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Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a major web skimming campaign that has been active since January 2022, targeting several major payment networks like American Express, Diners Club, Discover, JCB Co., Ltd., Mastercard, and UnionPay. "Enterprise organizations that are clients of these payment providers are the most likely to be impacted," Silent Push said in a report published today. Digital skimming attacks refer to a category of client-side attacks in which bad actors compromise legitimate e-commerce sites and payment portals to inject malicious JavaScript code that's capable of stealthily harvesting credit card information and other personal information when unsuspecting users attempt to make a payment on checkout pages. These attacks are classified under an umbrella term called Magecart , which initially referred to a coalition of cybercriminal groups that targeted e-commerce sites using the Magento software, before diversifying to other products and platf...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a malicious Google Chrome extension that's capable of stealing API keys associated with MEXC, a centralized cryptocurrency exchange (CEX) available in over 170 countries , while masquerading as a tool to automate trading on the platform. The extension, named MEXC API Automator (ID: pppdfgkfdemgfknfnhpkibbkabhghhfh), has 29 downloads and is still available on the Chrome Web Store as of writing. It was first published on September 1, 2025, by a developer named "jorjortan142." "The extension programmatically creates new MEXC API keys, enables withdrawal permissions, hides that permission in the user interface (UI), and exfiltrates the resulting API key and secret to a hardcoded Telegram bot controlled by the threat actor," Socket security researcher Kirill Boychenko said in an analysis. According to the Chrome Web Store listing, the web browser add-on is described as an extension that "simplifies connecti...

AI agents are no longer just writing code. They are executing it. Tools like Copilot, Claude Code, and Codex can now build, test, and deploy software end-to-end in minutes. That speed is reshaping engineering—but it's also creating a security gap most teams don't see until something breaks. Behind every agentic workflow sits a layer few organizations are actively securing: Machine Control Protocols (MCPs) . These systems quietly decide what an AI agent can run, which tools it can call, which APIs it can access, and what infrastructure it can touch. Once that control plane is compromised or misconfigured, the agent doesn't just make mistakes—it acts with authority. Ask the teams impacted by CVE-2025-6514 . One flaw turned a trusted OAuth proxy used by more than 500,000 developers into a remote code execution path. No exotic exploit chain. No noisy breach. Just automation doing exactly what it was allowed to do—at scale. That incident made one thing clear: if an AI agent can execute...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a previously undocumented and feature-rich malware framework codenamed VoidLink that's specifically designed for long-term, stealthy access to Linux-based cloud environments According to a new report from Check Point Research, the cloud-native Linux malware framework comprises an array of custom loaders, implants, rootkits, and modular plugins that enable its operators to augment or change its capabilities over time, as well as pivot when objectives change. It was first discovered in December 2025. "The framework includes multiple cloud-focused capabilities and modules, and is engineered to operate reliably in cloud and container environments over extended periods," the cybersecurity company said in an analysis published today. "VoidLink's architecture is extremely flexible and highly modular, centered around a custom Plugin API that appears to be inspired by Cobalt Strike's Beacon Object Files (BOF) appr...

Old Playbook, New Scale: While defenders are chasing trends, attackers are optimizing the basics The security industry loves talking about "new" threats. AI-powered attacks. Quantum-resistant encryption. Zero-trust architectures. But looking around, it seems like the most effective attacks in 2025 are pretty much the same as they were in 2015. Attackers are exploiting the same entry points that worked - they're just doing it better. Supply Chain: Still Cascading Downstream As the Shai Hulud NPM campaign showed us, supply chain remains a major issue. A single compromised package can cascade through an entire dependency tree, affecting thousands of downstream projects. The attack vector hasn't changed. What's changed is how efficiently attackers can identify and exploit opportunities. AI has collapsed the barrier to entry. Just as AI has enabled one-person software projects to build sophisticated applications, the same is true in cybercrime. What used to requi...

