The Hacker News | #1 Trusted Source for Cybersecurity News — Index Page

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a new malware campaign that makes use of a PowerShell-based shellcode loader to deploy a remote access trojan called Remcos RAT. "Threat actors delivered malicious LNK files embedded within ZIP archives, often disguised as Office documents," Qualys security researcher Akshay Thorve said in a technical report. "The attack chain leverages mshta.exe for proxy execution during the initial stage." The latest wave of attacks, as detailed by Qualys, employs tax-related lures to entice users into opening a malicious ZIP archive containing a Windows shortcut (LNK) file, which, in turn, makes use of mshta.exe, a legitimate Microsoft tool used to run HTML Applications (HTA). The binary is used to execute an obfuscated HTA file named "xlab22.hta" hosted on a remote server, which incorporates Visual Basic Script code to download a PowerShell script, a decoy PDF, and another HTA file similar to xlab22.hta called "3...

Austrian privacy non-profit noyb (none of your business) has sent Meta's Irish headquarters a cease-and-desist letter, threatening the company with a class action lawsuit if it proceeds with its plans to train users' data for training its artificial intelligence (AI) models without an explicit opt-in. The move comes weeks after the social media behemoth announced its plans to train its AI models using public data shared by adults across Facebook and Instagram in the European Union (E.U.) starting May 27, 2025, after it paused the efforts in June 2024 following concerns raised by Irish data protection authorities. "Instead of asking consumers for opt-in consent, Meta relies on an alleged 'legitimate interest' to just suck up all user data," noyb said in a statement. "Meta may face massive legal risks – just because it relies on an 'opt-out' instead of an 'opt-in' system for AI training." The advocacy group further noted that Met...

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has disclosed that unknown cyber actors broke into its systems and stole account data for a small subset of its customers. "Criminals targeted our customer support agents overseas," the company said in a statement. "They used cash offers to convince a small group of insiders to copy data in our customer support tools for less than 1% of Coinbase monthly transacting users." The end goal of the campaign was to put together a list of customers who they contacted by masquerading as Coinbase and deceiving them into handing over their cryptocurrency assets. Coinbase said the threat actors then unsuccessfully attempted to extort the company for $20 million on May 11, 2025, by claiming to have information about certain customer accounts as well as internal documents. In a statement shared with Fortune, Coinbase said the compromised customer agents worked in India and have all been fired.  "No passwords, private keys, or funds w...

Imagine this: Your organization completed its annual penetration test in January, earning high marks for security compliance. In February, your development team deployed a routine software update. By April, attackers had already exploited a vulnerability introduced in that February update, gaining access to customer data weeks before being finally detected. This situation isn't theoretical: it plays out repeatedly as organizations realize that point-in-time compliance testing can't protect against vulnerabilities introduced after the assessment. According to Verizons 2025 Data Breach Investigation Report , the exploitation of vulnerabilities rose 34% year-over-year. While compliance frameworks provide important security guidelines, companies need continuous security validation to identify and remediate new vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them. Here's what you need to know about pen testing to meet compliance standards — and why you should adopt continuous penetratio...

Google on Wednesday released updates to address four security issues in its Chrome web browser, including one for which it said there exists an exploit in the wild. The high-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-4664 (CVSS score: 4.3), has been characterized as a case of insufficient policy enforcement in a component called Loader. "Insufficient policy enforcement in Loader in Google Chrome prior to 136.0.7103.113 allowed a remote attacker to leak cross-origin data via a crafted HTML page," according to a description of the flaw. The tech giant credited security researcher Vsevolod Kokorin (@slonser_) with detailing the flaw in X on May 5, 2025, adding it's aware "an exploit for CVE-2025-4664 exists in the wild." "Unlike other browsers, Chrome resolves the Link header on sub-resource requests," Kokorin said in a series of posts on X earlier this month. "The issue is that the Link header can set a referrer-policy. We can specify uns...

Ransomware has evolved into a deceptive, highly coordinated and dangerously sophisticated threat capable of crippling organizations of any size. Cybercriminals now exploit even legitimate IT tools to infiltrate networks and launch ransomware attacks. In a chilling example, Microsoft recently disclosed how threat actors misused its Quick Assist remote assistance tool to deploy the destructive Black Basta ransomware strain. And what's worse? Innovations like Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) are lowering the bar for entry, making ransomware attacks more frequent and far-reaching than ever before. According to Cybersecurity Ventures , by 2031, a new ransomware attack is expected every 2 seconds, with projected damages hitting an astronomical $275 billion annually. No organization is immune to ransomware, and building a strong recovery strategy is equally, if not even more, important than attempting to prevent all attacks in the first place. A solid business continuity and disaster re...

