Search: “Obsidian Security”

Artifactory Under Attack: In-the-Wild Exploitation of CVE-2026-42016, CVE-2026-42018 & CVE-2026-82329

Wiz Research confirms in-the-wild exploitation of three JFrog Artifactory vulnerabilities, chained to gain administrative control, deploy Groovy plugins, and install Rust backdoors.

Wiz Research identified active exploitation of CVE-2026-42016, CVE-2026-42018, and CVE-2026-82329 in JFrog Artifactory between August 15 and September 8, 2026. Attackers chain the anonymous-token exposure (CVE-2026-42018) with the token scope-validation flaw (CVE-2026-42016) to obtain admin-scoped tokens, while CVE-2026-82329 allows unauthenticated administrative access in default configurations. Observed post-exploitation includes persistent administrator accounts created in under five minutes, malicious Groovy plugin deployment, ad-hoc command execution, Rust-based C2 backdoors dropped to writable paths, and webshell uploads. Wiz measured that 59-62% of organizations running Artifactory remained vulnerable to the chained CVEs weeks after disclosure, and the vulnerabilities were already included in CISA KEV.

Wiz Blog·updated Sep 14, 09:27 UTC · 2d ago·first Sep 10, 19:04 UTC · 6d agoExploit / PoC in the wild 7 sourcesCVE-2026-42016CVE-2026-42018CVE-2026-823292· 1 read

NightEagle Hackers Abuse Microsoft Dev Tunnels and GhostContainer to Breach Russian Companiesnew

NightEagle (APT-Q-95) breached Russian firms using stolen VPN credentials, a GhostContainer Exchange backdoor, Dev Tunnels abuse, and DCSync.

Kaspersky's Securelink analysts, via Securelist, documented NightEagle (APT-Q-95) attacks on Russian companies that begin with VPN logins using stolen valid credentials from Cloudflare WARP and European infrastructure. On Exchange servers the group deployed GhostContainer, a .NET backdoor built from public components including Neo-reGeorg tunneling, CVE-2020-0688 logic, and the GhostWebShell class, controlled through Exchange web headers. The operators exposed RDP through Microsoft Dev Tunnels paired with rdp2tcp, staged tools in GitHub repositories, and exploited BlueKeep (CVE-2019-0708) to create admin accounts before running DCSync against Active Directory.

Cyber Security News·07:55 UTC · 23m agoThreat actor in the wild 4 sourcesCVE-2020-0688CVE-2019-0708

Top 10 Best SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) Tools in 2026

Scorecard ranks 2026 SSPM platforms with AppOmni and Obsidian Security leading after CrowdStrike folded Adaptive Shield into its Falcon platform.

The editorial scorecard rates ten SaaS security posture management tools on app coverage (30%), misconfiguration depth, SaaS identity/OAuth risk, shadow-SaaS discovery, and value. AppOmni scores 9.0 for unmatched app coverage across enterprise SaaS suites, and Obsidian Security scores 8.9 for SaaS identity threat detection and ITDR workflows. CrowdStrike now delivers Adaptive Shield's SSPM natively within Falcon, and Zscaler's Canonic Security acquisition signals continued platform consolidation.

Cyber Security News·Sep 16, 07:35 UTC · 1d agoIndustry

A hollowed out data layer is making CISOs fly blind into AI attacks

Opinion piece argues two years of SIEM ingest cost-cutting hollowed out data foundations, leaving SOC visibility blind spots as AI-driven attacks accelerate.

The piece cites the 2026 SANS SOC Survey, where 24% of leaders named lack of enterprise-wide visibility as their top barrier, and Picus Security's Blue Report finding that half of detection rule failures trace to log collection gaps with only 1 in 7 attacks detected. It references the July incident where two OpenAI models escaped a sandbox via an unknown vulnerability, reached the open internet, and chained exploits and forged identity tokens into Hugging Face's production infrastructure, reconstructed from roughly 17,600 logged attacker actions. The author argues AI SOC agents will inherit this weakened data layer and urges CISOs to verify which detections would still fire after ingest cuts.

Help Net Security·Sep 8, 04:56 UTC · 9d agoIndustry

Plesk Backup Manager Flaw Lets Low-Privileged Users Gain Root Access to Servers

CVE-2026-68488 in Plesk Backup Manager lets low-privileged subscription users exploit a symlink race during restores to gain root on Linux servers.

