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New research from CrowdStrike has revealed that DeepSeek's artificial intelligence (AI) reasoning model DeepSeek-R1 produces more security vulnerabilities in response to prompts that contain topics deemed politically sensitive by China. "We found that when DeepSeek-R1 receives prompts containing topics the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) likely considers politically sensitive, the likelihood of it producing code with severe security vulnerabilities increases by up to 50%," the cybersecurity company said . The Chinese AI company previously attracted national security concerns, leading to a ban in many countries. Its open-source DeepSeek-R1 model was also found to censor topics considered sensitive by the Chinese government, refusing to answer questions about the Great Firewall of China or the political status of Taiwan, among others. In a statement released earlier this month, Taiwan's National Security Bureau warned citizens to be vigilant when using Chinese-m...

A recently patched security flaw in Microsoft Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) has been exploited by threat actors to distribute malware known as ShadowPad. "The attacker targeted Windows Servers with WSUS enabled, exploiting CVE-2025-59287 for initial access," AhnLab Security Intelligence Center (ASEC) said in a report published last week. "They then used PowerCat , an open-source PowerShell-based Netcat utility, to obtain a system shell (CMD). Subsequently, they downloaded and installed ShadowPad using certutil and curl." ShadowPad , assessed to be a successor to PlugX, is a modular backdoor widely used by Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups. It first emerged in 2015. In an analysis published in August 2021, SentinelOne called it a "masterpiece of privately sold malware in Chinese espionage." CVE-2025-59287 , addressed by Microsoft last month, refers to a critical deserialization flaw in WSUS that could be exploited to achieve remote code ...

The China-linked advanced persistent threat (APT) group known as APT31 has been attributed to cyber attacks targeting the Russian information technology (IT) sector between 2024 and 2025 while staying undetected for extended periods of time. "In the period from 2024 to 2025, the Russian IT sector, especially companies working as contractors and integrators of solutions for government agencies, faced a series of targeted computer attacks," Positive Technologies researchers Daniil Grigoryan and Varvara Koloskova said in a technical report. APT31, also known as Altaire, Bronze Vinewood, Judgement Panda, PerplexedGoblin, RedBravo, Red Keres, and Violet Typhoon (formerly Zirconium), is assessed to be active since at least 2010. It has a track record of striking a wide range of sectors, including governments, financial, and aerospace and defense, high tech, construction and engineering, telecommunications, media, and insurance. The cyber espionage group is primarily focused ...

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 ...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday added a critical security flaw impacting Oracle Identity Manager to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-61757 (CVSS score: 9.8), a case of missing authentication for a critical function that can result in pre-authenticated remote code execution. The vulnerability affects versions 12.2.1.4.0 and 14.1.2.1.0. It was addressed by Oracle as part of its quarterly updates released last month. "Oracle Fusion Middleware contains a missing authentication for a critical function vulnerability, allowing unauthenticated remote attackers to take over Identity Manager," CISA said. Searchlight Cyber researchers Adam Kues and Shubham Shah, who discovered the flaw, said it can permit an attacker to access API endpoints that, in turn, can allow them "to manipulate authentication flows, escalate privileges, and ...

Grafana has released security updates to address a maximum severity security flaw that could allow privilege escalation or user impersonation under certain configurations. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-41115 , carries a CVSS score of 10.0. It resides in the System for Cross-domain Identity Management ( SCIM ) component that allows automated user provisioning and management. First introduced in April 2025, it's currently in public preview. "In Grafana versions 12.x where SCIM provisioning is enabled and configured, a vulnerability in user identity handling allows a malicious or compromised SCIM client to provision a user with a numeric externalId, which in turn could allow for overriding internal user IDs and lead to impersonation or privilege escalation," Grafana's Vardan Torosyan said . That said, successful exploitation hinges on both conditions being met - enableSCIM feature flag is set to true user_sync_enabled config option in the [auth.scim] bl...

