Threat Hunting | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

My objective As someone relatively inexperienced with network threat hunting, I wanted to get some hands-on experience using a network detection and response (NDR) system. My goal was to understand how NDR is used in hunting and incident response, and how it fits into the daily workflow of a Security Operations Center (SOC). Corelight’s Investigator software , part of its Open NDR Platform, is designed to be user-friendly (even for junior analysts) so I thought it would be a good fit for me. I was given access to a production version of Investigator that had been loaded with pre-recorded network traffic. This is a common way to learn how to use this type of software. While I’m new to threat hunting, I do have experience looking at network traffic flows. I was even an early user of one of the first network traffic analyzers called Sniffer. Sniffers were specialized PCs equipped with network adapters designed to capture traffic and packets. These computers were the foundation on whi...

Many incident response failures do not come from a lack of tools, intelligence, or technical skills. They come from what happens immediately after detection, when pressure is high, and information is incomplete. I have seen IR teams recover from sophisticated intrusions with limited telemetry. I have also seen teams lose control of investigations they should have been able to handle. The difference usually appears early. Not hours later, when timelines are built, or reports are written, but in the first moments after a responder realizes something is wrong. Those early moments are often described as the first 90 seconds. However, taken too literally, that framing misses the point. This is not about reacting faster than an attacker or rushing to action. It is about establishing direction before assumptions harden and options disappear. Responders make quiet decisions right away, like what to look at first, what to preserve, and whether to treat the issue as a single system problem o...

If you work in security operations, the concept of the AI SOC agent is likely familiar. Early narratives promised total autonomy. Vendors seized on the idea of the "Autonomous SOC" and suggested a future where algorithms replaced analysts. That future has not arrived. We have not seen mass layoffs or empty security operations centers. We have instead seen the emergence of a practical reality. The deployment of AI in the SOC has not removed the human element. It has instead redefined how they are spending their time.  We now understand that the value of AI is not in replacing the operator. It is in solving the math problem of defense. Infrastructure complexity scales exponentially while headcount scales linearly. This mismatch previously forced teams to make statistical compromises and sample alerts rather than solving them. Agentic AI corrects this imbalance. It decouples investigation capacity from human availability and fundamentally alters the daily workflow of the sec...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is making its way into security operations quickly, but many practitioners are still struggling to turn early experimentation into consistent operational value. This is because SOCs are adopting AI without an intentional approach to operational integration. Some teams treat it as a shortcut for broken processes. Others attempt to apply machine learning to problems that are not well defined. Findings from our 2025 SANS SOC Survey reinforce that disconnect. A significant portion of organizations are already experimenting with AI, yet 40 percent of SOCs use AI or ML tools without making them a defined part of operations, and 42 percent rely on AI/ML tools “out of the box” with no customization at all. The result is a familiar pattern. AI is present inside the SOC but not operationalized. Analysts use it informally, often with mixed reliability, while leadership has not yet established a consistent model for where AI belongs, how its output should be valida...

Every October brings a familiar rhythm - pumpkin-spice everything in stores and cafés, alongside a wave of reminders, webinars, and checklists in my inbox. Halloween may be just around the corner, yet for those of us in cybersecurity, Security Awareness Month is the true seasonal milestone. Make no mistake, as a security professional, I love this month. Launched by CISA and the National Cybersecurity Alliance back in 2004, it’s designed to make security a shared responsibility. It helps regular citizens, businesses, and public agencies build safer digital habits. And it works. It draws attention to risk in its many forms, sparks conversations that otherwise might not happen, and helps employees recognize their personal stake in and influence over the organization’s security.  Security Awareness Month initiatives boost confidence, sharpen instincts, and keep security at the front of everyone’s mind... until the winter holiday season decorations start to go up, that is. After th...

