Malware | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

An attacker broke into the update system of the cPGuard security tool on November 2 and used it to send a malicious script to customers' Linux servers. The script installed a backdoor and collected password hashes and other sensitive files from servers that ran it, cPGuard maker OPSSHIELD said in an advisory . The attacker has since taken some of that data. cPGuard 5.88.25 and later versions remove the backdoor and the files the script left. Credentials the script copied may still work after the update, so any server that may have run the script also needs new passwords and keys. At 02:06 UTC, the attacker, who has not been identified, used compromised credentials to get into cPGuard's update system. The script went out in cPGuard versions 5.88.12 through 5.88.19. The attack was detected within 12 hours of those versions going out, according to OPSSHIELD. The company has cleared its infrastructure credentials and stopped the script from reaching more servers. It is sti...

A Russia-aligned threat actor known as Gorbag has been observed using simple information stealer malware in attacks targeting Ukrainian organizations. "Active since at least February 2025, the group has focused exclusively on Ukrainian targets, with a clear preference for law enforcement and justice entities, local administrations near the front line, and the defense sector," ESET researcher Damien Schaeffer said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The activity shares overlaps with a cluster tracked by the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) under the moniker UAC-0226 and by Trend Micro as SHADOW-EARTH-066 . Gorbag is known to be active since at least February 2025. A key tool in the threat actor's malware arsenal is GIFTEDCROOK, a C/C++ stealer that facilitates the theft of sensitive data from web browsers like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox, such as cookies, browsing history, and authentication data. Earlier this Ju...

A maximum-severity security flaw impacting Siemens SIMATIC IoT2050 Advanced devices has come under active exploitation, VulnCheck has revealed . The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-58115 (CVSS score: 10.0), is a case of missing authentication for a critical function that could be exploited by an unauthenticated remote attacker to run arbitrary code. "SIMATIC IoT2050 Advanced devices running Industrial OS with Node-RED installed contain a missing authentication vulnerability in the Node-RED HTTP interface that could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to create malicious flows and execute arbitrary code on the underlying server with maximum privileges," Siemens said in an advisory released back in August 2026. The issue has been remediated in versions 4.3.4.1 or later. As mitigations, Siemens recommends that users uninstall Node-RED or harden the installation by following the steps below - Enabling HTTPS access Securing the editor and admin API via cre...

Some attacks this week didn't need much of a trick. A fake support call, a trusted extension, a shared link, or a device with no password. Small things that people barely think about. Yet each was enough to cause serious trouble. Then there were the bigger messes. Billions stolen, hidden networks of hacked devices, poisoned software, and attackers finding new ways to turn normal tools against their users. Even the places meant to keep money and systems safe ended up with problems of their own. The strange part is how often the damage started somewhere nobody was looking. And that's before getting to the long list of fresh bugs, shady services, and scams making the rounds. Quite a bit to sort through. Here's what made the list. ⚡ Threat of the Week N. Korea Sets New Record with Binance $6.43B Crypto Theft — The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has officially attributed the theft of more than $6 billion in virtual assets from Binance to a North Korean hack...

