linux | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

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...

Threat actors are exploiting a nearly two-year-old security flaw in Apache ActiveMQ to gain persistent access to cloud Linux systems and deploy malware called DripDropper . But in an unusual twist, the unknown attackers have been observed patching the exploited vulnerability after securing initial access to prevent further exploitation by other adversaries and evade detection, Red Canary said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Follow-on adversary command-and-control (C2) tools varied by endpoint and included Sliver , and Cloudflare Tunnels to maintain covert command and control over the long term," researchers Christina Johns, Chris Brook, and Tyler Edmonds said. The attacks exploit a maximum-severity security flaw in Apache ActiveMQ ( CVE-2023-46604 , CVSS score: 10.0), a remote code execution vulnerability that could be exploited to run arbitrary shell commands. It was addressed in late October 2023. The security defect has since come under heavy exploitation...

Japan's CERT coordination center (JPCERT/CC) on Thursday revealed it observed incidents that involved the use of a command-and-control (C2) framework called CrossC2 , which is designed to extend the functionality of Cobalt Strike to other platforms like Linux and Apple macOS for cross-platform system control. The agency said the activity was detected between September and December 2024, targeting multiple countries, including Japan, based on an analysis of VirusTotal artifacts. "The attacker employed CrossC2 as well as other tools such as PsExec, Plink, and Cobalt Strike in attempts to penetrate AD. Further investigation revealed that the attacker used custom malware as a loader for Cobalt Strike," JPCERT/CC researcher Yuma Masubuchi said in a report published today. The bespoke Cobalt Strike Beacon loader has been codenamed ReadNimeLoader. CrossC2, an unofficial Beacon and builder, is capable of executing various Cobalt Strike commands after establishing communicati...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed vulnerabilities in select model webcams from Lenovo that could turn them into BadUSB attack devices. "This allows remote attackers to inject keystrokes covertly and launch attacks independent of the host operating system," Eclypsium researchers Paul Asadoorian, Mickey Shkatov, and Jesse Michael said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The vulnerabilities have been codenamed BadCam (aka CVE-2025-4371 ) by the firmware security company. The findings were presented at the DEF CON 33 security conference today. The development likely marks the first time it has been demonstrated that threat actors who gain control of a Linux-based USB peripheral that's already attached to a computer can weaponize it for malicious intent. In a hypothetical attack scenario, an adversary can take advantage of the vulnerability to send a victim a backdoored webcam, or attach it to a computer if they are able to secure physical access, and remot...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a set of 11 malicious Go packages that are designed to download additional payloads from remote servers and execute them on both Windows and Linux systems. "At runtime the code silently spawns a shell, pulls a second-stage payload from an interchangeable set of .icu and .tech command-and-control (C2) endpoints, and executes it in memory," Socket security researcher Olivia Brown said . The list of identified packages is below - github.com/stripedconsu/linker github.com/agitatedleopa/stm github.com/expertsandba/opt github.com/wetteepee/hcloud-ip-floater github.com/weightycine/replika github.com/ordinarymea/tnsr_ids github.com/ordinarymea/TNSR_IDS github.com/cavernouskina/mcp-go github.com/lastnymph/gouid github.com/sinfulsky/gouid github.com/briefinitia/gouid

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a previously undocumented Linux backdoor dubbed Plague that has managed to evade detection for a year. "The implant is built as a malicious PAM (Pluggable Authentication Module), enabling attackers to silently bypass system authentication and gain persistent SSH access," Nextron Systems researcher Pierre-Henri Pezier said . Pluggable Authentication Modules refers to a suite of shared libraries used to manage user authentication to applications and services in Linux and UNIX-based systems. Given that PAM modules are loaded into privileged authentication processes, a rogue PAM can enable theft of user credentials, bypass authentication checks, and remain undetected by security tools. The cybersecurity company said it uncovered multiple Plague artifacts uploaded to VirusTotal since July 29, 2024, with none of them detected by antimalware engines as malicious. What's more, the presence of several samples signals active developme...

Telecommunications organizations in Southeast Asia have been targeted by a state-sponsored threat actor known as CL-STA-0969 to facilitate remote control over compromised networks. Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said it observed multiple incidents in the region, including one aimed at critical telecommunications infrastructure between February and November 2024. The attacks are characterized by the use of several tools to enable remote access, as well as the deployment of Cordscan, which can collect location data from mobile devices. However, the cybersecurity company said it found no evidence of data exfiltration from the networks and systems it investigated. Nor were any efforts made by the attackers to track or communicate with target devices within mobile networks. "The threat actor behind CL-STA-0969 maintained high operational security (OPSEC) and employed various defense evasion techniques to avoid detection," security researchers Renzon Cruz, Nicolas Bareil, and Nav...

The financially motivated threat actor known as UNC2891 has been observed targeting Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) infrastructure using a 4G-equipped Raspberry Pi as part of a covert attack. The cyber-physical attack involved the adversary leveraging their physical access to install the Raspberry Pi device and have it connected directly to the same network switch as the ATM, effectively placing it within the target bank's network, Group-IB said. It's currently not known how this access was obtained. "The Raspberry Pi was equipped with a 4G modem, allowing remote access over mobile data," security researcher Nam Le Phuong said in a Wednesday report. "Using the TINYSHELL backdoor, the attacker established an outbound command-and-control (C2) channel via a Dynamic DNS domain. This setup enabled continuous external access to the ATM network, completely bypassing perimeter firewalls and traditional network defenses." UNC2891 was first documented by Googl...