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A Pakistan-nexus threat actor has been observed targeting Indian government entities as part of spear-phishing attacks designed to deliver a Golang-based malware known as DeskRAT . The activity, observed in August and September 2025 by Sekoia, has been attributed to Transparent Tribe (aka APT36), a state-sponsored hacking group known to be active since at least 2013. It also builds upon a prior campaign disclosed by CYFIRMA in August 2025. The attack chains involve sending phishing emails containing a ZIP file attachment, or in some cases, a link pointing to an archive hosted on legitimate cloud services like Google Drive. Present within the ZIP file is a malicious Desktop file embedding commands to display a decoy PDF ("CDS_Directive_Armed_Forces.pdf") using Mozilla Firefox while simultaneously executing the main payload. Both the artifacts are pulled from an external server "modgovindia[.]com" and executed. Like before, the campaign is designed to target BO...

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a new campaign targeting Brazilian users since the start of 2025 to infect users with a malicious extension for Chromium-based web browsers and siphon user authentication data. "Some of the phishing emails were sent from the servers of compromised companies, increasing the chances of a successful attack," Positive Technologies security researcher Klimentiy Galkin said in a report. "The attackers used a malicious extension for Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Brave browsers, as well as Mesh Agent and PDQ Connect Agent." The Russian cybersecurity company, which is tracking the activity under the name Operation Phantom Enigma , said the malicious extension was downloaded 722 times from across Brazil, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Mexico, Russia, and Vietnam, among others. As many as 70 unique victim companies have been identified. Some aspects of the campaign were disclosed in early April by a researcher who goes by th...

Some of the biggest security problems start quietly. No alerts. No warnings. Just small actions that seem normal but aren't. Attackers now know how to stay hidden by blending in, and that makes it hard to tell when something's wrong. This week's stories aren't just about what was attacked—but how easily it happened. If we're only looking for the obvious signs, what are we missing right in front of us? Here's a look at the tactics and mistakes that show how much can go unnoticed. ⚡ Threat of the Week Apple Zero-Click Flaw in Messages Exploited to Deliver Paragon Spyware — Apple disclosed that a security flaw in its Messages app was actively exploited in the wild to target civil society members in sophisticated cyber attacks. The vulnerability, CVE-2025-43200, was addressed by the company in February as part of iOS 18.3.1, iPadOS 18.3.1, iPadOS 17.7.5, macOS Sequoia 15.3.1, macOS Sonoma 14.7.4, macOS Ventura 13.7.4, watchOS 11.3.1, and visionOS 2.3.1. The Citizen Lab said it u...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new campaign that leverages a combination of social engineering and WhatsApp hijacking to distribute a Delphi-based banking trojan named Eternidade Stealer as part of attacks targeting users in Brazil. "It uses Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) to dynamically retrieve command-and-control (C2) addresses, allowing the threat actor to update its C2 server," Trustwave SpiderLabs researchers Nathaniel Morales, John Basmayor, and Nikita Kazymirskyi said in a technical breakdown of the campaign shared with The Hacker News. "It is distributed through a WhatsApp worm campaign, with the actor now deploying a Python script, a shift from previous PowerShell-based scripts to hijack WhatsApp and spread malicious attachments. The findings come close on the heels of another campaign dubbed Water Saci that has targeted Brazilian users with a worm that propagates via WhatsApp Web known as SORVEPOTEL, which then acts as a c...

A suspected nation-state threat actor has been linked to the distribution of a new malware called Airstalk as part of a likely supply chain attack. Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said it's tracking the cluster under the moniker CL-STA-1009 , where "CL" stands for cluster and "STA" refers to state-backed motivation. "Airstalk misuses the AirWatch API for mobile device management (MDM), which is now called Workspace ONE Unified Endpoint Management," security researchers Kristopher Russo and Chema Garcia said in an analysis. "It uses the API to establish a covert command-and-control (C2) channel, primarily through the AirWatch feature to manage custom device attributes and file uploads." The malware, which appears in PowerShell and .NET variants, makes use of a multi-threaded command-and-control (C2) communication protocol and is capable of capturing screenshots and harvesting cookies, browser history, bookmarks, and screenshots from web browse...

A previously undocumented threat actor dubbed Curly COMrades has been observed targeting entities in Georgia and Moldova as part of a cyber espionage campaign designed to facilitate long-term access to target networks. "They repeatedly tried to extract the NTDS database from domain controllers -- the primary repository for user password hashes and authentication data in a Windows network," Bitdefender said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Additionally, they attempted to dump LSASS memory from specific systems to recover active user credentials, potentially plain-text passwords, from machines where users were logged on." The activity, tracked by the Romanian cybersecurity company since mid-2024, has singled out judicial and government bodies in Georgia, as well as an energy distribution company in Moldova. "Regarding the timeline, while we have been tracking the campaign since mid-2024, our analysis of the artifacts indicates that activity began e...