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Microsoft today issued a new security advisory warning billions of Windows users of two new critical, unpatched zero-day vulnerabilities that could let hackers remotely take complete control over targeted computers. According to Microsoft , both unpatched flaws are being used in limited, targeted attacks and impact all supported versions of the Windows operating system—including Windows 10, 8.1 and Server 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2019 editions, as well as Windows 7 for which Microsoft ended its support on January 14, 2020. Both vulnerabilities reside in the Windows Adobe Type Manager Library , a font parsing software that not only parses content when open with a 3rd-party software but also used by Windows Explorer to display the content of a file in the 'Preview Pane' or 'Details Pane' without having users to open it. The flaws exist in Microsoft Windows when the Adobe Type Manager Library improperly "handles a specially-crafted multi-master font - Adobe Type ...

Cybersecurity researchers have charted the evolution of XWorm malware, turning it into a versatile tool for supporting a wide range of malicious actions on compromised hosts. "XWorm's modular design is built around a core client and an array of specialized components known as plugins," Trellix researchers Niranjan Hegde and Sijo Jacob said in an analysis published last week. "These plugins are essentially additional payloads designed to carry out specific harmful actions once the core malware is active." XWorm, first observed in 2022 and linked to a threat actor named EvilCoder, is a Swiss Army knife of malware that can facilitate data theft, keylogging, screen capture, persistence, and even ransomware operations. It's primarily propagated via phishing emails and bogus sites advertising malicious ScreenConnect installers. Some of the other tools advertised by the developer include a .NET-based malware builder, a remote access trojan called XBinder, a...

Security researchers have detailed a new variant of a dynamic link library ( DLL ) search order hijacking technique that could be used by threat actors to bypass security mechanisms and achieve execution of malicious code on systems running Microsoft Windows 10 and Windows 11. The approach "leverages executables commonly found in the trusted WinSxS folder and exploits them via the classic DLL search order hijacking technique," cybersecurity firm Security Joes  said  in a new report exclusively shared with The Hacker News. In doing so, it allows adversaries to eliminate the need for elevated privileges when attempting to run nefarious code on a compromised machine as well as introduce potentially vulnerable binaries into the attack chain, as  observed   in the   past . DLL search order hijacking , as the name implies, involves  gaming the search order  used to load DLLs in order to execute malicious payloads for purposes of defense evasion, persiste...

Internet Explorer is dead, but not the mess it left behind. Microsoft earlier today issued an emergency security advisory warning millions of Windows users of a new zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) browser that attackers are actively exploiting in the wild — and there is no patch yet available for it. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2020-0674 and rated moderated, is a remote code execution issue that exists in the way the scripting engine handles objects in memory of Internet Explorer and triggers through JScript.dll library. A remote attacker can execute arbitrary code on targeted computers and take full control over them just by convincing victims into opening a maliciously crafted web page on the vulnerable Microsoft browser. "The vulnerability could corrupt memory in such a way that an attacker could execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could gain the same user rights as...

The threat actors behind a malware family known as Winos 4.0 (aka ValleyRAT) have expanded their targeting footprint from China and Taiwan to target Japan and Malaysia with another remote access trojan (RAT) tracked as HoldingHands RAT (aka Gh0stBins). "The campaign relied on phishing emails with PDFs that contained embedded malicious links," Pei Han Liao, researcher with Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs, said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "These files masqueraded as official documents from the Ministry of Finance and included numerous links in addition to the one that delivered Winos 4.0." Winos 4.0 is a malware family that's often spread via phishing and search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning, directing unsuspecting users to fake websites masquerading as popular software like Google Chrome, Telegram, Youdao, Sogou AI, WPS Office, and DeepSeek, among others. The use of Winos 4.0 is primarily linked to an "aggressive" Chinese cybercri...