ServiceNow has disclosed details of a now-patched critical security flaw impacting its ServiceNow artificial intelligence (AI) Platform that could enable an unauthenticated user to impersonate another user and perform arbitrary actions as that user. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-12420 , carries a CVSS score of 9.3 out of 10.0. It has been codenamed BodySnatcher by AppOmni. "This issue [...] could enable an unauthenticated user to impersonate another user and perform the operations that the impersonated user is entitled to perform," the company said in an advisory released Monday. The shortcoming was addressed by ServiceNow on October 30, 2025, by deploying a security update to the majority of hosted instances, with the company also sharing the patches with ServiceNow partners and self-hosted customers. The following versions include a fix for CVE-2025-12420 - Now Assist AI Agents (sn_aia) - 5.1.18 or later and 5.2.19 or later Virtual Agent API (sn_va_as_ser...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new campaign dubbed SHADOW#REACTOR that employs an evasive multi-stage attack chain to deliver a commercially available remote administration tool called Remcos RAT and establish persistent, covert remote access. "The infection chain follows a tightly orchestrated execution path: an obfuscated VBS launcher executed via wscript.exe invokes a PowerShell downloader, which retrieves fragmented, text-based payloads from a remote host," Securonix researchers Akshay Gaikwad, Shikha Sangwan, and Aaron Beardslee said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. "These fragments are reconstructed into encoded loaders, decoded in memory by a .NET Reactor–protected assembly, and used to fetch and apply a remote Remcos configuration. The final stage leverages MSBuild.exe as a living-off-the-land binary (LOLBin) to complete execution, after which the Remcos RAT backdoor is fully deployed and takes control of the comprom...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has warned of active exploitation of a high-severity security flaw impacting Gogs by adding it to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-8110 (CVSS score: 8.7), relates to a case of path traversal in the repository file editor that could result in code execution. "Gogs Path Traversal Vulnerability: Gogs contains a path traversal vulnerability affecting improper Symbolic link handling in the PutContents API that could allow for code execution," CISA said in an advisory. Details of the shortcoming came to light last month when Wiz said it discovered it being exploited in zero-day attacks. The vulnerability essentially bypasses protections put in place for CVE-2024-55947 to achieve code execution by creating a git repository, committing a symbolic link pointing to a sensitive target, and using the PutContents API to write data to the symlink. This, in t...

Threat actors have been observed uploading a set of eight packages on the npm registry that masqueraded as integrations targeting the n8n workflow automation platform to steal developers' OAuth credentials. One such package, named "n8n-nodes-hfgjf-irtuinvcm-lasdqewriit," mimics a Google Ads integration, and prompts users to link their advertising account in a seemingly legitimate form and then siphon OAuth credentials to servers under the attackers' control. "The attack represents a new escalation in supply chain threats," Endor Labs said in a report published last week. "Unlike traditional npm malware, which often targets developer credentials, this campaign exploited workflow automation platforms that act as centralized credential vaults – holding OAuth tokens, API keys, and sensitive credentials for dozens of integrated services like Google Ads, Stripe, and Salesforce in a single location." The complete list of identified packages, which ...

A new wave of GoBruteforcer attacks has targeted databases of cryptocurrency and blockchain projects to co-opt them into a botnet that's capable of brute-forcing user passwords for services such as FTP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and phpMyAdmin on Linux servers. "The current wave of campaigns is driven by two factors: the mass reuse of AI-generated server deployment examples that propagate common usernames and weak defaults, and the persistence of legacy web stacks such as XAMPP that expose FTP and admin interfaces with minimal hardening," Check Point Research said in an analysis published last week. GoBruteforcer, also called GoBrut, was first documented by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 in March 2023, documenting its ability to target Unix-like platforms running x86, x64, and ARM architectures to deploy an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) bot and a web shell for remote access, along with fetching a brute-force module to scan for vulnerable systems and expand the botnet's reach. ...

