ZeroHour

Search: “LockBit”

11 items in the last 30d

U.S. Bank says breach claims related to fourth

LockBit claimed data theft from U.S. Bancorp, but the bank attributes it to a fourth-party breach at a contractor's third party, with no impact on its own systems.

LockBit added U.S. Bancorp to its leak site and threatened to release stolen data within two weeks, but the bank investigated and attributed the claims to a fourth-party incident outside its environment. U.S. Bancorp stated there is no evidence its systems, networks, or data repositories were compromised and reported the matter to law enforcement. The bank is the seventh largest in the United States, and LockBit provided no samples to substantiate the claim. The gang, previously subject to a 2024 law enforcement takedown, earned $252.4 million in ransoms through 353 attacks from 2022 to 2024 according to the U.S. Treasury.

The Record · 26d agoRansomware

Three Threat Groups Target Russian Enterprises With Backdoors, Ransomware, and Wipers

Kaspersky details NightEagle, Hacking Cat, and Toy Ghouls targeting Russian enterprises with Exchange backdoors, Gorilla RAT, and destructive Monkey ransomware.

Kaspersky reports three threat clusters targeting Russian enterprises: NightEagle (APT-Q-95), the pro-Ukrainian hacktivist group Hacking Cat, and Toy Ghouls. NightEagle uses compromised VPN credentials and the GhostContainer modular backdoor to fully compromise Microsoft Exchange servers, chaining CVE-2020-0688 exploitation, BlueKeep (CVE-2019-0708), Active Directory vulnerabilities, and DCSync to seize domain controllers. Hacking Cat exploits Exchange flaws including CVE-2021-26855 and CVE-2026-42897 to deliver the Gorilla RAT and multiple Monkey ransomware variants written in Rust, .NET, C++, and Golang targeting Windows, Linux, and VMware ESXi, with some variants acting as wipers that never store the encryption key.

Most Firms Unable to Recover Quickly from Ransomware

Fenix24's first State of Recoverability report finds only 0.5% of 800+ ransomware clients neared 24-48 hour recovery targets, with identity failures central.

Drawing on 500+ ransomware recoveries, Fenix24 found only four of 800+ clients (0.5%) came close to their own 24-48 hour recovery targets, and none reached full operations for weeks. 99.2% lacked a documented identity recovery plan, Active Directory typically fell first, and 94% tied backup systems to the compromised directory. In 38% of engagements backups survived but could not carry recovery; storage ran short in 82% of cases and 95% lacked meaningful MFA on critical infrastructure consoles.

Infosecurity Magazine · 1d agoResearch

Hackers Turn Windows Shadow Copies Into a Tool for Credential Theft and Ransomware

Attackers abuse Windows VSS shadow copies to delete recovery points before ransomware and to extract NTDS.dit/SAM credentials, demanding context-aware detection.

Threat actors are weaponizing the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for two purposes: destroying local recovery points via vssadmin.exe, wmic.exe, diskshadow.exe, wbadmin.exe, and bcdedit.exe before encryption, and accessing static copies of locked files such as NTDS.dit and SAM for credential theft. Ransomware families tied to shadow-copy removal include Akira, Black Basta, BlackCat, Conti, LockBit, Qilin, RansomHub, REvil, Ryuk, and WannaCry. Huntress's analysis of the Nightmare-Eclipse tool showed the BlueHammer technique chaining a Windows Defender timing issue with a VSS snapshot to dump the SAM database and decrypt NT hashes. Defenders should correlate VSS operations with parent process, hive access, and subsequent encryption activity, and maintain immutable off-host backups.

GBHackers · 1d agoResearch in the wild1

PaperCut Flaws Exploited in Attacks on U.S. and European Schools

Attackers are chaining recently disclosed PaperCut flaws CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078 to steal credentials and create privileged accounts at US and European schools.

Arctic Wolf researchers observed threat actors exploiting PaperCut servers via CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078, chaining an authentication bypass with remote code execution. Post-exploitation included creating a privileged account named Administrator17, downloading credential-harvesting tools with certutil, Meterpreter Java payloads, and registry hive collection to recover the Windows BootKey and reach the SAM database. PaperCut disclosed active exploitation on August 27, 2026, and CISA added both flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on August 31. PaperCut has a history of exploitation, including attacks that delivered LockBit ransomware.

Security Affairs · 11d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-81578CVE-2026-82078

Angry Birds: Toy Ghouls’ new toys

Kaspersky tracks ransomware group Toy Ghouls deploying new custom backdoors, mqtt-bird-agent and matrix-bird-agent, using HiveMQ MQTT and Element as C2 channels.

Kaspersky reports that Toy Ghouls (also known as Bearlyfy, Laboo.boo and Feral Wolf), a financially motivated group targeting Russian organizations since 2025, shifted from leaked Babuk and LockBit builders and public GitHub tools to its custom GenieLocker ransomware. In early July 2026 the group deployed two custom backdoors: mqtt-bird-agent 0.1.0 using the public HiveMQ MQTT broker as C2, and matrix-bird-agent 0.1.0 using the Element messenger. The backdoors are delivered via WinRM using Evil-WinRM and WinRM-fs, persist as Windows services, and encrypt their configuration with ChaCha20-Poly1305 keyed to the machine's MachineGuid registry value.

