cyber espionage | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added a critical security flaw impacting ownCloud to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog following reports that a Chinese-speaking threat actor weaponized the vulnerability to target a nuclear research body in the Philippines. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-49105 (CVSS score: 9.8), is a case of WebDAV API authentication bypass that could allow an attacker to access, modify or delete any file without authentication if the username of the victim is known and the victim has no signing-key configured, which is the default configuration. Disclosed by ownCloud in November 2023, the issue impacts "core" versions from 10.6.0 through 10.13.0. It was fixed in version 10.13.1. CISA's addition of the flaw to the KEV catalog comes a couple of days after Hunt.io said it identified an open directory on the host "31.58.209[.]241," which staged custom Python scripts, o...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a fresh set of campaigns targeting government and diplomatic organizations in Romania, Spain, and Türkiye between late September 2025 and early April 2026. These campaigns, per Recorded Future Insikt Group, have led to the deployment of a previously undocumented backdoor dubbed HOOKEDGE , a lightweight Windows batch script that's distributed via macro-enabled Microsoft Word documents bearing diplomatic-themed lures. Early versions are said to have impersonated Spanish government material, before switching to a social engineering approach a month later. The activity has been attributed with moderate confidence to a Russian state-sponsored hacking group known as APT28 (aka Fancy Bear and Forest Blizzard). It's tracked by the Mastercard-owned cybersecurity and threat intelligence firm under the moniker BlueDelta. This determination is based on what Recorded Future described as significant code and tradecraft overlap between HOOKEDGE a...

Individuals and organizations in Cambodia have emerged as the target of a new campaign that delivers an open-source remote access trojan (RAT) called Spark RAT . "The samples employ diverse lure themes, suggesting an effort to appeal to a broad range of potential victims. These include government notices, public health materials, real estate-related content, and other topics," Acronis Threat Research Unit (TRU) researchers Darrel Virtusio and Subhajeet Singha said in an analysis published Wednesday. The multi-stage attack is notable for employing the bring your own vulnerable driver (BYOVD) technique to load a legitimate-but-vulnerable driver associated with OPSWAT AppRemover ("ardrv.sys") to escalate privileges and neutralize security software. Attack chains likely make use of targeting phishing emails to distribute compressed archives containing an Inno Setup executable and trick recipients into running it using wide-ranging lures, including Cambodian gove...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Wednesday announced the disruption of two hacking platforms named QScan and QTRouter operated by Chinese threat actors to target critical infrastructure and other sensitive networks in the country. The activity has been attributed to a Chinese state-sponsored group known as QTFY, employed by Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Company (南京鑫玖维网络科技有限公司).  "Among the victims of QTFY computer intrusion activity are the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Federal Reserve, Department of Energy, Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Senate," DoJ said. Damon Rouse, a security researcher at Lumen Black Lotus Labs who has been tracking the activity for over the past 18 months, told The Hacker News that the digital quartermaster has been active since May 2018. Nanjing counts both China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) and the People's Liberation Army...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered additional infrastructure and previously undocumented malware associated with Nimbus Manticore , an Iranian state-sponsored hacking group affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Group-IB, in a new analysis published today, described the cyber espionage actor as among the most active Iranian APT groups in 2026. Nimbus Manticore (aka GalaxyGato, Mirage Kitten, Screening Serpens, Smoke Sandstorm, Subtle Snail, and UNC1549) is assessed to be linked to Tortoiseshell (aka Imperial Kitten and Unyielding Wasp), which is part of the Charming Kitten (aka Eclipsed Wasp) cluster. Tortoiseshell is known to be active since at least July 2018, mainly targeting defense, aerospace, IT service providers, and military organizations in the Middle East and the U.S. Nimbus Manticore also has a history of orchestrating its own version of the Dream Job campaign to deliver malware under the pretext of job opportunity-themed social engine...