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Threat actors have been observed exploiting a now-patched high-severity Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS vulnerability as an entry point to deploy Qilin (aka Agenda) ransomware on victim environments. Arctic Wolf Labs said it investigated multiple intrusions in June 2026 that began with the exploitation of CVE-2026-0257 (CVSS score: 7.8), an authentication bypass flaw affecting the portal and gateway components of PAN-OS software. Successful exploitation of the flaw allows unauthenticated remote attackers to sidestep authentication and establish VPN sessions without valid credentials when authentication override cookies are enabled with specific certificate configurations. "Post-exploitation tradecraft varied across intrusions, from rapid encryption-only operations to full double-extortion, possibly suggesting multiple affiliates operating under the Qilin ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) umbrella," the cybersecurity company said .

A malware operator left its delivery server wide open, and Rapid7 pulled down the whole toolkit: 1,048 files spanning lure templates, filename-spoofing tests, execution experiments, droppers, builder notes, and two campaign chains. One was already live against Windows users in Mexico, delivering an infostealer through a fake government ID-lookup site over WebDAV. What makes it more than a payload dump: it caught the operation mid-build. Testing notes, failed experiments, documentation, and live delivery logs sat in one place, the kind of complete development trail defenders rarely see. Rapid7 reads the artifacts, down to a hardcoded path pointing at an open-source AI coding tool, as an operator using generative AI to produce, test, and document phishing delivery at speed. The most developed test set focused on CVE-2025-33053 (CVSS 8.8, now in CISA's KEV catalog ), the WebDAV working-directory hijack Check Point documented last year in its Stealth Falcon reporting. The...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new software supply chain attack codenamed SleeperGem targeting the Ruby ecosystem after three malicious gems were published to RubyGems with the end goal of serving additional payloads. The rogue gems are listed below - git_credential_manager (versions 2.8.0, 2.8.1, 2.8.2, 2.8.3) - Published on July 18, 2026 Dendreo (versions 1.1.3, 1.1.4) - Published on October 14, 2017 fastlane-plugin-run_tests_firebase_testlab (version 0.3.2) - Published on February 06, 2018 "Each malicious release is a loader," StepSecurity said in an analysis. "It fetches a second stage from an attacker controlled Forgejo host, checks whether it is running in a build system and skips if it is, and on a developer machine it drops a native daemon and installs persistence." One aspect of the attack that immediately stands out is that "git_credential_manager" impersonates the official Microsoft Git Credential Manager, while t...

Cybersecurity researchers have attributed the April 2026 DigiCert security incident to a threat activity cluster dubbed CylindricalCanine . Expel, which shared technical details of the event, described the threat actor as a sub-group of GoldenEyeDog (aka APT-Q-27, Dragon Breath, and Miuuti Group), a Chinese cybercrime group known for its targeting of the gambling and gaming sectors using counterfeit websites to push malware-laced software. It's known to be active since at least 2015. "In April 2026, GoldenEyeDog used their malware to access a support member's device at DigiCert, a code-signing certificate provider, and leveraged their access to steal certificates intended for DigiCert customers," Expel security researcher Aaron Walton said in an analysis. "This attack highlighted the capability of the malware and operators." Central to the threat actor's operations is a modified version of Gh0st RAT (aka Farfli), a remote access trojan (RAT) w...

ACR Stealer , an infostealer in circulation since 2024, is walking out of enterprise networks with saved browser passwords, live session tokens, PDFs, Microsoft 365 documents, and files from synced OneDrive and SharePoint folders. It gets in because someone pasted a command into a Run box and pressed Enter. Microsoft laid out two of the delivery chains on Thursday. Its Defender Experts team, the company's managed detection arm, had watched ACR Stealer activity climb across customer environments from late April to mid-June, and says the campaigns are "successfully using ClickFix lures to steal browser credentials, authentication tokens, and sensitive documents." Both chains open with the same prompt, then split: one leaves traces on disk, the other runs almost entirely in memory. Microsoft's remediation guidance tells victims to revoke tokens, not just rotate passwords. A payload in the pixels The prompt likely arrives through malvertising or SEO-manipulated...

