linux | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A critical security flaw has been disclosed in the GNU InetUtils telnet daemon ( telnetd ) that went unnoticed for nearly 11 years. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-24061 , is rated 9.8 out of 10.0 on the CVSS scoring system. It affects all versions of GNU InetUtils from version 1.9.3 up to and including version 2.7. "Telnetd in GNU Inetutils through 2.7 allows remote authentication bypass via a '-f root' value for the USER environment variable," according to a description of the flaw in the NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD). In a post on the oss-security mailing list, GNU contributor Simon Josefsson said the vulnerability can be exploited to gain root access to a target system - The telnetd server invokes /usr/bin/login (normally running as root) passing the value of the USER environment variable received from the client as the last parameter. If the client supply [sic] a carefully crafted USER environment value being the string "-f root...

A new malicious package discovered in the Python Package Index (PyPI) has been found to impersonate a popular library for symbolic mathematics to deploy malicious payloads, including a cryptocurrency miner, on Linux hosts. The package, named sympy-dev , mimics SymPy , replicating the latter's project description verbatim in an attempt to deceive unsuspecting users into thinking that they are downloading a "development version" of the library. It has been downloaded over 1,100 times since it was first published on January 17, 2026. Although the download count is not a reliable yardstick for measuring the number of infections, the figure likely suggests some developers may have fallen victim to the malicious campaign. The package remains available for download as of writing. According to Socket , the original library has been modified to act as a downloader for an XMRig cryptocurrency miner on compromised systems. The malicious behavior is designed to trigger only when ...

The recently discovered sophisticated Linux malware framework known as VoidLink is assessed to have been developed by a single person with assistance from an artificial intelligence (AI) model. That's according to new findings from Check Point Research, which identified operational security blunders by malware's author that provided clues to its developmental origins. The latest insight makes VoidLink one of the first instances of an advanced malware largely generated using AI. "These materials provide clear evidence that the malware was produced predominantly through AI-driven development, reaching a first functional implant in under a week," the cybersecurity company said, adding it reached more than 88,000 lines of code by early December 2025. VoidLink, first publicly documented last week, is a feature-rich malware framework written in Zig that's specifically designed for long-term, stealthy access to Linux-based cloud environments. The malware is said...

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...

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. ...

A China-nexus threat actor known as UAT-7290 has been attributed to espionage-focused intrusions against entities in South Asia and Southeastern Europe. The activity cluster, which has been active since at least 2022, primarily focuses on extensive technical reconnaissance of target organizations before initiating attacks, ultimately leading to the deployment of malware families such as RushDrop, DriveSwitch, and SilentRaid, according to a Cisco Talos report published today. "In addition to conducting espionage-focused attacks where UAT-7290 burrows deep inside a victim enterprise's network infrastructure, their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and tooling suggest that this actor also establishes Operational Relay Box (ORBs) nodes," researchers Asheer Malhotra, Vitor Ventura, and Brandon White said . "The ORB infrastructure may then be used by other China-nexus actors in their malicious operations, signifying UAT-7290's dual role as an espionage-motiva...

The security vulnerability known as React2Shell is being exploited by threat actors to deliver malware families like KSwapDoor and ZnDoor, according to findings from Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 and NTT Security. "KSwapDoor is a professionally engineered remote access tool designed with stealth in mind," Justin Moore, senior manager of threat intel research at Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, said in a statement. "It builds an internal mesh network, allowing compromised servers to talk to each other and evade security blocks. It uses military-grade encryption to hide its communications and, most alarmingly, features a 'sleeper' mode that lets attackers bypass firewalls by waking the malware up with a secret, invisible signal." Moore told The Hacker News that the backdoor has been identified in two distinct regions and industries, and that it's likely the work of Chinese nation-state actors, based on the malware's code structure and functional overlap w...

The pro-Russian hacktivist group known as CyberVolk (aka GLORIAMIST) has resurfaced with a new ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) offering called VolkLocker that suffers from implementation lapses in test artifacts, allowing users to decrypt files without paying an extortion fee. According to SentinelOne, VolkLocker (aka CyberVolk 2.x) emerged in August 2025 and is capable of targeting both Windows and Linux systems. It's written in Golang. "Operators building new VolkLocker payloads must provide a bitcoin address, Telegram bot token ID, Telegram chat ID, encryption deadline, desired file extension, and self-destruct options," security researcher Jim Walter said in a report published last week. Once launched, the ransomware attempts to escalate privileges, performs reconnaissance and system enumeration, including checking local MAC address prefixes against known virtualization vendors like Oracle and VMware. In the next stage, it lists all available drives and determin...

