Phishing | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Welcome to this week's Threatsday Bulletin —your Thursday check-in on the latest twists and turns in cybersecurity and hacking. The digital threat landscape never stands still. One week it's a critical zero-day, the next it's a wave of phishing lures or a state-backed disinformation push. Each headline is a reminder that the rules keep changing and that defenders—whether you're protecting a global enterprise or your own personal data—need to keep moving just as fast. In this edition we unpack fresh exploits, high-profile arrests, and the newest tactics cybercriminals are testing right now. Grab a coffee, take five minutes, and get the key insights that help you stay a step ahead of the next breach. Firmware fights back SonicWall Releases SMA 100 Firmware Update to Remove Rootkit SonicWall has released a firmware update that it said will help customers remove rootkit malware deployed in attacks targeting SMA 100 series devices. "...

Organizations in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia have emerged as the target of a phishing campaign undertaken by a previously undocumented hacking group called ComicForm since at least April 2025. The activity primarily targeted industrial, financial, tourism, biotechnology, research, and trade sectors, cybersecurity company F6 said in an analysis published last week. The attack chain involves sending emails bearing subject lines like "Waiting for the signed document," "INvoice for Payment," or "Reconciliation Act for Signature," urging recipients to open an RR archive, within which there exists a Windows executable that masquerades as a PDF document (e.g., "Акт_сверки pdf 010.exe"). The messages, written in Russian or English, are sent from email addresses registered in the .ru, .by, and .kz top-level domains. The executable is an obfuscated .NET loader designed to launch a malicious DLL ("MechMatrix Pro.dll"), which subsequently...

Threat actors with ties to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (aka DPRK or North Korea) have been observed leveraging ClickFix-style lures to deliver a known malware called BeaverTail and InvisibleFerret. "The threat actor used ClickFix lures to target marketing and trader roles in cryptocurrency and retail sector organizations rather than targeting software development roles," GitLab Threat Intelligence researcher Oliver Smith said in a report published last week. First exposed by Palo Alto Networks in late 2023, BeaverTail and InvisibleFerret have been deployed by North Korean operatives as part of a long-running campaign dubbed Contagious Interview (aka Gwisin Gang), wherein the malware is distributed to software developers under the pretext of a job assessment. Assessed to be a subset of the umbrella group Lazarus , the cluster has been active since at least December 2022. Over the years, BeaverTail has also been propagated via bogus npm packages and f...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered what they say is the earliest example known to date of a malware that bakes in Large Language Model (LLM) capabilities. The malware has been codenamed MalTerminal by SentinelOne SentinelLABS research team. The findings were presented at the LABScon 2025 security conference. In a report examining the malicious use of LLMs, the cybersecurity company said AI models are being increasingly used by threat actors for operational support, as well as for embedding them into their tools – an emerging category called LLM-embedded malware that's exemplified by the appearance of LAMEHUG (aka PROMPTSTEAL) and PromptLock . This includes the discovery of a previously reported Windows executable called MalTerminal that uses OpenAI GPT-4 to dynamically generate ransomware code or a reverse shell. There is no evidence to suggest it was ever deployed in the wild, raising the possibility that it could also be a proof-of-concept malware or red team tool. ...

An Iran-nexus cyber espionage group known as UNC1549 has been attributed to a new campaign targeting European telecommunications companies, successfully infiltrating 34 devices across 11 organizations as part of a recruitment-themed activity on LinkedIn. Swiss cybersecurity company PRODAFT is tracking the cluster under the name Subtle Snail . It's assessed to be affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The targeted 11 companies are located in Canada, France, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States. "The group operates by posing as HR representatives from legitimate entities to engage employees, then compromises them through deployment of a MINIBIKE backdoor variant that communicates with command-and-control (C2) infrastructure proxied through Azure cloud services to bypass detection," the company said in a report shared with The Hacker News. UNC1549 (aka TA455), believed to be active since at least June 2022, ...

The phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) offerings known as Lighthouse and Lucid has been linked to more than 17,500 phishing domains targeting 316 brands from 74 countries. "Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) deployments have risen significantly recently," Netcraft said in a new report. "The PhaaS operators charge a monthly fee for phishing software with pre-installed templates impersonating, in some cases, hundreds of brands from countries around the world." Lucid was first documented by Swiss cybersecurity company PRODAFT earlier this April, detailing the phishing kit's ability to send smishing messages via Apple iMessage and Rich Communication Services (RCS) for Android. The service is assessed to be the work of a Chinese-speaking threat actor known as the XinXin group (changqixinyun), which has also leveraged other phishing kits like Lighthouse and Darcula in its operations. Darcula is developed by an actor named LARVA-246 (aka X667788X0 or xxhcvv), while Light...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new malware loader codenamed CountLoader that has been put to use by Russian ransomware gangs to deliver post-exploitation tools like Cobalt Strike and AdaptixC2 , and a remote access trojan known as PureHVNC RAT. "CountLoader is being used either as part of an Initial Access Broker's (IAB) toolset or by a ransomware affiliate with ties to the LockBit, Black Basta, and Qilin ransomware groups," Silent Push said in an analysis. Appearing in three different versions – .NET, PowerShell, and JavaScript – the emerging threat has been observed in a campaign targeting individuals in Ukraine using PDF-based phishing lures and impersonating the National Police of Ukraine. Silent Push told The Hacker News that it does not have any insight into the nature of malware that was dropped using CountLoader. It's worth noting that the PowerShell version of the malware was previously flagged by Kaspersky as being distributed using DeepSe...

The threat actor known as TA558 has been attributed to a fresh set of attacks delivering various remote access trojans (RATs) like Venom RAT to breach hotels in Brazil and Spanish-speaking markets. Russian cybersecurity vendor Kaspersky is tracking the activity, observed in summer 2025, to a cluster it tracks as RevengeHotels. "The threat actors continue to employ phishing emails with invoice themes to deliver Venom RAT implants via JavaScript loaders and PowerShell downloaders," the company said . "A significant portion of the initial infector and downloader code in this campaign appears to be generated by large language model (LLM) agents." The findings demonstrate a new trend among cybercriminal groups to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to bolster their tradecraft. Known to be active since at least 2015, RevengeHotels has a history of hospitality, hotel, and travel organizations in Latin America with the goal of installing malware on compromised syste...

A China-aligned threat actor known as TA415 has been attributed to spear-phishing campaigns targeting the U.S. government, think tanks, and academic organizations utilizing U.S.-China economic-themed lures. "In this activity, the group masqueraded as the current Chair of the Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as well as the U.S.-China Business Council, to target a range of individuals and organizations predominantly focused on U.S.-China relations, trade, and economic policy," Proofpoint said in an analysis. The enterprise security company said the activity, observed throughout July and August 2025, is likely an effort on part of Chinese state-sponsored threat actors to facilitate intelligence gathering amid ongoing U.S.-China trade talks, adding the hacking group shares overlaps with a threat cluster tracked broadly under the names APT41 and Brass Typhoon (formerly Barium). The findings come days...

Quantum computing and AI working together will bring incredible opportunities. Together, the technologies will help us extend innovation further and faster than ever before. But, imagine the flip side, waking up to news that hackers have used a quantum computer to crack your company's encryption overnight, exposing your most sensitive data, rendering much of it untrustworthy. And with your sensitive data exposed, where does that leave trust from your customers? And the cost to mitigate - if that is even possible with your outdated pre-quantum systems? According to IBM, cyber breaches are already hitting businesses with an average of $4.44 million per incident, and as high as $10.22 million in the US, but with quantum and AI working simultaneously, experts warn it could go much higher. In 2025, nearly two-thirds of organizations see quantum computing as the biggest cybersecurity threat looming in the next 3-5 years, while 93% of security leaders are prepping for daily AI-driven a...