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Microsoft has disclosed a now-patched security flaw in Windows Admin Center that could allow an attacker to escalate their privileges. Windows Admin Center is a locally deployed, browser-based management tool set that lets users manage their Windows Clients, Servers, and Clusters without the need for connecting to the cloud. The high-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-26119 , carries a CVSS score of 8.8 out of a maximum of 10.0 "Improper authentication in Windows Admin Center allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges over a network," Microsoft said in an advisory released on February 17, 2026. "The attacker would gain the rights of the user that is running the affected application." Microsoft credited Semperis researcher Andrea Pierini with discovering and reporting the vulnerability. It's worth mentioning that the security issue was patched by the tech giant in Windows Admin Center version 2511 released in December 2025.  While the ...

The cyber threat space doesn’t pause, and this week makes that clear. New risks, new tactics, and new security gaps are showing up across platforms, tools, and industries — often all at the same time. Some developments are headline-level. Others sit in the background but carry long-term impact. Together, they shape how defenders need to think about exposure, response, and preparedness right now. This edition of ThreatsDay Bulletin brings those signals into one place. Scan through the roundup for quick, clear updates on what’s unfolding across the cybersecurity and hacking landscape. Privacy model hardening Google Showcases New Privacy and Security Features in Android 17 Google announced the first beta version of Android 17 , with two privacy and security enhancements: the deprecation of Cleartext Traffic Attribute and support for HPKE Hybrid Cryptography to enable secure communication using a combination of public key and symme...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a critical security flaw in the Grandstream GXP1600 series of VoIP phones that could allow an attacker to seize control of susceptible devices. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-2329 , carries a CVSS score of 9.3 out of a maximum of 10.0. It has been described as a case of unauthenticated stack-based buffer overflow that could result in remote code execution. "A remote attacker can leverage CVE-2026-2329 to achieve unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) with root privileges on a target device," Rapid7 researcher Stephen Fewer, who discovered and reported the bug on January 6, 2026, said . According to the cybersecurity company, the issue is rooted in the device's web-based API service ("/cgi-bin/api.values.get") and is accessible in a default configuration without requiring authentication. This endpoint is designed to fetch one or more configuration values from the phone, such as the firmware version number...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed multiple security vulnerabilities in four popular Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code) extensions that, if successfully exploited, could allow threat actors to steal local files and execute code remotely. The extensions, which have been collectively installed more than 125 million times, are Live Server, Code Runner, Markdown Preview Enhanced, and Microsoft Live Preview. "Our research demonstrates that a hacker needs only one malicious extension, or a single vulnerability within one extension, to perform lateral movement and compromise entire organizations," OX Security researchers Moshe Siman Tov Bustan and Nir Zadok said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Details of the vulnerabilities are as follows - CVE-2025-65717 (CVSS score: 9.1) - A vulnerability in Live Server that allows attackers to exfiltrate local files, tricking a developer into visiting a malicious website when the extension is running, causing JavaScrip...

A maximum severity security vulnerability in Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines has been exploited as a zero-day by a suspected China-nexus threat cluster dubbed UNC6201 since mid-2024, according to a new report from Google Mandiant and Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG). The activity involves the exploitation of CVE-2026-22769 (CVSS score: 10.0), a case of hard-coded credentials affecting versions prior to 6.0.3.1 HF1. Other products, including RecoverPoint Classic, are not vulnerable to the flaw. "This is considered critical as an unauthenticated remote attacker with knowledge of the hardcoded credential could potentially exploit this vulnerability, leading to unauthorized access to the underlying operating system and root-level persistence," Dell said in a bulletin released Tuesday. The issue impacts the following products - RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines Version 5.3 SP4 P1 - Migrate from RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines 5.3 SP4 P1 to 6.0 SP3, and th...

Notepad++ has released a security fix to plug gaps that were exploited by an advanced threat actor from China to hijack the software update mechanism to selectively deliver malware to targets of interest. The version 8.9.2 update incorporates what maintainer Don Ho calls a "double lock" design that aims to make the update process "robust and effectively unexploitable." This includes verification of the signed installer downloaded from GitHub (implemented in version 8.8.9 and later), as well as the newly added verification of the signed XML returned by the update server at notepad-plus-plus[.]org. In addition to these enhancements, security-focused changes have been introduced to WinGUp, the auto-updater component - Removal of libcurl.dll to eliminate DLL side-loading risk Removal of two unsecured cURL SSL options: CURLSSLOPT_ALLOW_BEAST and CURLSSLOPT_NO_REVOKE Restriction of plugin management execution to programs signed with the same certificate as WinGUp...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday added four security flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation in the wild. The list of vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2026-2441 (CVSS score: 8.8) - A use-after-free vulnerability in Google Chrome that could allow a remote attacker to potentially exploit heap corruption via a crafted HTML page. CVE-2024-7694 (CVSS score: 7.2) - An arbitrary file upload vulnerability in TeamT5 ThreatSonar Anti-Ransomware versions 3.4.5 and earlier that could allow an attacker to upload malicious files and achieve arbitrary system command execution on the server. CVE-2020-7796 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerability in Synacor Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) that could allow an attacker to send a crafted HTTP request to a remote host and obtain unauthorized access to sensitive information. CVE-2008-0015 (CVSS score: 8.8) - ...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed that artificial intelligence (AI) assistants that support web browsing or URL fetching capabilities can be turned into stealthy command-and-control (C2) relays, a technique that could allow attackers to blend into legitimate enterprise communications and evade detection. The attack method, which has been demonstrated against Microsoft Copilot and xAI Grok, has been codenamed AI as a C2 proxy by Check Point. It leverages "anonymous web access combined with browsing and summarization prompts," the cybersecurity company said. "The same mechanism can also enable AI-assisted malware operations, including generating reconnaissance workflows, scripting attacker actions, and dynamically deciding 'what to do next' during an intrusion." The development signals yet another consequential evolution in how threat actors could abuse AI systems, not just to scale or accelerate different phases of the cyber attack cycle, but als...

