Open Source | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

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...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered malicious libraries in the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that are designed to steal sensitive information and test stolen credit card data. Two of the packages, bitcoinlibdbfix and bitcoinlib-dev, masquerade as fixes for recent issues detected in a legitimate Python module called bitcoinlib, according to ReversingLabs . A third package discovered by Socket, disgrasya, contained a fully automated carding script targeting WooCommerce stores. The packages attracted hundreds of downloads before being taken down, according to statistics from pepy.tech - bitcoinlibdbfix - 1,101 downloads bitcoinlib-dev - 735 downloads disgrasya - 37,217 downloads "The malicious libraries both attempt a similar attack, overwriting the legitimate 'clw cli' command with malicious code that attempts to exfiltrate sensitive database files," ReversingLabs said. In an interesting twist, the authors of the counterfeit libraries are s...

The cascading supply chain attack that initially targeted Coinbase before becoming more widespread to single out users of the "tj-actions/changed-files" GitHub Action has been traced further back to the theft of a personal access token ( PAT ) related to SpotBugs. "The attackers obtained initial access by taking advantage of the GitHub Actions workflow of SpotBugs, a popular open-source tool for static analysis of bugs in code," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said in an update this week. "This enabled the attackers to move laterally between SpotBugs repositories, until obtaining access to reviewdog." There is evidence to suggest that the malicious activity began as far back as late November 2024, although the attack against Coinbase did not take place until March 2025. Unit 42 said its investigation began with the knowledge that reviewdog's GitHub Action was compromised due to a leaked PAT associated with the project's maintainer. This subsequen...

There's a virtuous cycle in technology that pushes the boundaries of what's being built and how it's being used. A new technology development emerges and captures the world's attention. People start experimenting and discover novel applications, use cases, and approaches to maximize the innovation's potential. These use cases generate significant value, fueling demand for the next iteration of the innovation, and in turn, a new wave of innovators create the next generation of use cases, driving further advancements. Containerization has become the foundation of modern, cloud-native software development, supporting new use cases and approaches to building resilient, scalable, and portable applications. It also holds the keys to the next software delivery innovation, simultaneously necessitating the evolution to secure-by-design, continuously-updated software and serving as the means to get there. Below, I'll talk through some of the innovations that led to our containerized r...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered several cryptocurrency packages on the npm registry that have been hijacked to siphon sensitive information such as environment variables from compromised systems. "Some of these packages have lived on npmjs.com for over 9 years, and provide legitimate functionality to blockchain developers," Sonatype researcher Ax Sharma said . "However, [...] the latest versions of each of these packages were laden with obfuscated scripts." The affected packages and their hijacked versions are listed below - country-currency-map (2.1.8) bnb-javascript-sdk-nobroadcast (2.16.16) @bithighlander/bitcoin-cash-js-lib (5.2.2) eslint-config-travix (6.3.1) @crosswise-finance1/sdk-v2 (0.1.21) @keepkey/device-protocol (7.13.3) @veniceswap/uikit (0.65.34) @veniceswap/eslint-config-pancake (1.6.2) babel-preset-travix (1.2.1) @travix/ui-themes (1.1.5) @coinmasters/types (4.8.16) Analysis of these packages by the software supply chain ...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered two malicious packages on the npm registry that are designed to infect another locally installed package, underscoring the continued evolution of software supply chain attacks targeting the open-source ecosystem. The packages in question are ethers-provider2 and ethers-providerz , with the former downloaded 73 times to date since it was published on March 15, 2025. The second package, likely removed by the malware author themselves, did not attract any downloads. "They were simple downloaders whose malicious payload was cleverly hidden," ReversingLabs researcher Lucija Valentić said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The interesting part lay in their second stage, which would 'patch' the legitimate npm package ethers , installed locally, with a new file containing the malicious payload. That patched file would ultimately serve a reverse shell." The development marks a new escalation of threat actors...

The supply chain attack involving the GitHub Action "tj-actions/changed-files" started as a highly-targeted attack against one of Coinbase's open-source projects, before evolving into something more widespread in scope. "The payload was focused on exploiting the public CI/CD flow of one of their open source projects – agentkit, probably with the purpose of leveraging it for further compromises," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said in a report. "However, the attacker was not able to use Coinbase secrets or publish packages." The incident came to light on March 14, 2025, when it was found that "tj-actions/changed-files" was compromised to inject code that leaked sensitive secrets from repositories that ran the workflow. It has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2025-30066 (CVSS score: 8.6). According to Endor Labs, 218 GitHub repositories are estimated to have exposed their secrets due to the supply chain attack, and a majority of the leak...