Security operations have never been a 9-to-5 job. For SOC analysts, the day often starts and ends deep in a queue of alerts, chasing down what turns out to be false positives, or switching between half a dozen tools to piece together context. The work is repetitive, time-consuming, and high-stakes, leaving SOCs under constant pressure to keep up, yet often struggling to stay ahead of emerging threats. That combination of inefficiency, elevated risk, and a reactive operating model is exactly where AI-powered SOC capabilities are starting to make a difference. Why AI SOC is gaining traction now The recent Gartner Hype Cycle for Security Operations 2025 (download a complimentary copy ) recognizes AI SOC Agents as an innovation trigger, reflecting a broader shift in how teams approach automation. Instead of relying solely on static playbooks or manual investigation workflows, AI SOC capabilities bring reasoning, adaptability, and context-aware decision-making into the mix. SOC teams r...

Threat hunters have discovered a network of more than 1,000 compromised small office and home office (SOHO) devices that have been used to facilitate a prolonged cyber espionage infrastructure campaign for China-nexus hacking groups. The Operational Relay Box (ORB) network has been codenamed LapDogs by SecurityScorecard's STRIKE team. "The LapDogs network has a high concentration of victims across the United States and Southeast Asia, and is slowly but steadily growing in size," the cybersecurity company said in a technical report published this week. Other regions where the infections are prevalent include Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, with victims spanning IT, networking, real estate, and media sectors. Active infections span devices and services from Ruckus Wireless, ASUS, Buffalo Technology, Cisco-Linksys, Cross DVR, D-Link, Microsoft, Panasonic, and Synology.  LapDogs' beating heart is a custom backdoor called ShortLeash that's engineered...

Cybersecurity researchers have detailed two novel methods that can be used to disrupt cryptocurrency mining botnets. The methods take advantage of the design of various common mining topologies in order to shut down the mining process , Akamai said in a new report published today. "We developed two techniques by leveraging the mining topologies and pool policies that enable us to reduce a cryptominer botnet's effectiveness to the point of completely shutting it down, which forces the attacker to make radical changes to their infrastructure or even abandon the entire campaign," security researcher Maor Dahan said . The techniques, the web infrastructure company said, hinge on exploiting the Stratum mining protocol such that it causes an attacker's mining proxy or wallet to be banned, effectively disrupting the operation. The first of the two approaches, dubbed bad shares, entails banning the mining proxy from the network, which, in turn, results in the shutdow...

Most cyberattacks today don’t start with loud alarms or broken firewalls. They start quietly—inside tools and websites your business already trusts. It’s called “ Living Off Trusted Sites ” (LOTS)—and it’s the new favorite strategy of modern attackers. Instead of breaking in, they blend in. Hackers are using well-known platforms like Google, Microsoft, Dropbox, and Slack as launchpads. They hide malicious code inside routine traffic, making it incredibly difficult for traditional defenses to detect them. And here’s the scary part: many security teams don’t even realize it’s happening—until it’s too late. Why You’re Not Seeing These Attacks LOTS tactics don’t look suspicious at first glance. There’s no malware signature to flag, and no unusual IP address to trace. It’s legitimate traffic—until it’s not. Attackers are exploiting: Common business tools like Teams, Zoom, and GitHub Shortened or vanity URLs to redirect users Trusted cloud services to host malicious payloads ...

Threat hunters have uncovered a new threat actor named UAT-5918 that has been attacking critical infrastructure entities in Taiwan since at least 2023. "UAT-5918, a threat actor believed to be motivated by establishing long-term access for information theft, uses a combination of web shells and open-sourced tooling to conduct post-compromise activities to establish persistence in victim environments for information theft and credential harvesting," Cisco Talos researchers Jungsoo An, Asheer Malhotra, Brandon White, and Vitor Ventura said . Besides critical infrastructure, some of the other targeted verticals include information technology, telecommunications, academia, and healthcare. Assessed to be an advanced persistent threat (APT) group looking to establish long-term persistent access in victim environments, UAT-5918 is said to share tactical overlaps with several Chinese hacking crews tracked as Volt Typhoon , Flax Typhoon , Tropic Trooper , Earth Estries , and Dalb...

