Vulnerability | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Hackers tied to a Chinese cybersecurity company stole email from government organizations, law enforcement agencies, healthcare systems, and religious institutions in Southeast Asia, the FBI and agencies in 6 other countries said on October 8. The company, Integrity Technology Group , has been sanctioned by the U.S. and the UK. The hackers scanned websites for flaws using a tool containing more than 1,300 scripts, guessed passwords for Microsoft 365 and Exchange accounts, and copied mailboxes using tools designed to collect mail. The hackers have been breaking into networks since at least mid-January 2021, according to the agencies'  joint advisory . It describes the hacking in the present tense but provides no date for any theft and does not specify how many organizations were breached. The same hackers targeted U.S. government services, critical manufacturing, healthcare, and IT organizations, along with U.S. law enforcement, education, and religious groups. Organizations ...

The crooks have trust problems of their own. One ransomware affiliate decided to keep the profits for himself. Elsewhere, an attacker left a server exposed, complete with tools and traces of an intrusion. Apparently, keeping things secure is a problem on both sides of the fence. The rest of the week isn't much more reassuring. Malicious code turned up in developer packages and extensions that looked harmless. Familiar online services helped phishing emails appear legitimate. A basic file upload flaw gave attackers a way in, while weak session cookies made impersonation far too easy. Even AI assistants are getting their own instructions hidden inside phishing messages now. What's interesting is the gap between effort and results. Some attacks involve several stages, careful timing, and plenty of tricks. Others get surprisingly far because of a bad design choice or something nobody bothered to check. Both seem to be working well enough. Anyway, here's what else turned u...

Attackers behind a string of personal data leaks at Japanese organizations have abused APIs for mobile apps and targeted known software flaws, the JPCERT Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC) said. The Tokyo-based center, which takes incident reports, based its  October 8, 2026 alert  on those reports and other information. The alert names no attacker and no affected organization. JPCERT/CC called what it knows "limited and fragmentary" in the alert, translated here from Japanese. It said its account does not mean the same method was used in every incident. Besides consumer apps, the systems hit include business intelligence (BI) tools and employee-facing management systems that their operators did not expect the public to reach. Data stored in them leaked in some cases. For defenders, the alert includes eight source IP addresses, five User-Agent strings, and a list of API controls, including access controls on every endpoint, public or not. The only product it names a...

The U.S. State Department is offering up to $10 million for information leading to the identification or location of Zhang Yu, a Chinese national charged in the United States in connection with the 2021 Microsoft Exchange Server attacks known as HAFNIUM. The reward is for information leading to his identification or location, the news outlet  NTD reported  this week, citing a notice from the department's Rewards for Justice program. Zhang remains at large, U.S. authorities say, meaning he has not been arrested. The charges against him have not been tested in court. Rewards for Justice  is the State Department's national security rewards program. It says it has paid more than $250 million to over 125 people since 1984. Zhang is wanted for his alleged role in "malicious cyber activities against U.S. critical infrastructure," NTD quoted the notice as saying. The amount and that wording match an offer the program was already making  in January 2025 . That of...

SonicWall has released hotfixes for four flaws in its SMA1000 appliances, the gateways that give remote workers access to a company's network and applications. The most serious could allow an attacker without a login to send requests through the appliance and reach internal functions. SonicWall rates it 10.0 on the CVSS scale and says it has no evidence that any of the four flaws is being used in attacks. The most serious flaw, tracked as  CVE-2026-102255 , is a server-side request forgery (SSRF) bug in WorkPlace, the portal that SMA1000 users log in to. It exists due to an unintended access path through SonicWall and can be reached before authentication. An attacker who abuses that path could "reach internal functionality and perform unauthorized operations," SonicWall said in its  security advisory , dated October 6, without saying which functions. All four flaws affect SMA1000 models 6210, 7210 and 8200v on these platform-hotfix versions:

A critical vulnerability in LMCache , open-source software that speeds up large language model (LLM) servers such as vLLM, lets an attacker run code on the cache server without logging in, and no fixed version is available. The flaw is in LMCache's  multiprocess mode , where the cache runs as a standalone server that LLM workers reach over the ZeroMQ messaging library. A single network message to that server can run commands as the user the LMCache process runs as. The server can be reached from another machine only when an operator sets it to listen on a routable address, rather than the localhost it uses by default. JFrog disclosed the flaw  on October 7 and assigned it a severity score of 9.8 out of 10, in the critical range, the rating it gives a server bound to a routable address. The vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2026-105192 , affects LMCache from version 0.3.9, released in October 2025, through 0.5.5, the latest stable release, and is also present in the ...

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a new malware family that has been observed targeting exposed artificial intelligence (AI) and large language model (LLM) infrastructure with an aim to deploy cryptocurrency miners and further expand the scale of the botnet. The financially motivated campaign, dubbed Canto Incognito , has been found to install cryptocurrency miners, including XMRig and Iron, and connects victims to Kryptex, a Russian cryptocurrency mining service. "Compromised hosts are reused to expand the botnet," Lumen Black Lotus Labs said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Infected servers are turned into scanners and exploit servers, allowing the actor to find and compromise additional vulnerable systems." The malware distributed as part of the campaign has been codenamed PoeLLM owing to what has been described as a "creative" technique that hides the command-and-control (C2) address within a poem the threat actors wr...

