Vulnerability | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A previously unknown threat actor tracked as UAT-9921 has been observed leveraging a new modular framework called VoidLink in its campaigns targeting the technology and financial services sectors, according to findings from Cisco Talos. "This threat actor seems to have been active since 2019, although they have not necessarily used VoidLink over the duration of their activity," researchers Nick Biasini, Aaron Boyd, Asheer Malhotra, and Vitor Ventura said . "UAT-9921 uses compromised hosts to install VoidLink command-and-control (C2), which are then used to launch scanning activities both internal and external to the network." VoidLink was first documented by Check Point last month, describing it as a feature-rich malware framework written in Zig designed for long-term, stealthy access to Linux-based cloud environments. It's assessed to be the work of a single developer with assistance from a large language model (LLM) to flesh out its internals based on a p...

Threat actors have started to exploit a recently disclosed critical security flaw impacting BeyondTrust Remote Support (RS) and Privileged Remote Access (PRA) products, according to watchTowr. "Overnight we observed first in-the-wild exploitation of BeyondTrust across our global sensors," Ryan Dewhurst, head of threat intelligence at watchTowr, said in a post on X. "Attackers are abusing get_portal_info to extract the x-ns-company value before establishing a WebSocket channel." The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-1731 (CVS score: 9.9), which could allow an unauthenticated attacker to achieve remote code execution by sending specially crafted requests. BeyondTrust noted last week that successful exploitation of the shortcoming could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to execute operating system commands in the context of the site user, resulting in unauthorized access, data exfiltration, and service disruption. It has been patched in the following...

Google on Thursday said it observed the North Korea-linked threat actor known as UNC2970 using its generative artificial intelligence (AI) model Gemini to conduct reconnaissance on its targets, as various hacking groups continue to weaponize the tool for accelerating various phases of the cyber attack life cycle, enabling information operations, and even conducting model extraction attacks. "The group used Gemini to synthesize OSINT and profile high-value targets to support campaign planning and reconnaissance," Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This actor's target profiling included searching for information on major cybersecurity and defense companies and mapping specific technical job roles and salary information." The tech giant's threat intelligence team characterized this activity as a blurring of boundaries between what constitutes routine professional research and malicious reconnaissance, al...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a fresh set of malicious packages across npm and the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository linked to a fake recruitment-themed campaign orchestrated by the North Korea-linked Lazarus Group. The coordinated campaign has been codenamed graphalgo in reference to the first package published in the npm registry. It's assessed to be active since May 2025. "Developers are approached via social platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, or through job offerings on forums like Reddit," ReversingLabs researcher Karlo Zanki said in a report. "The campaign includes a well-orchestrated story around a company involved in blockchain and cryptocurrency exchanges." Notably, one of the identified npm packages, bigmathutils, attracted more than 10,000 downloads after the first, non-malicious version was published, and before the second version containing a malicious payload was released. The names of the packages are listed below - npm...

Threat activity this week shows one consistent signal — attackers are leaning harder on what already works. Instead of flashy new exploits, many operations are built around quiet misuse of trusted tools, familiar workflows, and overlooked exposures that sit in plain sight. Another shift is how access is gained versus how it’s used. Initial entry points are getting simpler, while post-compromise activity is becoming more deliberate, structured, and persistent. The objective is less about disruption and more about staying embedded long enough to extract value. There’s also growing overlap between cybercrime, espionage tradecraft, and opportunistic intrusion. Techniques are bleeding across groups, making attribution harder and defense baselines less reliable. Below is this week’s ThreatsDay Bulletin — a tight scan of the signals that matter, distilled into quick reads. Each item adds context to where threat pressure is building next. Notepad RCE via Markdown L...

A significant chunk of the exploitation attempts targeting a newly disclosed security flaw in Ivanti Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) can be traced back to a single IP address on bulletproof hosting infrastructure offered by PROSPERO. Threat intelligence firm GreyNoise said it recorded 417 exploitation sessions from 8 unique source IP addresses between February 1 and 9, 2026. An estimated 346 exploitation sessions have originated from 193.24.123[.]42, accounting for 83% of all attempts. The malicious activity is designed to exploit CVE-2026-1281 (CVSS scores: 9.8), one of the two critical security vulnerabilities in EPMM, along with CVE-2026-1340 that could be exploited by an attacker to achieve unauthenticated remote code execution. Late last month, Ivanti acknowledged it's aware of a "very limited number of customers" who were impacted following the zero-day exploitation of the issues. Since then, multiple European agencies, including the Netherlands' Dutch Da...

Apple on Wednesday released iOS, iPadOS, macOS Tahoe, tvOS, watchOS, and visionOS updates to address a zero-day flaw that it said has been exploited in sophisticated cyber attacks. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-20700 (CVSS score: 7.8), has been described as a memory corruption issue in dyld, Apple's Dynamic Link Editor. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability could allow an attacker with memory write capability to execute arbitrary code on susceptible devices. Google Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has been credited with discovering and reporting the bug. "Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals on versions of iOS before iOS 26," the company said in an advisory. "CVE-2025-14174 and CVE-2025-43529 were also issued in response to this report." It's worth noting that both CVE-2025-14174 and CVE-2025-43529 were addressed by Cupertino in Decembe...

