Vulnerability | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Turning off email images should at least stop the pictures. This week, attackers had a workaround: a scannable QR code built out of text. It still appears, even with images blocked. A small detail, but an annoying one if that was a precaution you were counting on. Elsewhere, a trusted software source delivered code that stole credentials, and a protocol designed for secure network management gave outsiders useful clues before login. Add active attacks on browsers, routers, and online stores, and there’s plenty to check—even for teams that have kept up with the patches. Read the full recap for the week’s major developments, plus more research, attacks, and security news beyond what we covered last week. ⚡ Threat of the Week N-able Patches Critical N-central Flaws — N-able has released hotfixes to address two severe N-central flaws (CVE-2026-86206 and CVE-2026-86207) that could allow an unauthorized party to bypass authentication controls and gain full access to the platform. ...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of worm-like activity that abuses ConnectWise ScreenConnect to distribute a malicious Visual Basic Script (VBScript) payload to newly connected systems. According to Huntress , three unrelated incidents have been found to use diverse initial access methods, namely a Quick Assist tech-support scam, a phishing-delivered MSI installer, and a fake Geek Squad refund form lure, to activate a four-stage VBScript chain that leads to rogue ScreenConnect installations. However, once the ScreenConnect instances were installed, the cybersecurity company said it observed the clients repeatedly spawning "wscript.exe" to execute VBScripts named 1.vbs, 2.vbs, 3.vbs, and 4.vbs. The incidents were observed in August 2026. The details of the three attacks are below - A social engineering attack that persuaded a user into executing Quick Assist as part of a tech support scam, after which a rogue ScreenConnect remote access client was d...

A TantoSec proof-of-concept turns an AES-CBC "padding oracle" in Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX into unauthenticated remote code execution — but only against applications in a specific non-default configuration, and Progress patched the chain in July. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation in the wild. Security firm TantoSec has published a working exploit chain targeting vulnerabilities in Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX that can allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute remote code on the server hosting a vulnerable application. Progress Software patched the flaws in July, and exploitation requires a non-default configuration — but the release pairs a detailed write-up with a ready-to-run tool and two payloads, putting a complete attack path in public hands for the first time. The underlying flaws are not new. Progress shipped the fix in version 2026.2.708 (2026 Q2 SP1) on July 8 and published the CVEs and advisory on July 22. What changed on September 7 is t...

Every on-premises N-central build below 2026.3.1.14 — including servers updated to Hotfix 3 a day earlier — needs Hotfix 4. N-able's incident notice says the flaw has been exploited in the wild; its release notes say that is unconfirmed. N-able has released its  fourth hotfix  in five weeks for the N-central remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform, this time for a maximum-severity vulnerability that could allow remote code execution on the N-central server without authentication. The company's own communications disagree on whether the flaw has already been exploited. The vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2026-86218 , carries a CVSS 4.0 score of 10.0, assigned by N-able as the CVE Numbering Authority, and is classed as a static code injection weakness (CWE-96). It affects every N-central build before 2026.3.1.14, the build shipped as 2026.3 Hotfix 4 in the early hours of September 6 (UTC). That includes servers already updated to  Hotfix 3  (2026.3...

Attackers are exploiting MikroTik routers with their Secure Shell (SSH) remote-access service, which is reachable from the internet, to gain full administrative control without authentication, according to  CERT Polska's attack warning , published on September 5. Successful attacks date to at least September 2. The Hacker News’s September 6 review of the warning found no victim count or attacker identity. MikroTik's security update  lists fixed RouterOS releases. CERT says the fixes prevent the observed attacks and recommends immediate installation, followed by a check for unauthorized configuration changes. According to the  vendor's default firewall explanation , home MikroTik devices block public access to management ports while their default firewall rules remain intact. The Hacker News checked CERT's  affected RouterOS versions  against MikroTik's listed fixes on September 6. Use the  official RouterOS downloads  for your update. ...

Attackers are exploiting a new unpatched vulnerability in Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce that lets them run malicious code on an online store's server without logging in, Dutch e-commerce security company Sansec said in an  advisory published on September 5 . Sansec, which discovered the flaw and named it StyleSmuggler , said attacks started on September 4. "Sansec is publishing early because stores are being compromised right now," the company said. As of September 6, Adobe has not published an advisory, a CVE identifier, a patch, or a workaround, and its  Adobe Commerce security bulletin index  lists nothing after the August 11 update. A successful attack gives the attacker code execution on the store's server and installs a persistent backdoor. Sansec said all current versions are affected, including 2.4.9, and that it reproduced the full unauthenticated chain on clean Magento Open Source installations of 2.4.7, 2.4.8, and 2.4.9. Its ...

JetBrains is urging Cadence users to revoke and rotate all credentials following a security incident last month in which unidentified threat actors exploited a recently disclosed critical vulnerability in TeamCity to breach its own environment. "Cadence users should immediately revoke or rotate all credentials and secrets that may have been used to run their Cadence executions," JetBrains said . "They should also treat all executions, including their inputs and outputs in your Cadence project, as potentially untrusted." "As the threat actors gained access to the Cadence server, any credentials or secrets stored in Cadence, contained in the compromised backup, or made available to executions on the affected server should be considered compromised and must be revoked or rotated." Cadence is a JetBrains-hosted cloud computing service that integrates with PyCharm via an optional plugin to let developers run machine learning and heavy workloads on cloud...