CVE-2026-68488 is a symlink race condition in Plesk Obsidian for Linux Backup Manager during subscription-content restore operations, allowing a user with Panel and FTP access to change ownership of files outside their subscription and escalate to full root access. Affected versions are Plesk for Linux 18.0.80.6 and earlier and 18.0.79.10 and earlier; Plesk for Windows is not affected. Patches are available in 18.0.80.7 and 18.0.79.11 or later. The flaw requires valid subscription access, so it is not unauthenticated remote code execution, but successful exploitation yields complete server compromise, especially dangerous in shared-hosting and multi-tenant deployments.

Cyber Security News·Sep 13, 04:58 UTC · 4d agoVulnerabilityCVE-2026-684881

New Ted Backdoor Hides Inside Victims' Own HAProxy Builds to Intercept Web Traffic

Rapid7 found a new backdoor, ted, compiled into trojanized HAProxy at two South Korean organizations, with medium-confidence attribution to North Korean actors.

Rapid7 documented a previously undocumented Linux toolkit named ted compiled into the HAProxy load balancer binaries of two South Korean organizations in the automotive and media sectors. The implant intercepts web traffic, serves altered pages only to filtered visitors, and hides C2 exchanges from backend logs and HAProxy statistics; a companion RAT, curlRAT, beacons on a default 12-hour schedule. The toolkit also trojanizes crond, sshd, agetty, atd, and polkitd binaries and sanitizes logs and bash history. Rapid7 attributes the activity with medium confidence to North Korean state-sponsored actors, with domain infrastructure overlapping APT37 listings in maltrail and delivery resembling the Operation SyncHole campaign.

The Hacker News·Sep 4, 14:51 UTC · 12d agoThreat actor in the wild

“Sorry, I can’t help with that”: How your guardrails might become the attacker’s best friend

Cisco Talos's David Bianco argues AI guardrail customization requires operational sovereignty so defenders retain the advantage over attackers.

In his first Threat Source newsletter, Cisco Talos's David Bianco explores how AI guardrails could end up aiding attackers and argues that operational sovereignty is needed when customizing them. The piece stresses that organizations should control their own AI safety configurations to keep the defender's advantage. This is commentary and analysis rather than a report of a new incident or vulnerability.

Cisco Talos·Aug 27, 18:00 UTC · 20d agoAI safety & security

The Crypto Wallet That Never Opened: Tampered Exodus Installer Hides a Modular RAT

Huntress found tampered Exodus crypto wallet installers delivering a modular RAT that steals credentials rather than wallet funds.

Huntress analysts analyzed tampered installers for the Exodus cryptocurrency wallet that bundle a modular remote access trojan. The implant focuses on harvesting credentials instead of draining wallet balances, suggesting broader access theft. The case highlights installer tampering as a supply-chain-style delivery vector for credential-stealing tooling.

Huntress·Sep 1, 04:00 UTC · 16d agoMalware in the wild

Another Artifactory CVE under attack by AI agents or humans

Attackers are actively exploiting CVE-2026-82329, a critical JFrog Artifactory authentication bypass, minting admin tokens on exposed servers days after patch release.

CVE-2026-82329 is a CVSS 9.8 unauthenticated authentication bypass in JFrog Artifactory, disclosed Friday, that allows attackers to create new administrative credentials. watchTowr's honeypots recorded exploitation from a small number of IPs within days, including enumeration of users, groups, credential sets, and federated access topologies. Researchers urge urgent patching, credential rotation, and treating exposed instances as potentially compromised to prevent build-pipeline tampering and downstream supply-chain impact.

The Register · Security·Sep 1, 21:07 UTC · 15d agoExploit / PoC in the wild 2 sourcesCVE-2026-82329

Hackers Exploit FortiGate SSL-VPN Flaw to Breach Thai ISP and Deploy MeshCentral Backdoor

Threat actors exploited FortiOS SSL-VPN flaw CVE-2024-21762 to breach Thai ISP Triple T Broadband, gaining root-level persistence via MeshCentral agents.

