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Cybersecurity researchers have flagged multiple ClickFix campaigns that deliver three malware loaders called BabaDeda Loader , Lorem Ipsum Loader , and Potemkin , per independent reports from Morphisec , BlueVoyant , and Huntress , respectively. Attacks involving BabaDeda Loader, observed in April 2026, have targeted education and financial organizations. "Earlier BabaDeda activity was known for concealing malicious payloads inside legitimate looking installer packages," Morphisec researcher Shmuel Uzan said. "This new framework keeps that same code genome but expands it into a far more capable loader built for stealth, evasion, and payload flexibility." The starting point of the attacks is a ClickFix social engineering attack that deceives users into running attacker-supplied PowerShell commands to deliver the loader, which is then used to drop information stealers and remote access trojans (RATs) by combining well-known techniques like hidden PowerShell, i...

Security researchers at Zimperium's zLabs have documented a new Android banking trojan, Rokarolla , that targets 217 banking and cryptocurrency apps and packs 137 remote commands. Together, they give an operator near-total control of an infected phone: it lifts lock-screen PINs, reads and sends SMS, rewrites the clipboard to redirect crypto payments, and switches off Google Play Protect. Rokarolla , named after its command-and-control servers, spreads through malicious websites posing as well-known apps such as TikTok and Chrome. The first thing a victim installs is a dropper that pretends to be Google Play Protect. It uses that disguise to get the payload installed and grab Accessibility access. Once the malware is running, one of its commands turns Play Protect off. The theft runs through overlays. Rokarolla pulls a target list from its server, and for each app flagged active, it downloads a fake HTML login page and stores it in a local database. When the victim ope...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged two previously undocumented Windows variants of what was believed to be a Linux-only backdoor called SprySOCKS . "The Windows variants discovered are internally marked as WIN_DRV and WIN_PLUS," ESET said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Both come with a hard-coded C&C [command-and-control] configuration and support communication over TCP, UDP, and WebSocket protocols." Like its Linux counterpart, the Windows versions support more than 30 commands to facilitate system information collection, process enumeration, service management, and file system operations. WIN_DRV has also been found to utilize kernel drivers to conceal the malware's network connections, processes, files, and registry keys. In addition, the variant enables TCP traffic diversion that allows the malware operators to send commands to the backdoor through a random TCP port on the victim's device without exposing the backdoor's act...

The North Korean state-sponsored hacking group known as ScarCruft (aka APT37) has been observed using spear-phishing messages impersonating Microsoft Account security notifications to deliver malware called NarwhalRAT . "The attack email contained a message impersonating an MS account security alert," the Genians Security Center (GSC) said . "It was designed to create concern over possible account compromise and OTP abuse, thereby inducing the recipient to execute the attachment." "The email body instructed the recipient to refer to the attached advisory. However, the actual attachment was not an HWP [Hangul Word Processor] document, but a ZIP archive that contained a malicious LNK file." The email message claims "abnormal activity" related to repeated generation of one-time passwords, passing it off as a phishing attempt aimed at the target's Microsoft Account by a third-party, and urging them to change their password. The end goal o...

A China-linked espionage group hid inside North American medical, academic, and military research networks for more than a year, quietly stealing sensitive research and defense email. The way in was a backdoor on their REDCap research servers that stole login credentials. The exfiltration was the unusual part: the attackers rewired the victims' own Google Workspace rules to copy any message matching their keywords to an inbox they controlled. Google's Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) laid out the campaign in a report published this week and attributes it with high confidence to a cluster it tracks as UNC6508. The actor and its REDCap backdoor are not new names; Google first surfaced both in February , in a wider report on state-backed attacks against the defense sector. It did not name the victims, describing them only as multiple organizations across the US and Canada: clinical providers, academic centers, military health institutions, advocacy groups, and health regul...