Threat Intelligence | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The threat actor known as Vane Viper has been outed as a purveyor of malicious ad technology (adtech), while relying on a tangled web of shell companies and opaque ownership structures to deliberately evade responsibility. "Vane Viper has provided core infrastructure in widespread malvertising, ad fraud, and cyberthreat proliferation for at least a decade," Infoblox said in a technical report published last week in collaboration with Guardio and Confiant. "Vane Viper not only brokers traffic for malware droppers and phishers, but appears to run their own campaigns, consistent with previously documented ad-fraud techniques." Vane Viper, also called Omnatuor , was previously documented by the DNS threat intelligence firm in August 2022, describing it as a malvertising network akin to VexTrio Viper that takes advantage of vulnerable WordPress sites to build a massive network of compromised domains and use them to spread riskware, spyware, and adware. One of t...

The latest Gcore Radar report analyzing attack data from Q1–Q2 2025, reveals a 41% year-on-year increase in total attack volume. The largest attack peaked at 2.2 Tbps, surpassing the 2 Tbps record in late 2024. Attacks are growing not only in scale but in sophistication, with longer durations, multi-layered strategies, and a shift in target industries. Technology now overtakes gaming as the most attacked sector, while the financial services industry continues to face heightened risks. Key takeaways: the evolving DDoS landscape Here are five key insights from the Q1–Q2 2025 Gcore Radar report: Attack volumes are rising. Total attacks climbed from 969,000 in H2 2024 to 1.17 million in H1 2025, a 21% increase over the previous two quarters and 41% YoY growth. Attack size continues to grow. The peak attack of 2.2 Tbps demonstrates the increasing scale and destructive potential of modern DDoS campaigns. Attacks are becoming longer and more sophisticated. Extended durations and mu...

A suspected cyber espionage activity cluster that was previously found targeting global government and private sector organizations spanning Africa, Asia, North America, South America, and Oceania has been assessed to be a Chinese state-sponsored threat actor. Recorded Future, which was tracking the activity under the moniker TAG-100 , has now graduated it to a hacking group dubbed RedNovember . It's also tracked by Microsoft as Storm-2077 . "Between June 2024 and July 2025, RedNovember (which overlaps with Storm-2077) targeted perimeter appliances of high-profile organizations globally and used the Go-based backdoor Pantegana and Cobalt Strike as part of its intrusions," the Mastercard-owned company said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The group has expanded its targeting remit across government and private sector organizations, including defense and aerospace organizations, space organizations, and law firms." Some of the likely new victims of...

Companies in the legal services, software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers, Business Process Outsourcers (BPOs), and technology sectors in the U.S. have been targeted by a suspected China-nexus cyber espionage group to deliver a known backdoor referred to as BRICKSTORM . The activity, attributed to UNC5221 and closely related, suspected China-nexus threat clusters, is designed to facilitate persistent access to victim organizations for over a year, Mandiant and Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said in a new report shared with The Hacker News. It's assessed that the objective of BRICKSTORM targeting SaaS providers is to gain access to downstream customer environments or the data SaaS providers host on their customers' behalf, while the targeting of the U.S. legal and technological spheres is likely an attempt to gather information related to national security and international trade, as well as steal intellectual property to advance the development of zero-day exploits. ...

The U.S. Secret Service on Tuesday said it took down a network of electronic devices located across the New York tri-state area that were used to threaten U.S. government officials and posed an imminent threat to national security. "This protective intelligence investigation led to the discovery of more than 300 co-located SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards across multiple sites," the Secret Service said . The devices were concentrated within a 35-mile (56 km) radius of the global meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. An investigation into the incident has been launched by the Secret Service's Advanced Threat Interdiction Unit. Aside from issuing anonymous telephonic threats, the sophisticated devices could be weaponized to conduct various attacks on the telecommunications infrastructure, including disabling cell phone towers, triggering a denial-of-service, and facilitating encrypted communication between potential threat actors and criminal...

