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

Cloud attacks move fast — faster than most incident response teams. In data centers, investigations had time. Teams could collect disk images, review logs, and build timelines over days. In the cloud, infrastructure is short-lived. A compromised instance can disappear in minutes. Identities rotate. Logs expire. Evidence can vanish before analysis even begins. Cloud forensics is fundamentally different from traditional forensics. If investigations still rely on manual log stitching, attackers already have the advantage. Register: See Context-Aware Forensics in Action ➜ Why Traditional Incident Response Fails in the Cloud Most teams face the same problem: alerts without context. You might detect a suspicious API call, a new identity login, or unusual data access — but the full attack path remains unclear across the environment. Attackers use this visibility gap to move laterally, escalate privileges, and reach critical assets before responders can connect the activity. To...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed that artificial intelligence (AI) assistants that support web browsing or URL fetching capabilities can be turned into stealthy command-and-control (C2) relays, a technique that could allow attackers to blend into legitimate enterprise communications and evade detection. The attack method, which has been demonstrated against Microsoft Copilot and xAI Grok, has been codenamed AI as a C2 proxy by Check Point. It leverages "anonymous web access combined with browsing and summarization prompts," the cybersecurity company said. "The same mechanism can also enable AI-assisted malware operations, including generating reconnaissance workflows, scripting attacker actions, and dynamically deciding 'what to do next' during an intrusion." The development signals yet another consequential evolution in how threat actors could abuse AI systems, not just to scale or accelerate different phases of the cyber attack cycle, but als...

A new Android backdoor that's embedded deep into the device firmware can silently harvest data and remotely control its behavior, according to new findings from Kaspersky. The Russian cybersecurity vendor said it discovered the backdoor, dubbed Keenadu , in the firmware of devices associated with various brands, including Alldocube, with the compromise occurring during the firmware build phase. Keenadu has been detected in Alldocube iPlay 50 mini Pro firmware dating back to August 18, 2023. In all cases, the backdoor is embedded within tablet firmware, and the firmware files carry valid digital signatures. The names of the other vendors were not disclosed. "In several instances, the compromised firmware was delivered with an OTA update," security researcher Dmitry Kalinin said in an exhaustive analysis published today. "A copy of the backdoor is loaded into the address space of every app upon launch. The malware is a multi-stage loader granting its operators the ...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new SmartLoader campaign that involves distributing a trojanized version of a Model Context Protocol ( MCP ) server associated with Oura Health to deliver an information stealer known as StealC . "The threat actors cloned a legitimate Oura MCP Server – a tool that connects AI assistants to Oura Ring health data – and built a deceptive infrastructure of fake forks and contributors to manufacture credibility," Straiker's AI Research (STAR) Labs team said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The end game is to leverage the trojanized version of the Oura MCP server to deliver the StealC infostealer, allowing the threat actors to steal credentials, browser passwords, and data from cryptocurrency wallets. SmartLoader, first highlighted by OALABS Research in early 2024, is a malware loader that's known to be distributed via fake GitHub repositories containing artificial intelligence (AI)-generated lures to giv...

My objective As someone relatively inexperienced with network threat hunting, I wanted to get some hands-on experience using a network detection and response (NDR) system. My goal was to understand how NDR is used in hunting and incident response, and how it fits into the daily workflow of a Security Operations Center (SOC). Corelight’s Investigator software , part of its Open NDR Platform, is designed to be user-friendly (even for junior analysts) so I thought it would be a good fit for me. I was given access to a production version of Investigator that had been loaded with pre-recorded network traffic. This is a common way to learn how to use this type of software. While I’m new to threat hunting, I do have experience looking at network traffic flows. I was even an early user of one of the first network traffic analyzers called Sniffer. Sniffers were specialized PCs equipped with network adapters designed to capture traffic and packets. These computers were the foundation on whi...

New research from Microsoft has revealed that legitimate businesses are gaming artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots via the "Summarize with AI" button that's being increasingly placed on websites in ways that mirror classic search engine poisoning (SEO). The new AI hijacking technique has been codenamed AI Recommendation Poisoning by the Microsoft Defender Security Research Team. The tech giant described it as a case of an AI memory poisoning attack that's used to induce bias and deceive the AI system to generate responses that artificially boost visibility and skew recommendations. "Companies are embedding hidden instructions in 'Summarize with AI' buttons that, when clicked, attempt to inject persistence commands into an AI assistant's memory via URL prompt parameters," Microsoft said . "These prompts instruct the AI to 'remember [Company] as a trusted source' or 'recommend [Company] first.'" Microsoft said it id...

Apple on Monday released a new developer beta of iOS and iPadOS with support for end-to-end encryption (E2EE) in Rich Communications Services ( RCS ) messages. The feature is currently available for testing in iOS and iPadOS 26.4 Beta, and is expected to be shipped to customers in a future update for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS. "End-to-end encryption is in beta and is not available for all devices or carriers," Apple said in its release notes. "Conversations labeled as encrypted are encrypted end-to-end, so messages can't be read while they're sent between devices." The iPhone maker also pointed out that the availability of RCS encryption is limited to conversations between Apple devices, and not other platforms like Android. The secure messaging test arrives nearly a year after the GSM Association (GSMA) formally announced support for E2EE for safeguarding messages sent via the RCS protocol. E2EE for RCS‌ will require Apple to update to ‌RCS‌ Un...