Malware | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Oligo Security has warned of ongoing attacks exploiting a two-year-old security flaw in the Ray open-source artificial intelligence (AI) framework to turn infected clusters with NVIDIA GPUs into a self-replicating cryptocurrency mining botnet. The activity, codenamed ShadowRay 2.0 , is an evolution of a prior wave that was observed between September 2023 and March 2024. The attack, at its core, exploits a critical missing authentication bug (CVE-2023-48022, CVSS score: 9.8) to take control of susceptible instances and hijack their computing power for illicit cryptocurrency mining using XMRig. The vulnerability has remained unpatched due to a " long-standing design decision " that's consistent with Ray's development best practices, which requires it to be run in an isolated network and act upon trusted code. The campaign involves submitting malicious jobs, with commands ranging from simple reconnaissance to complex multi-stage Bash and Python payloads, to an una...

Cybersecurity researchers have warned of an actively expanding botnet dubbed Tsundere that's targeting Windows users. Active since mid-2025, the threat is designed to execute arbitrary JavaScript code retrieved from a command-and-control (C2) server, Kaspersky researcher Lisandro Ubiedo said in an analysis published today. There are currently no details on how the botnet malware is propagated; however, in at least one case, the threat actors behind the operation are said to have leveraged a legitimate Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tool as a conduit to download an MSI installer file from a compromised site. The names given to the malware artifacts – Valorant, r6x (Rainbow Six Siege X), and cs2 (Counter-Strike 2) – also suggest that the implant is likely being disseminated using lures for games. It's possible that users searching for pirated versions of these games are the target. Regardless of the method used, the fake MSI installer is designed to install Node.js...

This week has been crazy in the world of hacking and online security. From Thailand to London to the US, we've seen arrests, spies at work, and big power moves online. Hackers are getting caught. Spies are getting better at their jobs. Even simple things like browser add-ons and smart home gadgets are being used to attack people. Every day, there's a new story that shows how quickly things are changing in the fight over the internet. Governments are cracking down harder on cybercriminals. Big tech companies are rushing to fix their security. Researchers keep finding weak spots in apps and devices we use every day. We saw fake job recruiters on LinkedIn spying on people, huge crypto money-laundering cases, and brand-new malware made just to beat Apple's Mac protections. All these stories remind us: the same tech that makes life better can very easily be turned into a weapon. Here's a simple look at the biggest cybersecurity news happening right now — from the hidde...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new Android banking trojan called Sturnus that enables credential theft and full device takeover to conduct financial fraud. "A key differentiator is its ability to bypass encrypted messaging," ThreatFabric said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "By capturing content directly from the device screen after decryption, Sturnus can monitor communications via WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal." Another notable feature is its ability to stage overlay attacks by serving fake login screens atop banking apps to capture victims' credentials. According to the Dutch mobile security company, Sturnus is privately operated and is currently assessed to be in the evaluation stage. Artifacts distributing the banking malware are listed below - Google Chrome ("com.klivkfbky.izaybebnx") Preemix Box ("com.uvxuthoq.noscjahae") The malware has been designed to specifically single out financial inst...

Threat actors are leveraging bogus installers masquerading as popular software to trick users into installing malware as part of a global malvertising campaign dubbed TamperedChef . The end goal of the attacks is to establish persistence and deliver JavaScript malware that facilitates remote access and control, per a new report from Acronis Threat Research Unit (TRU). The campaign , per the Singapore-headquartered company, is still ongoing, with new artifacts being detected and associated infrastructure remaining active. "The operator(s) rely on social engineering by using everyday application names, malvertising, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and abused digital certificates that aim to increase user trust and evade security detection," researchers Darrel Virtusio and Jozsef Gegeny said. TamperedChef is the name assigned to a long-running campaign that has leveraged seemingly legitimate installers for various utilities to distribute an information stealer malware of...

