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Cybersecurity researchers have called attention to a cyber attack in which unknown threat actors deployed an open-source endpoint monitoring and digital forensic tool called Velociraptor , illustrating ongoing abuse of legitimate software for malicious purposes. "In this incident, the threat actor used the tool to download and execute Visual Studio Code with the likely intention of creating a tunnel to an attacker-controlled command-and-control (C2) server," the Sophos Counter Threat Unit Research Team said in a report published this week.  While threat actors are known to adopt living-off-the-land (LotL) techniques or take advantage of legitimate remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools in their attacks, the use of Velociraptor signals a tactical evolution, where incident response programs are being used to obtain a foothold and minimize the need for having to deploy their own malware.  Further analysis of the incident has revealed that the attackers used the Wind...

GitHub on Wednesday officially confirmed that the breach of its internal repositories was the result of a compromise of an employee device involving a poisoned version of the Nx Console Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code) extension.  The development comes as the Nx team revealed that the extension, nrwl.angular-console , was breached after one of its developers' systems was hacked in the wake of the recent TanStack supply chain attack. Other companies that were impacted by the TanStack compromise include OpenAI, Mistral AI , and Grafana Labs . "We have no evidence of impact to customer information stored outside of GitHub's internal repositories, such as our customer's own enterprises, organizations, and repositories," Alexis Wales, Chief Information Security Officer of GitHub, said in a statement. "Some of GitHub's internal repositories contain information from customers, for example, excerpts of support interactions. If any impact is discov...

A new attack vector targeting the Visual Studio Code extensions marketplace could be leveraged to upload rogue extensions masquerading as their legitimate counterparts with the goal of mounting supply chain attacks. The technique "could act as an entry point for an attack on many organizations," Aqua security researcher Ilay Goldman  said  in a report published last week. VS Code extensions, curated via a  marketplace  made available by Microsoft, allow developers to add programming languages, debuggers, and tools to the VS Code source-code editor to augment their workflows.  "All extensions run with the privileges of the user that has opened the VS Code without any sandbox," Goldman said, explaining the potential risks of using VS Code extensions. "This means that the extension can install any program on your computer including ransomwares, wipers, and more." To that end, Aqua found that not only is it possible for a threat actor to impersonate a po...

Microsoft on Tuesday released another round of  security updates  for Windows operating system and other supported software, squashing 50 vulnerabilities, including six zero-days that are said to be under active attack. The flaws were identified and resolved in Microsoft Windows, .NET Core and Visual Studio, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based and EdgeHTML), SharePoint Server, Hyper-V, Visual Studio Code - Kubernetes Tools, Windows HTML Platform, and Windows Remote Desktop. Of these 50 bugs, five are rated Critical, and 45 are rated Important in severity, with three of the issues publicly known at the time of release. The vulnerabilities that being actively exploited are listed below - CVE-2021-33742  (CVSS score: 7.5) - Windows MSHTML Platform Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2021-33739  (CVSS score: 8.4) - Microsoft DWM Core Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2021-31199  (CVSS score: 5.2) - Microsoft Enhanced Cryptogra...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a compromised version of the Nx Console extension that was published to the Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code) Marketplace. The extension in question is rwl.angular-console (version 18.95.0), a popular user interface and plugin for code editors like VS Code, Cursor, and JetBrains. The VS Code extension has more than 2.2 million installations. "Within seconds of a developer opening any workspace, the compromised extension silently fetched and executed a 498 KB obfuscated payload from a dangling orphan commit hidden inside the official nrwl/nx GitHub repository," StepSecurity researcher Ashish Kurmi said . The payload is a "multi-stage credential stealer and supply chain poisoning tool" that harvests developer secrets and exfiltrates them via HTTPS, the GitHub API, and DNS tunneling. It also installs a Python backdoor on macOS systems that abuses the GitHub Search API as a dead drop resolver for receiving further comm...

A previously undocumented China-aligned advanced persistent threat (APT) group named PlushDaemon has been linked to a supply chain attack targeting a South Korean virtual private network (VPN) provider in 2023, according to new findings from ESET. "The attackers replaced the legitimate installer with one that also deployed the group's signature implant that we have named SlowStepper – a feature-rich backdoor with a toolkit of more than 30 components," ESET researcher Facundo Muñoz said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. PlushDaemon is assessed to be a China-nexus group that has been operational since at least 2019, targeting individuals and entities in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, the United States, and New Zealand. Central to its operations is a bespoke backdoor called SlowStepper, which is described as a large toolkit consisting of around 30 modules, programmed in C++, Python, and Go. Another crucial aspect of its attacks is the hijackin...

