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The maintainer of the Axios npm package has confirmed that the supply chain compromise was the result of a highly-targeted social engineering campaign orchestrated by North Korean threat actors tracked as UNC1069 . Maintainer Jason Saayman said the attackers tailored their social engineering efforts "specifically to me" by first approaching him under the guise of the founder of a legitimate, well-known company. "They had cloned the company's founders' likeness as well as the company itself," Saayman said in a post-mortem of the incident. "They then invited me to a real Slack workspace. This workspace was branded to the company's CI and named in a plausible manner. The Slack [workspace] was thought out very well; they had channels where they were sharing LinkedIn posts." Subsequently, the threat actors are said to have scheduled a meeting with him on Microsoft Teams. Upon joining the fake call, he was presented with a fake error mes...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new version of the SparkCat malware on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, more than a year after the trojan was discovered targeting both the mobile operating systems. The malware has been found to conceal itself within seemingly benign apps, such as enterprise messengers and food delivery services, while silently scanning victims' photo galleries for cryptocurrency wallet recovery phrases. Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky said it found two infected apps on the App Store and one on the Google Play Store that primarily target cryptocurrency users in Asia. "The iOS variant, however, takes a different approach as it scans for cryptocurrency wallet mnemonic phrases, which are in English," the company said. "This makes the iOS variant potentially broader in reach, as it can affect users regardless of their region." The improved version of SparkCat for...

Solana-based decentralized exchange Drift has confirmed that attackers drained about $285 million from the platform during a security incident that took place on April 1, 2026. "Earlier today, a malicious actor gained unauthorized access to Drift Protocol through a novel attack involving durable nonces, resulting in a rapid takeover of Drift’s Security Council administrative powers," the company said in a series of posts on X. "This was a highly sophisticated operation that appears to have involved multi-week preparation and staged execution, including the use of durable nonce accounts to pre-sign transactions that delayed execution." Drift noted that the attack did not exploit a vulnerability in its programs or smart contracts, and that there is no evidence of compromised seed phrases. Rather, the breach is said to have "involved unauthorized or misrepresented transaction approvals obtained prior to execution, likely facilitated through durable n...

A large-scale credential harvesting operation has been observed exploiting the React2Shell vulnerability as an initial infection vector to steal database credentials, SSH private keys, Amazon Web Services (AWS) secrets, shell command history, Stripe API keys, and GitHub tokens at scale. Cisco Talos has attributed the operation to a threat cluster it tracks as UAT-10608 . At least 766 hosts spanning multiple geographic regions and cloud providers have been compromised as part of the activity. "Post-compromise, UAT-10608 leverages automated scripts for extracting and exfiltrating credentials from a variety of applications, that are then posted to its command-and-control (C2)," security researchers  Asheer Malhotra and Brandon White said in a report shared with The Hacker News ahead of publication. "The C2 hosts a web-based graphical user interface (GUI) titled 'NEXUS Listener' that can be used to view s...

Cisco has released updates to address a critical security flaw in the Integrated Management Controller (IMC) that, if successfully exploited, could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to bypass authentication and gain access to the system with elevated privileges. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-20093, carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10.0. "This vulnerability is due to incorrect handling of password change requests," Cisco said in an advisory released Wednesday. "An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted HTTP request to an affected device." "A successful exploit could allow the attacker to bypass authentication, alter the passwords of any user on the system, including an Admin user, and gain access to the system as that user." Security researcher "jyh" has been credited with discovering and reporting the vulnerability. The shortcoming affects the following products regardless of the dev...

Google has formally attributed the supply chain compromise of the popular Axios npm package to a financially motivated North Korean threat activity cluster tracked as UNC1069 . "We have attributed the attack to a suspected North Korean threat actor we track as UNC1069," John Hultquist, chief analyst at Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG), told The Hacker News in a statement. "North Korean hackers have deep experience with supply chain attacks, which they've historically used to steal cryptocurrency. The full breadth of this incident is still unclear, but given the popularity of the compromised package, we expect it will have far reaching impacts." The development comes after threat actors seized control of the package maintainer's npm account to push two trojanized versions 1.14.1 and 0.30.4 that introduced a malicious dependency named "plain-crypto-js" that's used to deliver a cross-platform backdoor capable of infecting Windows, ma...

A high-severity security flaw in the TrueConf client video conferencing software has been exploited in the wild as a zero-day as part of a campaign targeting government entities in Southeast Asia dubbed TrueChaos . The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-3502 (CVSS score: 7.8), a lack of integrity check when fetching application update code, allowing an attacker to distribute a tampered update, resulting in the execution of arbitrary code. It has been patched in the TrueConf Windows client starting with version 8.5.3 , released earlier this month. "The flaw stems from the abuse of TrueConf's updater validation mechanism, allowing an attacker who controls the on-premises TrueConf server to distribute and execute arbitrary files across all connected endpoints," Check Point said in a report published today. In other words, an attacker who manages to gain control of the on-premises TrueConf server can substitute the update package with a poisoned version, which then...

