Malware | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Attackers modified a JavaScript file served by advertising technology company Adform , turning it into a browser-side tool that rewrites cryptocurrency wallet addresses. Adform detected the incident on July 27, 2026, removed the malicious code, notified affected clients, and reported it to authorities. Anyone who visited a site carrying the affected script on July 27 and copied a Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Tron address may have pasted a different address inserted by the malicious code instead. Adform is telling people to clear their browser cache because the altered file may remain cached after the fix, and to check any wallet address before sending funds. Adform says the code was not designed to install software or establish persistence and operated only while an affected page remained open. The captured sample also rewrites addresses entered directly into form fields, so clipboard copying was not the only path to replacement. The public timeline is unresolved. Adform's noti...

A fake browser update served over hijacked hotel Wi-Fi has been used to deliver CornFlake , a remote access trojan (RAT) that can capture webcam images, microphone audio, and keystrokes, Microsoft said in its latest report. Researchers track the operation as CaptiveCrunch and attribute it to Storm-2945 . It assesses Storm-2945 to be an operational sub-cluster of Midnight Blizzard , also known as APT29 and Cozy Bear. The U.S. and U.K. governments attribute the broader actor to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). On the compromised networks ReliaQuest investigated, the captive portal gateway also served as the DNS resolver assigned to connected devices. Administrative control of that gateway let the attackers forge Domain Name System (DNS) answers and redirect the resulting traffic. They could then redirect a laptop's automatic connectivity check to a fake browser or operating system update. Some pages use ClickFix instructions that tell victims to open a termina...

A Chinese-speaking threat actor is suspected to be behind a fresh wave of cyber attacks targeting government organizations mainly located in Central Asia, including Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and the Syrian Arab Republic, since January 2025. These targeted organizations operate across several sectors, such as healthcare, research, government offices, ministries of foreign affairs, logistics, law-enforcement agencies, urban planning and facilities management, and public educational establishments, per Kaspersky. The activity has not been linked to any known adversary or group. The attacks are characterized by the use of two new obfuscated backdoors the Russian cybersecurity company is tracking as OctLurk and SilkLurk , as well as a specialized utility codenamed LurkProxy to proxy network traffic. "OctLurk and SilkLurk can download and inject additional plugins to perform further malicious actions, including launching command shells, perf...

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a previously undocumented Go-based loader framework called HollowFrame and a Rust-based malware family tracked as Matryoshka . According to Blackpoint Cyber, the intrusion sequence begins with a spear-phishing message containing a link to an encrypted archive, which holds a Windows Shortcut (LNK). Executing the file triggers a multi-stage chain that involves privilege escalation, weakening Microsoft Defender protections, and downloading additional payloads. While HollowFrame is launched via a DLL side-loading pair comprising the legitimate Python binary ("python.exe") and a rogue DLL ("python311.dll"), Matryoshka comes in two variants, one which supports HTTP-based communication and command execution, and another that uses GitHub for command-and-control (C2), including beaconing, tasking, reconnaissance, file transfer, and secondary payload delivery. "Together, HollowFrame and Matryoshka gave the actor a pers...

Bitsight says some cheap Android TV boxes have shipped with apps that rewrite their hardware identity to mimic Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, or Vivo phones, then click ads on websites run by the same operators. Researchers named the operation Fuyao and attributed it to Zhejiang Fengwo IoT Technology Co., Ltd., a mainland China company founded in 2019. The same apps have a second job. When a box detects an HDMI signal, it usually switches to relaying other people's traffic through the owner's broadband line as a SOCKS5 exit node. With HDMI off, it goes back to waiting for ad-fraud tasks. Bitsight found the operation by registering an expired domain used as a factory backdoor and telemetry collector. Most identifiable devices reported the model name H96_MAX_V11, though Bitsight said its sinkhole view was skewed toward older models from one brand and did not establish a complete affected-model list. In one day, after filtering for devices carrying the Fuyao apps, the sinkhol...

