Search results for lua# | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Users searching for game cheats are being tricked into downloading a Lua-based malware that is capable of establishing persistence on infected systems and delivering additional payloads. "These attacks capitalize on the popularity of Lua gaming engine supplements within the student gamer community," Morphisec researcher Shmuel Uzan said in a new report published today, adding "this malware strain is highly prevalent across North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and even Australia." Details about the campaign were first documented by OALabs in March 2024, in which users were lured into downloading a malware loader written in Lua by exploiting a quirk in GitHub to stage malicious payloads. McAfee Labs, in a subsequent analysis , detailed threat actors' use of the same technique to deliver a variant of the RedLine information stealer by hosting the malware-bearing ZIP archives within legitimate Microsoft repositories. "We disabled user accounts an...

Redis has disclosed details of a maximum-severity security flaw in its in-memory database software that could result in remote code execution under certain circumstances. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-49844 (aka RediShell), has been assigned a CVSS score of 10.0. "An authenticated user may use a specially crafted Lua script to manipulate the garbage collector, trigger a use-after-free, and potentially lead to remote code execution," according to a GitHub advisory for the issue. "The problem exists in all versions of Redis with Lua scripting." However, for exploitation to be successful, it requires an attacker to first gain authenticated access to a Redis instance, making it crucial that users don't leave their Redis instances exposed to the internet and secure them with strong authentication. The issue impacts all versions of Redis. It has been addressed in versions 6.2.20, 7.2.11, 7.4.6, 8.0.4, and 8.2.2 released on October 3, 2025. As tempor...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new cloud targeting, peer-to-peer (P2P) worm called  P2PInfect  that targets vulnerable Redis instances for follow-on exploitation. "P2PInfect exploits Redis servers running on both Linux and Windows Operating Systems making it more scalable and potent than other worms," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers William Gamazo and Nathaniel Quist  said . "This worm is also written in Rust, a highly scalable and cloud-friendly programming language." It's estimated that as many as 934 unique Redis systems may be vulnerable to the threat. The first known instance of P2PInfect was detected on July 11, 2023. A notable characteristic of the worm is its ability to infects vulnerable Redis instances by exploiting a critical Lua sandbox escape vulnerability,  CVE-2022-0543  (CVSS score: 10.0), which has been previously exploited to deliver multiple  malware families  such as  Muhstik ,  Redigo , and  H...

A recently disclosed maximum-severity security flaw impacting the Wing FTP Server has come under active exploitation in the wild, according to Huntress. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-47812 (CVSS score: 10.0), is a case of improper handling of null ('\0') bytes in the server's web interface, which allows for remote code execution. It has been addressed in version 7.4.4. "The user and admin web interfaces mishandle '\0' bytes, ultimately allowing injection of arbitrary Lua code into user session files," according to an advisory for the flaw on CVE.org. "This can be used to execute arbitrary system commands with the privileges of the FTP service (root or SYSTEM by default)." What makes it even more concerning is that the flaw can be exploited via anonymous FTP accounts. A comprehensive breakdown of the vulnerability entered the public domain towards the end of June 2025, courtesy of RCE Security researcher Julien Ahrens. Cybersecuri...

A previously undocumented threat actor dubbed  Sandman  has been attributed to a set of cyber attacks targeting telecommunication providers in the Middle East, Western Europe, and the South Asian subcontinent. Notably, the intrusions leverage a just-in-time (JIT) compiler for the Lua programming language known as LuaJIT as a vehicle to deploy a novel implant called LuaDream . "The activities we observed are characterized by strategic lateral movement to specific targeted workstations and minimal engagement, suggesting a deliberate approach aimed at achieving the set objectives while minimizing the risk of detection," SentinelOne security researcher Aleksandar Milenkoski  said  in an analysis published in collaboration with QGroup. "The implementation of LuaDream indicates a well-executed, maintained, and actively developed project of a considerable scale." Neither the campaign nor its tactics have been correlated with any known threat actor or group, although a...

