Malware | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Threat actors are exploiting the newly disclosed PaperCut flaws to facilitate credential theft in attacks targeting the education sector in the U.S. and Europe. The Arctic Wolf Adversary Research Team said it observed attackers exploiting CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078 – an authentication bypass and remote code execution chain – to conduct command execution and reconnaissance, as well as create privileged accounts. "Observed post-exploitation activity included delivery of Windows registry hive collection tools, Metasploit/Meterpreter-related Java payloads, and commands used to identify hosts, users, processes, and sensitive configuration data," Arctic Wolf said. The cybersecurity company told The Hacker News that the activity has targeted vulnerable PaperCut servers across the education sector, impacting organizations ranging from K-12 schools to major universities in the U.S. and Europe. Some of the identified malicious activity includes - Running discover...

A previously undocumented Linux toolkit has been found compiled directly into the trojanized HAProxy load balancers of two South Korean organizations, where it intercepted web traffic and served altered pages to selected visitors. The attackers named the implant ted in debug strings left in the binary. It is not a HAProxy vulnerability, and installing it requires code execution on the host and the ability to replace the running binary. Rapid7 Labs attributed the toolkit with medium confidence to North Korean state-sponsored actors and put the two victims in South Korea's automotive and media sectors. Command-and-control (C2) requests never reach a backend server and are erased from HAProxy's own connection counters, so neither the backend logs nor the load balancer's statistics record them. "Further evidence is necessary to make a more definitive assessment," Rapid7 said. A request for one specific image path puts the filter into C2 mode, Rapid7 said i...

Threat actors are exploiting two critical security flaws in WordPress plugins Super Forms and Elementor Pro, according to findings from Wordfence. The vulnerabilities in question are - CVE-2026-14894 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A missing file type validation vulnerability in Super Forms – Drag & Drop Form Builder that allows unauthenticated attackers to upload files of any type, including executable PHP files, leading to remote code execution. (Fixed in version 6.3.314) CVE-2026-32475 (CVSS score: 9.0/9.8) - A vulnerability in Elementor Pro that allows unauthenticated attackers to upload files of any type, including executable PHP files, leading to remote code execution. (Fixed in version 4.2.2) As with arbitrary file upload vulnerabilities of this kind, an attacker can leverage them to write a PHP web shell to the site and execute arbitrary code, which can then be abused to create administrator accounts, exfiltrate data, or seize control of the entire WordPress site. It...

The worst part is how normal these attacks look. A call from IT. A shared file. A trusted app. A simple request to click “Allow.” Why break in when someone might open the door? That idea runs through this edition. Attackers use real tools, fake login pages, old account links, and software guides that point to unsafe downloads. One wrong letter in a web address can be enough. There is also ransomware, stolen ID data, hidden attack servers, and weak settings that should have been fixed long ago. Here’s the full list. The threats change every week. Subscribe, and we’ll alert you when each new ThreatsDay Bulletin is out.

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a sophisticated Python-based Windows malware framework called BraZetsu that fuels an underground marketplace commercializing access to compromised hosts. "Unlike the standard infostealer model, BraZetsu is a comprehensive master toolkit that empowers Initial Access Brokers (IABs) by turning compromised systems into highly valuable commercial assets," Group-IB malware analysts Julio Guapo Menezes and Miguel Salazar said in a technical report. "The framework exhibits high operational maturity, utilizing a modular architecture and stealth techniques that allowed some samples to remain fully undetectable on VirusTotal at the time of analysis." BraZetsu is a portmanteau of "Brazil" and "Zetsu," a fictional character from the Japanese Manga series Naruto who is known to operate as a threat from the shadows. The naming is inspired by the fact that the initial access tool stealthily infiltrat...