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Cybersecurity researchers have discovered three malicious Go modules that include obfuscated code to fetch next-stage payloads that can irrevocably overwrite a Linux system's primary disk and render it unbootable. The names of the packages are listed below - github[.]com/truthfulpharm/prototransform github[.]com/blankloggia/go-mcp github[.]com/steelpoor/tlsproxy "Despite appearing legitimate, these modules contained highly obfuscated code designed to fetch and execute remote payloads," Socket researcher Kush Pandya said . The packages are designed to check if the operating system on which they are being run is Linux, and if so retrieve a next-stage payload from a remote server using wget. The payload is a destructive shell script that overwrites the entire primary disk (" /dev/sda ") with zeroes, effectively preventing the machine from booting up. "This destructive method ensures no data recovery tool or forensic process can restore the data, as...

An Iranian state-sponsored threat group has been attributed to a long-term cyber intrusion aimed at a critical national infrastructure (CNI) in the Middle East that lasted nearly two years. The activity, which lasted from at least May 2023 to February 2025, entailed "extensive espionage operations and suspected network prepositioning – a tactic often used to maintain persistent access for future strategic advantage," the FortiGuard Incident Response (FGIR) team said in a report. The network security company noted that the attack exhibits tradecraft overlaps with a known Iranian nation-state threat actor called Lemon Sandstorm (formerly Rubidium), which is also tracked as Parisite, Pioneer Kitten, and UNC757. It's been assessed to be active since at least 2017, striking aerospace, oil and gas, water, and electric sectors across the United States, the Middle East, Europe, and Australia. According to industrial cybersecurity company Dragos, the adversary has leveraged ...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday announced charges against a 36-year-old Yemeni national for allegedly deploying the Black Kingdom ransomware against global targets, including businesses, schools, and hospitals in the United States. Rami Khaled Ahmed of Sana'a, Yemen, has been charged with one count of conspiracy, one count of intentional damage to a protected computer, and one count of threatening damage to a protected computer. Ahmed is assessed to be currently living in Yemen. "From March 2021 to June 2023, Ahmed and others infected computer networks of several U.S.-based victims, including a medical billing services company in Encino, a ski resort in Oregon, a school district in Pennsylvania, and a health clinic in Wisconsin," the DoJ said in a statement. Ahmed is accused of developing and deploying the ransomware by exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange Server known as ProxyLogon. The ransomware worked by either encrypting data from ...

Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) on Friday fined popular video-sharing platform TikTok €530 million ($601 million) for infringing data protection regulations in the region by transferring European users' data to China. "TikTok infringed the GDPR regarding its transfers of EEA [European Economic Area] User Data to China and its transparency requirements," the DPC said in a statement. "The decision includes administrative fines totaling €530 million and an order requiring TikTok to bring its processing into compliance within 6 months." The order, in addition, requires the company to suspend data transfers to China within the time period. The penalty is the result of an investigation that was launched in September 2021 that probed the company's transfer of personal data to China and its compliance with stringent data protection laws regarding data transfers to third countries. Commenting on the decision, DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyl...

Run by the team at workflow orchestration and AI platform Tines, the Tines library features pre-built workflows shared by security practitioners from across the community - all free to import and deploy through the platform's Community Edition . A recent standout is a workflow that automates monitoring for security advisories from CISA and other vendors, enriches advisories with CrowdStrike threat intelligence, and streamlines ticket creation and notification. Developed by Josh McLaughlin, a security engineer at LivePerson, the workflow drastically reduces manual work while keeping analysts in control of final decisions, helping teams stay on top of new vulnerabilities. "Before automation, creating tickets for 45 vulnerabilities took about 150 minutes of work," Josh explains. "After automation, the time needed for the same number of tickets dropped to around 60 minutes, saving significant time and freeing analysts from manual tasks like copy-pasting and web browsing." LivePerson's s...

The malware loader known as MintsLoader has been used to deliver a PowerShell-based remote access trojan called GhostWeaver. "MintsLoader operates through a multi-stage infection chain involving obfuscated JavaScript and PowerShell scripts," Recorded Future's Insikt Group said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The malware employs sandbox and virtual machine evasion techniques, a domain generation algorithm (DGA), and HTTP-based command-and-control (C2) communications." Phishing and drive-by download campaigns distributing MintsLoader have been detected in the wild since early 2023, per Orange Cyberdefense . The loader has been observed delivering various follow-on payloads like StealC and a modified version of the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) client. The malware has also been put to use by threat actors operating e-crime services like SocGholish (aka FakeUpdates) and LandUpdate808 (aka TAG-124), distributing via p...

