cybersecurity | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Oligo Security has warned of ongoing attacks exploiting a two-year-old security flaw in the Ray open-source artificial intelligence (AI) framework to turn infected clusters with NVIDIA GPUs into a self-replicating cryptocurrency mining botnet. The activity, codenamed ShadowRay 2.0 , is an evolution of a prior wave that was observed between September 2023 and March 2024. The attack, at its core, exploits a critical missing authentication bug (CVE-2023-48022, CVSS score: 9.8) to take control of susceptible instances and hijack their computing power for illicit cryptocurrency mining using XMRig. The vulnerability has remained unpatched due to a " long-standing design decision " that's consistent with Ray's development best practices, which requires it to be run in an isolated network and act upon trusted code. The campaign involves submitting malicious jobs, with commands ranging from simple reconnaissance to complex multi-stage Bash and Python payloads, to an una...

Cybersecurity researchers have warned of an actively expanding botnet dubbed Tsundere that's targeting Windows users. Active since mid-2025, the threat is designed to execute arbitrary JavaScript code retrieved from a command-and-control (C2) server, Kaspersky researcher Lisandro Ubiedo said in an analysis published today. There are currently no details on how the botnet malware is propagated; however, in at least one case, the threat actors behind the operation are said to have leveraged a legitimate Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tool as a conduit to download an MSI installer file from a compromised site. The names given to the malware artifacts – Valorant, r6x (Rainbow Six Siege X), and cs2 (Counter-Strike 2) – also suggest that the implant is likely being disseminated using lures for games. It's possible that users searching for pirated versions of these games are the target. Regardless of the method used, the fake MSI installer is designed to install Node.js...

This week has been crazy in the world of hacking and online security. From Thailand to London to the US, we've seen arrests, spies at work, and big power moves online. Hackers are getting caught. Spies are getting better at their jobs. Even simple things like browser add-ons and smart home gadgets are being used to attack people. Every day, there's a new story that shows how quickly things are changing in the fight over the internet. Governments are cracking down harder on cybercriminals. Big tech companies are rushing to fix their security. Researchers keep finding weak spots in apps and devices we use every day. We saw fake job recruiters on LinkedIn spying on people, huge crypto money-laundering cases, and brand-new malware made just to beat Apple's Mac protections. All these stories remind us: the same tech that makes life better can very easily be turned into a weapon. Here's a simple look at the biggest cybersecurity news happening right now — from the hidde...

CTM360 has identified a rapidly expanding WhatsApp account-hacking campaign targeting users worldwide via a network of deceptive authentication portals and impersonation pages. The campaign, internally dubbed HackOnChat, abuses WhatsApp's familiar web interface, using social engineering tactics to trick users into compromising their accounts. Investigators identified thousands of malicious URLs being hosted on inexpensive top-level domains and rapidly generated through modern website-building platforms, allowing attackers to deploy new pages at scale. The campaign's activity logs show hundreds of incidents in recent weeks, with a noticeable surge across the Middle East and Asia. Read the full report here: https://www.ctm360.com/reports/hackonchat-unmasking-the-whatsapp-hacking-scam The hacking operations and the exploitation techniques Two techniques dominate these hacking operations. The Session Hijacking , where threat actors misuse the linked-device functionality to hijack act...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new Android banking trojan called Sturnus that enables credential theft and full device takeover to conduct financial fraud. "A key differentiator is its ability to bypass encrypted messaging," ThreatFabric said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "By capturing content directly from the device screen after decryption, Sturnus can monitor communications via WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal." Another notable feature is its ability to stage overlay attacks by serving fake login screens atop banking apps to capture victims' credentials. According to the Dutch mobile security company, Sturnus is privately operated and is currently assessed to be in the evaluation stage. Artifacts distributing the banking malware are listed below - Google Chrome ("com.klivkfbky.izaybebnx") Preemix Box ("com.uvxuthoq.noscjahae") The malware has been designed to specifically single out financial inst...

Threat actors with ties to Iran engaged in cyber warfare as part of efforts to facilitate and enhance physical, real-world attacks, a trend that Amazon has called cyber-enabled kinetic targeting. The development is a sign that the lines between state-sponsored cyber attacks and kinetic warfare are increasingly blurring, necessitating the need for a new category of warfare, the tech giant's threat intelligence team said in a report shared with The Hacker News. While traditional cybersecurity frameworks have treated digital and physical threats as separate domains, CJ Moses, CISO of Amazon Integrated Security, said these delineations are artificial and that nation-state threat actors are engaging in cyber reconnaissance activity to enable kinetic targeting. "These aren't just cyber attacks that happen to cause physical damage; they are coordinated campaigns where digital operations are specifically designed to support physical military objectives," Moses added. As an...

