cyber espionage | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new fully-featured Windows backdoor called NANOREMOTE that uses the Google Drive API for command-and-control (C2) purposes. According to a report from Elastic Security Labs, the malware shares code similarities with another implant codenamed FINALDRAFT (aka Squidoor) that employs Microsoft Graph API for C2. FINALDRAFT is attributed to a threat cluster known as REF7707 (aka CL-STA-0049, Earth Alux, and Jewelbug). "One of the malware's primary features is centered around shipping data back and forth from the victim endpoint using the Google Drive API," Daniel Stepanic, principal security researcher at Elastic Security Labs, said. "This feature ends up providing a channel for data theft and payload staging that is difficult for detection. The malware includes a task management system used for file transfer capabilities that include queuing download/upload tasks, pausing/resuming file transfers, canceling file...

An advanced persistent threat (APT) known as WIRTE has been attributed to attacks targeting government and diplomatic entities across the Middle East with a previously undocumented malware suite dubbed AshTag since 2020 . Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 is tracking the activity cluster under the name Ashen Lepus . Artifacts uploaded to the VirusTotal platform show that the threat actor has trained its sights on Oman and Morocco, indicating an expansion in operational scope beyond the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. The company told The Hacker News said it has observed "scores of unique lures" disseminated across the Middle East, indicating a "persistent and wide-reaching campaign" confined to government and diplomatic entities in the region. More than a dozen entities are estimated to have been targeted, although it's suspected that the real number could be higher. "Ashen Lepus remained persistently active throughout the Israel...

Canadian organizations have emerged as the focus of a targeted cyber campaign orchestrated by a threat activity cluster known as STAC6565 . Cybersecurity company Sophos said it investigated almost 40 intrusions linked to the threat actor between February 2024 and August 2025. The campaign is assessed with high confidence to share overlaps with a hacking group known as Gold Blade , which is also tracked under the names Earth Kapre, RedCurl, and Red Wolf. The financially motivated threat actor is believed to be active since late 2018 , initially targeting entities in Russia, before expanding its focus to entities in Canada, Germany, Norway, Russia, Slovenia, Ukraine, the U.K., and the U.S. The group has a history of using phishing emails to conduct commercial espionage. However, recent attack waves have found RedCurl to have engaged in ransomware attacks using a bespoke malware strain dubbed QWCrypt . One of the notable tools in the threat actor's arsenal is RedLoader, which s...

The Iranian hacking group known as MuddyWater has been observed leveraging a new backdoor dubbed UDPGangster that uses the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) for command-and-control (C2) purposes. The cyber espionage activity targeted users in Turkey, Israel, and Azerbaijan, according to a report from Fortinet FortiGuard Labs. "This malware enables remote control of compromised systems by allowing attackers to execute commands, exfiltrate files, and deploy additional payloads – all communicated through UDP channels designed to evade traditional network defenses," security researcher Cara Lin said . The attack chain involves using spear-phishing tactics to distribute booby-trapped Microsoft Word documents that trigger the execution of a malicious payload once macros are enabled. Some of the phishing messages impersonate the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus Ministry of Foreign Affairs and purport to invite recipients to an online seminar titled "Presidential Elections a...

Microsoft has silently plugged a security flaw that has been exploited by several threat actors since 2017 as part of the company's November 2025 Patch Tuesday updates , according to ACROS Security's 0patch . The vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-9491 (CVSS score: 7.8/7.0), which has been described as a Windows Shortcut (LNK) file UI misinterpretation vulnerability that could lead to remote code execution. "The specific flaw exists within the handling of .LNK files," according to a description in the NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD). "Crafted data in an .LNK file can cause hazardous content in the file to be invisible to a user who inspects the file via the Windows-provided user interface. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to execute code in the context of the current user." In other words, these shortcut files are crafted such that viewing their properties in Windows conceals the malicious commands executed by them out of the u...

