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Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new malware loader codenamed CountLoader that has been put to use by Russian ransomware gangs to deliver post-exploitation tools like Cobalt Strike and AdaptixC2 , and a remote access trojan known as PureHVNC RAT. "CountLoader is being used either as part of an Initial Access Broker's (IAB) toolset or by a ransomware affiliate with ties to the LockBit, Black Basta, and Qilin ransomware groups," Silent Push said in an analysis. Appearing in three different versions – .NET, PowerShell, and JavaScript – the emerging threat has been observed in a campaign targeting individuals in Ukraine using PDF-based phishing lures and impersonating the National Police of Ukraine. It's worth noting that the PowerShell version of the malware was previously flagged by Kaspersky as being distributed using DeepSeek-related decoys to trick users into installing it. The attacks, per the Russian cybersecurity vendor, led to the deployment of...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered two new malicious packages in the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that are designed to deliver a remote access trojan called SilentSync on Windows systems. "SilentSync is capable of remote command execution, file exfiltration, and screen capturing," Zscaler ThreatLabz's Manisha Ramcharan Prajapati and Satyam Singh said . "SilentSync also extracts web browser data, including credentials, history, autofill data, and cookies from web browsers like Chrome, Brave, Edge, and Firefox." The packages, now no longer available for download from PyPI, are listed below. They were both uploaded by a user named "CondeTGAPIS." sisaws (201 Downloads) secmeasure (627 Downloads) Zscaler said the package sisaws mimics the behavior of the legitimate Python package sisa, which is associated with Argentina's national health information system, Sistema Integrado de Información Sanitaria Argentino (SISA). However, ...

The threat actor known as TA558 has been attributed to a fresh set of attacks delivering various remote access trojans (RATs) like Venom RAT to breach hotels in Brazil and Spanish-speaking markets. Russian cybersecurity vendor Kaspersky is tracking the activity, observed in summer 2025, to a cluster it tracks as RevengeHotels. "The threat actors continue to employ phishing emails with invoice themes to deliver Venom RAT implants via JavaScript loaders and PowerShell downloaders," the company said . "A significant portion of the initial infector and downloader code in this campaign appears to be generated by large language model (LLM) agents." The findings demonstrate a new trend among cybercriminal groups to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to bolster their tradecraft. Known to be active since at least 2015, RevengeHotels has a history of hospitality, hotel, and travel organizations in Latin America with the goal of installing malware on compromised syste...

A China-aligned threat actor known as TA415 has been attributed to spear-phishing campaigns targeting the U.S. government, think tanks, and academic organizations utilizing U.S.-China economic-themed lures. "In this activity, the group masqueraded as the current Chair of the Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as well as the U.S.-China Business Council, to target a range of individuals and organizations predominantly focused on U.S.-China relations, trade, and economic policy," Proofpoint said in an analysis. The enterprise security company said the activity, observed throughout July and August 2025, is likely an effort on part of Chinese state-sponsored threat actors to facilitate intelligence gathering amid ongoing U.S.-China trade talks, adding the hacking group shares overlaps with a threat cluster tracked broadly under the names APT41 and Brass Typhoon (formerly Barium). The findings come days...

Cybersecurity researchers have warned of a new campaign that's leveraging a variant of the FileFix social engineering tactic to deliver the StealC information stealer malware. "The observed campaign uses a highly convincing, multilingual phishing site (e.g., fake Facebook Security page), with anti-analysis techniques and advanced obfuscation to evade detection," Acronis security researcher Eliad Kimhy said in a report shared with The Hacker News. At a high level, the attack chain involves the use of FileFix to entice users into launching an initial payload that then proceeds to download seemingly innocuous images containing the malicious components from a Bitbucket repository. This allows the attackers to abuse the trust associated with a legitimate source code hosting platform to bypass detection. FileFix, first documented by security researcher mrd0x as a proof-of-concept (PoC) in June 2025, is a little different from ClickFix in that it eschews the need for us...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a fresh software supply chain attack targeting the npm registry that has affected more than 40 packages that belong to multiple maintainers. "The compromised versions include a function (NpmModule.updatePackage) that downloads a package tarball, modifies package.json, injects a local script (bundle.js), repacks the archive, and republishes it, enabling automatic trojanization of downstream packages," supply chain security company Socket said . The end goal of the campaign is to search developer machines for secrets using TruffleHog's credential scanner and transmit them to an external server under the attacker's control. The attack is capable of targeting both Windows and Linux systems. The following packages have been identified as impacted by the incident - angulartics2@14.1.2 @ctrl/deluge@7.2.2 @ctrl/golang-template@1.4.3 @ctrl/magnet-link@4.0.4 @ctrl/ngx-codemirror@7.0.2 @ctrl/ngx-csv@6.0.2 @ctrl/ngx-emoji-mart@...