Anthropic has become the latest Artificial intelligence (AI) company to announce a new suite of features that allows users of its Claude platform to better understand their health information. Under an initiative called Claude for Healthcare , the company said U.S. subscribers of Claude Pro and Max plans can opt to give Claude secure access to their lab results and health records by connecting to HealthEx and Function , with Apple Health and Android Health Connect integrations rolling out later this week via its iOS and Android apps. "When connected, Claude can summarize users' medical history, explain test results in plain language, detect patterns across fitness and health metrics, and prepare questions for appointments," Anthropic said . "The aim is to make patients' conversations with doctors more productive, and to help users stay well-informed about their health." The development comes merely days after OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT Health as a dedicated e...

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on two service providers that supply online criminal networks with the necessary tools and infrastructure to fuel the pig butchering-as-a-service (PBaaS) economy. At least since 2016, Chinese-speaking criminal groups have erected industrial-scale scam centers across Southeast Asia, creating special economic zones that are devoted to fraudulent investment and impersonation operations. These compounds are host to thousands of people who are lured with the promise of high-paying jobs, only to have their passports and be forced to conduct scams under the threat of violence. INTERPOL has characterized these networks as human trafficking-fuelled fraud on an industrial scale. One of the crucial drivers of the pig butchering (aka romance baiting) scams is service providers who supply the networks with all the tools to run and manage social engineering operations, as well as swiftly launder stolen funds and cryptocurrencies and move ill-gotten p...

The Iranian threat actor known as MuddyWater has been attributed to a spear-phishing campaign targeting diplomatic, maritime, financial, and telecom entities in the Middle East with a Rust-based implant codenamed RustyWater . "The campaign uses icon spoofing and malicious Word documents to deliver Rust based implants capable of asynchronous C2, anti-analysis, registry persistence, and modular post-compromise capability expansion," CloudSEK resetter Prajwal Awasthi said in a report published this week. The latest development reflects continued evolution of MuddyWater's tradecraft, which has gradually-but-steadily reduced its reliance on legitimate remote access software as a post-exploitation tool in favor of a diverse custom malware arsenal comprising tools like Phoenix, UDPGangster , BugSleep (aka MuddyRot), and MuddyViper . Also tracked as Mango Sandstorm, Static Kitten, and TA450, the hacking group is assessed to be affiliated with Iran's Ministry of Intelli...

Europol on Friday announced the arrest of 34 individuals in Spain who are alleged to be part of an international criminal organization called Black Axe . As part of an operation conducted by the Spanish National Police, in coordination with the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office and Europol, 28 arrests were made in Seville, along with three others in Madrid, two in Málaga, and one in Barcelona. "The criminal network is known for its involvement in a wide range of criminal activities, including cyber-enabled fraud, drug trafficking, human trafficking and prostitution, kidnapping, armed robbery and fraudulent spiritual practices," Europol said in a statement. It's estimated that the criminal network is responsible for fraud resulting in damages exceeding €5.93 million ($6.9 million). In addition to the arrests, authorities have frozen €119,352 ($138,935) in bank accounts and seized €66,403 ($77,290) in cash during house searches. Black Axe is assessed to be a hier...

Chinese-speaking threat actors are suspected to have leveraged a compromised SonicWall VPN appliance as an initial access vector to deploy a VMware ESXi exploit that may have been developed as far back as February 2024. Cybersecurity firm Huntress, which observed the activity in December 2025 and stopped it before it could progress to the final stage, said it may have resulted in a ransomware attack. Most notably, the attack is believed to have exploited three VMware vulnerabilities that were disclosed as zero-days by Broadcom in March 2025: CVE-2025-22224 (CVSS score: 9.3), CVE-2025-22225 (CVSS score: 8.2), and CVE-2025-22226 (CVSS score: 7.1). Successful exploitation of the issue could permit a malicious actor with admin privileges to leak memory from the Virtual Machine Executable (VMX) process or execute code as the VMX process. That same month, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added the flaws to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) ca...

