Open Source | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Eclipse Foundation, which maintains the open-source Open VSX project, said it has taken steps to revoke a small number of tokens that were leaked within Visual Studio Code (VS Code) extensions published in the marketplace. The action comes following a report from cloud security company Wiz earlier this month, which found several extensions from both Microsoft's VS Code Marketplace and Open VSX to have inadvertently exposed their access tokens within public repositories, potentially allowing bad actors to seize control and distribute malware, effectively poisoning the extension supply chain. "Upon investigation, we confirmed that a small number of tokens had been leaked and could potentially be abused to publish or modify extensions," Mikaël Barbero, head of security at the Eclipse Foundation, said in a statement. "These exposures were caused by developer mistakes, not a compromise of the Open VSX infrastructure." Open VSX said it has also introduced a toke...

The open-source command-and-control (C2) framework known as AdaptixC2 is being used by a growing number of threat actors, some of whom are related to Russian ransomware gangs. AdaptixC2 is an emerging extensible post-exploitation and adversarial emulation framework designed for penetration testing. While the server component is written in Golang, the GUI Client is written in C++ QT for cross-platform compatibility. It comes with a wide range of features, including fully encrypted communications, command execution, credential and screenshot managers, and a remote terminal, among others. An early iteration was publicly released by a GitHub user named " RalfHacker " ( @HackerRalf on X) in August 2024, who describes themselves as a penetration tester, red team operator, and "MalDev" (short for malware developer). In recent months, AdaptixC2 has been adopted by various hacking groups, including threat actors tied to the Fog and Akira ransomware operations, as ...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered yet another active software supply chain attack campaign targeting the npm registry with over 100 malicious packages that can steal authentication tokens, CI/CD secrets, and GitHub credentials from developers' machines. The campaign has been codenamed PhantomRaven by Koi Security. The activity is assessed to have begun in August 2025, when the first packages were uploaded to the repository. It has since ballooned to a total of 126 npm libraries, attracting more than 86,000 installs. Some of the packages have also been flagged by the DevSecOps company DCODX -  op-cli-installer (486 Downloads) unused-imports (1,350 Downloads) badgekit-api-client (483 Downloads) polyfill-corejs3 (475 Downloads) eslint-comments (936 Downloads) What makes the attack stand out is the attacker's pattern of hiding the malicious code in dependencies by pointing to a custom HTTP URL, causing npm to fetch them from an untrusted website (in this case,...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new supply chain attack targeting the NuGet package manager with malicious typosquats of Nethereum , a popular Ethereum .NET integration platform, to steal victims' cryptocurrency wallet keys. The package, Netherеum.All , has been found to harbor functionality to decode a command-and-control (C2) endpoint and exfiltrate mnemonic phrases, private keys, and keystore data, according to security company Socket. The library was uploaded by a user named " nethereumgroup " on October 16, 2025. It was taken down from NuGet for violating the service's Terms of Use four days later. What's notable about the NuGet package is that it swaps the last occurrence of the letter "e" with the Cyrillic homoglyph "e" (U+0435) to fool unsuspecting developers into downloading it. In a further attempt to increase the credibility of the package, the threat actors have resorted to artificially inflating the download counts...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a high-severity flaw impacting the popular async-tar Rust library and its forks, including tokio-tar, that could result in remote code execution under certain conditions. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-62518 (CVSS score: 8.1), has been codenamed TARmageddon by Edera, which discovered the issue in late August 2025. It impacts several widely-used projects, such as testcontainers and wasmCloud. "In the worst-case scenario, this vulnerability has a severity of 8.1 (High) and can lead to Remote Code Execution (RCE) through file overwriting attacks, such as replacing configuration files or hijacking build backends," the Seattle-based security company said . The problem is compounded by the fact that tokio-tar is essentially abandonware despite attracting thousands of downloads via crates.io. Tokio-tar is a Rust library for asynchronously reading and writing TAR archives built atop the Tokio runtime for the programmi...

