remote code execution | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers have identified 22 new vulnerabilities in popular models of serial-to-IP converters from Lantronix and Silex that could be exploited to hijack susceptible devices and tamper with data exchanged by them. The vulnerabilities have been collectively codenamed BRIDGE:BREAK by Forescout Research Vedere Labs, which identified nearly 20,000 Serial-to-Ethernet converters exposed online globally. "Some of these vulnerabilities allow attackers to take full control of mission-critical devices connected via serial links," the cybersecurity company said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Serial-to-IP converters are hardware devices that enable users to remotely access, control, and manage any serial device over an IP network or the internet by "bridging" legacy applications and industrial control systems (ICS) that operate over TCP/IP. At a high level, as many as eight security flaws have been discovered in Lantronix products (EDS3000PS Seri...

A critical security vulnerability has been disclosed in SGLang that, if successfully exploited, could result in remote code execution on susceptible systems. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-5760 , carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of 10.0. It has been described as a case of command injection leading to the execution of arbitrary code. SGLang is a high-performance, open-source serving framework for large language models and multimodal models. The official GitHub project has been forked over 5,500 times and starred 26,100 times.  According to the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC), the vulnerability impacts the reranking endpoint "/v1/rerank," allowing an attacker to achieve arbitrary code execution in the context of the SGLang service by means of a specially crafted GPT-Generated Unified Format ( GGUF ) model file. "An attacker exploits this vulnerability by creating a malicious GPT Generated Unified Format (GGUF) model file with a crafted tokenizer.chat_temp...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a critical "by design" weakness in the Model Context Protocol's ( MCP ) architecture that could pave the way for remote code execution and have a cascading effect on the artificial intelligence (AI) supply chain. "This flaw enables Arbitrary Command Execution (RCE) on any system running a vulnerable MCP implementation, granting attackers direct access to sensitive user data, internal databases, API keys, and chat histories," OX Security researchers Moshe Siman Tov Bustan, Mustafa Naamnih, Nir Zadok, and Roni Bar said in an analysis published last week. The cybersecurity company said the systemic vulnerability is baked into Anthropic's official MCP software development kit (SDK) across any supported language, including Python, TypeScript, Java, and Rust. In all, it affects more than 7,000 publicly accessible servers and software packages totaling more than 150 million downloads. At issue are unsafe defaults in...

A recently disclosed high-severity security flaw in Apache ActiveMQ Classic has come under active exploitation in the wild, per the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). To that end, the agency has added the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-34197 (CVSS score: 8.8), to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, requiring Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to apply the fixes by April 30, 2026. CVE-2026-34197 has been described as a case of improper input validation that could lead to code injection, effectively allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code on susceptible installations. According to Horizon3.ai's Naveen Sunkavally, CVE-2026-34197 has been "hiding in plain sight" for 13 years.  "An attacker can invoke a management operation through ActiveMQ's Jolokia API to trick the broker into fetching a remote configuration file and running arbitrary OS c...

Cybersecurity researchers have warned of an active malicious campaign that's targeting the workforce in the Czech Republic with a previously undocumented botnet dubbed PowMix since at least December 2025. "PowMix employs randomized command-and-control (C2) beaconing intervals, rather than persistent connection to the C2 server, to evade the network signature detections," Cisco Talos researcher Chetan Raghuprasad said in a report published today. "PowMix embeds the encrypted heartbeat data along with unique identifiers of the victim machine into the C2 URL paths, mimicking legitimate REST API URLs. PowMix has the capability to remotely update the new C2 domain to the botnet configuration file dynamically." The attack chain begins with a malicious ZIP file, likely delivered via a phishing email, to activate a multi-stage infection chain that drops PowMix. Specifically, it involves a Windows Shortcut (LNK) that's used to launch a PowerShell loader, which ...