Threat actors are leveraging bogus installers masquerading as popular software to trick users into installing malware as part of a global malvertising campaign dubbed TamperedChef . The end goal of the attacks is to establish persistence and deliver JavaScript malware that facilitates remote access and control, per a new report from Acronis Threat Research Unit (TRU). The campaign , per the Singapore-headquartered company, is still ongoing, with new artifacts being detected and associated infrastructure remaining active. "The operator(s) rely on social engineering by using everyday application names, malvertising, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and abused digital certificates that aim to increase user trust and evade security detection," researchers Darrel Virtusio and Jozsef Gegeny said. TamperedChef is the name assigned to a long-running campaign that has leveraged seemingly legitimate installers for various utilities to distribute an information stealer malware of...

A recently disclosed security flaw impacting 7-Zip has come under active exploitation in the wild, according to an advisory issued by the U.K. NHS England Digital on Tuesday. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-11001 (CVSS score: 7.0), which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code. It has been addressed in 7-Zip version 25.00 released in July 2025. "The specific flaw exists within the handling of symbolic links in ZIP files. Crafted data in a ZIP file can cause the process to traverse to unintended directories," Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) said in an alert released last month. "An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to execute code in the context of a service account." Ryota Shiga of GMO Flatt Security Inc., along with the company's artificial intelligence (AI)-powered AppSec Auditor Takumi , has been credited with discovering and reporting the vulnerability.  It's worth noting that 7-Zip 25.00 also resolves anoth...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new campaign that leverages a combination of social engineering and WhatsApp hijacking to distribute a Delphi-based banking trojan named Eternidade Stealer as part of attacks targeting users in Brazil. "It uses Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) to dynamically retrieve command-and-control (C2) addresses, allowing the threat actor to update its C2 server," Trustwave SpiderLabs researchers Nathaniel Morales, John Basmayor, and Nikita Kazymirskyi said in a technical breakdown of the campaign shared with The Hacker News. "It is distributed through a WhatsApp worm campaign, with the actor now deploying a Python script, a shift from previous PowerShell-based scripts to hijack WhatsApp and spread malicious attachments. The findings come close on the heels of another campaign dubbed Water Saci that has targeted Brazilian users with a worm that propagates via WhatsApp Web known as SORVEPOTEL, which then acts as a c...

A newly discovered campaign has compromised tens of thousands of outdated or end-of-life (EoL) ASUS routers worldwide, predominantly in Taiwan, the U.S., and Russia, to rope them into a massive network. The router hijacking activity has been codenamed Operation WrtHug by SecurityScorecard's STRIKE team. Southeast Asia and European countries are some of the other regions where infections have been recorded. Over the past six months, more than 50,000 unique IP addresses belonging to these compromised devices around the globe have been identified. The attacks likely involve the exploitation of six known security flaws in end-of-life ASUS WRT routers to take control of susceptible devices. All the infected routers have been found to share a unique self-signed TLS certificate with an expiration date set for 100 years from April 2022. SecurityScorecard said 99% of the services presenting the certificate are ASUS AiCloud, a proprietary service designed to enable access to local stora...

The challenge facing security leaders is monumental: Securing environments where failure is not an option. Reliance on traditional security postures, such as Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) to chase threats after they have already entered the network, is fundamentally risky and contributes significantly to the half-trillion-dollar annual cost of cybercrime. Zero Trust fundamentally shifts this approach, transitioning from reacting to symptoms to proactively solving the underlying problem. Application Control, the ability to rigorously define what software is allowed to execute, is the foundation of this strategy. However, even once an application is trusted, it can be misused. This is where ThreatLocker Ringfencing™, or granular application containment , becomes indispensable, enforcing the ultimate standard of least privilege on all authorized applications. Defining Ringfencing: Security Beyond Allowlisting Ringfencing is an advanced containment strategy applied to applicat...

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...

