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The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) this week announced the seizure of $61 million worth of Tether that were allegedly associated with bogus cryptocurrency schemes known as pig butchering . The confiscated funds were traced to cryptocurrency addresses used for the laundering of criminally derived proceeds stolen from victims of cryptocurrency investment scams, the department added. "Criminal actors and professional money launderers use cyber-enabled fraud schemes to swindle their victims and conceal their ill-gotten gains," said HSI Charlotte Acting Special Agent in Charge Kyle D. Burns. "HSI special agents work diligently to trace the illicit proceeds of crime across the globe to disrupt and dismantle the transnational criminal organizations that seek to defraud hardworking Americans." As is the norm in such cybercrime operations, threat actors are known to target individuals by cultivating romantic relationships after approaching them on dating and social m...

The Shadowserver Foundation has revealed that over 900 Sangoma FreePBX instances still remain infected with web shells as part of attacks that exploited a command injection vulnerability starting in December 2025. Of these, 401 instances are located in the U.S., followed by 51 in Brazil, 43 in Canada, 40 in Germany, and 36 in France. The non-profit entity said the compromises are likely accomplished via the exploitation of CVE-2025-64328 (CVSS score: 8.6), a high-severity security flaw that could enable post-authentication command injection. "The impact is that any user with access to the FreePBX Administration panel could leverage this vulnerability to execute arbitrary shell commands on the underlying host," FreePBX said in an advisory for the flaw in November 2025. "An attacker could leverage this to obtain remote access to the system as the asterisk user." The vulnerability affects FreePBX versions higher than and including 17.0.2.36. It was resolved in...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a malicious Go module that's designed to harvest passwords, create persistent access via SSH, and deliver a Linux backdoor named Rekoobe. The Go module, github[.]com/xinfeisoft/crypto, impersonates the legitimate "golang.org/x/crypto" codebase, but injects malicious code that's responsible for exfiltrating secrets entered via terminal password prompts to a remote endpoint, fetches a shell script in response, and executes it. "This activity fits namespace confusion and impersonation of the legitimate golang.org/x/crypto subrepository (and its GitHub mirror github.com/golang/crypto)," Socket security researcher Kirill Boychenko said . "The legitimate project identifies go.googlesource.com/crypto as canonical and treats GitHub as a mirror, a distinction the threat actor abuses to make github.com/xinfeisoft/crypto look routine in dependency graphs." Specifically, the backdoor has been placed with...

The North Korean threat actor known as ScarCruft has been attributed to a fresh set of tools, including a backdoor that uses Zoho WorkDrive for command-and-control (C2) communications to fetch more payloads and an implant that uses removable media to relay commands and breach air-gapped networks. The campaign, codenamed Ruby Jumper by Zscaler ThreatLabz, involves the deployment of malware families, such as RESTLEAF, SNAKEDROPPER, THUMBSBD, VIRUSTASK, FOOTWINE, and BLUELIGHT to facilitate surveillance on a victim's system. It was discovered by the cybersecurity company in December 2025. "In the Ruby Jumper campaign, when a victim opens a malicious LNK file, it launches a PowerShell command and scans the current directory to locate itself based on file size," security researcher Seongsu Park said . "Then, the PowerShell script launched by the LNK file carves multiple embedded payloads from fixed offsets within that LNK, including a decoy document, an executable pa...

Threat actors are luring unsuspecting users into running trojanized gaming utilities that are distributed via browsers and chat platforms to distribute a remote access trojan (RAT). "A malicious downloader staged a portable Java runtime and executed a malicious Java archive (JAR) file named jd-gui.jar," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said in a post on X. "This downloader used PowerShell and living-off-the-land binaries (LOLBins) like cmstp.exe for stealthy execution." The attack chain is also designed to evade detection by deleting the initial downloader and by configuring Microsoft Defender exclusions for the RAT components. Persistence is achieved by means of a scheduled task and Windows startup script named "world.vbs," before the final payload is deployed on the compromised host. The malware, per Microsoft, is a "multi-purpose malware" that acts as a loader, runner, downloader, and RAT. Once launched, it connects to an external ...

Meta on Thursday said it's taking legal action to tackle scams on its platforms by filing lawsuits against what it calls deceptive advertisers based in Brazil, China, and Vietnam. As part of the effort, the advertisers' methods of payment have been suspended, related accounts have been disabled, and the website domain names used to pull off the scams have been blocked. Concurrently, the social media giant said it has also issued cease and desist letters to eight marketing consultants who advertised the ability to bypass its ad policy enforcement systems. This included fake "un-ban" or account restoration services and renting access to trusted accounts so as to help clients bypass its controls. At least three advertisers, two from Brazil and one from China, were found to engage in celeb-bait scams, which often involve misusing the image of well-known figures to trick people into clicking on bogus ads that lead to scam sites. These websites are designed to harvest ...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new botnet loader called Aeternum C2 that uses a blockchain-based command-and-control (C2) infrastructure to make it resilient to takedown efforts. "Instead of relying on traditional servers or domains for command-and-control, Aeternum stores its instructions on the public Polygon blockchain," Qrator Labs said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This network is widely used by decentralized applications, including Polymarket, the world's largest prediction market. This approach makes Aeternum's C2 infrastructure effectively permanent and resistant to traditional takedown methods." This is not the first time botnets have been found relying on blockchain for C2. In 2021, Google said it took steps to disrupt a botnet known as Glupteba that uses the Bitcoin blockchain as a backup C2 mechanism to fetch the actual C2 server address. Details of Aeternum C2 first emerged in December 2025, when Outpos...