Cisco has announced patches to address four critical security flaws impacting Identity Services and Webex Services that could result in arbitrary code execution and allow an attacker to impersonate any user within the service. The details of the vulnerabilities are below - CVE-2026-20184 (CVSS score: 9.8) - An improper certificate validation in the integration of single sign-on (SSO) with Control Hub in Webex Services that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to impersonate any user within the service and gain unauthorized access to legitimate Cisco Webex services. CVE-2026-20147 (CVSS score: 9.9) - An insufficient validation of user-supplied input vulnerability in Identity Services Engine (ISE) and ISE Passive Identity Connector (ISE-PIC) that could allow an authenticated, remote attacker in possession of valid administrative credentials to achieve remote code execution by sending crafted HTTP requests. CVE-2026-20180 and CVE-2026-20186 (CVSS scores: 9.9) ...

A recently disclosed critical security flaw impacting nginx-ui, an open-source, web-based Nginx management tool, has come under active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-33032 (CVSS score: 9.8), an authentication bypass vulnerability that enables threat actors to seize control of the Nginx service. It has been codenamed MCPwn by Pluto Security. "The nginx-ui MCP (Model Context Protocol) integration exposes two HTTP endpoints: /mcp and /mcp_message," according to an advisory released by nginx-ui maintainers last month. "While /mcp requires both IP whitelisting and authentication (AuthRequired() middleware), the /mcp_message endpoint only applies IP whitelisting -- and the default IP whitelist is empty, which the middleware treats as 'allow all.'"  "This means any network attacker can invoke all MCP tools without authentication, including restarting nginx, creating/modifying/deleting nginx configuration files, and t...

A number of critical vulnerabilities impacting products from Adobe, Fortinet, Microsoft, and SAP have taken center stage in April's Patch Tuesday releases. Topping the list is an SQL injection vulnerability impacting SAP Business Planning and Consolidation and SAP Business Warehouse ( CVE-2026-27681 , CVSS score: 9.9) that could result in the execution of arbitrary database commands. "The vulnerable ABAP program allows a low-privileged user to upload a file with arbitrary SQL statements that will then be executed," Onapsis said in an advisory. In a potential attack scenario, a bad actor could abuse the affected upload-related functionality to run malicious SQL against BW/BPC data stores, extract sensitive data, and delete or corrupt database content. "Manipulated planning figures, broken reports, or deleted consolidation data can undermine close processes, executive reporting, and operational planning," Pathlock said . "In the wrong hands, t...

Microsoft on Tuesday released updates to address a record 169 security flaws across its product portfolio, including one vulnerability that has been actively exploited in the wild. Of these 169 vulnerabilities, 157 are rated Important, eight are rated Critical, three are rated Moderate, and one is rated Low in severity. Ninety-three of the flaws are classified as privilege escalation, followed by 21 information disclosure, 21 remote code execution, 14 security feature bypass, 10 spoofing, and nine denial-of-service vulnerabilities. Also included among the 169 flaws are four non-Microsoft issued CVEs impacting AMD (CVE-2023-20585), Node.js (CVE-2026-21637), Windows Secure Boot (CVE-2026-25250), and Git for Windows (CVE-2026-32631). The updates are in addition to 78 vulnerabilities that have been addressed in its Chromium-based Edge browser since the update that was released last month . T...

A critical security vulnerability impacting ShowDoc , a document management and collaboration service popular in China, has come under active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-0520 (aka CNVD-2020-26585), which carries a CVSS score of 9.4 out of 10.0. It relates to a case of unrestricted file upload that stems from improper validation of file extension, allowing an attacker to upload arbitrary PHP files and achieve remote code execution. "[In] ShowDoc version before 2.8.7, an unrestricted and unauthenticated file upload issue is found and [an] attacker is able to upload a web shell and execute arbitrary code on server," according to an advisory released by Vulhub.  The vulnerability was addressed in ShowDoc version 2.8.7 , which was shipped in October 2020. The current version of the software is 3.8.1 . According to new details shared by Caitlin Cond...