Israeli entities spanning academia, engineering, local government, manufacturing, technology, transportation, and utilities sectors have emerged as the target of a new set of attacks undertaken by Iranian nation-state actors that have delivered a previously undocumented backdoor called MuddyViper. The activity has been attributed by ESET to a hacking group known as MuddyWater (aka Mango Sandstorm, Static Kitten, or TA450), a cluster assessed to be affiliated with Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). The attacks also singled out one technology company based in Egypt. The campaign took place between September 30, 2024, and March 18, 2025. The hacking group first came to light in November 2017, when Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 detailed targeted attacks against the Middle East between February and October of that year using a custom backdoor dubbed POWERSTATS. It's also known for its destructive attacks on Israeli organizations using a Thanos ransomware varian...

The threat actor known as Tomiris has been attributed to attacks targeting foreign ministries, intergovernmental organizations, and government entities in Russia with an aim to establish remote access and deploy additional tools. "These attacks highlight a notable shift in Tomiris's tactics, namely the increased use of implants that leverage public services (e.g., Telegram and Discord) as command-and-control (C2) servers," Kaspersky researchers Oleg Kupreev and Artem Ushkov said in an analysis. "This approach likely aims to blend malicious traffic with legitimate service activity to evade detection by security tools." The cybersecurity company said more than 50% of the spear-phishing emails and decoy files used in the campaign used Russian names and contained Russian text, indicating that Russian-speaking users or entities were the primary focus. The spear-phishing emails have also targeted Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan using tailored...

The threat actors behind a malware family known as RomCom targeted a U.S.-based civil engineering company via a JavaScript loader dubbed SocGholish to deliver the Mythic Agent. "This is the first time that a RomCom payload has been observed being distributed by SocGholish," Arctic Wolf Labs researcher Jacob Faires said in a Tuesday report. The activity has been attributed with medium-to-high confidence to Unit 29155 of Russia's Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, also known as GRU. According to the cybersecurity company, the targeted entity had worked for a city with close ties to Ukraine in the past. SocGholish (aka FakeUpdates), linked to a financially motivated operator tracked as TA569 (aka Gold Prelude, Mustard Tempest, Purple Vallhund, and UNC1543), serves as an initial access broker, allowing other threat actors to drop a wide range of payloads. Some of its known customers are Evil Corp, LockBit, Dridex, and ...

The China-linked advanced persistent threat (APT) group known as APT31 has been attributed to cyber attacks targeting the Russian information technology (IT) sector between 2024 and 2025 while staying undetected for extended periods of time. "In the period from 2024 to 2025, the Russian IT sector, especially companies working as contractors and integrators of solutions for government agencies, faced a series of targeted computer attacks," Positive Technologies researchers Daniil Grigoryan and Varvara Koloskova said in a technical report. APT31, also known as Altaire, Bronze Vinewood, Judgement Panda, PerplexedGoblin, RedBravo, Red Keres, and Violet Typhoon (formerly Zirconium), is assessed to be active since at least 2010. It has a track record of striking a wide range of sectors, including governments, financial, and aerospace and defense, high tech, construction and engineering, telecommunications, media, and insurance. The cyber espionage group is primarily focused ...

A China-nexus threat actor known as APT24 has been observed using a previously undocumented malware dubbed BADAUDIO to establish persistent remote access to compromised networks as part of a nearly three-year campaign. "While earlier operations relied on broad strategic web compromises to compromise legitimate websites, APT24 has recently pivoted to using more sophisticated vectors targeting organizations in Taiwan," Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) researchers Harsh Parashar, Tierra Duncan, and Dan Perez said . "This includes the repeated compromise of a regional digital marketing firm to execute supply chain attacks and the use of targeted phishing campaigns." APT24, also called Pitty Tiger, is the moniker assigned to a suspected Chinese hacking group that has targeted government, healthcare, construction and engineering, mining, non-profit, and telecommunications sectors in the U.S. and Taiwan. The group is also known to engage in cyber operations wh...

The threat actor known as PlushDaemon has been observed using a previously undocumented Go-based network backdoor codenamed EdgeStepper to facilitate adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) attacks. EdgeStepper "redirects all DNS queries to an external, malicious hijacking node, effectively rerouting the traffic from legitimate infrastructure used for software updates to attacker-controlled infrastructure," ESET security researcher Facundo Muñoz said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Known to be active since at least 2018, PlushDaemon is assessed to be a China-aligned group that has attacked entities in the U.S., New Zealand, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and mainland China. It was first documented by the Slovak cybersecurity company earlier this January, detailing a supply chain attack aimed at a South Korean virtual private network (VPN) provider named IPany to target a semiconductor company and an unidentified software development company in South Korea wi...