Cybersecurity company ESET has disclosed that it discovered an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered ransomware variant codenamed PromptLock . Written in Golang, the newly identified strain uses the gpt-oss:20b model from OpenAI locally via the Ollama API to generate malicious Lua scripts in real-time. The open-weight language model was released by OpenAI earlier this month. "PromptLock leverages Lua scripts generated from hard-coded prompts to enumerate the local filesystem, inspect target files, exfiltrate selected data, and perform encryption," ESET said . "These Lua scripts are cross-platform compatible, functioning on Windows, Linux, and macOS." The ransomware code also embeds instructions to craft a custom note based on the "files affected," and the infected machine is a personal computer, company server, or a power distribution controller. It's currently not known who is behind the malware, but ESET told The Hacker News that PromptLoc arti...

A new information stealer has been found leveraging Lua bytecode for added stealth and sophistication, findings from McAfee Labs reveal. The cybersecurity firm has assessed it to be a variant of a known malware called RedLine Stealer owing to the fact that the command-and-control (C2) server  IP address  has been previously identified as associated with the malware. RedLine Stealer,  first documented  in March 2020, is typically delivered via email and malvertising campaigns, either directly or via  exploit kits  and loader malware like  dotRunpeX  and  HijackLoader . The off-the-shelf malware is capable of harvesting information from cryptocurrency wallets, VPN software, and web browsers, such as saved credentials, autocomplete data, credit card information, and geolocations based on the victims' IP addresses. Over the years, RedLine Stealer has been co-opted by several threat actors into their attack chains, making it a prevalent strai...

Sandcat Browser 2.0 Released,  Penetration Testing Oriented Browser Sandcat Browser version 2.0 includes several user interface and experience improvements, an improved extension system, RudraScript support and new extensions. What is Sandcat Browser? The fastest web browser combined with the fastest scripting language packed with features for pen-testers. Sandcat Browser is a freeware portable pen-test oriented multi-tabbed web browser with extensions support developed by the Syhunt team, the same creators of the Sandcat web application security scanner. The Sandcat Browser is built on top of Chromium, the same engine that powers the Google Chrome browser, and uses the Lua language to provide extensions and scripting support. This first Sandcat Browser release includes the following pen-test oriented features: Live HTTP Headers Request Editor extension Fuzzer extension with multiple modes and support for filters JavaScript Executor extension -- allows you to load and r...

The developers of the information stealer malware known as  Rhadamanthys  are actively iterating on its features, broadening its information-gathering capabilities and also incorporating a plugin system to make it more customizable. This approach not only transforms it into a threat capable of delivering "specific distributor needs," but also makes it more potent, Check Point  said  in a technical deep dive published last week. Rhadamanthys,  first documented  by ThreatMon in October 2022, has been sold under the malware-as-a-service (MaaS) model as early as September 2022 by an actor under the alias "kingcrete2022." Typically distributed through malicious websites mirroring those of genuine software that are advertised through Google ads, the malware is capable of harvesting a wide range of sensitive information from compromised hosts, including from web browsers, crypto wallets, email clients, VPN, and instant messaging apps. "Rhadamanthys represent...

Muhstik, a botnet infamous for propagating via web application exploits, has been observed targeting Redis servers using a recently disclosed vulnerability in the database system. The vulnerability relates to  CVE-2022-0543 , a  Lua sandbox escape flaw  in the open-source, in-memory, key-value data store that could be abused to achieve remote code execution on the underlying machine. The vulnerability is rated 10 out of 10 for severity. "Due to a packaging issue, a remote attacker with the ability to execute arbitrary Lua scripts could possibly escape the Lua sandbox and execute arbitrary code on the host," Ubuntu noted in an advisory released last month. According to  telemetry data  gathered by Juniper Threat Labs, the attacks leveraging the new flaw are said to have commenced on March 11, 2022, leading to the retrieval of a malicious shell script ("russia.sh") from a remote server, which is then utilized to fetch and execute the botnet binaries from anoth...

Tactical and targeting overlaps have been discovered between the enigmatic advanced persistent threat (APT) called  Sandman  and a China-based threat cluster that's known to use a backdoor referred to as KEYPLUG. The assessment comes jointly from SentinelOne, PwC, and the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team based on the fact that the adversary's Lua-based malware LuaDream and KEYPLUG have been determined to cohabit in the same victim networks. Microsoft and PwC are tracking the activity under the names Storm-0866 and Red Dev 40, respectively. "Sandman and Storm-0866/Red Dev 40 share infrastructure control and management practices, including hosting provider selections, and domain naming conventions," the companies  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The implementation of LuaDream and KEYPLUG reveals indicators of shared development practices and overlaps in functionalities and design, suggesting shared functional requirements by their operators....

