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Threat actors with ties to North Korea have been attributed to a new wave of attacks targeting European companies active in the defense industry as part of a long-running campaign known as Operation Dream Job . "Some of these [companies] are heavily involved in the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) sector, suggesting that the operation may be linked to North Korea's current efforts to scale up its drone program," ESET security researchers Peter Kálnai and Alexis Rapin said in a report shared with The Hacker News. It's assessed that the end goal of the campaign is to plunder proprietary information and manufacturing know-how using malware families such as ScoringMathTea and MISTPEN. The Slovak cybersecurity company said it observed the campaign starting in late March 2025. Some of the targeted entities include a metal engineering company in Southeastern Europe, a manufacturer of aircraft components in Central Europe, and a defense company in Central Europe. While Sc...

Threat actors behind the Interlock ransomware group have unleashed a new PHP variant of its bespoke remote access trojan (RAT) as part of a widespread campaign using a variant of ClickFix called FileFix. "Since May 2025, activity related to the Interlock RAT has been observed in connection with the LandUpdate808 (aka KongTuke) web-inject threat clusters," The DFIR Report said in a technical analysis published today in collaboration with Proofpoint. "The campaign begins with compromised websites injected with a single-line script hidden in the page's HTML, often unbeknownst to site owners or visitors." The JavaScript code acts as a traffic distribution system (TDS), using IP filtering techniques to redirect users to fake CAPTCHA verification pages that leverage ClickFix to entice them into running a PowerShell script that leads to the deployment of NodeSnake (aka Interlock RAT or Supper ). The use of NodeSnake by Interlock was previously documented by Qu...

The threat actors behind the Qilin ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) scheme are now offering legal counsel for affiliates to put more pressure on victims to pay up, as the cybercrime group intensifies its activity and tries to fill the void left by its rivals. The new feature takes the form of a "Call Lawyer" feature on the affiliate panel, per Israeli cybersecurity company Cybereason. The development represents a newfound resurgence of the e-crime group as once-popular ransomware groups like LockBit, Black Cat, RansomHub, Everest, and BlackLock have suffered abrupt cessations, operational failures, and defacements. The group, also tracked as Gold Feather and Water Galura, has been active since October 2022. Data compiled from the dark web leak sites run by ransomware groups shows that Qilin led with 72 victims in April 2025. In May, it is estimated to be behind 55 attacks , putting it behind Safepay (72) and Luna Moth (67). It's also the third most active group after...

Japan's National Police Agency (NPA) and National Center of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity (NCSC) accused a China-linked threat actor named MirrorFace of orchestrating a persistent attack campaign targeting organizations, businesses, and individuals in the country since 2019. The primary objective of the attack campaign is to steal information related to Japan's national security and advanced technology, the agencies said . MirrorFace, also tracked as Earth Kasha, is assessed to be a sub-group within APT10. It has a track record of systematically striking Japanese entities, often leveraging tools like ANEL, LODEINFO, and NOOPDOOR (aka HiddenFace). Last month, Trend Micro revealed details of a spear-phishing campaign that targeted individuals and organizations in Japan with an aim to deliver ANEL and NOOPDOOR . Other campaigns observed in recent years have also been directed against Taiwan and India. According to NPA and NCSC, attacks mounted by Mirro...

Iran-affiliated threat actors have been linked to a new custom malware that's geared toward IoT and operational technology (OT) environments in Israel and the United States. The malware has been codenamed IOCONTROL by OT cybersecurity company Claroty, highlighting its ability to attack IoT and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) devices such as IP cameras, routers, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), human-machine interfaces (HMIs), firewalls, and other Linux-based IoT/OT platforms. "While the malware is believed to be custom-built by the threat actor, it seems that the malware is generic enough that it is able to run on a variety of platforms from different vendors due to its modular configuration," the company said . The development makes IOCONTROL the tenth malware family to specifically single out Industrial Control Systems (ICS) after Stuxnet, Havex, Industroyer (aka CrashOverride), Triton (aka Trisis), BlackEnergy2, Industroyer2, PIPEDREAM (a...

The U.S. government on Tuesday unsealed charges against a Chinese national for allegedly breaking into thousands of Sophos firewall devices globally in 2020. Guan Tianfeng (aka gbigmao and gxiaomao), who is said to have worked at Sichuan Silence Information Technology Company, Limited, has been charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Guan has been accused of developing and testing a zero-day security vulnerability used to conduct the attacks against Sophos firewalls. "Guan Tianfeng is wanted for his alleged role in conspiring to access Sophos firewalls without authorization, cause damage to them, and retrieve and exfiltrate data from both the firewalls themselves and the computers behind these firewalls," the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said . "The exploit was used to infiltrate approximately 81,000 firewalls." The then-zero-day vulnerability in question is CVE-2020-12271 (CVSS score: 9.8), a severe S...

More than 140,000 phishing websites have been found linked to a phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform named Sniper Dz over the past year, indicating that it's being used by a large number of cybercriminals to conduct credential theft. "For prospective phishers, Sniper Dz offers an online admin panel with a catalog of phishing pages," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers Shehroze Farooqi, Howard Tong, and Alex Starov said in a technical report. "Phishers can either host these phishing pages on Sniper Dz-owned infrastructure or download Sniper Dz phishing templates to host on their own servers." Perhaps what makes it even more lucrative is that these services are provided for free. That said, the credentials harvested using the phishing sites are also exfiltrated to the operators of the PhaaS platform, a technique that Microsoft calls double theft . PhaaS platforms have become an increasingly common way for aspiring threat actors to enter the world of cy...

