2025-11-15 AI创业新闻

North Korean Hackers Turn JSON Services into Covert Malware Delivery Channels

The North Korean threat actors behind the Contagious Interview campaign have once again tweaked their tactics by using JSON storage services to stage malicious payloads. “The threat actors have recently resorted to utilizing JSON storage services like JSON Keeper, JSONsilo, and npoint.io to host and deliver malware from trojanized code projects, with the lure,” NVISO researchers Bart Parys, Stef Collart, and Efstratios Lontzetidis said in a Thursday report. The campaign essentially involves approaching prospective targets on professional networking sites like LinkedIn, either under the pretext of conducting a job assessment or collaborating on a project, as part of which they are instructed to download a demo project hosted on platforms like GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. In one such project spotted by NVISO, it has been found that a file named “server/config/.config.env” contains a Base64-encoded value that masquerades as an API key, but, in reality, is a URL to a JSON storage service like JSON Keeper where the next-stage payload is stored in obfuscated format.

The payload is a JavaScript malware known as BeaverTail, which is capable of harvesting sensitive data and dropping a Python backdoor called InvisibleFerret. While the functionality of the backdoor has remained largely unchanged from when it was first documented by Palo Alto Networks in late 2023, one notable change involves fetching an additional payload dubbed TsunamiKit from Pastebin. It’s worth noting that use of TsunamiKit as part of the Contagious Interview campaign was highlighted by ESET back in September 2025, with the attacks also dropping Tropidoor and AkdoorTea. The toolkit is capable of system fingerprinting, data collection, and fetching more payloads from a hard-coded .onion address that’s currently offline.

“It’s clear that the actors behind Contagious Interview are not lagging behind and are trying to cast a very wide net to compromise any (software) developer that might seem interesting to them, resulting in exfiltration of sensitive data and crypto wallet information,” the researchers concluded. “The use of legitimate websites such as JSON Keeper, JSON Silo and npoint.io, along with code repositories such as GitLab and GitHub, underlines the actor’s motivation and sustained attempts to operate stealthily and blend in with normal traffic.” Found this article interesting? Follow us on Google News , Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

Researchers Find Serious AI Bugs Exposing Meta, Nvidia, and Microsoft Inference Frameworks

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered critical remote code execution vulnerabilities impacting major artificial intelligence (AI) inference engines, including those from Meta, Nvidia, Microsoft, and open-source PyTorch projects such as vLLM and SGLang. “These vulnerabilities all traced back to the same root cause: the overlooked unsafe use of ZeroMQ (ZMQ) and Python’s pickle deserialization,” Oligo Security researcher Avi Lumelsky said in a report published Thursday. At its core, the issue stems from what has been described as a pattern called ShadowMQ , in which the insecure deserialization logic has propagated to several projects as a result of code reuse. The root cause is a vulnerability in Meta’s Llama large language model (LLM) framework ( CVE-2024-50050 , CVSS score: 6.3/9.3) that was patched by the company last October.

Specifically, it involved the use of ZeroMQ’s recv_pyobj() method to deserialize incoming data using Python’s pickle module. This, coupled with the fact that the framework exposed the ZeroMQ socket over the network, opened the door to a scenario where an attacker can execute arbitrary code by sending malicious data for deserialization. The issue has also been addressed in the pyzmq Python library. Oligo has since discovered the same pattern recurring in other inference frameworks, such as NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM, Microsoft Sarathi-Serve, Modular Max Server, vLLM, and SGLang.

“All contained nearly identical unsafe patterns: pickle deserialization over unauthenticated ZMQ TCP sockets,” Lumelsky said. “Different maintainers and projects maintained by different companies – all made the same mistake.” Tracing the origins of the problem, Oligo found that in at least a few cases, it was the result of a direct copy-paste of code. For example, the vulnerable file in SGLang says it’s adapted by vLLM, while Modular Max Server has borrowed the same logic from both vLLM and SGLang, effectively perpetuating the same flaw across codebases. The issues have been assigned the following identifiers - CVE-2025-30165 (CVSS score: 8.0) - vLLM (While the issue is not fixed, it has been addressed by switching to the V1 engine by default) CVE-2025-23254 (CVSS score: 8.8) - NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM (Fixed in version 0.18.2) CVE-2025-60455 (CVSS score: N/A) - Modular Max Server (Fixed) Sarathi-Serve (Remains unpatched) SGLang (Implemented incomplete fixes ) With inference engines acting as a crucial component within AI infrastructures, a successful compromise of a single node could permit an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the cluster, escalate privileges, conduct model theft, and even drop malicious payloads like cryptocurrency miners for financial gain.

“Projects are moving at incredible speed, and it’s common to borrow architectural components from peers,” Lumelsky said. “But when code reuse includes unsafe patterns, the consequences ripple outward fast.” The disclosure comes as a new report from AI security platform Knostic has found that it’s possible to compromise Cursor’s new built-in browser via JavaScript injection techniques, not to mention leverage a malicious extension to facilitate JavaScript injection in order to take control of the developer workstation. The first attack involves registering a rogue local Model Context Protocol ( MCP ) server that bypasses Cursor’s controls to allow an attacker to replace the login pages within the browser with a bogus page that harvests credentials and exfiltrates them to a remote server under their control. “Once a user downloaded the MCP server and ran it, using an mcp.json file within Cursor, it injected code into Cursor’s browser that led the user to a fake login page, which stole their credentials and sent them to a remote server,” security researcher Dor Munis said .

Given that the AI-powered source code editor is essentially a fork of Visual Studio Code, a bad actor could also craft a malicious extension to inject JavaScript into the running IDE to execute arbitrary actions, including marking harmless Open VSX extensions as “malicious.” “JavaScript running inside the Node.js interpreter, whether introduced by an extension, an MCP server, or a poisoned prompt or rule, immediately inherits the IDE’s privileges: full file-system access, the ability to modify or replace IDE functions (including installed extensions), and the ability to persist code that reattaches after a restart,” the company said . “Once interpreter-level execution is available, an attacker can turn the IDE into a malware distribution and exfiltration platform.” To counter these risks, it’s essential that users disable Auto-Run features in their IDEs, vet extensions, install MCP servers from trusted developers and repositories, check what data and APIs the servers access, use API keys with minimal required permissions, and audit MCP server source code for critical integrations. Found this article interesting? Follow us on Google News , Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

Iranian Hackers Launch ‘SpearSpecter’ Spy Operation on Defense & Government Targets

The Iranian state-sponsored threat actor known as APT42 has been observed targeting individuals and organizations that are of interest to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as part of a new espionage-focused campaign. The activity, detected in early September 2025 and assessed to be ongoing, has been codenamed SpearSpecter by the Israel National Digital Agency (INDA). “The campaign has systematically targeted high-value senior defense and government officials using personalized social engineering tactics,” INDA researchers Shimi Cohen, Adi Pick, Idan Beit-Yosef, Hila David, and Yaniv Goldman said. “These include inviting targets to prestigious conferences or arranging significant meetings.” What’s notable about the effort is that it also extends to the targets’ family members, creating a broader attack surface that exerts more pressure on the primary targets.

APT42 was first publicly documented in late 2022 by Google Mandiant, detailing its overlaps with another IRGC threat cluster tracked as APT35, CALANQUE, Charming Kitten, CharmingCypress, Cobalt Illusion, Educated Manticore, GreenCharlie, ITG18, Magic Hound, Mint Sandstorm (formerly Phosphorus), TA453, and Yellow Garuda. One of the group’s hallmarks is its ability to mount convincing social engineering campaigns that can run for days or weeks in an effort build trust with the targets, in some cases masquerading as known contacts to create an illusion of authenticity, before sending a malicious payload or tricking them into clicking on booby-trapped links. As recently as June 2025, Check Point detailed an attack wave in which the threat actors approached Israeli technology and cyber security professionals by posing as technology executives or researchers in emails and WhatsApp messages. Goldman told The Hacker News that SpearSpecter and the June 2025 campaign are distinct and have been undertaken by two different sub-groups within APT42.

“While our campaign was carried out by cluster D of APT42 (which focuses more on malware-based operations), the campaign detailed by Check Point was carried out by cluster B of the same group (which focuses more on credential harvesting),” Goldman added. INDA said SpearSpecter is flexible in that the adversary tweaks its approach based on the value of the target and operational objectives. In one set of attacks, victims are redirected to bogus meeting pages that are designed to capture their credentials. On the other hand, if the end goal is persistent long-term access, the attacks lead to the deployment of a known PowerShell backdoor dubbed TAMECAT that has been repeatedly put to use in recent years .

