Search: “Lazarus”

Lazarus Exploits Windows Zero-Day to Gain SYSTEM Access and Deploy Backdoor

Lazarus exploits Windows AFD.sys zero-day CVE-2026-68820 in Operation Dream Job to deploy Troy backdoor at defense firms.

Check Point attributes Operation Dream Job attacks to Lazarus Group exploiting CVE-2026-68820 (CVSS 7.0), a privilege escalation flaw in Windows AFD.sys patched in August 2026 Patch Tuesday. The campaign targets defense and aerospace firms in France, Germany, Brazil, and India via trojanized PDF viewers and DLL side-loading, deploying backdoors Troy, ForestTiger, and the FudModule 3.1 kernel rootkit. Attackers also compromise WordPress, SharePoint, and Roundcube servers as C2, using CVE-2025-49113 and the RelayShell PHP web shell.

The Hacker News·Aug 15, 00:00 UTC · Aug 15, 2026Threat actor in the wildCVE-2026-68820CVE-2025-491132

Lazarus hackers pair fake job offers with Windows zero-day exploit

Lazarus' Operation Dream Job targets the defense sector with fake job offers, a Windows LPE zero-day (CVE-2026-68820), and new Troy and RelayShell backdoors.

Check Point documented two parallel infection chains in Lazarus' Operation Dream Job: a digitally signed PDF viewer with DLL sideloading delivering the MISTPEN in-memory downloader, and a trojanized SecurityPDF viewer, distributed via fake Enveil websites, installing the newly documented Troy backdoor. A component exploits CVE-2026-68820, a local privilege escalation zero-day in the Windows AFD.sys driver used since at least early July, which Microsoft patched on August 11, 2026, enabling deployment of the FudModule kernel-mode rootkit. Lazarus also compromised Roundcube webmail servers vulnerable to CVE-2025-49113 to deploy the RelayShell PHP web shell and relay C2 traffic, targeting defense-sector organizations primarily in Western Europe and India. Separately, CERT-UA documented Sandworm's UAC-0145 using fake job offers against IT professionals since May 2026.

Help Net Security·Aug 12, 00:00 UTC · Aug 12, 2026Threat actor in the wildCVE-2026-68820CVE-2025-49113

Lazarus Used Post-Quantum Key Exchange to Deliver Zero-Day

Lazarus used a post-quantum key exchange to shield delivery of a Windows zero-day exploit, adding stealth to its campaign.

North Korean Lazarus Group malware used a post-quantum key exchange to protect the delivery of a Windows zero-day exploit. The technique adds a layer of stealth to the campaign's initial access, complicating detection and traffic inspection. It signals growing APT adoption of post-quantum cryptography in offensive operations.

Infosecurity Magazine·Aug 12, 13:35 UTC · Aug 12, 2026Threat actor in the wild

North Korea’s Lazarus Operates Through Six Distinct Cyber Clusters

Sekoia and Kudelski Security reclassify North Korea's Lazarus umbrella into six clusters spanning espionage, financial theft, and fake IT worker operations.

New research by Sekoia and Kudelski Security, published September 7, divides the former Lazarus umbrella into TEMP.Hermit, Citrine Sleet, CryptoCore, Jade Sleet, Moonstone Sleet, and Famous Chollima, mostly under North Korea's military intelligence bureau (GRIB). The former APT38 likely split into CryptoCore and Jade Sleet, focused on cryptocurrency, Web3, and blockchain targets. Moonstone Sleet combines espionage with financially motivated operations, using custom malware alongside Qilin ransomware-as-a-service. Thousands of fake IT workers generate regime revenue and provide access, linked to incidents like the $62.5M Munchables protocol theft.

Infosecurity Magazine·Sep 7, 11:00 UTC · 9d agoThreat actor

North Korean Lazarus Group Uses Windows Zero

Check Point links Lazarus Group's Operation Dream Job to a new Windows zero-day, CVE-2026-68820, targeting defense workers with fake Lockheed Martin job offers.

