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Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a new campaign that's leveraging a combination of ClickFix lures and fake adult websites to deceive users into running malicious commands under the guise of a "critical" Windows security update. "Campaign leverages fake adult websites (xHamster, PornHub clones) as its phishing mechanism, likely distributed via malvertising," Acronis said in a new report shared with The Hacker News. "The adult theme, and possible connection to shady websites, adds to the victim's psychological pressure to comply with sudden 'security update' installation." ClickFix-style attacks have surged over the past year, typically tricking users into running malicious commands on their own machines using prompts for technical fixes or completing CAPTCHA verification checks. According to data from Microsoft, ClickFix has become the most common initial access method, accounting for 47% of attacks. The latest camp...

A China-aligned threat actor codenamed UTA0388 has been attributed to a series of spear-phishing campaigns targeting North America, Asia, and Europe that are designed to deliver a Go-based implant known as GOVERSHELL . "The initially observed campaigns were tailored to the targets, and the messages purported to be sent by senior researchers and analysts from legitimate-sounding, completely fabricated organizations," Volexity said in a Wednesday report. "The goal of these spear phishing campaigns was to socially engineer targets into clicking links that led to a remotely hosted archive containing a malicious payload." Since then, the threat actor behind the attacks is said to have leveraged different lures and fictional identities, spanning several languages, including English, Chinese, Japanese, French, and German. Early iterations of the campaigns have been found to embed links to phishing content either hosted on a cloud-based service or their own infrastruc...

Microsoft on Thursday released out-of-band security updates to patch a critical-severity Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) vulnerability with a proof-of-concept (Poc) exploit publicly available and has come under active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-59287 (CVSS score: 9.8), a remote code execution flaw in WSUS that was originally fixed by the tech giant as part of its Patch Tuesday update published last week. Three security researchers, MEOW, f7d8c52bec79e42795cf15888b85cbad, and Markus Wulftange with CODE WHITE GmbH, have been acknowledged for discovering and reporting the bug. The shortcoming concerns a case of deserialization of untrusted data in WSUS that allows an unauthorized attacker to execute code over a network. It's worth noting that the vulnerability does not impact Windows servers that do not have the WSUS Server Role enabled. In a hypothetical attack scenario, a remote, unauthenticated attacker could send a crafted eve...

A new cyber attack campaign is leveraging the PowerShell script associated with a legitimate red teaming tool to plunder  NTLMv2 hashes  from compromised Windows systems primarily located in Australia, Poland, and Belgium. The activity has been codenamed Steal-It by Zscaler ThreatLabz. "In this campaign, the threat actors steal and exfiltrate NTLMv2 hashes using customized versions of Nishang's  Start-CaptureServer PowerShell script , executing various system commands, and exfiltrating the retrieved data via Mockbin APIs," security researchers Niraj Shivtarkar and Avinash Kumar said. Nishang  is a framework and collection of PowerShell scripts and payloads for offensive security, penetration testing, and red teaming. The attacks leverage as many as five different infection chains, although they all leverage phishing emails containing ZIP archives as the starting point to infiltrate specific targets using geofencing techniques - NTLMv2 hash stealing infection...

Fake web browser updates are being used to deliver remote access trojans (RATs) and information stealer malware such as BitRAT and Lumma Stealer (aka LummaC2). "Fake browser updates have been responsible for numerous malware infections, including those of the well-known SocGholish malware," cybersecurity firm eSentire said in a new report. "In April 2024, we observed FakeBat being distributed via similar fake update mechanisms." The attack chain commences when prospective targets visits a booby-trapped website that contains JavaScript code designed to redirect users to a bogus browser update page ("chatgpt-app[.]cloud"). The redirected web page comes embedded with a download link to a ZIP archive file ("Update.zip") that's hosted on Discord and downloaded automatically to the victim's device. It's worth pointing out that threat actors often use Discord as an attack vector, with a recent analysis from Bitdefender uncovering m...

Details have emerged about a previously undocumented and fully undetectable (FUD) PowerShell backdoor that gains its stealth by disguising itself as part of a Windows update process. "The covert self-developed tool and the associated C2 commands seem to be the work of a sophisticated, unknown threat actor who has targeted approximately 100 victims," Tomer Bar, director of security research at SafeBreach,  said  in a new report. Attributed to an  unnamed threat actor , attack chains involving the malware commence with a weaponized  Microsoft Word document  that, per the company, was uploaded from Jordan on August 25, 2022. Metadata associated with the lure document indicates that the initial intrusion vector is a LinkedIn-based spear-phishing attack, which ultimately leads to the execution of a PowerShell script via a piece of embedded macro code. "The Macro drops 'updater.vbs,' creates a scheduled task pretending to be part of a Windows update, which will ...