Kaspersky Securelist · 12d agoThreat actor

New pro-Ukraine hacker group targets Russian companies with custom ransomware

F6 links new pro-Ukraine ransomware group VantaCore, likely a Thor rebrand, to seven attacks on Russian firms using custom tooling and multimillion-dollar demands.

Russian cybersecurity firm F6 reports that VantaCore, a ransomware group believed to be a rebrand of pro-Ukrainian group Thor, has targeted at least seven Russian organizations with ransom demands reaching millions of dollars, operating as a ransomware-as-a-service operation with a Tor-based victim chat and a leak site. The group uses custom-built tooling including the VantaCore ransomware that encrypts servers and workstations, VantaCoreLoader for distribution, the VantaCoreRAT backdoor, and SnowKiller, which disables antivirus and security software. Initial access relies on poorly secured VPNs and remote-access tools, flaws in internet-facing applications, and credentials stolen from business partners. F6 notes pro-Ukrainian groups increasingly abandoned stock ransomware like LockBit 3 Black and Babuk in 2025-2026 in favor of custom malware.

The Record · 14d agoRansomware

Attackers plant remote access tools on compromised PaperCut servers

Attackers chained two PaperCut NG/MF zero-days for unauthenticated access, installing SimpleHelp and AnyDesk remote access tools on compromised servers.

An ongoing campaign exploits chained zero-days CVE-2026-81578 (improper access control) and CVE-2026-82078 (unsafe dynamic class loading) in internet-facing PaperCut NG and MF Application Servers, enabling authentication bypass and arbitrary Java bytecode execution. Post-compromise activity includes user and domain enumeration, payload download from sendit.sh, and silent installation of SimpleHelp and AnyDesk for redundant remote access; Defused observed CVE-2026-81578/CVE-2026-82078 exploit activity in honeypots since August 29, including data theft via Derby database dumps. Emergency patches were released August 28 and August 30, but 47% of roughly 2,500 PaperCut installs tracked by Huntress run v23 or older, for which no patch is available.

Help Net Security · 14d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-81578CVE-2026-820781

PaperCut NG/MF vulnerabilities exploited in zero-day attacks

PaperCut warns of active zero-day exploitation chaining CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078 for pre-auth remote code execution in NG/MF print management.

PaperCut Software confirmed attackers are chaining two vulnerabilities in PaperCut NG and MF: CVE-2026-81578, an improper access control flaw in the web management interface allowing unauthenticated configuration changes, and CVE-2026-82078, unsafe dynamic class loading in database connection utilities enabling arbitrary Java bytecode execution. Huntress reproduced a pre-authentication remote configuration takeover and full RCE chain against PaperCut NG 25.0.11.75758 and observed limited exploitation at two customers, including post-exploitation whoami and ver commands. The vendor released Emergency Patch Release 2 with additional hardening and urged restricting Application Server web access to trusted IPs. In 2023, Clop and LockBit affiliates abused CVE-2023-27350 and CVE-2023-27351 in the same software.

Help Net Security · 16d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-81578CVE-2026-82078CVE-2023-27350+1 CVEs1

PaperCut Zero-Day Exploited in Attacks, Affecting All NG and MF Versions

PaperCut warns of actively exploited zero-day RCE chain CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078 affecting all PaperCut NG and MF versions.

PaperCut alerted customers that attackers are actively exploiting a zero-day affecting all versions of PaperCut NG and MF print management software, with confirmed customer incidents and an ongoing investigation. Emergency patches were released for v25 and v26, and the flaw was later identified as an exploitation chain of CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078 enabling remote code execution. Shared IoCs include suspicious post-exploitation activity from pc-app.exe and missing, truncated or deleted server.log files with specific database errors. Users with internet-exposed PaperCut Application Servers are urged to immediately restrict access to trusted IPs; in 2023, CVE-2023-27350 (CVSS 9.8) in the same products was exploited by Lace Tempest to deliver Cl0p and LockBit ransomware.

ThreatsDay: GhostJacking AI Attacks, EtherHiding ClickFix, Cursor CLI Flaw + 17 More Stories

A weekly bulletin aggregating short security updates, including the City-Forum data-theft campaign, a ShipMonk breach, a Cursor CLI flaw, and GhostJacking AI attacks.

The Hacker News ThreatsDay Bulletin bundles roughly 20 short updates across cloud services, AI tools, malware, breaches, and scams. Highlights include the City-Forum campaign pulling data from unauthenticated guest access in Salesforce Experience Cloud and ServiceNow Service Portals since March 2025, and a ShipMonk breach exposing Trezor customer order data for orders in seven countries between May 10 and August 8, 2026. Other items cover a patched Cursor CLI flaw that let cloned repositories run commands before the workspace-trust prompt, Okta's analysis of the Work Panel vishing console used by actors like UNC6671, and GhostJacking AI agent hijacking via a patched Claude Desktop sandbox escape. Meta also launched an on-device WhatsApp Scam Alert machine learning model that keeps message content on the device.

The Hacker News · 29d agoIndustry