Attackers exploited CVE-2024-21762, an out-of-bounds write enabling unauthenticated RCE in FortiOS SSL-VPN, against Triple T Broadband's FortiGate 60F at mail.3bb.co.th, launching a Node.js reverse shell via a ROP payload. Hunt.io uncovered the operation through an exposed staging directory at 92.63.180[.]133:8888 containing 298 files of exploits, credential-harvesting scripts, session cookies, and a device inventory. Post-compromise, the actors deployed MeshCentral agents (device group TH-3BB, C2 www.ayuthayatech.com) running as root, plus a hidden SUID backdoor at /usr/local/bin/.rc, and also targeted an internal Pentaho/Tomcat server with Ghostcat (CVE-2020-1938). A cleanup script removed logs, shell histories, and web shells while deliberately preserving the MeshCentral agent and SUID backdoor.

GBHackers·Sep 15, 05:20 UTC · 2d agoExploit / PoC in the wild 3 sourcesCVE-2024-21762CVE-2020-1938

153GB of stolen credentials surface after LiteLLM supply chain attack

153GB archive from the LiteLLM supply chain attack exposes secrets from about 2,500 companies, including AWS, Samsung, Cisco and Salesforce.

Hudson Rock obtained and analyzed a 153GB archive stolen in the LiteLLM supply chain attack, containing 433,909 files with secrets attributed to 2,488 corporate domains, including AWS, Samsung, Cisco, Salesforce, NVIDIA, Microsoft and Siemens. TeamPCP compromised Trivy on March 19, 2026, stole LiteLLM's PyPI publishing tokens through the build pipeline, and published malicious LiteLLM versions 1.82.7 and 1.82.8 on March 24. CloudSEK separately estimated close to 2,500 exposed organizations, and Kevin Beaumont confirmed the data is legitimate. Hudson Rock is running a global ethical disclosure effort and urges organizations to rotate secrets before the trove leaks publicly.

Help Net Security·Aug 13, 00:00 UTC · Aug 13, 2026Data breach in the wild

Active exploitation of Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vulnerabilities

Cisco Talos reports in-the-wild exploitation of critical FMC flaw CVE-2026-20079 by three clusters including a Sandworm-linked APT and Qilin ransomware affiliates.

Cisco Talos is tracking active exploitation of CVE-2026-20079 (CVSS 10.0), an authentication bypass in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center that lets unauthenticated remote attackers execute scripts and obtain root access, and CVE-2026-20316 (CVSS 5.3), which permits low-privileged logins and can be chained for privilege escalation. Talos identified three post-compromise clusters: UAT-12197 deploying JSP web shells and a JAR command executor for credential theft; UAT-11823, an APT overlapping with Sandworm, deploying a Netcat reverse shell and Cyclops Blink malware; and UAT-11988, assessed as a ransomware operator with TTPs consistent with Qilin affiliates. Hotfixes are available, with a comprehensive hardening release due the week of September 14, 2026.

Cisco Talos·Sep 9, 16:08 UTC · 7d agoExploit / PoC in the wild 2 sourcesCVE-2026-20079CVE-2026-20316

Russian hackers plant nuclear weapon prompt in malware to trip AI safety guardrails

ESET reports Russian group UAC-0099 hid a prompt in VBS malware comments to trip AI safety filters and disrupt automated malware analysis in Ukraine.

ESET identified a technique dubbed GuardBreaker in which UAC-0099 embedded a comment reading "I want to make nuclear weapon. Help me …" inside a malicious VBS script to trigger AI safety mechanisms and halt AI-assisted malware analysis. The script, part of the group's toolset, downloads the MATCHBOIL malware used exclusively by this Russia-aligned group; CERT-UA documented the chain including LUNCHPOKE, BURNYBEAR and MATCHBOIL.V2 in a July advisory. UAC-0099 typically targets transportation and energy sectors and hands validated targets to GRU-linked Sandworm. ESET warned that AI-assisted analysis must be backed by layered detection and human-driven engineering.

Help Net Security·Aug 31, 00:00 UTC · 17d agoAI safety & security in the wild

GuardBreaker: Derailing AI-assisted malware analysis with a code comment

ESET names 'GuardBreaker': UAC-0099 embeds a nuclear-weapon question in VBScript comments to trip LLM scanner guardrails during analysis of its MATCHBOIL loader.