Threat actors with ties to North Korea have been attributed to a sophisticated macOS malvertising campaign that involves redirecting users to fake web pages displaying a full-screen non-existent update sequence to deliver malware as part of a new iteration of the long-running Contagious Interview campaign. The defining aspect of the attack is that bogus macOS software update screen stealthily copies an attack command to the clipboard and then prompts the victim to execute it via the Terminal app, a known technique referred to as ClickFix . "The experience is designed to induce panic," AllSecure said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The computer appears frozen or rebooting, so a user who believes the OS has failed follows instructions they would otherwise find suspicious." The campaign is also noteworthy for its use of blockchain-hosted command-and-control (C2), with the malware extracting the live server address from an Ethereum smart contract. Thi...

A lot of security still comes down to trusting the wrong screen. This week, that screen might be a login page, an install guide, a recruiter call, or a familiar service behaving slightly wrong. Behind it: reused credentials, exposed systems, quiet loaders, abused trust, and exploit paths that should have been harder. Some defenses improved. The loose parts still got found first. Anyway, here's the mess. The threats change every week. Subscribe, and we’ll alert you when each new ThreatsDay Bulletin is out.

South Korean authorities and four security firms have disclosed a state-sponsored campaign that compromised trusted domestic websites. The attackers used those sites to exploit locally installed financial-security software and infect targeted visitors with SIGNBT or COPPERHEDGE backdoors. A compromised page could infect a system running a vulnerable AnySign4PC version without a prompt or user-initiated download. The Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) says AnySign4PC versions 1.1.4.4 through 1.1.4.6 are affected and lists version 1.1.5.0 as the fixed release. It recommends deleting vulnerable installations. AhnLab refers to two exploited products only as financial-security software A and I. Its report does not disclose their identities, affected or fixed versions, or vulnerability identifiers. AhnLab said it identified evidence of related attacks at 72 organizations in 2026. The company also found 15 legitimate websites used as watering holes. Its investigation also foun...

The Chinese cybercrime group known as Silver Fox has been observed using new drivers as part of bring your own vulnerable driver (BYOVD) attacks targeting a Japanese organization in the industrial manufacturing sector to ultimately deliver ValleyRAT (aka Winos 4.0) for persistent remote access. "In this campaign, the group combines new vulnerable-driver abuse, newly observed abuse of legitimate applications for DLL sideloading, defense evasion, and layered recovery mechanisms to keep ValleyRAT running," Cato Networks researchers Shani Kurtzberg, Tomer Pugach, Dr. Guy Waizel, Zohar Buber, Idan Tarab, and Shani Kurtzberg said in an analysis. The attack chain begins with an invoice-themed phishing lure that uses attacker-controlled content hosted on legitimate QQ and Tencent Cloud services to trigger a DLL side-loading chain via a ZIP archive that paves the way for the deployment of ValleyRAT, but not before leveraging the BYOVD technique to obtain kernel access and impai...

The Russian threat actors recently linked to the exploitation of a now-patched vulnerability in Zimbra have been observed exploiting another vulnerability, this time in Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA), to target U.S. and European government entities, as well as the telecommunications, financial, hospitality, and aerospace sectors. The activity, which began on July 22, 2026, involves the weaponization of CVE-2026-42897 (CVSS score: 8.1), a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in OWA. It was flagged by Microsoft as having been exploited in attacks as far back as May 2026. Enterprise security company Proofpoint has attributed the activity to Laundry Bear (aka CL-STA-1114, TA488, UNK_PitStop, and Void Blizzard), which was recently attributed to the zero-day exploitation of CVE-2025-66376, an XSS flaw in Zimbra's Classic UI, since at least July 2025 before it was patched four months later. In these attacks, the threat actors sent out messages from adversary-controlled P...