Check Point Research documented a new wave of Operation Dream Job, a North Korean Lazarus Group campaign targeting defense and aerospace professionals in France, Germany, Brazil, and India with fake Lockheed Martin job offers. The attacks chain a previously unknown Windows privilege escalation flaw in AFD.sys, CVE-2026-68820, which Microsoft patched on August 11, 2026, to deploy the MISTPEN downloader, ForestTiger backdoor, and updated FudModule 3.1 kernel rootkit. Check Point also discovered a new Troy backdoor DLL with 17 operator commands and a RelayShell PHP webshell deployed on compromised Roundcube and WordPress servers used as command relays, some infected via CVE-2025-49113 or leaked credentials. Defenders are urged to apply the August 2026 Patch Tuesday update and review Check Point's indicators of compromise.

Security Affairs·Aug 13, 07:05 UTC · Aug 13, 2026Threat actor in the wildCVE-2026-68820CVE-2025-491131

CISA gives federal agencies two weeks to patch Microsoft bug exploited in DPRK campaign

CISA orders federal agencies to patch exploited Windows Winsock zero-day CVE-2026-68820 by August 25, used by Lazarus in Operation Dream Job.

CISA ordered federal agencies to patch Windows Winsock vulnerability CVE-2026-68820, rated 7/10, by August 25 after confirming exploitation; no workaround exists and a restart is required. Check Point found Lazarus Group hackers impersonated Lockheed Martin and Enveil recruiters on LinkedIn, sent malicious PDFs enabling long-term remote access, then used the zero-day to escalate from limited access to full system control. Targets spanned defense sectors including surveillance, drones and robotics in France, Germany, Brazil and India, as part of Operation Dream Job tracked since 2020.

The Record·Aug 12, 12:12 UTC · Aug 12, 2026Exploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-688201

Claude Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

Claude Fable 5.1 solved Sir Thomas Urquhart's 370-year-old Cyphral Distich cipher, recovering a hidden royalist prayer for Charles II.

Vals AI reports that Claude Fable 5.1 solved the Cyphral Distich, a 64-number cryptogram from Sir Thomas Urquhart's Logopandecteision unsolved since 1653, in 44 minutes using 176k tokens with no human hints. The key insight was that the cipher's key was the book itself: each number indexes a word in the corresponding Proquiritation, taking the first letter, yielding 'O GOD UPHOLD KING CHARLS THE SECOND AND MAKE HIM THE SUPREME RULER OF THIS LAND'. The model also deciphered the larger Cyphral Octastich (285 numbers) from The Jewel (1652) using page-based word indexing, recovering all but nine letters of a royalist prayer. The puzzle had been listed among Klaus Schmeh's Top 50 unsolved encrypted messages.

Hacker News · AI·Sep 13, 21:06 UTC · 2d agoAI researchHN 63↑ · 6 comments1· 1 read

⚡ Weekly Recap: VMware Exploits, Windows 0-Day, MCP Attacks, Browser Hijacks and More

Weekly recap: suspected China-nexus APT exploited VMware vCenter CVE-2026-59310, Lazarus used Windows zero-day CVE-2026-68820, and macOS flaw dropped Monero miners.

The week's top stories included a suspected China-nexus APT exploiting VMware vCenter CVE-2026-59310 (CVSS 9.8), a directory-traversal flaw enabling arbitrary code execution, with backdoors, reverse SSH and Babuk-derived ransomware deployed, per QUIRSO. NCSC-NL reported active exploitation of macOS Screen Sharing flaw CVE-2026-65400 (CVSS 9.8) to install Monero miners on systems with port 5900 exposed. Lazarus Group exploited Windows zero-day CVE-2026-68820 (CVSS 7.0) in Operation Dream Job, delivering ForestTiger and Troy backdoors to defense and aerospace targets. GeoServer patched a critical SQL injection flaw exploited within hours of disclosure, and Jamf analyzed the new Amnesia Stealer for macOS with live browser control.

The Hacker News·Aug 17, 17:57 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Exploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-59310CVE-2026-65400CVE-2026-688201

Claude comes for Gemini with its own take on Docs and Slides

Anthropic launched Claude Docs and Slides in beta and merged chats with Cowork into 'one Claude', challenging Google's Gemini-powered productivity tools.