A newly discovered campaign has compromised tens of thousands of outdated or end-of-life (EoL) ASUS routers worldwide, predominantly in Taiwan, the U.S., and Russia, to rope them into a massive network. The router hijacking activity has been codenamed Operation WrtHug by SecurityScorecard's STRIKE team. Southeast Asia and European countries are some of the other regions where infections have been recorded. Over the past six months, more than 50,000 unique IP addresses belonging to these compromised devices around the globe have been identified. The attacks likely involve the exploitation of six known security flaws in end-of-life ASUS WRT routers to take control of susceptible devices. All the infected routers have been found to share a unique self-signed TLS certificate with an expiration date set for 100 years from April 2022. SecurityScorecard said 99% of the services presenting the certificate are ASUS AiCloud, a proprietary service designed to enable access to local stora...

The threat actor known as PlushDaemon has been observed using a previously undocumented Go-based network backdoor codenamed EdgeStepper to facilitate adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) attacks. EdgeStepper "redirects all DNS queries to an external, malicious hijacking node, effectively rerouting the traffic from legitimate infrastructure used for software updates to attacker-controlled infrastructure," ESET security researcher Facundo Muñoz said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Known to be active since at least 2018, PlushDaemon is assessed to be a China-aligned group that has attacked entities in the U.S., New Zealand, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and mainland China. It was first documented by the Slovak cybersecurity company earlier this January, detailing a supply chain attack aimed at a South Korean virtual private network (VPN) provider named IPany to target a semiconductor company and an unidentified software development company in South Korea wi...

The malware authors associated with a Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) kit known as Sneaky 2FA have incorporated Browser-in-the-Browser (BitB) functionality into their arsenal, underscoring the continued evolution of such offerings and further making it easier for less-skilled threat actors to mount attacks at scale. Push Security, in a report shared with The Hacker News, said it observed the use of the technique in phishing attacks designed to steal victims' Microsoft account credentials. BitB was first documented by security researcher mr.d0x in March 2022, detailing how it's possible to leverage a combination of HTML and CSS code to create fake browser windows that can masquerade as login pages for legitimate services in order to facilitate credential theft . "BitB is principally designed to mask suspicious phishing URLs by simulating a pretty normal function of in-browser authentication – a pop-up login form," Push Security said. "BitB phishing pages repl...

Meta on Tuesday said it has made available a tool called WhatsApp Research Proxy to some of its long-time bug bounty researchers to help improve the program and more effectively research the messaging platform's network protocol. The idea is to make it easier to delve into WhatsApp-specific technologies as the application continues to be a lucrative attack surface for state-sponsored actors and commercial spyware vendors. The company also noted that it's setting up a pilot initiative where it's inviting research teams to focus on platform abuse with support for internal engineering and tooling. "Our goal is to lower the barrier of entry for academics and other researchers who might not be as familiar with bug bounties to join our program," it added . The development comes as the social media giant said it has awarded more than $25 million in bug bounties to over 1,400 researchers from 88 countries in the last 15 years, out of which more than $4 million were...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a cyber attack targeting a major U.S.-based real-estate company that involved the use of a nascent command-and-control (C2) and red teaming framework known as Tuoni . "The campaign leveraged the emerging Tuoni C2 framework, a relatively new, command-and-control (C2) tool (with a free license) that delivers stealthy, in-memory payloads," Morphisec researcher Shmuel Uzan said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Tuoni is advertised as an advanced C2 framework designed for security professionals, facilitating penetration testing operations, red team engagements, and security assessments. A "Community Edition" of the software is freely available for download from GitHub. It was first released in early 2024. The attack, per Morphisec, unfolded in mid-October 2025, with the unknown threat actor likely leveraging social engineering via Microsoft Teams impersonation for initial access. It's suspected that t...