Suspected espionage-driven threat actors from Iran have been observed deploying backdoors like TWOSTROKE and DEEPROOT as part of continued attacks aimed at aerospace, aviation, and defense industries in the Middle East. The activity has been attributed by Google-owned Mandiant to a threat cluster tracked as UNC1549 (aka GalaxyGato, Nimbus Manticore, or Subtle Snail), which was first documented by the threat intelligence firm early last year. "Operating in late 2023 through 2025, UNC1549 employed sophisticated initial access vectors, including abuse of third-party relationships to gain entry (pivoting from service providers to their customers), VDI breakouts from third-parties, and highly targeted, role-relevant phishing," researchers Mohamed El-Banna, Daniel Lee, Mike Stokkel, and Josh Goddard said. The disclosure comes about two months after Swiss cybersecurity company PRODAFT tied the hacking group to a campaign targeting European telecommunications companies, succes...

State-sponsored threat actors from China used artificial intelligence (AI) technology developed by Anthropic to orchestrate automated cyber attacks as part of a "highly sophisticated espionage campaign" in mid-September 2025. "The attackers used AI's 'agentic' capabilities to an unprecedented degree – using AI not just as an advisor, but to execute the cyber attacks themselves," the AI upstart said . The activity is assessed to have manipulated Claude Code, Anthropic's AI coding tool, to attempt to break into about 30 global targets spanning large tech companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturing companies, and government agencies. A subset of these intrusions succeeded. Anthropic has since banned the relevant accounts and enforced defensive mechanisms to flag such attacks. The campaign, GTG-1002, marks the first time a threat actor has leveraged AI to conduct a "large-scale cyber attack" without major human intervention an...

The North Korea-affiliated threat actor known as Konni (aka Earth Imp, Opal Sleet, Osmium, TA406, and Vedalia) has been attributed to a new set of attacks targeting both Android and Windows devices for data theft and remote control. "Attackers impersonated psychological counselors and North Korean human rights activists, distributing malware disguised as stress-relief programs," the Genians Security Center (GSC) said in a technical report. What's notable about the attacks targeting Android devices is also the destructive ability of the threat actors to exploit Google's asset tracking service, Find Hub (formerly Find My Device), to remotely reset victim devices, thereby leading to the unauthorized deletion of personal data. The activity was detected in early September 2025. The development marks the first time the hacking group has weaponized legitimate management functions to remotely reset mobile devices. The activity is also preceded by an attack chain in whi...

A never-before-seen threat activity cluster codenamed UNK_SmudgedSerpent has been attributed as behind a set of cyber attacks targeting academics and foreign policy experts between June and August 2025, coinciding with heightened geopolitical tensions between Iran and Israel. "UNK_SmudgedSerpent leveraged domestic political lures, including societal change in Iran and investigation into the militarization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)," Proofpoint security researcher Saher Naumaan said in a new report shared with The Hacker News. The enterprise security company said the campaign shares tactical similarities with that of prior attacks mounted by Iranian cyber espionage groups like TA455 (aka Smoke Sandstorm or UNC1549), TA453  (aka Charming Kitten or Mint Sandstorm), and TA450 (aka Mango Sandstorm or MuddyWater). The email messages bear all hallmarks of a classic Charming Kitten attack, with the threat actors reeling in prospective targets by engagin...

Threat actors are leveraging weaponized attachments distributed via phishing emails to deliver malware likely targeting the defense sector in Russia and Belarus. According to multiple reports from Cyble and Seqrite Labs , the campaign is designed to deploy a persistent backdoor on compromised hosts that uses OpenSSH in conjunction with a customized Tor hidden service that employs obfs4 for traffic obfuscation. The activity has been codenamed Operation SkyCloak by Seqrite, stating the phishing emails utilize lures related to military documents to convince recipients into opening a ZIP file containing a hidden folder with a second archive file, along with a Windows shortcut (LNK) file, which, when opened, triggers the multi-step infection chain. "They trigger PowerShell commands which act as the initial dropper stage where another archive file besides the LNK is used to set up the entire chain," security researchers Sathwik Ram Prakki and Kartikkumar Jivani said, adding...