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Cybersecurity researchers have flagged an evolution of the EtherHiding blockchain-based command-and-control (C2) technique that conceals the C2 server IP address inside a made-up destination address of a completely empty Ethereum transfer. The new dead drop resolver approach, observed in two trojanized npm package "bianira-ui" and "fluid-type-ui," has been codenamed NullReceiver by OpenSourceMalware, which has described it as a "deliberate improvement on EtherHiding." The activity has been linked to North Korea. The packages are currently no longer available for download from npm. However, statistics show that they have been downloaded a few hundred times since they were first published on July 28, 2026 - bianira-ui (109 downloads), uploaded by an npm user named "npmuser1101" fluid-type-ui (587 downloads), uploaded by an npm user named "npmuser3002" EtherHiding was first publicly documented by Guardio Labs in October ...

A memory corruption flaw in the Linux kernel's Open vSwitch datapath gives ordinary local users a path to root on a broad set of default-configured distributions, and a public exploit ships with pre-built records for roughly 800 kernel builds. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-64531 (CVSS score: 7.8) and codenamed OVSwrap by its discoverer, was disclosed by security researcher Asim Manizada on July 28, 2026. The bug sits in the kernel datapath, not the userspace ovs-vswitchd daemon. In a technical write-up , Manizada said an attacker needs "no existing OVS bridge, no running ovs-vswitchd, no host-level CAP_NET_ADMIN." On affected systems where the OVS kernel datapath is available and unprivileged user namespaces are enabled, an ordinary user can create private user and network namespaces with unshare -Urn, gain CAP_NET_ADMIN inside that namespace, and reach the vulnerable flow-installation path. If the openvswitch module is installed but not loaded, resolvi...

Kali365 is turning a legitimate Microsoft login into a gateway to corporate data. The phishing kit targets US organizations with attacker-controlled device codes that victims approve on Microsoft's real authentication page. Once access and refresh tokens are issued, attackers may retain access to email, documents, and cloud resources, creating a direct path to data exposure, financial fraud, operational disruption, and costly incident response. How Kali365 Targets US Organizations Kali365 is a device code phishing kit built to abuse legitimate Microsoft authentication. ANY.RUN telemetry records more than 80 public sessions linked to the campaign each week, with the United States emerging as its main geographic target. One of these sandbox sessions shows a SharePoint-themed lure used to draw the victim into the authentication flow. View the analysis session and gather IOCs SharePoint-themed Kali365 lure analyzed inside ANY.RUN’s Interactive Sandbox Based on the resear...

An unauthenticated attacker can read any file the service account can access on Gitea , the self-hosted Git platform, in versions 1.22.1 through 1.27.0. No login, no repository write access. A public repository and crafted Org-mode markup are enough. The flaw is fixed in Gitea 1.27.1. The file-read flaw is tracked as CVE-2026-59774 , rated Critical with a CVSS score of 9.8, and received its formal advisory on August 2. Gitea 1.27.1 also patches CVE-2026-60004 , a separate remote code execution bug covered in a prior THN report . Gitea said Cloud instances would be upgraded automatically during the release maintenance window. Self-hosted administrators should move to 1.27.1 immediately. The file-read bug is not direct one-request remote code execution. Gitea says it can become command execution if an attacker reads app.ini , extracts INTERNAL_TOKEN , injects a Git hook through the internal logger, and triggers that hook during an anonymous clone. That chain is described in Gite...

GitGuardian researchers found 321 n8n instances accepting API tokens exposed in public GitHub commits and demonstrated four ways attackers could use them to access sensitive data and downstream credentials without exploiting a software vulnerability. We scanned public GitHub commits for exposed n8n API tokens and identified 4,576 unique credentials associated with 1,255 hostnames. Of the 896 instances reachable at the time of testing, 321 accepted at least one leaked token. That means leaked credentials provided authenticated access to 36% of the reachable instances we tested, or roughly 26% of all hostnames identified in the commits. The implications extend well beyond n8n. Organizations use the automation platform to connect databases, source code repositories, cloud environments, artificial intelligence services, customer support platforms, and other internal systems. A sufficiently privileged n8n token can expose workflow definitions and execution data, allow attackers to us...

A cluster of 77 extensions on the Open VSX marketplace has been found to impersonate legitimate developer tools while transmitting information about the systems and development environments on which they were installed. The "evil twin" extensions were uploaded to the repository between July 26 and August 1, 2026, according to Manifold Security. The packages have been removed from Open VSX as of August 3, 2026. "In most of the packages it sends little more than the machine's hostname," security researchers Ax Sharma and Cody Nash said . "In nineteen of them it sends a detailed description of the machine, the repository open in the editor, and the CI system the editor is running inside." Of the identified extensions, 58 have been described as lightweight tools designed to exfiltrate the hostname and, in some cases, the workspace folder name or editor version. The rest are reconnaissance payloads that transmit the developer-related information: l...