To that end, the attack chains involve impersonating trusted WhatsApp contacts to send a malicious link to a supposed required document for an upcoming meeting or conference. When the link is clicked, it initiates a redirect chain to serve a WebDAV-hosted Windows shortcut (LNK) masquerading as a PDF file by taking advantage of the “search-ms:” protocol handler. The LNK file, for its part, establishes contact with a Cloudflare Workers subdomain to retrieve a batch script that functions as a loader for TAMECAT, which, in turn, employs various modular components to facilitate data exfiltration and remote control. The PowerShell framework uses three distinct channels, viz., HTTPS, Discord, and Telegram, for command-and-control (C2), suggesting the threat actor’s goal of maintaining persistent access to compromised hosts even if one pathway gets detected and blocked.

For Telegram-based C2, TAMECAT listens for incoming commands from an attacker-controlled Telegram bot, based on which it fetches and executes additional PowerShell code from different Cloudflare Workers subdomains. In the case of Discord, a webhook URL is used to send basic system information and get commands in return from a hard-coded channel. “Analysis of accounts recovered from the actor’s Discord server suggests the command lookup logic relies on messages from a specific user, allowing the actor to deliver unique commands to individual infected hosts while using the same channel to coordinate multiple attacks, effectively creating a collaborative workspace on a single infrastructure,” INDA researchers said. Furthermore, TAMECAT comes equipped with features to conduct reconnaissance, harvest files matching a certain extensions, steal data from web browsers like Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, collect Outlook mailboxes, and take screenshots at 15-second intervals.

The data is exfiltrated over HTTPS or FTP. It also adopts a variety of stealthy techniques to evade detection and resist analysis efforts. These include encrypting telemetry and controller payloads, source code obfuscation, using living-off-the-land binaries (LOLBins) to hide malicious activities, and operating mostly in memory, thereby leaving little traces on disk. “The SpearSpecter campaign’s infrastructure reflects a sophisticated blend of agility, stealth, and operational security designed to sustain prolonged espionage against high-value targets,” INDA said.

“operators leverage a multifaceted infrastructure that combines legitimate cloud services with attacker-controlled resources, enabling seamless initial access, persistent command-and-control (C2), and covert data exfiltration.” Found this article interesting? Follow us on Google News , Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

Ransomware’s Fragmentation Reaches a Breaking Point While LockBit Returns

Key Takeaways: 85 active ransomware and extortion groups observed in Q3 2025, reflecting the most decentralized ransomware ecosystem to date. 1,590 victims disclosed across 85 leak sites, showing high, sustained activity despite law-enforcement pressure. 14 new ransomware brands launched this quarter, proving how quickly affiliates reconstitute after takedowns. LockBit’s reappearance with version 5.0 signals potential re-centralization after months of fragmentation.

In Q3 2025, Check Point Research recorded a record 85 active ransomware and extortion groups , the highest ever observed. What was once a concentrated market dominated by a few ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) giants has splintered into dozens of smaller, short-lived operations. This proliferation of leak sites represents a fundamental structural shift. The same enforcement and market pressures that disrupted large RaaS groups have fueled a wave of opportunistic, decentralized actors, many run by former affiliates now operating independently.

Read the full Q3 2025 Ransomware Report A Record 85 Active Groups Across more than 85 monitored leak sites, ransomware operators published: 1,592 new victims in Q3 2025. An average of 535 disclosures per month. A major power shift: the top ten groups accounted for just 56% of victims, down from 71% earlier this year. Smaller actors are now posting fewer than ten victims each, reflecting a rise in independent operations outside traditional RaaS hierarchies.

Many emerged from the collapse of RansomHub, 8Base, and BianLian. Fourteen new groups began publishing in Q3 alone, bringing the 2025 total to 45. Fragmentation at this level erodes predictability, once the cyber security professional’s advantage. When large RaaS brands dominated, security teams could track affiliate behaviors and infrastructure reuse.

Now, dozens of ephemeral leak sites make attribution fleeting and reputation-based intelligence far less reliable. Share of total victims by top 10 ransomware groups, Q1–Q3 2025 Read the full Q3 2025 Ransomware Report. Law Enforcement’s Limited Impact Several high-profile takedowns this year targeting groups like RansomHub and 8Base have not meaningfully reduced ransomware volume. Affiliates displaced by these operations simply migrate or rebrand.

The problem is structural. Law-enforcement efforts typically dismantle infrastructure or seize domains, not the affiliates who execute attacks. When a platform falls, those operators scatter and regroup within days. The result is a broader, more resilient ecosystem that mirrors decentralized finance or open-source communities more than a traditional criminal hierarchy.

This diffusion also undermines the credibility of the ransomware market. Smaller, short-lived crews have no incentive to honor ransom agreements or provide decryption keys. Payment rates, estimated at just 25 to 40 percent, continue to decline as victims lose trust in attacker promises. LockBit’s Return and Re-centralization In September 2025, LockBit 5.0 marked the return of one of cybercrime’s most enduring brands.

Its administrator, LockBitSupp, had teased a comeback for months following the 2024 takedown under Operation Cronos. The new version delivers: Updated Windows, Linux, and ESXi variants. Faster encryption and improved evasion. Unique negotiation portals per victim.

At least a dozen victims were hit in the first month. The campaign demonstrates renewed affiliate confidence and technical maturity. For attackers, joining a recognizable brand like LockBit brings something smaller crews cannot offer: reputation. Victims are more likely to pay when they believe they will actually receive decryption keys, trust that large RaaS programs carefully maintain.

If LockBit succeeds in attracting affiliates seeking structure and credibility, it could recentralize a significant portion of the ransomware economy. Centralization has a dual effect. It makes tracking easier but increases the potential scale of coordinated attacks. LockBit 5.0 ransom note from an attack DragonForce and the Performance of Power DragonForce illustrates another survival strategy: visibility through branding.

In September, the group publicly claimed coalitions with both LockBit and Qilin on underground forums. No shared infrastructure has been verified, and the alliances appear more symbolic than operational. Still, these moves highlight ransomware’s evolution toward corporate-style marketing. DragonForce promotes itself with: Affiliate partnership announcements.

Data-audit services to analyze stolen data and improve extortion leverage. Public relations aimed at projecting strength and reliability. The group’s messaging reflects a competitive marketplace where image and credibility are as valuable as encryption speed. DragonForce audit example Geographic and Industry Trends Global targeting in Q3 2025 largely mirrored previous quarters but with distinct regional and sector shifts.

The United States accounted for about half of all reported victims, continuing to be the prime target for financially motivated actors. South Korea entered the global top ten for the first time, almost entirely due to Qilin’s focused campaign against financial firms. Europe remained highly active, with Germany and the United Kingdom seeing sustained pressure from Safepay and INC Ransom. Read the full Q3 2025 Ransomware Report On the industrial side: Manufacturing and business services each represented about 10 percent of recorded cases.

Healthcare held steady at 8 percent, though some groups such as Play avoid the sector to reduce scrutiny. These shifts show how ransomware is guided by business logic more than ideology. Actors pursue sectors and regions with high-value data and low tolerance for downtime. The Road Ahead Q3 2025 confirms ransomware’s structural resilience.

Enforcement and market pressure no longer suppress overall volume; they simply reshape the landscape. Each takedown disperses actors who quickly resurface under new names or join emerging collectives. LockBit’s return adds another layer of complexity, raising the question of whether ransomware is entering a new consolidation cycle. If LockBit re-establishes dominance, it may restore some predictability but also re-enable large-scale, coordinated campaigns that smaller crews cannot execute.

For cyber security professionals, the takeaway is clear. Tracking brands is no longer enough. Analysts must monitor affiliate mobility , infrastructure overlap , and economic incentives — the underlying forces that sustain ransomware even as its faces fragment. 🔗 Read the full Q3 2025 Ransomware Report → Found this article interesting?

This article is a contributed piece from one of our valued partners. Follow us on Google News , Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

Chinese Hackers Use Anthropic’s AI to Launch Automated Cyber Espionage Campaign

State-sponsored threat actors from China used artificial intelligence (AI) technology developed by Anthropic to orchestrate automated cyber attacks as part of a “highly sophisticated espionage campaign” in mid-September 2025. “The attackers used AI’s ‘agentic’ capabilities to an unprecedented degree – using AI not just as an advisor, but to execute the cyber attacks themselves,” the AI upstart said . The activity is assessed to have manipulated Claude Code, Anthropic’s AI coding tool, to attempt to break into about 30 global targets spanning large tech companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturing companies, and government agencies. A subset of these intrusions succeeded.

Anthropic has since banned the relevant accounts and enforced defensive mechanisms to flag such attacks. The campaign, GTG-1002, marks the first time a threat actor has leveraged AI to conduct a “large-scale cyber attack” without major human intervention and for intelligence collection by striking high-value targets, indicating continued evolution in adversarial use of the technology. Describing the operation as well-resourced and professionally coordinated, Anthropic said the threat actor turned Claude into an “autonomous cyber attack agent” to support various stages of the attack lifecycle, including reconnaissance, vulnerability discovery, exploitation, lateral movement, credential harvesting, data analysis, and exfiltration. Specifically, it involved the use of Claude Code and Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools, with the former acting as the central nervous system to process the human operators’ instructions and break down the multi-stage attack into small technical tasks that can be offloaded to sub-agents.