Triaging and investigating alerts is central to security operations. As SOC teams strive to keep up with ever-increasing alert volumes and complexity, modernizing SOC automation strategies with AI has emerged as a critical solution. This blog explores how an AI SOC Analyst transforms alert management, addressing key SOC challenges while enabling faster investigations and responses. Security operations teams are under constant pressure to manage the relentless flow of security alerts from an expanding array of tools. Every alert carries the risk of serious consequences if ignored, yet the majority are false positives. This flood of alerts bogs down teams in a cycle of tedious, repetitive tasks, consuming valuable time and resources. The result? Overstretched teams are struggling to balance reactive alert “whack-a-mole” chasing with proactive threat hunting and other strategic security initiatives.  Core challenges High alert volumes: Security operations teams receive hundreds t...

Threat hunters are calling attention to a new campaign that has targeted Fortinet FortiGate firewall devices with management interfaces exposed on the public internet. "The campaign involved unauthorized administrative logins on management interfaces of firewalls, creation of new accounts, SSL VPN authentication through those accounts, and various other configuration changes," cybersecurity firm Arctic Wolf said in an analysis published last week. The malicious activity is believed to have commenced in mid-November 2024, with unknown threat actors gaining unauthorized access to management interfaces on affected firewalls to alter configurations and extract credentials using DCSync . The exact initial access vector is currently not known, although it has been assessed with "high confidence" that it's likely driven by the exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability given the "compressed timeline across affected organizations as well as firmware versions af...

Addressing cyber threats before they have a chance to strike or inflict serious damage is by far the best security approach any company can embrace. Achieving this takes a lot of research and proactive threat hunting. The problem here is that it is easy to get stuck in endless arrays of data and end up with no relevant intel.  To avoid this, use these five battle-tested techniques that are certain to improve your company’s threat awareness and overall security. Finding threats targeting orgs in your region The most basic, yet high-impact way to learn about the current threat landscape for your company is to go and see what type of attacks other organizations in your region are experiencing.  In most cases, threat actors attempt to target dozens of businesses at the same time as part of a single campaign. This makes it possible to catch the threat early and make correct adjustments in your organization. How it contributes to your security: More targeted and effective de...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming cybersecurity, and those leading the charge are using it to outsmart increasingly advanced cyber threats. Join us for an exciting webinar, " The Future of Threat Hunting is Powered by Generative AI ," where you'll explore how AI tools are shaping the future of cybersecurity defenses. During the session, Censys Security Researcher Aidan Holland will introduce you to CensysGPT, a cutting-edge tool revolutionizing threat hunting and cybersecurity research. With CensysGPT, you can ask questions in plain language, understand competitor searches, and uncover insights from network data like never before. Here's why you should attend: Discover the latest:  Learn how generative AI is changing the game in cybersecurity and threat intelligence. Hunt smarter and faster:  See how CensysGPT helps you find threats quicker, reducing your organization's risk. Strengthen your defenses:  Find out how to incorporate AI into your se...

In the high-stakes world of cybersecurity, the battleground has shifted. Supply chain attacks have emerged as a potent threat, exploiting the intricate web of interconnected systems and third-party dependencies to breach even the most formidable defenses. But what if you could turn the tables and proactively hunt these threats before they wreak havoc? We invite you to join us for an exclusive webinar that will equip you with the knowledge and strategies to stay ahead of the curve: " Supply Chain Under Siege: Unveiling Hidden Threats ." This comprehensive session, led by industry experts Rhys Arkins (VP of Product) and Jeffrey Martin (VP of Product Marketing), promises an in-depth exploration of the supply chain threat landscape. Brace yourself for a revelatory journey through: The Anatomy of Supply Chain Threats:  Gain a deep understanding of these insidious attacks, their far-reaching consequences, and the vulnerabilities they exploit. Proactive Threat Hu...