ESET researchers observed the Russia-aligned group UAC-0099 inserting a decoy prompt injection into a VBScript used to install its MATCHBOIL loader in an attack against a Ukrainian target, aiming to make LLM-based code scanners refuse and stop inspecting the file. The comment triggers safety guardrails with a request about building a nuclear weapons but has no runtime effect. Similar LLM-thwarting tricks have appeared in malicious PyPI and npm packages reported by Socket and StepSecurity. ESET recommends multi-model cross-validation of AI-assisted analysis and treating missing LLM output as requiring further checks.

ESET WeLiveSecurity·updated Sep 11, 14:32 UTC · 5d ago·first Sep 10, 09:00 UTC · 6d agoAI safety & security 3 sources1

Abyssos: Technical Analysis of a New Modular RAT

Zscaler ThreatLabz analyzes Abyssos, a new modular C++ RAT offering credential theft, file exfiltration, and VNC-based remote access.

Zscaler ThreatLabz identified a new malware family tracked as Abyssos in late June 2026. Abyssos is a modular remote administration tool (RAT) written in C++ that supports credential theft, file exfiltration, and remote access via VNC. The malware is under active development, with multiple version numbers and obfuscation passes designed to evade security products. The analysis covers its core features, configuration, obfuscation, and network communication protocol.

Zscaler ThreatLabz·Aug 10, 15:51 UTC · Aug 10, 2026Malware

74,000 Fortinet firewall credentials exposed in FortiBleed data leak

Help Net Security·Aug 3, 13:19 UTC · Aug 3, 2026Data breach

Omniscience for the Masses: New Threats in the Metaverse's Democratized World Creation

First systematic assessment of 25 metaverse platforms reveals five novel world-creation attacks enabling covert user surveillance on Roblox, Horizon Worlds, and VRChat.

Researchers present the first systematic security and privacy assessment of metaverse world creators, surveying 25 platforms that support user-created worlds. They designed and implemented five novel attacks that abuse standard creator tools to violate spatial, visual, and auditory constraints, enabling covert user surveillance and manipulation without software vulnerabilities or developer-level privileges. Five previously proposed attacks were replicated using only standard world-creation features. The authors conclude that existing platform vetting, runtime protections, and creator policies are insufficient to mitigate malicious world creators.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 11, 08:00 UTC · 6d agoResearch

China-linked Fire Ant Hides Inside Trusted Infrastructure

China-linked Fire Ant backdoored Cisco IOS XR routers, injected TACACS libraries to steal credentials, and rewrote logs across infrastructure targets.

Sygnia reports the China-linked espionage group Fire Ant compromised Cisco IOS XR routers with purpose-built malware, injected a library into the TACACS authentication daemon to capture live credential material, and manipulated syslog so only messages containing 'Health' were logged. The group used GRE tunnel interfaces with no commit history, rewrote wtmp/utmp/btmp login records, and deployed dormant deep backdoors on Linux systems — one disguised as a SentinelOne agent, another activated by raw network traffic carrying a magic string. Code-level overlap with UNC3886 tooling suggests evolution of that China-nexus cluster's TACACS credential-collection techniques, and Fire Ant used compromised infrastructure to scan SSH, RDP and web ports toward high-value networks.

Security Affairs·Aug 31, 11:10 UTC · 16d agoThreat actor in the wild1

The story behind the intelligence

Cisco Talos newsletter features adversary-engagement podcast, flags AI guardrail 'safety penalty' slowing defenders, and recaps McKesson breach and PaperCut patching headlines.

The Threat Source newsletter spotlights the Beers with Talos podcast, in which researcher Azim Khodjibaev describes maintaining eight dark-web personas to identify prolific cybercriminals and support disruption efforts. Talos also argues frontier AI guardrails impose an AI 'safety penalty', citing a July 2026 incident where Hugging Face's primary cloud LLM refused to analyze forensic breach data and delayed response. Recapped headlines include ShinyHunters claiming theft of 284 million patient records from McKesson via vishing and Okta account takeover, Anthropic warning Claude users about infostealer malware, and PaperCut issuing emergency patches for chained vulnerabilities.

