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The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday added two security flaws impacting ConnectWise ScreenConnect and Microsoft Windows to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerabilities are listed below - CVE-2024-1708 (CVSS score: 8.4) - A path traversal vulnerability in  ConnectWise ScreenConnect that could allow an attacker to execute remote code or directly impact confidential data and critical systems. (Fixed in February 2024) CVE-2026-32202 (CVSS score: 4.3) - A protection mechanism failure vulnerability in  Microsoft Windows Shell that could allow an unauthorized attacker to perform spoofing over a network. (Fixed in April 2026) The addition of CVE-2026-32202 to the KEV catalog comes a day after Microsoft updated its advisory  for the flaw to acknowledge it had come under active exploitation. Although Microsoft has not disclosed the nature of the attacks weaponizi...

Threat hunters are warning that the cybercriminal operation known as VECT 2.0 acts more like a wiper than a ransomware due to a critical flaw in its encryption implementation across Windows, Linux, and ESXi variants that renders recovery impossible even for the threat actors. The fact that VECT's locker permanently destroys large files rather than encrypting them means even victims who opt to pay the ransom cannot get their data back, as the decryption keys are discarded by the malware during the time encryption occurs. "VECT is being marketed as ransomware, but for any file over 131KB – which is most of what enterprises actually care about – it functions as a data destruction tool," Eli Smadja, group manager at Check Point Research, said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. "CISOs need to understand that in a VECT incident, paying is not a recovery strategy. There is no decrypter that can be handed over, not because the attackers are unwilling, but beca...

A pro-Ukrainian hacktivist group called PhantomCore has been attributed to attacks actively targeting servers running TrueConf video conferencing software in Russia since September 2025. That's according to a report published by Positive Technologies, which found the threat actors to be leveraging an exploit chain comprising three vulnerabilities to execute commands remotely on susceptible servers.     "Despite the fact that there are no exploits for this chain of vulnerability in public access, attackers from PhantomCore managed to conduct their research and reproduce vulnerabilities, which led to a large number of cases of its operation in Russian organizations," researchers Daniil Grigoryan and Georgy Khandozhko said . PhantomCore , also called Fairy Trickster, Head Mare, Rainbow Hyena, and UNG0901, is the name assigned to a politically- and financially-motivated hacking crew that has been active since 2022 following the Russo-Ukrainian war. Attacks   mo...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday added four vulnerabilities impacting SimpleHelp, Samsung MagicINFO 9 Server, and D-Link DIR-823X series routers to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The list of vulnerabilities is below - CVE-2024-57726 (CVSS score: 9.9) - A missing authorization vulnerability in SimpleHelp that could allow low-privileged technicians to create API keys with excessive permissions, which can then be used to escalate privileges to the server admin role. CVE-2024-57728 (CVSS score: 7.2) - A path traversal vulnerability in SimpleHelp that allows admin users to upload arbitrary files anywhere on the file system by uploading a crafted zip file (i.e., zip slip), which can be exploited to execute arbitrary code on the host in the context of the SimpleHelp server user. CVE-2024-7399 (CVSS score: 8.8) - A path traversal vulnerability in Samsung MagicINFO 9 Server that cou...

A previously undocumented threat activity cluster known as UNC6692 has been observed leveraging social engineering tactics via Microsoft Teams to deploy a custom malware suite on compromised hosts. "As with many other intrusions in recent years, UNC6692 relied heavily on impersonating IT help desk employees, convincing their victim to accept a Microsoft Teams chat invitation from an account outside their organization," Google-owned Mandiant said in a report published today. UNC6692 has been attributed to a large email campaign that's designed to overwhelm a target's inbox with a flood of spam emails, creating a false sense of urgency. The threat actor then approaches the target over Microsoft Teams by sending a message claiming to be from the IT support team to offer assistance with the email bombing problem. It's worth noting that this combination of bombarding a victim's email inbox followed by Microsoft Teams-based help desk impersonation has been a ...