Microsoft's latest round of monthly security updates has been released with fixes for  68 vulnerabilities  spanning its software portfolio, including patches for six actively exploited zero-days. 12 of the issues are rated Critical, two are rated High, and 55 are rated Important in severity. This also includes the weaknesses that were closed out by  OpenSSL  the previous week. Also separately  addressed  in Microsoft Edge at the start of the month is an actively exploited flaw in Chromium-based browsers ( CVE-2022-3723 ) that was plugged by Google as part of an out-of-band update late last month. "The big news is that  two older zero-day CVEs  affecting Exchange Server, made public at the end of September, have finally been fixed," Greg Wiseman, product manager at Rapid7, said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. "Customers are advised to update their  Exchange Server systems  immediately, regardless of whether any previousl...

A new Mini Shai-Hulud supply chain attack campaign, codenamed Miasma , has compromised @redhat-cloud-services packages to steal credentials and secrets from developer machines and deliver a self-propagating worm. "This is effectively a Mini Shai-Hulud campaign: it uses the same core tactics of install-time execution, credential harvesting, CI/CD targeting, encrypted exfiltration, and potential downstream propagation," Socket said . Exactly who is behind the attack activity is presently unknown given that TeamPCP (aka Replicating Marauder, TGR-CRI-1135, and UNC6780), an infamous cybercrime group, has open-sourced the attack tools linked to the Shai-Hulud worm, opening the door for other threat actors to pull off similar attacks and making definitive attribution harder. The names of some of the affected packages are listed below - @redhat-cloud-services/vulnerabilities-client @redhat-cloud-services/tsc-transform-imports @redhat-cloud-services/topological-inv...

A high-severity flaw in Amazon Q Developer let a malicious repository run commands and steal a developer's cloud credentials. The path was short: a developer opens the repo, trusts the workspace, and Amazon Q does the rest. Amazon has patched it. Tracked as  CVE-2026-12957  (CVSS 8.5), the bug sat in how Amazon's AI coding assistant handled Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. Wiz Research, which found and reported it, showed that a single config file dropped in a repo was enough to go from git clone to cloud compromise. How the attack worked Amazon Q read an MCP configuration file, .amazonq/mcp.json, from the open workspace and launched the servers it defined. MCP servers are local processes that an AI assistant can spawn to reach databases, APIs, or build tools, so starting one means running commands on the machine. Those processes inherited the developer's full environment. That usually means AWS keys, cloud CLI tokens, API secrets, and SSH agent sockets. ...

In yet another software supply chain attack, the open-source, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered coding assistant Cline CLI was updated to stealthily install OpenClaw , a self-hosted autonomous AI agent that has become exceedingly popular in the past few months. "On February 17, 2026, at 3:26 AM PT, an unauthorized party used a compromised npm publish token to publish an update to Cline CLI on the NPM registry: cline@2.3.0," the maintainers of the Cline package said in an advisory. "The published package contains a modified package.json with an added postinstall script: 'postinstall": "npm install -g openclaw@latest.'" As a result, this causes OpenClaw to be installed on the developer's machine when Cline version 2.3.0 is installed. Cline said no additional modifications were introduced to the package and there was no malicious behavior observed. However, it noted that the installation of OpenClaw was not authorized or intended. The s...

GitHub on Tuesday said it's investigating unauthorized access to its internal repositories after the notorious threat actor known as TeamPCP listed the platform's source code and internal organizations for sale on a cybercrime forum. "While we currently have no evidence of impact to customer information stored outside of GitHub's internal repositories (such as our customers' enterprises, organizations, and repositories), we are closely monitoring our infrastructure for follow-on activity," the Microsoft-owned subsidiary said . The company also noted that it will notify customers via established incident response and notification channels if any impact is discovered. The development comes after TeamPCP, a threat actor behind a string of software supply chain attacks targeting open-source packages, listed GitHub's source code for sale for an asking price of no less than $50,000. The alleged data dump is said to include about 4,000 repositories. ...

The maintainers of the nx build system have alerted users to a supply chain attack that allowed attackers to publish malicious versions of the popular npm package and other auxiliary plugins with data-gathering capabilities. "Malicious versions of the nx package, as well as some supporting plugin packages, were published to npm, containing code that scans the file system, collects credentials, and posts them to GitHub as a repo under the user's accounts," the maintainers said in an advisory published Wednesday. Nx is an open-source, technology-agnostic build platform that's designed to manage codebases. It's advertised as an "AI-first build platform that connects everything from your editor to CI [continuous integration]." The npm package has over 3.5 million weekly downloads. The list of affected packages and versions is below. These versions have since been removed from the npm registry. The compromise of the nx package took place on August 26, 20...