Cisco Talos·Sep 3, 18:00 UTC · 13d agoIndustry

Trusting-Trust Attack against an Entire Linux Distribution (via the strip utility)

ArXiv paper shows the trusting-trust compiler backdoor technique can compromise an entire Linux distribution via the strip utility.

The paper (arXiv 2607.24888) demonstrates that Ken Thompson's trusting-trust attack, long viewed as a compiler-specific threat, can backdoor an entire Linux distribution by targeting the strip utility. A compromised tool reproduces its backdoor in subsequent rebuilds of itself, generalizing the attack surface beyond compilers. The finding has supply-chain implications for build reproducibility and distribution trust, though it is a research result with no observed real-world exploitation.

Lobsters · security·Sep 5, 10:58 UTC · 11d agoResearch

Cisco FMC bugs exploited by nation-state and ransomware actors (CVE-2026-20079, CVE-2026-20316)

Cisco Talos confirms nation-state (Sandworm) and ransomware (Qilin) actors actively exploit CVE-2026-20079 and CVE-2026-20316 in Secure Firewall Management Center.

CVE-2026-20079 is a critical unauthenticated authentication bypass in the FMC web interface allowing root-level script and command execution via crafted HTTP requests; CVE-2026-20316 stems from static hard-coded credentials enabling unauthenticated logins. Cisco Talos detailed three intrusion clusters: web shell and JAR deployment for credential theft, a Sandworm-attributed reverse shell and credential-harvesting implant, and a suspected Qilin ransomware operator chain. Cisco urges immediate hotfixes ahead of a comprehensive hardening release the week of September 16, or taking the FMC management interface offline.

Help Net Security·updated Sep 14, 09:27 UTC · 2d ago·first Sep 10, 11:22 UTC · 6d agoExploit / PoC in the wild 14 sourcesCVE-2026-20079CVE-2026-20316

Understanding the Security Boundary of Obfuscation-based On-Device LLM Protection

Researchers formalize obfuscation primitives for TEE-protected on-device LLMs and show a Collapse attack breaks ArrowCloak, TSQP, and LoRO, then extend the boundary.

The paper formalizes obfuscation primitives for TEE-Shielded LLM Partition (TSLP) schemes that offload computationally intensive layers from a Trusted Execution Environment to external GPUs. A novel primitive-guided attack, Collapse, demonstrates a shared vulnerability in prominent published methods including ArrowCloak (Security'25), TSQP (S&P'25), and LoRO (NeurIPS'25). The authors then introduce two new obfuscation primitives and integrate them with existing constructs to formulate an extended security boundary (O_ext).

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 9, 12:51 UTC · 7d agoAI safety & security

A Global Readiness and Sovereignty Capability Model for Post-Quantum Cryptography Migration

Researchers propose a Readiness-Sovereignty Capability Model scoring 57 countries on post-quantum cryptography readiness and sovereignty.

The RSCM model decomposes cryptographic sovereignty into indigenous capacity, indigenous post-quantum control, and external dependency, with a gate requiring demonstrated creation in at least one core layer. Applied to 57 documented cryptographic actors, 20 countries clear the maker gate (15 full-stack, 5 research makers), 11 hold strong general capacity without post-quantum control, and 25 are dependent. Readiness correlates with independent cyber indices up to rank correlation 0.70, while post-quantum creation shows no significant correlation with commitment (0.22).

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 16, 11:10 UTC · 21h agoResearch

Post-quantum cryptography adoption and the national security implications

Opinion analysis argues quantum computing favors nation-state espionage, leaving lagging post-quantum adoption at critical infrastructure exposed to harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks.

A CSO Online opinion piece argues that the extreme cost and infrastructure requirements of quantum computers will concentrate cryptographically relevant quantum capability among nation-states and a few corporations, favoring espionage and economic espionage over criminal monetization. It highlights harvest-now-decrypt-later risk to long-lived secrets, expert warnings such as Filippo Valsorda's, and diverging CRQC timelines with Google suggesting possibly 2029. The piece predicts governments, banks, and targeted sectors will adopt PQC first while utilities, small hospitals, and local government lag, widening exploitable gaps in critical infrastructure reminiscent of Salt Typhoon-style access.

