ransomware | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A critical security vulnerability impacting SAP S/4HANA, an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, has come under active exploitation in the wild. The command injection vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-42957 (CVSS score: 9.9), was fixed by SAP as part of its monthly updates last month. "SAP S/4HANA allows an attacker with user privileges to exploit a vulnerability in the function module exposed via RFC," according to a description of the flaw in the NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD). "This flaw enables the injection of arbitrary ABAP code into the system, bypassing essential authorization checks. Successful exploration of the defect could result in a full system compromise of the SAP environment, subverting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the system. In short, it can permit attackers to modify the SAP database, create superuser accounts with SAP_ALL privileges, download password hashes, and alter business processes. SecurityBri...

Story teaser text: Cybersecurity leaders face mounting pressure to stop attacks before they start, and the best defense may come down to the settings you choose on day one. In this piece, Yuriy Tsibere explores how default policies like deny-by-default, MFA enforcement, and application Ringfencing ™ can eliminate entire categories of risk. From disabling Office macros to blocking outbound server traffic, these simple but strategic moves create a hardened environment that attackers can't easily penetrate. Whether you're securing endpoints or overseeing policy rollouts, adopting a security-by-default mindset can reduce complexity, shrink your attack surface, and help you stay ahead of evolving threats. Cybersecurity has changed dramatically since the days of the "Love Bug" virus in 2001. What was once an annoyance is now a profit-driven criminal enterprise worth billions. This shift demands proactive defense strategies that don't just respond to threats—they prevent t...

Cyber threats and attacks like ransomware continue to increase in volume and complexity with the endpoint typically being the most sought after and valued target. With the rapid expansion and adoption of AI, it is more critical than ever to ensure the endpoint is adequately secured by a platform capable of not just keeping pace, but staying ahead of an ever-evolving threat landscape. SentinelOne's steadfast commitment to delivering AI-powered cybersecurity enables global customers and partners to achieve resiliency and reduce risk with real-time, autonomous protection across the entire enterprise — all from a single agent and console with a robust, rigorously tested platform that keeps the customer in control. Cybersecurity today isn't just about detection—it's about operational continuity under pressure. For example, endpoint solutions must account for encrypted traffic inspection, policy enforcement during identity compromise, and fast containment across distributed environments. ...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a Ukrainian IP network for engaging in massive brute-force and password spraying campaigns targeting SSL VPN and RDP devices between June and July 2025. The activity originated from a Ukraine-based autonomous system FDN3 ( AS211736 ), per French cybersecurity company Intrinsec. "We believe with a high level of confidence that FDN3 is part of a wider abusive infrastructure composed of two other Ukrainian networks, VAIZ-AS ( AS61432 ) and ERISHENNYA-ASN ( AS210950 ), and a Seychelles-based autonomous system named TK-NET ( AS210848 )," according to a report published last week. "Those were all allocated in August 2021 and often exchange IPv4 prefixes with one another to evade blocklisting and continue hosting abusive activities." AS61432 currently announces a single prefix 185.156.72[.]0/24, while AS210950 has announced two prefixes 45.143.201[.]0/24 and 185.193.89[.]0/24. The two autonomous systems were allocated in May an...

Cybersecurity today is less about single attacks and more about chains of small weaknesses that connect into big risks. One overlooked update, one misused account, or one hidden tool in the wrong hands can be enough to open the door. The news this week shows how attackers are mixing methods—combining stolen access, unpatched software, and clever tricks to move from small entry points to large consequences.  For defenders, the lesson is clear: the real danger often comes not from one major flaw, but from how different small flaws interact together. ⚡ Threat of the Week WhatsApp Patches Actively Exploited Flaw — WhatsApp addressed a security vulnerability in its messaging apps for Apple iOS and macOS that it said may have been exploited in the wild in conjunction with a recently disclosed Apple flaw in targeted zero-day attacks. The vulnerability, CVE-2025-55177 relates to a case of insufficient authorization of linked device synchronization messages. The Meta-owned company ...

