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Cybersecurity researchers are warning of a "widespread and ongoing" SMS phishing campaign that's been targeting toll road users in the United States for financial theft since mid-October 2024. "The toll road smishing attacks are being carried out by multiple financially motivated threat actors using the smishing kit developed by 'Wang Duo Yu,'" Cisco Talos researchers Azim Khodjibaev, Chetan Raghuprasad, and Joey Chen assessed with moderate confidence. The phishing campaigns , per the company, impersonate U.S. electronic toll collection systems like E-ZPass, sending SMS messages and Apple iMessages to individuals across Washington, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Texas, Ohio, Illinois, and Kansas about an unpaid toll and clicking on a fake link sent in the chat. It's worth noting some aspects of the toll phishing campaign were previously highlighted by security journalist Brian Krebs in January 2025, with the activity traced back to a China-b...

The threat actor known as Paper Werewolf has been observed exclusively targeting Russian entities with a new implant called PowerModul . The activity, which took place between July and December 2024, singled out organizations in the mass media, telecommunications, construction, government entities, and energy sectors, Kaspersky said in a new report published Thursday. Paper Werewolf, also known as GOFFEE, is assessed to have conducted at least seven campaigns since 2022, according to BI.ZONE, with the attacks mainly aimed at government, energy, financial, media, and other organizations. Attack chains mounted by the threat actor have also been observed incorporating a disruptive component, wherein the intrusions go beyond distributing malware for espionage purposes to also change passwords belonging to employee accounts. The attacks themselves are initiated via phishing emails that contain a macro-laced lure document, which, upon opening and enabling macros, paves the way for th...

The North Korean threat actors behind Contagious Interview have adopted the increasingly popular ClickFix social engineering tactic to lure job seekers in the cryptocurrency sector to deliver a previously undocumented Go-based backdoor called GolangGhost on Windows and macOS systems. The new activity, assessed to be a continuation of the campaign, has been codenamed ClickFake Interview by French cybersecurity company Sekoia. Contagious Interview , also tracked as DeceptiveDevelopment, DEV#POPPER, and Famous Chollima, is known to be active since at least December 2022, although it was only publicly documented for the first time in late 2023. "It uses legitimate job interview websites to leverage the ClickFix tactic and install Windows and macOS backdoors," Sekoia researchers Amaury G., Coline Chavane, and Felix Aimé said , attributing the effort to the infamous Lazarus Group , a prolific adversary attributed to the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB) of the Democratic Pe...

Threat actors are using the "mu-plugins" directory in WordPress sites to conceal malicious code with the goal of maintaining persistent remote access and redirecting site visitors to bogus sites. mu-plugins, short for must-use plugins , refers to plugins in a special directory ("wp-content/mu-plugins") that are automatically executed by WordPress without the need to enable them explicitly via the admin dashboard. This also makes the directory an ideal location for staging malware. "This approach represents a concerning trend, as the mu-plugins (Must-Use plugins) are not listed in the standard WordPress plugin interface, making them less noticeable and easier for users to ignore during routine security checks," Sucuri researcher Puja Srivastava said in an analysis. In the incidents analyzed by the website security company, three different kinds of rogue PHP code have been discovered in the directory - "wp-content/mu-plugins/redirect.php," ...

Entities in Ukraine have been targeted as part of a phishing campaign designed to distribute a remote access trojan called Remcos RAT . "The file names use Russian words related to the movement of troops in Ukraine as a lure," Cisco Talos researcher Guilherme Venere said in a report published last week. "The PowerShell downloader contacts geo-fenced servers located in Russia and Germany to download the second stage ZIP file containing the Remcos backdoor." The activity has been attributed with moderate confidence to a Russian hacking group known as Gamaredon , which is also tracked under the monikers Aqua Blizzard, Armageddon, Blue Otso, BlueAlpha, Hive0051, Iron Tilden, Primitive Bear, Shuckworm, Trident Ursa, UAC-0010, UNC530, and Winterflounder.  The threat actor, assessed to be affiliated with Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), is known for its targeting of Ukrainian organizations for espionage and data theft. It's operational since at least ...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new Android banking malware called Crocodilus that's primarily designed to target users in Spain and Turkey. "Crocodilus enters the scene not as a simple clone, but as a fully-fledged threat from the outset, equipped with modern techniques such as remote control, black screen overlays, and advanced data harvesting via accessibility logging," ThreatFabric said . As with other banking trojans of its kind, the malware is designed to facilitate device takeover ( DTO ) and ultimately conduct fraudulent transactions. An analysis of the source code and the debug messages reveals that the malware author is Turkish-speaking. The Crocodilus artifacts analyzed by the Dutch mobile security company masquerade as Google Chrome (package name: "quizzical.washbowl.calamity"), which act as a dropper capable of  bypassing Android 13+ restrictions .  Once installed and launched, the app requests permission to Android's access...

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a new phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform that leverages the Domain Name System ( DNS ) mail exchange ( MX ) records to serve fake login pages that impersonate about 114 brands. DNS intelligence firm Infoblox is tracking the actor behind the PhaaS, the phishing kit, and the related activity under the moniker Morphing Meerkat . "The threat actor behind the campaigns often exploits open redirects on adtech infrastructure, compromises domains for phishing distribution, and distributes stolen credentials through several mechanisms, including Telegram," the company said in a report shared with The Hacker News. One such campaign leveraging the PhaaS toolkit was documented by Forcepoint in July 2024, where phishing emails contained links to a purported shared document that, when clicked, directed the recipient to a fake login page hosted on Cloudflare R2 with the end goal of collecting and exfiltrating the credentials via Tele...