A critical security vulnerability in Marimo , an open-source Python notebook for data science and analysis, has been exploited within 10 hours of public disclosure, according to findings from Sysdig. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-39987 (CVSS score: 9.3), a pre-authenticated remote code execution vulnerability impacting all versions of Marimo prior to and including 0.20.4. The issue has been addressed in version 0.23.0 . "The terminal WebSocket endpoint /terminal/ws lacks authentication validation, allowing an unauthenticated attacker to obtain a full PTY shell and execute arbitrary system commands," Marimo maintainers said in an advisory earlier this week. "Unlike other WebSocket endpoints (e.g., /ws) that correctly call validate_auth() for authentication, the /terminal/ws endpoint only checks the running mode and platform support before accepting connections, completely skipping authentication verification." In other words, at...

Unknown threat actors have hijacked the update system for the Smart Slider 3 Pro plugin for WordPress and Joomla to push a poisoned version containing a backdoor. The incident impacts Smart Slider 3 Pro version 3.5.1.35 for WordPress, per WordPress security company Patchstack. Smart Slider 3 is a popular WordPress slider plugin with more than 800,000 active installations across its free and Pro editions. "An unauthorized party gained access to Nextend’s update infrastructure and distributed a fully attacker-authored build through the official update channel," the company said . "Any site that updated to 3.5.1.35 between its release on April 7, 2026, and its detection approximately 6 hours later received a fully weaponized remote access toolkit." Nextend, which maintains the plugin, said an unauthorized party gained unauthorized access to its update system and pushed a malicious version (3.5.1.35 Pro) that remained accessible for approximately six hours, before ...

Threat actors have been exploiting a previously unknown zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Reader using maliciously crafted PDF documents since at least December 2025. The finding, detailed by EXPMON's Haifei Li, has been described as a highly-sophisticated PDF exploit. The artifact ("Invoice540.pdf") first appeared on the VirusTotal platform on November 28, 2025. A second sample was uploaded to VirusTotal on March 23, 2026. Given the name of the PDF document, it's likely that there is an element of social engineering involved, with the attackers luring unsuspecting users into opening the files on Adobe Reader. Once launched, it automatically triggers the execution of obfuscated JavaScript to harvest sensitive data and receive additional payloads. Security researcher Gi7w0rm, in an X post , said the PDF documents observed contain Russian language lures and refer to issues regarding current events related to the oil and gas industry i...

An active campaign has been observed targeting internet-exposed instances running ComfyUI, a popular stable diffusion platform, to enlist them into a cryptocurrency mining and proxy botnet. "A purpose-built Python scanner continuously sweeps major cloud IP ranges for vulnerable targets, automatically installing malicious nodes via ComfyUI-Manager if no exploitable node is already present," Censys security researcher Mark Ellzey said in a report published Monday. The attack activity, at its core, systemically scans for exposed ComfyUI instances and exploits a misconfiguration that allows remote code execution on unauthenticated deployments through custom nodes . Upon successful exploitation, the compromised hosts are added to a cryptomining operation that mines Monero via XMRig and Conflux via lolMiner, as well as to a Hysteria V2 botnet. Both of them are centrally managed through a Flask-based command-and-control (C2) dashboard. Data from the at...

Threat actors are exploiting a maximum-severity security flaw in Flowise , an open-source artificial intelligence (AI) platform, according to new findings from VulnCheck. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-59528 (CVSS score: 10.0), a code injection vulnerability that could result in remote code execution. "The CustomMCP node allows users to input configuration settings for connecting to an external MCP (Model Context Protocol) server," Flowise said in an advisory released in September 2025. "This node parses the user-provided mcpServerConfig string to build the MCP server configuration. However, during this process, it executes JavaScript code without any security validation." Flowise noted that successful exploitation of the vulnerability can allow access to dangerous modules such as child_process (command execution) and fs (file system), as it runs with full Node.js runtime privileges. Put differently, a threat actor who weaponizes the flaw can execu...

