Threat Intelligence | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a fresh batch of malicious npm packages linked to the ongoing Contagious Interview operation originating from North Korea. According to Socket , the ongoing supply chain attack involves 35 malicious packages that were uploaded from 24 npm accounts. These packages have been collectively downloaded over 4,000 times. The complete list of the JavaScript libraries is below - react-plaid-sdk sumsub-node-websdk vite-plugin-next-refresh vite-plugin-purify nextjs-insight vite-plugin-svgn node-loggers react-logs reactbootstraps framer-motion-ext serverlog-dispatch mongo-errorlog next-log-patcher vite-plugin-tools pixel-percent test-topdev-logger-v1 test-topdev-logger-v3 server-log-engine logbin-nodejs vite-loader-svg struct-logger flexible-loggers beautiful-plugins chalk-config jsonpacks jsonspecific jsonsecs util-buffers blur-plugins proc-watch node-orm-mongoose prior-config use-videos lucide-node, and router-parse ...

I had the honor of hosting the first episode of the Xposure Podcast live from Xposure Summit 2025. And I couldn't have asked for a better kickoff panel: three cybersecurity leaders who don't just talk security, they live it. Let me introduce them. Alex Delay , CISO at IDB Bank, knows what it means to defend a highly regulated environment. Ben Mead , Director of Cybersecurity at Avidity Biosciences, brings a forward-thinking security perspective that reflects the innovation behind Avidity's targeted RNA therapeutics. Last but not least, Michael Francess , Director of Cybersecurity Advanced Threat at Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, leads the charge in protecting the franchise. Each brought a unique vantage point to a common challenge: applying Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) to complex production environments. Gartner made waves in 2023 with a bold prediction: organizations that prioritize CTEM will be three times less likely to be breached by 2026. But here's the kicker -...

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has warned of a new cyber attack campaign by the Russia-linked APT28 (aka UAC-0001) threat actors using Signal chat messages to deliver two previously undocumented malware families dubbedd BEARDSHELL and COVENANT. BEARDSHELL, per CERT-UA, is written in C++ and offers the ability to download and execute PowerShell scripts, as well as upload the results of the execution back to a remote server over the Icedrive API. The agency said it first observed BEARDSHELL, alongside a screenshot-taking tool named SLIMAGENT, as part of incident response efforts in March-April 2024 in a Windows computer. While there were no details available on how the infection took place at that time, the agency said it received threat intelligence from ESET more than a year later that detected evidence of unauthorized access to a "gov.ua" email account. The exact nature of the information shared was not disclosed, but it likely pertains to a...

It sure is a hard time to be a SOC analyst. Every day, they are expected to solve high-consequence problems with half the data and twice the pressure. Analysts are overwhelmed—not just by threats, but by the systems and processes in place that are meant to help them respond. Tooling is fragmented. Workflows are heavy. Context lives in five places, and alerts never slow down. What started as a fast-paced, high-impact role has, for many analysts, become a repetitive loop of alert triage and data wrangling that offers little room for strategy or growth.  Most SOC teams also run lean. Last year, our annual SANS SOC Survey found that a majority of SOCs only consist of just 2–10 full-time analysts , a number unchanged since the survey began tracking in 2017. Meanwhile, the scope of coverage has exploded, ranging from on-prem infrastructure to cloud environments, remote endpoints, SaaS platforms, and beyond. Compounded at scale, this has led to systemic burnout across SOC environment...

Not every risk looks like an attack. Some problems start as small glitches, strange logs, or quiet delays that don't seem urgent—until they are. What if your environment is already being tested, just not in ways you expected? Some of the most dangerous moves are hidden in plain sight. It's worth asking: what patterns are we missing, and what signals are we ignoring because they don't match old playbooks? This week's reports bring those quiet signals into focus—from attacks that bypassed MFA using trusted tools, to supply chain compromises hiding behind everyday interfaces. Here's what stood out across the cybersecurity landscape: ⚡ Threat of the Week Cloudflare Blocks Massive 7.3 Tbps DDoS Attack — Cloudflare said it autonomously blocked the largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack ever recorded, which hit a peak of 7.3 terabits per second (Tbps). The attack, the company said, targeted an unnamed hosting provider and delivered 37.4 terabytes in 45 seconds. It origi...

The April 2025 cyber attacks targeting U.K. retailers Marks & Spencer and Co-op have been classified as a "single combined cyber event." That's according to an assessment from the Cyber Monitoring Centre (CMC), a U.K.-based independent, non-profit body set up by the insurance industry to categorize major cyber events. "Given that one threat actor claimed responsibility for both M&S and Co-op, the close timing, and the similar tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), CMC has assessed the incidents as a single combined cyber event," the CMC said . The organization has categorized the disruption of the retailers as a "Category 2 systemic event." It's estimated that the security breaches will have a total financial impact of £270 million ($363 million) to £440 million ($592 million). However, the cyber attack on Harrods around the same time has not been included at this stage, citing a lack of adequate information about the cause and...

The North Korea-aligned threat actor known as BlueNoroff has been observed targeting an employee in the Web3 sector with deceptive Zoom calls featuring deepfaked company executives to trick them into installing malware on their Apple macOS devices. Huntress, which revealed details of the cyber intrusion, said the attack targeted an unnamed cryptocurrency foundation employee, who received a message from an external contact on Telegram. "The message requested time to speak to the employee, and the attacker sent a Calendly link to set up meeting time," security researchers Alden Schmidt, Stuart Ashenbrenner, and Jonathan Semon said . "The Calendly link was for a Google Meet event, but when clicked, the URL redirects the end user to a fake Zoom domain controlled by the threat actor." After several weeks, the employee is said to have joined a group Zoom meeting that included several deepfakes of known members of the senior leadership of their company, along with oth...