Cybersecurity researchers have called attention to a new modular malware called TELEPUZ that's been spreading via websites infected with ClickFix lures since late April 2026. "The malware is full-featured, lightweight, and modular," Elastic Security Labs researcher Cyril François said in a technical report. "While the number of C2 [command-and-control] domains is currently small, the daily volume of builds uploaded to VirusTotal and the rapid pace of updates indicate active development and likely further growth." The disclosure makes it the second new threat cluster after SCMBANKER to be propagated via ClickFix , a pervasive social engineering attack that tricks users into manually running malicious commands by disguising them as innocent fixes for fake browser errors, software updates, or CAPTCHA verifications. Underpinning the technique is an approach called clipboard hijacking. Because web pages using ClickFix inject malicious script or commands i...

An advanced malware previously attributed to a China-linked threat actor has resurfaced after more than four years within a Taiwan manufacturing firm, along with a previously unreported backdoor dubbed Stupig . Daxin ("srt64.sys"), as the kernel-mode rootkit is referred to, was first documented by Broadcom-owned Symantec in March 2022, with evidence indicating its use in targeted attacks aimed at governments and other critical infrastructure targets since 2013. The latest findings from the Symantec and Carbon Black Threat Hunter Team show that Daxin is still operational, after it was found running on a compromised host in Taiwan in 2026. The same machine, belonging to a Taiwan-based subsidiary of a multinational high-tech manufacturer, is also said to have been infected with Stupig ("a.dll" or "kbdus1.dll"). The file name is an attempt to masquerade as "kbdus.dll," a legitimate Microsoft DLL associated with the U.S. English keyboard layout...

A malware framework called OkoBot has been running on Windows machines since April 2025, and one of its modules is built to con hardware wallet owners out of their recovery phrase. On an infected PC, the request comes from inside the wallet's own desktop software. Sometimes it waits until you plug the device in first. The page is malicious. The app around it is the real one you installed, and the phrase is the wallet. Kaspersky's GReAT team  published the teardown  on Wednesday, counting hundreds of victims in its telemetry across more than 25 countries. The largest share of attacked users is in Brazil, Vietnam, Canada, Mexico, and Türkiye. How many of them typed a phrase in, the report does not say. OkoBot carries more than 20 payloads and implants and was still active as of the July 15 report. SeedHunter Waits for the Device SeedHunter is the OkoBot module that steals the phrase. Once the framework lands, it watches for Trezor Suite, Ledger Wallet, and Ledger Live...

Security researcher Chaotic Eclipse (aka Nightmare-Eclipse ) has released a new proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit called LegacyHive. It has been described as a Windows User Profile Service arbitrary hive load elevation of privileges vulnerability. The Windows User Profile Service, also referred to as ProfSvc, is a core system component that manages user accounts and environments. "The PoC requires another standard user credential and a third username (which can be an administrator account)," Chaotic Eclipse said . "If the PoC is successful, it will end up mounting the target user hive in the current user classes root." The researcher said the exploit was stripped down to prevent public exploitation, adding the original exploit did not require additional user credentials and was not limited to the "usrclass.dat" hive. "Any hive could be loaded using this vulnerability, but you would need some brain cells to make the PoC do it," the researc...

Open a repository in Cursor on Windows and, if a file named git.exe is sitting in the project root, Cursor runs it. No click, no approval dialog, no warning that anything in the folder is about to execute. Whatever that binary does, it does as you, with your source, your SSH keys and your cloud tokens. Cursor keeps re-running it for as long as the project stays open. No prompt injection, no agent, no model in the loop, and no prior access to the machine: opening the folder is the entire exploit, and the result is arbitrary code execution as the logged-in user. AI security firm Mindgard reported the flaw to Cursor on December 15, 2025 and  published full technical details  on Tuesday, seven months later. There is still no patch, and Cursor has published no advisory for the issue. The mechanism takes about a sentence. Cursor checks several locations for a Git binary when a project loads, and one of them is the workspace itself. Process Monitor output in t...