Google's DeepMind division on Monday announced an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered agent called CodeMender that automatically detects, patches, and rewrites vulnerable code to prevent future exploits. The efforts add to the company's ongoing efforts to improve AI-powered vulnerability discovery, such as Big Sleep and OSS-Fuzz . DeepMind said the AI agent is designed to be both reactive and proactive, by fixing new vulnerabilities as soon as they are spotted as well as rewriting and securing existing codebases with an aim to eliminate whole classes of vulnerabilities in the process. "By automatically creating and applying high-quality security patches, CodeMender's AI-powered agent helps developers and maintainers focus on what they do best — building good software," DeepMind researchers Raluca Ada Popa and Four Flynn said . "Over the past six months that we've been building CodeMender, we have already upstreamed 72 security fixes to open source proje...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered what has been described as the first-ever instance of a malicious Model Context Protocol ( MCP ) server spotted in the wild, raising software supply chain risks. According to Koi Security, a legitimate-looking developer managed to slip in rogue code within an npm package called " postmark-mcp " that copied an official Postmark Labs library of the same name. The malicious functionality was introduced in version 1.0.16, which was released on September 17, 2025. The actual "postmark-mcp" library, available on GitHub , exposes an MCP server to allow users to send emails, access and use email templates, and track campaigns using artificial intelligence (AI) assistants. The npm package in question has since been deleted from npm by the developer " phanpak ," who uploaded it to the repository on September 15, 2025, and maintains 31 other packages. The JavaScript library attracted a total of 1,643 downloads. ...

GitHub on Monday announced that it will be changing its authentication and publishing options "in the near future" in response to a recent wave of supply chain attacks targeting the npm ecosystem, including the Shai-Hulud attack . This includes steps to address threats posed by token abuse and self-replicating malware by allowing local publishing with required two-factor authentication (2FA), granular tokens that will have a limited lifetime of seven days, and trusted publishing , which enables the ability to securely publish npm packages directly from CI/CD workflows using OpenID Connect (OIDC). Trusted publishing, besides eliminating the need for npm tokens, establishes cryptographic trust by authenticating each publish using short-lived, workflow-specific credentials that cannot be exfiltrated or reused. Even more significantly, the npm CLI automatically generates and publishes provenance attestations for the package. "Every package published via trusted publi...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed multiple critical security vulnerabilities in Chaos Mesh that, if successfully exploited, could lead to cluster takeover in Kubernetes environments. "Attackers need only minimal in-cluster network access to exploit these vulnerabilities, execute the platform's fault injections (such as shutting down pods or disrupting network communications), and perform further malicious actions, including stealing privileged service account tokens," JFrog said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Chaos Mesh is an open-source cloud-native Chaos Engineering platform that offers various types of fault simulation and simulates various abnormalities that might occur during the software development lifecycle. The issues, collectively called Chaotic Deputy, are listed below - CVE-2025-59358 (CVSS score: 7.5) - The Chaos Controller Manager in Chaos Mesh exposes a GraphQL debugging server without authentication to the entire Kubernetes clus...

Multiple npm packages have been compromised as part of a software supply chain attack after a maintainer's account was compromised in a phishing attack. The attack targeted Josh Junon (aka Qix ), who received an email message that mimicked npm ("support@npmjs[.]help"), urging them to update their update their two-factor authentication (2FA) credentials before September 10, 2025, by clicking on embedded link. The phishing page is said to have prompted the co-maintainer to enter their username, password, and two-factor authentication (2FA) token, only for it to be stolen likely by means of an adversary-in-the-middle ( AitM ) attack and used to publish the rogue version to the npm registry. The following 20 packages, which collectively attract over 2 billion weekly downloads, have been confirmed as affected as part of the incident - ansi-regex@6.2.1 ansi-styles@6.2.2 backslash@0.2.1 chalk@5.6.1 chalk-template@1.1.1 color-convert@3.1.1 color-name@2.0.1...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a loophole in the Visual Studio Code Marketplace that allows threat actors to reuse names of previously removed extensions. Software supply chain security outfit ReversingLabs said it made the discovery after it identified a malicious extension named "ahbanC.shiba" that functioned similarly to two other extensions – ahban.shiba and ahban.cychelloworld – that were flagged earlier this March. All three libraries are designed to act as a downloader to retrieve a PowerShell payload from an external server that encrypts files in a folder called "testShiba" on the victim's Windows desktop and demands a Shiba Inu token by instructing the victim to deposit the assets to an unspecified wallet. These efforts suggest ongoing development attempts by the threat actor. The company said it decided to dig deeper because of the fact that the name of the new extension ("ahbanC.shiba") was virtually the same as one of the t...

The maintainers of the nx build system have alerted users to a supply chain attack that allowed attackers to publish malicious versions of the popular npm package and other auxiliary plugins with data-gathering capabilities. "Malicious versions of the nx package, as well as some supporting plugin packages, were published to npm, containing code that scans the file system, collects credentials, and posts them to GitHub as a repo under the user's accounts," the maintainers said in an advisory published Wednesday. Nx is an open-source, technology-agnostic build platform that's designed to manage codebases. It's advertised as an "AI-first build platform that connects everything from your editor to CI [continuous integration]." The npm package has over 3.5 million weekly downloads. The list of affected packages and versions is below. These versions have since been removed from the npm registry. The compromise of the nx package took place on August 26, 20...