A previously undocumented threat activity cluster has been attributed to an ongoing malicious campaign targeting education and healthcare sectors in the U.S. since at least December 2025. The campaign is being tracked by Cisco Talos under the moniker UAT-10027 . The end goal of the attacks is to deliver a never-before-seen backdoor codenamed Dohdoor. "Dohdoor utilizes the DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) technique for command-and-control (C2) communications and has the ability to download and execute other payload binaries reflectively," security researchers Alex Karkins and Chetan Raghuprasad said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. Although the initial access vector used in the campaign is currently not known, it's suspected to involve the use of social engineering phishing techniques, leading to the execution of a PowerShell script. The script then proceeds to download and run a Windows batch script from a remote staging server, which, for its part, facilitat...

Nothing here looks dramatic at first glance. That’s the point. Many of this week’s threats begin with something ordinary, like an ad, a meeting invite, or a software update. Behind the scenes, the tactics are sharper. Access happens faster. Control is established sooner. Cleanup becomes harder. Here is a quick look at the signals worth paying attention to. AI-powered command execution Kali Linux Integrates Claude AI Assistant via MCP Kali Linux, an advanced penetration testing Linux distribution used for ethical hacking and network security assessments, has added an integration with Anthropic's Claude large language model through the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to issue commands in natural language and translate them into technical commands. Belarus-linked Android spyware ResidentBat Infrastructure Analyzed ResidentBat is an Android spyware implant used by Belarusian autho...

Introduction: Steal It Today, Break It in a Decade Digital evolution is unstoppable, and though the pace may vary, things tend to fall into place sooner rather than later. That, of course, applies to adversaries as well. The rise of ransomware and cyber extortion generated funding for a complex and highly professional criminal ecosystem. The era of the cloud brought general availability of almost infinite amounts of storage. So there is literally nothing that stops criminals from stealing and trafficking heaps of data, be it encrypted or not.  Patient adversaries are employing a "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later" (HNDL) strategy. They are quietly accumulating encrypted data with the intention of decrypting it later using quantum computers. Any data requiring long-term security, such as trade secrets or classified designs, is vulnerable because its lifespan will inevitably outlive its current encryption. Therefore, it is crucial that organizations begin planning their PQC migrati...

A "coordinated developer-targeting campaign" is using malicious repositories disguised as legitimate Next.js projects and technical assessments to trick victims into executing them and establish persistent access to compromised machines. "The activity aligns with a broader cluster of threats that use job-themed lures to blend into routine developer workflows and increase the likelihood of code execution," the Microsoft Defender Security Research Team said in a report published this week. The tech giant said the campaign is characterized by the use of multiple entry points that lead to the same outcome, where attacker-controlled JavaScript is retrieved at runtime and executed to facilitate command-and-control (C2). The attacks rely on the threat actors setting up fake repositories on trusted developer platforms like Bitbucket, using names like "Cryptan-Platform-MVP1" to trick developers looking for jobs into running them as part of an assessment proces...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new malicious package discovered on the NuGet Gallery, impersonating a library from financial services firm Stripe in an attempt to target the financial sector. The package, codenamed StripeApi.Net, attempts to masquerade as Stripe.net , a legitimate library from Stripe that has over 75 million downloads. It was uploaded by a user named StripePayments on February 16, 2026. The package is no longer available. "The NuGet page for the malicious package is set up to resemble the official Stripe.net package as closely as possible," ReversingLabs Petar Kirhmajer said . "It uses the same icon as the legitimate package and contains a nearly identical readme, only swapping the 'Stripe.net' references to read 'Stripe-net.'" In a further effort to lend credibility to the typosquatted package, the threat actor behind the campaign is said to have artificially inflated the download count to more than 180,00...

A newly disclosed maximum-severity security flaw in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller (formerly vSmart) and Catalyst SD-WAN Manager (formerly vManage) has come under active exploitation in the wild as part of malicious activity that dates back to 2023. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-20127 (CVSS score: 10.0), allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to bypass authentication and obtain administrative privileges on an affected system by sending a crafted request. Successful exploitation of the flaw could allow the adversary to obtain elevated privileges and log in to the system as an internal, high-privileged, non-root user account. "This vulnerability exists because the peering authentication mechanism in an affected system is not working properly," Cisco said in an advisory, adding the threat actor could leverage the non-root user account to access NETCONF and manipulate network configuration for the SD-WAN fabric.  The shortcoming affects the following deploym...