Cybersecurity researchers disclosed they have detected a case of an information stealer infection successfully exfiltrating a victim's OpenClaw (formerly Clawdbot and Moltbot ) configuration environment. "This finding marks a significant milestone in the evolution of infostealer behavior: the transition from stealing browser credentials to harvesting the 'souls' and identities of personal AI [artificial intelligence] agents," Hudson Rock said . Alon Gal, CTO of Hudson Rock, told The Hacker News that the stealer was likely a variant of Vidar based on the infection details. Vidar is an off-the-shelf information stealer that's known to be active since late 2018. That said, the cybersecurity company said the data capture was not facilitated by a custom OpenClaw module within the stealer malware, but rather through a "broad file-grabbing routine" that's designed to look for certain file extensions and specific directory names containing sensitiv...

A new study has found that multiple cloud-based password managers, including Bitwarden, Dashlane, and LastPass, are susceptible to password recovery attacks under certain conditions. "The attacks range in severity from integrity violations to the complete compromise of all vaults in an organization," researchers Matteo Scarlata, Giovanni Torrisi, Matilda Backendal, and Kenneth G. Paterson said . "The majority of the attacks allow the recovery of passwords." It's worth noting that the threat model, per the study from ETH Zurich and Università della Svizzera italiana, supposes a malicious server and aims to examine the password manager's zero-knowledge encryption (ZKE) promises made by the three solutions. ZKE is a cryptographic technique that allows one party to prove knowledge of a secret to another party without actually revealing the secret itself. ZKE is also a little different from end-to-end encryption (E2EE). While E2EE refers to a method of secur...

This week’s recap shows how small gaps are turning into big entry points. Not always through new exploits, often through tools, add-ons, cloud setups, or workflows that people already trust and rarely question. Another signal: attackers are mixing old and new methods. Legacy botnet tactics, modern cloud abuse, AI assistance, and supply-chain exposure are being used side by side, whichever path gives the easiest foothold. Below is the full weekly recap — a condensed scan of the incidents, flaws, and campaigns shaping the threat landscape right now. ⚡ Threat of the Week Malicious Outlook Add-in Turns Into Phishing Kit — In an unusual case of a supply chain attack, the legitimate AgreeTo add-in for Outlook has been hijacked and turned into a phishing kit that stole more than 4,000 Microsoft account credentials. This was made possible by seizing control of a domain associated with the now-abandoned project to serve a fake Microsoft login page. The incident demonstrates how overlooke...

Google on Friday released security updates for its Chrome browser to address a security flaw that it said has been exploited in the wild. The high-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-2441 (CVSS score: 8.8), has been described as a use-after-free bug in CSS. Security researcher Shaheen Fazim has been credited with discovering and reporting the shortcoming on February 11, 2026. "Use after free in CSS in Google Chrome prior to 145.0.7632.75 allowed a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code inside a sandbox via a crafted HTML page," according to a description of the flaw in the NIST's National Vulnerability Database (NVD). Google did not disclose any details about how the vulnerability is being exploited in the wild, by whom, or who may have been targeted, but it acknowledged that "an exploit for CVE-2026-2441 exists in the wild." While Google Chrome is no stranger to actively exploited vulnerabilities, the development once again highlights how bro...

A previously unknown threat actor tracked as UAT-9921 has been observed leveraging a new modular framework called VoidLink in its campaigns targeting the technology and financial services sectors, according to findings from Cisco Talos. "This threat actor seems to have been active since 2019, although they have not necessarily used VoidLink over the duration of their activity," researchers Nick Biasini, Aaron Boyd, Asheer Malhotra, and Vitor Ventura said . "UAT-9921 uses compromised hosts to install VoidLink command-and-control (C2), which are then used to launch scanning activities both internal and external to the network." VoidLink was first documented by Check Point last month, describing it as a feature-rich malware framework written in Zig designed for long-term, stealthy access to Linux-based cloud environments. It's assessed to be the work of a single developer with assistance from a large language model (LLM) to flesh out its internals based on a p...