The China-aligned threat actor known as Mustang Panda has been observed using an updated version of a backdoor called TONESHELL and a previously undocumented USB worm called SnakeDisk. "The worm only executes on devices with Thailand-based IP addresses and drops the Yokai backdoor," IBM X-Force researchers Golo Mühr and Joshua Chung said in an analysis published last week. The tech giant's cybersecurity division is tracking the cluster under the name Hive0154, which is also broadly referred to as BASIN, Bronze President, Camaro Dragon, Earth Preta, HoneyMyte, Polaris, RedDelta, Stately Taurus, and Twill Typhoon. The state-sponsored threat actor is believed to have been active since at least 2012. TONESHELL was first publicly documented by Trend Micro way back in November 2022 as part of cyber attacks targeting Myanmar, Australia, the Philippines, Japan, and Taiwan between May and October. Typically executed via DLL side-loading, its primary responsibility is to d...

Attacks that target users in their web browsers have seen an unprecedented rise in recent years. In this article, we'll explore what a "browser-based attack" is, and why they're proving to be so effective.  What is a browser-based attack? First, it's important to establish what a browser-based attack is. In most scenarios, attackers don't think of themselves as attacking your web browser. Their end-goal is to compromise your business apps and data. That means going after the third-party services that are now the backbone of business IT. The most common attack path today sees attackers log into third-party services, dump the data, and monetize it through extortion. You need only look at last year's Snowflake customer breaches or the still-ongoing Salesforce attacks to see the impact.  The most logical way to do this is by targeting users of those apps. And because of the changes to working practices, your users are more accessible than ever to external attackers — and ex...

In a world where threats are persistent, the modern CISO's real job isn't just to secure technology—it's to preserve institutional trust and ensure business continuity. This week, we saw a clear pattern: adversaries are targeting the complex relationships that hold businesses together, from supply chains to strategic partnerships. With new regulations and the rise of AI-driven attacks, the decisions you make now will shape your organization's resilience for years to come. This isn't just a threat roundup; it's the strategic context you need to lead effectively. Here's your full weekly recap, packed with the intelligence to keep you ahead. ⚡ Threat of the Week New HybridPetya Ransomware Bypasses UEFI Secure Boot — A copycat version of the infamous Petya/NotPetya malware dubbed HybridPetya has been spotted. But no telemetry exists to suggest HybridPetya has been deployed in the wild yet. It also differs in one key respect: It can compromise the secure boot featu...

Chinese-speaking users are the target of a search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning campaign that uses fake software sites to distribute malware. "The attackers manipulated search rankings with SEO plugins and registered lookalike domains that closely mimicked legitimate software sites," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Pei Han Liao said . "By using convincing language and small character substitutions, they tricked victims into visiting spoofed pages and downloading malware." The activity, which was discovered by the cybersecurity company in August 2025, leads to the deployment of malware families like HiddenGh0st and Winos (aka ValleyRAT), both of which are variants of a remote access trojan called Gh0st RAT. It's worth noting that the use of Winos has been attributed to a cybercrime group known as Silver Fox , which is also tracked as SwimSnake, The Great Thief of Valley (or Valley Thief), UTG-Q-1000, and Void Arachne. It's believed to be acti...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new ransomware strain dubbed HybridPetya that resembles the notorious Petya / NotPetya malware, while also incorporating the ability to bypass the Secure Boot mechanism in Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) systems using a now-patched vulnerability disclosed earlier this year. Slovakian cybersecurity company ESET said the samples were uploaded to the VirusTotal platform in February 2025. "HybridPetya encrypts the Master File Table , which contains important metadata about all the files on NTFS-formatted partitions," security researcher Martin Smolár said . "Unlike the original Petya/NotPetya, HybridPetya can compromise modern UEFI-based systems by installing a malicious EFI application onto the EFI System Partition." In other words, the deployed UEFI application is the central component that takes care of encrypting the Master File Table (MFT) file, which contains metadata related to all the files on the NTF...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added a critical security flaw impacting Dassault Systèmes DELMIA Apriso Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) software to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-5086 , carries a CVSS score of 9.0 out of 10.0. According to Dassault, the issue impacts versions from Release 2020 through Release 2025. "Dassault Systèmes DELMIA Apriso contains a deserialization of untrusted data vulnerability that could lead to a remote code execution," the agency said in an advisory. The addition of CVE-2025-5086 to the KEV catalog comes after the SANS Internet Storm Center reported seeing exploitation attempts targeting the flaw that originate from the IP address 156.244.33[.]162 , which geolocates to Mexico. The attacks involve sending an HTTP request to the "/apriso/WebServices/FlexNetOperationsService.sv...