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 actors with suspected ties to Russia have been observed taking advantage of a Google account feature called application specific passwords (or app passwords) as part of a novel social engineering tactic designed to gain access to victims' emails. Details of the highly targeted campaign were disclosed by Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) and the Citizen Lab, stating the activity seeks to impersonate the U.S. Department of State.  "From at least April through early June 2025, this actor targeted prominent academics and critics of Russia, often using extensive rapport building and tailored lures to convince the target to set up application specific passwords (ASPs), GTIG researchers Gabby Roncone and Wesley Shields said . "Once the target shares the ASP passcode, the attackers establish persistent access to the victim's mailbox." The activity has been attributed by Google to a threat cluster it tracks as UNC6293, which it says is likely affiliate...

A new campaign is making use of Cloudflare Tunnel subdomains to host malicious payloads and deliver them via malicious attachments embedded in phishing emails. The ongoing campaign has been codenamed SERPENTINE#CLOUD by Securonix. It leverages "the Cloudflare Tunnel infrastructure and Python-based loaders to deliver memory-injected payloads through a chain of shortcut files and obfuscated scripts," security researcher Tim Peck said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The attack starts with sending payment- or invoice-themed phishing emails bearing a link to a zipped document that contains a Windows shortcut (LNK) file. These shortcuts are disguised as documents to trick victims into opening them, effectively activating the infection sequence. The elaborate multi-step process culminates in the execution of a Python-based shellcode loader that executes payloads packed with the open-source Donut loader entirely in memory. Securonix said the campaign has targeted the...

A new multi-stage malware campaign is targeting Minecraft users with a Java-based malware that employs a distribution-as-service (DaaS) offering called Stargazers Ghost Network . "The campaigns resulted in a multi-stage attack chain targeting Minecraft users specifically," Check Point researchers Jaromír Hořejší and Antonis Terefos said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The malware was impersonating Oringo and Taunahi, which are 'Scripts and macros tools' (aka cheats). Both the first and second stages are developed in Java and can only be executed if the Minecraft runtime is installed on the host machine." The end goal of the attack is to trick players into downloading a Minecraft mod from GitHub and deliver a .NET information stealer with comprehensive data theft capabilities. The campaign was first detected by the cybersecurity company in March 2025. What makes the activity notable is its use of an illicit offering called the Stargazers Ghost...

Cybersecurity researchers have exposed a previously unknown threat actor known as Water Curse that relies on weaponized GitHub repositories to deliver multi-stage malware. "The malware enables data exfiltration (including credentials, browser data, and session tokens), remote access, and long-term persistence on infected systems," Trend Micro researchers Jovit Samaniego, Aira Marcelo, Mohamed Fahmy, and Gabriel Nicoleta said in an analysis published this week. The "broad and sustained" campaign, first spotted last month, set up repositories offering seemingly innocuous penetration testing utilities, such as SMTP email bomber and Sakura-RAT, but harbored within their Visual Studio project configuration files malicious payloads that are designed to siphon sensitive data. Water Curse's arsenal incorporates a wide range of tools and programming languages, underscoring their cross-functional development capabilities to target the supply chain with "develope...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday placed a security flaw impacting the Linux kernel in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, stating it has been actively exploited in the wild. The vulnerability, CVE-2023-0386 (CVSS score: 7.8), is an improper ownership bug in the Linux kernel that could be exploited to escalate privileges on susceptible systems. It was patched in early 2023. "Linux kernel contains an improper ownership management vulnerability, where unauthorized access to the execution of the setuid file with capabilities was found in the Linux kernel's OverlayFS subsystem in how a user copies a capable file from a nosuid mount into another mount," the agency said. "This uid mapping bug allows a local user to escalate their privileges on the system." It's currently not known how the security flaw is being exploited in the wild. In a report published in May 2023, Datadog said the vulnerability...

A former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst has been sentenced to little more than three years in prison for unlawfully retaining and transmitting top secret National Defense Information (NDI) to people who were not entitled to receive them and for attempting to cover up the malicious activity. Asif William Rahman, 34, of Vienna, has been sentenced today to 37 months on charges of stealing and divulging classified information. He was an employee of the CIA since 2016 and had Top Secret security clearance to access Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) until he was terminated from his job after he was arrested last November in Cambodia. Earlier this January, Rahman pleaded guilty to two counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information related to the national defense. As previously reported by The Hacker News, Rahman retained multiple Secret and Top Secret documents without authorization on October 17, 2024, took them to his place of residence...

Veeam has rolled out patches to contain a critical security flaw impacting its Backup & Replication software that could result in remote code execution under certain conditions. The security defect, tracked as CVE-2025-23121, carries a CVSS score of 9.9 out of a maximum of 10.0. "A vulnerability allowing remote code execution (RCE) on the Backup Server by an authenticated domain user," the company said in an advisory. CVE-2025-23121 impacts all earlier version 12 builds, including 12.3.1.1139. It has been addressed in version 12.3.2 (build 12.3.2.3617). Security researchers at CODE WHITE GmbH and watchTowr have been credited with discovering and reporting the vulnerability. Cybersecurity company Rapid7 noted that the update likely addresses concerns shared by CODE WHITE in late March 2025 that the patch put in place to plug a similar hole ( CVE-2025-23120 , CVSS score: 9.9) could be bypassed. Also addressed by Veeam is another flaw in the same product (CVE-2025...