Russian state-sponsored threat actors have been linked to a fresh set of credential harvesting attacks targeting individuals associated with a Turkish energy and nuclear research agency, as well as staff affiliated with a European think tank and organizations in North Macedonia and Uzbekistan. The activity has been attributed to APT28 (aka BlueDelta), which was tied to a "sustained" credential-harvesting campaign targeting users of UKR[.]net last month. APT28 is associated with the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU). "The use of Turkish-language and regionally targeted lure material suggests that BlueDelta tailored its content to increase credibility among specific professional and geographic audiences," Recorded Future's Insikt Group said . "These selections reflect a continued interest in organizations connected to energy research, defense cooperation, and government communication networks relevan...

As organizations plan for 2026, cybersecurity predictions are everywhere. Yet many strategies are still shaped by headlines and speculation rather than evidence. The real challenge isn't a lack of forecasts—it's identifying which predictions reflect real, emerging risks and which can safely be ignored. An upcoming webinar hosted by Bitdefender aims to cut through the noise with a data-driven outlook on where organizations are already falling short, and what those failures signal for the year ahead. Rather than speculative scenarios, the session focuses on threats that are actively reshaping the attack landscape today. The webinar examines the convergence of three major trends. First, ransomware is evolving beyond opportunistic attacks toward targeted disruptions designed to maximize operational and business impact. Second, the rapid and often uncontrolled adoption of AI within organizations is creating an internal security crisis, eroding traditional perimeter assumptions and exp...

Trend Micro has released security updates to address multiple security vulnerabilities impacting on-premise versions of Apex Central for Windows, including a critical bug that could result in arbitrary code execution. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-69258 , carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10.0. The vulnerability has been described as a case of remote code execution affecting LoadLibraryEX. "A LoadLibraryEX vulnerability in Trend Micro Apex Central could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to load an attacker-controlled DLL into a key executable, leading to execution of attacker-supplied code under the context of SYSTEM on affected installations," the cybersecurity company said. Also patched by Trend Micro are two other flaws - CVE-2025-69259 (CVSS score: 7.5) - A message unchecked NULL return value vulnerability in Trend Micro Apex Central could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to create a denial-of-service condition on affected ins...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday said it's retiring 10 emergency directives (Eds) that were issued between 2019 and 2024. The list of the directives now considered closed is as follows - ED 19-01: Mitigate DNS Infrastructure Tampering ED 20-02: Mitigate Windows Vulnerabilities from January 2020 Patch Tuesday ED 20-03: Mitigate Windows DNS Server Vulnerability from July 2020 Patch Tuesday   ED 20-04: Mitigate Netlogon Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability from August 2020 Patch Tuesday ED 21-01: Mitigate SolarWinds Orion Code Compromise ED 21-02: Mitigate Microsoft Exchange On-Premises Product Vulnerabilities ED 21-03: Mitigate Pulse Connect Secure Product Vulnerabilities   ED 21-04: Mitigate Windows Print Spooler Service Vulnerability   ED 22-03: Mitigate VMware Vulnerabilities ED 24-02: Mitigating the Significant Risk from Nation-State Compromise of Microsoft Corporate Email System   Stating that these directives were iss...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Thursday released an advisory warning of North Korean state-sponsored threat actors leveraging malicious QR codes in spear-phishing campaigns targeting entities in the country. "As of 2025, Kimsuky actors have targeted think tanks, academic institutions, and both U.S. and foreign government entities with embedded malicious Quick Response (QR) codes in spear-phishing campaigns," the FBI said in the flash alert. "This type of spear-phishing attack is referred to as quishing." The use of QR codes for phishing is a tactic that forces victims to shift from a machine that's secured by enterprise policies to a mobile device that may not offer the same level of protection, effectively allowing threat actors to bypass traditional defenses. Kimsuky, also tracked as APT43, Black Banshee, Emerald Sleet, Springtail, TA427, and Velvet Chollima, is a threat group that's assessed to be affiliated with North Korea's...