Malware | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Most of this week's threats didn't rely on new tricks. They relied on familiar systems behaving exactly as designed, just in the wrong hands. Ordinary files, routine services, and trusted workflows were enough to open doors without forcing them. What stands out is how little friction attackers now need. Some activity focused on quiet reach and coverage, others on timing and reuse. The emphasis wasn't speed or spectacle, but control gained through scale, patience, and misplaced trust. The stories below trace where that trust bent, not how it broke. Each item is a small signal of a larger shift, best seen when viewed together. Spear-phishing delivers custom backdoor Operation Nomad Leopard Targets Afghanistan Government entities in Afghanistan have been at the receiving end of a spear-phishing campaign dubbed Operation Nomad Leopard that employs bogus administrative documents as decoys to distribute a backdoor named FALSECUB by means o...

A new malicious package discovered in the Python Package Index (PyPI) has been found to impersonate a popular library for symbolic mathematics to deploy malicious payloads, including a cryptocurrency miner, on Linux hosts. The package, named sympy-dev , mimics SymPy , replicating the latter's project description verbatim in an attempt to deceive unsuspecting users into thinking that they are downloading a "development version" of the library. It has been downloaded over 1,100 times since it was first published on January 17, 2026. Although the download count is not a reliable yardstick for measuring the number of infections, the figure likely suggests some developers may have fallen victim to the malicious campaign. The package remains available for download as of writing. According to Socket , the original library has been modified to act as a downloader for an XMRig cryptocurrency miner on compromised systems. The malicious behavior is designed to trigger only when ...

As many as 3,136 individual IP addresses linked to likely targets of the Contagious Interview activity have been identified, with the campaign claiming 20 potential victim organizations spanning artificial intelligence (AI), cryptocurrency, financial services, IT services, marketing, and software development sectors in Europe, South Asia, the Middle East, and Central America. The new findings come from Recorded Future's Insikt Group, which is tracking the North Korean threat activity cluster under the moniker PurpleBravo . First documented in late 2023, the campaign is also known as CL-STA-0240, DeceptiveDevelopment, DEV#POPPER, Famous Chollima, Gwisin Gang, Tenacious Pungsan, UNC5342, Void Dokkaebi, and WaterPlum. The 3,136 individual IP addresses, primarily concentrated around South Asia and North America, are assessed to have been targeted by the adversary from August 2024 to September 2025. The 20 victim companies are said to be based in Belgium, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, In...

The recently discovered sophisticated Linux malware framework known as VoidLink is assessed to have been developed by a single person with assistance from an artificial intelligence (AI) model. That's according to new findings from Check Point Research, which identified operational security blunders by malware's author that provided clues to its developmental origins. The latest insight makes VoidLink one of the first instances of an advanced malware largely generated using AI. "These materials provide clear evidence that the malware was produced predominantly through AI-driven development, reaching a first functional implant in under a week," the cybersecurity company said, adding it reached more than 88,000 lines of code by early December 2025. VoidLink, first publicly documented last week, is a feature-rich malware framework written in Zig that's specifically designed for long-term, stealthy access to Linux-based cloud environments. The malware is said...

LastPass is alerting users to a new active phishing campaign that's impersonating the password management service, which aims to trick users into giving up their master passwords. The campaign, which began on or around January 19, 2026, involves sending phishing emails claiming upcoming maintenance and urging them to create a local backup of their password vaults in the next 24 hours. The messages, LastPass said, come with the following subject lines - LastPass Infrastructure Update: Secure Your Vault Now Your Data, Your Protection: Create a Backup Before Maintenance Don't Miss Out: Backup Your Vault Before Maintenance Important: LastPass Maintenance & Your Vault Security Protect Your Passwords: Backup Your Vault (24-Hour Window) The emails are designed to steer unsuspecting users to a phishing site ("group-content-gen2.s3.eu-west-3.amazonaws[.]com/5yaVgx51ZzGf") that then redirects to the domain " mail-lastpass[.]com ." The company emphasiz...