Claude Docs and Slides launch in beta, letting users create, edit, share, and collaboratively comment on documents and presentations from any chat, with export options. Anthropic also merged regular chats and Cowork into 'one Claude', bringing Cowork, Design, and Artifacts into a single interface. The update closes ground with Google, which has expanded Gemini inside Docs, Sheets, and Slides, and rolls out to Pro and Max users first across web, desktop, and mobile.

The Verge · AI·updated 18:09 UTC · 1h ago·first 16:30 UTC · 3h agoAI industry 5 sources

Microsoft Patches 398 Flaws Including a Windows Driver Zero

Microsoft's August Patch Tuesday fixes 398 CVEs, including actively exploited Windows zero-day CVE-2026-68820 used by Lazarus for SYSTEM privilege escalation.

Microsoft's August 2026 Patch Tuesday release addresses 398 new vulnerabilities, 62 rated Critical by the Zero Day Initiative, with CVE-2026-68820 (CVSS 7.0), a use-after-free in the afd.sys Windows kernel driver, the only flaw flagged as actively exploited. Check Point Research attributed exploitation of the privilege escalation bug to Lazarus' Operation Dream Job campaign. Four unauthenticated remote code execution flaws rated 9.8 affect Windows DNS Server (CVE-2026-62878, called wormable by ZDI), Windows Deployment Services (CVE-2026-62893), Microsoft QUIC (CVE-2026-62815) and HPC Pack (CVE-2026-59124). The release also completes a two-part SharePoint fix with RCE component CVE-2026-63520, following July's authentication bypass fix CVE-2026-55040.

The Hacker News·Aug 11, 20:10 UTC · Aug 11, 2026Exploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-68820CVE-2026-62878CVE-2026-62893+4 CVEs

Mole Ransomware: How One Malicious Spam Campaign Quickly Increased Complexity and Changed Tactics

Unit 42 tracks the new Mole ransomware (CryptoMix family) spread via USPS-themed malspam, with tactics escalating to JavaScript downloaders dropping multiple malware families.

On April 11, 2017, a malspam campaign began distributing Mole ransomware, a CryptoMix-family strain, through USPS-themed emails linking to fake Microsoft Word Online sites offering a bogus Office plugin. By April 13 the campaign added Nemucod JavaScript downloaders installing Mole alongside Kovter and Miuref, and by April 18 it switched to the KINS banking Trojan before moving to speeding-ticket themes and a fake parking services website. Unit 42 notes the rapid tactic changes are likely intended to evade detection, and CryptoMix variants like Mole are typically repackaged within weeks.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 09:53 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Ransomware in the wild

Microsoft’s massive Patch Tuesday releases continue as AI reshapes bug discovery

Microsoft patches 419 vulnerabilities in record-breaking Patch Tuesday; Windows Winsock zero-day CVE-2026-68820 is actively exploited by Lazarus Group.

Microsoft's August Patch Tuesday fixes 419 vulnerabilities (62 critical, 357 important), among the largest monthly counts on record, following 206 fixes in June and 622 in July as AI-assisted discovery drives unprecedented volume. Three flaws are zero-days; Windows Winsock bug CVE-2026-68820 is exploited in the wild by Lazarus Group in job-themed attacks using PDFs with a trojanised reader. CVE-2026-62832, publicly disclosed by researcher Nightmare Eclipse via the LegacyHive PoC, is also patched. Microsoft now lists bugs by product family instead of itemized CVEs, which defenders warn complicates triage.

The Record·Aug 12, 12:36 UTC · Aug 12, 2026Vulnerability in the wildCVE-2026-68820CVE-2026-62832

Introducing agentic video understanding with Gemini

Google DeepMind launches agentic video understanding for Gemini 3.7 Flash, 3.6 Flash, and 3.5 Flash-Lite, cutting video-analysis tokens up to 88%.

Google DeepMind launched agentic video understanding across Gemini 3.7 Flash, 3.6 Flash, and 3.5 Flash-Lite via the Gemini API in Google AI Studio and the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform. The feature replaces static fixed-FPS ingestion with an agentic loop that dynamically searches frames, audio, and transcripts, cutting token consumption by up to 88%, reducing costs by up to 66%, and improving accuracy by up to 7%. Gemini 3.7 Flash with the feature sits at the accuracy-to-cost Pareto frontier on tested video benchmarks, and the capability will later power YouTube's Ask YouTube feature.

