Open Source | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Threat hunters are calling attention to a new variant of a remote access trojan (RAT) called Chaos RAT that has been used in recent attacks targeting Windows and Linux systems. According to findings from Acronis, the malware artifact may have been distributed by tricking victims into downloading a network troubleshooting utility for Linux environments. "Chaos RAT is an open-source RAT written in Golang, offering cross-platform support for both Windows and Linux systems," security researchers Santiago Pontiroli, Gabor Molnar, and Kirill Antonenko said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Inspired by popular frameworks such as Cobalt Strike and Sliver, Chaos RAT provides an administrative panel where users can build payloads, establish sessions, and control compromised machines." While work on the "remote administration tool" started way back in 2017, it did not attract attention until December 2022 , when it was put to use in a malicious campaig...

Several malicious packages have been uncovered across the npm, Python, and Ruby package repositories that drain funds from cryptocurrency wallets, erase entire codebases after installation, and exfiltrate Telegram API tokens, once again demonstrating the variety of supply chain threats lurking in open-source ecosystems. The findings come from multiple reports published by Checkmarx, ReversingLabs, Safety, and Socket in recent weeks. The list of identified packages across these platforms are listed below - Socket noted that the two malicious gems were published by a threat actor under the aliases Bùi nam, buidanhnam, and si_mobile merely days after Vietnam ordered a nationwide ban on the Telegram messaging app late last month for allegedly not cooperating with the government to tackle illicit activities related to fraud, drug trafficking, and terrorism. "These gems silently exfiltrate all data sent to the Telegram API by redirecting traffic through a command-and-control (C2...

As many as 60 malicious npm packages have been discovered in the package registry with malicious functionality to harvest hostnames, IP addresses, DNS servers, and user directories to a Discord-controlled endpoint. The packages, published under three different accounts, come with an install‑time script that's triggered during npm install, Socket security researcher Kirill Boychenko said in a report published last week. The libraries have been collectively downloaded over 3,000 times. "The script targets Windows, macOS, or Linux systems, and includes basic sandbox‑evasion checks, making every infected workstation or continuous‑integration node a potential source of valuable reconnaissance," the software supply chain security firm said . The names of the three accounts, each of which published 20 packages within an 11-day time period, are listed below. The accounts no longer exist on npm - bbbb335656 cdsfdfafd1232436437, and  sdsds656565 The malicious code, per So...

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Cybersecurity researchers have discovered risky default identity and access management (IAM) roles impacting Amazon Web Services that could open the door for attackers to escalate privileges, manipulate other AWS services, and, in some cases, even fully compromise AWS accounts. "These roles, often created automatically or recommended during setup, grant overly broad permissions, such as full S3 access," Aqua researchers Yakir Kadkoda and Ofek Itach said in an analysis. "These default roles silently introduce attack paths that allow privilege escalation, cross-service access, and even potential account compromise." The cloud security firm said it identified security issues in default IAM roles created by AWS services like SageMaker, Glue, EMR, and Lightsail. A similar flaw has also been unearthed in a popular open-source framework called Ray, which automatically creates a default IAM role (ray-autoscaler-v1) with the AmazonS3FullAccess policy. What's concer...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered malicious packages uploaded to the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that act as checker tools to validate stolen email addresses against TikTok and Instagram APIs. All three packages are no longer available on PyPI. The names of the Python packages are below - checker-SaGaF (2,605 downloads) steinlurks (1,049 downloads) sinnercore (3,300 downloads) "True to its name, checker-SaGaF checks if an email is associated with a TikTok account and an Instagram account," Socket researcher Olivia Brown said in an analysis published last week. Specifically, the package is designed to send HTTP POST requests to TikTok's password recovery API and Instagram's account login endpoints to determine if an email address passed as input is valid, meaning there exists an account holder corresponding to that email address. "Once threat actors have this information, just from an email address, they can threaten to dox or spam, c...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious package on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that purports to be an application related to the Solana blockchain, but contains malicious functionality to steal source code and developer secrets. The package, named solana-token, is no longer available for download from PyPI, but not before it was downloaded 761 times . It was first published to PyPI in early April 2024, albeit with an entirely different version numbering scheme. "When installed, the malicious package attempts to exfiltrate source code and developer secrets from the developer's machine to a hard-coded IP address," ReversingLabs researcher Karlo Zanki said in a report shared with The Hacker News. In particular, the package is designed to copy and exfiltrate the source code contained in all the files in the Python execution stack under the guise of a blockchain function named "register_node()." This unusual behavior suggests that...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious package on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that masquerades as a seemingly harmless Discord-related utility but incorporates a remote access trojan. The package in question is discordpydebug , which was uploaded to PyPI on March 21, 2022. It has been downloaded 11,574 times and continues to be available on the open-source registry. Interestingly, the package has not received any update since then. "At first glance, it appeared to be a simple utility aimed at developers working on Discord bots using the Discord.py library," the Socket Research Team said . "However, the package concealed a fully functional remote access trojan (RAT)." The package, once installed, contacts an external server ("backstabprotection.jamesx123.repl[.]co"), and includes features to read and write arbitrary files based on commands, readfile or writefile, received from the server. The RAT also supports the ability...