Suspected espionage-driven threat actors from Iran have been observed deploying backdoors like TWOSTROKE and DEEPROOT as part of continued attacks aimed at aerospace, aviation, and defense industries in the Middle East. The activity has been attributed by Google-owned Mandiant to a threat cluster tracked as UNC1549 (aka GalaxyGato, Nimbus Manticore, or Subtle Snail), which was first documented by the threat intelligence firm early last year. "Operating in late 2023 through 2025, UNC1549 employed sophisticated initial access vectors, including abuse of third-party relationships to gain entry (pivoting from service providers to their customers), VDI breakouts from third-parties, and highly targeted, role-relevant phishing," researchers Mohamed El-Banna, Daniel Lee, Mike Stokkel, and Josh Goddard said. The disclosure comes about two months after Swiss cybersecurity company PRODAFT tied the hacking group to a campaign targeting European telecommunications companies, succes...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a set of seven npm packages published by a single threat actor that leverages a cloaking service called Adspect to differentiate between real victims and security researchers to ultimately redirect them to sketchy crypto-themed sites. The malicious npm packages, published by a threat actor named " dino_reborn " between September and November 2025, are listed below. The npm account no longer exists on npm as of writing. signals-embed (342 downloads) dsidospsodlks (184 downloads) applicationooks21 (340 downloads) application-phskck (199 downloads) integrator-filescrypt2025 (199 downloads) integrator-2829 (276 downloads) integrator-2830 (290 downloads) "Upon visiting a fake website constructed by one of the packages, the threat actor determines if the visitor is a victim or a security researcher," Socket security researcher Olivia Brown said. "If the visitor is a victim, they see a fake CAPTCHA, eventually b...

Microsoft on Monday disclosed that it automatically detected and neutralized a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack targeting a single endpoint in Australia that measured 15.72 terabits per second (Tbps) and nearly 3.64 billion packets per second (pps). The tech giant said it was the largest DDoS attack ever observed in the cloud, and that it originated from a TurboMirai-class Internet of Things (IoT) botnet known as AISURU . It's currently not known who was targeted by the attack. "The attack involved extremely high-rate UDP floods targeting a specific public IP address, launched from over 500,000 source IPs across various regions," Microsoft's Sean Whalen said . "These sudden UDP bursts had minimal source spoofing and used random source ports, which helped simplify traceback and facilitated provider enforcement." According to data from QiAnXin XLab, the AISURU botnet is powered by nearly 300,000 infected devices, most of which are routers, se...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered malware campaigns using the now-prevalent ClickFix social engineering tactic to deploy Amatera Stealer and NetSupport RAT . The activity, observed this month, is being tracked by eSentire under the moniker EVALUSION . First spotted in June 2025, Amatera is assessed to be an evolution of ACR (short for "AcridRain") Stealer, which was available under the malware-as-a-service (MaaS) model until sales of the malware were suspended in mid-July 2024. Amatera is available for purchase via subscription plans that go from $199 per month to $1,499 for a year. "Amatera provides threat actors with extensive data exfiltration capabilities targeting crypto-wallets, browsers, messaging applications, FTP clients, and email services," the Canadian cybersecurity vendor said. "Notably, Amatera employs advanced evasion techniques such as WoW64 SysCalls to circumvent user-mode hooking mechanisms commonly used by sandboxes, Anti-Vi...

This week showed just how fast things can go wrong when no one's watching. Some attacks were silent and sneaky. Others used tools we trust every day — like AI, VPNs, or app stores — to cause damage without setting off alarms. It's not just about hacking anymore. Criminals are building systems to make money, spy, or spread malware like it's a business. And in some cases, they're using the same apps and services that businesses rely on — flipping the script without anyone noticing at first. The scary part? Some threats weren't even bugs — just clever use of features we all take for granted. And by the time people figured it out, the damage was done. Let's look at what really happened, why it matters, and what we should all be thinking about now. ⚡ Threat of the Week Silently Patched Fortinet Flaw Comes Under Attack — A vulnerability that was patched by Fortinet in FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) has been exploited in the wild since early October 2025 by threat actors to c...

The threat actor known as Dragon Breath has been observed making use of a multi-stage loader codenamed RONINGLOADER to deliver a modified variant of a remote access trojan called Gh0st RAT. The campaign, which is primarily aimed at Chinese-speaking users, employs trojanized NSIS installers masquerading as legitimate like Google Chrome and Microsoft Teams, according to Elastic Security Labs. "The infection chain employs a multi-stage delivery mechanism that leverages various evasion techniques, with many redundancies aimed at neutralising endpoint security products popular in the Chinese market," security researchers Jia Yu Chan and Salim Bitam said . "These include bringing a legitimately signed driver, deploying custom WDAC policies, and tampering with the Microsoft Defender binary through PPL [Protected Process Light] abuse." Dragon Breath, also known as APT-Q-27 and Golden Eye, was previously highlighted by Sophos in May 2023 in connection with a campaign ...