Threat actors have begun to exploit a newly disclosed critical security flaw impacting Atlassian Data Center products that could allow access to sensitive files under certain conditions. The arbitrary file access flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-21589 (CVSS score: 9.3) affects multiple products, including Bitbucket Data Center, Confluence Data Center, Jira Service Management Data Center, Jira Software Data Center, Bamboo Data Center, Crowd Data Center, Crucible, and Fisheye. "This arbitrary file access vulnerability allows an unauthenticated attacker to access specific files within the web application root directory in affected versions," the Australian company said. "Exploitation requires prior knowledge of the target file's exact name and path; this vulnerability does not allow attackers to enumerate or list directory contents. In some configurations, there may be sensitive files present that increase your risk." Atlassian said impacted Atlassian Cloud pro...

If you’re evaluating an agentic pentesting solution right now, you’ve probably heard the same pitch more than once: point it at a target, and it discovers, validates, and exploits attack paths autonomously, the way a real attacker would. That promise is worth taking seriously. It’s also worth pressure testing, and three questions do the heavy lifting.  What can the assessment actually prove?   When is that proof produced? And,  How much of your environment does the proof cover?  Most evaluations stop at the first step. However, it’s at the second and third ones where validation programs are won or lost. One note on where we stand: Picus builds and sells autonomous pentesting . That is exactly why we can be precise about where it ends, because the limits belong to the method, not to any vendor's implementation, and no roadmap can remove them. The problem in four numbers Four numbers from this year explain why the second and third questions now c...

Anthropic on Tuesday said it's expanding a program that allows vetted cybersecurity professionals to test its advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models with reduced safeguards and blocking classifiers, as the company claimed its Project Glasswing initiative uncovered at least 129,000 verified software vulnerabilities between April and July 2026. The company said it also found an additional 5,500 verified software vulnerabilities between April and October 2026 through open-source scanning efforts. "Of these verified vulnerabilities, more than 33,000 have so far been rated as critical- or high-severity," Anthropic said . "This is likely an undercount, as it is based on survey data from only a subset of Glasswing partners. As such, we expect the true impact to be at least five times higher." The updated program, called the Cyber Verification Program (CVP), features three access tiers, allowing organizations and security teams to apply for one that best a...

A malicious spreadsheet can make LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice run an attacker's code as soon as the file is opened, security researchers have shown. There is no warning first, of the kind either program shows before it runs a macro. The attack works only when the program's Java support is enabled. So far, it has only been shown as a proof of concept, and there are no reports of its use in real attacks. LibreOffice has already  fixed the flaw , which it tracks as CVE-2026-63277, in updates released on October 5. It recommends that users move to version 26.2.5 or 26.8.0. Versions before those are affected. Apache OpenOffice has not fixed the matching flaw, which it tracks as CVE-2026-59265. Every version up to and including its current release, 4.1.16, is affected, and the project  says a fix is expected  in version 4.1.17, which is still being tested. Until then, Apache OpenOffice users can block the attack by turning off Java in the program's settings, or by...

Google has stopped accepting product vulnerability reports through its bug bounty program for its open-source software. The change, in effect since October 1, means researchers can no longer submit security flaws in the code of projects such as Go, Angular, and Protocol Buffers there for a reward. Reports about supply chain compromises are still accepted, and reports filed before October 1 are not affected. Google called the stop temporary in a  post on X  on October 1 and said it was due to "a significant rise in automated submissions, the vast majority of which are not valid." The post gave no figures. It did not say whether the submissions were produced with AI tools. The  rules of the program , called the Open Source Software Vulnerability Reward Program (OSS VRP), now carry a notice of the stop. It commits Google to an update in the first quarter of 2027 while it reworks this part of the program. Neither the post nor the notice gives a date for accepting p...

A critical flaw in 8 Atlassian Data Center products, which customers host themselves, allows an attacker with no login access to read specific files in each product's web application root directory. The attacker must already know a file's exact name and path and cannot list what the directory holds. Atlassian  disclosed the flaw , CVE-2026-21589 , on October 5, rated it 9.3 out of 10, and listed a fixed version for each product. The web application root directory is the folder on the server that holds the web application itself. In some configurations, it may contain sensitive files, which raises the risk, according to Atlassian. Atlassian's cloud products affected by the flaw have already been patched, and cloud customers do not need to take any action. Atlassian advises customers who cannot upgrade all at once to take the instance offline if possible. Any instance reachable from the public internet, including one that requires a login, should be restricted from ...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has removed an Accenture contractor for their alleged role in a ShinyHunters-breach that led to the theft of personal details of thousands of bureau employees. That's according to a report from Reuters, citing two sources familiar with the matter. "To date, our review has determined that the incident occurred as the result of a security failure ​of a platform managed by a third-party organization — after a contractor failed to implement a security patch explicitly issued to secure the ​platform," Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI's cyber division, was quoted as saying to Reuters. "As such, the FBI has removed the contractor and taken all necessary steps to both mitigate any further risk and protect our workforce." Although the name of the third-party organization was not disclosed by the FBI, Reuters reported that it's Oracle PeopleSoft, which the ShinyHunters group said it exploited...