Broadcom has released security updates for two security flaws impacting VMware Workstation and Fusion, including one critical bug that could result in arbitrary code execution under certain conditions. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-59346 (CVSS score: 9.3), is an integer-overflow vulnerability that a local attacker with elevated privileges can exploit to run arbitrary code. "A malicious actor with local administrative privileges on a virtual machine with VMXNET3 virtual network adapter may exploit this issue to execute code on the host," Broadcom said in an alert. The tech giant credited @h4urek, @cameudis, and Stan S for discovering the issue. Also patched by Broadcom is a stack-based buffer-overflow vulnerability in HGFS ( CVE-2026-59347 , CVSS score: 8.1), which can be exploited by a bad actor with local administrative privileges on a virtual machine to execute code as the virtual machine's VMX process running on the host. Yeonghyeon Choi and Tianc...

Hardware wallet manufacturer Trezor on Friday disclosed that another 67,000 customers from the U.S. have been impacted in a breach at its shipping provider ShipMonk. The exposed information includes customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, shipping addresses, and order numbers between November 2019 and August 2021. The breach does not affect the security of the company's hardware wallets. "Throughout our entire relationship with ShipMonk, we repeatedly requested and received written assurance confirming the deletion of the data, in line with our contract, data policy, and past communications," Trezor said . "We are very disappointed that, despite receiving this confirmation, the data was not deleted in their systems." The exposure is in addition to 13,689 customers the company disclosed last month as having had their data either fully or partially exposed. The breach, it noted at the time, was limited during its 90-day data storage policy. Trezo...

Threat actors are exploiting the newly disclosed PaperCut flaws to facilitate credential theft in attacks targeting the education sector in the U.S. and Europe. The Arctic Wolf Adversary Research Team said it observed attackers exploiting CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078 – an authentication bypass and remote code execution chain – to conduct command execution and reconnaissance, as well as create privileged accounts. "Observed post-exploitation activity included delivery of Windows registry hive collection tools, Metasploit/Meterpreter-related Java payloads, and commands used to identify hosts, users, processes, and sensitive configuration data," Arctic Wolf said. The cybersecurity company told The Hacker News that the activity has targeted vulnerable PaperCut servers across the education sector, impacting organizations ranging from K-12 schools to major universities in the U.S. and Europe. Some of the identified malicious activity includes - Running discover...

PostgreSQL has released updates to address a security flaw that allows an account with the REPLICATION attribute to run arbitrary code as the operating-system user running the database server. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-6471 (CVSS score: 7.2), has been present since logical decoding was introduced in PostgreSQL 9.4 in 2014. Versions before PostgreSQL 18.6, 17.11, 16.15, 15.19, and 14.24 are affected. Exploitation requires an account carrying the REPLICATION attribute and a server running with wal_level = logical. Backup tools, standby servers, change data capture (CDC) pipelines, and monitoring systems routinely hold that attribute. The fix, shipped on August 13, adds a server parameter called output_plugin_libraries that lists which libraries may be loaded as logical decoding output plugins, defaulting to 'pgoutput, test_decoding'. Installations using any other output plugin, wal2json, and decoderbufs among them, will have logical decoding refused aft...

Threat actors are exploiting two critical security flaws in WordPress plugins Super Forms and Elementor Pro, according to findings from Wordfence. The vulnerabilities in question are - CVE-2026-14894 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A missing file type validation vulnerability in Super Forms – Drag & Drop Form Builder that allows unauthenticated attackers to upload files of any type, including executable PHP files, leading to remote code execution. (Fixed in version 6.3.314) CVE-2026-32475 (CVSS score: 9.0/9.8) - A vulnerability in Elementor Pro that allows unauthenticated attackers to upload files of any type, including executable PHP files, leading to remote code execution. (Fixed in version 4.2.2) As with arbitrary file upload vulnerabilities of this kind, an attacker can leverage them to write a PHP web shell to the site and execute arbitrary code, which can then be abused to create administrator accounts, exfiltrate data, or seize control of the entire WordPress site. It...

Plex is urging users to update their instances to the latest version following the release of an update that patches multiple security flaws. The fixes are available in Plex Media Server 1.43.3 and Plex Desktop 1.115.0. The streaming media service did not elaborate on what those issues are, but said CVE identifiers have been requested for them. "We recommend all server owners and Desktop users update to the latest version as soon as possible," Plex said in an announcement this week. "If you're running Plex Media Server on a NAS device, the updated version may not be available in their package manager yet, but you can install the package manually." In August 2025, Plex addressed a high-severity security flaw ( CVE-2025-34158 , CVSS score: 8.5), an authentication bug that stemmed from the "/myplex/account" endpoint incorrectly exposing the server owner's account details, including their administrative access token, even when accessed by any...

