Operational Security | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

At least one Russian intelligence service is systematically hijacking internet-connected security cameras across Europe and Ukraine, using the feeds to watch military transport routes, weapons shipments bound for Kyiv , and the locations of Ukrainian troops. That is the finding of a cybersecurity advisory published July 10 by the AIVD and MIVD, the Netherlands' civilian and military intelligence services, which describe the operation as ongoing. In Ukraine, the surveillance has not stayed passive. Camera access there has been "used in attempts to neutralise Ukrainian military personnel" and destroy their equipment, the services say, turning an exposed roadside or business camera into a targeting aid. Across EU and NATO states, the services add, the same camera access is also collecting military intelligence that has nothing to do with the war. Getting in is rarely the hard part. The operators scan the internet for exposed devices, fingerprint IP cameras by bran...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the web-based control panel used by operators of the StealC information stealer, allowing them to gather crucial insights on one of the threat actors using the malware in their operations. "By exploiting it, we were able to collect system fingerprints, monitor active sessions, and – in a twist that will surprise no one – steal cookies from the very infrastructure designed to steal them," CyberArk researcher Ari Novick said in a report published last week. StealC is an information stealer that first emerged in January 2023 under a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) model, allowing potential customers to leverage YouTube as a primary mechanism – a phenomenon called the YouTube Ghost Network – to distribute the malicious program by disguising it as cracks for popular software. Over the past year, the stealer has also been observed being propagated via rogue Blender Foundation files and a soc...

OpenAI has revealed that it banned a set of ChatGPT accounts that were likely operated by Russian-speaking threat actors and two Chinese nation-state hacking groups to assist with malware development, social media automation, and research about U.S. satellite communications technologies, among other things. "The [Russian-speaking] actor used our models to assist with developing and refining Windows malware, debugging code across multiple languages, and setting up their command-and-control infrastructure," OpenAI said in its threat intelligence report. "The actor demonstrated knowledge of Windows internals and exhibited some operational security behaviors." The Go-based malware campaign has been codenamed ScopeCreep by the artificial intelligence (AI) company. There is no evidence that the activity was widespread in nature. The threat actor, per OpenAI, used temporary email accounts to sign up for ChatGPT, using each of the created accounts to have one conversat...

A likely lone wolf actor behind the EncryptHub persona was acknowledged by Microsoft for discovering and reporting two security flaws in Windows last month, painting a picture of a "conflicted" individual straddling a legitimate career in cybersecurity and pursuing cybercrime. In a new extensive analysis published by Outpost24 KrakenLabs, the Swedish security company unmasked the up-and-coming cybercriminal, who, about 10 years ago, fled his hometown in Kharkov, Ukraine, to a new place somewhere near the Romanian coast. The vulnerabilities were credited by Microsoft to a party named "SkorikARI with SkorikARI," which has been assessed to be another username used by EncryptHub. The flaws in question, both of which were fixed by Redmond as part of its Patch Tuesday update last month, are below - CVE-2025-24061 (CVSS score: 7.8) - Microsoft Windows Mark-of-the-Web (MotW) Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2025-24071 (CVSS score: 6.5) - Microsoft Windo...

In what's an instance of hacking the hackers, threat hunters have managed to infiltrate the online infrastructure associated with a ransomware group called BlackLock, uncovering crucial information about their modus operandi in the process. Resecurity said it identified a security vulnerability in the data leak site (DLS) operated by the e-crime group that made it possible to extract configuration files, credentials, as well as the history of commands executed on the server. The flaw concerns a "certain misconfiguration in the Data Leak Site (DLS) of BlackLock Ransomware, leading to clearnet IP addresses disclosure related to their network infrastructure behind TOR hidden services (hosting them) and additional service information," the company said . It described the acquired history of commands as one of the biggest operational security (OPSEC) failures of BlackLock ransomware. BlackLock is a rebranded version of another ransomware group known as Eldorado . It has...