Cybersecurity researchers are warning that a command-and-control (C&C) framework called Winos is being distributed within gaming-related applications like installation tools, speed boosters, and optimization utilities. "Winos 4.0 is an advanced malicious framework that offers comprehensive functionality, a stable architecture, and efficient control over numerous online endpoints to execute further actions," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Rebuilt from Gh0st RAT , it includes several modular components, each handling distinct functions." Campaigns distributing Winos 4.0 were documented back in June by Trend Micro and the KnownSec 404 Team. The cybersecurity companies are tracking the activity cluster under the names Void Arachne and Silver Fox. These attacks have been observed targeting Chinese-speaking users, leveraging black hat Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics, social media, and messaging platforms like Te...

Threat actors with ties to North Korea have been attributed to a new wave of attacks targeting European companies active in the defense industry as part of a long-running campaign known as Operation Dream Job . "Some of these [companies] are heavily involved in the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) sector, suggesting that the operation may be linked to North Korea's current efforts to scale up its drone program," ESET security researchers Peter Kálnai and Alexis Rapin said in a report shared with The Hacker News. It's assessed that the end goal of the campaign is to plunder proprietary information and manufacturing know-how using malware families such as ScoringMathTea and MISTPEN. The Slovak cybersecurity company said it observed the campaign starting in late March 2025. Some of the targeted entities include a metal engineering company in Southeastern Europe, a manufacturer of aircraft components in Central Europe, and a defense company in Central Europe. While Sc...

The open-source remote access trojan known as  Quasar RAT  has been observed leveraging DLL side-loading to fly under the radar and stealthily siphon data from compromised Windows hosts. "This technique capitalizes on the inherent trust these files command within the Windows environment," Uptycs researchers Tejaswini Sandapolla and Karthickkumar Kathiresan  said  in a report published last week, detailing the malware's reliance on ctfmon.exe and calc.exe as part of the attack chain. Also known by the names CinaRAT or Yggdrasil, Quasar RAT is a C#-based remote administration tool capable of gathering system information, a list of running applications, files, keystrokes, screenshots, and executing arbitrary shell commands. DLL side-loading  is a  popular   technique  adopted by  many threat actors  to execute their own payloads by planting a spoofed DLL file with a name that a benign executable is known to be looking for. "Adversarie...

A serious vulnerability has been discovered in Microsoft-owned most popular free web messaging and voice calling service Skype that could potentially allow attackers to gain full control of the host machine by granting system-level privileges to a local, unprivileged user. The worst part is that this vulnerability will not be patched by Microsoft anytime soon. It's not because the flaw is unpatchable, but because fixing the vulnerability requires a significant software rewrite, which indicates that the company will need to issue an all-new version of Skype rather than just a patch. The vulnerability has been discovered and reported to Microsoft by security researcher Stefan Kanthak and resides in Skype's update installer, which is susceptible to Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL) hijacking. According to the researcher, a potential attacker could exploit the "functionality of the Windows DLL loader where the process loading the DLL searches for the DLL to be loaded fi...

Chinese-speaking users are the target of a search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning campaign that uses fake software sites to distribute malware. "The attackers manipulated search rankings with SEO plugins and registered lookalike domains that closely mimicked legitimate software sites," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Pei Han Liao said . "By using convincing language and small character substitutions, they tricked victims into visiting spoofed pages and downloading malware." The activity, which was discovered by the cybersecurity company in August 2025, leads to the deployment of malware families like HiddenGh0st and Winos (aka ValleyRAT), both of which are variants of a remote access trojan called Gh0st RAT. It's worth noting that the use of Winos has been attributed to a cybercrime group known as Silver Fox , which is also tracked as SwimSnake, The Great Thief of Valley (or Valley Thief), UTG-Q-1000, and Void Arachne. It's believed to be acti...

The infamous Lazarus Group actor has been targeting vulnerable versions of Microsoft Internet Information Services ( IIS ) servers as an initial breach route to deploy malware on targeted systems. The findings come from the AhnLab Security Emergency response Center (ASEC), which detailed the advanced persistent threat's (APT) continued abuse of DLL side-loading techniques to run arbitrary payloads. "The threat actor places a malicious DLL (msvcr100.dll) in the same folder path as a normal application (Wordconv.exe) via the Windows IIS web server process, w3wp.exe," ASEC explained . "They then execute the normal application to initiate the execution of the malicious DLL." DLL side-loading , similar to DLL search-order hijacking, refers to the proxy execution of a rogue DLL via a benign binary planted in the same directory. Lazarus , a highly-capable and relentless nation-state group linked to North Korea, was most recently spotted leveraging the same t...