Google on Thursday released security updates to patch 12 vulnerabilities, including one that has come under active exploitation in the wild. The high-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-85046 (CVSS score: 8.8), has been described as a type confusion bug in V8, Chrome's JavaScript and WebAssembly engine. "Type confusion in V8 in Google Chrome prior to 152.0.7977.82 allowed a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code inside the sandbox via a crafted HTML page," reads a description of the flaw in CVE.org. Security researcher Salvatore Gulizia (aka Serotav) has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw on August 4, 2026. The researcher has been awarded a bug bounty of $1,000 for responsible disclosure. In a separate blog post detailing the issue, Gulizia  described it as a "V8 bug in the compilers that leads to an array containing PACKED_ELEMENTS to receive the map PACKED_SMI_ELEMENTS, this can be turned into arbitrary read/write on the J...

OpenAI on Thursday officially unveiled GPT‑6 Astra , which it described as the "world's most intelligent and aligned model." The development comes days after the artificial intelligence (AI) company said the model had reached the "Critical" cybersecurity capability threshold under its Preparedness Framework. "Astra is state-of-the-art on computer use, browsing, software engineering, cybersecurity, science, and professional work. Astra saturates FrontierMath Tier 4 with a 98% score," OpenAI said. "Astra also saturates ARC-AGI-3 with a 99.9% score and ExploitBench with a 100% score. It also sets a new frontier on computer and browser use, handling the most demanding professional work with unmatched speed, accuracy, and judgment." The model is currently rolling out to a small set of organizations and is expected to be available to all ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise users, as well as through the OpenAI API, Microsoft Azure,...

The worst part is how normal these attacks look. A call from IT. A shared file. A trusted app. A simple request to click “Allow.” Why break in when someone might open the door? That idea runs through this edition. Attackers use real tools, fake login pages, old account links, and software guides that point to unsafe downloads. One wrong letter in a web address can be enough. There is also ransomware, stolen ID data, hidden attack servers, and weak settings that should have been fixed long ago. Here’s the full list. The threats change every week. Subscribe, and we’ll alert you when each new ThreatsDay Bulletin is out.

Cisco has released patches to address a critical security flaw affecting 10 Silicon One-based Nexus 9000 switches that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute code as root, alongside an IOS XR hardening release bundling 7 umbrella CVEs, 2 of which are rated 9.8, with no workaround for any IOS XR version. The Nexus vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-20212 (CVSS score: 9.8), is a case of binding to an unrestricted IP address that leaves TCP ports 43210 and 43211 reachable in the default Layer 3 virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) instance. An attacker who can reach a switch's address on either port can connect directly to the service. Crafted input sent to that service is then executed as code with root privileges. An exploitation attempt can also crash the S1HAL process and reload the device. Cisco said it's not aware of any malicious use of the flaw as of its September 2 disclosure. It has published no fixed-release table and directs customers to its...

The security researcher known as Chaotic Eclipse (aka INFINITE NIGHTMARE, MSNightmare, and Nightmare-Eclipse) has dropped a new zero-day dubbed FalconFlank , a proof-of-concept (PoC) for a privilege escalation flaw impacting Crowdstrike Falcon. "FalconFlank is a 0-day privilege escalation that abuses the office malicious macros remediation in CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor," the researcher said in a GitHub README file, adding the cybersecurity company may already have detections for the flaw by now. "So if you want to test, you either have to add it to the exclusions or obfuscate the PoC and change the DLL load technique." The PoC, the researcher added, works in a fully updated Windows 11 25H2 machine or Windows Server 2025 with CrowdStrike Falcon. In a statement shared with The Hacker News, a CrowdStrike spokesperson said they are currently investigating the report. "We are actively investigating these claims and advise customers to disable the Microsof...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Wednesday added seven security flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog after they landed in attackers' crosshairs. The vulnerabilities are as follows - CVE-2026-83548 (CVSS score: 10.0) - A server-side request forgery vulnerability in SonicWall SMA 1000 Appliances that could allow a remote unauthenticated attacker to gain unauthorized access to sensitive functionality and perform unauthorized operations.  CVE-2026-83549 (CVSS score: 7.8) - A post-authentication operating system command injection vulnerability in SonicWall SMA 1000 Appliances that could enable a remote authenticated attacker as administrator to execute arbitrary OS commands, resulting in remote code execution. CVE-2026-9586 (CVSS score: 9.3) - An SQL injection vulnerability in Sangoma Switchvox that could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to execute arbitrary SQL statements against the backend PostgreSQL...

Google on Wednesday announced Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber, which it described as its most capable cybersecurity model, and has made it available to a set of trusted defenders via a new initiative called the Fairwind Program . "The Fairwind Program gives high-priority defenders (like governments, healthcare providers, and telecommunications services) early access to advanced models that help them build better defenses, before new threats arrive," Google said . "So defenders have an early advantage, to help them protect vital infrastructure – which in turn protects people who rely on those systems." The tech giant said it's currently working with over 650 partners globally, including CrowdStrike, Datadog, Menlo Security, Palo Alto Networks, and Snowflake. The program is available to a group of Google Cloud customers, government agencies, and cybersecurity partners. The release of Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber comes a little over a month after Google unveiled Gemini 3....