Search: “x86”

No Bit Left Behind: Using Brute-Force Lifting to Achieve Fully Static Binary Recompilation

Prototype binary lifter brute-force lifts every byte offset of x86-64 binaries to LLVM IR, enabling fully static cross-ISA recompilation without runtime support.

The paper presents a fully static, whole-program binary lifting system that treats every byte offset as a potential branch target, constructing a superset control flow graph that conservatively contains all feasible control flows. Statically unresolvable computed branches are reduced to lookups in a dispatch table pointing to translated control flow paths, eliminating runtime translation machinery on the target machine. A prototype recompiles x86-64 binaries to LLVM IR with no code/data heuristics and achieves fully static cross-compilation to AArch64 using unmodified LLVM backends.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 14, 23:00 UTC · 2d agoResearch1

Xen Security Advisory 510 v3 (CVE-2026-79602) - x86: improper handling of HVM emulation return codes

Xen Project released XSA-510 (CVE-2026-79602) fixing mishandled HVM emulation return codes that let PCI-passthrough guests crash Xen.

Xen Security Advisory 510 v3 publicly discloses CVE-2026-79602, improper handling of HVM emulation return codes in the Xen hypervisor on x86. A guest with an assigned PCI device that has at least one BAR in the IO port space can trigger a BUG() in Xen. The advisory was released publicly as version 3.

oss-security·Sep 8, 15:37 UTC · 8d agoVulnerability 4 sourcesCVE-2026-796021

Xen Security Advisory 509 v3 (CVE-2026-62437) - x86: DMs may cause mem leak by IRQ binding

Xen Project released XSA-509 (CVE-2026-62437) fixing a memory leak in IRQ tracking when guests with assigned PCI devices are terminated.

Xen Security Advisory 509 v3 publicly discloses CVE-2026-62437, a memory leak affecting the Xen hypervisor on x86. When guests are terminated, cleanup of PCI devices assigned to those guests and removal of associated IRQ tracking structures may fail, leaking memory. The advisory was released publicly as version 3.

oss-security·Sep 8, 15:35 UTC · 8d agoVulnerabilityCVE-2026-62437

Apple Xcode Integer Underflow Flaw Lets Crafted Archives Leak Memory and Crash Builds

Researchers disclosed an integer underflow in Apple's Mach-O archive parser that lets crafted static libraries crash Xcode builds or leak process memory.

SecureLayer7 disclosed an integer underflow in the mach_o::Archive::Entry::name() function in Apple's open-source dyld project, reported to Apple Product Security on May 23, 2026, with no public patch after more than 90 days. Crafted static archives (.a files) cause the parser's unsigned index to wrap to SIZE_MAX, producing SIGSEGV crashes in the ld-prime linker, out-of-bounds reads that may print adjacent memory to stderr, or SIGABRT in libtool and ranlib. The modern parser is used by ld-prime, the default linker for arm64, arm64e, and x86_64 since Xcode 15, while legacy ld-classic is unaffected. Crafted archives need only be processed, creating supply-chain risk via vendored SDKs, binary dependencies, and CI pipelines.

GBHackers·Sep 10, 11:41 UTC · 6d agoVulnerability1

Scaling Verification of Cryptographic Software with Aeneas, Rust, and Lean

Microsoft SymCrypt implementations of SHA-3 and ML-KEM verified in Lean via Aeneas-extracted Rust models, with AI agents writing proofs.

The paper develops a methodology for verifying production Rust cryptographic code by using Aeneas to extract pure models into Lean, avoiding low-level pointer and aliasing reasoning. Applied to Microsoft's SymCrypt, it verifies SHA-3 and ML-KEM implementations ported from C to Rust and extends SymCrypt with FrodoKEM, ML-DSA, and HPKE. A 237 KLOC Lean development establishes safety, panic-freedom, and functional correctness of 16.7 KLOC of Rust supporting post-quantum cipher suites on x86-64 and ARM. AI agents autonomously write formal proofs verified by the Lean kernel, and evaluation shows verified Rust meets SymCrypt's performance and portability requirements.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 14, 14:32 UTC · 2d agoResearch1

Re: Retrospective by 'gpg.fail' authors

GPG exploitation talk author clarifies a format-string 0day enabling code execution via printf %n writes and a polyglot PEM certificate payload.