The supply chain campaign known as GlassWorm has once again reared its head, infiltrating both Microsoft Visual Studio Marketplace and Open VSX with 24 extensions impersonating popular developer tools and frameworks like Flutter, React, Tailwind, Vim, and Vue. GlassWorm was first documented in October 2025, detailing its use of the Solana blockchain for command-and-control (C2) and harvest npm, Open VSX, GitHub, and Git credentials, drain cryptocurrency assets from dozens of wallets, and turn developer machines into attacker-controlled nodes for other criminal activities. The most crucial aspect of the campaign is the abuse of the stolen credentials to compromise additional packages and extensions, thereby spreading the malware like a worm. Despite continued efforts of Microsoft and Open VSX, the malware resurfaced a second time last month, and the attackers were observed targeting GitHub repositories. The latest wave of the GlassWorm campaign, spotted by Secure Annex's Jo...

This week saw a lot of new cyber trouble. Hackers hit Fortinet and Chrome with new 0-day bugs. They also broke into supply chains and SaaS tools. Many hid inside trusted apps, browser alerts, and software updates. Big firms like Microsoft, Salesforce, and Google had to react fast — stopping DDoS attacks, blocking bad links, and fixing live flaws. Reports also showed how fast fake news, AI risks, and attacks on developers are growing. Here’s what mattered most in security this week. ⚡ Threat of the Week Fortinet Warns of Another Silently Patched and Actively Exploited FortiWeb Flaw — Fortinet has warned that a new security flaw in FortiWeb has been exploited in the wild. The medium-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-58034, carries a CVSS score of 6.7 out of a maximum of 10.0. It has been addressed in version 8.0.2. "An Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command ('OS Command Injection') vulnerability [CWE-78] in FortiWeb may allow an a...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new iteration of the GlassWorm campaign that they say represents a "significant escalation" in how it propagates through the Open VSX registry. "Instead of requiring every malicious listing to embed the loader directly, the threat actor is now abusing extensionPack and extensionDependencies to turn initially standalone-looking extensions into transitive delivery vehicles in later updates, allowing a benign-appearing package to begin pulling a separate GlassWorm-linked extension only after trust has already been established," Socket said in a report published Friday. The software supply chain security company said it discovered at least 72 additional malicious Open VSX extensions since January 31, 2026, targeting developers. These extensions mimic widely used developer utilities, including linters and formatters, code runners, and tools for artificial intelligence (AI)-powered coding assistants like Clade Code and Google...

Microsoft's GitHub repositories have become the latest to fall victim to the ongoing Miasma self-replicating supply chain attack campaign. The incident impacted 73 Microsoft repositories across four of its GitHub organizations, including Azure, Azure-Samples, Microsoft, and MicrosoftDocs, per OpenSourceMalware . The development has prompted GitHub to disable access to those repositories. "Access to this repository has been disabled by GitHub Staff due to a violation of GitHub's terms of service," reads the message when attempting to access the " Azure/azure-functions-host " repository. "If you are the owner of the repository, you may reach out to GitHub Support for more information." According to OpenSourceMalware, some of the repositories impacted by the incident are listed below - azure-search-openai-demo-purviewdatasecurity Connectors-NET-LSP Connectors-NET-SDK durabletask durabletask-dotnet durabletask-go durablet...

Bad actors are leveraging browser notifications as a vector for phishing attacks to distribute malicious links by means of a new command-and-control (C2) platform called Matrix Push C2. "This browser-native, fileless framework leverages push notifications, fake alerts, and link redirects to target victims across operating systems," Blackfog researcher Brenda Robb said in a Thursday report. In these attacks, prospective targets are tricked into allowing browser notifications through social engineering on malicious or legitimate-but-compromised websites. Once a user agrees to receive notifications from the site, the attackers take advantage of the web push notification mechanism built into the web browser to send alerts that look like they have been sent by the operating system or the browser itself, leveraging trusted branding, familiar logos, and convincing language to maintain the ruse. These include alerts about, say, suspicious logins or browser updates, along with ...

New research has uncovered that publishers of over 100 Visual Studio Code (VS Code) extensions leaked access tokens that could be exploited by bad actors to update the extensions, posing a critical software supply chain risk. "A leaked VS Code Marketplace or Open VSX PAT [personal access token] allows an attacker to directly distribute a malicious extension update across the entire install base," Wiz security researcher Rami McCarthy said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "An attacker who discovered this issue would have been able to directly distribute malware to the cumulative 150,000 install base." The cloud security firm noted in many cases publishers failed to account for the fact that VS Code extensions, while distributed as .vsix files, can be unzipped and inspected, exposing hard-coded secrets embedded into them. In all, Wiz said it found over 550 validated secrets, distributed across more than 500 extensions from hundreds of distinct publishers....