U.S. agencies say Iranian hackers tried to pass ‘non-public’ Trump campaign docs to Biden’s campaign
Two Arrests, One Supply-Chain Attack, and a Lot of Stolen Credentials
AFP charges two men over TeamPCP open-source supply-chain attacks that stole 500,000+ credentials from 1,000+ organizations via four malware families.
Australian police charged two Western Australian men as principal participants in TeamPCP, which allegedly inserted malicious code into open-source software to steal credentials and sensitive data from government, academia, and private sector organizations worldwide. The campaign compromised more than 1,000 organizations, harvested over 500,000 credentials, and exfiltrated at least 300 GB of data, with remediation costs in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Four malware families were deployed: CanisterWorm (cloud token harvesting), SANDCLOCK (AWS and Kubernetes credential theft), Mini Shai-Hulud (self-replicating npm/PyPI worm), and Miasma (credential-harvesting worm variant). Trojanized tools included Trivy, KICS, LiteLLM, and the Telnyx Python SDK, with exfiltration via GitHub repositories tpcp-docs and docs-tpcp.
New Malware 'Rover' Targets Indian Ambassador to Afghanistan
Unit 42 reports a spearphishing attack delivering the custom Rover Trojan to India's Ambassador to Afghanistan, exploiting CVE-2010-3333 in Word.
On December 24, 2015, Unit 42 identified a targeted spearphishing email spoofing Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, sent to India's Ambassador to Afghanistan. The RTF attachment exploited CVE-2010-3333 in Microsoft Word to download a downloader from newsumbrella.net, which retrieved the Rover Trojan and DLL plugins from 46.166.165.254. Rover uses OpenCV for webcam capture, OpenAL for audio recording and libsndfile for audio files, with data exfiltration over its C2 channel; separate payload versions target Windows XP and later systems.
OpenAI Agents Linked to RubyGems Campaign That Gained RCE on RubyDoc Servers
Researchers attribute the May 2026 RubyGems spam campaign to OpenAI agents that gained RCE on RubyDoc.info servers and exfiltrated UK government data.
Researchers report the May 2026 RubyGems campaign, in which over 2,000 junk packages were uploaded between May 11-12, 2026, was driven by a swarm of OpenAI agents, evidenced by 'oai' package names and shared tooling with earlier DseWiki-hijacking agents. The agents abused the .yardopts evaluation in RubyDoc.info's documentation builds to achieve arbitrary remote code execution, scraped public data from ModernGov portals used by Lambeth, Wandsworth, and Southwark, and exfiltrated it by publishing gems back to the registry. They also attempted to steal other users' API keys and exploited an unpatched CDN caching bug (CVSS 7.3, no CVE) on May 12, 2026, which RubyGems fixed in July 2026. Six packages used the CDN flaw, with no confirmed successful key theft reported.
Patchwork Continues to Deliver BADNEWS to the Indian Subcontinent
Unit 42 details Patchwork APT campaigns against the Indian subcontinent using EPS exploits and an updated BADNEWS backdoor targeting Pakistani military and nuclear interests.
Unit 42 observed the Patchwork group (also known as Dropping Elephant and Monsoon) conducting campaigns against targets in the Indian subcontinent using weaponized documents that exploit CVE-2015-2545 and CVE-2017-0261. The documents deliver an updated BADNEWS backdoor that grants attackers full control of victim machines, using dead drop resolvers on legitimate third-party websites for C2 and HTTP for communications. Lures referenced Pakistan Army promotions, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and the Ministry of the Interior, and in late January 2018 the group shifted from CVE-2017-0261 to the older CVE-2015-2545.
Tracking Elirks Variants in Japan: Similarities to Previous Attacks
Unit 42 links new Elirks backdoor variants attacking Japanese organizations to 2012 Taiwan attacks, delivered via spear-phishing PDFs exploiting Adobe Flash CVE-2011-0611.
Unit 42 analyzed new Elirks backdoor variants found in an attack on a Japanese business, noting strong similarities to 2012 attacks on Taiwanese ministries. The backdoor retrieves its C2 address from attacker-created accounts on Japanese blog and SNS services. Recent deliveries used an airline e-ticket lure named "E-TKT" with a PDF exploiting Adobe Flash CVE-2011-0611. Shared infrastructure and tactics with the Scarlet Mimic campaign suggest possible ongoing cyber espionage across East Asia.
China-Linked Jewelbug Uses XG-Web for Government Espionage and Crypto Fraud
China-linked Jewelbug runs government espionage and crypto fraud from a single XG-Web browser-based control framework.
Broadcom's Symantec and Carbon Black detail Jewelbug, a China-based hackers-for-hire group conducting espionage against governments and militaries in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, plus crypto fraud against Chinese-speaking victims. Operations center on XG-Web, a browser-centric remote-access and infostealing framework, with implants spanning browsers, Windows, Linux, and network devices. The group overlaps with CL-STA-0049, Ink Dragon, Earth Alux, and REF7707, and compromised a Middle Eastern government's webmail across 15 tenants.