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Threat actors likely associated with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) have been observed using GitHub as command-and-control (C2) infrastructure in multi-stage attacks targeting organizations in South Korea. The attack chain, per Fortinet FortiGuard Labs , involves obfuscated Windows shortcut (LNK) files acting as the starting point to drop a decoy PDF document and a PowerShell script that sets the stage for the next phase of the attack. It's assessed that these LNK files are distributed via phishing emails. As soon as the payloads are downloaded, the victim is displayed the PDF document, while the malicious PowerShell script runs silently in the background. The PowerShell script performs checks to resist analysis by scanning for running processes related to virtual machines, debuggers, and forensic tools. If any of those processes are detected, the script immediately terminates. Otherwise, it extracts a Visual Basic Scri...

Your attack surface no longer lives on one operating system, and neither do the campaigns targeting it. In enterprise environments, attackers move across Windows endpoints, executive MacBooks, Linux infrastructure, and mobile devices, taking advantage of the fact that many SOC workflows are still fragmented by platform.  For security leaders, this creates a costly operational gap : slower validation, limited early-stage visibility, more escalations, and more time for attackers to steal credentials, establish persistence, or move deeper before the response fully begins. The Multi-OS Attack Problem SOCs Aren’t Ready For A multi-OS attack can turn one threat into several different investigations at once. The campaign may follow a different path depending on the system it reaches, which breaks the speed and consistency SOC teams rely on during early triage. Instead of moving through one clear validation pro...

This week had real hits. The key software got tampered with. Active bugs showed up in the tools people use every day. Some attacks didn’t even need much effort because the path was already there. One weak spot now spreads wider than before. What starts small can reach a lot of systems fast. New bugs, faster use, less time to react. That’s this week. Read through it. ⚡ Threat of the Week Axios npm Package Compromised by N. Korean Hackers —Threat actors with ties to North Korea seized control of the npm account belonging to the lead maintainer of Axios, a popular npm package with nearly 100 million weekly downloads, to push malicious versions containing a cross-platform malware dubbed WAVESHAPER.V2. The activity has been attributed to a financially motivated threat actor known as UNC1069. The incident demonstrates how quickly the compromise of a popular npm package can have ripple effects through the ecosystem. T...

Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (aka BKA or the Bundeskriminalamt) has unmasked the real identities of two of the key figures associated with the now-defunct REvil (aka Sodinokibi ) ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation. One of the threat actors, who went by the alias UNKN , functioned as a representative of the group, advertising the ransomware in June 2019 on the XSS cybercrime forum. He has now been identified as Daniil Maksimovich Shchukin , a 31-year-old Russian national. He also went by the online monikers Oneiilk2, Oneillk2, Oneillk22, and GandCrab. The development was reported by independent security journalist Brian Krebs. "From early 2019 at the latest until at least July 2021, the wanted person, in cooperation with other individuals, acted as the leader of one of the largest global ransomware groups, known as GandCrab/REvil," BKA said. "The perpetrators demanded large ransom payments in exchange for decrypting and not leaki...

Drift has revealed that the April 1, 2026, attack that led to the theft of $285 million was the culmination of a months-long targeted and meticulously planned social engineering operation undertaken by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) that began in the fall of 2025. The Solana-based decentralized exchange described it as "an attack six months in the making," attributing it with medium confidence to a North Korean state-sponsored hacking group dubbed UNC4736 , which is also tracked under the cyptonyms AppleJeus, Citrine Sleet, Golden Chollima, and Gleaming Pisces. The threat actor has a history of targeting the cryptocurrency sector for financial theft since at least 2018. It's best known for the X_TRADER/3CX supply chain breach in 2023 and the $53 million hack of decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Radiant Capital in October 2024. "The basis for this connection is both on-chain (f...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered 36 malicious packages in the npm registry that are disguised as Strapi CMS plugins but come with different payloads to facilitate Redis and PostgreSQL exploitation, deploy reverse shells, harvest credentials, and drop a persistent implant. "Every package contains three files (package.json, index.js, postinstall.js), has no description, repository, or homepage, and uses version 3.6.8 to appear as a mature Strapi v3 community plugin," SafeDep said . All identified npm packages follow the same naming convention, starting with "strapi-plugin-" and then phrases like "cron," "database," or "server" to fool unsuspecting developers into downloading them. It's worth noting that the official Strapi plugins are scoped under "@strapi/." The packages, uploaded by four sock puppet accounts "umarbek1233," "kekylf12," "tikeqemif26," and "umar_bektembiev1...

A China-aligned threat actor has set its sights on European government and diplomatic organizations since mid-2025, following a two-year period of minimal targeting in the region. The campaign has been attributed to TA416 , a cluster of activity that overlaps with DarkPeony, RedDelta, Red Lich, SmugX, UNC6384, and Vertigo Panda. "This TA416 activity included multiple waves of web bug and malware delivery campaigns against diplomatic missions to the European Union and NATO across a range of European countries," Proofpoint researchers Mark Kelly and Georgi Mladenov said . "Throughout this period, TA416 regularly altered its infection chain, including abusing Cloudflare Turnstile challenge pages, abusing OAuth redirects, and using C# project files, as well as frequently updating its custom PlugX payload." TA416 has also been observed orchestrating multiple campaigns aimed at diplomatic and government entities in the Middle East following the outbreak...