Threat actors have started to exploit a recently disclosed critical security flaw impacting BeyondTrust Remote Support (RS) and Privileged Remote Access (PRA) products, according to watchTowr. "Overnight we observed first in-the-wild exploitation of BeyondTrust across our global sensors," Ryan Dewhurst, head of threat intelligence at watchTowr, said in a post on X. "Attackers are abusing get_portal_info to extract the x-ns-company value before establishing a WebSocket channel." The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-1731 (CVS score: 9.9), which could allow an unauthenticated attacker to achieve remote code execution by sending specially crafted requests. BeyondTrust noted last week that successful exploitation of the shortcoming could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to execute operating system commands in the context of the site user, resulting in unauthorized access, data exfiltration, and service disruption. It has been patched in the following...

Google on Thursday said it observed the North Korea-linked threat actor known as UNC2970 using its generative artificial intelligence (AI) model Gemini to conduct reconnaissance on its targets, as various hacking groups continue to weaponize the tool for accelerating various phases of the cyber attack life cycle, enabling information operations, and even conducting model extraction attacks. "The group used Gemini to synthesize OSINT and profile high-value targets to support campaign planning and reconnaissance," Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This actor's target profiling included searching for information on major cybersecurity and defense companies and mapping specific technical job roles and salary information." The tech giant's threat intelligence team characterized this activity as a blurring of boundaries between what constitutes routine professional research and malicious reconnaissance, al...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a fresh set of malicious packages across npm and the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository linked to a fake recruitment-themed campaign orchestrated by the North Korea-linked Lazarus Group. The coordinated campaign has been codenamed graphalgo in reference to the first package published in the npm registry. It's assessed to be active since May 2025. "Developers are approached via social platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, or through job offerings on forums like Reddit," ReversingLabs researcher Karlo Zanki said in a report. "The campaign includes a well-orchestrated story around a company involved in blockchain and cryptocurrency exchanges." Notably, one of the identified npm packages, bigmathutils, attracted more than 10,000 downloads after the first, non-malicious version was published, and before the second version containing a malicious payload was released. The names of the packages are listed below - npm...

Threat activity this week shows one consistent signal — attackers are leaning harder on what already works. Instead of flashy new exploits, many operations are built around quiet misuse of trusted tools, familiar workflows, and overlooked exposures that sit in plain sight. Another shift is how access is gained versus how it’s used. Initial entry points are getting simpler, while post-compromise activity is becoming more deliberate, structured, and persistent. The objective is less about disruption and more about staying embedded long enough to extract value. There’s also growing overlap between cybercrime, espionage tradecraft, and opportunistic intrusion. Techniques are bleeding across groups, making attribution harder and defense baselines less reliable. Below is this week’s ThreatsDay Bulletin — a tight scan of the signals that matter, distilled into quick reads. Each item adds context to where threat pressure is building next. Notepad RCE via Markdown L...

A significant chunk of the exploitation attempts targeting a newly disclosed security flaw in Ivanti Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) can be traced back to a single IP address on bulletproof hosting infrastructure offered by PROSPERO. Threat intelligence firm GreyNoise said it recorded 417 exploitation sessions from 8 unique source IP addresses between February 1 and 9, 2026. An estimated 346 exploitation sessions have originated from 193.24.123[.]42, accounting for 83% of all attempts. The malicious activity is designed to exploit CVE-2026-1281 (CVSS scores: 9.8), one of the two critical security vulnerabilities in EPMM, along with CVE-2026-1340 that could be exploited by an attacker to achieve unauthenticated remote code execution. Late last month, Ivanti acknowledged it's aware of a "very limited number of customers" who were impacted following the zero-day exploitation of the issues. Since then, multiple European agencies, including the Netherlands' Dutch Da...

Apple on Wednesday released iOS, iPadOS, macOS Tahoe, tvOS, watchOS, and visionOS updates to address a zero-day flaw that it said has been exploited in sophisticated cyber attacks. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-20700 (CVSS score: 7.8), has been described as a memory corruption issue in dyld, Apple's Dynamic Link Editor. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability could allow an attacker with memory write capability to execute arbitrary code on susceptible devices. Google Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has been credited with discovering and reporting the bug. "Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals on versions of iOS before iOS 26," the company said in an advisory. "CVE-2025-14174 and CVE-2025-43529 were also issued in response to this report." It's worth noting that both CVE-2025-14174 and CVE-2025-43529 were addressed by Cupertino in Decembe...

It's Patch Tuesday, which means a number of software vendors have released patches for various security vulnerabilities impacting their products and services. Microsoft issued fixes for 59 flaws, including six actively exploited zero-days in various Windows components that could be abused to bypass security features, escalate privileges, and trigger a denial-of-service (DoS) condition. Elsewhere, Adobe released updates for Audition, After Effects, InDesign Desktop, Substance 3D, Bridge, Lightroom Classic, and DNG SDK. The company said it's not aware of in-the-wild exploitation of any of the shortcomings. SAP shipped fixes for two critical-severity vulnerabilities, including a code injection bug in SAP CRM and SAP S/4HANA (CVE-2026-0488, CVSS score: 9.9) that an authenticated attacker could use to run an arbitrary SQL statement and lead to a full database compromise. The second critical vulnerability is a case of a missing authorization check in SAP NetWeaver Application...