Google on Wednesday disclosed that it worked with industry partners to disrupt the infrastructure of a suspected China-nexus cyber espionage group tracked as UNC2814 that breached at least 53 organizations across 42 countries. "This prolific, elusive actor has a long history of targeting international governments and global telecommunications organizations across Africa, Asia, and the Americas," Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) and Mandiant said in a report published today. UNC2814 is also suspected to be linked to additional infections in more than 20 other nations. The tech giant, which has been tracking the threat actor since 2017, has been observed using API calls to communicate with software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps as command-and-control (C2) infrastructure. The idea, it added, is to disguise their malicious traffic as benign. Central to the hacking group's operations is a novel backdoor dubbed GRIDTIDE that abuses Google Sheets API as a communication ...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed multiple security vulnerabilities in Anthropic's Claude Code, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered coding assistant, that could result in remote code execution and theft of API credentials. "The vulnerabilities exploit various configuration mechanisms, including Hooks, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, and environment variables – executing arbitrary shell commands and exfiltrating Anthropic API keys when users clone and open untrusted repositories," Check Point researchers Aviv Donenfeld and Oded Vanunu said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The identified shortcomings fall under three broad categories - No CVE (CVSS score: 8.7) - A code injection vulnerability stemming from a user consent bypass when starting Claude Code in a new directory that could result in arbitrary code execution without additional confirmation via untrusted project hooks defined in .claude/settings.json. (Fixed in version 1.0.87 in Sep...

The notorious cybercrime collective known as Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters (SLH) has been observed offering financial incentives to recruit women to pull off social engineering attacks. The idea is to hire them for voice phishing campaigns targeting IT help desks, Dataminr said in a new threat brief. The group is said to be offering anywhere between $500 and $1,000 upfront per call, in addition to providing them with the necessary pre-written scripts to carry out the attack. "SLH is diversifying its social engineering pool by specifically recruiting women to conduct vishing attacks, likely to increase the success rate of help desk impersonation," the threat intelligence firm said . A high-profile cybercrime supergroup comprising LAPSUS$, Scattered Spider, and ShinyHunters, SLH has a record of engaging in advanced social engineering attacks to sidestep multi-factor authentication (MFA) through techniques like MFA prompt bombing and SIM swapping.  The group's modus ope...

Triage is supposed to make things simpler. In a lot of teams, it does the opposite. When you can’t reach a confident verdict early, alerts turn into repeat checks, back-and-forth, and “just escalate it” calls. That cost doesn’t stay inside the SOC; it shows up as missed SLAs, higher cost per case, and more room for real threats to slip through. So where does triage go wrong? Here are five triage issues that turn investigations into expensive guesswork, and how top teams are changing the outcome with execution evidence. 1. Decisions Made Without Real Evidence Business risk: The hardest triage failure to notice is when decisions get made before proof exists. If responders rely on partial signals (labels, hash matches, reputation), they end up approving or escalating cases without seeing what the file or link actually does.  That uncertainty fuels false positives, missed real threats, slower containment, and higher cost per case, while giving attackers more time before anyone h...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered four malicious NuGet packages that are designed to target ASP.NET web application developers to steal sensitive data. The campaign, discovered by Socket , exfiltrates ASP.NET Identity data , including user accounts, role assignments, and permission mappings, as well as manipulates authorization rules to create persistent backdoors in victim applications. The names of the packages are listed below - NCryptYo DOMOAuth2_ IRAOAuth2.0 SimpleWriter_ The NuGet packages were published to the repository between August 12 and 21, 2024, by a user named hamzazaheer . They have since been taken down from the repository following responsible disclosure, but not before attracting more than 4,500 downloads. According to the software supply chain security company, NCryptYo acts as a first-stage dropper that establishes a local proxy on localhost:7152 that relays traffic to an attacker-controlled command-and-control (C2) server whose address is dyna...

Why automating sensitive data transfers is now a mission-critical priority More than half of national security organizations still rely on manual processes to transfer sensitive data, according to The CYBER360: Defending the Digital Battlespace report. This should alarm every defense and government leader because manual handling of sensitive data is not just inefficient, it is a systemic vulnerability.  Recent breaches in defense supply chains show how manual processes create exploitable gaps that adversaries can weaponize. This is not just a technical issue. It is a strategic challenge for every organization operating in contested domains, where speed and certainty define mission success. In an era defined by accelerating cyber threats and geopolitical tension, every second counts. Delays, errors, and gaps in control can cascade into consequences that compromise mission readiness, decision-making, and operational integrity. This is exactly what manual processes introduce: unc...

A 39-year-old Australian national who was previously employed at U.S. defense contractor L3Harris has been sentenced to a little over seven years in prison for selling eight zero-day exploits to Russian exploit broker Operation Zero in exchange for millions of dollars. Peter Williams pleaded guilty to two counts of theft of trade secrets in October 2025. In addition to the jail term, Williams has been ordered to serve three years of supervised release with special conditions, as well as forfeit illicit proceeds, including properties, clothing, jewelry, and luxury watches, purchased from the cryptocurrency payments he received in return for selling the exploits. The case's connection to Operation Zero was disclosed by cybersecurity journalist Kim Zetter late last year. The nature of the exploits are presently unclear. But a sentencing memorandum published earlier this month revealed that the tools could have been "used against any manner of victim, civilian or military ...