The cybersecurity landscape is accelerating at an unprecedented rate. What is emerging is not simply a rise in the number of vulnerabilities or tools, but a dramatic increase in speed. Speed of attack, speed of exploitation, and speed of change across modern environments. This is the defining challenge of the new era of digital warfare: the weaponization of Artificial Intelligence. Threat actors, from nation-states to sophisticated criminal enterprises, are no longer just attacking. They are automating the entire kill chain. In this AI arms race, traditional defensive strategies are no longer sufficient. Periodic point-in-time assessments, manual triage, and human-speed response were already under pressure in fast-moving environments. Against AI-enabled adversaries, they are increasingly inadequate. Solutions like PlexTrac are built to help organizations move beyond fragmented findings, disconnected tools, and slow manual workflows by unifying exposure management, remediation, and...

A new campaign has leveraged the ClickFix social engineering tactic as a way to distribute a previously undocumented malware loader referred to as DeepLoad . "It likely uses AI-assisted obfuscation and process injection to evade static scanning, while credential theft starts immediately and captures passwords and sessions even if the primary loader is blocked," ReliaQuest researchers Thassanai McCabe and Andrew Currie said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The starting point of the attack chain is a ClickFix lure that tricks users into running PowerShell commands by pasting the command into the Windows Run dialog under the pretext of addressing a non-existent issue. This, in turn, uses "mshta.exe," a legitimate Windows utility to download and run an obfuscated PowerShell loader. The loader, for its part, has been found to conceal its actual functionality among meaningless variable assignments, likely in an attempt to deceive security tools. It's ass...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a remote access toolkit of Russian-origin that's distributed via malicious Windows shortcut (LNK) files that are disguised as private key folders. The CTRL toolkit, according to Censys, is custom-built using .NET and includes various executables" to facilitate credential phishing, keylogging, Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) hijacking, and reverse tunneling via Fast Reverse Proxy (FRP). "The executables provide encrypted payload loading, credential harvesting via a polished Windows Hello phishing UI, keylogging, RDP session hijacking, and reverse proxy tunneling through FRP," Censys security researcher Andrew Northern said . The attack surface management platform said it recovered CTRL from an open directory at 146.19.213[.]155 in February 2026. Attack chains distributing the toolkit rely on a weaponized LNK file ("Private Key #kfxm7p9q_yek.lnk") with a folder icon to trick users into double-clicking it. This tri...

Three threat activity clusters aligned with China have targeted a government organization in Southeast Asia as part of what has been described as a "complex and well-resourced operation." The campaigns have led to the deployment of various malware families, including HIUPAN (aka USBFect, MISTCLOAK, or U2DiskWatch), PUBLOAD , EggStremeFuel (aka RawCookie), EggStremeLoader (aka Gorem RAT), MASOL RAT , PoshRAT , TrackBak Stealer, RawCookie, Hypnosis Loader, and FluffyGh0st . The activity has been attributed to the following clusters - June - August 2025: Mustang Panda (aka Stately Taurus).  March - September 2025: CL-STA-1048, which overlaps with clusters publicly documented under the monikers Earth Estries and Crimson Palace . April and August 2025 - CL-STA-1049, which overlaps with a publicly documented cluster known as Unfading Sea Haze . Activity timeline "These activity clusters overlap with publicly reported campaigns aimed at establishing persistent ...

A recently disclosed critical security flaw impacting Citrix NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway is witnessing active reconnaissance activity, according to Defused Cyber and watchTowr . The vulnerability, CVE-2026-3055 (CVSS score: 9.3), refers to a case of insufficient input validation leading to memory overread, which an attacker could exploit to leak potentially sensitive information. Per Citrix, successful exploitation of the flaw hinges on the appliance being configured as a SAML Identity Provider (SAML IDP). "We are now observing auth method fingerprinting activity against NetScaler ADC/Gateway in the wild," Defused Cyber said in a post on X. "Attackers are probing /cgi/GetAuthMethods to enumerate enabled authentication flows in our Citrix honeypots." This is likely an attempt on the part of threat actors to determine if NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway are indeed configured as a SAML IDP. In a similar warning, watchTowr said it has detected active...

Rising geopolitical tensions are reflected (or in some cases preceded) by cyber operations, while technology itself has become politicized. Let’s admit it: we are in the middle of it.  Introduction: One tech power to rule them all is a thing of the past  The relative safety, peace and prosperity that much of the world has enjoyed since 1945 was not accidental. It emerged from the ashes of two world wars and the deliberate construction of a new global order. The United States of America set the terms of this new world. The long peace under Pax Americana provided a stable foundation, but that foundation is shifting. Europe’s deep strategic dependence on the U.S.’s technological and cybersecurity capabilities, from intelligence and infrastructure to frameworks and funding, is now being tested. Those tectonic geopolitical changes are undermining trust, threatening the state of safety, and compelling European organizations to rethink digital architectures and approaches at ever...