The Russian advanced persistent threat (APT) group known as COLDRIVER has been attributed to a fresh round of ClickFix-style attacks designed to deliver two new "lightweight" malware families tracked as BAITSWITCH and SIMPLEFIX. Zscaler ThreatLabz, which detected the new multi-stage ClickFix campaign earlier this month, described BAITSWITCH as a downloader that ultimately drops SIMPLEFIX, a PowerShell backdoor. COLDRIVER , also tracked as Callisto, Star Blizzard, and UNC4057, is the moniker assigned to a Russia-linked threat actor that's known to target a wide range of sectors since 2019. While early campaign waves were observed using spear-phishing lures to direct targets to credential harvesting pages, the group has been fleshing out its arsenal with custom tools like SPICA and LOSTKEYS , which underscores its technical sophistication. The adversary's use of ClickFix tactics was previously documented by the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) back in May 2...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new malware loader codenamed CountLoader that has been put to use by Russian ransomware gangs to deliver post-exploitation tools like Cobalt Strike and AdaptixC2 , and a remote access trojan known as PureHVNC RAT. "CountLoader is being used either as part of an Initial Access Broker's (IAB) toolset or by a ransomware affiliate with ties to the LockBit, Black Basta, and Qilin ransomware groups," Silent Push said in an analysis. Appearing in three different versions – .NET, PowerShell, and JavaScript – the emerging threat has been observed in a campaign targeting individuals in Ukraine using PDF-based phishing lures and impersonating the National Police of Ukraine. Silent Push told The Hacker News that it does not have any insight into the nature of malware that was dropped using CountLoader. It's worth noting that the PowerShell version of the malware was previously flagged by Kaspersky as being distributed using DeepSe...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new malware campaign that leverages bogus Google Sites pages and HTML smuggling to distribute a commercial malware called  AZORult  in order to facilitate information theft. "It uses an unorthodox HTML smuggling technique where the malicious payload is embedded in a separate JSON file hosted on an external website," Netskope Threat Labs researcher Jan Michael Alcantara  said  in a report published last week. The phishing campaign has not been attributed to a specific threat actor or group. The cybersecurity company described it as widespread in nature, carried out with an intent to collect sensitive data for selling them in underground forums. AZORult, also called PuffStealer and Ruzalto, is an  information stealer  first detected around 2016. It's typically distributed via phishing and malspam campaigns, trojanized installers for pirated software or media, and malvertising. Once installed, it's capable of g...

The malware known as Latrodectus has become the latest to embrace the widely-used social engineering technique called ClickFix as a distribution vector. "The ClickFix technique is particularly risky because it allows the malware to execute in memory rather than being written to disk," Expel said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This removes many opportunities for browsers or security tools to detect or block the malware." Latrodectus, believed to be a successor to IcedID, is the name given to a malware that acts as a downloader for other payloads, such as ransomware. It was first documented by Proofpoint and Team Cymru in April 2024.

Threat actors are leveraging fake Google Meet web pages as part of an ongoing malware campaign dubbed ClickFix to deliver infostealers targeting Windows and macOS systems. "This tactic involves displaying fake error messages in web browsers to deceive users into copying and executing a given malicious PowerShell code, finally infecting their systems," French cybersecurity company Sekoia said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Variations of the ClickFix (aka ClearFake and OneDrive Pastejacking) campaign have been reported widely in recent months , with threat actors employing different lures to redirect users to bogus pages that aim to deploy malware by urging site visitors to run an encoded PowerShell code to address a supposed issue with displaying content in the web browser. These pages are known to masquerade as popular online services, including Facebook, Google Chrome, PDFSimpli, and reCAPTCHA, and now Google Meet as well as potentially Zoom - meet.googl...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and National Security Agency (NSA), along with international partners from Australia and Canada, have released guidance to harden on-premise Microsoft Exchange Server instances from potential exploitation. "By restricting administrative access, implementing multi-factor authentication, enforcing strict transport security configurations, and adopting zero trust (ZT) security model principles, organizations can significantly bolster their defenses against potential cyber attacks," CISA said . The agencies said malicious activity aimed at Microsoft Exchange Server continues to take place, with unprotected and misconfigured instances facing the brunt of the attacks. Organizations are advised to decommission end-of-life on-premises or hybrid Exchange servers after transitioning to Microsoft 365. Some of the best practices outlined are listed below - Maintain security updates and patching cadence Migrate end-o...

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...

Threat hunters have uncovered similarities between a banking malware called Coyote and a newly disclosed malicious program dubbed Maverick that has been propagated via WhatsApp. According to a report from CyberProof, both malware strains are written in .NET, target Brazilian users and banks, and feature identical functionality to decrypt, targeting banking URLs and monitor banking applications. More importantly, both include the ability to spread through WhatsApp Web . Maverick was first documented by Trend Micro early last month, attributing it to a threat actor dubbed Water Saci . The campaign involves two components: A self-propagating malware referred to as SORVEPOTEL that's spread via the desktop web version of WhatsApp and is used to deliver a ZIP archive containing the Maverick payload. The malware is designed to monitor active browser window tabs for URLs that match a hard-coded list of financial institutions in Latin America. Should the URLs match, it establishes con...