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Google on Tuesday revealed that multiple threat actors, including nation-state adversaries and financially motivated groups, are exploiting a now-patched critical security flaw in RARLAB WinRAR to establish initial access and deploy a diverse array of payloads. "Discovered and patched in July 2025, government-backed threat actors linked to Russia and China as well as financially motivated threat actors continue to exploit this n-day across disparate operations," the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said . "The consistent exploitation method, a path traversal flaw allowing files to be dropped into the Windows Startup folder for persistence, underscores a defensive gap in fundamental application security and user awareness." The vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-8088 (CVSS score: 8.8), which was patched by WinRAR version 7.13 released on July 30, 2025. Successful exploitation of the flaw could allow an attacker to obtain arbitrary code execution by c...

Microsoft on Monday issued out-of-band security patches for a high-severity Microsoft Office zero-day vulnerability exploited in attacks. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-21509 , carries a CVSS score of 7.8 out of 10.0. It has been described as a security feature bypass in Microsoft Office. "Reliance on untrusted inputs in a security decision in Microsoft Office allows an unauthorized attacker to bypass a security feature locally," the tech giant said in an advisory. "This update addresses a vulnerability that bypasses OLE mitigations in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office, which protect users from vulnerable COM/OLE controls." Successful exploitation of the flaw relies on an attacker sending a specially crafted Office file and convincing recipients to open it. It also noted that the Preview Pane is not an attack vector. The Windows maker said customers running Office 2021 and later will be automatically protected via a service-side change , but will b...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered an ongoing campaign that's targeting Indian users with a multi-stage backdoor as part of a suspected cyber espionage campaign. The activity , per the eSentire Threat Response Unit (TRU), involves using phishing emails impersonating the Income Tax Department of India to trick victims into downloading a malicious archive, ultimately granting the threat actors persistent access to their machines for continuous monitoring and data exfiltration. The end goal of the sophisticated attack is to deploy a variant of a known banking trojan called Blackmoon (aka KRBanker) and a legitimate enterprise tool called SyncFuture TSM (Terminal Security Management) that's developed by Nanjing Zhongke Huasai Technology Co., Ltd , a Chinese company. The campaign has not been attributed to any known threat actor or group. "While marketed as a legitimate enterprise tool, it is repurposed in this campaign as a powerful, all-in-one espionage framework,...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new dual-vector campaign that leverages stolen credentials to deploy legitimate Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) software for persistent remote access to compromised hosts. "Instead of deploying custom viruses, attackers are bypassing security perimeters by weaponizing the necessary IT tools that administrators trust," KnowBe4 Threat Labs researchers Jeewan Singh Jalal, Prabhakaran Ravichandhiran, and Anand Bodke said . "By stealing a 'skeleton key' to the system, they turn legitimate Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) software into a persistent backdoor." The attack unfolds in two distinct waves, where the threat actors leverage fake invitation notifications to steal victim credentials, and then leverage those pilfered credentials to deploy RMM tools to establish persistent access. The bogus emails are disguised as an invitation from a legitimate platform called Greenvelope, and aim to tri...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of an ongoing campaign dubbed KongTuke that used a malicious Google Chrome extension masquerading as an ad blocker to deliberately crash the web browser and trick victims into running arbitrary commands using ClickFix -like lures to deliver a previously undocumented remote access trojan (RAT) dubbed ModeloRAT. This new escalation of ClickFix, observed earlier this month, has been codenamed CrashFix by Huntress. KongTuke , also tracked as 404 TDS, Chaya_002, LandUpdate808, and TAG-124, is the name given to a traffic distribution system (TDS) known for profiling victim hosts before redirecting them to a payload delivery site that infects their systems. Access to these compromised hosts is then handed off to other threat actors, including ransomware groups, for follow-on malware delivery. Some of the cybercriminal groups that have leveraged TAG-124 infrastructure include Rhysida ransomware , Interlock ransomware , and TA866 (aka Asylu...