The maintainer of the Axios npm package has confirmed that the supply chain compromise was the result of a highly-targeted social engineering campaign orchestrated by North Korean threat actors tracked as UNC1069 . Maintainer Jason Saayman said the attackers tailored their social engineering efforts "specifically to me" by first approaching him under the guise of the founder of a legitimate, well-known company. "They had cloned the company's founders' likeness as well as the company itself," Saayman said in a post-mortem of the incident. "They then invited me to a real Slack workspace. This workspace was branded to the company's CI and named in a plausible manner. The Slack [workspace] was thought out very well; they had channels where they were sharing LinkedIn posts." Subsequently, the threat actors are said to have scheduled a meeting with him on Microsoft Teams. Upon joining the fake call, he was presented with a fake error mes...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new version of the SparkCat malware on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, more than a year after the trojan was discovered targeting both the mobile operating systems. The malware has been found to conceal itself within seemingly benign apps, such as enterprise messengers and food delivery services, while silently scanning victims' photo galleries for cryptocurrency wallet recovery phrases. Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky said it found two infected apps on the App Store and one on the Google Play Store that primarily target cryptocurrency users in Asia. "The iOS variant, however, takes a different approach as it scans for cryptocurrency wallet mnemonic phrases, which are in English," the company said. "This makes the iOS variant potentially broader in reach, as it can affect users regardless of their region." The improved version of SparkCat for...

The latest ThreatsDay Bulletin is basically a cheat sheet for everything breaking on the internet right now. No corporate fluff or boring lectures here, just a quick and honest look at the messy reality of keeping systems safe this week. Things are moving fast. The list includes researchers chaining small bugs together to create massive backdoors, old software flaws coming back to haunt us, and some very clever new tricks that let attackers bypass security logs entirely without leaving a trace. We are also seeing sketchier traffic on the underground and the usual supply chain mess, where one bad piece of code threatens thousands of apps. It is definitely worth a quick scan before you log off for the day, if only to make sure none of this is sitting in your own network. Let's get into it. Pre-auth RCE chain exposed Security Flaws in Progress ShareFile watchTower Labs has disclosed two securi...

A financially motivated operation codenamed REF1695  has been observed leveraging fake installers to deploy remote access trojans (RATs) and cryptocurrency miners since November 2023. "Beyond cryptomining, the threat actor monetizes infections through CPA (Cost Per Action) fraud, directing victims to content locker pages under the guise of software registration," Elastic Security Labs researchers Jia Yu Chan, Cyril François, and Remco Sprooten said in an analysis published this week. Recent iterations of the campaign have also been found to deliver a previously undocumented .NET implant codenamed CNB Bot. These attacks leverage an ISO file as the infection vector to deliver a .NET Reactor-protected loader and a text file with explicit instructions to the user to bypass Microsoft Defender SmartScreen protections against running unrecognized applications by clicking on "More info" and "Run anyway...

Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp said it alerted about 200 users who were tricked into installing a bogus version of its iOS app that was infected with spyware. According to reports from Italian newspaper La Repubblica and news agency ANSA , the vast majority of the targets are located in Italy. It's assessed that the threat actors behind the activity used social engineering tactics to get users to install malicious software that mimicked WhatsApp. All the affected users have been logged out and have been recommended to uninstall the malware-laced apps and download the official WhatsApp app. WhatsApp did not reveal who was targeted in these attacks. The tech giant said it's also taking action against Asigint, an Italian subsidiary of spyware company SIO, for allegedly creating a counterfeit version of WhatsApp.  On its website, the company advertises solutions to law enforcement agencies, government organizations, and police and intelligenc...

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has disclosed details of a new phishing campaign in which the cybersecurity agency itself was impersonated to distribute a remote administration tool known as AGEWHEEZE. As part of the attacks, the threat actors, tracked as UAC-0255 , sent emails on March 26 and 27, 2026, posing as CERT-UA to distribute a password-protected ZIP archive hosted on Files.fm and urged recipients to install the "specialized software." The targets of the campaign included state organizations, medical centers, security companies, educational institutions, financial institutions, and software development companies. Some of the emails were sent from the email address "incidents@cert-ua[.]tech." The ZIP file ("CERT_UA_protection_tool.zip") is designed to download malware packaged as security software from the agency. The malware, per CERT-UA, is a remote access trojan codenamed AGEWHEEZE.  A Go-based malware, AGEWHEEZE...

Microsoft is calling attention to a new campaign that has leveraged WhatsApp messages to distribute malicious Visual Basic Script (VBS) files. The activity, beginning in late February 2026, leverages these scripts to initiate a multi-stage infection chain for establishing persistence and enabling remote access. It's currently not known what lures the threat actors use to trick users into executing the scripts. "The campaign relies on a combination of social engineering and living-off-the-land techniques," the Microsoft Defender Security Research Team said . "It uses renamed Windows utilities to blend into normal system activity, retrieves payloads from trusted cloud services such as AWS, Tencent Cloud, and Backblaze B2, and installs malicious Microsoft Installer (MSI) packages to maintain control of the system." The use of legitimate tools and trusted platforms is a deadly combination, as it allows threat actors to blend in normal network activity and incre...