It's Patch Tuesday, which means a number of software vendors have released patches for various security vulnerabilities impacting their products and services. Microsoft issued fixes for 59 flaws, including six actively exploited zero-days in various Windows components that could be abused to bypass security features, escalate privileges, and trigger a denial-of-service (DoS) condition. Elsewhere, Adobe released updates for Audition, After Effects, InDesign Desktop, Substance 3D, Bridge, Lightroom Classic, and DNG SDK. The company said it's not aware of in-the-wild exploitation of any of the shortcomings. SAP shipped fixes for two critical-severity vulnerabilities, including a code injection bug in SAP CRM and SAP S/4HANA (CVE-2026-0488, CVSS score: 9.9) that an authenticated attacker could use to run an arbitrary SQL statement and lead to a full database compromise. The second critical vulnerability is a case of a missing authorization check in SAP NetWeaver Application...

Microsoft on Tuesday released security updates to address a set of 59 flaws across its software, including six vulnerabilities that it said have been exploited in the wild. Of the 59 flaws, five are rated Critical, 52 are rated Important, and two are rated Moderate in severity. Twenty-five of the patched vulnerabilities have been classified as privilege escalation, followed by remote code execution (12), spoofing (7), information disclosure (6), security feature bypass (5), denial-of-service (3), and cross-site scripting (1). It's worth noting that the patches are in addition to three security flaws that Microsoft has addressed in its Edge browser since the release of the January 2026 Patch Tuesday update , including a Moderate vulnerability impacting the Edge browser for Android ( CVE-2026-0391 , CVSS score: 6.5) that could allow an unauthorized attacker to perform spoofing over a network by taking advantage of a "user interface misrepresentation of critical information....

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new botnet operation called SSHStalker that relies on the Internet Relay Chat ( IRC ) communication protocol for command-and-control (C2) purposes. "The toolset blends stealth helpers with legacy-era Linux exploitation: Alongside log cleaners (utmp/wtmp/lastlog tampering) and rootkit-class artifacts, the actor keeps a large back-catalog of Linux 2.6.x-era exploits (2009–2010 CVEs)," cybersecurity company Flare said . "These are low value against modern stacks, but remain effective against 'forgotten' infrastructure and long-tail legacy environments." SSHStalker combines IRC botnet mechanics with an automated mass-compromise operation that uses an SSH scanner and other readily available scanners to co-opt susceptible systems into a network and enroll them in IRC channels.

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of an emergent ransomware family dubbed Reynolds that comes embedded with a built-in bring your own vulnerable driver (BYOVD) component for defense evasion purposes within the ransomware payload itself. BYOVD refers to an adversarial technique that abuses legitimate but flawed driver software to escalate privileges and disable Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions so that malicious activities go unnoticed. The strategy has been adopted by many ransomware groups over the years. "Normally, the BYOVD defense evasion component of an attack would involve a distinct tool that would be deployed on the system prior to the ransomware payload in order to disable security software," the Symantec and Carbon Black Threat Hunter Team said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "However, in this attack, the vulnerable driver (an NsecSoft NSecKrnl driver) was bundled with the ransomware itself." Broadcom's ...

Fortinet has released security updates to address a critical flaw impacting FortiClientEMS that could lead to the execution of arbitrary code on susceptible systems. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-21643 , has a CVSS rating of 9.1 out of a maximum of 10.0. "An improper neutralization of special elements used in an SQL Command ('SQL Injection') vulnerability [CWE-89] in FortiClientEMS may allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute unauthorized code or commands via specifically crafted HTTP requests," Fortinet said in an advisory. The shortcoming affects the following versions - FortiClientEMS 7.2 (Not affected) FortiClientEMS 7.4.4 (Upgrade to 7.4.5 or above) FortiClientEMS 8.0 (Not affected) Gwendal Guégniaud of the Fortinet Product Security team has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw. While Fortinet makes no mention of the vulnerability being exploited in the wild, it's essential that users move quickly to apply the fixes...

SmarterTools confirmed last week that the Warlock (aka Storm-2603) ransomware gang breached its network by exploiting an unpatched SmarterMail instance. The incident took place on January 29, 2026, when a mail server that was not updated to the latest version was compromised, the company's Chief Commercial Officer, Derek Curtis, said. "Prior to the breach, we had approximately 30 servers/VMs with SmarterMail installed throughout our network," Curtis explained . "Unfortunately, we were unaware of one VM, set up by an employee, that was not being updated. As a result, that mail server was compromised, which led to the breach." However, SmarterTools emphasized that the breach did not affect its website, shopping cart, My Account portal, and several other services, and that no business applications or account data were affected or compromised. About 12 Windows servers on the company's office network, as well as a secondary data center used for quality cont...