Lexi Groves, author of the gpg.fail talk, clarified on oss-security that the first finding was an actual zero-day: a classic printf injection using %n for memory writes, with multiple X.509 certificates in one PEM file to re-enter and defeat ASLR before calling execv@plt. The payload executed the certificate itself, a polyglot file made by inserting a shebang and bash command into the PEM. A second finding was hash-collided by another party before the author could exploit it.

oss-security·updated Sep 16, 17:16 UTC · 8h ago·first Sep 16, 00:50 UTC · 1d agoResearch 8 sources

Counterfeit installers to system compromise: Tracking a deceptive software download campaign

Microsoft tracks a counterfeit software-installer campaign compromising multinationals' China operations, moderately linked to the Silver Fox (Yinhu) actor.

Microsoft Defender Experts is tracking an active campaign using spoofed software download sites for brands such as Razer, Kaspersky, Microsoft Edge, Calibre, and Baidu Netdisk on .com.cn and .hl.cn domains, delivering installer archives whose hashes change per download, indicating server-side payload generation. The implants establish persistence, weaken security protections, and communicate with attacker-controlled infrastructure, with confirmed compromises across healthcare, manufacturing, gaming, technology, logistics, government, and education. Microsoft assesses with moderate confidence that the activity matches the publicly reported Silver Fox (Yinhu) fake software campaign; it has not attributed it to a nation-state actor.

Microsoft Security Blog·Sep 1, 22:48 UTC · 15d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Cyclops Blink Evolves Into x86-64 Linux Implant With Packet Sniffing and Internal Network Scanning

Sophos uncovers a new x86-64 Cyclops Blink Linux implant with packet sniffing and internal network scanning on compromised Cisco FMC appliances.

Sophos identified a 64-bit Linux Cyclops Blink implant in August on compromised Cisco Firewall Management Center devices, persisting via SysV init scripts and masquerading as the process 'kworker01'. The modular malware runs five child processes for reconnaissance, file transfer, scanning, packet capture, and persistence, and beacons hourly over outbound TLS to hardcoded C2 89.34.96.56 on ports 43856 and 49172. The family was previously tied to Russian-linked Sandworm activity on WatchGuard appliances, though Sophos treats 2026 attribution cautiously. The packet-capture module applies configurable filters to retain credentials, cookies, and authentication tokens from raw Ethernet traffic.

Cyber Security News·Sep 14, 13:33 UTC · 2d agoMalware in the wild

C*: Unifying Programming and Verification in C

Research paper C* (arXiv:2504.02246) proposes unifying programming and formal verification in C, discussed on Hacker News.

The arXiv paper 2504.02246, titled C*: Unifying Programming and Verification in C, presents an approach that combines C programming with built-in formal verification. The item surfaced via Hacker News, where it reached 28 points and 18 comments. Detailed abstract content was not included in the source text.

Hacker News · security·Sep 8, 15:56 UTC · 8d agoResearchHN 28↑ · 18 comments

Compiler Can Undo Your Security Checks

Chris Domas explains at Black Hat how legal compiler optimizations can strip security checks and memory-clearing operations, turning secure C source into vulnerable binaries.

David Bombal interviews researcher Chris Domas at Black Hat USA 2026 about how the C abstract machine permits compilers to legally transform code in ways that remove security protections, delete memory-clearing operations, and introduce time-of-check to time-of-use vulnerabilities. Factors like register pressure, structure layout, and data size affect vulnerability, with examples where 17 or 33 byte buffers are safe while nearby sizes produce vulnerable code. An AI-assisted analysis of 500 million lines of open-source code identified 300 potentially dangerous patterns. Recommended mitigations include enabling compiler warnings, using sanitizers, analyzing optimized builds, and testing the exact binary that ships.

Hacker News · security·Sep 12, 14:07 UTC · 4d agoResearchHN 22↑ · 27 comments

The GNU C Library security advisories update for 2026-09-14

glibc advisory GLIBC-SA-2026-0017 discloses a buffer overflow in strfmon/strfmon_l affecting versions 2.38 through 2.44.

The GNU C Library published security advisories including GLIBC-SA-2026-0017, a buffer overflow in strfmon and strfmon_l. Calling these functions with right-justified width padding conversions can write past the end of the caller-supplied output buffer in glibc 2.38 to 2.44. Exploitation requires an application code path that calls strfmon with attacker-influenced parameters.

oss-security·Sep 14, 19:54 UTC · 2d agoVulnerability 2 sources1

Redtail Payload Analysis [Guest Diary], (Wed, Sep 9th)

SANS guest analyst detonated a RedTail Linux sample from a DShield honeypot, finding process masquerading as php-fpm, monitoring-kill behavior, and a TCP listener.