A multi-pronged phishing campaign is targeting Spanish-speaking users in organizations across Latin America and Europe to deliver Windows banking trojans like Casbaneiro (aka Metamorfo) via another malware called Horabot . The activity has been attributed to a Brazilian cybercrime threat actor tracked as Augmented Marauder and Water Saci . The e-crime group was first documented by Trend Micro in October 2025. "This threat group employs a wider-ranging attack model focused on a bespoke delivery and propagation mechanism that includes WhatsApp, ClickFix techniques, and email-centric phishing," BlueVoyant security researchers Thomas Elkins and Joshua Green said in a technical breakdown published Tuesday. "It is now evident that while these Brazil-based operators heavily leverage script-based WhatsApp automation to compromise retail and consumer users in Latin America, they concurrently maintain and deploy an advanced, email-hijacking engine to penetrate enterprise ...

For years, cybersecurity has followed a familiar model: block malware, stop the attack. Now, attackers are moving on to what’s next. Threat actors now use malware less frequently in favor of what’s already inside your environment, including abusing trusted tools, native binaries, and legitimate admin utilities to move laterally, escalate privileges, and persist without raising alarms. Most organizations fail to see this risk until after the damage is done. To help visualize this challenge, consider a complimentary Internal Attack Surface Assessment — a guided, low-friction way to see where trusted tools may be working against you. Now, let’s look at how this risk operates within your environment, and 3 reasons why attackers prefer using your own tools against you. 1. Most Attacks No Longer Look Like Attacks Threat actors prefer attacks that don’t look like attacks. Recent analysis of over 700,000 high-severity incidents shows a clear shift : 84% of attacks now abuse legitimate ...

Google has formally attributed the supply chain compromise of the popular Axios npm package to a financially motivated North Korean threat activity cluster tracked as UNC1069 . "We have attributed the attack to a suspected North Korean threat actor we track as UNC1069," John Hultquist, chief analyst at Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG), told The Hacker News in a statement. "North Korean hackers have deep experience with supply chain attacks, which they've historically used to steal cryptocurrency. The full breadth of this incident is still unclear, but given the popularity of the compromised package, we expect it will have far reaching impacts." The development comes after threat actors seized control of the package maintainer's npm account to push two trojanized versions 1.14.1 and 0.30.4 that introduced a malicious dependency named "plain-crypto-js" that's used to deliver a cross-platform backdoor capable of infecting Windows, ma...

A high-severity security flaw in the TrueConf client video conferencing software has been exploited in the wild as a zero-day as part of a campaign targeting government entities in Southeast Asia dubbed TrueChaos . The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-3502 (CVSS score: 7.8), a lack of integrity check when fetching application update code, allowing an attacker to distribute a tampered update, resulting in the execution of arbitrary code. It has been patched in the TrueConf Windows client starting with version 8.5.3 , released earlier this month. "The flaw stems from the abuse of TrueConf's updater validation mechanism, allowing an attacker who controls the on-premises TrueConf server to distribute and execute arbitrary files across all connected endpoints," Check Point said in a report published today. In other words, an attacker who manages to gain control of the on-premises TrueConf server can substitute the update package with a poisoned version, which then...

The cybersecurity landscape is accelerating at an unprecedented rate. What is emerging is not simply a rise in the number of vulnerabilities or tools, but a dramatic increase in speed. Speed of attack, speed of exploitation, and speed of change across modern environments. This is the defining challenge of the new era of digital warfare: the weaponization of Artificial Intelligence. Threat actors, from nation-states to sophisticated criminal enterprises, are no longer just attacking. They are automating the entire kill chain. In this AI arms race, traditional defensive strategies are no longer sufficient. Periodic point-in-time assessments, manual triage, and human-speed response were already under pressure in fast-moving environments. Against AI-enabled adversaries, they are increasingly inadequate. Solutions like PlexTrac are built to help organizations move beyond fragmented findings, disconnected tools, and slow manual workflows by unifying exposure management, remediation, and...

Chinese-speaking users are the target of an active campaign that uses typosquatted domains impersonating trusted software brands to deliver a previously undocumented remote access trojan named AtlasCross RAT . "The operation covers VPN clients, encrypted messengers, video conferencing tools, cryptocurrency trackers, and e-commerce applications, with eleven confirmed delivery domains impersonating brands including Surfshark VPN, Signal, Telegram, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and others," Germany-based cybersecurity company Hexastrike said in a report published last week. The activity has been attributed to a Chinese cybercrime group called Silver Fox , which is also tracked as SwimSnake, The Great Thief of Valley (or Valley Thief), UTG-Q-1000, and Void Arachne. The discovery of AtlasCross RAT represents an evolution of the threat actor's arsenal from Gh0st RAT derivatives like ValleyRAT (aka Winos 4.0), Gh0stCringe, and HoldingHands RAT (aka Gh0stBins). The attack chains i...