The JavaScript (aka JScript) malware loader called GootLoader has been observed using a malformed ZIP archive that's designed to sidestep detection efforts by concatenating anywhere from 500 to 1,000 archives. "The actor creates a malformed archive as an anti-analysis technique," Expel security researcher Aaron Walton said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "That is, many unarchiving tools are not able to consistently extract it, but one critical unarchiving tool seems to work consistently and reliably: the default tool built into Windows systems." This leads to a scenario where the archive cannot be processed by tools like WinRAR or 7-Zip, and, therefore, prevents many automated workflows from analyzing the contents of the file. At the same time, it can be opened by the default Windows unarchiver, thereby ensuring that victims who fall victim to the social engineering scheme can extract and run the JavaScript malware. GootLoader is typically distrib...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new campaign dubbed SHADOW#REACTOR that employs an evasive multi-stage attack chain to deliver a commercially available remote administration tool called Remcos RAT and establish persistent, covert remote access. "The infection chain follows a tightly orchestrated execution path: an obfuscated VBS launcher executed via wscript.exe invokes a PowerShell downloader, which retrieves fragmented, text-based payloads from a remote host," Securonix researchers Akshay Gaikwad, Shikha Sangwan, and Aaron Beardslee said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. "These fragments are reconstructed into encoded loaders, decoded in memory by a .NET Reactor–protected assembly, and used to fetch and apply a remote Remcos configuration. The final stage leverages MSBuild.exe as a living-off-the-land binary (LOLBin) to complete execution, after which the Remcos RAT backdoor is fully deployed and takes control of the comprom...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday said it's retiring 10 emergency directives (Eds) that were issued between 2019 and 2024. The list of the directives now considered closed is as follows - ED 19-01: Mitigate DNS Infrastructure Tampering ED 20-02: Mitigate Windows Vulnerabilities from January 2020 Patch Tuesday ED 20-03: Mitigate Windows DNS Server Vulnerability from July 2020 Patch Tuesday   ED 20-04: Mitigate Netlogon Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability from August 2020 Patch Tuesday ED 21-01: Mitigate SolarWinds Orion Code Compromise ED 21-02: Mitigate Microsoft Exchange On-Premises Product Vulnerabilities ED 21-03: Mitigate Pulse Connect Secure Product Vulnerabilities   ED 21-04: Mitigate Windows Print Spooler Service Vulnerability   ED 22-03: Mitigate VMware Vulnerabilities ED 24-02: Mitigating the Significant Risk from Nation-State Compromise of Microsoft Corporate Email System   Stating that these directives were iss...

Source: Securonix Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new campaign dubbed PHALT#BLYX that has leveraged ClickFix -style lures to display fixes for fake blue screen of death ( BSoD ) errors in attacks targeting the European hospitality sector. The end goal of the multi-stage campaign is to deliver a remote access trojan known as DCRat , according to cybersecurity company Securonix. The activity was detected in late December 2025. "For initial access, the threat actors utilize a fake Booking.com reservation cancellation lure to trick victims into executing malicious PowerShell commands, which silently fetch and execute remote code," researchers Shikha Sangwan, Akshay Gaikwad, and Aaron Beardslee said . The starting point of the attack chain is a phishing email impersonating Booking.com that contains a link to a fake website (e.g., "low-house[.]com"). The messages warn recipients of unexpected reservation cancellations, urging them to click the ...