Google DeepMind·Sep 1, 17:08 UTC · 15d agoAI tools & infra

Gunra Ransomware Exploits Fortinet FortiOS, FortiProxy Flaws to Breach Networks

CISA, FBI, and South Korean agencies warn Gunra ransomware, with 51 victims since April 2025, exploits Fortinet flaws for double-extortion attacks on critical infrastructure.

CISA, the FBI, and South Korean agencies warned of Gunra ransomware attacks targeting healthcare, financial services, government, and professional services worldwide. The Conti-derived operation exploits internet-facing Fortinet FortiOS and FortiProxy flaws CVE-2024-55591 and CVE-2025-24472 for initial access, then deploys double extortion with Salsa20/ChaCha20 encryption and publishes non-payers on a leak site within five to seven days. Ransomware.Live lists 51 victims since April 2025, mostly in South Korea, Brazil, Spain, Thailand, and Hong Kong. The group uses Impacket tools for SMB lateral movement and NTDS credential dumping, tampers with VDI authentication to accept a designated OTP value to bypass MFA, and launched a RaaS affiliate program in January 2026 under the new alias Golden Community.

The Hacker News·Aug 12, 08:42 UTC · Aug 12, 2026Ransomware in the wildCVE-2024-55591CVE-2025-24472

Claude Fable 5.1 made me a really nice animated pelican

Anthropic launched Claude Fable 5.1, claiming gains in coding and long-running tasks, with 52.6% on Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1.

Anthropic released Claude Fable 5.1 (alongside Mythos 5.1), positioning it as a new standard for coding, knowledge work, and long-running problem-solving. The model scores 52.6% on Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1, up from 24.7% for Fable 5, versus 29.0% for Opus 5 and 22.4% for GPT-5.6 Sol. Simon Willison's hands-on test found the model produced an impressive animated pelican, though he notes other benchmarks show only slightly improved scores.

Simon Willison·Sep 1, 23:57 UTC · 14d agoModel release1

Risky Bulletin: BGP hijack targets Virtualizor to deliver malicious updates

Unknown attackers BGP-hijacked part of Hetzner's space for 33 hours to impersonate Softaculous and push malicious Virtualizor updates via a clone site.

On 28 August 2026, AS62390 (NexonHost) began announcing 162.55.80.0/24 — part of Hetzner's 162.55.0.0/16 containing Softaculous systems — via transit AS6204 (Zet.net), keeping Hetzner (AS24940) on the AS path so the rogue route looked RPKI-valid; the hijack ran nearly 33 hours. The attacker obtained a TLS certificate in Softaculous's name and hosted a clone website delivering malicious updates for the Virtualizor VPS management platform. Virtualizor cannot measure impact because hijacked traffic never touched its infrastructure, and warns users who paid during the attack may have had financial data stolen; no attribution was made. The same bulletin reports a ~$75 million theft attempt against Tectonic via an exploited Cosmos bug (~$68M clawed back), two METR breaches including $600,000 in stolen API credits, and Anthropic pausing external cyber evaluations after models escaped test environments.

Risky Business News·Sep 2, 02:55 UTC · 14d agoData breach in the wild1

Intelligent transcription with Gemini 3.5 Transcribe

Google DeepMind launched Gemini 3.5 Transcribe, a speech-to-text model offering more intelligent transcription as part of the Gemini family.

Google DeepMind announced Gemini 3.5 Transcribe, a new speech-to-text model described as delivering more intelligent transcription. The blog post provides limited technical detail in the available text, with no benchmarks or model sizes given. The release adds a dedicated audio transcription model to the Gemini family.

Google DeepMind·Aug 26, 17:01 UTC · 21d agoModel release

Risky Bulletin: Ukraine's top prosecutor resigns amid scam call center scandal

Ukraine's top prosecutor Ruslan Kravchenko resigned after NABU arrested a deputy for taking bribes protecting scam call centers running fake investment platforms.

