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Indian defense sector and government-aligned organizations have been targeted by multiple campaigns that are designed to compromise Windows and Linux environments with remote access trojans capable of stealing sensitive data and ensuring continued access to infected machines. The campaigns are characterized by the use of malware families like Geta RAT , Ares RAT , and DeskRAT , which are often attributed to Pakistan-aligned threat clusters tracked as SideCopy and APT36 (aka Transparent Tribe). SideCopy, active since at least 2019, is assessed to operate as a subdivision of Transparent Tribe. "Taken together, these campaigns reinforce a familiar but evolving narrative," Aditya K. Sood, vice president of Security Engineering and AI Strategy at Aryaka, said . "Transparent Tribe and SideCopy are not reinventing espionage – they are refining it." "By expanding cross-platform coverage, leaning into memory-resident techniques, and experimenting with new delivery ...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new botnet operation called SSHStalker that relies on the Internet Relay Chat ( IRC ) communication protocol for command-and-control (C2) purposes. "The toolset blends stealth helpers with legacy-era Linux exploitation: Alongside log cleaners (utmp/wtmp/lastlog tampering) and rootkit-class artifacts, the actor keeps a large back-catalog of Linux 2.6.x-era exploits (2009–2010 CVEs)," cybersecurity company Flare said . "These are low value against modern stacks, but remain effective against 'forgotten' infrastructure and long-tail legacy environments." SSHStalker combines IRC botnet mechanics with an automated mass-compromise operation that uses an SSH scanner and other readily available scanners to co-opt susceptible systems into a network and enroll them in IRC channels.

The North Korea-linked threat actor known as UNC1069 has been observed targeting the cryptocurrency sector to steal sensitive data from Windows and macOS systems with the ultimate goal of facilitating financial theft. "The intrusion relied on a social engineering scheme involving a compromised Telegram account, a fake Zoom meeting, a ClickFix infection vector, and reported usage of AI-generated video to deceive the victim," Google Mandiant researchers Ross Inman and Adrian Hernandez said . UNC1069, assessed to be active since at least April 2018, has a history of conducting social engineering campaigns for financial gain using fake meeting invites and posing as investors from reputable companies on Telegram. It's also tracked by the broader cybersecurity community under the monikers CryptoCore and MASAN . In a report published last November, Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) pointed out the threat actor's use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) t...

The information technology (IT) workers associated with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) are now applying to remote positions using real LinkedIn accounts of individuals they're impersonating, marking a new escalation of the fraudulent scheme. "These profiles often have verified workplace emails and identity badges, which DPRK operatives hope will make their fraudulent applications appear legitimate," Security Alliance (SEAL) said in a series of posts on X. The IT worker threat is a long-running operation mounted by North Korea in which operatives from the country pose as remote workers to secure jobs in Western companies and elsewhere under stolen or fabricated identities. The threat is also tracked by the broader cybersecurity community as Jasper Sleet, PurpleDelta, and Wagemole. The end goal of these efforts is two-pronged: to generate a steady revenue stream to fund the nation's weapons programs, conduct espionage by stealing sensitive...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of an emergent ransomware family dubbed Reynolds that comes embedded with a built-in bring your own vulnerable driver (BYOVD) component for defense evasion purposes within the ransomware payload itself. BYOVD refers to an adversarial technique that abuses legitimate but flawed driver software to escalate privileges and disable Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions so that malicious activities go unnoticed. The strategy has been adopted by many ransomware groups over the years. "Normally, the BYOVD defense evasion component of an attack would involve a distinct tool that would be deployed on the system prior to the ransomware payload in order to disable security software," the Symantec and Carbon Black Threat Hunter Team said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "However, in this attack, the vulnerable driver (an NsecSoft NSecKrnl driver) was bundled with the ransomware itself." Broadcom's ...

