Open Source | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The North Korea-linked threat actor known as ScarCruft is said to have been behind a never-before-seen Android surveillance tool named KoSpy targeting Korean and English-speaking users. Lookout, which shared details of the malware campaign, said the earliest versions date back to March 2022. The most recent samples were flagged in March 2024. It's not clear how successful these efforts were. "KoSpy can collect extensive data, such as SMS messages, call logs, location, files, audio, and screenshots via dynamically loaded plugins," the company said in an analysis. The malicious artifacts masquerade as utility applications on the official Google Play Store, using the names File Manager, Phone Manager, Smart Manager, Software Update Utility, and Kakao Security to trick unsuspecting users into infecting their own devices. All the identified apps offer the promised functionality to avoid raising suspicion while stealthily deploying spyware-related components in the backg...

Two high-severity security flaws have been disclosed in the open-source ruby-saml library that could allow malicious actors to bypass Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) authentication protections. SAML is an XML-based markup language and open-standard used for exchanging authentication and authorization data between parties, enabling features like single sign-on (SSO), which allows individuals to use a single set of credentials to access multiple sites, services, and apps. The vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2025-25291 and CVE-2025-25292 , carry a CVSS score of 8.8 out of 10.0. They affect the following versions of the library - < 1.12.4 >= 1.13.0, < 1.18.0 Both the shortcomings stem from how both REXML and Nokogiri parse XML differently, causing the two parsers to generate entirely different document structures from the same XML input This parser differential allows an attacker to be able to execute a Signature Wrapping attack, leading to an authentication by...

Meta has warned that a security vulnerability impacting the FreeType open-source font rendering library may have been exploited in the wild. The vulnerability has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2025-27363 , and carries a CVSS score of 8.1, indicating high severity. Described as an out-of-bounds write flaw, it could be exploited to achieve remote code execution when parsing certain font files. "An out-of-bounds write exists in FreeType versions 2.13.0 and below when attempting to parse font subglyph structures related to TrueType GX and variable font files," the company said in an advisory. "The vulnerable code assigns a signed short value to an unsigned long and then adds a static value causing it to wrap around and allocate too small of a heap buffer. The code then writes up to 6 signed long integers out of bounds relative to this buffer. This may result in arbitrary code execution." The company did not share any specifics on how the shortcoming is be...

Cybersecurity researchers are alerting of an ongoing malicious campaign targeting the Go ecosystem with typosquatted modules that are designed to deploy loader malware on Linux and Apple macOS systems. "The threat actor has published at least seven packages impersonating widely used Go libraries, including one (github[.]com/shallowmulti/hypert) that appears to target financial-sector developers," Socket researcher Kirill Boychenko said in a new report. "These packages share repeated malicious filenames and consistent obfuscation techniques, suggesting a coordinated threat actor capable of pivoting rapidly." While all of them continue to be available on the official package repository, their corresponding GitHub repositories barring "github[.]com/ornatedoctrin/layout" are no longer accessible. The list of offending Go packages is below - shallowmulti/hypert (github.com/shallowmulti/hypert) shadowybulk/hypert (github.com/shadowybulk/hypert) belate...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a malicious Python library on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that facilitates unauthorized music downloads from music streaming service Deezer. The package in question is automslc, which has been downloaded over 104,000 times to date. First published in May 2019, it remains available on PyPI as of writing. "Although automslc, which has been downloaded over 100,000 times, purports to offer music automation and metadata retrieval, it covertly bypasses Deezer's access restrictions by embedding hardcoded credentials and communicating with an external command-and-control (C2) server," Socket security researcher Kirill Boychenko said in a report published today. Specifically, the package is designed to log into the French music streaming platform via user-supplied and hard-coded credentials, gather track-related metadata, and download full audio files in violation of Deezer's API terms. The package also periodicall...