A botnet of more than 1.3 million Android devices, mostly TV set-top boxes, lost control of its servers in late October in a takedown led by Google. Google says  it is highly confident that device maker Videostrong intentionally put a backdoor in the boxes and sold access to criminals. They used the boxes for ad fraud and to pass other people's internet traffic through owners' home connections. The backdoor is still on the boxes, and owners cannot remove it themselves. Videostrong, based in Shenzhen, China, makes Android TV boxes and other devices under its own name and for other brands. The backdoor, called x.cpe, was built into many device models and brands over several years. Google does not believe a rogue insider or a mistake was to blame. Google used legal action to take down the domains and servers that controlled the botnet. It also took down the control domains of more than a dozen malware families loaded through the backdoor. Japan's National Police Agenc...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a cyber espionage campaign targeting Israel and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq by an Iran state-aligned threat actor between August and October 2026. According to a report published by Dream Research Labs, the campaign has led to the compromise of a high-profile individual in Israel, along with additional compromises affecting a government cloud environment in the Kurdistan Region. The activity has been attributed to a threat actor known as DarkBlinders , an Iran-nexus group assessed to be active since at least September 2024 and linked to attacks aimed at aviation infrastructure and telecommunications in the U.A.E. and Iraq. It exhibits no technical overlap with other known hacking groups. Attacks mounted by the group are known to rely on spear-phishing as an initial access pathway to lure recipients into opening trojanized utilities or clicking on attacker-controlled websites that host similar tools as direct downloads. Prev...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a cyber espionage campaign specifically targeting Linux infrastructure associated with government entities and state-affiliated infrastructure. The activity, observed by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 between October 2025 and April 2026, has been tracked under the moniker CL-UNK-1211 , where "CL" refers to cluster and "UNK" stands for unknown motivation. A notable aspect of the campaign concerns the use of large language models (LLMs) and/or automated artificial intelligence (AI) agents to generate payloads and execute malicious code. "The attackers behind this cluster of activity focused on Linux environments to conduct extensive reconnaissance and maintain persistent network access to support intelligence-gathering," researchers Roey Porat and Tom Fakterman said . "The attackers attempted to dump sensitive databases and exfiltrate government mailboxes to access social media accounts." T...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new Windows infostealer malware called VOLTA-AUTODOXER (aka VOLTA) that makes use of a large language model (LLM) to rank a victim's stolen data by their monetization value. Like other typical stealer families, VOLTA is equipped to harvest passwords and cookies from Chromium-based web browsers; data from Outlook profiles and Slack workspaces; payment cards; cryptocurrency wallet seed phrases; Discord, Telegram, Steam, and Roblox sessions; Microsoft OAuth tokens; SSH and cloud-provider keys; Wi-Fi profiles; and screenshots. "VOLTA builds a structured evidence bundle about the person behind the machine," Cisco Talos researcher Ryan Fetterman said . "This bundle contains geolocation and home address, employer and employer domain, inferred birth year, card last-4 digits, Slack workspaces, document authorship metadata, iPhone backup indicators, and a live Roblox account valuation." To make this information more va...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has officially attributed the theft of more than $6 billion in virtual assets from Binance to TraderTraitor , a North Korea-aligned elite hacking group also tracked as Jade Sleet, Pressure Chollima, PUKCHONG, Slow Pisces, and UNC4899. The FBI, along with the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), said it observed the threat actor converting stolen assets primarily into Ethereum (ETH). "It is expected these assets will then be further laundered by converting them using DeFi and instant swap services as they prepare them for further laundering stages," the FBI said in a statement. The agency has also provided a list of wallet addresses that the attackers are said to be using to launder the stolen assets. The development comes as Binance said it has resumed phase one of withdrawals starting today between 6 and 9 a.m. UTC after they were paused in the wake of the incide...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of what has been described as a "highly sophisticated infection chain" targeting government organizations in Asia. The activity, detailed by Kaspersky this week, targeted a custom Windows 10 build used exclusively by government entities in Asia and involves the deployment of a previously undocumented .NET assembly-loading framework codenamed NetamLoader . The attack has not been attributed to any known threat actor or group. Nor is it clear if the intrusion compromised more than one system and allowed the hackers to steal any sensitive information. The Russian cybersecurity company said the artifact was detected in the first half of 2026, packaged inside a Windows cabinet archive (CAB) file placed in a directory that stores Windows operating system update packages. It's suspected the operation involved a supply chain attack , in which bad actors compromised a trusted third-party vendor to gain access to downstrea...

Chinese state-sponsored threat actors have been observed using a Go-based artificial intelligence (AI)-powered penetration testing framework called ARTEX in attacks aimed at high-value targets simultaneously. The activity has been attributed by CrowdStrike to a China-based "targeted intrusion adversary" it tracks under the moniker Vapor Panda (previously VexatiousTemper). First identified in February 2021, the hacking group overlaps with a threat cluster detailed by Trend Micro as Earth Estries . "Agentic tooling like ARTEX enables this scale of expansion at speed, allowing a small team to pursue a wider target set than manual operations would support, rather than a wholesale shift away from the adversary's established access-development mission," CrowdStrike said in a Thursday analysis. Starting October 17, 2026, Vapor Panda is said to have used the AI tool against more than 200 distinct organizations across the world, including foreign ministries in ...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed that a trojanized version of Anthropic's official Claude Code extension was distributed through the Cursor Marketplace as a legitimate update, attempting to install a persistent SSH backdoor on affected systems. The malicious update, version 2.1.313, was distributed under the extension's legitimate publisher identity, prompting Cursor to temporarily shut down its marketplace to remove the compromised package. The exact method attackers used to introduce the unauthorized update remains unclear. "We identified a security incident affecting a modified Claude Code VS Code extension accessed through our Cursor IDE extension marketplace, impacting at most 5,000 users," Cursor said . "This malicious version of the extension was not developed by Anthropic. It does not impact other extensions downloaded from the cursor[.]com/marketplace, Grok Bot, Grok, or our other SpaceXSI product. However, Cursor's statement that the...

Some attacks take real skill. Others just need someone to leave a door open. This week has both. Exposed passwords, old bugs still getting exploited, and trusted software doing things it shouldn't. There's a strange mix of clever tricks and careless mistakes. Hackers are borrowing trust from familiar apps, websites, and AI tools. Some are using AI to speed things up. Others are leaving their own attack files exposed. Not exactly careful work. Different stories, familiar weak spots. Here's what showed up this week. The threats change every week. Subscribe, and we’ll alert you when each new ThreatsDay Bulletin is out.