The security landscape now moves at a pace no patch cycle can match. Attackers aren't waiting for quarterly updates or monthly fixes—they adapt within hours, blending fresh techniques with old, forgotten flaws to create new openings. A vulnerability closed yesterday can become the blueprint for tomorrow's breach. This week's recap explores the trends driving that constant churn: how threat actors reuse proven tactics in unexpected ways, how emerging technologies widen the attack surface, and what defenders can learn before the next pivot. Read on to see not just what happened, but what it means—so you can stay ahead instead of scrambling to catch up. ⚡ Threat of the Week Google Patches Actively Exploited Chrome 0-Day — Google released security updates for the Chrome web browser to address four vulnerabilities, including one that it said has been exploited in the wild. The zero-day vulnerability, CVE-2025-10585, has been described as a type confusion issue in the V8 JavaScript ...

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, ...

Fortra has disclosed details of a critical security flaw in GoAnywhere Managed File Transfer (MFT) software that could result in the execution of arbitrary commands. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-10035 , carries a CVSS score of 10.0, indicating maximum severity. "A deserialization vulnerability in the License Servlet of Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT allows an actor with a validly forged license response signature to deserialize an arbitrary actor-controlled object, possibly leading to command injection," Fortra said in an advisory released Thursday. The company also noted that successful exploitation of the vulnerability is dependent on the system being publicly accessible over the internet. Users are advised to update to the patched release – version 7.8.4, or the Sustain Release 7.6.3 – to safeguard against potential threats. If immediate patching is not possible, it's advisable to ensure that access to the GoAnywhere Admin Console is not open to the public...

Run by the team at workflow orchestration and AI platform Tines, the Tines library features over 1,000 pre-built workflows shared by security practitioners from across the community - all free to import and deploy through the platform's Community Edition. The workflow we are highlighting streamlines security alert handling by automatically identifying and executing the appropriate Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) from Confluence. When an alert triggers, AI agents analyze it, locate relevant SOPs, and perform required remediation steps - all while keeping the on-call team informed via Slack. It was created by Michael Tolan, Security Researcher L2 at Tines, and Peter Wrenn, Senior Solutions Engineer at Tines. In this guide, we'll share an overview of the workflow, plus step-by-step instructions for getting it up and running. The problem - manual alert triage and SOP execution For security teams, responding to alerts efficiently requires quickly identifying the threat ty...

Cybersecurity researchers have discerned evidence of two Russian hacking groups Gamaredon and Turla collaborating together to target and co-comprise Ukrainian entities. Slovak cybersecurity company ESET said it observed the Gamaredon tools PteroGraphin and PteroOdd being used to execute Turla group's Kazuar backdoor on an endpoint in Ukraine in February 2025, indicating that Turla is very likely actively collaborating with Gamaredon to gain access to specific machines in Ukraine and deliver the Kazuar backdoor.  "PteroGraphin was used to restart the Kazuar v3 backdoor, possibly after it crashed or was not launched automatically," ESET said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Thus, PteroGraphin was probably used as a recovery method by Turla." In a separate instance in April and June 2025, ESET said it also detected the deployment of Kazuar v2 through two other Gamaredon malware families tracked as PteroOdd and PteroPaste. Both Gamaredon (aka Aqua B...

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...

AI's growing role in enterprise environments has heightened the urgency for Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) to drive effective AI governance. When it comes to any emerging technology, governance is hard – but effective governance is even harder. The first instinct for most organizations is to respond with rigid policies. Write a policy document, circulate a set of restrictions, and hope the risk is contained. However, effective governance doesn't work that way. It must be a living system that shapes how AI is used every day, guiding organizations through safe transformative change without slowing down the pace of innovation.  For CISOs, finding that balance between security and speed is critical in the age of AI. This technology simultaneously represents the greatest opportunity and greatest risk enterprises have faced since the dawn of the internet. Move too fast without guardrails, and sensitive data leaks into prompts, shadow AI proliferates, or regulatory gaps bec...

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...