A recently patched security flaw in Google Chrome and other Chromium web browsers was exploited as a zero-day by North Korean actors in a campaign designed to deliver the FudModule rootkit. The development is indicative of the persistent efforts made by the nation-state adversary, which has made a habit of incorporating rafts of Windows zero-day exploits into its arsenal in recent months. Microsoft, which detected the activity on August 19, 2024, attributed it to a threat actor it tracks as Citrine Sleet (formerly DEV-0139 and DEV-1222), which is also known as AppleJeus, Labyrinth Chollima, Nickel Academy, and UNC4736 . It's assessed to be a sub-cluster within the Lazarus Group (aka Diamond Sleet and Hidden Cobra). It's worth mentioning that the use of the AppleJeus malware has also been previously attributed by Kaspersky to another Lazarus subgroup called BlueNoroff (aka APT38, Nickel Gladstone, and Stardust Chollima), indicative of the infrastructure and toolset sharin...

A previously undocumented backdoor named Msupedge has been put to use against a cyber attack targeting an unnamed university in Taiwan. "The most notable feature of this backdoor is that it communicates with a command-and-control (C&C) server via DNS traffic," the Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom, said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The origins of the backdoor are presently unknown as are the objectives behind the attack. The initial access vector that likely facilitated the deployment of Msupedge is said to involve the exploitation of a recently disclosed critical flaw impacting PHP ( CVE-2024-4577 , CVSS score: 9.8), which could be used to achieve remote code execution . The backdoor in question is a dynamic-link library (DLL) that's installed in the paths "csidl_drive_fixed\xampp\" and "csidl_system\wbem\." One of the DLLs, wuplog.dll, is launched by the Apache HTTP server (httpd). The parent process for the second ...

Cybersecurity researchers have warned that multiple high-severity security vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins are being actively exploited by threat actors to create rogue administrator accounts for follow-on exploitation. "These vulnerabilities are found in various WordPress plugins and are prone to unauthenticated stored cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks due to inadequate input sanitization and output escaping, making it possible for attackers to inject malicious scripts," Fastly researchers Simran Khalsa, Xavier Stevens, and Matthew Mathur said . The security flaws in question are listed below - CVE-2023-6961 (CVSS score: 7.2) - Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting in WP Meta SEO <= 4.5.12 CVE-2023-40000 (CVSS score: 8.3) - Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting in LiteSpeed Cache <= 5.7 CVE-2024-2194 (CVSS score: 7.2) - Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting in WP Statistics <= 14.5 Attack chains exploiting the flaws involve inject...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new cryptojacking campaign that employs vulnerable drivers to disable known security solutions (EDRs) and thwart detection in what's called a Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver ( BYOVD ) attack. Elastic Security Labs is tracking the campaign under the name REF4578 and the primary payload as GHOSTENGINE. Previous research from Chinese cybersecurity firm Antiy Labs has codenamed the activity as HIDDEN SHOVEL. "GHOSTENGINE leverages vulnerable drivers to terminate and delete known EDR agents that would likely interfere with the deployed and well-known coin miner," Elastic researchers Salim Bitam, Samir Bousseaden, Terrance DeJesus, and Andrew Pease said . "This campaign involved an uncommon amount of complexity to ensure both the installation and persistence of the XMRig miner." It all starts with an executable file ("Tiworker.exe"), which is used to run a PowerShell script that retrieves an obfuscated Power...

Multiple critical security flaws have been disclosed in the Judge0 open-source online code execution system that could be exploited to obtain code execution on the target system. The three flaws, all critical in nature, allow an "adversary with sufficient access to perform a sandbox escape and obtain root permissions on the host machine," Australian cybersecurity firm Tanto Security said in a report published today. Judge0 (pronounced "judge zero") is  described  by its maintainers as a "robust, scalable, and open-source online code execution system" that can be used to build applications that require online code execution features such as candidate assessment, e-learning, and online code editors and IDEs. According to its website, the service is used by 23 customers like AlgoDaily, CodeChum, and PYnative, among others. The project has been  forked 412 times on GitHub  to date. The flaw...

A now-patched security flaw in the Microsoft Edge web browser could have been abused to install arbitrary extensions on users' systems and carry out malicious actions.  "This flaw could have allowed an attacker to exploit a private API, initially intended for marketing purposes, to covertly install additional browser extensions with broad permissions without the user's knowledge," Guardio Labs security researcher Oleg Zaytsev  said  in a new report shared with The Hacker News. Tracked as  CVE-2024-21388  (CVSS score: 6.5), it was addressed by Microsoft in Edge stable version 121.0.2277.83 released on January 25, 2024, following responsible disclosure in November 2023. The Windows maker credited both Zaytsev and Jun Kokatsu for reporting the issue. "An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the privileges needed to install an extension," Microsoft said in an advisory for the flaw, adding it "could lead to a browser sandbo...

Microsoft on Tuesday released its monthly security update,  addressing 61 different security flaws  spanning its software, including two critical issues impacting Windows Hyper-V that could lead to denial-of-service (DoS) and remote code execution. Of the 61 vulnerabilities, two are rated Critical, 58 are rated Important, and one is rated Low in severity. None of the flaws are listed as publicly known or under active attack at the time of the release, but six of them have been tagged with an "Exploitation More Likely" assessment. The fixes are in addition to  17 security flaws  that have been patched in the company's Chromium-based Edge browser since the release of the  February 2024 Patch Tuesday updates . Topping the list of critical shortcomings are  CVE-2024-21407  and  CVE-2024-21408 , which affect Hyper-V and could result in remote code execution and a DoS condition, respectively. Microsoft's update also addresses privilege escalation f...