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to an Android malware campaign that leverages Microsoft's .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) framework to create bogus banking and social media apps targeting Indian and Chinese-speaking users. "These threats disguise themselves as legitimate apps, targeting users to steal sensitive information," McAfee Labs researcher Dexter Shin said . .NET MAUI is Microsoft's cross-platform desktop and mobile app framework for creating native applications using C# and XAML. It represents an evolution of Xamarin, with added capabilities to not only create multi-platform apps using a single project, but also incorporate platform-specific source code as and when necessary. It's worth noting that official support for Xamarin ended on May 1, 2024 , with the tech giant urging developers to migrate to .NET MAUI. While Android malware implemented using Xamarin has been detected in the past , the latest development signals that ...

Users searching for pirated software are the target of a new malware campaign that delivers a previously undocumented clipper malware called MassJacker, according to findings from CyberArk. Clipper malware is a type of cryware (as coined by Microsoft) that's designed to monitor a victim's clipboard content and facilitate cryptocurrency theft by substituting copied cryptocurrency wallet addresses with an attacker-controlled one so as to reroute them to the adversary instead of the intended target. "The infection chain begins at a site called pesktop[.]com," security researcher Ari Novick said in an analysis published earlier this week. "This site, which presents itself as a site to get pirated software, also tries to get people to download all sorts of malware." The initial executable acts as a conduit to run a PowerShell script that delivers a botnet malware named Amadey , as well as two other .NET binaries, each compiled for 32- and 64-bit architect...

The Middle East and North Africa have become the target of a new campaign that delivers a modified version of a known malware called AsyncRAT since September 2024. "The campaign, which leverages social media to distribute malware, is tied to the region's current geopolitical climate," Positive Technologies researchers Klimentiy Galkin and Stanislav Pyzhov said in an analysis published last week. "The attackers host malware in legitimate online file-sharing accounts or Telegram channels set up specially for this purpose." The campaign is estimated to have claimed approximately 900 victims since the fall 2024, the Russian cybersecurity company added, indicating its widespread nature. A majority of the victims are located in Libya, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Tunisia. The activity, attributed to a threat actor dubbed Desert Dexter , was discovered in February 2025. It chiefly involves creating temporary accounts and news ...

Microsoft has disclosed details of a large-scale malvertising campaign that's estimated to have impacted over one million devices globally as part of what it said is an opportunistic attack designed to steal sensitive information. The tech giant, which detected the activity in early December 2024, is tracking it under the broader umbrella Storm-0408, a moniker used for a set of threat actors that are known to distribute remote access or information-stealing malware via phishing, search engine optimization (SEO), or malvertising. "The attack originated from illegal streaming websites embedded with malvertising redirectors, leading to an intermediary website where the user was then redirected to GitHub and two other platforms," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said . "The campaign impacted a wide range of organizations and industries, including both consumer and enterprise devices, highlighting the indiscriminate nature of the attack." The most signifi...

The Threat actor known as DoNot Team has been linked to a new Android malware as part of highly targeted cyber attacks. The artifacts in question, named Tanzeem (meaning "organization" in Urdu) and Tanzeem Update, were spotted in October and December 2024 by cybersecurity company Cyfirma. The apps in question have been found to incorporate identical functions, barring minor modifications to the user interface. "Although the app is supposed to function as a chat application, it does not work once installed, shutting down after the necessary permissions are granted," Cyfirma noted in a Friday analysis. "The app's name suggests that it is designed to target specific individuals or groups both inside and outside the country." DoNot Team, also tracked as APT-C-35, Origami Elephant, SECTOR02, and Viceroy Tiger, is a hacking group believed to be of Indian origin, with historical attacks leveraging spear-phishing emails and Android malware families to...

The threat actor known as Cloud Atlas has been observed using a previously undocumented malware called VBCloud as part of its cyber attack campaigns targeting "several dozen users" in 2024. "Victims get infected via phishing emails containing a malicious document that exploits a vulnerability in the formula editor (CVE-2018-0802) to download and execute malware code," Kaspersky researcher Oleg Kupreev said in an analysis published this week. More than 80% of the targets were located in Russia. A lesser number of victims have been reported from Belarus, Canada, Moldova, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, and Vietnam. Also referred to as Clean Ursa, Inception, Oxygen, and Red October, Cloud Atlas is an unattributed threat activity cluster that has been active since 2014. In December 2022, the group was linked to cyber attacks aimed at Russia, Belarus, and Transnistria that deployed a PowerShell-based backdoor called PowerShower. Then exactly a year later, Russian cy...

A dual Russian and Israeli national has been charged in the United States for allegedly being the developer of the now-defunct LockBit ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation since its inception in or around 2019 through at least February 2024. Rostislav Panev , 51, was arrested in Israel earlier this August and is currently awaiting extradition, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said in a statement. Based on fund transfers to a cryptocurrency wallet owned by Panev, he allegedly earned approximately $230,000 between June 2022 and February 2024. "Rostislav Panev for years built and maintained the digital weapons that enabled his LockBit co-conspirators to wreak havoc and cause billions of dollars in damage around the world," U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said . LockBit, which was one of the most prolific ransomware groups, had its infrastructure seized in February 2024 as part of an international law enforcement operation called Cronos. It gained notoriety for tar...