Imagine you're considering a new car for your family. Before making a purchase, you evaluate its safety ratings, fuel efficiency, and reliability. You might even take it for a test drive to ensure it meets your needs. The same approach should be applied to software and hardware products before integrating them into an organization's environment. Just as you wouldn't buy a car without knowing its safety features, you shouldn't deploy software without understanding the risks it introduces. The Rising Threat of Supply Chain Attacks Cybercriminals have recognized that instead of attacking an organization head-on, they can infiltrate through the software supply chain—like slipping counterfeit parts into an assembly line. According to the 2024 Sonatype State of the Software Supply Chain report , attackers are infiltrating open-source ecosystems at an alarming rate, with over 512,847 malicious packages detected last year alone—a 156% increase from the previous year. Traditional sec...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered two malicious machine learning (ML) models on Hugging Face that leveraged an unusual technique of "broken" pickle files to evade detection. "The pickle files extracted from the mentioned PyTorch archives revealed the malicious Python content at the beginning of the file," ReversingLabs researcher Karlo Zanki said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "In both cases, the malicious payload was a typical platform-aware reverse shell that connects to a hard-coded IP address." The approach has been dubbed nullifAI, as it involves clearcut attempts to sidestep existing safeguards put in place to identify malicious models. The Hugging Face repositories have been listed below - glockr1/ballr7 who-r-u0000/0000000000000000000000000000000000000 It's believed that the models are more of a proof-of-concept (PoC) than an active supply chain attack scenario. The pickle serialization format, used commonly for dis...

Taiwan has become the latest country to ban government agencies from using Chinese startup DeepSeek's Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform, citing security risks. "Government agencies and critical infrastructure should not use DeepSeek, because it endangers national information security," according to a statement released by Taiwan's Ministry of Digital Affairs, per Radio Free Asia . "DeepSeek AI service is a Chinese product. Its operation involves cross-border transmission, and information leakage and other information security concerns." DeepSeek's Chinese origins have prompted authorities from various countries to look into the service's use of personal data. Last week, it was blocked in Italy, citing a lack of information regarding its data handling practices. Several companies have also prohibited access to the chatbot over similar risks. The chatbot has captured much of the mainstream attention over the past few weeks for the fact tha...

The maintainers of the Python Package Index (PyPI) registry have announced a new feature that allows package developers to archive a project as part of efforts to improve supply chain security . "Maintainers can now archive a project to let users know that the project is not expected to receive any more updates," Facundo Tuesca, senior engineer at Trail of Bits, said . In doing so, the idea is to clearly signal to developers that the Python libraries are no longer being actively maintained and that no future security fixes or product updates should be expected. That said, projects labeled as archived will continue to remain available on PyPI and users can continue to install it without any issues. In a separate blog post detailing the feature, Tuesca said the maintainers are considering additional maintainer-controlled statuses to better communicate a project's status to downstream consumers. PyPI also recommends that package developers release a final version pr...

Buzzy Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup DeepSeek , which has had a meteoric rise in popularity in recent days, left one of its databases exposed on the internet, which could have allowed malicious actors to gain access to sensitive data. The ClickHouse database "allows full control over database operations, including the ability to access internal data," Wiz security researcher Gal Nagli said . The exposure also includes more than a million lines of log streams containing chat history, secret keys, backend details, and other highly sensitive information, such as API Secrets and operational metadata. DeepSeek has since plugged the security hole following attempts by the cloud security firm to contact them. The database, hosted at oauth2callback.deepseek[.]com:9000 and dev.deepseek[.]com:9000, is said to have enabled unauthorized access to a wide range of information. The exposure, Wiz noted, allowed for complete database control and potential privilege escalati...

Three security flaws have been disclosed in the open-source PHP package Voyager that could be exploited by an attacker to achieve one-click remote code execution on affected instances. "When an authenticated Voyager user clicks on a malicious link, attackers can execute arbitrary code on the server," Sonar researcher Yaniv Nizry said in a write-up published earlier this week. The identified issues, which remain unpatched to date despite responsible disclosure on September 11, 2024, are listed below - CVE-2024-55417 - An arbitrary file write vulnerability in the "/admin/media/upload" endpoint CVE-2024-55416 - A reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the "/admin/compass" endpoint CVE-2024-55415 - An arbitrary file leak and deletion vulnerability  A malicious attacker could leverage Voyager's media upload feature to upload a malicious file in a manner that bypasses MIME type verification, and make use of a polyglot file that ap...

