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Cybersecurity researchers have flagged two new malware families called WordlistLoader and SynkLoader that's used to deliver next-stage payloads and likely sell access to ransomware groups. According to findings from Gen Digital, WordlistLoader is being used to deliver Amatera Stealer (aka ACR Stealer or AcridRain Stealer) via ClearFake campaigns, which employ the ClickFix (aka FakeCaptcha) technique to dupe victims into running malicious commands under the pretext of completing CAPTCHA verification checks. "Once the visitor clicks on the 'I'm not a robot' checkbox, they're walked through the well-known ClickFix flow, where a malicious command is copied into their clipboard and the victim is instructed to paste it into the Windows Run dialog and execute it, leading to the download of WordlistLoader that ultimately results in the execution of Amatera," security researcher Vojtěch Krejsa said . The ClickFix prompts are displayed on real websites th...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a cyber espionage campaign targeting Myanmar that uses graduation ceremony invitation lures to deliver a Go backdoor called QUICAgent. The campaign, codenamed Operation QUICSILVER , has been found to target government and information technology sectors, per Seqrite Labs. The activity is assessed to be the work of a China-nexus threat actor with moderate confidence. It was first observed in April 2026, when the attack was observed delivering a file named "HolidayNotice.pdf.exe" along with a lure that was a fabricated Belgian–Myanmar public holiday calendar. Two subsequent artifacts, each detected in June and July 2026, make use of a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) file that activates the infection chain. Present within the VHD file is a Windows Shortcut (LNK) that mimics a PDF document. Opening the document displays a decoy PDF to the victim, an official graduation ceremony invitation that's written in Burmese and purports to be from t...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a Chinese-speaking cybercrime group dubbed UAT-10147 that's targeting Windows and Linux web servers globally across the education, media, technology, and gaming sectors. The vast majority of the targets are located in Brazil, Bolivia, China, Canada, and Vietnam. Details of the threat activity came to light following the discovery of an open directory hosted at "139.180.197[.]150," which was observed communicating with one of the compromised machines. "The actor leveraged publicly disclosed vulnerabilities to gain initial access at scale," Cisco Talos said in a two-part report published last week. The actor employed a mixture of open-source offensive frameworks, including Metasploit , ysoserial , PentestGPT , DeepAudit, and multiple privilege escalation exploits to automate intrusion operations and establish persistence." UAT-10147 has been described as a threat actor that conducts search engine op...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a set of trojanized npm packages that masquerade as working calendar and streak utilities but are engineered to stealthily deliver an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered Linux implant dubbed RedC2 4.0. "When the module loads, it locates the bundled binary, marks it executable, and launches it as a detached background process," TrendAI, Trend Micro's enterprise cybersecurity business, said in a report published Thursday. "No install hook function call is needed; a single import anywhere in the dependency graph, even a transitive one, is enough to execute the payload." The list of identified packages is below - streak-metrics-math@1.0.0,1.0.1 kit-map-vim@1.0.0 streak-map-cache@1.0.0 streak-map-kit@1.0.0 map-streak-kit@1.0.0 streak-cache-map@1.0.0 streak-calc-metrics@1.0.0 streak-calc-math@1.0.0 streak-math-abz@1.0.0 streak-metricsaz@1.0.0 streak-math-metrics@1.0.0 streak-metrica...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new malware family that's specifically designed to infect Android-based vehicle head unit firmware developed by DoFun. Kaspersky, which discovered the threat in June 2026, said the end goal of the malware is to serve a multi-stage downloader to enable ad fraud and creation of a proxy botnet. "The malware spread through the built-in updaters of Android-based automotive head unit firmware," security researcher Dmitry Kalinin said. "This is the first documented case of malware found on a car head unit with an infection chain specific to that type of device." The activity has been attributed with high confidence to the MoYu Group , which was outed by the HUMAN Satori Threat Intelligence and Research team last year as part of a broader ad fraud and residential proxy scheme dubbed BADBOX. In July 2025, Google filed a lawsuit against 25 unnamed individuals or entities in China for allegedly operating the BADBOX botnet a...

The Rust Project has deleted malicious versions of three widely used Rust crates from crates.io after a compromised maintainer account published releases that added a typosquatted dependency whose build script downloaded and executed a remote payload during compilation. The affected releases are arrayref 0.3.10, internment 0.8.7, and append-only-vec 0.1.9, all published from the same owner account on August 20, 2026, and all removed within 86 to 107 minutes. Because the malicious code sat in the build script of the injected dependency, building a project that resolved it was sufficient to run the payload, and nothing from the crates themselves had to be called. Developers are advised to search ~/.cargo/registry/cache for the deleted crate files and to pin arrayref at 0.3.9 or earlier, after the Rust Security Response Team unyanked the maliciously-yanked versions during the response. There is no patched version, no CVE identifier has been assigned, and the RustSec advisories...