Cybersecurity researchers have called attention to a cyber attack in which unknown threat actors deployed an open-source endpoint monitoring and digital forensic tool called Velociraptor , illustrating ongoing abuse of legitimate software for malicious purposes. "In this incident, the threat actor used the tool to download and execute Visual Studio Code with the likely intention of creating a tunnel to an attacker-controlled command-and-control (C2) server," the Sophos Counter Threat Unit Research Team said in a report published this week.  While threat actors are known to adopt living-off-the-land (LotL) techniques or take advantage of legitimate remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools in their attacks, the use of Velociraptor signals a tactical evolution, where incident response programs are being used to obtain a foothold and minimize the need for having to deploy their own malware.  Further analysis of the incident has revealed that the attackers used the Wind...

Picture this: Your team rolls out some new code, thinking everything's fine. But hidden in there is a tiny flaw that explodes into a huge problem once it hits the cloud. Next thing you know, hackers are in, and your company is dealing with a mess that costs millions. Scary, right? In 2025, the average data breach hits businesses with a whopping $4.44 million bill globally. And guess what? A big chunk of these headaches comes from app security slip-ups, like web attacks that snag credentials and wreak havoc. If you're in dev, ops, or security, you've probably felt that stress—endless alerts, teams arguing over who's to blame, and fixes that take forever. But hey, it doesn't have to be this way. What if you could spot those risks early, from the moment code is written all the way to when it's running in the cloud? That's the magic of code-to-cloud visibility, and it's changing how smart teams handle app security. Our upcoming webinar, "Code-to-Clou...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a loophole in the Visual Studio Code Marketplace that allows threat actors to reuse names of previously removed extensions. Software supply chain security outfit ReversingLabs said it made the discovery after it identified a malicious extension named "ahbanC.shiba" that functioned similarly to two other extensions – ahban.shiba and ahban.cychelloworld – that were flagged earlier this March. All three libraries are designed to act as a downloader to retrieve a PowerShell payload from an external server that encrypts files in a folder called "testShiba" on the victim's Windows desktop and demands a Shiba Inu token by instructing the victim to deposit the assets to an unspecified wallet. These efforts suggest ongoing development attempts by the threat actor. The company said it decided to dig deeper because of the fact that the name of the new extension ("ahbanC.shiba") was virtually the same as one of the t...

Every day, businesses, teams, and project managers trust platforms like Trello, Asana, etc., to collaborate and manage tasks. But what happens when that trust is broken? According to a recent report by Statista, the average cost of a data breach worldwide was about $4.88 million. Also, in 2024, the private data of over 15 million Trello user profiles was shared on a popular hacker forum. Yet, most organizations and project managers still assume that their platform's built-in backups are enough until they are not. The next few paragraphs will expose some risks of relying on these platform tools alone and how to better protect yourself and your organization from data loss with cloud backup and recovery . Why are project management tools becoming a prime target for data loss? More than 95% of businesses today rely heavily on project management tools like Trello and Asana to organize tasks, collaborate with teams, and track project milestones. However, as project managers become mor...

The financially motivated threat actor known as Storm-0501 has been observed refining its tactics to conduct data exfiltration and extortion attacks targeting cloud environments. "Unlike traditional on-premises ransomware, where the threat actor typically deploys malware to encrypt critical files across endpoints within the compromised network and then negotiates for a decryption key, cloud-based ransomware introduces a fundamental shift," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Leveraging cloud-native capabilities, Storm-0501 rapidly exfiltrates large volumes of data, destroys data and backups within the victim environment, and demands ransom -- all without relying on traditional malware deployment." Storm-0501 was first documented by Microsoft almost a year ago, detailing its hybrid cloud ransomware attacks targeting government, manufacturing, transportation, and law enforcement sectors in the U.S., with the thr...

Cybersecurity company ESET has disclosed that it discovered an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered ransomware variant codenamed PromptLock . Written in Golang, the newly identified strain uses the gpt-oss:20b model from OpenAI locally via the Ollama API to generate malicious Lua scripts in real-time. The open-weight language model was released by OpenAI earlier this month. "PromptLock leverages Lua scripts generated from hard-coded prompts to enumerate the local filesystem, inspect target files, exfiltrate selected data, and perform encryption," ESET said . "These Lua scripts are cross-platform compatible, functioning on Windows, Linux, and macOS." The ransomware code also embeds instructions to craft a custom note based on the "files affected," and the infected machine is a personal computer, company server, or a power distribution controller. It's currently not known who is behind the malware, but ESET told The Hacker News that PromptLoc arti...