Malicious actors can exploit default configurations in ServiceNow's Now Assist generative artificial intelligence (AI) platform and leverage its agentic capabilities to conduct prompt injection attacks. The second-order prompt injection, according to AppOmni, makes use of Now Assist's agent-to-agent discovery to execute unauthorized actions, enabling attackers to copy and exfiltrate sensitive corporate data, modify records, and escalate privileges. "This discovery is alarming because it isn't a bug in the AI; it's expected behavior as defined by certain default configuration options," said Aaron Costello, chief of SaaS Security Research at AppOmni. "When agents can discover and recruit each other, a harmless request can quietly turn into an attack, with criminals stealing sensitive data or gaining more access to internal company systems. These settings are easy to overlook." The attack is made possible because of agent discovery and agent-to-a...

Fortinet has warned of a new security flaw in FortiWeb that it said has been exploited in the wild. The medium-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-58034 , carries a CVSS score of 6.7 out of a maximum of 10.0. "An Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command ('OS Command Injection') vulnerability [CWE-78] in FortiWeb may allow an authenticated attacker to execute unauthorized code on the underlying system via crafted HTTP requests or CLI commands," the company said in a Tuesday advisory. In other words, successful attacks require an attacker to first authenticate themselves through some other means and chain it with CVE-2025-58034 to execute arbitrary operating system commands. It has been addressed in the following versions - FortiWeb 8.0.0 through 8.0.1 (Upgrade to 8.0.2 or above) FortiWeb 7.6.0 through 7.6.5 (Upgrade to 7.6.6 or above) FortiWeb 7.4.0 through 7.4.10 (Upgrade to 7.4.11 or above) FortiWeb 7.2.0 through 7.2.11 (U...

The malware authors associated with a Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) kit known as Sneaky 2FA have incorporated Browser-in-the-Browser (BitB) functionality into their arsenal, underscoring the continued evolution of such offerings and further making it easier for less-skilled threat actors to mount attacks at scale. Push Security, in a report shared with The Hacker News, said it observed the use of the technique in phishing attacks designed to steal victims' Microsoft account credentials. BitB was first documented by security researcher mr.d0x in March 2022, detailing how it's possible to leverage a combination of HTML and CSS code to create fake browser windows that can masquerade as login pages for legitimate services in order to facilitate credential theft . "BitB is principally designed to mask suspicious phishing URLs by simulating a pretty normal function of in-browser authentication – a pop-up login form," Push Security said. "BitB phishing pages repl...

Meta on Tuesday said it has made available a tool called WhatsApp Research Proxy to some of its long-time bug bounty researchers to help improve the program and more effectively research the messaging platform's network protocol. The idea is to make it easier to delve into WhatsApp-specific technologies as the application continues to be a lucrative attack surface for state-sponsored actors and commercial spyware vendors. The company also noted that it's setting up a pilot initiative where it's inviting research teams to focus on platform abuse with support for internal engineering and tooling. "Our goal is to lower the barrier of entry for academics and other researchers who might not be as familiar with bug bounties to join our program," it added . The development comes as the social media giant said it has awarded more than $25 million in bug bounties to over 1,400 researchers from 88 countries in the last 15 years, out of which more than $4 million were...

You've probably already moved some of your business to the cloud—or you're planning to. That's a smart move. It helps you work faster, serve your customers better, and stay ahead. But as your cloud setup grows, it gets harder to control who can access what. Even one small mistake—like the wrong person getting access—can lead to big problems. We're talking data leaks, legal trouble, and serious damage. And with different rules in different regions like the US, UK, EU, APAC, and more, keeping up is tough. Join our free webinar: " Securing Cloud Workloads and Infrastructure: Balancing Innovation with Identity and Access Control " with experts from CyberArk. You'll learn simple, practical ways to stay secure and move fast. Cloud tools today aren't all the same. Most companies use several cloud platforms at once—each with its own setup, rules, and risks. You want your team to stay fast and flexible, but you also need to keep everything safe. That's a tricky balance. That's why we'...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a cyber attack targeting a major U.S.-based real-estate company that involved the use of a nascent command-and-control (C2) and red teaming framework known as Tuoni . "The campaign leveraged the emerging Tuoni C2 framework, a relatively new, command-and-control (C2) tool (with a free license) that delivers stealthy, in-memory payloads," Morphisec researcher Shmuel Uzan said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Tuoni is advertised as an advanced C2 framework designed for security professionals, facilitating penetration testing operations, red team engagements, and security assessments. A "Community Edition" of the software is freely available for download from GitHub. It was first released in early 2024. The attack, per Morphisec, unfolded in mid-October 2025, with the unknown threat actor likely leveraging social engineering via Microsoft Teams impersonation for initial access. It's suspected that t...

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...