A DShield honeypot captured multi-architecture RedTail Linux executables (ARM, ARM64, i686, RISC-V, x86-64) deployed via shell scripts. Dynamic analysis of the UPX-packed, statically linked x86-64 sample (SHA-256 63be5f38...d35e) in an isolated Ubuntu 24.04 VM on Proxmox showed it renamed its process via prctl(PR_SET_NAME), killed a filesystem-monitoring process, and opened a TCP listening socket while surviving processes posed as php-fpm or PostgreSQL-like workers. Differential memory images pre- and post-execution were captured from the hypervisor for forensics.

SANS Internet Storm Center·Sep 10, 12:58 UTC · 6d agoMalware in the wild1

TuxBot v3: Inside an IoT Botnet Framework With LLM

Unit 42 uncovers TuxBot v3, an LLM-assisted IoT botnet framework with 17-architecture builds, Telnet brute-forcing, and DDoS capabilities.

Palo Alto Unit 42 identified TuxBot v3 Evolution, a modular IoT botnet framework derived from AISURU, Wuhan-lineage botnets, and MHDDoS. The C-based bot brute-forces Telnet with 1,496 credential pairs, targets over 30 IoT device families, and communicates with a Go-based C2 over encrypted TCP with multiple fallback mechanisms including DGA, P2P, and DNS TXT. LLM-assisted development left hallucinated crypto implementations and broken exploit modules in the analyzed samples, though roughly 70% of core functionality works. Researchers warn polished production builds likely exist, raising the threat potential.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 19, 12:03 UTC · 28d agoMalware1

CHERI-D Reincarnate: efficient multicore CHERI temporal memory safety through allocation reincarnation (draft version)

CHERI-D Reincarnate adds allocation reincarnation to CHERI, quarantining generation IDs instead of memory to cut temporal memory-safety overheads on multicore systems.

The proposal extends CHERI-D temporal memory safety by quarantining exhausted generation IDs rather than memory slots, allowing freed memory immediate reuse through allocation reincarnation. It adds coherent ID caching and multicore support connecting physical coherence events to the virtually addressed ObjID buffer. The design was implemented as a hardware-software co-design across CHERI-Toooba FPGA softcore, QEMU, LLVM/Clang, and CheriBSD. Across evaluated workloads it substantially reduces memory-sweep frequency and quarantine overhead with low performance and hardware cost.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 10, 14:19 UTC · 6d agoResearch

TasmScan: Continuation-Aware Taint Analysis for TVM Bytecode with Savelist Abstraction

TasmScan introduces source-free taint analysis for TON smart-contract bytecode, detecting 95.3% of defects with 96.8% precision and 17x speedup.

TasmScan is the first bytecode-level static analysis framework for the TON Virtual Machine, enabling cross-continuation data flow reasoning without source code by modeling savelist semantics through forward register analysis with formal over-approximation guarantees. It lifts bytecode into a typed intermediate representation (TASIR) and performs path-sensitive taint analysis. On a 208-contract benchmark with human-confirmed ground truth it detects 95.3% of defects across five classes at 96.8% precision, and resolves 294,546 dynamic continuation targets with 100% precision across 2,921 registry contracts. It achieves a 17x median speedup over symbolic-execution baselines.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 15, 11:01 UTC · 1d agoResearch

FrostyGoop’s Zoom-In: A Closer Look into the Malware Artifacts, Behaviors and Network Communications

Unit 42 dissects FrostyGoop OT malware, which sent Modbus TCP commands to disrupt heating for 600+ apartment buildings in Ukraine.

Palo Alto Unit 42 analyzed new FrostyGoop/BUSTLEBERM samples, the ninth known ICS-centric malware, first used against a Ukrainian municipal energy company by sending Modbus TCP commands to ENCO control devices. The attack caused a two-day heating outage affecting over 600 apartment buildings during sub-zero temperatures. The Go-compiled malware accepts Modbus register operations and timing parameters via command-line arguments or a JSON configuration file, uses an obscure open-source Modbus library, and checks the Windows BeingDebugged flag to evade debuggers. Unit 42 telemetry recorded over 1 million Modbus TCP devices exposed to the internet between September and October 2024.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 19, 12:04 UTC · 28d agoMalware in the wild

Atomic macOS (AMOS) Stealer Activity

Unit 42 details an August 2026 AMOS macOS stealer infection delivered via fake 'macOS toolkit' pages and Terminal paste commands, exfiltrating credentials to C2.