“The human operator tasked instances of Claude Code to operate in groups as autonomous penetration testing orchestrators and agents, with the threat actor able to leverage AI to execute 80-90% of tactical operations independently at physically impossible request rates,” the company added. “Human responsibilities centered on campaign initialization and authorization decisions at critical escalation points.” Human involvement also occurred at strategic junctures, such as authorizing progression from reconnaissance to active exploitation, approving use of harvested credentials for lateral movement, and making final decisions about data exfiltration scope and retention. The system is part of an attack framework that accepts as input a target of interest from a human operator and then leverages the power of MCP to conduct reconnaissance and attack surface mapping. In the next phases of the attack, the Claude-based framework facilitates vulnerability discovery and validates discovered flaws by generating tailored attack payloads.

Upon obtaining approval from human operators, the system proceeds to deploy the exploit and obtain a foothold, and initiate a series of post-exploitation activities involving credential harvesting, lateral movement, data collection, and extraction. În one case targeting an unnamed technology company, the threat actor is said to have instructed Claude to independently query databases and systems and parse results to flag proprietary information and group findings by intelligence value. What’s more, Anthropic said its AI tool generated detailed attack documentation at all phases, allowing the threat actors to likely hand off persistent access to additional teams for long-term operations after the initial wave. “By presenting these tasks to Claude as routine technical requests through carefully crafted prompts and established personas, the threat actor was able to induce Claude to execute individual components of attack chains without access to the broader malicious context,” per the report.

There is no evidence that the operational infrastructure enabled custom malware development. Rather, it has been found to rely extensively on publicly available network scanners, database exploitation frameworks, password crackers, and binary analysis suites. However, investigation into the activity has also uncovered a crucial limitation of AI tools: Their tendency to hallucinate and fabricate data during autonomous operations – cooking up fake credentials or presenting publicly available information as critical discoveries – thereby posing major roadblocks to the overall effectiveness of the scheme. The disclosure comes nearly four months after Anthropic disrupted another sophisticated operation that weaponized Claude to conduct large-scale theft and extortion of personal data in July 2025.

Over the past two months, OpenAI and Google have also disclosed attacks mounted by threat actors leveraging ChatGPT and Gemini , respectively. “This campaign demonstrates that the barriers to performing sophisticated cyberattacks have dropped substantially,” the company said. “Threat actors can now use agentic AI systems to do the work of entire teams of experienced hackers with the right set up, analyzing target systems, producing exploit code, and scanning vast datasets of stolen information more efficiently than any human operator. Less experienced and less resourced groups can now potentially perform large-scale attacks of this nature.” Found this article interesting?

Now-Patched Fortinet FortiWeb Flaw Exploited in Attacks to Create Admin Accounts

Cybersecurity researchers are sounding the alert about an authentication bypass vulnerability in Fortinet Fortiweb WAF that could allow an attacker to take over admin accounts and completely compromise a device. “The watchTowr team is seeing active, indiscriminate in-the-wild exploitation of what appears to be a silently patched vulnerability in Fortinet’s FortiWeb product,” Benjamin Harris, watchTowr CEO and founder, said in a statement. “Patched in version 8.0.2 , the vulnerability allows attackers to perform actions as a privileged user - with in-the-wild exploitation focusing on adding a new administrator account as a basic persistence mechanism for the attackers.” The cybersecurity company said it was able to successfully reproduce the vulnerability and create a working proof-of-concept (Poc). It has also released an artifact generator tool for the authentication bypass to help identify susceptible devices.

According to details shared by Defused and security researcher Daniel Card of PwnDefend, the threat actor behind the exploitation has been found to send a payload to the “/api/v2.0/cmdb/system/admin%3F/../../../../../cgi-bin/fwbcgi” endpoint by means of an HTTP POST request to create an admin account. Some of the admin usernames and passwords created by the payloads detected in the wild are below - Testpoint / AFodIUU3Sszp5 trader1 / 3eMIXX43 trader / 3eMIXX43 test1234point / AFT3$tH4ck Testpoint / AFT3$tH4ck Testpoint / AFT3$tH4ckmet0d4yaga!n watchTowr Labs researcher Sina Kheirkhah, in a follow-up analysis , said the vulnerability is actually a combination of two flaws: a path traversal bug within the HTTP request to reach the “fwbcgi” executable (“/api/v2.0/cmdb/system/admin%3F/../../../../../cg1-bin/fwbcgi”) and an authentication bypass via the contents of the HTTP request header CGIINFO. The “fwbcgi” binary includes a check to confirm if the body of the incoming HTTP request is a valid JSON blob, as well as invokes a function named “cgi_auth(),” which “provides a mechanism to impersonate any user based on data supplied by the client.” This unfolds over four steps - Extracts a CGIINFO header from the HTTP request Decode the Base64-encoded value Parse the result as JSON Iterate over the all JSON keys in the blob to extract four attributes: username, profname (profile name), vdom (virtual domain), and loginname (login identifier) In other words, these fields passed via the HTTP request instruct “fwbcgi” the user the sender of the request wishes to impersonate. In the case of the built-in “admin” account, these values are consistent across devices and cannot be changed: username (“admin”), profname (“prof_admin”), vdom (“root”), and loginname (“admin”).

As a result, an attacker can leverage the path traversal vulnerability by sending a specifically crafted HTTP request containing a CGIINFO header that allows them to impersonate any user, including an admin, by simply supplying the aforementioned values and inheriting their privileges. “That means an attacker can perform any privileged action simply by supplying the appropriate JSON structure,” Kheirkhah explained, adding that the vulnerability could be weaponized to create new local users with elevated privileges. The origins and identity of the threat actor behind the attacks remain unknown. The exploitation activity was first detected early last month.

As of writing, Fortinet has not assigned a CVE identifier or published an advisory on its PSIRT feed. The Hacker News has reached out to Fortinet for comment, and we will update the story if we hear back. Rapid7, which is urging organizations running versions of Fortinet FortiWeb that predate 8.0.2 to address the vulnerability on an emergency basis, said it observed an alleged zero-day exploit targeting FortiWeb was published for sale on a popular black hat forum on November 6, 2025. It’s currently not clear if it’s the same exploit.

“While we wait for a comment from Fortinet, users and enterprises are now facing a familiar process now: look for trivial signs of prior compromise, reach out to Fortinet for more information, and apply patches if you haven’t already,” Harris said. “That said, given the indiscriminate exploitation observed […], appliances that remain unpatched are likely already compromised.” Found this article interesting? Follow us on Google News , Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

Russian Hackers Create 4,300 Fake Travel Sites to Steal Hotel Guests’ Payment Data

A Russian-speaking threat behind an ongoing, mass phishing campaign has registered more than 4,300 domain names since the start of the year. The activity , per Netcraft security researcher Andrew Brandt, is designed to target customers of the hospitality industry, specifically hotel guests who may have travel reservations with spam emails. The campaign is said to have begun in earnest around February 2025. Of the 4,344 domains tied to the attack, 685 domains contain the name “Booking”, followed by 18 with “Expedia,” 13 with “Agoda,” and 12 with “Airbnb,” indicating an attempt to target all popular booking and rental platforms.

“The ongoing campaign employs a sophisticated phishing kit that customizes the page presented to the site visitor depending on a unique string in the URL path when the target first visits the website,” Brandt said. “The customizations use the logos from major online travel industry brands, including Airbnb and Booking.com.” The attack begins with a phishing email urging recipients to click on a link to confirm their booking within the next 24 hours using a credit card. Should they take the bait, the victims are taken to a fake site instead after initiating a chain of redirects. These bogus sites follow consistent naming patterns for their domains, featuring phrases like confirmation, booking, guestcheck, cardverify, or reservation to give them an illusion of legitimacy.

The pages support 43 different languages, allowing the threat actors to cast a wide net. The page then instructs the victim to pay a deposit for their hotel reservation by entering their card information. In the event that any user directly attempts to access the page without a unique identifier called AD_CODE, they are greeted with a blank page. The bogus sites also feature a fake CAPTCHA check that mimics Cloudflare to deceive the target.

“After the initial visit, the AD_CODE value is written to a cookie, which ensures that subsequent pages present the same impersonated branding appearance to the site visitor as they click through pages,” Netcraft said. This also means that changing the “AD_CODE” value in the URL produces a page targeting a different hotel on the same booking platform. As soon as the card details, along with the expiration data and CVV number, are entered, the page attempts to process a transaction in the background, while an “support chat” window appears on the screen with steps to complete a supposed “3D Secure verification for your credit card” to secure against fake bookings. The identity of the threat group behind the campaign remains unknown, but the use of Russian for source code comments and debugger output either alludes to their provenance or is an attempt to cater to prospective customers of the phishing kit who may be looking to customize it to suit their needs.