Threat actors affiliated with the Akira ransomware group have continued to target SonicWall devices for initial access. Cybersecurity firm Rapid7 said it observed a spike in intrusions involving SonicWall appliances over the past month, particularly following reports about renewed Akira ransomware activity since late July 2025. SonicWall subsequently revealed the SSL VPN activity aimed at its firewalls involved a year-old security flaw ( CVE-2024-40766 , CVSS score: 9.3) where local user passwords were carried over during the migration and not reset. "We are observing increased threat activity from actors attempting to brute-force user credentials," the company noted . "To mitigate risk, customers should enable Botnet Filtering to block known threat actors and ensure Account Lockout policies are enabled." SonicWall has also urged users to review LDAP SSL VPN Default User Groups, describing it as a "critical weak point" if misconfigured in the con...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed two new campaigns that are serving fake browser extensions using malicious ads and fake websites to steal sensitive data. The malvertising campaign, per Bitdefender , is designed to push fake " Meta Verified " browser extensions named SocialMetrics Pro that claim to unlock the blue check badge for Facebook and Instagram profiles. At least 37 malicious ads have been observed serving the extension in question. "The malicious ads are bundled with a video tutorial that guides viewers through the process of downloading and installing a so-called browser extension, which claims to unlock the blue verification tick on Facebook or other special features," the Romanian cybersecurity vendor said. But, in reality, the extension – which is hosted on a legitimate cloud service called Box -- is capable of collecting session cookies from Facebook and sending them to a Telegram bot controlled by the attackers. It's also equipped to ...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new campaign that leverages ConnectWise ScreenConnect, a legitimate Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) software, to deliver a fleshless loader that drops a remote access trojan (RAT) called AsyncRAT to steal sensitive data from compromised hosts. "The attacker used ScreenConnect to gain remote access, then executed a layered VBScript and PowerShell loader that fetched and ran obfuscated components from external URLs," LevelBlue said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "These components included encoded .NET assemblies ultimately unpacking into AsyncRAT while maintaining persistence via a fake 'Skype Updater' scheduled task." In the infection chain documented by the cybersecurity company, the threat actors have been found to leverage a ScreenConnect deployment to initiate a remote session and launch a Visual Basic Script payload via hands-on-keyboard activity. "We saw trojanized ScreenC...

An advanced persistent threat (APT) group from China has been attributed to the compromise of a Philippines-based military company using a previously undocumented fileless malware framework called EggStreme . "This multi-stage toolset achieves persistent, low-profile espionage by injecting malicious code directly into memory and leveraging DLL sideloading to execute payloads," Bitdefender researcher Bogdan Zavadovschi said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The core component, EggStremeAgent, is a full-featured backdoor that enables extensive system reconnaissance, lateral movement, and data theft via an injected keylogger." The targeting of the Philippines is something of a recurring pattern for Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups, particularly in light of geopolitical tensions fueled by territorial disputes in the South China Sea between China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei. That said, the latest activity has not been a...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered two new malware families, including a modular Apple macOS backdoor called CHILLYHELL and a Go-based remote access trojan (RAT) named ZynorRAT that can target both Windows and Linux systems. According to an analysis from Jamf Threat Labs, ChillyHell is written in C++ and is developed for Intel architectures. CHILLYHELL is the name assigned to a malware that's attributed to an uncategorized threat cluster dubbed UNC4487. The hacking group is assessed to have been active since at least October 2022. According to threat intelligence shared by Google Mandiant, UNC4487 is a suspected espionage actor that has been observed compromising the websites of Ukrainian government entities to redirect and socially engineer targets to execute Matanbuchus or CHILLYHELL malware. The Apple device management company said it discovered a new CHILLYHELL sample uploaded to the VirusTotal malware scanning platform on May 2, 2025. The artifact, notarized ...