In a surprise move, Google on Thursday announced that it has updated Quick Share, its peer-to-peer file transfer service, to work with Apple's equipment AirDrop, allowing users to more easily share files and photos between Android and iPhone devices. The cross-platform sharing feature is currently limited to the Pixel 10 lineup and works with iPhone, iPad, and macOS devices, with plans to expand to additional Android devices in the future. In order to transfer a file from a Pixel 10 phone over AirDrop, the only caveat is that the owner of the Apple device is required to make sure their iPhone (or iPad or Mac) is discoverable to anyone – which can be enabled for 10 minutes. Likewise, to receive content from an Apple device, Android device users will need to adjust their Quick Share visibility settings to Everyone for 10 minutes or be in Receive mode on the Quick Share page, according to a support document published by Google. "We built Quick Share's interoperability...

Ever wonder how some IT teams keep corporate data safe without slowing down employees? Of course you have. Mobile devices are essential for modern work—but with mobility comes risk. IT admins, like you, juggle protecting sensitive data while keeping teams productive. That's why more enterprises are turning to Samsung for mobile security. Hey—you're busy, so here's a quick-read article on what makes Samsung Galaxy devices and Knox Suite really stand out. Security built in. Management simplified. Samsung Galaxy devices come with Samsung Knox built in at the manufacturing stage, creating a hardware foundation that extends visibility and control across your security infrastructure. Simplified management with Knox Suite: Samsung's all-in-one package to manage and secure work devices grants centralized control without the need for extra tools or workflows (that got your attention!). Integrated security: Samsung Knox is built into both hardware and software, giving multi-la...

A China-nexus threat actor known as APT24 has been observed using a previously undocumented malware dubbed BADAUDIO to establish persistent remote access to compromised networks as part of a nearly three-year campaign. "While earlier operations relied on broad strategic web compromises to compromise legitimate websites, APT24 has recently pivoted to using more sophisticated vectors targeting organizations in Taiwan," Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) researchers Harsh Parashar, Tierra Duncan, and Dan Perez said . "This includes the repeated compromise of a regional digital marketing firm to execute supply chain attacks and the use of targeted phishing campaigns." APT24, also called Pitty Tiger, is the moniker assigned to a suspected Chinese hacking group that has targeted government, healthcare, construction and engineering, mining, non-profit, and telecommunications sectors in the U.S. and Taiwan. The group is also known to engage in cyber operations wh...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has abandoned its lawsuit against SolarWinds and its chief information security officer, alleging that the company had misled investors about the security practices that led to the 2020 supply chain attack. In a joint motion filed November 20, 2025, the SEC, along with SolarWinds and its CISO Timothy G. Brown, asked the court to voluntarily dismiss the case. The SEC said its decision to seek dismissal "does not necessarily reflect the Commission's position on any other case." SolarWinds and Brown were accused by the SEC in October 2023 of "fraud and internal control failures" and that the company defrauded investors by overstating its cybersecurity practices and understating or failing to disclose known risks. The agency also said both SolarWinds and Brown ignored "repeated red flags" and failed to adequately protect its assets, ultimately leading to the supply chain compromise that came to li...

Salesforce has warned of detected "unusual activity" related to Gainsight-published applications connected to the platform. "Our investigation indicates this activity may have enabled unauthorized access to certain customers' Salesforce data through the app's connection," the company said in an advisory. The cloud services firm said it has taken the step of revoking all active access and refresh tokens associated with Gainsight-published applications connected to Salesforce. It has also temporarily removed those applications from the AppExchange as its investigation continues. Salesforce did not disclose how many customers were impacted by the incident, but said it has notified them. "There is no indication that this issue resulted from any vulnerability in the Salesforce platform," the company added. "The activity appears to be related to the app's external connection to Salesforce." Out of an abundance of caution, the Gainsight ...

Oligo Security has warned of ongoing attacks exploiting a two-year-old security flaw in the Ray open-source artificial intelligence (AI) framework to turn infected clusters with NVIDIA GPUs into a self-replicating cryptocurrency mining botnet. The activity, codenamed ShadowRay 2.0 , is an evolution of a prior wave that was observed between September 2023 and March 2024. The attack, at its core, exploits a critical missing authentication bug (CVE-2023-48022, CVSS score: 9.8) to take control of susceptible instances and hijack their computing power for illicit cryptocurrency mining using XMRig. The vulnerability has remained unpatched due to a " long-standing design decision " that's consistent with Ray's development best practices, which requires it to be run in an isolated network and act upon trusted code. The campaign involves submitting malicious jobs, with commands ranging from simple reconnaissance to complex multi-stage Bash and Python payloads, to an una...