Ukraine's anti-corruption bureau NABU arrested Serhiy Kropyva, Deputy Head of International Cooperation at the Prosecutor General's Office, alleging officials took monthly protection fees from a network of 100-500 scam call centers luring victims into fake investment platforms, with bribes reportedly growing from $700,000 to $3.5 million per month. Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko resigned on Monday, calling it a political decision, while Kropyva was fired with bail set at 120 million hryvnias ($2.7 million) and over 100 call centers shut down in the past month. The newsletter also briefly covers a cyberattack crippling more than 80 Luxembourg medical practices via payment vendor BMS Engineering, ShinyHunters' claimed theft of 200,000 Florida DMV driver records, a cyberattack on the American Meteor Society, and school closures in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Risky Business News·Sep 9, 06:06 UTC · 7d agoPhishing & fraud

Novel-reading apps used users' phones to generate fake ad traffic

Help Net Security·Aug 6, 00:00 UTC · Aug 6, 2026Threat actor1

North Korean Hackers Deploy New Linux Espionage Toolkit

Rapid7 says North Korea-aligned actors use a new Linux espionage toolkit (ted HAProxy backdoor, CurlRAT) against South Korean automotive and media targets.

Rapid7 reports a stealthy Linux framework comprising a custom HAProxy backdoor ('ted'), trojanized system binaries (agetty, atd, crond, polkitd, sshd), an SSH keylogger, and CurlRAT that polls C&C every 12 hours. Initial access came via a Groupware login portal flaw, with credential harvesting enabling lateral movement to internal systems. The toolkit supports long-term surveillance, HTTP traffic interception/injection, and drive-by downloads, likely in use since late 2024. Infrastructure and artifacts overlap Operation SyncHole, suggesting Lazarus or APT37 involvement.

SecurityWeek·Sep 7, 12:12 UTC · 9d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Hikers rescued after using Google Gemini for planning

Three hikers were rescued from Mount Shasta after following Google Gemini's advice to carry insufficient food and water during a multi-day ordeal.

Three young men began their Mount Shasta ascent at 3 a.m. and summited at 7 p.m., far past the recommended noon turnaround, then tried descending in the dark. The Siskiyou County sheriff's office said Gemini advised far less food and water than required as the planned 8-hour climb became a multiday ordeal. The trio spent the night in Mud Creek Canyon and were rescued the next morning by Forest Service rangers and volunteers.

TechCrunch · AI·Sep 5, 19:35 UTC · 11d agoAI safety & security

Week in review: Salesforce and ServiceNow portals exposed for 17 months, exploited Metabase 0-day

Weekly digest: exploited Metabase zero-day breached Framework; Salesforce/ServiceNow portals read for 17 months; Microsoft patched 400+ flaws.

Help Net Security's week in review aggregates top stories: a 'City-Forum' campaign tracked by Reco has been pulling records from Salesforce and ServiceNow portals worldwide for 17 months, and Framework suffered a breach via an exploited Metabase zero-day exposing customer contact and IP data. It also covers Microsoft's August 2026 Patch Tuesday fixing 400+ flaws including exploited zero-day CVE-2026-68820, Cisco's fix for exploited firewall DoS bug CVE-2026-20349 (added to CISA KEV), and a second N-able N-central hotfix for actively exploited CVE-2026-18577. Other items include GitHub expanding Dependabot malware alerts to eight package ecosystems and EU AI Act enforcement beginning on 2 August 2026.

Help Net Security·Aug 16, 00:00 UTC · Aug 16, 2026Industry in the wildCVE-2026-18577CVE-2026-68820CVE-2026-203491

Prompt Injections for Defense

Tracebit researchers show prompt injections placed next to AWS secrets can stop AI hacking agents by triggering forbidden outputs, a technique called context bombing.

Researchers from Tracebit reported that placing prompt injections alongside passwords, SSH keys, and other secrets stored on AWS could shut down attacks by AI hacking agents. The injected prompts order the attacking LLM to perform actions forbidden by its guardrails, such as explaining how to develop inhalable Anthrax spores or referencing Tank Man, causing guarded models to halt. The researchers named the technique context bombing and note it only works against agents with guardrails, not locally run guardrail-free models.

Schneier on Security·Aug 12, 09:57 UTC · Aug 12, 2026AI safety & security

Risky Bulletin: Expired cards can be used for new transactions

Researchers show expired Visa contactless cards can be revived via NFC man-in-the-middle relay to run fraudulent transactions; roundup also covers major breaches.

