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Multiple state-sponsored hacking groups from Iran, North Korea, and Russia have been found leveraging the increasingly popular ClickFix social engineering tactic to deploy malware over a three-month period from late 2024 through the beginning of 2025. The phishing campaigns adopting the strategy have been attributed to clusters tracked as TA427 (aka Kimsuky), TA450 (aka MuddyWater), UNK_RemoteRogue, and TA422 (aka APT28). ClickFix has been an initial access technique primarily affiliated with cybercrime groups, although the effectiveness of the approach has led to it also being adopted by nation-state groups. "The incorporation of ClickFix is not revolutionizing the campaigns carried out by TA427, TA450, UNK_RemoteRogue, and TA422 but instead is replacing the installation and execution stages in existing infection chains," enterprise security firm Proofpoint said in a report published today. ClickFix , in a nutshell, refers to a sneaky technique that tricks users int...

Microsoft closed out 2025 with patches for 56 security flaws in various products across the Windows platform, including one vulnerability that has been actively exploited in the wild. Of the 56 flaws, three are rated Critical, and 53 are rated Important in severity. Two other defects are listed as publicly known at the time of the release. These include 29 privilege escalation, 18 remote code execution, four information disclosure, three denial-of-service, and two spoofing vulnerabilities. In total, Microsoft has addressed a total of 1,275 CVEs in 2025, according to data compiled by Fortra. Tenable's Satnam Narang said 2025 also marks the second consecutive year where the Windows maker has patched over 1,000 CVEs. It's the third time it has done so since Patch Tuesday's inception. The update is in addition to 17 shortcomings the tech giant patched in its Chromium-based Edge browser since the release of the November 2025 Patch Tuesday update . This also consists of a s...

A financially motivated threat actor codenamed UNC5142 has been observed abusing blockchain smart contracts as a way to facilitate the distribution of information stealers, such as Atomic (AMOS), Lumma, Rhadamanthys (aka RADTHIEF), and Vidar, targeting both Windows and Apple macOS systems. "UNC5142 is characterized by its use of compromised WordPress websites and 'EtherHiding,' a technique used to obscure malicious code or data by placing it on a public blockchain, such as the BNB Smart Chain," Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said in a report shared with The Hacker News. As of June 2025, Google said it flagged about 14,000 web pages containing injected JavaScript that exhibit behavior associated with an UNC5142, indicating indiscriminate targeting of vulnerable WordPress sites. However, the tech giant noted that it has not spotted any UNC5142 activity since July 23, 2025, either signaling a pause or an operational pivot. EtherHiding was first documented ...

Users of Cleo-managed file transfer software are being urged to ensure that their instances are not exposed to the internet following reports of mass exploitation of a vulnerability affecting fully patched systems. Cybersecurity company Huntress said it discovered evidence of threat actors exploiting the issue en masse on December 3, 2024. The vulnerability, which impacts Cleo's LexiCom, VLTransfer, and Harmony software, concerns a case of unauthenticated remote code execution. The security hole is tracked as CVE-2024-50623 (CVSS score: 9.8), with Cleo noting that the flaw is the result of an unrestricted file upload that could pave the way for the execution of arbitrary code. The Illinois-based company, which has over 4,200 customers across the world, has since issued another advisory (CVE-2024-55956), warning of a separate "unauthenticated malicious hosts vulnerability that could lead to remote code execution." The development comes after Huntress said the pat...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new cryptojacking campaign that employs vulnerable drivers to disable known security solutions (EDRs) and thwart detection in what's called a Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver ( BYOVD ) attack. Elastic Security Labs is tracking the campaign under the name REF4578 and the primary payload as GHOSTENGINE. Previous research from Chinese cybersecurity firm Antiy Labs has codenamed the activity as HIDDEN SHOVEL. "GHOSTENGINE leverages vulnerable drivers to terminate and delete known EDR agents that would likely interfere with the deployed and well-known coin miner," Elastic researchers Salim Bitam, Samir Bousseaden, Terrance DeJesus, and Andrew Pease said . "This campaign involved an uncommon amount of complexity to ensure both the installation and persistence of the XMRig miner." It all starts with an executable file ("Tiworker.exe"), which is used to run a PowerShell script that retrieves an obfuscated Power...