The Russia-aligned threat actor known as UAC-0184 has been observed targeting Ukrainian military and government entities by leveraging the Viber messaging platform to deliver malicious ZIP archives. "This organization has continued to conduct high-intensity intelligence gathering activities against Ukrainian military and government departments in 2025," the 360 Threat Intelligence Center said in a technical report. Also tracked as Hive0156, the hacking group is primarily known for leveraging war-themed lures in phishing emails to deliver Hijack Loader in attacks targeting Ukrainian entities. The malware loader subsequently acts as a pathway for Remcos RAT infections. The threat actor was first documented by CERT-UA in early January 2024. Subsequent attack campaigns have been found to leverage messaging apps like Signal and Telegram as a delivery vehicle for malware. The latest findings from the Chinese security vendor points to a further evolution of this tactic. ...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new Python-based information stealer called VVS Stealer (also styled as VVS $tealer) that's capable of harvesting Discord credentials and tokens. The stealer is said to have been on sale on Telegram as far back as April 2025, according to a report from Palo Alto Networks Unit 42. "VVS stealer's code is obfuscated by Pyarmor," researchers Pranay Kumar Chhaparwal and Lee Wei Yeong said . "This tool is used to obfuscate Python scripts to hinder static analysis and signature-based detection. Pyarmor can be used for legitimate purposes and also leveraged to build stealthy malware." Advertised on Telegram as the "ultimate stealer," it's available for €10 ($11.69) for a weekly subscription. It can also be purchased at different pricing tiers: €20 ($23) for a month, €40 ($47) for three months, €90 ($105) for a year, and €199 ($232) for a lifetime license, making it one of the cheapest stealers ...

The threat actor known as Transparent Tribe has been attributed to a fresh set of attacks targeting Indian governmental, academic, and strategic entities with a remote access trojan (RAT) that grants them persistent control over compromised hosts. "The campaign employs deceptive delivery techniques, including a weaponized Windows shortcut (LNK) file masquerading as a legitimate PDF document and embedded with full PDF content to evade user suspicion," CYFIRMA said in a technical report. Transparent Tribe, also called APT36, is a hacking group that's known for mounting cyber espionage campaigns against Indian organizations. Assessed to be of Pakistani origin, the state-sponsored adversary has been active since at least 2013. The threat actor boasts of an ever-evolving arsenal of RATs to realize its goals. Some of the trojans put to use by Transparent Tribe in recent years include CapraRAT , Crimson RAT , ElizaRAT , and DeskRAT . The latest set of attacks began with ...

The threat actor known as Silver Fox has turned its focus to India, using income tax-themed lures in phishing campaigns to distribute a modular remote access trojan called ValleyRAT (aka Winos 4.0). "This sophisticated attack leverages a complex kill chain involving DLL hijacking and the modular Valley RAT to ensure persistence," CloudSEK researchers Prajwal Awasthi and Koushik Pal said in an analysis published last week. Also tracked as SwimSnake, The Great Thief of Valley (or Valley Thief), UTG-Q-1000, and Void Arachne, Silver Fox is the name assigned to an aggressive cybercrime group from China that has been active since 2022. It has a track record of orchestrating a variety of campaigns whose motives range from espionage and intelligence collection to financial gain, cryptocurrency mining, and operational disruption, making it one of the few hacking crews with a multi-pronged approach to their intrusion activity. Primarily focused on Chinese-speaking individuals...

A previously undocumented China-aligned threat cluster dubbed LongNosedGoblin has been attributed to a series of cyber attacks targeting governmental entities in Southeast Asia and Japan. The end goal of these attacks is cyber espionage, Slovak cybersecurity company ESET said in a report published today. The threat activity cluster has been assessed to be active since at least September 2023. "LongNosedGoblin uses Group Policy to deploy malware across the compromised network, and cloud services (e.g., Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive) as command and control (C&C) servers," security researchers Anton Cherepanov and Peter Strýček said . Group Policy is a mechanism for managing settings and permissions on Windows machines. According to Microsoft, Group Policy can be used to define configurations for groups of users and client computers, as well as manage server computers. The attacks are characterized by the use of a varied custom toolset that mainly consists of C#...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new fully-featured Windows backdoor called NANOREMOTE that uses the Google Drive API for command-and-control (C2) purposes. According to a report from Elastic Security Labs, the malware shares code similarities with another implant codenamed FINALDRAFT (aka Squidoor) that employs Microsoft Graph API for C2. FINALDRAFT is attributed to a threat cluster known as REF7707 (aka CL-STA-0049, Earth Alux, and Jewelbug). "One of the malware's primary features is centered around shipping data back and forth from the victim endpoint using the Google Drive API," Daniel Stepanic, principal security researcher at Elastic Security Labs, said. "This feature ends up providing a channel for data theft and payload staging that is difficult for detection. The malware includes a task management system used for file transfer capabilities that include queuing download/upload tasks, pausing/resuming file transfers, canceling file...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday added a security flaw impacting the WinRAR file archiver and compression utility to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-6218 (CVSS score: 7.8), is a path traversal bug that could enable code execution. However, for exploitation to succeed, it requires a prospective target to visit a malicious page or open a malicious file. "RARLAB WinRAR contains a path traversal vulnerability allowing an attacker to execute code in the context of the current user," CISA said in an alert. The vulnerability was patched by RARLAB with WinRAR 7.12 in June 2025. It only affects Windows-based builds. Versions of the tool for other platforms, including Unix and Android, are not affected. "This flaw could be exploited to place files in sensitive locations — such as the Windows Startup folder — potentially leading to u...