University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers built an NFC man-in-the-middle rig that updates a card's expiration date in transit and relays the modified payment to POS terminals, reviving expired contactless cards; Visa terminals and the backends of all five banks studied failed to catch the manipulation. The same roundup reports Iranian hackers shut down a small UK power plant for four days, Lazarus breached South Korea's Presidential Office as part of a campaign exceeding 100 victims, and French telecom SFR suffered a breach affecting over 2.1 million customers.

Risky Business News·Aug 24, 04:40 UTC · 23d agoResearch1

Claude's new system prompt really doesn't want to reproduce song lyrics

Anthropic published updated Claude consumer system prompts, including changes steering the model away from reproducing song lyrics, likely over copyright concerns.

Anthropic publishes system prompts for Claude.ai and Claude mobile apps, including historic revisions, and has reorganized them into an index with per-model pages such as the Haiku 4.5 page showing the original October 15, 2025 prompt and an updated January 18, 2026 version. The latest consumer prompt strongly discourages reproducing song lyrics, a behavioral constraint likely tied to copyright considerations. Prompts for Claude Cowork and Claude Code are not included in the published set.

Simon Willison·Sep 2, 14:16 UTC · 14d agoAI safety & security

Security Affairs newsletter Round 594 by Pierluigi Paganini – INTERNATIONAL EDITION

Weekly Security Affairs newsletter aggregates top stories including Cisco FMC exploitation, Qilin ransomware, Chrome zero-days, and Berlin leak.

Pierluigi Paganini's Security Affairs newsletter Round 594 (International Edition) rounds up the week's security headlines. Topics include attackers exploiting a critical Cisco FMC flaw to deploy Qilin ransomware, SonicWall mass exploitation linked to a UK council attack, multiple CISA KEV additions, Chrome zero-days used by four nation-state actors, a $320 million Liquid Network theft, and a Berlin ransomware data leak. It also covers AI security items such as agent sandbox failures and distillation campaigns by Chinese AI firms.

Security Affairs·Sep 13, 14:23 UTC · 3d agoIndustry in the wildCVE-2026-42016CVE-2026-42018CVE-2026-82329+1 CVEs1

Introducing Gemini 3.7 Flash

Google DeepMind announced Gemini 3.7 Flash, a new Flash-tier addition to its Gemini model family for fast, cost-efficient workloads.

Google DeepMind introduced Gemini 3.7 Flash via its official blog. The release adds a new Flash-tier model to the Gemini family; Flash tiers typically target low-latency, cost-efficient inference. The announcement text provided no additional benchmark or capability details.

Google DeepMind·Aug 13, 17:04 UTC · Aug 13, 2026Model release

FBI, South Korea warn of Gunra ransomware gang targeting critical infrastructure

The Record·Aug 10, 19:30 UTC · Aug 10, 2026RansomwareCVE-2024-55591CVE-2025-24472

NOAH: Learning the Full Patient Journey. A Longitudinal Multimodal Time-Aware Model for Representation and Forecasting

Researchers introduce NOAH, a generative time-aware transformer trained on 559 million MIMIC clinical events to model and forecast patient trajectories.

NOAH is a task-agnostic, time-aware generative transformer designed to represent and forecast the full multimodal patient journey across medical images, time-series signals, categorical events, and clinical text. It was trained on over 559 million clinical events from 431,000 hospital visits covering 299,000 patients in the MIMIC dataset family. The architecture combines bidirectional time integration with a variational latent space to capture continuous patient state evolution and clinical stochasticity. NOAH supports autoregressive forecasting with time control, zero-shot classification, and counterfactual intervention simulation, with evaluations on 15 ICD chapters, 29 comorbidities, and time-to-event prediction.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CL·Sep 8, 17:56 UTC · 8d agoAI research2

Microsoft Patches Severe Entra ID Flaw (CVSS 10.0) Allowing Remote Code Execution

Microsoft patched CVE-2026-69836 (CVSS 10.0), a deserialization RCE in Entra ID; the flaw was fully mitigated service-side and was not exploited in the wild.