Anthropic on Wednesday revealed that it disrupted a sophisticated operation that weaponized its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot Claude to conduct large-scale theft and extortion of personal data in July 2025. "The actor targeted at least 17 distinct organizations, including in healthcare, the emergency services, and government, and religious institutions," the company said . "Rather than encrypt the stolen information with traditional ransomware, the actor threatened to expose the data publicly in order to attempt to extort victims into paying ransoms that sometimes exceeded $500,000." "The actor employed Claude Code on Kali Linux as a comprehensive attack platform, embedding operational instructions in a CLAUDE.md file that provided persistent context for every interaction." The unknown threat actor is said to have used AI to an "unprecedented degree," using Claude Code, Anthropic's agentic coding tool, to automate variou...

A new large-scale campaign has been observed exploiting over 100 compromised WordPress sites to direct site visitors to fake CAPTCHA verification pages that employ the ClickFix social engineering tactic to deliver information stealers, ransomware, and cryptocurrency miners. The large-scale cybercrime campaign, first detected in August 2025, has been codenamed ShadowCaptcha by the Israel National Digital Agency. "The campaign [...] blends social engineering, living-off-the-land binaries (LOLBins), and multi-stage payload delivery to gain and maintain a foothold in targeted systems," researchers Shimi Cohen, Adi Pick, Idan Beit Yosef, Hila David, and Yaniv Goldman said . "The ultimate objectives of ShadowCaptcha are collecting sensitive information through credential harvesting and browser data exfiltration, deploying cryptocurrency miners to generate illicit profits, and even causing ransomware outbreaks." The attacks begin with unsuspecting users visiting a c...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new variant of an Android banking trojan called HOOK that features ransomware-style overlay screens to display extortion messages. "A prominent characteristic of the latest variant is its capacity to deploy a full-screen ransomware overlay, which aims to coerce the victim into remitting a ransom payment," Zimperium zLabs researcher Vishnu Pratapagiri said . "This overlay presents an alarming '*WARNING*' message, alongside a wallet address and amount, both of which are dynamically retrieved from the command-and-control server." The mobile security company said the overlay is remotely initiated when the command "ransome" is issued by the C2 server. The overlay can be dismissed by the attacker by sending the "delete_ransome" command. HOOK is assessed to be an offshoot of the ERMAC banking trojan, which, coincidentally, had its source code leaked on a publicly accessible directory over the int...

Cybersecurity today moves at the pace of global politics. A single breach can ripple across supply chains, turn a software flaw into leverage, or shift who holds the upper hand. For leaders, this means defense isn't just a matter of firewalls and patches—it's about strategy. The strongest organizations aren't the ones with the most tools, but the ones that see how cyber risks connect to business, trust, and power. This week's stories highlight how technical gaps become real-world pressure points—and why security decisions now matter far beyond IT. ⚡ Threat of the Week Popular Password Managers Affected by Clickjacking — Popular password manager plugins for web browsers have been found susceptible to clickjacking security vulnerabilities that could be exploited to steal account credentials, two-factor authentication (2FA) codes, and credit card details under certain conditions. The technique has been dubbed Document Object Model (DOM)-based extension clickjacking by independent sec...

INTERPOL on Friday announced that authorities from 18 countries across Africa have arrested 1,209 cybercriminals who targeted 88,000 victims. "The crackdown recovered $97.4 million and dismantled 11,432 malicious infrastructures, underscoring the global reach of cybercrime and the urgent need for cross-border cooperation," the agency said . The effort is the second phase of an ongoing law enforcement initiative called Operation Serengeti , which took place between June and August 2025 to tackle severe crimes like ransomware, online scams. and business email compromise (BEC). The first wave of arrests occurred late last year. Among the highlights are the dismantling of 25 cryptocurrency mining centres in Angola, where 60 Chinese nationals were involved in the illicit money-making scheme. "The crackdown identified 45 illicit power stations which were confiscated, along with mining and IT equipment worth more than $37 million, now earmarked by the government to support...