Three distinct suspected Russian cyber espionage threat clusters have been observed leveraging legitimate authentication flows to single out individuals working in academia, aerospace and defense, governments, and think tanks across Europe, as well as academia and think tanks within the U.S. These clusters include UNC6293 , UNC7005 , and UNC5976 . "These clusters engage in persistent, adaptive phishing campaigns, using sophisticated social engineering tactics to compromise personal accounts across multiple platforms," Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) researchers Gabby Roncone and Wesley Shields said in a report published today. UNC6293, first detailed by the tech giant and the Citizen Lab in June 2025, is assessed to be a sub-cluster of Ice Relic (formerly APT29), which is also tracked under the monikers Cozy Bear and Midnight Blizzard. The hacking crew was previously attributed to a campaign that abused a Google account feature called application specific pas...

A lot of this week’s trouble starts with something trusted doing exactly what it was allowed to do. Signed drivers get turned against defenses. Legitimate apps help malware blend in. A weak header check opens a path to code execution. Elsewhere, exposed systems, old bugs, odd hiding tricks, and AI-assisted exploit research keep lowering the effort needed to cause damage. Nothing here needs much decoration. The small gaps are doing enough work already. The threats change every week. Subscribe, and we’ll alert you when each new ThreatsDay Bulletin is out.

A new Android threat codenamed Manic has been observed actively targeting Ukrainian banks, government and identity services, and messaging applications, as well as Russian and European financial institutions, global fintech and cryptocurrency services, and military-focused communications. "Manic sits at the intersection of Android banking malware and mobile spyware, combining financial-fraud capabilities with broader surveillance and device-control features," ThreatFabric said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. The malware, besides targeting sensitive applications and enabling extensive device takeover, introduces a novel Wi‑Fi mesh technique that makes it possible for the infected devices to relay data through nearby compromised devices with internet access. It's distributed via phishing sites and dropper apps impersonating utilities. The Dutch security company said the malware family's activity dates back to February 2026, when the first dom...

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on an updated version of ToxicPanda (aka TgToxic) that comes with "significant enhancements," including a set of 167 remote commands and expands its targeting footprint globally. Zimperium zLabs, in a Wednesday report , said the Android malware also features a PIN harvesting workflow targeting more than 140 banking and cryptocurrency applications. ToxicPanda is known to be active in the wild since at least July 2022. "By abusing the Android accessibility service, threat actors can steal every UI element on the screen, alongside an overlay-based credential theft mechanism targeting 349 financial institutions [across 16 countries], compared to the previous version, which targeted only 16 banking applications, the latest iteration demonstrates a significant expansion in targeting scope and capabilities," security researcher Vishnu Pratapagiri said. The new version also fleshes out some of the previously unimplemented c...

A set of 40 Mozilla Firefox extensions has been found to engage in cryptocurrency wallet theft by masquerading as OKX, Rabby Wallet, TronLink, and other Web3 products. According to the Socket Threat Research team, the extensions are part of a broader set of 77 browser add-ons that share source code and infrastructure overlaps. The campaign, dubbed Offside Wallet Theft Factory , is believed to have been active since March 2026. The activity has not been attributed to any known threat actor or group. "Extension-level analysis confirms 40 as malicious," security researcher Kirill Boychenko said . "Another 37 form a coordinated multi-sport score-shell operation. Their analyzed builds contain no confirmed credential- or wallet-stealing payloads, but their deceptive functionality, shared publishing artifacts, and version histories indicate malicious intent." Among those 40 extensions, seven use threat actor-controlled Supabase projects as remote switches to server ...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a critical flaw in the Elementor Pro WordPress plugin that, if successfully exploited, could lead to remote code execution. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-32475 , carries a CVSS score of 9.0 out of 10.0. It has been described as a case of unrestricted upload of a file with a dangerous type. "The flaw lives in the Forms module's File Upload field, where the extension check and the file-move step run in two separate loops with different handling of empty file entries," Patchstack said . "By submitting two file parts for the same field, an unauthenticated attacker skips the extension blocklist entirely and writes a PHP file into a public directory." This discrepancy in how it validates the file's extension and moves the uploaded file to a public directory when empty file entries are processed turns a restricted file-upload field into an unauthenticated remote code execution primitive. Succes...