The Russia-linked nation-state threat actor tracked as  APT28  weaponized a security flaw in the Microsoft Windows Print Spooler component to deliver a previously unknown custom malware called GooseEgg. The post-compromise tool, which is said to have been used since at least June 2020 and possibly as early as April 2019, leveraged a now-patched flaw that allowed for privilege escalation (CVE-2022-38028, CVSS score: 7.8). It was  addressed  by Microsoft as part of updates released in October 2022, with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) credited for reporting the flaw at the time. According to new findings from the tech giant's threat intelligence team,  APT28  – also called Fancy Bear and Forest Blizzard (formerly Strontium) – weaponized the bug in attacks targeting Ukrainian, Western European, and North American government, non-governmental, education, and transportation sector organizations. "Forest ...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new malware family dubbed YiBackdoor that has been found to share "significant" source code overlaps with IcedID and Latrodectus . "The exact connection to YiBackdoor is not yet clear, but it may be used in conjunction with Latrodectus and IcedID during attacks," Zscaler ThreatLabz said in a Tuesday report. "YiBackdoor is able to execute arbitrary commands, collect system information, capture screenshots, and deploy plugins that dynamically expand the malware's functionality." The cybersecurity company said it first identified the malware in June 2025, adding it may be serving as a precursor to follow-on exploitation, such as facilitating initial access for ransomware attacks. Only limited deployments of YiBackdoor have been detected to date, indicating it's currently either under development or being tested. Given the similarities between YiBackdoor, IcedID, and Latrodectus, it's b...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new malvertising campaign that's designed to infect victims with a multi-stage malware framework called PS1Bot . "PS1Bot features a modular design, with several modules delivered used to perform a variety of malicious activities on infected systems, including information theft, keylogging, reconnaissance, and the establishment of persistent system access," Cisco Talos researchers Edmund Brumaghin and Jordyn Dunk said . "PS1Bot has been designed with stealth in mind, minimizing persistent artifacts left on infected systems and incorporating in-memory execution techniques to facilitate execution of follow-on modules without requiring them to be written to disk." Campaigns distributing the PowerShell and C# malware have been found to be active since early 2025, leveraging malvertising as a propagation vector, with the infection chains executing modules in-memory to minimize forensic trail. PS1Bot is assessed to share ...

Threat actors with ties to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (aka DPRK or North Korea) have been observed leveraging ClickFix-style lures to deliver a known malware called BeaverTail and InvisibleFerret. "The threat actor used ClickFix lures to target marketing and trader roles in cryptocurrency and retail sector organizations rather than targeting software development roles," GitLab Threat Intelligence researcher Oliver Smith said in a report published last week. First exposed by Palo Alto Networks in late 2023, BeaverTail and InvisibleFerret have been deployed by North Korean operatives as part of a long-running campaign dubbed Contagious Interview (aka Gwisin Gang), wherein the malware is distributed to software developers under the pretext of a job assessment. Assessed to be a subset of the umbrella group Lazarus , the cluster has been active since at least December 2022. Over the years, BeaverTail has also been propagated via bogus npm packages and f...

Security researchers have spotted a new malware campaign in the wild that spreads an advanced botnet malware by leveraging at least three recently disclosed vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office. Dubbed Zyklon , the fully-featured malware has resurfaced after almost two years and primarily found targeting telecommunications, insurance and financial services. Active since early 2016, Zyklon is an HTTP botnet malware that communicates with its command-and-control servers over Tor anonymising network and allows attackers to remotely steal keylogs, sensitive data, like passwords stored in web browsers and email clients. Zyklon malware is also capable of executing additional plugins, including secretly using infected systems for DDoS attacks and cryptocurrency mining. Different versions of the Zyklon malware has previously been found being advertised on a popular underground marketplace for $75 (normal build) and $125 ( Tor-enabled build). According to a recently published report...

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has warned of cyber attacks perpetrated by Russian nation-state hackers targeting various government bodies in the country. The agency  attributed  the phishing campaign to APT28, which is also known by the names Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard, FROZENLAKE, Iron Twilight, Sednit, and Sofacy. The email messages come with the subject line "Windows Update" and purportedly contain instructions in the Ukrainian language to run a PowerShell command under the pretext of security updates. Running the script loads and executes a next-stage PowerShell script that's designed to collect basic system information through commands like  tasklist  and  systeminfo , and exfiltrate the details via an HTTP request to a  Mocky API . To trick the targets into running the command, the emails impersonate system administrators of the targeted government entities using fake Microsoft Outlook email accounts created with the...

The threat actors behind the Rhadamanthys information stealer have added new advanced features to the malware, including using artificial intelligence (AI) for optical character recognition (OCR) as part of what's called "Seed Phrase Image Recognition." "This allows Rhadamanthys to extract cryptocurrency wallet seed phrases from images, making it a highly potent threat for anyone dealing in cryptocurrencies," Recorded Future's Insikt Group said in an analysis of version 0.7.0 of the malware. "The malware can recognize seed phrase images on the client side and send them back to the command-and-control (C2) server for further exploitation." First discovered in the wild in September 2022, Rhadamanthys has emerged as one of the most potent information stealers that are advertised under the malware-as-a-service (MaaS) model, alongside Lumma and others. The malware continues to have an active presence despite suffering bans from underground forum...

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...