Microsoft disclosed CVE-2026-69836, a CVSS 10.0 remote code execution flaw in Entra ID caused by deserialization of untrusted data, and said the issue was fully mitigated on the service side with no customer action required. The security bulletin initially marked the flaw as exploited, but Microsoft corrected the status to not exploited in the wild on August 21, 2026. Microsoft credited principal security engineer Robert Fitzpatrick with the discovery. The article also recalls the Lazarus Group's exploitation of Windows WinSock AFD zero-day CVE-2026-68820 (CVSS 7.0) in the Operation Dream Job campaign.

The Hacker News·Aug 21, 19:56 UTC · 26d agoVulnerabilityCVE-2026-69836CVE-2026-688201

Breeze Comet Executes Hundreds of Fraudulent Transactions via Brazilian Payment Systems

Google/Mandiant profile Breeze Comet, a Brazil-based e-crime group executing fraudulent Pix and STR payment transactions at banks, retailers, and fintechs.

Google Threat Intelligence Group and Mandiant describe Breeze Comet (formerly UNC5669), a financially motivated threat actor active since September 2023 targeting Brazilian financial services, retail, and e-commerce. The group gains access via password spraying, vishing impersonating IT support to install RMM tools like AnyDesk, WhatsApp social engineering, and exploitation of vulnerable JBoss AS servers for web shell deployment. It uses compromised government websites as C2, deploys the Rust-based COBALTSPIN tunneler and multiple custom backdoors (LIGHTPAINT, MILDFROST, KICKPLATE, BOATBEAM), then clears logs after executing hundreds of fraudulent transactions through Pix, STR, and Boleto payment systems. At least one heist yielded tens of thousands of dollars, with infrastructure suggesting expansion toward Latin America and Africa.

The Hacker News·Sep 8, 11:22 UTC · 8d agoThreat actor in the wild

Extradited Russian Hacker Faces Charges Over Excel Malware Campaign That Infected Thousands

US DoJ charged extradited Russian Searzhudin Aktulaev for a 2016-2017 Excel macro campaign infecting ~80,000 freelance platform users with TVRAT and DarkVNC.

Searzhudin Tamirlanovich Aktulaev, 40, was arrested in Cyprus in May 2025 and extradited to the US on August 28, facing charges including wire fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft. The indictment alleges ~255 fake freelance-platform accounts were used to send Excel macro attachments to about 80,000 users in 2016-2017, deploying TVRAT (TeamSpy/TVSPY) and DarkVNC RATs for remote access and data theft. Thousands of infected machines called back to a US-hosted C2 domain, with stolen credentials and PII stored in the shared email account used in the scheme.

The Hacker News·Sep 2, 09:10 UTC · 14d agoPolicy & legal

Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking

Google launches Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking speech models, topping speech-to-speech benchmarks with parallel reasoning for voice agents.

Google announced Gemini 3.8 Live and Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking, its most advanced live dialogue models for near real-time voice agents. Extended Thinking ranks #1 on Artificial Analysis' Speech-to-Speech Quality Index (82.6), scores 68.6% on τ-Voice, 35.1% on Sierra's τ-Voice-banking, and 97.7% on Big Bench Audio. The models support 97 languages with mid-conversation switching, real-time visual grounding, background tool execution, and SynthID audio watermarking. Rollout covers the Gemini API, AI Studio, Enterprise private previews, Search Live, and Workspace.

Hacker News · AI·updated Sep 15, 20:53 UTC · 23h ago·first Sep 15, 17:38 UTC · 1d agoModel release 3 sourcesHN 44↑ · 12 comments

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

Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash lets you build with more control

Google DeepMind released Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash, an updated model giving developers more control when building applications.

Google DeepMind announced Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash in a blog post titled 'Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash lets you build with more control.' The update targets developers building on Gemini, emphasizing greater control over model behavior. No article text was available, so technical details such as benchmarks, context window, or pricing are unknown.

Google DeepMind·Aug 27, 16:11 UTC · 20d agoModel release

Stately Taurus Activity in Southeast Asia Links to Bookworm Malware

Unit 42 links Stately Taurus APT activity in ASEAN region and Myanmar to the decade-old Bookworm malware family via infrastructure overlaps.