A previously unreported cyber espionage operation dubbed SilkParasite has been observed targeting government bodies in Central Asia. The intrusion set makes use of seven remote access tool (RAT) families, five of which have never been previously documented: DriveSilkRAT, CookiETagRAT, NomadRAT, GoginRAT, and NodeEdgeRAT. SilkParasite, first discovered in late 2025, is assessed to be a China-nexus threat cluster with medium confidence. "What makes SilkParasite interesting is the traces of AI-assisted development running through otherwise expert code, which is a different thing from AI-generated malware," Bitdefender Labs said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. Unlike other operations that rely on AI-generated malware, SilkParasite's arsenal exhibits all hallmarks typically associated with professional espionage tooling that's developed by a team of human operators while AI is likely used to streamline the process. The Romanian cybersecurity v...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a global cybercrime operation that abuses thousands of hacked WordPress websites as infrastructure to disseminate malware, commandeer infected hosts, store stolen documents, screenshots, and activity logs created to track the status of the activity. "The operation doesn't rely on a single piece of malware, but on a whole toolkit of criminal software working together – some components encrypt files, others silently steal documents or lock the screen, and another acts as a live chat between the attackers and their victims," Check Point Research's Jaromír Hořejší said . The large-scale campaign is being tracked by the cybersecurity company under the moniker StopAndProtect after discovering a ransomware family of the same name in mid-May 2026. The infection chain begins with a ClickFix social engineering attack, resulting in the execution of a PowerShell command that leads to the deployment of additional .NET downloaders and l...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday added four critical vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, stating they are being exploited in the wild. The shortcomings added to the KEV catalog are listed below - CVE-2026-65400 (CVSS score: 9.8) - An improper authentication vulnerability impacting Apple macOS that could allow an attacker on the network to authenticate to Screen Sharing without valid credentials. CVE-2026-55040 (CVSS score: 9.1) - A weak authentication vulnerability impacting Microsoft SharePoint that could allow an unauthorized attacker to bypass a security feature over a network. CVE-2026-59310 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A path traversal vulnerability in Broadcom VMware vCenter that could allow a threat actor with network access to vCenter to execute arbitrary code. CVE-2026-33824 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A double free vulnerability in  Microsoft Internet Key Exchange (IKE) Service Extensions ...

Microsoft Defender Experts have linked more than 30 web domains to MacSync Stealer, a macOS-focused information stealer, after correlating recurring endpoint and network behaviors across changing infrastructure, tracing the malware from payload retrieval through data collection, staging, and exfiltration. The tech giant said it required multiple endpoint and network behaviors to align before treating a domain as connected, including process ancestry, command-line patterns, request paths, headers, and upload parameters.  Microsoft did not disclose a victim count or attribute the activity to a named threat actor in the report published Tuesday. "The investigation also confirmed active data exfiltration, not just beaconing," the company said. According to the analysis , observed execution began from an interactive zsh Terminal session consistent with ClickFix social engineering, followed by curl retrieving attacker-controlled content over a recurring /curl/ path and na...

A JavaServer Pages (JSP) web shell deployed following the exploitation of a critical security flaw in PTC Windchill and FlexPLM servers is specifically designed for the enterprise Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software, according to new findings from ReliaQuest. The cybersecurity company characterized the web shell as a fully equipped extortion platform capable of mapping sensitive vault data, decrypting every credential in the Windchill keystore, and running additional code by means of a custom Java class loader, turning the tool into a backdoor for remote access and post-exploitation activity, such as lateral movement, ransomware, or persistence. While threat actors are typically known to deploy lightweight web shells (or reuse open-source variants like Behinder or China Chopper) as a way to maintain remote access to compromised systems and enable basic command execution capabilities, the latest development signals the use of a bespoke web shell that's tailored to the ...

Security researchers at Anthropic and Switzerland's EPFL have demonstrated that self-propagating payloads can spread from one artificial intelligence (AI) agent to the next through the editable system prompt files that autonomous agent harnesses use to carry state between sessions. The work, released as a preprint on August 10, 2026, tests the technique in a simulated six-agent coding collaboration and in a chain of paired agents modeled on OpenClaw , the open-source autonomous assistant formerly known as Clawdbot and Moltbot . There is no evidence that the technique has spread successfully in the wild, and the same paper reports that a review of archived posts from Moltbook, the social network for AI agents, found no successful agent-to-agent propagation despite several attempts. A one-paragraph warning added to an agent's system prompt reduced spread to near zero across the payloads tested. Fifteen generations of adversarial optimization run against that warning on C...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a previously undocumented Python implant framework dubbed TWINLOOT . "TWINLOOT is a modular, PyArmor-hardened Python implant designed to operate its entire command-and-control infrastructure inside trusted Microsoft services," Ontinue said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. "Tasking flows through SharePoint Online file dead-drops via the Microsoft Graph API. Interactive operator access routes through WebRTC DataChannels relayed by Microsoft Teams TURN servers." Traffic to and from the Graph API is driven by means of a headless instance of the victim's own Edge browser, thereby making it virtually indistinguishable from legitimate network activity. The implant is equipped to harvest Windows credentials using pixel-perfect fake lock screens, offer a reverse SOCKS5 pivot into victim networks, execute arbitrary commands, and establish persistence on the host. Ontinue's Cyber Defense Cen...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new typosquatting campaign targeting RubyGems users with a Windows-based information stealer. OpenSourceMalware, which discovered the activity on August 15, 2026, is tracking the threat under the moniker StubMaker . The complete list of packages published as part of the campaign is below - ubnuler ubnlder ri18nr reaker rakier orakw joxn ise18n ioe18n ie18u iai8n i1l8n i18om activesupmport brumdler brundlef "This new malware harvests browser credentials, cryptocurrency wallets, seed phrases, and Telegram data," security researcher Paul McCarty (aka 6mile) said. "All of the malicious RubyGems packages appear to be typosquats of popular Ruby dependencies, but rather than the clever SEO-fueled typosquats we've seen from other threat actors (e.g., events-channel imitating the popular Node.js events module), they're all clumsy typos." The 16 gems have been published...