A pro-Ukrainian group called Bearlyfy has been attributed to more than 70 cyber attacks targeting Russian companies since it first surfaced in the threat landscape in January 2025, with recent attacks leveraging a custom Windows ransomware strain codenamed GenieLocker. "Bearlyfy (also known as Labubu) operates as a dual-purpose group aimed at inflicting maximum damage upon Russian businesses; its attacks serve the dual objectives of extortion for financial gain and acts of sabotage," Russian security vendor F6 said . The hacking group was first documented by F6 in September 2025 as leveraging encryptors associated with LockBit 3 (Black) and Babuk, with early intrusions focusing on smaller companies before upping the ante and demanding ransoms to the tune of €80,000 (about $92,100). By August 2025, the group had claimed at least 30 victims. Beginning May 2025, Bearlyfy actors also utilized a modified version of PolyVice , a ransomware family attributed to Vice Society ...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed three security vulnerabilities impacting LangChain and LangGraph that, if successfully exploited, could expose filesystem data, environment secrets, and conversation history. Both LangChain and LangGraph are open-source frameworks that are used to build applications powered by Large Language Models (LLMs). LangGraph is built on the foundations of LangChain for more sophisticated and non-linear agentic workflows. According to statistics on the Python Package Index (PyPI), LangChain, LangChain-Core, and LangGraph have been downloaded more than 52 million , 23 million , and 9 million times last week alone. "Each vulnerability exposes a different class of enterprise data: filesystem files, environment secrets, and conversation history," Cyera security researcher Vladimir Tokarev said in a report published Thursday. The issues, in a nutshell, offer three independent paths that an attacker can leverage to drain sensitive data from any...

A long-term and ongoing campaign attributed to a China-nexus threat actor has embedded itself in telecom networks to conduct espionage against government networks. The strategic positioning activity, which involves implanting and maintaining stealthy access mechanisms within critical environments, has been attributed to Red Menshen , a threat cluster that's also tracked as Earth Bluecrow, DecisiveArchitect, and Red Dev 18. The group has a track record of striking telecom providers across the Middle East and Asia since at least 2021. Rapid7 described the covert access mechanisms as "some of the stealthiest digital sleeper cells" ever encountered in telecommunications networks. The campaign is characterized by the use of kernel-level implants, passive backdoors, credential-harvesting utilities, and cross-platform command frameworks, giving the threat actor the ability to persistently inhabit networks of interest. One of the most recognized tools in its malware arsenal i...

Most teams have security tools in place. Alerts are firing, dashboards look clean, threat intel is flowing in. On the surface, everything feels under control. But one question usually stays unanswered: Would your defenses actually stop a real attack? That’s where things get shaky. A control exists, so it’s assumed to work. A detection rule is active, so it’s expected to catch something. But very few teams are consistently testing how all of this holds up when someone is actively trying to break through, step by step. This is exactly the gap this webinar focuses on. Exposure-Driven Resilience: Automate Testing to Validate & Improve Your Security Posture is a practical session built around one idea: stop guessing, start proving. Instead of relying on occasional testing or assumptions, it shows how to validate your security posture continuously using real attacker behavior. The session walks through how to pressure-test both your controls and your processes, how to use threa...

The kernel exploit for two security vulnerabilities used in the recently uncovered Apple iOS exploit kit known as Coruna is an updated version of the same exploit that was used in the Operation Triangulation campaign back in 2023, according to new findings from Kaspersky. "When Coruna was first reported, the public evidence wasn't sufficient to link its code to Triangulation — shared vulnerabilities alone don't prove shared authorship," Boris Larin, principal security researcher at Kaspersky GReAT, told The Hacker News in a statement. "Coruna is not a patchwork of public exploits; it is a continuously maintained evolution of the original Operation Triangulation framework. The inclusion of checks for recent processors like the M3 and newer iOS builds shows that the original developers have actively expanded this codebase. What began as a precision espionage tool is now deployed indiscriminately." Coruna was first documented by Google and iVerify earli...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new payment skimmer that uses WebRTC data channels as a means to receive payloads and exfiltrate data, effectively bypassing security controls. "Instead of the usual HTTP requests or image beacons, this malware uses WebRTC data channels to load its payload and exfiltrate stolen payment data," Sansec said in a report published this week. The attack, which targeted a car maker's e-commerce website, is said to have been facilitated by PolyShell , a new vulnerability impacting Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce that allows unauthenticated attackers to upload arbitrary executables via the REST API and achieve code execution. Notably, the vulnerability has since come under mass exploitation since March 19, 2026, with more than 50 IP addresses participating in the scanning activity. The Dutch security company said it has found PolyShell attacks on 56.7% of all vulnerable stores. The skimmer is designed as a self-executing ...

The alleged administrator of the LeakBase cybercrime forum has been arrested by Russian law enforcement authorities, state media reported Thursday. According to TASS and MVD Media , a news website linked to the Russian Interior Ministry, the suspect is a resident of the city of Taganrog. The suspect is said to have been detained for creating and managing a criminal site that allowed stolen personal databases to be traded since 2021. In addition, technical equipment and other items of evidentiary value were confiscated during a search of the suspect's residence. "The platform hosted hundreds of millions of user accounts, bank details, usernames, and passwords, as well as corporate documents obtained through hacking," said Irina Volk, an official spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. "More than 147,000 users registered on the forum could buy and sell this data, as well as use it to commit fraudulent acts against citizens." LeakBase was...