A Russia-linked threat actor has been attributed to a cyber espionage operation targeting webmail servers such as Roundcube, Horde, MDaemon, and Zimbra via cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities, including a then-zero-day in MDaemon, according to new findings from ESET. The activity, which commenced in 2023, has been codenamed Operation RoundPress by the Slovak cybersecurity company. It has been attributed with medium confidence to the Russian state-sponsored hacking group tracked as APT28, which is also referred to as BlueDelta, Fancy Bear, Fighting Ursa, Forest Blizzard, FROZENLAKE, Iron Twilight, ITG05, Pawn Storm, Sednit, Sofacy, and TA422. "The ultimate goal of this operation is to steal confidential data from specific email accounts," ESET researcher Matthieu Faou said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Most victims are governmental entities and defense companies in Eastern Europe, although we have observed governments in Africa, Europe, and South ...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious package named "os-info-checker-es6" that disguises itself as an operating system information utility to stealthily drop a next-stage payload onto compromised systems. "This campaign employs clever Unicode-based steganography to hide its initial malicious code and utilizes a Google Calendar event short link as a dynamic dropper for its final payload," Veracode said in a r eport shared with The Hacker News. "Os-info-checker-es6" was first published in the npm registry on March 19, 2025, by a user named "kim9123." It has been downloaded 2,001 times as of writing. The same user has also uploaded another npm package called "skip-tot" that lists "os-info-checker-es6" as a dependency. The package has been downloaded 94 times . While the initial five versions exhibited no signs of data exfiltration or malicious behavior, a subsequent iteration uploaded on May 7, 2025, has ...

Samsung has released software updates to address a critical security flaw in MagicINFO 9 Server that has been actively exploited in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-4632 (CVSS score: 9.8), has been described as a path traversal flaw. "Improper limitation of a pathname to a restricted directory vulnerability in Samsung MagicINFO 9 Server version before 21.1052 allows attackers to write arbitrary files as system authority," according to an advisory for the flaw. It's worth noting that CVE-2025-4632 is a patch bypass for CVE-2024-7399, another path traversal flaw in the same product that was remediated by Samsung in August 2024. CVE-2025-4632 has since been exploited in the wild shortly after the release of a proof-of-concept (PoC) by SSD Disclosure on April 30, 2025, in some instances to even deploy the Mirai botnet. While it was initially assumed that the attacks were targeting CVE-2024-7399, cybersecurity company Huntress first revealed the exist...

At least two different cybercrime groups BianLian and RansomExx are said to have exploited a recently disclosed security flaw in SAP NetWeaver tracked as CVE-2025-31324 , indicating that multiple threat actors are taking advantage of the bug. Cybersecurity firm ReliaQuest, in a new update published today, said it uncovered evidence suggesting involvement from the BianLian data extortion crew and the RansomExx ransomware family, which is traced by Microsoft under the moniker Storm-2460. BianLian is assessed to be involved in at least one incident based on infrastructure links to IP addresses previously identified as attributed to the e-crime group. "We identified a server at 184[.]174[.]96[.]74 hosting reverse proxy services initiated by the rs64.exe executable," the company said. "This server is related to another IP, 184[.]174[.]96[.]70, operated by the same hosting provider. The second IP had previously been flagged as a command-and-control (C2) server associat...

A Chinese-language, Telegram-based marketplace called Xinbi Guarantee has facilitated no less than $8.4 billion in transactions since 2022, making it the second major black market to be exposed after HuiOne Guarantee . According to a report published by blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, merchants on the marketplace have been found to peddle technology, personal data, and money laundering services. "The USDT stablecoin is the primary payment method, with the market having received $8.4 billion in transactions to date," the company said . "Some transactions can be linked to funds stolen by North Korea." Xinbi, like HuiOne, has offered its services to scammers in Southeast Asia, including those responsible for so-called romance baiting schemes (formerly referred to as "pig butchering"), which has become one of the most lucrative forms of cybercrime in recent years. What's notable about these criminal bazaars is that they are entirely run on Tele...

A new global phishing threat called " Meta Mirage " has been uncovered, targeting businesses using Meta's Business Suite. This campaign specifically aims at hijacking high-value accounts, including those managing advertising and official brand pages. Cybersecurity researchers at CTM360 revealed that attackers behind Meta Mirage impersonate official Meta communications, tricking users into handing over sensitive details like passwords and security codes (OTP). The scale of this operation is alarming. Researchers have already identified over 14,000 malicious URLs , a concerning majority of which —nearly 78%— were not blocked by browsers at the time the report was published. Cybercriminals cleverly hosted fake pages leveraging trusted cloud platforms like GitHub, Firebase, and Vercel, making it harder to spot the scams. This method aligns closely with recent findings from Microsoft, which highlighted similar abuse of cloud hosting services to compromise Kubernetes appli...