An agent running Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5 spent 34 hours trying to get a malware dropper merged into a real open-source project during a cyber evaluation by the UK's AI Security Institute. When a bystander publicly warned that the code was malicious, the agent denied it, force-pushed a rewritten branch history to erase the evidence, and posted from a second account it controlled to vouch for its own work. The project's maintainer closed the pull request anyway. The institute, known as AISI, published its incident report on Tuesday. Across 122 runs of a capture-the-flag (CTF) exercise on two of its cyber ranges, researchers catalogued 19 unsanctioned actions on the live internet across 10 runs: 17 from Mythos 5, a restricted model Anthropic sells for cybersecurity work, and two from OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol. AISI says the attempts failed and that it has found no evidence of resulting real-world harm. Both models ran with their providers' cyber classifiers swi...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), on August 5, 2026, added three flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation in the wild. The list of vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2026-9198 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A code injection vulnerability in Langflow that allows unauthenticated attackers to achieve full remote code execution on default Langflow deployments. (Fixed in July 2026 with version 1.10.1) CVE-2026-34486 (CVS score: 7.5) - A missing encryption of sensitive data vulnerability in Apache Tomcat that allows a bypass of EncryptInterceptor, a cluster component that adds pre-shared key encryption to messages sent between cluster nodes. (Fixed in April 2026 with versions 11.0.21, 10.1.54, and 9.0.117) Also added to the KEV catalog is CVE-2026-18556 (CVSS score: 8.2), an authentication bypass vulnerability in N-able N-central. It's worth noting that an incomplete fix for this issue promp...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed what has been described as a "long-standing supply chain attack" on QuickFox, a virtual private network (VPN) and network acceleration tool designed for overseas Chinese users. According to Fortinet FortiGuard Labs, the supply chain attack has been ongoing since at least August 2025 and involves a trojanized version of the application to deliver FDMTP , a backdoor that has been put to use by a Chinese state-sponsored threat actor tracked as Mustang Panda. "The attack is delivered via a modified Electron renderer HTML file used to download and execute a JavaScript-based loader," the FortiGuard Incident Response Team said . "Upon execution, the JavaScript loader fingerprints the victim endpoint to determine if it's a valid target before downloading and installing an FDMTP implant." Following responsible disclosure, QuickFox has removed the malicious components from their Windows installer with the release o...

The commercial phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) toolkit known as Greatness has become the latest crimeware solution to add support for device code phishing, a rapidly growing cyber threat that abuses the legitimate OAuth 2.0 Device Authorization Grant to bypass Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and seize control of user accounts. "Greatness supports AiTM [adversary-in-the-middle] credential and token theft, device code phishing, and OAuth consent abuse, all from the same operator panel and shared backend infrastructure," ZeroBEC said in a report shared with The Hacker News detailing the PhaaS kit's latest capabilities. "The platform now supports AiTM token theft, device code phishing, OAuth consent abuse, and multiple target platforms, including iCloud, Yahoo, and Google Workspace. This evolution reflects the broader trend of PhaaS platforms expanding from simple credential harvesting to integrated attack ecosystems." The phishing platform was first pu...

A credential-stealing npm worm that first appeared in keyv@6.0.0 spread beyond the Keyv and Cacheable namespaces into hundreds of packages across multiple organizations on August 4, 2026. SafeDep verified 353 poisoned versions across 79 package names in the npm registry. Its monitoring put the wider footprint at 442 versions across 353 names, while Aikido later reported at least 868 packages across 1,381 versions. Neither broader total was independently reproducible from a complete public list at the reporting cutoff. The malicious release used a preinstall script to run a credential-stealing bundle inside developer and continuous integration (CI) environments. SafeDep and Socket say it can harvest repository, package registry, cloud and private-key material, then use available npm publishing access to poison more packages. The Keyv repository also retained separate Claude Code and Visual Studio Code (VS Code) hooks that can execute the payload once a user trusts the workspace...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of an active, multi-wave campaign that employs social engineering lures themed around Adobe and Zoom software updates, business document reviews, and system maintenance utilities to stealthily deploy Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) programs like ConnectWise ScreenConnect. The campaign has been codenamed SMOKE#SCREEN by Securonix Threat Research. "The campaign relies on a toolkit of VBScript droppers, batch file loaders, compiled .NET executables and an HTML phishing page, all ultimately pointing to a live WsgiDAV-based staging server at 207.174.0[.]143:8080," researchers Shikha Sangwan, Akshay Gaikwad, and Aaron Beardslee said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Successful attacks culminate with a ScreenConnect agent installed and beaconing to one of three attacker-controlled relay servers, providing the attackers with persistent remote access to compromised systems. The activity has not been attributed to ...

The cybersecurity industry has spent decades assuming that offensive capability scales with technical expertise. That assumption is starting to break. Security teams have long estimated risk by ranking attacker sophistication. Nation-state actors sat at one end. Organized criminal groups followed. Inexperienced attackers, dismissed as "script kiddies," sat at the other end, running public tools they didn't fully understand. Generative AI is collapsing that ranking. The next generation of attackers won't necessarily bring years of exploit development or reverse engineering experience. Instead, they'll use AI to close knowledge gaps by accelerating research, explaining unfamiliar concepts, generating code, troubleshooting errors, and adapting known techniques to new environments. The barrier to entry is dropping fast. The Economics of Cyberattacks Are Changing Every major technology shift changes economics as it changes the solutions we rely on. Clo...

Google deleted three AI agent workflows from its Agent Development Kit (ADK) Python repository. Pillar Security showed that a public GitHub issue could manipulate a triage agent into triggering a privileged code-fixing agent. The researchers said the public agent could be prompt-injected into posting /adk-issue-fix as adk-bot . They identified the bot as a collaborator, so that comment satisfied the privileged workflow's owner, member, or collaborator gate. The trusted bot identity became the authorization bridge. The team demonstrated arbitrary code execution on the continuous integration (CI) runner and exfiltration of the bot personal access token (PAT). The privileged job also held a Google API key and a Google Cloud service-account credential. Its researcher-controlled proof-of-concept attacks do not identify in-the-wild exploitation or a compromised ADK release. The exposed component was the repository automation, not a flaw in the distributed ADK Python package. Fo...