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Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a supply chain attack targeting a Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code) extension called Ethcode that has been installed a little over 6,000 times. The compromise, per ReversingLabs , occurred via a GitHub pull request that was opened by a user named Airez299 on June 17, 2025. First released by 7finney in 2022, Ethcode is a VS Code extension that's used to deploy and execute solidity smart contracts in Ethereum Virtual Machine ( EVM )-based blockchains. An EVM is a decentralized computation engine that's designed to run smart contracts on the Ethereum network. According to the supply chain security company, the GitHub project received its last non-malicious update on September 6, 2024. That changed last month when Airez299 opened a pull request with the message "Modernize codebase with viem integration and testing framework." The user claimed to have added a new testing framework with Mocha integration and contract testin...

From overprivileged admin roles to long-forgotten vendor tokens, these attackers are slipping through the cracks of trust and access. Here's how five retail breaches unfolded, and what they reveal about... In recent months, major retailers like Adidas, The North Face, Dior, Victoria's Secret, Cartier, Marks & Spencer, and Co‑op have all been breached. These attacks weren't sophisticated malware or zero-day exploits. They were identity-driven, exploiting overprivileged access and unmonitored service accounts, and used the human layer through tactics like social engineering. Attackers didn't need to break in. They logged in. They moved through SaaS apps unnoticed, often using real credentials and legitimate sessions. And while most retailers didn't share all the technical details, the patterns are clear and recurring.  Here's a breakdown of the five recent high-profile breaches in retail: 1. Adidas: Exploiting third-party trust Adidas confirmed a data breach caused by an ...

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a malware campaign that's targeting security flaws in TBK digital video recorders (DVRs) and Four-Faith routers to rope the devices into a new botnet called RondoDox . The vulnerabilities in question include CVE-2024-3721 , a medium-severity command injection vulnerability affecting TBK DVR-4104 and DVR-4216 DVRs, and CVE-2024-12856 , an operating system (OS) command injection bug affecting Four-Faith router models F3x24 and F3x36. Many of these devices are installed in critical environments like retail stores, warehouses, and small offices, where they often go unmonitored for years. That makes them ideal targets—easy to exploit, hard to detect, and usually exposed directly to the internet through outdated firmware or misconfigured ports. It's worth noting that all three security defects have been repeatedly weaponized by threat actors to deploy different Mirai botnet variants in recent months. "Both [the security f...

A newly released report by cybersecurity firm CTM360 reveals a large-scale scam operation utilizing fake news websites—known as Baiting News Sites (BNS)—to deceive users into online investment fraud across 50 countries. These BNS pages are made to look like real news outlets: CNN, BBC, CNBC, or regional media. They publish fake stories that feature public figures, central banks, or financial brands, all claiming to back new ways to earn passive income. The goal? Build trust quickly and steer readers toward professional-looking scam platforms like Trap10, Solara Vynex, or Eclipse Earn. Scammers use sponsored ads on Google, Meta, and blog networks to push traffic to these sites. Ads often carry clickbait headlines—"You won't believe what a prominent public figure just revealed"—paired with official photos or national flags to make them feel legit. Clicking the ad directs users to a fake article, which then redirects them to a fraudulent trading platform. Many of these scams follow a...

Russian organizations have been targeted as part of an ongoing campaign that delivers a previously undocumented Windows spyware called Batavia. The activity, per cybersecurity vendor Kaspersky, has been active since July 2024. "The targeted attack begins with bait emails containing malicious links, sent under the pretext of signing a contract," the Russian company said . "The main goal of the attack is to infect organizations with the previously unknown Batavia spyware, which then proceeds to steal internal documents." The email messages are sent from the domain "oblast-ru[.]com," which is said to be owned by the attackers themselves. The links embedded within the digital missives lead to the download of an archive file containing a Visual Basic Encoded script (.VBE) file. When executed, the script profiles the compromised host and exfiltrates the system information to the remote server. This is followed by the retrieval of a next-stage payload from t...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday added four security flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation in the wild. The list of flaws is as follows - CVE-2014-3931 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A buffer overflow vulnerability in Multi-Router Looking Glass (MRLG) that could allow remote attackers to cause an arbitrary memory write and memory corruption CVE-2016-10033 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A command injection vulnerability in PHPMailer that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code within the context of the application or result in a denial-of-service (DoS) condition CVE-2019-5418 (CVSS score: 7.5) - A path traversal vulnerability in Ruby on Rails' Action View that could cause contents of arbitrary files on the target system's file system to be exposed CVE-2019-9621 (CVSS score: 7.5) - A Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability in the Zimbra Collaboration Suite that could ...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a malicious campaign that leverages search engine optimization ( SEO ) poisoning techniques to deliver a known malware loader called Oyster (aka Broomstick or CleanUpLoader). The malvertising activity, per Arctic Wolf, promotes fake websites hosting trojanized versions of legitimate tools like PuTTY and WinSCP, aiming to trick software professionals searching for these programs into installing them instead. "Upon execution, a backdoor known as Oyster/Broomstick is installed," the company said in a brief published last week. "Persistence is established by creating a scheduled task that runs every three minutes, executing a malicious DLL (twain_96.dll) via rundll32.exe using the DllRegisterServer export, indicating the use of DLL registration as part of the persistence mechanism." The names of some of the bogus websites are listed below - updaterputty[.]com zephyrhype[.]com putty[.]run putty[.]bet, and puttyy[.]org...