Unit 42 analyzed an AMOS (Atomic macOS Stealer) infection from August 5, 2026, initiated via a page at getmacouscloud[.]com instructing users to paste a command into Terminal. The command fetched a Zsh script from ferncore13[.]com that delivered a Mach-O installer to /tmp/helper and supporting files under /Library/Application Support/.com.apple.accountsd/ and .com.apple.metadata.mds/. AMOS collected browser data, credentials, cryptocurrency wallets (Binance, TonKeeper), Telegram data, and FileGrabber content such as AWS and gcloud files, uploading it via HTTP POST to C2 server 161.35.146[.]120. AMOS has been advertised on Telegram since April 2024 and distributed via ClickFix campaigns, malicious ads, and cracked-software sites.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Sep 16, 10:00 UTC · 15h agoMalware in the wild

MicroHasTEE: Bare-Metal Haskell for Type-Level Peripheral Ownership on Armv8-M

MicroHasTEE expresses TrustZone secure and non-secure firmware as one typed Haskell program, catching peripheral-ownership inconsistencies at compile time.

MicroHasTEE is a multiparty Haskell framework that models both TrustZone firmware images as participants in a single typed program, using type-level capability ledgers to track peripheral acquisition, configuration, transfer, and finalization. MicroHs compiles the shared program twice to produce separate bare-metal Secure and Non-secure firmware images. The framework rejects inconsistent resource use, post-configuration attribution changes, wrong-domain callbacks, and calls to unregistered Secure services. A door-lock case study on an STM32U5 Nucleo board produced images of 232.7 KiB and 228.4 KiB of flash with roughly 220 KiB of SRAM per domain.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 11, 08:34 UTC · 5d agoResearch1

OpenSSL’s new alpha build speeds up post-quantum crypto

OpenSSL 4.1.0 alpha1 adds DTLS 1.3 support and speeds up ML-DSA and ML-KEM post-quantum operations across several architectures.

The OpenSSL project released the first alpha of OpenSSL 4.1.0, months before general availability. The build adds DTLS 1.3 (RFC 9147) to secure UDP-based traffic such as VPNs, video calls and IoT, and includes optimized ML-DSA and ML-KEM operations for ppc64le, s390x and x86_64 plus AVX-512 acceleration for SHAKE hashing and AES-CBC decryption. Breaking changes include a new Net::Curl::Easy dependency for tsget, dropped Windows-on-Itanium and Windows CE support, and replacement of the no-ecdsa/no-ecdh Configure options with no-ec. It also adds GREASE support (RFC 8701), a DTLS mode for the SSL listener API, IKEv2 KDF support, and initial Elbrus2000 processor architecture support.

Help Net Security·Sep 9, 22:15 UTC · 7d agoTools

The Fractured Block Campaign: CARROTBAT Used to Deliver Malware Targeting Southeast Asia

Unit 42 uncovers the Fractured Block campaign using the CARROTBAT dropper to deliver SYSCON and OceanSalt malware in cryptocurrency-themed attacks across Southeast Asia.

Unit 42 identified 29 CARROTBAT dropper samples used in the Fractured Block campaign, delivering decoy documents on cryptocurrencies, exchanges, and Korean political topics. Early samples delivered the SYSCON RAT, which uses FTP for command and control, while later ones dropped the previously reported OceanSalt malware. CARROTBAT supports 11 decoy file formats and uses certutil to download and execute payloads. Initial discovery stemmed from a December 2017 spear phishing attack on a British government agency, with infrastructure overlap tying the campaign to KONNI activity.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 12:22 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Malware

Exploring the Latest Mispadu Stealer Variant

Unit 42 found a new Mispadu infostealer variant targeting Mexican users via malicious .url files exploiting the SmartScreen CVE-2023-36025 bypass.

Unit 42 discovered a new variant of Mispadu Stealer, a Delphi-based banking trojan first reported in 2019, found while hunting for the Windows SmartScreen bypass CVE-2023-36025. The campaign uses crafted .url files referencing UNC network-share paths with an HTTP port (@80) that forces payload retrieval over WebDAV via rundll32.exe, avoiding SmartScreen warnings. Analyzed samples (~4 KB, compiled 2023-11-12) predate the CVE publication, and ZIP payloads were likely distributed as email attachments, primarily targeting users in Mexico.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 11:46 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Malware in the wildCVE-2023-360251

Show HN: Self-hosted company OS, Claude Code and Codex agents in departments

OtoDock, a self-hosted company OS that organizes Claude Code and Codex AI agents into departments, was launched on GitHub via Show HN.