Microsoft shipped its largest Patch Tuesday on record today, and two of the fixes close holes that attackers are already exploiting. The release covers 622 of Microsoft's own CVEs by its  Security Update Guide  count, more than triple  June's previous high of around 200 . Those two live bugs are the ones to grab first. Microsoft credits incident responders for both. Both are elevation-of-privilege flaws in identity and collaboration infrastructure: CVE-2026-56164 in on-premises SharePoint Server and CVE-2026-56155 in Active Directory Federation Services. Neither is one of the splashy remote code execution criticals. They are privilege bugs in two systems that matter more than their scores suggest: the company document store, and the box that signs its logins. The two zero-days to patch first CVE-2026-56164 , a SharePoint Server flaw Microsoft says is being exploited in attacks, lets an unauthenticated attacker escalate privileges over the ne...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a previously undocumented Rust-based remote access trojan (RAT) codenamed LabubaRAT that masquerades as NVIDIA software to blend into target environments. "LabubaRAT creates a reusable foothold for hands-on activity," Blackpoint Cyber researchers Sam Decker and Nevan Beal said in an analysis published today. "Once deployed, it can profile the host, identify security tools, receive operator commands, move files, capture screenshots, and proxy traffic through the affected system." The implant also supports multiple communication methods, including HTTPS, WebView2, and DNS tunneling, allowing attackers to maintain access to compromised hosts even if one pathway is detected and closed off. There are some signs that LabubuRAT is being offered under a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) model. The starting point of the attack chain is an executable named "nvidia-sysruntime.exe," which impersonates NVIDIA's container ru...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged an intrusion in which an unknown threat actor leveraged a vibe-coded PowerShell script for Active Directory (AD) enumeration. "The script looked for the Domain Controller (DC) and mapped users, computers, and domains, before creating a directory and exporting out a number of files, and finally creating AD_Report.html to measure the success of the enumeration attempt," Huntress researchers Jevon Ang and Dray Agha said . The attack chain involved the threat actor establishing Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) access onto a domain-joined Windows Server with a set of pre-compromised credentials, followed by staging the tools in the "C:\ProgramData\" folder. The incident took place in early June 2026. This included an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated payload to map the Active Directory environment. The assessment is based on various telltale signs, such as the prompt iteration title, placeholder strings, over-engineered cod...

Progress Software has told ShareFile customers to shut down the Windows servers running their Storage Zone Controllers, confirming to The Hacker News that it is responding to a "credible external security threat." The company has temporarily disabled access to the affected accounts, a step it says it took "out of an abundance of caution" while it works with internal and external security experts. It says it has no indication of unauthorized access to any ShareFile accounts or data, and that it notified customers after learning of the threat. What Progress has not said is what the threat is or who is behind it. The order became public when a customer posted the company's email to Reddit's  r/sysadmin  on July 10. Progress  confirmed the disruption on its status page, listing Storage Zone Controller customers as "not operational" and the incident as under investigation as of a 12:12 p.m. EDT update. Only the Storage Zone Controller is af...

The China-linked cybercrime group known as Silver Fox has been attributed to a new Rust-based remote access trojan (RAR) called MODBEACON . Chinese cybersecurity company QiAnXin said that while the threat cluster may appear like a low-sophistication, high-activity operation that propagates malware via counterfeit installers using SEO poisoning techniques, it belies their true organizational structure , which compromises multiple distributors. "These distributors conduct activities across Asia using counterfeit software installers distributed through SEO campaigns, leveraging variants of Gh0st RAT and WinOS (ValleyRAT) trojan families," QiAnXin said . One such campaign observed in mid-June 2026 involved a distributor delivering a previously undocumented modular RAT targeting technology, education, and state-owned enterprises in the country. MODBEACON's requested command-and-control (C2) infrastructure is hosted on Amazon and Cloudflare's Content Delivery Networ...