Threat actors with ties to North Korea have likely become the latest to exploit the recently disclosed critical React2Shell security flaw in React Server Components (RSC) to deliver a previously undocumented remote access trojan dubbed EtherRAT . "EtherRAT leverages Ethereum smart contracts for command-and-control (C2) resolution, deploys five independent Linux persistence mechanisms, and downloads its own Node.js runtime from nodejs.org," Sysdig said in a report published Monday. The cloud security firm said the activity exhibits significant overlap with a long-running campaign codenamed Contagious Interview , which has been observed leveraging the EtherHiding technique to distribute malware since February 2025. Contagious Interview is the name given to a series of attacks in which blockchain and Web3 developers, among others, are targeted through fake job interviews, coding assignments, and video assessments, leading to the deployment of malware. These efforts typi...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious Rust package that's capable of targeting Windows, macOS, and Linux systems, and features malicious functionality to stealthily execute on developer machines by masquerading as an Ethereum Virtual Machine ( EVM ) unit helper tool. The Rust crate, named " evm-units ," was uploaded to crates.io in mid-April 2025 by a user named " ablerust ," attracting more than 7,000 downloads over the past eight months. Another package created by the same author, " uniswap-utils ," listed "evm-units" as a dependency. It was downloaded over 7,400 times. The packages have since been removed from the package repository. "Based on the victim's operating system and whether Qihoo 360 antivirus is running, the package downloads a payload, writes it to the system temp directory, and silently executes it," Socket security researcher Olivia Brown said in a report. "The package appears to retur...

A Pakistan-nexus threat actor has been observed targeting Indian government entities as part of spear-phishing attacks designed to deliver a Golang-based malware known as DeskRAT . The activity, observed in August and September 2025 by Sekoia, has been attributed to Transparent Tribe (aka APT36), a state-sponsored hacking group known to be active since at least 2013. It also builds upon a prior campaign disclosed by CYFIRMA in August 2025. The attack chains involve sending phishing emails containing a ZIP file attachment, or in some cases, a link pointing to an archive hosted on legitimate cloud services like Google Drive. Present within the ZIP file is a malicious Desktop file embedding commands to display a decoy PDF ("CDS_Directive_Armed_Forces.pdf") using Mozilla Firefox while simultaneously executing the main payload. Both the artifacts are pulled from an external server "modgovindia[.]com" and executed. Like before, the campaign is designed to target BO...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new campaign that exploited a recently disclosed security flaw impacting Cisco IOS Software and IOS XE Software to deploy Linux rootkits on older, unprotected systems. The activity, codenamed Operation Zero Disco by Trend Micro, involves the weaponization of CVE-2025-20352 (CVSS score: 7.7), a stack overflow vulnerability in the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) subsystem that could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code by sending crafted SNMP packets to a susceptible device. The intrusions have not been attributed to any known threat actor or group. The shortcoming was patched by Cisco late last month, but not before it was exploited as a zero-day in real-world attacks. "The operation primarily impacted Cisco 9400, 9300, and legacy 3750G series devices, with additional attempts to exploit a modified Telnet vulnerability (based on CVE-2017-3881 ) to enable memory access," research...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday added a critical security flaw impacting the Sudo command-line utility for Linux and Unix-like operating systems to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-32463 (CVSS score: 9.3), which affects Sudo versions prior to 1.9.17p1. It was disclosed by Stratascale researcher Rich Mirch back in July 2025. "Sudo contains an inclusion of functionality from an untrusted control sphere vulnerability," CISA said. "This vulnerability could allow a local attacker to leverage sudo's -R (--chroot) option to run arbitrary commands as root, even if they are not listed in the sudoers file." It's currently not known how the shortcoming is being exploited in real-world attacks, and who may be behind such efforts. Also added to the KEV catalog are four other flaws - CVE-2021-21311 - Adminer...

Cloud security company Wiz has revealed that it uncovered in-the-wild exploitation of a security flaw in a Linux utility called Pandoc as part of attacks designed to infiltrate Amazon Web Services (AWS) Instance Metadata Service (IMDS). The vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-51591 (CVSS score: 6.5), which refers to a case of Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) that allows attackers to compromise a target system by injecting a specially crafted HTML iframe element. The EC2 IMDS is a crucial component of the AWS cloud environment, offering information about running instances, as well as temporary, short-lived credentials if an identity and access management (IAM) role is associated with the instance. The instance metadata is accessible to any application running on an EC2 instance via a link-local address (169.254.169[.]254). These credentials can then be used to securely interact with other AWS services like S3, RDS, or DynamoDB, permitting applications to authenticate without...

