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Chaos Ransomware Uses msaRAT to Route C2 Traffic Through Headless Chrome and Edge

Chaos Ransomware Uses msaRAT to Route C2 Traffic Through Headless Chrome and Edge

Jul 23, 2026 Ransomware / Network Security
The Chaos ransomware group ran its command-and-control through the victim's own browser. Cisco Talos on Thursday detailed msaRAT , the Rust implant behind it, found on a compromised Windows machine ahead of the encryptor. The implant never opens an outbound connection of its own. Its process talks to 127.0.0.1 and nothing else. It starts Chrome or Edge in headless mode and drives the browser over the Chrome DevTools Protocol, the browser's own debugging API. Every C2 message travels out from there through a WebRTC data channel relayed by Twilio's TURN service, so what a defender sees on the wire is a browser calling Cloudflare and Twilio. The attacker's own server address never appears at all. Chrome Does the Talking msaRAT looks for Chrome or Edge through environment variables first, then falls back to the registry for Chrome. If no matching browser is found, the CDP path is skipped. When it finds one, it starts the browser without a visible window using -...
China-Nexus JadeProx Uses New TriBack Loader in Government and Healthcare Attacks

China-Nexus JadeProx Uses New TriBack Loader in Government and Healthcare Attacks

Jul 23, 2026 Malware / Threat Intelligence
An exposed Alibaba Cloud server has revealed a China-nexus operation that Group-IB tracks as JadeProx . The cluster has targeted government, healthcare, and education organizations across Asia and Latin America with a previously undocumented Windows loader called TriBack Loader. Group-IB found the server in mid-April 2026 in Alibaba Cloud's Singapore region; it was offline by the time the report published on July 23, 2026. Its bash history, phishing packages, post-exploitation tools, and webshell paths laid the operation out: active intrusions against a Vietnamese public hospital's medical imaging system and Malaysia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, scanning and exploitation follow-up against Hong Kong education infrastructure, and a spear-phishing package addressed to the National Congress of Honduras. The operators reached the hospital's imaging server through webshells planted on an exposed Java management interface. One Loader, Four Builds TriBack Loader a...
How Synthetic Identity Fraud is Coming for Machine Identities

How Synthetic Identity Fraud is Coming for Machine Identities

Jul 23, 2026 Identity Security / Cloud Security
Most people understand identity theft as an attacker stealing a real person's sensitive information and impersonating them. Synthetic identity fraud is much harder to catch. Instead of stealing a real identity, the attacker manufactures a new one, frankensteining together several real data points with fabricated ones to create a person who doesn't exist. Since no real victim monitors misuse, a fake identity can silently accumulate permissions and credibility over time before it's ever detected. This same principle has a largely unexplored parallel with Non-Human Identities (NHIs). Security teams are spending significant effort to protect NHIs from being stolen. Still, the machine-side equivalent of synthetic identity fraud is rarely discussed: identities that were never legitimately provisioned from the start. Following this approach, an attacker doesn't hijack an existing service account but instead fabricates one, blending real environmental attributes with fake o...
cyber security

Agentic AI Runs Recon, Phishing, and Malware Without a Human

websiteSANSAI Security / Offensive AI
Foster Nethercott explains how, then SANS SEC535 teaches the tradecraft. GOAA cert path.
cyber security

Webinar: The State of Shadow AI in 2026 (And How Attackers Are Taking Advantage)

websitePush SecurityShadow AI / SaaS Security
AI adoption has exploded, but every new app, integration and extension introduces new threats and risks.
Attackers Weaponize GitHub Actions Runners to Target cPanel and WHM Servers

Attackers Weaponize GitHub Actions Runners to Target cPanel and WHM Servers

Jul 23, 2026 Vulnerability / Web Security
Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a large-scale campaign that has turned compromised GitHub repositories into distributed attack infrastructure designed to target cPanel and WebHost Manager (WHM) instances. The activity involves malicious Packagist development versions spanning 10 packages associated with a legitimate PHP and DevOps developer, dinushchathurya, between July 12 and 13, 2026. The list of affected Packagist packages is below - dinushchathurya/nationality-list dinushchathurya/srilankan-divisional-secretariats dinushchathurya/srilankan-gn-divisions dinushchathurya/srilankan-local-authorities dinushchathurya/srilankan-mobile-number-validator dinushchathurya/srilankan-state-hospitals dinushchathurya/srilankan-universities dinushchathurya/uk-mobile-number-validator dinushchathurya/uk-post-code dinushchathurya/websmslk "The PHP libraries were not the execution path," Socket said in a statement. "Attackers had added...
Google Adds Selfie Video Recovery for Users Locked Out of Their Accounts

Google Adds Selfie Video Recovery for Users Locked Out of Their Accounts

Jul 23, 2026 Authentication / Data Protection
Google on Thursday announced a new way for users to sign-in to their accounts by letting them take a selfie video. The selfie for sign-in , per the tech giant, is another option on top of existing recovery methods to log in to an account, including an email address or a phone number. The idea is to use a video selfie as a way to regain access if a user ever gets locked out or doesn't have access to their usual phone or computer. As part of the process, users are required to set up a selfie video by just looking into the device's camera and completing a "few short, guided head movements" to capture their face from different angles. Should users have any trouble signing in to their accounts with the selfie method at a later stage, they can just take another selfie to sign back in. "Selfie video compares the new video to the one you set up to confirm it is really you and help you get back into your account," Google said in a blog post shared with The Ha...
Nine-Year-Old RefluXFS Linux Flaw Gives Local Users Root on Default RHEL Installs

Nine-Year-Old RefluXFS Linux Flaw Gives Local Users Root on Default RHEL Installs

Jul 23, 2026 Linux / Vulnerability
RefluXFS , a Linux kernel flaw disclosed on July 22 and tracked as CVE-2026-64600 , lets an unprivileged local user overwrite root-owned files on an XFS filesystem and gain persistent root access. Qualys said default installations of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and its derivatives, Fedora Server, and Amazon Linux can meet the conditions for exploitation. The company demonstrated the race against /etc/passwd and setuid-root binaries. The overwrite lands at the block layer. It survives a reboot and leaves the target's ownership, permissions, timestamps, and setuid bit untouched, so a modified setuid-root binary still runs as root. The fix was merged on July 16, and Linux vendors have begun shipping backported kernels. The patch traces the bug to Linux 4.11 in 2017: a Fixes: tag naming commit 3c68d44a2b49 and a stable backport request marked # v4.11 . Who is exposed Exploitation requires three conditions: The system runs Linux 4.11 or later without the RefluXFS fix....
Check Point Patches Exploited SmartConsole Flaw Allowing Full Admin Access

Check Point Patches Exploited SmartConsole Flaw Allowing Full Admin Access

Jul 23, 2026 Vulnerability / Network Security
Check Point has released security updates to address multiple vulnerabilities impacting Security Management and Multi-Domain Management (MDSM) products, including a critical flaw that has come under active exploitation in the wild . The security flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-16232 (CVSS score: 9.3), is an authentication bypass affecting the Check Point SmartConsole login process that allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to obtain an application login token and use it to authenticate with full administrative privileges. "Successful exploitation allows the attacker to modify security policies and security configurations," according to a description of the flaw in CVE.org. "Remote exploitation requires internet access to the Management Server IP address and a configuration that does not restrict Trusted Clients." Lotem Finkelstein, vice president of research at Check Point, said the company is aware of a small number of customers being targeted by this flaw, ...
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