of the ransomware group broke into corporate networks and ultimately deployed ransomware and extorted money to recover the e...

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...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered five new malicious Google Chrome web browser extensions that masquerade as human resources (HR) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms like Workday, NetSuite, and SuccessFactors to take control of victim accounts. "The extensions work in concert to steal authentication tokens, block incident response capabilities, and enable complete account takeover through session hijacking," Socket security researcher Kush Pandya said in a Thursday report. The names of the extensions are listed below - DataByCloud Access (ID: oldhjammhkghhahhhdcifmmlefibciph, Published by: databycloud1104) - 251 Installs Tool Access 11 (ID: ijapakghdgckgblfgjobhcfglebbkebf, Published by: databycloud1104) - 101 Installs DataByCloud 1 (ID: mbjjeombjeklkbndcjgmfcdhfbjngcam, Published by: databycloud1104) - 1,000 Installs DataByCloud 2 (ID: makdmacamkifdldldlelollkkjnoiedg, Published by: databycloud1104) - 1,000 Installs Software Access (ID: bmodapc...

Security experts have disclosed details of a new campaign that has targeted U.S. government and policy entities using politically themed lures to deliver a backdoor known as LOTUSLITE . The targeted malware campaign leverages decoys related to the recent geopolitical developments between the U.S. and Venezuela to distribute a ZIP archive ("US now deciding what's next for Venezuela.zip") containing a malicious DLL that's launched using DLL side-loading techniques. It's not known if the campaign managed to successfully compromise any of the targets. The activity has been attributed with moderate confidence to a Chinese state-sponsored group known as Mustang Panda (aka Earth Preta, HoneyMyte, and Twill Typhoon), citing tactical and infrastructure patterns. It's worth noting that the threat actor is known for extensively relying on DLL side-loading to launch its backdoors, including TONESHELL. "This campaign reflects a continued trend of targeted spear...

A maximum-severity security flaw in a WordPress plugin called Modular DS has come under active exploitation in the wild, according to Patchstack. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-23550 (CVSS score: 10.0), has been described as a case of unauthenticated privilege escalation impacting all versions of the plugin prior to and including 2.5.1. It has been patched in version 2.5.2 . The plugin has more than 40,000 active installs. "In versions 2.5.1 and below, the plugin is vulnerable to privilege escalation, due to a combination of factors including direct route selection, bypassing of authentication mechanisms, and auto-login as admin," Patchstack said . The problem is rooted in its routing mechanism, which is designed to put certain sensitive routes behind an authentication barrier. The plugin exposes its routes under the "/api/modular-connector/" prefix. However, it has been found that this security layer can be bypassed every time the "direct reques...

The internet never stays quiet. Every week, new hacks, scams, and security problems show up somewhere. This week's stories show how fast attackers change their tricks, how small mistakes turn into big risks, and how the same old tools keep finding new ways to break in. Read on to catch up before the next wave hits. Unauthenticated RCE risk Security Flaw in Redis A high-severity security flaw has been disclosed in Redis (CVE-2025-62507, CVSS score: 8.8) that could potentially lead to remote code execution by means of a stack buffer overflow. It was fixed in version 8.3.2. JFrog's analysis of the flaw has revealed that the vulnerability is triggered when using the new Redis 8.2 XACKDEL command, which was introduced to simplify and optimize stream cleanup. Specifically, it resides in the implementation of xackdelCommand(), a function responsible for parsing and processing the list of stream IDs supplied by the user. "The core ...