A critical security flaw has been disclosed in the Cacti open-source network monitoring and fault management framework that could allow an authenticated attacker to achieve remote code execution on susceptible instances. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2025-22604, carries a CVSS score of 9.1 out of a maximum of 10.0. "Due to a flaw in the multi-line SNMP result parser, authenticated users can inject malformed OIDs in the response," the project maintainers said in an advisory released this week. "When processed by ss_net_snmp_disk_io() or ss_net_snmp_disk_bytes(), a part of each OID will be used as a key in an array that is used as part of a system command, causing a command execution vulnerability." Successful exploitation of the vulnerability could permit an authenticated user with device management permissions to execute arbitrary code in the server, and steal, edit, or delete sensitive data. CVE-2025-22604 affects all versions of the software prior to and includ...

Cybersecurity researchers have revealed several malicious packages on the npm registry that have been found impersonating the Nomic Foundation's Hardhat tool in order to steal sensitive data from developer systems. "By exploiting trust in open source plugins, attackers have infiltrated these platforms through malicious npm packages, exfiltrating critical data such as private keys, mnemonics, and configuration details," the Socket research team said in an analysis. Hardhat is a development environment for Ethereum software, incorporating various components for editing, compiling, debugging and deploying smart contracts and decentralized apps (dApps). The list of identified counterfeit packages is as follows - nomicsfoundations @nomisfoundation/hardhat-configure installedpackagepublish @nomisfoundation/hardhat-config @monicfoundation/hardhat-config @nomicsfoundation/sdk-test @nomicsfoundation/hardhat-config @nomicsfoundation/web3-sdk @nomicsfoundation/sdk-...

A high-severity security flaw has been disclosed in ProjectDiscovery's Nuclei , a widely-used open-source vulnerability scanner that, if successfully exploited, could allow attackers to bypass signature checks and potentially execute malicious code. Tracked as CVE-2024-43405 , it carries a CVSS score of 7.4 out of a maximum of 10.0. It impacts all versions of Nuclei later than 3.0.0. "The vulnerability stems from a discrepancy between how the signature verification process and the YAML parser handle newline characters, combined with the way multiple signatures are processed," according to a description of the vulnerability. "This allows an attacker to inject malicious content into a template while maintaining a valid signature for the benign part of the template." Nuclei is a vulnerability scanner designed to probe modern applications, infrastructure, cloud platforms, and networks to identify security flaws. The scanning engine makes use of templates , wh...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious package on the npm package registry that masquerades as a library for detecting vulnerabilities in Ethereum smart contracts but, in reality, drops an open-source remote access trojan called Quasar RAT onto developer systems. The heavily obfuscated package, named ethereumvulncontracthandler , was published to npm on December 18, 2024, by a user named "solidit-dev-416." As of writing, it continues to be available for download. It has been downloaded 66 times to date. "Upon installation, it retrieves a malicious script from a remote server, executing it silently to deploy the RAT on Windows systems," Socket security researcher Kirill Boychenko said in an analysis published last month. The malicious code embedded into ethereumvulncontracthandler is obscured with multiple layers of obfuscation, leveraging techniques like Base64- and XOR-encoding, as well as minification to resist analysis and detection efforts. ...

Having been at ActiveState for nearly eight years, I've seen many iterations of our product. However, one thing has stayed true over the years: Our commitment to the open source community and companies using open source in their code. ActiveState has been helping enterprises manage open source for over a decade. In the early days, open source was in its infancy. We focused mainly on the developer case, helping to get open source on platforms like Windows. Over time, our focus shifted from helping companies run open source to supporting enterprises managing open source when the community wasn't producing it in the way they needed it. We began managing builds at scale, and supporting enterprises in understanding what open source they're using and if it's compliant and safe. Managing open source at scale in a large organization can be complex. To help companies overcome this and bring structure to their open source DevSecOps practice, we're unveiling our end-to-end platform to help m...

In yet another software supply chain attack, it has come to light that two versions of a popular Python artificial intelligence (AI) library named ultralytics were compromised to deliver a cryptocurrency miner. The versions, 8.3.41 and 8.3.42, have since been removed from the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository. A subsequently released version has introduced a security fix that "ensures secure publication workflow for the Ultralytics package." The project maintainer, Glenn Jocher, confirmed on GitHub that the two versions were infected by malicious code injection in the PyPI deployment workflow after reports emerged that installing the library led to a drastic spike in CPU usage , a telltale sign of cryptocurrency mining. The most notable aspect of the attack is that bad actors managed to compromise the build environment related to the project to insert unauthorized modifications after the completion of the code review step, thus leading to a discrepancy in the so...