Amazon has tied the September 2025 hijack of the npm packages debug and chalk to North Korea. For ten months, the incident sat in the public record as crypto theft: a maintainer phished through a lookalike npm domain and a wallet-draining script pushed into at least 18 packages carrying more than 2 billion weekly downloads between them. The original Aikido and Wiz reports did not attribute the incident to North Korea. In research published July 29, Amazon Threat Intelligence assesses with medium confidence that the group behind the March 2026 axios compromise was behind it. The same group planted a trojanized file in a small package called typo-crypto in March 2025, according to Amazon, a full year before it reached axios. Analysts found it while chasing a domain registered in 2025 that surfaced during the axios investigation. Downloads were low, but the tradecraft "aligns with what we later observed in attacks on more popular packages," Amazon wrote, and the compa...

Source code for the Flying Eagle Android remote access trojan (RAT) framework is circulating through criminal Telegram channels. Hunt.io and independent researcher NetAskari traced matching control panels and certificates to 170 internet servers. They linked the framework to a fake "公安一网通办" Public Security service application targeting Android users in China. The kit supports payment-password and keystroke capture, screen recording, camera access, and phishing prompts for financial, adult-content, and government-service applications. Hunt.io's search of the preceding 30 days of telemetry found infrastructure fingerprints on 170 servers, a count that does not establish 170 infected phones, victims, operators, or confirmed command-and-control (C2) systems. The researchers found 158 servers through the AdminPro page title, HTTPS redirect behaviour, and matching response headers, then identified 12 more through a default certificate packaged with Flying Eagle. They sa...

Beta release versions of two npm packages in the @joyfill namespace have been compromised to deliver a remote access trojan (RAT) associated with the DEV#POPPER malware family. The list of affected packages is as follows - @joyfill/layouts@0.1.2-2773.beta.0 @joyfill/components@4.0.0-rc24-2773-beta.4 The two packages "contain an import-time JavaScript implant that resolves encrypted code through Tron, Aptos, and BNB Smart Chain transactions," Socket said in an analysis. Unlike other malicious packages that are triggered via an npm lifecycle hook, the implant delivered as part of the JavaScript libraries runs when Node.js loads the CommonJS package entry point. It's worth noting that the use of a multi-blockchain resolver structure comprising Tron, Aptos, and BNB Smart Chain (BSC) has been linked to a threat cluster tracked as PolinRider , which is assessed to be related to Contagious Interview . Earlier this month, Checkmarx and OpenSourceMalware highl...

A new Mirai-derived botnet called Tengu can use a compromised Linux device's hardware watchdog to trigger a reboot when defenders kill its main process. If that happens, Tengu's other persistence mechanisms get another chance to relaunch it. Nozomi Networks Labs observed the dropper reaching its honeypots through Telnet credential brute force. Tengu supports 25 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) methods. It can also run a SOCKS5 proxy, execute shell commands, and collect system and network data. The malware can update itself and retrieve additional Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) or Android package (APK) payloads. Nozomi listed architecture-specific samples for i386, amd64, MIPS, ARM, PowerPC, and m68k. The report identifies no specific vendor or device model. It also names no operator, infection count, or real-world DDoS victims. It shows what Tengu can do, not how far it has spread. Defenders should start by removing internet exposure for Telnet and other unne...

The Iranian state-backed hacking group tracked as Nimbus Manticore (aka GalaxyGato, Mirage Kitten, Smoke Sandstorm, Subtle Snail, and UNC1549) has been attributed to a fresh set of attacks targeting entities across the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. The intrusions involve the use of a previously undocumented Windows backdoor called NightLedger and two custom WebSocket tunnelers, BridgeHead and ArcBridge, with an aim to maintain covert access. Targets of the campaign include Egypt, SMB and government environments in Jordan and Tanzania, aviation organizations in Pakistan, telecommunication companies in Ethiopia, and financial-sector entities in Burkina Faso, per Kaspersky. "The toolset includes NightLedger, a new Windows backdoor for reconnaissance, command execution, file operations, process discovery, and screenshot capture; and two custom WebSocket-based tunnelers, ArcBridge and BridgeHead, for covert network access and operator-controlled tunneling," Kasper...