Penetration Testing Oriented Browser - Sandcat Browser The fastest web browser combined with the fastest scripting language packed with features for pen-testers.  Sandcat Browser is a freeware portable pen-test oriented multi-tabbed web browser with extensions support developed by the Syhunt team, the same creators of the Sandcat web application security scanner. The Sandcat Browser is built on top of Chromium, the same engine that powers the Google Chrome browser, and uses the Lua language to provide extensions and scripting support. This first Sandcat Browser release includes the following pen-test oriented features: Live HTTP Headers Request Editor extension Fuzzer extension with multiple modes and support for filters JavaScript Executor extension -- allows you to load and run external JavaScript files Lua Executor extension -- allows you to load and run external Lua scripts Syhunt Gelo HTTP Brute Force, CGI Scanner scripts and more. Download SandCat Browser

More than 600,000 small office/home office (SOHO) routers are estimated to have been bricked and taken offline following a destructive cyber attack staged by unidentified cyber actors, disrupting users' access to the internet. The mysterious event, which took place between October 25 and 27, 2023, and impacted a single internet service provider (ISP) in the U.S., has been codenamed Pumpkin Eclipse by the Lumen Technologies Black Lotus Labs team. It specifically affected three router models issued by the ISP: ActionTec T3200, ActionTec T3260, and Sagemcom. "The incident took place over a 72-hour period between October 25-27, rendered the infected devices permanently inoperable, and required a hardware-based replacement," the company said in a technical report. The blackout is significant, not least because it led to the abrupt removal of 49% of all modems from the impacted ISP's autonomous system number (ASN) during the time-frame. While the name of the ISP was...

A gambling company in the Philippines was the target of a China-aligned threat actor as part of a campaign that has been ongoing since October 2021. Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET is tracking the series of attacks against Southeast Asian gambling companies under the name  Operation ChattyGoblin . "These attacks use a specific tactic: targeting the victim companies' support agents via chat applications – in particular, the Comm100 and LiveHelp100 apps," ESET  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The use of a trojanized Comm100 installer to deliver malware was  first documented  by CrowdStrike in October 2022. The company attributed the supply chain compromise to a threat actor likely with associations to China. The attack chains leverage the aforementioned chat apps to distribute a C# dropper that, in turn, deploys another C# executable, which ultimately serves as a conduit to drop a Cobalt Strike beacon on hacked workstations. Also highlighted in...

The P2PInfect peer-to-peer (P2) worm has been observed employing previously undocumented initial access methods to breach susceptible Redis servers and rope them into a botnet. "The malware compromises exposed instances of the Redis data store by exploiting the replication feature," Cado Security researchers Nate Bill and Matt Muir  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "A common attack pattern against Redis in cloud environments is to exploit this feature using a malicious instance to enable replication. This is achieved via connecting to an exposed Redis instance and issuing the SLAVEOF command." The Rust-based malware was  first documented  by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, calling out the malware's ability to exploit a critical Lua sandbox escape vulnerability ( CVE-2022-0543 , CVSS score: 10.0) to obtain a foothold into Redis instances. The campaign is believed to have commenced on or after June 29, 2023. However, the latest discovery suggests th...

In any organization, there are certain accounts that are designated as being privileged. These privileged accounts differ from standard user accounts in that they have permission to perform actions that go beyond what standard users can do. The actions vary based on the nature of the account but can include anything from setting up new user accounts to shutting down mission-critical systems. Privileged accounts are essential tools. Without these accounts, the IT staff would be unable to do its job. At the same time, privileged accounts can pose a serious threat to an organization's security. Added risk of a privileged account  Imagine for a moment that a hacker manages to steal a standard user's password and is able to log in as that user. Even though the hacker would have access to certain resources at that point, they would be constrained by the user's privileges (or lack thereof). In other words, the hacker would be able to browse the Internet, open some applications, and ac...