cyber espionage | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

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 ...