Microsoft closed out 2025 with patches for 56 security flaws in various products across the Windows platform, including one vulnerability that has been actively exploited in the wild. Of the 56 flaws, three are rated Critical, and 53 are rated Important in severity. Two other defects are listed as publicly known at the time of the release. These include 29 privilege escalation, 18 remote code execution, four information disclosure, three denial-of-service, and two spoofing vulnerabilities. In total, Microsoft has addressed a total of 1,275 CVEs in 2025, according to data compiled by Fortra. Tenable's Satnam Narang said 2025 also marks the second consecutive year where the Windows maker has patched over 1,000 CVEs. It's the third time it has done so since Patch Tuesday's inception. The update is in addition to 17 shortcomings the tech giant patched in its Chromium-based Edge browser since the release of the November 2025 Patch Tuesday update . This also consists of a s...

If you're using community tools like Chocolatey or Winget to keep systems updated, you're not alone. These platforms are fast, flexible, and easy to work with—making them favorites for IT teams. But there's a catch... The very tools that make your job easier might also be the reason your systems are at risk. These tools are run by the community. That means anyone can add or update packages. Some packages may be old, missing safety checks, or changed by mistake or on purpose. Hackers look for these weak spots. This has already happened in places like NPM and PyPI. The same risks can happen with Windows tools too. To help you patch safely without slowing down, there's a free webinar coming up . It's led by Gene Moody, Field CTO at Action1 . He'll walk through how these tools work, where the risks are, and how to protect your systems while keeping updates on track. In this session, he'll test how safe these tools really are. You'll get practical steps you can use right away—n...

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a new campaign that's leveraging a combination of ClickFix lures and fake adult websites to deceive users into running malicious commands under the guise of a "critical" Windows security update. "Campaign leverages fake adult websites (xHamster, PornHub clones) as its phishing mechanism, likely distributed via malvertising," Acronis said in a new report shared with The Hacker News. "The adult theme, and possible connection to shady websites, adds to the victim's psychological pressure to comply with sudden 'security update' installation." ClickFix-style attacks have surged over the past year, typically tricking users into running malicious commands on their own machines using prompts for technical fixes or completing CAPTCHA verification checks. According to data from Microsoft, ClickFix has become the most common initial access method, accounting for 47% of attacks. The latest camp...

Bad actors are leveraging browser notifications as a vector for phishing attacks to distribute malicious links by means of a new command-and-control (C2) platform called Matrix Push C2. "This browser-native, fileless framework leverages push notifications, fake alerts, and link redirects to target victims across operating systems," Blackfog researcher Brenda Robb said in a Thursday report. In these attacks, prospective targets are tricked into allowing browser notifications through social engineering on malicious or legitimate-but-compromised websites. Once a user agrees to receive notifications from the site, the attackers take advantage of the web push notification mechanism built into the web browser to send alerts that look like they have been sent by the operating system or the browser itself, leveraging trusted branding, familiar logos, and convincing language to maintain the ruse. These include alerts about, say, suspicious logins or browser updates, along with ...