The Netherlands' Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) and the Council for the Judiciary confirmed both agencies (Rvdr) have disclosed that their systems were impacted by cyber attacks that exploited the recently disclosed security flaws in Ivanti Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM), according to a notice sent to the country's parliament on Friday. "On January 29, the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) was informed by the supplier of vulnerabilities in EPMM," the Dutch authorities said . "EPMM is used to manage mobile devices, apps, and content, including their security." "It is now known that work-related data of AP employees, such as names, business email addresses, and telephone numbers, have been accessed by unauthorized persons." The development comes as the European Commission also revealed that its central infrastructure managing mobile devices "identified traces" of a cyber attack that may have resulted in access to names and mo...

Microsoft has revealed that it observed a multi‑stage intrusion that involved the threat actors exploiting internet‑exposed SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD) instances to obtain initial access and move laterally across the organization's network to other high-value assets. That said, the Microsoft Defender Security Research Team said it's not clear whether the activity weaponized recently disclosed flaws (CVE-2025-40551, CVSS score: 9.8, and CVE-2025-40536, CVSS score: 8.1), or a previously patched vulnerability (CVE-2025-26399, CVSS score: 9.8). "Since the attacks occurred in December 2025 and on machines vulnerable to both the old and new set of CVEs at the same time, we cannot reliably confirm the exact CVE used to gain an initial foothold," the company said in a report published last week. While CVE-2025-40536 is a security control bypass vulnerability that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to gain access to certain restricted functionality, CVE-2025-...

Cyber threats are no longer coming from just malware or exploits. They’re showing up inside the tools, platforms, and ecosystems organizations use every day. As companies connect AI, cloud apps, developer tools, and communication systems, attackers are following those same paths. A clear pattern this week: attackers are abusing trust. Trusted updates, trusted marketplaces, trusted apps, even trusted AI workflows. Instead of breaking security controls head-on, they’re slipping into places that already have access. This recap brings together those signals — showing how modern attacks are blending technology abuse, ecosystem manipulation, and large-scale targeting into a single, expanding threat surface. ⚡ Threat of the Week OpenClaw announces VirusTotal Partnership — OpenClaw has announced a partnership with Google's VirusTotal malware scanning platform to scan skills that are being uploaded to ClawHub as part of a defense-in-depth approach to improve the security of the agen...

Cybersecurity researchers have called attention to a "massive campaign" that has systematically targeted cloud native environments to set up malicious infrastructure for follow-on exploitation. The activity, observed around December 25, 2025, and described as "worm-driven," leveraged exposed Docker APIs, Kubernetes clusters, Ray dashboards, and Redis servers, along with the recently disclosed React2Shell (CVE-2025-55182, CVSS score: 10.0) vulnerability. The campaign has been attributed to a threat cluster known as TeamPCP (aka DeadCatx3, PCPcat, PersyPCP, and ShellForce). TeamPCP is known to be active since at least November 2025, with the first instance of Telegram activity dating back to July 30, 2025. The TeamPCP Telegram channel currently has over 700 members, where the group publishes stolen data from diverse victims across Canada, Serbia, South Korea, the U.A.E., and the U.S. Details of the threat actor were first documented by Beelzebub in December 2025...

BeyondTrust has released updates to address a critical security flaw impacting Remote Support (RS) and Privileged Remote Access (PRA) products that, if successfully exploited, could result in remote code execution. "BeyondTrust Remote Support (RS) and certain older versions of Privileged Remote Access (PRA) contain a critical pre-authentication remote code execution vulnerability," the company said in an advisory released February 6, 2026. "By sending specially crafted requests, an unauthenticated remote attacker may be able to execute operating system commands in the context of the site user." The vulnerability, categorized as an operating system command injection , has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2026-1731 . It's rated 9.9 on the CVSS scoring system. BeyondTrust said successful exploitation of the shortcoming could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to execute operating system commands in the context of the site user, resulting in unautho...

OpenClaw (formerly Moltbot and Clawdbot) has announced that it's partnering with Google-owned VirusTotal to scan skills that are being uploaded to ClawHub, its skill marketplace, as part of broader efforts to bolster the security of the agentic ecosystem. "All skills published to ClawHub are now scanned using VirusTotal's threat intelligence, including their new Code Insight capability," OpenClaw's founder Peter Steinberger, along with Jamieson O'Reilly and Bernardo Quintero said. "This provides an additional layer of security for the OpenClaw community." The process essentially entails creating a unique SHA-256 hash for every skill and cross checking it against VirusTotal's database for a match. If it's not found, the skill bundle is uploaded to the malware scanning tool for further analysis using VirusTotal Code Insight . Skills that have a "benign" Code Insight verdict are automatically approved by ClawHub, while those marke...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has ordered Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to strengthen asset lifecycle management for edge network devices and remove those that no longer receive security updates from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) over the next 12 to 18 months. The agency said the move is to drive down technical debt and minimize the risk of compromise, as state-sponsored threat actors turn such devices as a preferred access pathway for breaking into target networks. Edge devices is an umbrella term that encompasses load balancers, firewalls, routers, switches, wireless access points, network security appliances, Internet of Things (IoT) edge devices, software-defined networks, and other physical or virtual networking components that route network traffic and hold privileged access. "Persistent cyber threat actors are increasingly exploiting unsupported edge devices -- hardware and software that no longer receiv...