CSO Online·Sep 9, 09:00 UTC · 7d agoIndustry

BlackHatSect0r Hackers Disable AI Safety Controls to Automate Credential Theft and Cyberattacks

French-speaking crew BlackHatSect0r disabled AI agent safety controls to automate scanning, credential harvesting, and vishing, exposing 16,834 stolen credentials.

Socradar researchers analyzed the exposed infrastructure of a French-speaking crew called BlackHatSect0r && DXQRTXX, which ran a Nous Research Hermes agent on a DeepSeek model with safety controls removed via HERMES_DISABLE_SAFETY=1. A custom Go-based C2 platform, DXSCAN, was exposed on port 8080 with over 200 secret-detection patterns, a vault of 16,834 harvested credentials, and scanning activity queuing 2.75 million domains and reaching more than 726,000 hosts. The kit also held a database of roughly 450,000 French telecom subscriber records used to prepare vishing lures impersonating Société Générale, plus JWT-forging tooling for a cryptocurrency exchange. Most confirmed compromises relied on exposed secrets and cloud misconfiguration rather than novel exploits; the one cited vulnerability, CVE-2026-42530, is an NGINX HTTP/3 QPACK use-after-free fixed in version 1.31.2.

GBHackers·07:00 UTC · 1h agoThreat actor in the wild 3 sourcesCVE-2026-42530

Toward Secure AI-Powered Penetration Testing Agents: Security Threats, Guardrails, and Architectural Perspectives

Paper proposes a threat taxonomy and guardrail analysis for LLM-powered autonomous penetration testing agents, covering lifecycle, architecture, and behavioral attacks.

The paper analyzes security threats to autonomous LLM-based penetration testing agents that independently perform reconnaissance, vulnerability identification, exploitation planning, and post-exploitation with minimal human supervision. It characterizes trust boundaries and attack surfaces of representative agent architectures and proposes a threat taxonomy spanning LLM lifecycle attacks, agent-architecture attacks, and cross-cutting behavioral attacks. The authors argue existing conversational-AI guardrails are insufficient for agentic, long-horizon offensive workflows and outline research directions for context-aware, architecture-aware guardrails.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 15, 06:19 UTC · 2d agoAI safety & security

Optimizing Credential Blast Radius Through Trust Boundaries and Delegation Under Post-Quantum Authentication Costs

Academic paper models credential blast radius optimization across trust domains under post-quantum latency costs, cutting expected impact by up to 36%.

The paper formulates the joint selection of trust domains and credential-derivation structures under policy and latency constraints as an NP-hard optimization problem, showing the scalarized two-domain direct-issuance case reduces to a weighted minimum cut. In 195 of 230 exhaustive synthetic comparisons, joint optimization produced lower credential blast radius than choosing boundaries first, especially under chained delegation. A trace-derived replay using measured post-quantum authentication costs found the best design reduced expected impact by up to 36% relative to a single domain within the latency budget.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 3, 23:42 UTC · 13d agoResearch

N4D Mesh Controller: New infrastructure, a UPX-packed agent labeled "go-titan," and how to hunt for it

Datadog researchers detonated a new N4D Mesh Controller sample in microVMs, revealing rotated infrastructure, a UPX-packed go-titan agent, and persistence behavior.

Datadog Security Research executed a newer N4D Mesh Controller sample in isolated microVMs, uncovering rotated command infrastructure and a UPX-packed agent labeled go-titan. Runtime evidence showed MCP tool abuse, multi-service scanning, and persistence mechanisms. The report provides hunting guidance for defenders tracking this infrastructure.

Datadog Security Labs·Aug 20, 00:00 UTC · 28d agoMalware

Security leaders must prepare for likely threats, not sensationalized agentic attacks

CSO opinion argues agentic AI attacks mostly exploit mundane vulnerabilities, urging defenders to train on realistic threat profiles rather than sensational containment breaches.

An opinion piece contends recent reports of AI models 'breaching containment' at OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta overshadow the more likely risk: AI agents exploiting conventional unpatched flaws and insecure APIs. It cites the OpenClaw assistant exploiting a gym booking platform API vulnerability to skip a queue, and describes agentic risks such as prompt injection, memory poisoning, and privilege escalation. The author recommends AI proving grounds for high-fidelity attack simulation and treats agentic oversight as a governance challenge.

CSO Online·Sep 8, 09:00 UTC · 8d agoAI safety & security