The disclosure comes days after Sekoia warned of a large-scale phishing campaign targeting the hospitality industry that lures hotel managers to ClickFix-style pages and harvest their credentials by deploying malware like PureRAT and then approach hotel customers via WhatsApp or emails with their reservation details and confirm their booking by clicking on a link. Interestingly, one of the indicators shared by the French cybersecurity company – guestverifiy5313-booking[.]com/67122859 – matches the domain pattern registered by the threat actor (e.g., verifyguets71561-booking[.]com), raising the possibility that these two clusters of activity could be related. When reached for comment, Netcraft confirmed to The Hacker News that they appear to be the same campaign, and that it’s “seeing significant overlap.” In recent weeks, large-scale phishing campaigns have also impersonated multiple brands like Microsoft, Adobe, WeTransfer, FedEx, and DHL to steal credentials by distributing HTML attachments through email. The embedded HTML files, once launched, display a fake login page while JavaScript code captures credentials entered by the victim and sends them directly to attacker-controlled Telegram bots, Cyble said.

The campaign has mainly targeted a wide range of organizations across Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Germany. “The attackers distribute phishing emails posing as legitimate customers or business partners, requesting quotations or invoice confirmations,” the company pointed out. “This regional focus is evident through targeted recipient domains belonging to local enterprises, distributors, government-linked entities, and hospitality firms that routinely process RFQs and supplier communications.” Furthermore, phishing kits have been put to use in a large-scale campaign targeting customers of Aruba S.p.A, one of Italy’s largest web hosting and IT service providers, in a similar attempt to steal sensitive data and payment information by sending emails warning of expiring services or failed payments. The phishing kit is a “fully automated, multi-stage platform designed for efficiency and stealth,” Group-IB researchers Ivan Salipur and Federico Marazzi said .

“It employs CAPTCHA filtering to evade security scans, pre-fills victim data to increase credibility, and uses Telegram bots to exfiltrate stolen credentials and payment information. Every function serves a single goal: industrial-scale credential theft.” These findings exemplify the growing demand for phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) offerings in the underground economy, enabling threat actors with little to no technical expertise to pull off attacks at scale. “The automation observed in this particular kit exemplifies how phishing has become systematized – faster to deploy, harder to detect, and easier to replicate,” the Singaporean company added. “What once required technical expertise can now be executed at scale through pre-built, automated frameworks.” Found this article interesting?

Fake Chrome Extension “Safery” Steals Ethereum Wallet Seed Phrases Using Sui Blockchain

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a malicious Chrome extension that poses as a legitimate Ethereum wallet but harbors functionality to exfiltrate users’ seed phrases. The name of the extension is “Safery: Ethereum Wallet,” with the threat actor describing it as a “secure wallet for managing Ethereum cryptocurrency with flexible settings.” It was uploaded to the Chrome Web Store on September 29, 2025, and was updated as recently as November 12. It’s still available for download as of writing. “Marketed as a simple, secure Ethereum (ETH) wallet, it contains a backdoor that exfiltrates seed phrases by encoding them into Sui addresses and broadcasting microtransactions from a threat actor-controlled Sui wallet,” Socket security researcher Kirill Boychenko said .

Specifically, the malware present within the browser add-on is designed to steal wallet mnemonic phrases by encoding them as fake Sui wallet addresses and then using micro-transactions to send 0.000001 SUI to those wallets from a hard-coded threat actor-controlled wallet. The end goal of the malware is to smuggle the seed phrase inside normal looking blockchain transactions without the need for setting up a command-and-control (C2) server to receive the information. Once the transactions are complete, the threat actor can decode the recipient addresses to reconstruct the original seed phrase and ultimately drain assets from it. “This extension steals wallet seed phrases by encoding them as fake Sui addresses and sending micro-transactions to them from an attacker-controlled wallet, allowing the attacker to monitor the blockchain, decode the addresses back to seed phrases, and drain victims’ funds,” Koi Security notes in an analysis.

To counter the risk posed by the threat, users are advised to stick to trusted wallet extensions. Defenders are recommended to scan extensions for mnemonic encoders, synthetic address generators, and hard-coded seed phrases, as well as block those that write on the chain during wallet import or creation. “This technique lets threat actors switch chains and RPC endpoints with little effort, so detections that rely on domains, URLs, or specific extension IDs will miss it,” Boychenko said. “Treat unexpected blockchain RPC calls from the browser as high signal, especially when the product claims to be single chain.” Found this article interesting?

When Attacks Come Faster Than Patches: Why 2026 Will be the Year of Machine-Speed Security

The Race for Every New CVE Based on multiple 2025 industry reports: roughly 50 to 61 percent of newly disclosed vulnerabilities saw exploit code weaponized within 48 hours. Using the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog as a reference, hundreds of software flaws are now confirmed as actively targeted within days of public disclosure. Each new announcement now triggers a global race between attackers and defenders. Both sides monitor the same feeds, but one moves at machine speed while the other moves at human speed.

Major threat actors have fully industrialized their response. The moment a new vulnerability appears in public databases, automated scripts scrape, parse, and assess it for exploitation potential, and now these efforts are getting ever more streamlined through the use of AI. Meanwhile, IT and security teams often enter triage mode, reading advisories, classifying severity, and queuing updates for the next patch cycle. That delay is precisely the gap the adversaries exploit.

The traditional cadence of quarterly or even monthly patching is no longer sustainable. Attackers now weaponize critical vulnerabilities within hours of disclosure, long before organizations have even analyzed or validated them, and usually well before they have rolled out the fix. The Exploitation Economy of Speed Today’s threat ecosystem is built on automation and volume. Exploit brokers and affiliate groups operate as supply chains, each specializing in one part of the attack process.

They use vulnerability feeds, open-source scanners, and fingerprinting tools to match new CVEs against exposed software targets. Many of these targets have already been identified, and these systems know in advance which targets are most likely to be susceptible to the impending attack. This is a game of quick draw, the fastest gun wins. Research from Mandiant shows that exploitation often begins within 48 hours of public disclosure, in many organizations, IT operates on 8 hours a day, leaving the 32 hours in the attackers’ favor.

This efficiency in operations illustrates how attackers have stripped almost every manual step from their workflow. Once a working exploit is confirmed, it’s packaged and shared within hours across dark web forums, internal channels, and malware kits. Failure at Scale is Acceptable Attackers also enjoy a luxury defenders can’t afford: failure . If they crash a thousand systems on the path to compromising a hundred, the effort is still a success.

Their metrics are based on yield, not uptime. Defenders, on the other hand, must achieve near-perfect stability. A single failed update or service interruption can have a widespread impact and cause loss of customer trust. This imbalance allows adversaries to take reckless risks while defenders remain constrained, and that also helps keep the operational gap wide enough for consistent exploitation.

From Human-Speed Defense to Machine-Speed Resilience Awareness is not the issue. The challenge is execution speed. Security teams know when vulnerabilities are published but cannot move fast enough without automation. Transitioning from ticket-based and or manual patching to orchestrated, policy-driven remediation is no longer optional if you want to remain competitive in this fight.

Automated hardening and response systems can drastically shorten exposure windows. By continuously applying critical patches, enforcing configuration baselines, and using conditional rollback when needed, organizations can maintain operational safety while removing delay. And a hard lesson here that many will have to simply get over, is the damage you may cause will almost certainly be less, and easier to recover from than an attack. It is a calculated risk, and one that can be managed.

The lesson is simple, would you rather have to roll back a browser update for 1000 systems, or recover them entirely from backup. I am not suggesting you be cavalier about this but weigh the value of your hesitance against the value of your action, and when action wins, listen to your gut. IT leaders need to begin to understand this, and business leaders need to realize that this is IT’s best strategy. Absolutely test, and factor business criticality when choosing the speed at which to proceed on critical systems but tilt the whole process towards streamlined automation and in favor of rapid action.

Flatten the Burnout Curve Automation also reduces fatigue and error. Instead of chasing alerts, security teams define rules once, allowing systems to enforce them continuously. This shift turns cybersecurity into an adaptive, self-sustaining process instead of a cycle of manual triage and stitches. It takes less time to audit and review processes than it does to enact them in almost all cases.

This new class of attack automation systems do not sleep, they do not get tired, they do not care about any consequences of their actions. They are singularly focused on a goal, gain access to as many systems as they can. No matter how many people you throw at this problem, the problem festers between departments, policies, personalities, and egos. If you aim to combat a tireless machine, you need a tireless machine in your corner of the ring.

Changing What Can’t Be Automated Even the most advanced tools cannot automate everything. Some workloads are too delicate or bound by strict compliance frameworks. But those exceptions should still be examined through a single lens: How can they be made more automatable, if not, at least more efficient? That may mean standardizing configurations, segmenting legacy systems, or streamlining dependencies that slow patch workflows.