Microsoft has released out-of-band security updates to address a high-severity flaw in Microsoft Exchange Server that could allow an attacker to escalate privileges under certain conditions. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-96940 , is rated 8.8 on the CVSS scoring system. "Weak authorization in Microsoft Exchange Server allows an authenticated attacker to elevate privileges over a network," Microsoft said in an advisory released on October 2, 2026. The Windows maker said an authenticated attacker can exploit this flaw to gain unauthorized access to other users' mailboxes within the same organization and read email messages and attachments. However, the vulnerability does not allow cross-tenant access. Microsoft has already deployed a "related service-side fix" to Exchange Online to address the issue. As a result, Exchange Online customers are not required to take any action. Users of affected on-premises Microsoft Exchange Server products are a...

A blank field. A public repo. One reply to an email. A box left exposed. None of this sounds dramatic, which is partly the problem. This week’s threats keep finding leverage in small things that were easy to overlook. There are actively exploited bugs in the mix, cleaner intrusion paths, smarter automation, and a long patch list waiting behind them. Some attacks are getting more capable. Others are still getting in because the basics gave way first. Here’s what mattered this week. ⚡ Threat of the Week Citrix Warns of Newly Exploited NetScaler ADC and Gateway Flaw — Citrix released security updates for a high-severity security flaw in NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway that has been exploited as part of targeted zero-day attacks. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-88779, carries a CVSS score of 8.7 out of 10.0. "CVE-2026-88779 is a memory overflow vulnerability in Citrix NetScaler ADC and Citrix NetScaler Gateway that can lead to denial-of-service under specific depl...

Threat actors have been observed attempting to exploit a now-patched critical security flaw impacting the Realtek Jungle software development kit (SDK) to deploy a botnet malware called Cling . "Cling is notable not because it introduces a new propagation technique, but because it repurposes ordinary STUN behavior into a practical command-and-control channel," Nozomi Networks said in a report published last week. "The result is a botnet whose traffic can resemble legitimate NAT-traversal activity while still supporting propagation, proxying, tunneling and denial-of-service commands." The operational technology (OT) security company said it observed a spike in attempts to exploit CVE-2021-35394 (CVSS score: 9.8), a critical remote code execution (RCE) flaw in Realtek Jungle SDK starting around September 5, 2026, with a subset of the activity delivering Cling. An analysis of the malware sample has found it to embed exploit logic for various command injectio...

Apple has announced that it's taking steps to tighten controls around a macOS setting called Full Disk Access (FDA) due to security risks posed by artificial intelligence (AI) agents. "Some developers are using Full Disk Access in ways that could put users at risk, exposing everything on their systems—including files, mail, messages, and even browsing history – without users' full knowledge and understanding," Apple said in a post. "For communication apps, this can also compromise the privacy of the people users are communicating with." Full Disk Access , accessed via Privacy & Security in the Settings app, was introduced by Apple in macOS Mojave (version 10.14). It offers users greater control over which applications can access their entire system and data from apps like Mail, Messages, Safari, and Time Machine backups. Once the setting is enabled for an application, it allows that program to bypass certain security restrictions and read and w...

A critical security flaw impacting Rejetto HTTP File Server (HFS) is witnessing active exploitation attempts, according to VulnCheck. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-61500 (CVSS score: 9.3), a case of session forgery stemming from the use of a weak pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) that can lead to a predictable key, which an attacker can then use to gain unauthorized access and seize control of affected systems. "Rejetto HFS 3.0.0 through 3.2.0 derives its session-cookie signing key from the non-cryptographic Math.random() generator and discloses outputs of the same generator to unauthenticated clients during login," according to an advisory for the flaw. "A remote attacker can collect a small number of login responses, reconstruct the generator's state, recover the signing key, and forge a valid administrator session cookie, leading to full administrative access and remote code execution via the server_code configuration feature." Hori...

Citrix has released security updates for a high-severity security flaw in NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway that has been exploited as part of targeted zero-day attacks. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-88779 , carries a CVSS score of 8.7 out of 10.0. "CVE-2026-88779 is a memory overflow vulnerability in Citrix NetScaler ADC and Citrix NetScaler Gateway that can lead to denial-of-service under specific deployment conditions," Citrix said . "The issue affects customer-managed NetScaler deployments running affected supported versions when the required preconditions are met." For successful exploitation, NetScaler ADC or NetScaler Gateway must be configured either as a SAML service provider (SP) or SAML identity provider(IdP). Customers can check if their NetScaler deployment meets the precondition by reviewing their configuration for entries matching the following - SAML SP - add authentication samlAction SAML IdP - add authentication samlIdPPro...