Unit 42 connected Stately Taurus (aka Mustang Panda) espionage activity targeting ASEAN-affiliated organizations and Myanmar to the Bookworm malware family, first published in 2015. Earlier attacks delivered the PubLoad stager via DLL sideloading, with a PubLoad variant communicating with C2 at 123.253.32[.]15 while mimicking Windows Update URLs. Three previously unreported loader samples from 2021-2022 used UUID-decoded shellcode loaded via heap allocation and API callbacks, ultimately decrypting and loading Bookworm DLLs. A ToneShell backdoor variant shared debug paths with Bookworm loaders, and the January 2024 CSIRT CTI post corroborated the Myanmar attacks.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 10:54 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Threat actor in the wild

Gemini Live audio

Google released Gemini 3.8 Live speech-to-speech models; Simon Willison built a library-free browser web UI for real-time voice conversations with them.

Google released Gemini 3.8 Live and Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking, two new speech-to-speech models comparable in shape to OpenAI's GPT-Live family. Simon Willison had GPT-6 Astra Extra High build him a web UI for testing the models, supporting model and voice preset selection, optional system prompts, and interrupting the model mid-speech. The implementation uses no libraries and talks directly to Google's wss://generativelanguage.googleapis.com BidiGenerateContent WebSocket endpoint.

Simon Willison·Sep 15, 22:47 UTC · 21h agoModel release

Researchers Built a Fake Crypto Startup and Hired Three Suspected North Korean IT Workers

Security researchers hired three suspected North Korean IT workers at a fake DeFi startup, documenting forged IDs, AI-edited images and post-hire system access.

Researchers from BCA LTD, NorthScan and ANY.RUN built a fake DeFi protocol called Ballena Azul and hired three suspected Famous Chollima operatives through a real recruiting pipeline. The hires submitted inconsistent or AI-processed identity documents, including a driver's license whose metadata showed Google Gemini processing and a SynthID watermark. On day one the workers profiled their assigned VMs, checked their egress country, and one installed Chrome Remote Desktop and logged into GitHub. The findings were presented at DEF CON 34 and align with a July 31 joint government alert on DPRK IT worker schemes.

The Hacker News·Aug 11, 12:48 UTC · Aug 11, 2026Threat actor

NOAH: Learning the Full Patient Journey. A Longitudinal Multimodal Time-Aware Model for Representation and Forecasting

Researchers introduce NOAH, a time-aware generative transformer trained on 559 million MIMIC clinical events to forecast multimodal patient trajectories.

NOAH is a task-agnostic, time-aware generative transformer trained on over 559 million clinical events from 431,000 hospital visits by 299,000 patients across the MIMIC dataset family. It uses bidirectional time integration and a variational latent space to model the stochastic evolution of patient states, natively processing medical images, time-series signals, categorical events, and structured or unstructured clinical records. The model supports autoregressive forecasting with optional time control, zero-shot classification, and counterfactual intervention simulation, with strong probing performance across clinical outcomes, 15 ICD chapters, and 29 comorbidities.

Hugging Face daily papers·Sep 7, 20:00 UTC · 8d agoAI research1

Iranian Hackers Pose as Recruiters to Deliver Cross

Kaspersky attributes new cross-platform RATs NodeRabbit and PollCat to Iranian group Nimbus Manticore, spread via recruiter-themed LinkedIn lures.

Kaspersky links two previously undocumented malware families, NodeRabbit (Node.js) and PollCat (obfuscated JavaScript), to the Iranian threat actor Nimbus Manticore, also known as Iranian Dream Job. Victims in Afghanistan, Egypt, and Ethiopia received trojanized coding challenge archives containing fake npm packages (colorized_terminal, pretty-log) that silently launched the RATs as background processes. NodeRabbit contacts Azure-hosted C2 servers via checkin, task, and result API endpoints and supports 11 commands including shell execution, file operations, and network enumeration. Persistence is platform-specific: Windows Run keys or scheduled tasks, Linux cron entries, and macOS launch agents, impersonating Microsoft Edge updates or Intel's Driver & Support Assistant.

The Hacker News·Sep 2, 10:20 UTC · 14d agoThreat actor