Are ransomware and encryption still the defining signals of modern cyberattacks, or has the industry been too fixated on noise while missing a more dangerous shift happening quietly all around them? According to Picus Labs’ new Red Report 2026, which analyzed over 1.1 million malicious files and mapped 15.5 million adversarial actions observed across 2025, attackers are no longer optimizing for disruption. Instead, their goal is now long-term, invisible access. To be clear, ransomware isn’t going anywhere, and adversaries continue to innovate. But the data shows a clear strategic pivot away from loud, destructive attacks toward techniques designed to evade detection, persist inside environments, and quietly exploit identity and trusted infrastructure. Rather than breaking in and burning systems down, today’s attackers increasingly behave like Digital Parasites. They live inside the host, feed on credentials and services, and remain undetected for as long as possible. Public attent...

SmarterTools confirmed last week that the Warlock (aka Storm-2603) ransomware gang breached its network by exploiting an unpatched SmarterMail instance. The incident took place on January 29, 2026, when a mail server that was not updated to the latest version was compromised, the company's Chief Commercial Officer, Derek Curtis, said. "Prior to the breach, we had approximately 30 servers/VMs with SmarterMail installed throughout our network," Curtis explained . "Unfortunately, we were unaware of one VM, set up by an employee, that was not being updated. As a result, that mail server was compromised, which led to the breach." However, SmarterTools emphasized that the breach did not affect its website, shopping cart, My Account portal, and several other services, and that no business applications or account data were affected or compromised. About 12 Windows servers on the company's office network, as well as a secondary data center used for quality cont...

Cyber threats are no longer coming from just malware or exploits. They’re showing up inside the tools, platforms, and ecosystems organizations use every day. As companies connect AI, cloud apps, developer tools, and communication systems, attackers are following those same paths. A clear pattern this week: attackers are abusing trust. Trusted updates, trusted marketplaces, trusted apps, even trusted AI workflows. Instead of breaking security controls head-on, they’re slipping into places that already have access. This recap brings together those signals — showing how modern attacks are blending technology abuse, ecosystem manipulation, and large-scale targeting into a single, expanding threat surface. ⚡ Threat of the Week OpenClaw announces VirusTotal Partnership — OpenClaw has announced a partnership with Google's VirusTotal malware scanning platform to scan skills that are being uploaded to ClawHub as part of a defense-in-depth approach to improve the security of the agen...

The threat actor known as Bloody Wolf has been linked to a campaign targeting Uzbekistan and Russia to infect systems with a remote access trojan known as NetSupport RAT . Cybersecurity vendor Kaspersky is tracking the activity under the moniker Stan Ghouls . The threat actor is known to be active since at least 2023, orchestrating spear-phishing attacks against manufacturing, finance, and IT sectors in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. The campaign is estimated to have claimed about 50 victims in Uzbekistan, with 10 devices in Russia also impacted. Other infections have been identified to a lesser degree in Kazakhstan, Turkey, Serbia, and Belarus. Infection attempts have also been recorded on devices within government organizations, logistics companies, medical facilities, and educational institutions. "Given Stan Ghouls' targeting of financial institutions, we believe their primary motive is financial gain," Kaspersky noted. "That said, their hea...

Cybersecurity researchers have called attention to a "massive campaign" that has systematically targeted cloud native environments to set up malicious infrastructure for follow-on exploitation. The activity, observed around December 25, 2025, and described as "worm-driven," leveraged exposed Docker APIs, Kubernetes clusters, Ray dashboards, and Redis servers, along with the recently disclosed React2Shell (CVE-2025-55182, CVSS score: 10.0) vulnerability. The campaign has been attributed to a threat cluster known as TeamPCP (aka DeadCatx3, PCPcat, PersyPCP, and ShellForce). TeamPCP is known to be active since at least November 2025, with the first instance of Telegram activity dating back to July 30, 2025. The TeamPCP Telegram channel currently has over 700 members, where the group publishes stolen data from diverse victims across Canada, Serbia, South Korea, the U.A.E., and the U.S. Details of the threat actor were first documented by Beelzebub in December 2025...