Every manual step left in place represents time lost, and time is the one resource attackers exploit most effectively. We have to look at defense strategies in depth to determine which decisions, policies, or approval processes are creating drag. If the chain of command or change management is slowing remediation, it may be time for sweeping policy changes designed to eliminate those bottlenecks. Defense automation should operate at a pace commensurate with attacker behavior, not for administrative convenience.

Accelerated Defense in Practice Many forward-thinking enterprises have already adopted the principle of accelerated defense, combining automation, orchestration, and controlled rollback to maintain agility without introducing chaos. Platforms such as Action1 facilitate this approach by enabling security teams to identify, deploy, and verify patches automatically across entire enterprise environments. This eliminates the manual steps that slow patch deployment and closes the gap between awareness and action. IF your policies are sound, your automation is sound, and your decisions are sound in practice because they are all agreed upon in advance.

By automating remediation and validation, Action1 and similar solutions exemplify what security at machine speed looks like: rapid, governed, and resilient. The objective isn’t simply automation, but policy-driven automation , where human judgment defines boundaries and technology executes instantly. The Future Is Automated Defense Both attackers and defenders draw from the same public data, but it is the automation built atop that data that decides who wins the race. Every hour between disclosure and remediation represents a potential compromise.

Defenders cannot slow the pace of discovery, but they can close the gap through hardening, orchestration, and systemic automation. The future of cybersecurity belongs to those who make instant, informed action their standard operating mode, because in this race, the slowest responder is already compromised. Key takeaways: No team of humans will ever be able to outpace the sheer speed and efficiency of the automated attack systems being built. More people lead to more decisions, delays, confusion, and margins for error.

This is a firefight: you must use equal force, automate or lose. Threat actors are building fully automated attack pipelines in which new exploit code is simply fed to the system —or even developed by it —using AI. They work 24/7/365, they do not fatigue, they do not take breaks, they seek and destroy as a reason for existence until turned off or directed otherwise. Most mass threat actors operate on body count, not precision shots.

They are not looking “for you” as much as they are looking for “Anyone”. Your scale and value mean nothing at the initial compromise phase, which is evaluated AFTER access is gained. Threat actors think nothing about using large volumes of their ill-gotten gains on new tech to further their offensive capabilities; to them, it is an investment. At the same time, the industry sees it as a drain on profits.

The system attacking you involved many talented devs in its construction and maintenance, and budgets beyond the wildest dream of any defender. These are not hobby crooks, they are highly organized enterprises just as capable, and more willing to invest in the resources than the business sector is. Here comes 2026. Is your network ready for it?

Note: This article was written and contributed by Gene Moody, Field CTO at Action1. Found this article interesting? This article is a contributed piece from one of our valued partners. Follow us on Google News , Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

Operation Endgame Dismantles Rhadamanthys, Venom RAT, and Elysium Botnet in Global Crackdown

Malware families like Rhadamanthys Stealer , Venom RAT , and the Elysium botnet have been disrupted as part of a coordinated law enforcement operation led by Europol and Eurojust. The activity, which is taking place between November 10 and 13, 2025, marks the latest phase of Operation Endgame , an ongoing operation designed to take down criminal infrastructures and combat ransomware enablers worldwide. Besides dismantling the “three large cybercrime enablers,” authorities have also arrested the main suspect behind Venom RAT in Greece on November 3, more than 1,025 servers have been taken down, and 20 domains have been seized. “The dismantled malware infrastructure consisted of hundreds of thousands of infected computers containing several million stolen credentials,” Europol said in a statement.

“Many of the victims were not aware of the infection of their systems.” It’s worth noting that the Elysium botnet neutralized by authorities is the same proxy botnet service RHAD security (aka Mythical Origin Labs), the threat actor associated with Rhadamanthys, was observed advertising as recently as last month. Europol also noted that the main suspect behind the infostealer had access to no less than 100,000 cryptocurrency wallets belonging to victims, potentially amounting to millions of euros. A recent analysis published by Check Point revealed that the latest version of Rhadamanthys added support for collecting device and web browser fingerprints, along with incorporating several mechanisms to fly under the radar. Rhadamanthys, according to the cybersecurity company, was offered under two paid models, a self-hosted subscription and a subscription with a rented server and additional benefits.

It’s assessed that the impact of the crackdown will be felt differently for each of them, Sergey Shykevich, group manager at Check Point Research, told The Hacker News. Rhadamanthys infections per country “The takedowns of RedLine and Lumma changed the ecosystem last year, and Rhadamanthys became one of the most dominant and widely used infostealers,” Shykevich added. “The current takedown operation is another important step in fighting the big brands in the underground ecosystem.” “Rhadamanthys developer had many ups and downs during the last years, and nevertheless, was able to continue and even accelerate its activity. We assume that now the developer behind Rhadamanthys will try to revive its operations in a few days, likely using only the new version 0.9.3, which was launched just recently.” “It is important to note that Rhadamanthys may have been used to drop additional malware on infected systems, so other malware infections may also be active on these systems and require further local remediation efforts,” the Shadowserver Foundation said .

“These victim systems may also have been used in historic or recent intrusions and ransomware incidents.” The non-profit, which assisted in the enforcement action, said 525,303 unique Rhadamanthys Stealer infections were identified between March and November 2025 across 226 countries and territories, representing over 86.2 million “information stealing events.” Of these, about 63,000 IP addresses are located in India. “Operation Endgame 3.0 shows what’s possible when law enforcement and the private sector work together,” Adam Meyers, head of Counter Adversary Operations at CrowdStrike, said in a statement. “Disrupting the front end of the ransomware kill chain – the initial-access brokers, loaders, and infostealers – instead of just the operators themselves has a ripple effect through the eCrime ecosystem.” “By targeting the infrastructure that fuels ransomware, this operation struck the ransomware economy at its source. But disruption isn’t eradication.

Defenders should use this window to harden their environments, close visibility gaps, and hunt for the next wave of tools these adversaries will deploy.” Authorities that participated in the effort included law enforcement agencies from Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and the U.S. (The story was updated after publication to include additional insights from Check Point Research.) Found this article interesting? Follow us on Google News , Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

ThreatsDay Bulletin: Cisco 0-Days, AI Bug Bounties, Crypto Heists, State-Linked Leaks and 20 More Stories

Behind every click, there’s a risk waiting to be tested. A simple ad, email, or link can now hide something dangerous. Hackers are getting smarter, using new tools to sneak past filters and turn trusted systems against us. But security teams are fighting back.

They’re building faster defenses, better ways to spot attacks, and stronger systems to keep people safe. It’s a constant race — every move by attackers sparks a new response from defenders. In this week’s ThreatsDay Bulletin, we look at the latest moves in that race — from new malware and data leaks to AI tools, government actions, and major security updates shaping the digital world right now. U.K.

moves to tighten cyber rules for key sectors U.K. Debuts Cyber Security and Resilience Bill The U.K. government has proposed a new Cyber Security and Resilience Bill that aims to strengthen national security and secure public services like healthcare, drinking water providers, transport, and energy from cybercriminals and state-backed actors. Under the proposal, medium and large companies providing services like IT management, IT help desk support, and cybersecurity to private and public sector organisations like the National Health Service (NHS) will be regulated.

Organizations covered by the new law would have to report more harmful cyber incidents to both their regulator and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) within 24 hours, followed by a full report sent within 72 hours. Penalties for serious violations under the new rules will reach daily fines equivalent to £100,000 ($131,000), or 10% of the organization’s daily turnover – whichever is higher. “Because they hold trusted access across government, critical national infrastructure and business networks, they will need to meet clear security duties,” the government said . “This includes reporting significant or potentially significant cyber incidents promptly to the government and their customers as well as having robust plans in place to deal with the consequences.” Intel’s data breach drama unfolds Intel Says Engineer Absconded With Top Secret Files A former Intel employee has been accused of downloading thousands of documents shortly after the company fired him in July, many of them classified as “Top Secret.” The Oregonian, which reported on the lawsuit, said Jinfeng Luo downloaded 18,000 files to a storage device.

After failing to get in touch with Luo at his home in Seattle and at two other addresses associated with him, the chipmaker filed suit seeking at least $250,000 in damages. New OWASP list exposes evolving web threats OWASP Releases Top 10 2025 Edition The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) has released a revised version of its Top 10 list of critical risks to web applications, adding two new categories, including software supply chain failures and mishandling of exceptional conditions to the list. While the former relates to compromises occurring within or across the entire ecosystem of software dependencies, build systems, and distribution infrastructure, the latter focuses on “improper error handling, logical errors, failing open, and other related scenarios stemming from abnormal conditions that systems may encounter.” Broken Access Control, Security Misconfiguration, Cryptographic Failures, Injection, Insecure Design, Authentication Failures, Software and Data Integrity Failures, and Logging & Alerting Failures take up the remaining eight spots. Sensitive data spills from top AI firms AI Companies Leak Secrets on GitHub A study of 50 leading AI companies has found that 65% had leaked verified secrets on GitHub, including API keys, tokens, and sensitive credentials.