A previously undocumented threat actor of unknown provenance has been linked to a number of attacks targeting organizations in the manufacturing, IT, and biomedical sectors in Taiwan. The Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom, attributed the attacks to an advanced persistent threat (APT) it tracks under the name  Grayling . Evidence shows that the campaign began in February 2023 and continued until at least May 2023. Also likely targeted as part of the activity is a government agency located in the Pacific Islands, as well as entities in Vietnam and the U.S. "This activity stood out due to the use by Grayling of a distinctive DLL side-loading technique that uses a custom decryptor to deploy payloads," the company  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The motivation driving this activity appears to be intelligence gathering." The initial foothold to victim environments is said to have been achieved by exploiting public-facing infrastructure, ...

Dropper Malware comes with DLL Hijacking Feature Trojans, Viruses, Worms have become the scare of the year, and with good reason. Many of the recent files are malicious in nature, causing the infected user at the very worst, to lose everything on their computer. There are few specially coded malware, which are not only developed to ensure that they cause maximum damage and steal all the sensitive information they can find on the infected devices. According to Bitdefender experts, In a blog post they mention about such a malware called "Dropper" or Trojan.Dropper.UAJ. But the brand new in terms of approach that dropper hijacks a library file called comres.dll, altering it to ensure that each time it’s being used, the malware steps into play. The smartness of this malware can be judge from here that, it makes a copy of the genuine comres.dll file, patches it and then saves it in the Windows directory folder, where the operating system normally looks for a DLL to load when...

A malware campaign distributing the XLoader malware has been observed using the DLL side-loading technique by making use of a legitimate application associated with the Eclipse Foundation. "The legitimate application used in the attack, jarsigner, is a file created during the installation of the IDE package distributed by the Eclipse Foundation," the AhnLab SEcurity Intelligence Center (ASEC) said . "It is a tool for signing JAR (Java Archive) files." The South Korean cybersecurity firm said the malware is propagated in the form of a compressed ZIP archive that includes the legitimate executable as well as the DLLs that are sideloaded to launch the malware - Documents2012.exe, a renamed version of the legitimate jarsigner.exe binary, jli.dll, a DLL file that's modified by the threat actor to decrypt and inject concrt140e.dll, and concrt140e.dll, the XLoader payload The attack chain crosses over to the malicious phase when "Documents2012.exe...

Before Ransomware, Click fraud was one of the popular and efficient ways for cybercriminals to make money and with the explosive growth in the size of the online threats it is still making its way on the Internet. “ Click-Fraud ” is the practice of deceptively clicking on search ads with the intention of either increasing third-party website revenues or exhausting an advertiser’s budget. Besides the search results, we all have seen advertisements placed in the search engine’s WebPage. If the visitor clicks the Ad, the advertiser has to pay a fee to the search engine. A problem that has arisen with pay-per-click is results in Click-Fraud. The term “ fraud ” is used because in either case, the advertiser is paying for a click without receiving any true value. Of course, the number of clicks has to be large enough in order to gain a considerable amount of money, and in order to do that an attacker can use an automated script or malicious program to simulate multiple clicks b...

The threat actor known as Transparent Tribe has been attributed to a fresh set of attacks targeting Indian governmental, academic, and strategic entities with a remote access trojan (RAT) that grants them persistent control over compromised hosts. "The campaign employs deceptive delivery techniques, including a weaponized Windows shortcut (LNK) file masquerading as a legitimate PDF document and embedded with full PDF content to evade user suspicion," CYFIRMA said in a technical report. Transparent Tribe, also called APT36, is a hacking group that's known for mounting cyber espionage campaigns against Indian organizations. Assessed to be of Pakistani origin, the state-sponsored adversary has been active since at least 2013. The threat actor boasts of an ever-evolving arsenal of RATs to realize its goals. Some of the trojans put to use by Transparent Tribe in recent years include CapraRAT , Crimson RAT , ElizaRAT , and DeskRAT . The latest set of attacks began with ...

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...