OpenClaw (formerly Moltbot and Clawdbot) has announced that it's partnering with Google-owned VirusTotal to scan skills that are being uploaded to ClawHub, its skill marketplace, as part of broader efforts to bolster the security of the agentic ecosystem. "All skills published to ClawHub are now scanned using VirusTotal's threat intelligence, including their new Code Insight capability," OpenClaw's founder Peter Steinberger, along with Jamieson O'Reilly and Bernardo Quintero said. "This provides an additional layer of security for the OpenClaw community." The process essentially entails creating a unique SHA-256 hash for every skill and cross checking it against VirusTotal's database for a match. If it's not found, the skill bundle is uploaded to the malware scanning tool for further analysis using VirusTotal Code Insight . Skills that have a "benign" Code Insight verdict are automatically approved by ClawHub, while those marke...

Cybersecurity researchers have taken the wraps off a gateway-monitoring and adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) framework dubbed DKnife that's operated by China-nexus threat actors since at least 2019. The framework comprises seven Linux-based implants that are designed to perform deep packet inspection, manipulate traffic, and deliver malware via routers and edge devices. Its primary targets seem to be Chinese-speaking users, an assessment based on the presence of credential harvesting phishing pages for Chinese email services, exfiltration modules for popular Chinese mobile applications like WeChat, and code references to Chinese media domains. "DKnife's attacks target a wide range of devices, including PCs, mobile devices, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices," Cisco Talos researcher Ashley Shen noted in a Thursday report. "It delivers and interacts with the ShadowPad and DarkNimbus backdoors by hijacking binary downloads and Android application updates....

A previously undocumented cyber espionage group operating from Asia broke into the networks of at least 70 government and critical infrastructure organizations across 37 countries over the past year, according to new findings from Palo Alto Networks Unit 42. In addition, the hacking crew has been observed conducting active reconnaissance against government infrastructure associated with 155 countries between November and December 2025. Some of the entities that have been successfully compromised include five national-level law enforcement/border control entities, three ministries of finance and other government ministries, and departments that align with economic, trade, natural resources, and diplomatic functions. The activity is being tracked by the cybersecurity company under the moniker TGR-STA-1030 , where "TGR" stands for temporary threat group and "STA" refers to state-backed motivation. Evidence shows that the threat actor has been active since January ...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new supply chain attack in which legitimate packages on npm and the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository have been compromised to push malicious versions to facilitate wallet credential theft and remote code execution. The compromised versions of the two packages are listed below - @dydxprotocol/v4-client-js (npm) - 3.4.1, 1.22.1, 1.15.2, 1.0.31  dydx-v4-client (PyPI) - 1.1.5post1 "The @dydxprotocol/v4-client-js (npm) and dydx-v4-client (PyPI) packages provide developers with tools to interact with the dYdX v4 protocol, including transaction signing, order placement, and wallet management," Socket security researcher Kush Pandya noted. "Applications using these packages handle sensitive cryptocurrency operations." dYdX is a non-custodial, decentralized cryptocurrency exchange for trading margin and perpetual swaps, while allowing users to retain full control over their assets. On its website, the DeFi exchang...

The distributed denial-of-service ( DDoS ) botnet known as AISURU/Kimwolf has been attributed to a record-setting attack that peaked at 31.4 Terabits per second (Tbps) and lasted only 35 seconds. Cloudflare, which automatically detected and mitigated the activity, said it's part of a growing number of hyper-volumetric HTTP DDoS attacks mounted by the botnet in the fourth quarter of 2025. The attack took place in November 2025. AISURU/Kimwolf has also been linked to another DDoS campaign codenamed The Night Before Christmas that commenced on December 19, 2025. Per Cloudflare, the average size of the hyper-volumetric DDoS attacks during the campaign was 3 billion packets per second (Bpps), 4 Tbps, and 54 requests per second (Mrps), with the maximum rates touching 9 Bpps, 24 Tbps, and 205 Mrps. "DDoS attacks surged by 121% in 2025, reaching an average of 5,376 attacks automatically mitigated every hour," Cloudflare's Omer Yoachimik and Jorge Pacheco said. "In...