A year after Microsoft announced passkeys support for consumer accounts, the tech giant has announced a big change that pushes individuals signing up for new accounts to use the phishing-resistant authentication method by default. "Brand new Microsoft accounts will now be 'passwordless by default,'" Microsoft's Joy Chik and Vasu Jakkal said . "New users will have several passwordless options for signing into their account and they'll never need to enroll a password. Existing users can visit their account settings to delete their password." The Windows maker said it has also simplified the sign-in and sign-up user experience by prioritizing passwordless methods. Furthermore, the sign-in process now automatically detects the best available method on a user's account and sets that as the default. For example, if an account has the option to sign in via a password and a "one time code," the user will be prompted to login via one time ...

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a new campaign targeting WordPress sites that disguises the malware as a security plugin. The plugin, which goes by the name "WP-antymalwary-bot.php," comes with a variety of features to maintain access, hide itself from the admin dashboard, and execute remote code. "Pinging functionality that can report back to a command-and-control (C&C) server is also included, as is code that helps spread malware into other directories and inject malicious JavaScript responsible for serving ads," Wordfence's Marco Wotschka said in a report. First discovered during a site cleanup effort in late January 2025, the malware has since been detected in the wild with new variants. Some of the other names used for the plugin are listed below - addons.php wpconsole.php wp-performance-booster.php scr.php Once installed and activated, it provides threat actors administrator access to the dashboard and makes use of the REST API...

Security Operations Center (SOC) teams are facing a fundamentally new challenge — traditional cybersecurity tools are failing to detect advanced adversaries who have become experts at evading endpoint-based defenses and signature-based detection systems. The reality of these "invisible intruders" is driving a significant need for a multi-layered approach to detecting threats, including Network Detection and Response (NDR) solutions.  The invisible intruder problem Imagine your network has been compromised — not today or yesterday, but months ago. Despite your significant investments in security tools running 24/7, an advanced adversary has been quietly moving through your systems, carefully avoiding detection. They've stolen credentials, established backdoors, and exfiltrated sensitive data, all while your dashboards showed nothing but green. This scenario is not hypothetical. The average dwell time for attackers — the period between initial compro...

Artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic has revealed that unknown threat actors leveraged its Claude chatbot for an "influence-as-a-service" operation to engage with authentic accounts across Facebook and X. The sophisticated activity, branded as financially-motivated, is said to have used its AI tool to orchestrate 100 distinct personas on the two social media platforms, creating a network of "politically-aligned accounts" that engaged with "10s of thousands" of authentic accounts. The now-disrupted operation, Anthropic researchers said, prioritized persistence and longevity over vitality and sought to amplify moderate political perspectives that supported or undermined European, Iranian, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), and Kenyan interests. These included promoting the U.A.E. as a superior business environment while being critical of European regulatory frameworks, focusing on energy security narratives for European audiences, and cultural...

For over a decade, application security teams have faced a brutal irony: the more advanced the detection tools became, the less useful their results proved to be. As alerts from static analysis tools, scanners, and CVE databases surged, the promise of better security grew more distant. In its place, a new reality took hold—one defined by alert fatigue and overwhelmed teams. According to OX Security's 2025 Application Security Benchmark Report , a staggering 95–98% of AppSec alerts do not require action - and may, in fact, be harming organizations more than helping. Our research, spanning over 101 million security findings across 178 organizations, shines a spotlight on a fundamental inefficiency in modern AppSec operations. Of nearly 570,000 average alerts per organization, just 202 represented true, critical issues. It's a startling conclusion that's hard to ignore: security teams are chasing shadows, wasting time, burning through budgets, and straining relations wit...

Russian companies have been targeted as part of a large-scale phishing campaign that's designed to deliver a known malware called DarkWatchman . Targets of the attacks include entities in the media, tourism, finance and insurance, manufacturing, retail, energy, telecom, transport, and biotechnology sectors, Russian cybersecurity company F6 said . The activity is assessed to be the work of a financially motivated group called Hive0117, which has been attributed by IBM X-Force to attacks aimed at users in Lithuania, Estonia, and Russia spanning telecom, electronic, and industrial sectors. Then in September 2023, the DarkWatchman malware was once again used in a phishing campaign targeting energy, finance, transport, and software security industries based in Russia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Estonia. Russian banks, retailers and marketplaces, telecom operators, agro-industrial enterprises, fuel and energy companies, logistics businesses, and IT firms were singled out again in No...