A proxy network known as REM Proxy is powered by malware known as SystemBC , offering about 80% of the botnet to its users, according to new findings from the Black Lotus Labs team at Lumen Technologies. "REM Proxy is a sizeable network, which also markets a pool of 20,000 Mikrotik routers and a variety of open proxies it finds freely available online," the company said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This service has been a favorite for several actors such as those behind TransferLoader , which has ties to the Morpheus ransomware group." SystemBC is a C-based malware that turns infected computers into SOCKS5 proxies, allowing infected hosts to communicate with a command-and-control (C2) server and download additional payloads. First documented by Proofpoint in 2019, it's capable of targeting both Windows and Linux systems . In a report earlier this January, ANY.RUN revealed that the Linux variant of SystemBC proxy implant is potentially desi...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered two new malware families, including a modular Apple macOS backdoor called CHILLYHELL and a Go-based remote access trojan (RAT) named ZynorRAT that can target both Windows and Linux systems. According to an analysis from Jamf Threat Labs, ChillyHell is written in C++ and is developed for Intel architectures. CHILLYHELL is the name assigned to a malware that's attributed to an uncategorized threat cluster dubbed UNC4487. The hacking group is assessed to have been active since at least October 2022. According to threat intelligence shared by Google Mandiant, UNC4487 is a suspected espionage actor that has been observed compromising the websites of Ukrainian government entities to redirect and socially engineer targets to execute Matanbuchus or CHILLYHELL malware. The Apple device management company said it discovered a new CHILLYHELL sample uploaded to the VirusTotal malware scanning platform on May 2, 2025. The artifact, notarized ...

Google has shipped security updates to address 120 security flaws in its Android operating system as part of its monthly fixes for September 2025, including two issues that it said have been exploited in targeted attacks. The vulnerabilities are listed below - CVE-2025-38352 (CVSS score: 7.4) - A privilege escalation flaw in the Linux Kernel component  CVE-2025-48543 (CVSS score: 7.4) - A privilege escalation flaw in the Android Runtime component Google said both vulnerabilities could lead to local escalation of privilege with no additional execution privileges needed. It also noted that no user interaction is required for exploitation. The tech giant did not reveal how the issues have been weaponized in real-world attacks and if they are being put to use in tandem, but acknowledged there are indications of "limited, targeted exploitation." Benoît Sevens of Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has been credited with discovering and reporting the upstream Lin...

The maintainers of the nx build system have alerted users to a supply chain attack that allowed attackers to publish malicious versions of the popular npm package and other auxiliary plugins with data-gathering capabilities. "Malicious versions of the nx package, as well as some supporting plugin packages, were published to npm, containing code that scans the file system, collects credentials, and posts them to GitHub as a repo under the user's accounts," the maintainers said in an advisory published Wednesday. Nx is an open-source, technology-agnostic build platform that's designed to manage codebases. It's advertised as an "AI-first build platform that connects everything from your editor to CI [continuous integration]." The npm package has over 3.5 million weekly downloads. The list of affected packages and versions is below. These versions have since been removed from the npm registry. The compromise of the nx package took place on August 26, 20...

The advanced persistent threat (APT) actor known as Transparent Tribe has been observed targeting both Windows and BOSS (Bharat Operating System Solutions) Linux systems with malicious Desktop shortcut files in attacks targeting Indian Government entities. "Initial access is achieved through spear-phishing emails," CYFIRMA said . "Linux BOSS environments are targeted via weaponized .desktop shortcut files that, once opened, download and execute malicious payloads." Transparent Tribe, also called APT36, is assessed to be of Pakistani origin, with the group – along with its sub-cluster SideCopy – having a storied history of breaking into Indian government institutions with a variety of remote access trojans (RATs). The latest dual-platform demonstrates the adversarial collective's continued sophistication, allowing it to broaden its targeting footprint and ensure access to compromised environments. The attack chains begin with phishing emails bearing sup...

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a novel attack chain that employs phishing emails to deliver an open-source backdoor called VShell . The "Linux-specific malware infection chain that starts with a spam email with a malicious RAR archive file," Trellix researcher Sagar Bade said in a technical write-up. "The payload isn't hidden inside the file content or a macro, it's encoded directly in the filename itself. Through clever use of shell command injection and Base64-encoded Bash payloads, the attacker turns a simple file listing operation into an automatic malware execution trigger." The technique, the cybersecurity company added, takes advantage of a simple yet dangerous pattern commonly observed in shell scripts that arises when file names are evaluated with inadequate sanitization, thereby causing a trivial command like eval or echo to facilitate the execution of arbitrary code. What's more, the technique offers the added advantage of...