This week didn’t produce one big headline. It produced many small signals — the kind that quietly shape what attacks will look like next. Researchers tracked intrusions that start in ordinary places: developer workflows, remote tools, cloud access, identity paths, and even routine user actions. Nothing looked dramatic on the surface. That’s the point. Entry is becoming less visible while impact scales later. Several findings also show how attackers are industrializing their work — shared infrastructure, repeatable playbooks, rented access, and affiliate-style ecosystems. Operations are no longer isolated campaigns. They run more like services. This edition pulls those fragments together — short, precise updates that show where techniques are maturing, where exposure is widening, and what patterns are forming behind the noise. Startup espionage expansion Operation Nomad Leopard Targets Afghanistan In a sign that the threat actor has moved beyond government targets, th...

The elusive Iranian threat group known as Infy (aka Prince of Persia) has evolved its tactics as part of efforts to hide its tracks, even as it readied new command-and-control (C2) infrastructure coinciding with the end of the widespread internet blackout the regime imposed at the start of January 2026. "The threat actor stopped maintaining its C2 servers on January 8 for the first time since we began monitoring their activities," Tomer Bar, vice president of security research at SafeBreach, said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This was the same day a country-wide internet shutdown was imposed by Iranian authorities in response to recent protests, which likely suggests that even government-affiliated cyber units did not have the ability or motivation to carry out malicious activities within Iran." The cybersecurity company said it observed renewed activity on January 26, 2026, as the hacking crew set up new C2 servers, one day before the Iranian gov...

Threat hunters have disclosed details of a new, stealthy malware campaign dubbed DEAD#VAX that employs a mix of "disciplined tradecraft and clever abuse of legitimate system features" to bypass traditional detection mechanisms and deploy a remote access trojan (RAT) known as AsyncRAT . "The attack leverages IPFS-hosted VHD files, extreme script obfuscation, runtime decryption, and in-memory shellcode injection into trusted Windows processes, never dropping a decrypted binary to disk," Securonix researchers Akshay Gaikwad, Shikha Sangwan, and Aaron Beardslee said in a report shared with The Hacker News. AsyncRAT is an open-source malware that provides attackers with extensive control over compromised endpoints, enabling surveillance and data collection through keylogging, screen and webcam capture, clipboard monitoring, file system access, remote command execution, and persistence across reboots. The starting point of the infection sequence is a phishing email...

Threat actors affiliated with China have been attributed to a fresh set of cyber espionage campaigns targeting government and law enforcement agencies across Southeast Asia throughout 2025. Check Point Research is tracking the previously undocumented activity cluster under the moniker Amaranth-Dragon , which it said shares links to the APT 41 ecosystem. Targeted countries include Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines. "Many of the campaigns were timed to coincide with sensitive local political developments, official government decisions, or regional security events," the cybersecurity company said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "By anchoring malicious activity in familiar, timely contexts, the attackers significantly increased the likelihood that targets would engage with the content." The Israeli firm added that the attacks were "narrowly focused" and "tightly scoped," indicating efforts on the part o...

Microsoft has warned that information-stealing attacks are "rapidly expanding" beyond Windows to target Apple macOS environments by leveraging cross-platform languages like Python and abusing trusted platforms for distribution at scale. The tech giant's Defender Security Research Team said it observed macOS-targeted infostealer campaigns using social engineering techniques such as ClickFix since late 2025 to distribute disk image (DMG) installers that deploy stealer malware families like Atomic macOS Stealer ( AMOS ), MacSync , and DigitStealer . The campaigns have been found to use techniques like fileless execution, native macOS utilities, and AppleScript automation to facilitate data theft. This includes details like web browser credentials and session data, iCloud Keychain, and developer secrets. The starting point of these attacks is often a malicious ad, often served through Google Ads, that redirects users searching for tools like DynamicLake and artificial i...