Everything feels secure—until one small thing slips through. Even strong systems can break if a simple check is missed or a trusted tool is misused. Most threats don't start with alarms—they sneak in through the little things we overlook. A tiny bug, a reused password, a quiet connection—that's all it takes. Staying safe isn't just about reacting fast. It's about catching these early signs before they blow up into real problems. That's why this week's updates matter. From stealthy tactics to unexpected entry points, the stories ahead reveal how quickly risk can spread—and what smart teams are doing to stay ahead. Dive in. ⚡ Threat of the Week U.S. Disrupts N. Korea IT Worker Scheme — Prosecutors said they uncovered the North Korean IT staff working at over 100 U.S. companies using fictitious or stolen identities and not only drawing salaries, but also stealing secret data and plundering virtual currency more than $900,000 in one incident targeting an unnamed blockchain company in ...

If you didn't hear about  Iranian hackers breaching US water facilities, it's because they only managed to control a single pressure station serving 7,000 people. What made this attack noteworthy wasn't its scale, but how easily the hackers gained access — by simply using the manufacturer's default password "1111." This narrow escape prompted  CISA to urge manufacturers to eliminate default credentials entirely, citing "years of evidence" that these preset passwords remain one of the most exploited weaknesses. While we wait for manufacturers to implement better security practices, the responsibility falls on IT teams. Whether you manage critical infrastructure or a standard business network, allowing unchanged manufacturer passwords in your environment is like rolling out the red carpet for attackers. Here's what you need to know about default passwords — why they persist, their business and technical consequences, and how manufacturers can imple...

A hacking group with ties other than Pakistan has been found targeting Indian government organizations with a modified variant of a remote access trojan (RAT) called DRAT. The activity has been attributed by Recorded Future's Insikt Group to a threat actor tracked as TAG-140, which it said overlaps with SideCopy , an adversarial collective assessed to be an operational sub-cluster within Transparent Tribe (aka APT-C-56, APT36, Datebug, Earth Karkaddan, Mythic Leopard, Operation C-Major, and ProjectM). "TAG-140 has consistently demonstrated iterative advancement and variety in its malware arsenal and delivery techniques," the Mastercard-owned company said in an analysis published last month. "This latest campaign, which spoofed the Indian Ministry of Defence via a cloned press release portal, marks a slight but notable shift in both malware architecture and command-and-control (C2) functionality." The updated version of DRAT, called DRAT V2, is the latest a...

Taiwan's National Security Bureau (NSB) has warned that China-developed applications like RedNote (aka Xiaohongshu), Weibo, TikTok, WeChat, and Baidu Cloud pose security risks due to excessive data collection and data transfer to China. The alert comes following an inspection of these apps carried out in coordination with the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MJIB) and the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) under the National Police Agency. "The results indicate the existence of security issues, including excessive data collection and privacy infringement," the NSB said . "The public is advised to exercise caution when choosing mobile apps." The agency said it evaluated the apps against 15 indicators spanning five broad categories: Personal data collection, excessive permission usage, data transmission and sharing, system information extraction, and biometric data access. According to the analysis, RedNote violated all 15 indicators, followed by W...

Threat actors are weaponizing exposed Java Debug Wire Protocol ( JDWP ) interfaces to obtain code execution capabilities and deploy cryptocurrency miners on compromised hosts. "The attacker used a modified version of XMRig with a hard-"coded configuration, allowing them to avoid suspicious command-line arguments that are often flagged by defenders," Wiz researchers Yaara Shriki and Gili Tikochinski said in a report published this week. "The payload used mining pool proxies to hide their cryptocurrency wallet address, thereby preventing investigators from pivoting on it." The cloud security firm, which is being acquired by Google Cloud, said it observed the activity against its honeypot servers running TeamCity, a popular continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) tool. JDWP is a communication protocol used in Java for debugging purposes. With JDWP, users can leverage a debugger to work in a different process, a Java application, on the same com...