“Some of these leaks could have exposed organizational structures, training data, or even private models,” Wiz researchers Shay Berkovich and Rami McCarthy said . “If you use a public Version Control System (VCS), deploy secret scanning now. This is your immediate, non-negotiable defense against easy exposure. Even companies with the smallest footprints can be exposed to secret leaks as we have just proved.” Fake Meta invites trick businesses worldwide Phishing Campaign Targets Facebook Business Suite A new large-scale phishing campaign is abusing Facebook’s Business Suite and facebookmail.com features to send convincing fake notifications (“Meta Agency Partner Invitation” or “Account Verification Required”) that appear to come directly from Meta.

“This method makes their campaigns extremely convincing, bypasses many traditional security filters, and demonstrates how attackers are exploiting trust in well-known platforms,” Check Point said . “While the volume of emails may suggest a spray-and-pray approach, the credibility of the sender domain makes these phishing attempts far more dangerous than ordinary spam.” More than 40,000 phishing emails have been recorded to date, primarily targeting entities in the U.S., Europe, Canada, and Australia that rely heavily on Facebook for advertising. To pull off the scheme, the attackers create fake Facebook Business pages and use the Business invitation feature to send phishing emails that mimic official Facebook alerts. The fact that these messages are sent from the “facebookmail[.]com” domain means they are perceived as trustworthy by email security filters.

Present within the emails are links that, when clicked, direct users to bogus websites that are designed to steal credentials and other sensitive information. Firefox tightens shield against online tracking Mozilla Firefox Gets New Anti-Fingerprinting Defenses Mozilla has added more fingerprint protections to its Firefox browser to prevent websites from identifying users without their consent, even when cookies are blocked or private browsing is enabled. The safeguards, starting with Firefox 145, aim to block access to certain pieces of information used by online fingerprinters. “This ranges from strengthening the font protections to preventing websites from getting to know your hardware details like the number of cores your processor has, the number of simultaneous fingers your touchscreen supports, and the dimensions of your dock or taskbar,” Mozilla said.

Specifically, the new protections include introducing random data to images generated in canvas elements, preventing locally installed fonts from being used to render text on a page, reporting the number of simultaneous touches supported by device hardware as 0, 1, or 5, reporting Available Screen Resolution as the screen height minus 48 pixels, and reporting the number of processor cores as either 4 or 8. Phishing kit simplifies global Microsoft 365 theft Microsoft 365 Credential Theft via Quantum Route Redirect A new phishing kit called Quantum Route Redirect is being wielded by threat actors to steal Microsoft 365 credentials. “Quantum Route Redirect comes with a pre-configured setup and phishing domains that significantly simplifies a once technically complex campaign flow, further ‘democratizing’ phishing for less skilled cybercriminals,” KnowBe4 Threat Labs said . The phishing campaigns impersonate legitimate services like DocuSign, or masquerade as payment notifications or missed voicemails to trick users into clicking on URLs that consistently follow the pattern “/([\w\d-]+.){2}[\w]{,3}\/quantum.php/” and are hosted on parked or compromised domains.

Nearly 1,000 such domains have been detected. The phishing kit also enables browser fingerprinting and VPN/proxy detection to redirect security tools to legitimate websites. Campaigns leveraging the kit have successfully claimed victims across 90 countries, with the U.S. accounting for 76% of affected users.

AI platform boosts defenses with Guardio tech Lovable Integrates with Guardio for Improved Security AI coding platform Lovable has partnered with Guardio to embed its Safe Browsing detection engine into the platform’s generative AI workflows, with an aim to scan every site created on the platform to detect phishing, scams, impersonation, and other forms of abuse. The development comes against the backdrop of reports that found AI-powered coding assistants like Lovable to be susceptible to techniques like VibeScamming , allowing bad actors to set up lookalike credential harvesting pages and carry out scams. Windows boosts passkey freedom for users Windows 11 Expands Passkey Manager Support Microsoft has officially launched native support for third-party passkey managers in Windows 11. The feature is available with the Windows November 2025 security update.

“This new capability empowers users to choose their favorite passkey manager – whether it’s Microsoft Password Manager or trusted third-party providers,” Microsoft said . The company also noted it has integrated Microsoft Password Manager from Microsoft Edge into Windows as a plugin, thereby making it possible to use it in Microsoft Edge, other browsers, or any app that supports passkeys. Hackers lay siege to construction industry Attacks Against the Construction Sector Threat actors ranging from ransomware operators and organized cybercriminal networks to state-sponsored APT groups are increasingly targeting the construction industry by exploiting the sector’s growing dependence on vulnerable IoT-enabled heavy machinery, Building Information Modeling (BIM) systems, and cloud-based project management platforms. “Cybercriminals increasingly target construction companies for initial access and data leaks, exploiting weak security practices, outdated legacy systems, and widespread use of cloud-based project management tools,” Rapid7 said .

“Attackers commonly employ phishing email messages, compromised credentials, and supply chain attacks, taking advantage of insufficient employee training and lax vendor risk management.” Attackers are also shifting to procuring initial access to construction company networks through underground forums rather than conducting resource-intensive initial compromise operations themselves. These listings facilitate support for escrow services to provide buyers with assurances about the validity of purchased data. Once breached, the threat actors move swiftly across the network to exfiltrate valuable data and even extort it through ransomware. Google backs down, keeps sideloading alive Google to Allow Experienced Users to Sideload Unverified Apps Back in August, Google announced plans to verify the identity of all developers who distribute apps on Android, even for those who distribute their software outside the Play Store.

The move was met with backlash , raising concerns that it could be the end of sideloading in Android. While Google has claimed the intention behind the change was to tackle online scams and malware campaigns, particularly those that occur when users download APK files distributed via third-party marketplaces, F-Droid painted the framing as disingenuous, given that there already exists Google Play Protect as a remediation mechanism. “Any perceived risks associated with direct app installation can be mitigated through user education, open-source transparency, and existing security measures without imposing exclusionary registration requirements,” F-Droid said . In response to feedback from “developers and power users,” Google said it’s “building a new advanced flow that allows experienced users to accept the risks of installing software that isn’t verified.” More details are expected to be shared in the coming months.

CISA warns of false Cisco patch security CISA Releases Emergency Cisco Directive The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued a new alert , stating it has identified devices marked as “patched” as part of Emergency Directive 25-03, but which were “updated to a version of the software that is still vulnerable to the threat activity” that involves the exploitation of CVE-2025-20333 and CVE-2025-20362 . “CISA is aware of multiple organizations that believed they had applied the necessary updates but had not in fact updated to the minimum software version,” the agency said. “CISA recommends all organizations verify the correct updates are applied.” Both vulnerabilities have come under active exploitation by a suspected China-linked hacking group known as UAT4356 (aka Storm-1849).

Russia tests new SIM-based drone defense Russia Imposes 24-Hour Mobile Internet Blackout for Citizens Returning Home Russia’s Digital Development Ministry has disclosed that telecom operators in the country have launched a new mechanism to combat drones at the request of regulators. “If a SIM card is brought into Russia from abroad, it must be confirmed that it is used by a person and not embedded in a drone,” the ministry said in a post on Telegram. “Until then, mobile internet and SMS services on this SIM card will be temporarily blocked.” The mechanism is being tested as of November 10, 2025. The ministry also noted that subscribers with Russian SIM cards are eligible for a 24-hour cooling-off period if the SIM has been inactive for 72 hours or upon returning from international travel.

Subscribers can restore access by solving a CAPTCHA provided by the carrier or calling their service provider and verifying their identity over the phone. The development comes a month after Moscow imposed a similar 24-hour blackout for people entering Russia with foreign SIM cards, citing similar reasons. Citrix patches exploitable XSS bug in NetScaler New Citrix Flaw Detailed Cybersecurity company watchTowr Labs has published details about a newly patched reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw (CVE-2025-12101, CVSS score: 6.1) in NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway when the appliance is configured as a Gateway (VPN virtual server, ICA Proxy, CVPN, RDP Proxy) or Authentication, Authorization, and Auditing (AAA) virtual server. The vulnerability was patched by Citrix earlier this week .

Sina Kheirkhah of watchTowr said the vulnerability stems from the application’s handling of the RelayState parameter, allowing an attacker to execute an arbitrary XSS payload by means of a specially crafted HTTPS request containing a RelayState parameter with a Base64-encoded value. “While this may not look realistic as a usable vulnerability (and we’d agree given the low hanging fruit elsewhere), it is broadly still usable via CSRF - as the NetScaler’s /cgi/logout endpoint accepts an HTTP POST request containing a valid SAMLResponse and a modified RelayState,” Kheirkhah said . Cloud apps emerge as top malware carriers Cloud Services as a Malware Distribution Vector A new report from Netskope has found that approximately 22 out of every 10,000 users in the manufacturing sector encounter malicious content every month. “Microsoft OneDrive is now the most commonly exploited platform, with 18% of organizations reporting malware downloads from the service each month,” the cybersecurity company said .