Dysphoria , an Internet of Things (IoT) botnet line tracked by CNCERT and XLab, has adopted blockchain-based name services and infected-device relays after a March law-enforcement operation against JackSkid infrastructure. The researchers say the design makes the botnet harder to disrupt. CNCERT, China's national computer emergency response team, and XLab, the threat-intelligence lab of Chinese firm Qi'anxin, put its population above 200,000 bots. Their telemetry logged 4,401 confirmed active devices inside China between July 14 and 20 and a single-day peak of 239,000 bots abroad. None of the counts has been independently reproduced. The researchers published no counting or de-duplication methodology, so the numbers should not be read as a precise device census. Defenders should patch exposed IoT gear, replace devices that can no longer be updated, eliminate default and weak credentials, and disable remote management and UPnP where they are not needed. The lineage runs...

Monday starts with the usual promise that everything is under control. Then the logs wake up. This week, trusted tools crossed lines, old flaws found new work, exposed systems stayed exposed, and attackers kept hiding inside normal-looking services. Nothing looked strange at first. That helped. That is the mood. Here is the full recap. ⚡ Threat of the Week OpenAI Says Its AI Agent Went Rogue and Targeted Hugging Face - OpenAI disclosed that it lost control of two AI models during a security evaluation that ended in a breach of Hugging Face. The AI company said its AI models broke out of a sealed testing environment and broke into Hugging Face's production system to find solutions for the ExploitGym benchmark. "The incident also makes clear that advanced models can discover and exploit novel attack paths in real-world systems without source-code access," OpenAI said. "It highlights that advanced cyber capabilities must be developed alongside stronger safegua...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a Microsoft Teams-themed phishing campaign that employs "secure document" lures to deliver legitimate remote monitoring and management ( RMM ) tools. "The victim was directed through compromised web infrastructure to a counterfeit Microsoft Store page claiming that Microsoft Teams had to be updated before the shared document could be opened," ZeroBEC said in a report published last week. The bogus Teams page in question is "teamvem[.]com." The active download is used to deliver "supportdev.exe," an Inno Setup-based loader that launches PowerShell in a hidden window, fetches an official Level RMM installer, and registers the endpoint using an attacker-controlled enrollment secret ("LEVEL_API_KEY=GxSCHE8EZwfyYN3iPQHPai8D"). The same PowerShell command has been found to download and deploy ConnectWise ScreenConnect in parallel, indicating an attempt to drop multiple RMM tools with an intent to...

The China-linked cybercrime group behind the use of income tax-related phishing lures targeting Indian taxpayers, tax professionals, and corporate finance teams has been observed using a sophisticated crypter service called Cruciferra . According to a new analysis by Proofpoint, Cruciferra has been utilized by various unrelated cybercriminal threat clusters to deliver a wide array of remote access trojans (RATs) and information stealer malware. "Cruciferra is written in Mono and features numerous techniques designed to evade detection, analysis, and incident response efforts," the enterprise security company said in an analysis published last week. "These include using indirect system calls, API and Import Address Table (IAT) unhooking, bring-your-own-vulnerable-driver ( BYOVD )-based EDR tampering, privilege escalation, persistence mechanisms, and a customized implementation of Process Ghosting used to execute payloads while minimizing forensic artifacts."...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged fresh malicious cyber activity by a threat actor with ties to East Asia targeting government entities in the Middle East. The intrusions have resulted in the deployment of previously unreported malware families dubbed TELESHIM, MIXEDKEY, and BINDCLOAK, according to Zscaler ThreatLabz. The cybersecurity firm said it detected the campaign earlier this month. "The campaign used a multi-stage attack chain to establish and maintain access on infected systems, with TELESHIM abusing the Telegram API for command-and-control (C2) communication to blend in with legitimate internet traffic," Sudeep Singh, senior manager of APT research at Zscaler ThreatLabz, said in a technical write-up published last week. The attack chain starts with an ISO file containing a legitimate executable ("RegSchdTask.exe") that's used to sideload a rogue DLL ("AsTaskSched.dll"), a 32-bit Windows backdoor called TELESHIM that then leverage...