Microsoft has warned that using pre-made templates, such as out-of-the-box Helm charts, during Kubernetes deployments could open the door to misconfigurations and leak valuable data. "While these 'plug-and-play' options greatly simplify the setup process, they often prioritize ease of use over security," Michael Katchinskiy and Yossi Weizman from the Microsoft Defender for Cloud Research team said . "As a result, a large number of applications end up being deployed in a misconfigured state by default, exposing sensitive data, cloud resources, or even the entire environment to attackers." Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes that allows developers to package, configure, and deploy applications and services onto Kubernetes clusters. It's part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). Kubernetes application packages are structured in the Helm packaging format called charts , which are YAML manifests and templates used to describe the Kuber...

A recently disclosed critical security flaw impacting the open-source Langflow platform has been added to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-3248 , carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10.0. "Langflow contains a missing authentication vulnerability in the /api/v1/validate/code endpoint that allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code via crafted HTTP requests," CISA said. Specifically, the endpoint has been found to improperly invoke Python's built-in exec() function on user-supplied code without adequate authentication or sandboxing, thereby allowing attackers to execute arbitrary commands on the server. The shortcoming, which affects most versions of the popular tool, has been addressed in version 1.3.0 released on March 31, 2025. Horizon3.ai has been credited with...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered three malicious Go modules that include obfuscated code to fetch next-stage payloads that can irrevocably overwrite a Linux system's primary disk and render it unbootable. The names of the packages are listed below - github[.]com/truthfulpharm/prototransform github[.]com/blankloggia/go-mcp github[.]com/steelpoor/tlsproxy "Despite appearing legitimate, these modules contained highly obfuscated code designed to fetch and execute remote payloads," Socket researcher Kush Pandya said . The packages are designed to check if the operating system on which they are being run is Linux, and if so retrieve a next-stage payload from a remote server using wget. The payload is a destructive shell script that overwrites the entire primary disk (" /dev/sda ") with zeroes, effectively preventing the machine from booting up. "This destructive method ensures no data recovery tool or forensic process can restore the data, as...

Meta on Tuesday announced LlamaFirewall , an open-source framework designed to secure artificial intelligence (AI) systems against emerging cyber risks such as prompt injection, jailbreaks, and insecure code, among others. The framework , the company said, incorporates three guardrails, including PromptGuard 2, Agent Alignment Checks, and CodeShield. PromptGuard 2 is designed to detect direct jailbreak and prompt injection attempts in real-time, while Agent Alignment Checks is capable of inspecting agent reasoning for possible goal hijacking and indirect prompt injection scenarios. CodeShield refers to an online static analysis engine that seeks to prevent the generation of insecure or dangerous code by AI agents. "LlamaFirewall is built to serve as a flexible, real-time guardrail framework for securing LLM-powered applications," the company said in a GitHub description of the project. "Its architecture is modular, enabling security teams and developers to com...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered three malicious packages in the npm registry that masquerade as a popular Telegram bot library but harbor SSH backdoors and data exfiltration capabilities. The packages in question are listed below - node-telegram-utils (132 downloads) node-telegram-bots-api (82 downloads) node-telegram-util (73 downloads) According to supply chain security firm Socket, the packages are designed to mimic node-telegram-bot-api , a popular Node.js Telegram Bot API with over 100,000 weekly downloads. The three libraries are still available for download. "While that number may sound modest, it only takes a single compromised environment to pave the way for wide-scale infiltration or unauthorized data access," security researcher Kush Pandya said . "Supply chain security incidents repeatedly show that even a handful of installs can have catastrophic repercussions, especially when attackers gain direct access to developer systems or produc...

A critical security vulnerability has been disclosed in the Apache Roller open-source, Java-based blogging server software that could allow malicious actors to retain unauthorized access even after a password change. The flaw, assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2025-24859 , carries a CVSS score of 10.0, indicating maximum severity. It affects all versions of Roller up to and including 6.1.4. "A session management vulnerability exists in Apache Roller before version 6.1.5 where active user sessions are not properly invalidated after password changes," the project maintainers said in an advisory. "When a user's password is changed, either by the user themselves or by an administrator, existing sessions remain active and usable." Successful exploitation of the flaw could enable an attacker to maintain continued access to the application through old sessions even after password changes. It could also enable unfettered access if credentials were compromised. Th...