GitHub came in second at 14%, followed by Google Drive (11%) and SharePoint (5.3%). To counter the risk, organizations are advised to inspect all HTTP and HTTPS downloads, including all web and cloud traffic, to prevent malware from infiltrating the enterprise network. Malvertising crew reroutes paychecks nationwide Payroll Pirates Hijacks Payroll Systems and Credit Unions A financially motivated threat actor known as Payroll Pirates (aka Storm-2657) has been observed hijacking payroll systems, credit unions, and trading platforms across the U.S. by orchestrating malvertising campaigns.

The malicious activity, described as persistent and adaptive, dates back to May 2023, when the threat actors set up phishing sites that impersonated payroll platforms. These sites were promoted via Google Ads, tricking employees into logging into fake HR portals with the goal of stealing their credentials. Once the login details were captured, the attackers rerouted salaries to their own accounts. Subsequent iterations came equipped with capabilities to bypass two-factor authentication (2FA).

Check Point, which has been tracking a recent surge in these campaigns, said it found a single Telegram bot that’s used to capture the 2FA codes in real-time across credit unions, payroll, health care benefits, and trading platforms, suggesting a “unified network.” While one set of attacks has been found to rely on cloaking techniques to ensure that only intended victims are redirected to the phishing sites, a second cluster targets financial institutions using Microsoft Ads. “Domains are aged for months and host dozens of phishing pages with randomized URLs,” Check Point said . “A cloaking service from adspect.ai determines which page to show based on browser fingerprinting. Both clusters use the same phishing kits.

Pages adapt dynamically based on operator feedback, making it easy to bypass most authentication methods.” Infamous banking trojan resurfaces stronger DanaBot Resurfaces After a 6-Month Hiatus The DanaBot malware has returned with a new version 669, nearly six months after law enforcement’s Operation Endgame disrupted its activity in May. The new variant has a command-and-control (C2) infrastructure that comprises Tor domains and BackConnect nodes, per Zscaler . It’s also using four different wallet addresses to steal cryptocurrency: 12eTGpL8EqYowAfw7DdqmeiZ87R922wt5L (BTC), 0xb49a8bad358c0adb639f43c035b8c06777487dd7 (ETH), LedxKBWF4MiM3x9F7zmCdaxnnu8A8SUohZ (LTC), and TY4iNhGut31cMbE3M6TU5CoCXvFJ5nP59i (TRX). New Android RAT enters black market for $500 New KomeX Android RAT Advertised on Hacking Forums A new Android remote access trojan (RAT) called KomeX RAT is being advertised for sale on cybercrime forums for a monthly price of $500 or $1,200 for a lifetime license.

Potential buyers can also obtain access to the entire codebase for $3,000. According to claims made by the seller, the Trojan is based on BTMOB , another Android remote control tool that emerged earlier this year as an evolution of SpySolr. Other features include the ability to acquire all necessary permissions, bypass Google Play Protect, log keystrokes, harvest SMS messages, and more. The threat actor also claims the RAT works worldwide without any geographic restrictions.

Interestingly, a Facebook page for SpySolr states that the malware is developed by EVLF , which was unmasked in 2023 as a Syrian threat actor behind CypherRAT and CraxsRAT. Amazon opens its AI models to ethical hackers Amazon Launches AI Bug Bounty Program Amazon has become the latest company to open its large language models to outside security researchers by instituting a bug bounty program to identify security issues in NOVA , the company’s suite of foundational AI models. “Through this program, researchers will test the Nova models across critical areas, including cybersecurity issues and Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) threat detection,” the tech giant said . “Qualified participants can earn monetary rewards, ranging from $200 to $25,000.” Privacy groups slam EU’s proposed GDPR rewrite Leaked E.U.

GDPR Reforms Invite Criticism Austrian privacy non-profit None of Your Business (noyb) has condemned the European Commission’s leaked plans to overhaul the bloc’s landmark privacy regulation, referred to as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), including likely allowing AI companies to use personal data of citizens in the region for model training. “In addition, the special protection of sensitive data like health data, political views or sexual orientation would be significantly reduced,” noyb said . “Also, remote access to personal data on PCs or smartphones without the consent of the user would be enabled.” Max Schrems, founder of noyb, said the draft represents a massive downgrade of user privacy, while mainly benefiting Big Tech. The Commission is planning to introduce the amendments on November 19.

Bitcoin Queen jailed in record $5.6B fraud case Chinese Woman Sentenced to 11 Years in Prison for Bitcoin Scam A U.K. court has sentenced a 47-year-old Chinese woman, Zhimin Qian (aka Yadi Zhang), to 11 years and 8 months in prison for laundering bitcoin linked to a $5.6 billion investment scheme. Until her arrest in April 2024, the defendant had been on the run since 2017 after carrying out a large-scale scam in China between 2014 and 2017, which defrauded more than 128,000 people. Qian, nicknamed Bitcoin Queen, entered Europe using fake passports and settled in Britain under a fake name — Yadi Zhang.

She pleaded guilty to offenses related to acquiring and possessing criminal property (i.e., cryptocurrency) back in September. The investigation also led to the seizure of 61,000 bitcoin, now valued at over $6 billion, making it the largest cryptocurrency seizure in history. New malware duo drains crypto and spies on browsers LeakyInjector and LeakyStealer Go After Crypto Wallets and Browser History Cybersecurity researchers have discovered two new second-stage malware families called LeakyInjector and LeakyStealer that are designed to target cryptocurrency wallets and browser history. “LeakyInjector uses low-level APIs for injection to avoid detection and injects LeakyStealer in ‘explorer.exe,’” Hybrid Analysis said .

“The duo performs reconnaissance on an infected machine and targets multiple crypto wallets, including browser extensions corresponding to crypto wallets. The malware also looks for browser history files from Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi.” LeakyStealer implements a polymorphic engine that modifies memory bytes using specific hard-coded values at runtime. It also beacons to an external server at regular intervals to execute Windows commands and download and run additional payloads. Experts warn against self-policing AI safety tools Using LLMs as Judges to Flag Prompt Injections Last month, OpenAI released a set of safety tools called Guardrails safety framework to detect and block potentially harmful model behavior, such as jailbreaks and prompt injections.

This includes detectors that rely on large language models (LLMs) to determine whether an input or output poses a security risk. AI security company HiddenLayer said this approach is fundamentally flawed, as it can be exploited by an attacker to the Guardrails framework. “If the same type of model used to generate responses is also used to evaluate safety, both can be compromised in the same way,” it said . “This experiment highlights a critical challenge in AI security: self-regulation by LLMs cannot fully defend against adversarial manipulation.

Effective safeguards require independent validation layers, red teaming, and adversarial testing to identify vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.” Massive leak exposes Chinese cyber arsenal Chinese Security Firm Knownsec Allegedly Suffers a Leak A data breach at a Chinese security vendor called Knownsec has led to the leak of over 12,000 classified documents, per Chinese security blog MXRN, “including information on Chinese state-owned cyber weapons, internal tools, and global target lists.” The trove is also said to have apparently included evidence of RATs that can break into Linux, Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android devices, as well as details about the company’s contracts with the Chinese government. The Android code can reportedly extract information from popular Chinese messaging apps and from Telegram. Also present in the leak data was a spreadsheet listing 80 overseas targets Knownsec has successfully attacked, plus 95GB of immigration data obtained from India, 3TB of call records stolen from South Korean telecom operator LG U-Plus, 459GB of road planning data obtained from Taiwan, passwords for Taiwanese Yahoo accounts, and data on Brazilian LinkedIn accounts. It’s currently not known who is behind the leaks.

There are indications that the leak is from an old data breach of Knownsec from 2023, per NetAskari . The cyber world never slows down. Every fix, every patch, every new idea brings a new risk waiting to be found. Staying alert isn’t just a choice anymore — it’s a habit we all need to build.

The good news is that defenders are learning faster than ever. Researchers, companies, and governments are sharing more knowledge, closing more gaps, and helping each other face threats head-on. Progress may be slow, but it’s steady. As we wrap up this week’s ThreatsDay Bulletin, remember — awareness is the first line of defense.

Stay curious, stay updated, and stay safe until next time. Found this article interesting? Follow us on Google News , Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Wednesday added a critical security flaw impacting WatchGuard Fireware to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-9242 (CVSS score: 9.3), an out-of-bounds write vulnerability affecting Fireware OS 11.10.2 up to and including 11.12.4_Update1, 12.0 up to and including 12.11.3 and 2025.1. It was patched by WatchGuard in September.