Threat actors are delivering malicious loaders and cryptocurrency miners under the guise of artificial intelligence (AI) desktop applications for Anthropic Claude and OpenAI ChatGPT as part of a campaign dubbed Yoba . The activity involves creating fake GitHub projects that claim to be desktop applications like GPT-5.6 Sol, GPT-6 Astra, and Claude Opus, only to deliver a malware family called YobaLoader. "The malware is placed next to legitimate, signed executables from OpenAI and Anthropic so it can be loaded indirectly, a technique commonly known as DLL sideloading, which is often used to bypass security protections," Check Point Research said in an analysis. To add to the project's credibility, the attackers set up GitHub.io pages to describe the capabilities of the software. Although the GitHub projects' popularity is not manipulated using techniques like ghost networks , signs point to the use of SEO poisoning tactics to ensure that links to them are sur...

GitHub has announced that it's introducing a new package firewall as a preview to block installation of suspicious npm packages during installation time. "The firewall inspects both metadata requests and package downloads for signs of malicious activity, acting as an install-time policy gate," GitHub said . The feature, which currently supports only npm packages, is available in public preview for all GitHub Enterprise Cloud customers, including data-resident GitHub Enterprise Cloud. According to the Microsoft subsidiary, the firewall is placed between endpoints or internal registries and the upstream package repositories so as to deter malware attacks that compromise systems when packages are installed. This behavior can expose users to severe security risks, especially when artificial intelligence (AI) agents and CI runners automatically install dependencies to complete a task or build without their explicit permission. The idea is that endpoints like coding ...

Hackers exploited a critical Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN flaw, fixed in February, to plant custom malware inside the systems that control an organization's SD-WAN network. The malware, called KeyDrift , is designed to copy the keys that encrypt traffic between sites and store them for later use,  Cisco Talos said  on October 28. Talos calls the attacks historical but does not specify when they occurred or whether any keys were sent. The flaw is tracked as  CVE-2026-20127  and has a CVSS score of 10.0. It allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to bypass authentication and gain administrative privileges on these control systems. On a Controller, the attacker can log in as a high-privileged internal account that is not root. When Cisco  disclosed the flaw in February , Talos tracked its exploitation as UAT-8616, a cluster of activity it said went back to at least 2023. In  Cisco's traditional key exchange , each SD-WAN router periodically generates an AE...

Third-party Android app stores can now apply to Google for permission to install apps with one tap, without Android's usual confirmation screens, and to update them in the background. To qualify, a store must pass identity checks and send Google  its full catalog , along with every new app and update, for ongoing malware scanning. Approved stores get the features from December 1, but only on devices running Android 17 QPR2 or later in  supported countries , which do not include the US. Today, a user installing apps from a third-party store must first enable the store to install apps, then confirm each install and each update. From December 1, a store in Google's  Registered App Stores program  gets that permission automatically once it is approved, and its updates run in the background under the user's own update settings. Google  announced the program in March , alongside changes it said resolved its disputes with Epic Games. Joining is optional, and sto...

Japan's GMO Internet Group is  offering up to $1 million in total  for tips that help catch the attackers who breached its Onamae.com Desktop Cloud service, after refusing to pay an extortion demand. The reward program opened on October 28 and pays only if a tip helps lead to an arrest or an international wanted notice. The service  hosts Windows desktops  used for FX trading, and a broker has linked unauthorized trades on some of its customers' accounts to logins leaked from the service. GMO says the attackers took customer information. It received a demand for about  $50 million (about ¥8 billion)  on October 21 from people it believes carried out the attack. They have also threatened its customers' trading accounts and data. On October 27, the attackers posted material on their website that they say is information about GMO and its customers. The site's domain, including its mirror sites,  was shut down  at about 4 a.m. Japan time on O...

The North Korea-linked Lazarus Group has been attributed to a cyber espionage campaign dubbed Operation FlashHole targeting at least three organizations in South Korea spanning the construction, software, and wire-communication equipment manufacturing sectors. According to Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky, the campaign has been active since at least July 2025. It's assessed to pick up from where Operation SyncHole left off. "The group targeted victims more selectively, sending spear‑phishing emails with links to fabricated but relevant sites, such as portfolio and résumé pages tailored to each target," Sojun Ryu, senior security researcher at Kaspersky GReAT, said in an exhaustive analysis. Operation SyncHole was first documented by Kaspersky in April 2025, detailing the state-sponsored adversary's targeting of South Korea's software, IT, financial, semiconductor manufacturing, and telecommunications industries since November 2024 to deliver malwa...

A criminal using the Amadey malware can no longer access or steal data from 180,000 infected computers around the world, including some in Australia, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) says. The agency's operators gained access to the criminal's operation's backend and cut it off from those computers. "The next steps that we took were to disconnect that Amadey controller from all those victims," Tauri Gregory, ASD's acting deputy director-general of intelligence,  told ABC News  in an interview published on October 27. ASD is Australia's foreign signals intelligence and cyber security agency. Its  offensive cyber operations  need explicit approval from the Australian government and can disrupt cybercriminals overseas by disabling their infrastructure. Amadey was sold to criminals as a service in 2018, according to  ESET's analysis of Amadey . Each buyer runs its own control panel on its own servers. Computers infected with Amadey check ...