A team of academics has devised a novel attack that can be used to downgrade a 5G connection to a lower generation without relying on a rogue base station (gNB). The attack , per the ASSET (Automated Systems SEcuriTy) Research Group at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), relies on a new open-source software toolkit named Sni5Gect (short for "Sniffing 5G Inject") that's designed to sniff unencrypted messages sent between the base station and the user equipment (UE, i.e., a phone) and inject messages to the target UE over-the-air. The framework can be used to carry out attacks such as crashing the UE modem, downgrading to earlier generations of networks, fingerprinting, or authentication bypass, according to Shijie Luo, Matheus Garbelini, Sudipta Chattopadhyay, and Jianying Zhou. "As opposed to using a rogue base station, which limits the practicality of many 5G attacks, SNI5GECT acts as a third-party in the communication, silently sniffs me...

The maintainers of the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository have announced that the package manager now checks for expired domains to prevent supply chain attacks. "These changes improve PyPI's overall account security posture, making it harder for attackers to exploit expired domain names to gain unauthorized access to accounts," Mike Fiedler, PyPI safety and security engineer at the Python Software Foundation (PSF), said . With the latest update, the intention is to tackle domain resurrection attacks, which occur when bad actors purchase an expired domain and use it to take control of PyPI accounts through password resets. PyPI said it has unverified over 1,800 email addresses since early June 2025, as soon as their associated domains entered expiration phases. While this is not a foolproof solution, it helps plug a significant supply chain attack vector that would otherwise appear legitimate and hard to detect, it added. Email addresses are tied to domain names...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious package in the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that introduces malicious behavior through a dependency that allows it to establish persistence and achieve code execution. The package, named termncolor , realizes its nefarious functionality through a dependency package called colorinal by means of a multi-stage malware operation, Zscaler ThreatLabz said . While termncolor was downloaded 355 times, colorinal attracted 529 downloads. Both libraries are no longer available on PyPI. "This attack could leverage DLL side-loading to facilitate decryption, establish persistence, and conduct command-and-control (C2) communication, ending in remote code execution," according to researchers Manisha Ramcharan Prajapati and Satyam Singh. Once installed and executed, termncolor is designed to import colorinal, which, in turn, loads a rogue DLL that's responsible for decrypting and running the next-stage payload. Specifica...

A Chinese-speaking advanced persistent threat (APT) actor has been observed targeting web infrastructure entities in Taiwan using customized versions of open-sourced tools with an aim to establish long-term access within high-value victim environments. The activity has been attributed by Cisco Talos to an activity cluster it tracks as UAT-7237 , which is believed to be active since at least 2022. The hacking group is assessed to be a sub-group of UAT-5918 , which is known to be attacking critical infrastructure entities in Taiwan as far back as 2023. "UAT-7237 conducted a recent intrusion targeting web infrastructure entities within Taiwan and relies heavily on the use of open-sourced tooling, customized to a certain degree, likely to evade detection and conduct malicious activities within the compromised enterprise," Talos said . The attacks are characterized by the use of a bespoke shellcode loader dubbed SoundBill that's designed to decode and launch secondary pay...

Python is everywhere in modern software. From machine learning models to production microservices, chances are your code—and your business—depends on Python packages you didn't write. But in 2025, that trust comes with a serious risk. Every few weeks, we're seeing fresh headlines about malicious packages uploaded to the Python Package Index (PyPI)—many going undetected until after they've caused real harm. One of the most dangerous recent examples? In December 2024, attackers quietly compromised the Ultralytics YOLO package, widely used in computer vision applications. It was downloaded thousands of times before anyone noticed. This wasn't an isolated event. This is the new normal. Python supply chain attacks are rising fast—and your next pip install could be the weakest link. Join our webinar to learn what's really happening, what's coming next, and how to secure your code with confidence. Don't wait for a breach. Watch this webinar now and take control. . What's Really Going ...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a set of 11 malicious Go packages that are designed to download additional payloads from remote servers and execute them on both Windows and Linux systems. "At runtime the code silently spawns a shell, pulls a second-stage payload from an interchangeable set of .icu and .tech command-and-control (C2) endpoints, and executes it in memory," Socket security researcher Olivia Brown said . The list of identified packages is below - github.com/stripedconsu/linker github.com/agitatedleopa/stm github.com/expertsandba/opt github.com/wetteepee/hcloud-ip-floater github.com/weightycine/replika github.com/ordinarymea/tnsr_ids github.com/ordinarymea/TNSR_IDS github.com/cavernouskina/mcp-go github.com/lastnymph/gouid github.com/sinfulsky/gouid github.com/briefinitia/gouid