Threat actors are increasingly using HTTP cookies as a control channel for PHP-based web shells on Linux servers and to achieve remote code execution, according to findings from the Microsoft Defender Security Research Team. "Instead of exposing command execution through URL parameters or request bodies, these web shells rely on threat actor-supplied cookie values to gate execution, pass instructions, and activate malicious functionality," the tech giant said . The approach offers added stealth as it allows malicious code to stay dormant during normal application execution and activate the web shell logic only when specific cookie values are present. This behavior, Microsoft noted, extends to web requests, scheduled tasks, and trusted background workers. The malicious activity takes advantage of the fact that cookie values are available at runtime through the $_COOKIE superglobal variable, allowing attacker-supplied inputs to be consumed with...

A large-scale credential harvesting operation has been observed exploiting the React2Shell vulnerability as an initial infection vector to steal database credentials, SSH private keys, Amazon Web Services (AWS) secrets, shell command history, Stripe API keys, and GitHub tokens at scale. Cisco Talos has attributed the operation to a threat cluster it tracks as UAT-10608 . At least 766 hosts spanning multiple geographic regions and cloud providers have been compromised as part of the activity. "Post-compromise, UAT-10608 leverages automated scripts for extracting and exfiltrating credentials from a variety of applications, that are then posted to its command-and-control (C2)," security researchers  Asheer Malhotra and Brandon White said in a report shared with The Hacker News ahead of publication. "The C2 hosts a web-based graphical user interface (GUI) titled 'NEXUS Listener' that can be used to view s...

Google on Thursday released security updates for its Chrome web browser to address 21 vulnerabilities, including a zero-day flaw that it said has been exploited in the wild. The high-severity vulnerability, CVE-2026-5281 (CVSS score: N/A), concerns a use-after-free bug in Dawn , an open-source and cross-platform implementation of the WebGPU standard. "Use-after-free in Dawn in Google Chrome prior to 146.0.7680.178 allowed a remote attacker who had compromised the renderer process to execute arbitrary code via a crafted HTML page," according to a description of the flaw in the NIST's National Vulnerability Database (NVD). As is customary for these alerts, Google did not provide any further details on how the shortcoming is being exploited and who may be behind the effort. This is typically done so as to ensure that a majority of users are updated with a fix and prevent other actors from joining the exploitation bandwagon. "Google is aware that an exploit for C...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday added a critical security flaw impacting F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-53521 (CVSS v4 score: 9.3), which could allow a threat actor to achieve remote code execution. "When a BIG-IP APM access policy is configured on a virtual server, specific malicious traffic can lead to Remote Code Execution (RCE)," according to a description of the flaw in CVE.org. While the shortcoming was initially categorized and remediated as a denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability with a CVSS v4 score of 8.7, F5 said it has been reclassified as a case of RCE in light of "new information obtained in March 2026." The company has since updated its advisory to confirm that the vulnerability "has been exploited in the vulnerable BIG-IP versions." It did not shar...

Threat actors are suspected to be exploiting a maximum-severity security flaw impacting Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA), according to Arctic Wolf. The cybersecurity company said it observed malicious activity starting the week of March 9, 2026, in customer environments that's consistent with the exploitation of CVE-2025-32975 on unpatched SMA systems exposed to the internet. It's currently not known what the end goals of the attack are. CVE-2025-32975 (CVSS score: 10.0) refers to an authentication bypass vulnerability that allows attackers to impersonate legitimate users without valid credentials. Successful exploitation of the flaw could facilitate the complete takeover of administrative accounts. The issue was patched by Quest in May 2025. In the malicious activity detected by Arctic Wolf, threat actors are believed to have weaponized the vulnerability to seize control of administrative accounts and execute remote commands to drop Base64-encoded payloads ...