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Malware linked to break-ins at F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager appliances hides a PHP web shell in memory instead of in a file on disk, Sophos said in an analysis published on September 7. When Apache loads any of the three appliances' own PHP scripts, the malware adds the web shell to the copy held in memory, so a check of the file on disk can come back clean. Those three scripts are the same ones F5 pointed customers to in March, when it said changes to them alone do not show a break-in. A web shell is usually a small script an attacker drops into a web server's folders to run commands through ordinary web requests. Because it sits on disk, defenders look for it by scanning files and comparing them against known-good copies. That approach does not work here. As the researchers put it, the web shell "does not need to exist in its final form on disk." The three scripts are apm_css.php3, full_wt.php3 and webtop_popup_css.php3, part of the BIG-IP APM webtop. ...

Threat actors are continuing to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline their operations , with one financially motivated hacking group employing an autonomous, multi-agent attack framework to carry out a large-scale credential harvesting campaign within six hours. Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said it has observed attackers with diverse motivations targeting proprietary AI models across healthcare, government, and media sectors, exfiltrating API credentials, and co-opting victim cloud environments to sustain unauthorized AI workloads. This highlights growing attacker focus on enterprise AI assets for espionage, extortion, and resource theft. "At this point, we can assume that all threat actors are using AI in some capacity and their operations have benefited," John Hultquist, chief analyst at GTIG, said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. "Like everyone else, we're concerned about the vulnerability problem, but AI is being applie...

Adobe on Monday released security patches to address a maximum-severity flaw impacting Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source that has come under active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability, now tracked as CVE-2026-75650 (CVSS score: 10.0), has been codenamed StyleSmuggler by Sansec, which discovered zero-day exploitation starting September 4, 2026. "This update resolves a critical vulnerability that could result in arbitrary code execution," Adobe said , adding it's "aware that CVE-2026-75650 has been exploited in the wild targeting Adobe Commerce merchants." At its core, the flaw abuses Magento's template system through PHP code injection to generate a "Payment Transaction Failed Reminder" email, triggering code execution in the process.

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a sprawling search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning campaign that paves the way for malware deployment and tech support scams. The campaign, discovered by the DFIR Report in March 2026, has been codenamed BengalSEO . It has operated out of the Indian state of Rajasthan since at least 2015, driven by two IT service providers named WeConnect Solutions LLC (previously iConnect Soft Solutions LLC) and Garage2Global. Although Garage2Global claims to be a website design, SEO, and digital marketing services provider, the cyber threat intelligence platform said it unearthed evidence indicating the company develops malicious web infrastructure used in SEO poisoning campaigns as part of the BengalSEO scam cluster. "This group utilizes its extensive SEO and web development capabilities to create and promote lure pages with multiple Black Hat SEO techniques," the DFIR Report said in a technical analysis published late last mo...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a complex Chromium-based post-exploitation toolkit called PEEP that masquerades as a bookmarks extension for the web browser. "Requiring prior administrative or code execution access, its installer injects the extension directly into Chrome/Edge profiles, bypassing Web Store checks and user prompts by forging Chromium's own Secure Preferences integrity values," SOCRadar said . "A native-messaging tool then extends it beyond browser telemetry to host-level command execution and file management." Once installed, the PEEP "extension" agent polls its command-and-control (C2) server ("206.237.30[.]232" or " xfjcc[.]fun ") every 30 seconds over plaintext HTTP for new commands, while exfiltrating browsing history, active-tab metadata, and session cookies. It also functions as a remote access and browser monitoring toolkit that runs host commands, steals credentials, hijacks sessions...