“WatchGuard Firebox contains an out-of-bounds write vulnerability in the OS iked process that may allow a remote unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code,” CISA said in an advisory. Details of the vulnerability were shared by watchTowr Labs last month, with the cybersecurity company stating that the issue stems from a missing length check on an identification buffer used during the IKE handshake process. “The server does attempt certificate validation, but that validation happens after the vulnerable code runs, allowing our vulnerable code path to be reachable pre-authentication,” security researcher McCaulay Hudson noted. In an update to its advisory on October 21, 2025, WatchGuard said it has evidence suggesting active exploitation of the flaw, sharing three indicators of compromise (IoCs) associated with the activity - An IKE_AUTH request log message with an abnormally large IKE_AUTH request IDi payload greater than 100 bytes During a successful exploit, the iked process will hang, interrupting VPN connections After a failed or successful exploit, the iked process will crash and generate a fault report on the Firebox According to data from the Shadowserver Foundation, more than 54,300 Firebox instances remain vulnerable to the critical bug as of November 12, 2025, down from a high of 75,955 on October 19.

Number of exposed WatchGuard Firebox instances Roughly 18,500 of these devices are in the U.S., the scans reveal. Italy (5,400), the U.K. (4,000), Germany (3,600), and Canada (3,000) round up the top five. Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies are advised to apply WatchGuard’s patches by December 3, 2025.

The development comes as CISA also added CVE-2025-62215 (CVSS score: 7.0), a recently disclosed flaw in Windows kernel, and CVE-2025-12480 (CVSS score: 9.1), an improper access control vulnerability in Gladinet Triofox, to the KEV catalog. Google’s Mandiant Threat Defense team has attributed the exploitation of CVE-2025-12480 to a threat actor it tracks as UNC6485. (The story was updated after publication to include information from WatchGuard confirming active exploitation efforts.) Found this article interesting? Follow us on Google News , Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

Over 67,000 Fake npm Packages Flood Registry in Worm-Like Spam Attack

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a large-scale spam campaign that has flooded the npm registry with thousands of fake packages since early 2024 as part of a likely financially motivated effort. “The packages were systematically published over an extended period, flooding the npm registry with junk packages that survived in the ecosystem for almost two years,” Endor Labs researchers Cris Staicu and Kiran Raj said in a Tuesday report. The coordinated campaign has so far published as many as 67,579 packages , according to SourceCodeRED security researcher Paul McCarty, who first flagged the activity. The end goal is quite unusual – It’s designed to inundate the npm registry with random packages rather than focusing on data theft or other malicious behaviors.

The worm-life propagation mechanism and the use of a distinctive naming scheme that relies on Indonesian names and food terms for the newly created packages have lent it the moniker IndonesianFoods Worm . The bogus packages masquerade as Next.js projects. “What makes this threat particularly concerning is that the attackers took the time to craft an NPM worm, rather than a singular attack,” McCarty said. “Even worse, these threat actors have been staging this for over two years.” Some signs that point to a sustained, coordinated effort include the consistent naming patterns and the fact that the packages are published from a small network of over a dozen npm accounts.

The worm is located within a single JavaScript file (e.g., “auto.js” or “publishScript.js”) in each package, staying dormant until a user manually runs the script using a command like “node auto.js.” In other words, it does not execute automatically during installation or as part of a “postinstall” hook. It’s not clear why someone would go to the extent of running the JavaScript file manually, but the existence of over 43,000 packages suggests either multiple victims executed the script – either by accident or out of curiosity – or the attackers ran it themselves to flood the registry, Henrik Plate, head of security research at Endor Labs, told The Hacker News. “We haven’t found evidence of a coordinated social engineering campaign, but the code was written with social engineering potential, possible victim scenarios include: fake blog posts, tutorials, or README entries instructing users to run ‘node auto.js’ to ‘complete setup’ or ‘fix a build issue,’ [and] CI/CD pipeline build scripts with wildcards something like node *.js that execute all JavaScript files,” Raj added. “The payload’s dormant design is intended to evade automated detection, by requiring manual execution instead of ‘autorun,’ the attackers reduce the chance of being flagged by security scanners and sandboxing systems.” The manual execution causes the script to initiate a series of actions in an infinite loop , including removing < “private”: true

from the “package.json” file.

This setting is typically used to prevent accidental publication of private repositories. It then proceeds to create a random package name using the internal dictionary and assign it a random version number to bypass npm’s duplicate version detection. In the final stage, the spam package is uploaded to npm using the “npm publish” command. The entire process is repeated in an endless loop, causing a new package to be pushed out every 7 to 10 seconds.

This translates to about 12 packages per minute, 720 per hour, or 17,000 per day. “This floods the NPM registry with junk packages, wastes infrastructure resources, pollutes search results, and creates supply chain risks if developers accidentally install these malicious packages,” McCarty said. According to Endor Labs, the campaign is part of an attack that was first documented by Phylum (now part of Veracode) and Sonatype in April 2024 that involved the publication of thousands of spam packages to conduct a “massive automated crypto farming campaign” by abusing the Tea protocol . “What makes this campaign particularly insidious is its worm-like spreading mechanism,” the researchers said.

“Analysis of the ‘package.json’ files reveals that these spam packages do not exist in isolation; they reference each other as dependencies, creating a self-replicating network.” Thus, when a user installs one of the spam packages, it causes npm to fetch the entire dependency tree, straining registry bandwidth as more dependencies are fetched exponentially. Endor Labs said some of the attacker-controlled packages, such as arts-dao and gula-dao, include a tea.yaml file listing five different TEA accounts. The Tea protocol is a decentralized framework that allows open-source developers to be rewarded for their software contributions. This likely indicates that the threat actors are using this campaign as a monetization vector by earning TEA tokens by artificially inflating their impact scores.

It’s not clear who is behind the activity, but source code and infrastructure clues suggest it could be someone operating out of Indonesia. The application security company has also flagged a second variant that employs a different package naming scheme comprising random English words (e.g., able_crocodile-notthedevs). JFrog, which is tracking the campaign as Big Red, said the malware reuses a victim user’s stored npm credentials to publish newly generated packages relentlessly to the repository. “The code is a simple but effective npm package factory,” JFrog researcher Andrii Polkovnychenko said .

“The result is a tight, fully automated loop that can flood the npm ecosystem with large numbers of superficially legitimate packages, all derived from the same code template and differentiated only by randomized metadata.” The findings also serve to highlight a security blind spot in security scanners, which are known to flag packages that execute malicious code during installation by monitoring lifecycle hooks or detecting suspicious system calls. “In this case, they found nothing because there was nothing to find at the time of installation,” Endor Labs said. “The sheer number of packages flagged in the current campaign shows that security scanners must analyze these signals in the future.” Garrett Calpouzos, principal security researcher at software supply chain security firm Sonatype, characterized IndonesianFoods as a self-publishing worm operating at a massive scale, overwhelming security data systems in the process. “The technical sophistication isn’t necessarily higher — interestingly, these packages do not appear to even try to infiltrate developer machines — it’s the automation and scale that are escalating at an alarming rate,” Calpouzos said.

“Each wave of these attacks weaponizes npm’s open nature in slightly new ways. This one may not steal credentials or inject code, but it still strains the ecosystem and proves how trivial it is to disrupt the world’s largest software supply chain. While the motivation is unclear, the implications are striking.” When reached for comment, a GitHub spokesperson said the company has removed the packages in question from npm, and that it’s committed to detecting, analyzing, and taking down packages and accounts that go against its policies. “We have disabled malicious npm packages in accordance with GitHub’s Acceptable Use Policies which prohibit posting content that directly supports unlawful active attack or malware campaigns that are causing technical harms,” the spokesperson added.

“We employ manual reviews and at-scale detections that use machine learning and constantly evolve to mitigate malicious usage of the platform. We also encourage customers and community members to report abuse and spam.” Over 150,000 Spam Packages Linked to the Campaign Amazon Web Services, in a report published Thursday, said its Amazon Inspector team identified and reported more than 150,000 packages linked to a coordinated TEA token farming campaign in the npm registry that has its origins in an initial wave that was detected in April 2024. “This is one of the largest package flooding incidents in open source registry history, and represents a defining moment in supply chain security,” researchers Chi Tran and Charlie Bacon said . “Threat actors automatically generate and publish packages to earn cryptocurrency rewards without user awareness, revealing how the campaign has expanded exponentially since its initial identification.” The activity essentially involves triggering a self-replicating automation mechanism that creates packages without legitimate functionality and publishes them to the npm registry and earns TEA tokens by artificially inflating package metrics through automated replication and dependency chains.

The tech giant said the incident, while not overtly malicious in nature, illustrates how financial incentives can fuel abuse of a package repository and its infrastructure at scale, polluting the ecosystem with low-quality, non-functional packages that can undermine trust in the software supply chain. “Even packages that seem benign can add unnecessary dependencies, potentially introducing unexpected behaviors or creating confusion in dependency resolution,” the researchers added. (The story was updated after publication to include insights from Amazon.) Found this article interesting? Follow us on Google News , Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.