Microsoft has taken apart a destructive Windows backdoor it calls GigaWiper . What stands out is how it is built: not one tool but three older destructive programs bolted into one, offered as commands the operator can choose from. Each is a different way to break a machine: wipe the whole disk, overwrite the Windows drive, or run fake "ransomware" that scrambles files with a key it never saves. Because this is malware and not a single flaw, there is no patch to chase; GigaWiper is what an attacker runs after they are already inside, which makes early detection and clean, offline backups the real defense. The same malicious files show up in a second report under another name: BLUERABBIT , a backdoor Binary Defense flagged last month . Microsoft lists four hashes for the GigaWiper backdoor ; Binary Defense lists the same four for BLUERABBIT , and both command servers match. Binary Defense, citing Google's Threat Intelligence Group, ties the malware to a likely Ir...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new ransomware family called GodDamn that employs the PoisonX kernel driver to neutralize security software as part of its defense evasion strategy. According to a new report published by the Threat Hunter Team from Symantec, the ransomware was first publicly spotted in the wild on May 21, 2026. It's assessed to be a rebrand of the Beast ransomware, which, in turn, was an enhanced version of Monster , a Delphi-based ransomware that surfaced in March 2022. Broadcom's cybersecurity arm is tracing the developer behind these ransomware families under the moniker Hyadina. In one attack orchestrated by the ransomware operation in early June 2026, the threat actors are said to have leveraged AnyDesk for remote access and used a NirSoft-based credential harvesting toolkit before deploying the ransomware. The exact initial access vector is unknown. The credential harvester is designed to extract sensitive data from common web browsers, W...

Microsoft has released security updates for a Defender vulnerability known as RoguePlanet, nearly a month after details of the flaw became public. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-50656 (CVSS score: 7.8), is a privilege escalation issue in the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine ("mpengine.dll"), which provides scanning, detection, and cleaning capabilities for its antivirus and antispyware software. The issue has been remediated in Microsoft Malware Protection Engine version 1.1.26060.3008, along with defense-in-depth updates to harden unspecified security-related features.  RoguePlanet was first disclosed by a security researcher named Chaotic Eclipse (aka Nightmare-Eclipse), describing it as a race condition that could be abused to spawn a shell with SYSTEM-level privileges. This, in turn, grants the attacker the ability to run arbitrary code or perform unauthorized actions. The exploit has been found to work on systems running up-to-date versions of Wind...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new threat actor dubbed Lurking Lizard that has been operating an end-to-end malicious residential proxy business using an infrastructure comprising more than 230 lookalike domains. The activity dates back to at least August 2022, according to DNS threat intelligence firm Infoblox. One such campaign, observed earlier this year, involved the actor luring victims with a trojanized 7-Zip installer hosted on a domain named "7zip[.]com," covertly recruiting compromised devices as proxy nodes. Lurking Lizard is also known to impersonate major proxy providers, including IPIDEA , SmartProxy (now Decodo), IP Royal, and 911Proxy, not to mention going to the extent of running fake "independent" review sites to drive traffic to its own scam storefronts. Interestingly, IPIDEA's infrastructure was dismantled by Google in an operation earlier this January.

Sophos looked at a week of its own endpoint data and found that AI coding agents such as Claude Code, Cursor, and OpenAI Codex are setting off detection rules written to catch human intruders. The agents are not malicious. They just do a lot of things that, to a behavioral engine, look exactly like an attack. Decrypting browser credentials, listing what sits in Windows' credential store, pulling files down with built-in system tools, writing to the startup folder: these have long been high-signal to defenders. What has changed is who is generating it. On the machines Sophos watched, it was often a developer's AI assistant going about ordinary work. What set the alarms off The  analysis  draws on seven days of telemetry from June 2026, taken from Sophos's behavioral engine on Windows and counted by unique machines, not raw event volume. It is a narrow window on one vendor's fleet, not an industry census. Sophos's charts put credential access at 56.2 perc...