OtoDock is a self-hosted 'company OS' shared on GitHub through a Show HN post, presenting Claude Code and Codex AI agents organized into department-style teams. The Hacker News feed entry shows the post reached 20 points with 5 comments; no further technical details are provided in the available text.

Hacker News · security·Sep 9, 17:57 UTC · 7d agoAI tools & infraHN 20↑ · 5 comments1

New OVSwrap Linux Kernel Flaw Lets Local Users Gain Root via Open vSwitch

The Hacker News·Aug 5, 11:43 UTC · Aug 5, 2026Exploit / PoCCVE-2026-64531

Memory-Efficient Designs for Word-Wise Universal Fully Homomorphic Encryption

BXT framework mitigates FHE memory bottlenecks via ciphertext compression, serialization, delayed seeding, and digit pruning, achieving up to 3.8x CNN inference speedup.

A new paper proposes BXT, an optimization framework for word-wise Universal Fully Homomorphic Encryption that targets the memory bottleneck rather than compute. It combines four techniques: ciphertext compression via seed regeneration, bit-packed ciphertext serialization for L2-to-L1 transfers, delayed PRNG-heavy offline seed generation across aggregated operations, and fault-aware ciphertext digit pruning. On CNN inference, the BXT-CSO50 configuration achieves up to 3.8x speedup over a 100x GPU baseline with under 1% accuracy loss at 50% comparison precision.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 4, 06:03 UTC · 12d agoResearch

OpenSSL 4.1.0 Alpha1 Released With DTLS 1.3 and Faster Post-Quantum Cryptography

OpenSSL 4.1.0 Alpha1 adds DTLS 1.3 support, ML-DSA and ML-KEM post-quantum optimizations, and GREASE TLS compatibility, intended for testing only.

The alpha preview of OpenSSL 4.1.0 implements RFC 9147 DTLS 1.3 for UDP-based applications and integrates DTLS into the SSL listener API. It accelerates ML-DSA signatures and ML-KEM encapsulation with AVX-512 and VAES optimizations on x86_64, and adds GREASE (RFC 8701), IKEv2 KDF support, and Elbrus2000 (e2k) targets. The release is intended for testing and development, not production, and removes Windows-on-Itanium and Windows CE build targets.

Cyber Security News·Sep 10, 11:22 UTC · 6d agoTools

"They don't care about this": A Systematic Study of TEE Build Reproducibility in the Wild

91% of 115 surveyed TEE deployments across Intel SGX, TDX, and AMD SEV fail to provide reproducible builds needed for verifiable remote attestation.

A systematic study of 115 TEE deployments found 91% were not reproducible and 80% lacked both source code and a reference build, undermining remote attestation guarantees. Interviews with 12 developers of 50 Intel SGX projects confirmed that only one participant treats reproducibility as a development priority. The authors identify technical barriers such as embedded timestamps plus ecosystem-level issues like lack of build-environment control in multi-stakeholder projects, and call for holistic, committed reproducibility practices.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 10, 11:43 UTC · 6d agoResearch

Mirai Variant MooBot Targeting D

Unit 42 observed the MooBot Mirai variant exploiting four D-Link vulnerabilities to compromise unpatched routers for use in DDoS attacks.

Unit 42 captured attacks exploiting four D-Link remote code execution vulnerabilities: CVE-2015-2051, CVE-2018-6530, CVE-2022-26258, and CVE-2022-28958, with three rated critical at CVSS 9.8. The exploits download the MooBot malware, a Mirai botnet variant, from infrastructure at 159.203.15.179 via wget. Compromised devices fall under full attacker control and can be used for distributed denial-of-service attacks. D-Link has published bulletins for all four flaws, but unpatched devices remain exposed.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 13:06 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Malware in the wildCVE-2015-2051CVE-2018-6530CVE-2022-26258+1 CVEs

[hardware] Fullhan FH8626V100 - Multiple Vulnerabilities

Multiple vulnerabilities in the Fullhan FH8626V100 hardware chip have been disclosed alongside public proof-of-concept exploits.

Exploit-DB lists an entry covering multiple vulnerabilities in the Fullhan FH8626V100, a hardware component. The listing provides no CVE ids, vulnerability classes, or evidence of in-the-wild exploitation. Impact is likely limited to devices embedding the affected chip.

Exploit-DB·Sep 2, 00:00 UTC · 15d agoExploit / PoC

New KATARU IoT Malware Packs Linux Privilege Escalation Exploits and Mirai-Style DDoS Attacks

Nozomi Networks identified KATARU, a new Mirai-style IoT botnet delivered via Telnet brute force that uses Linux privilege-escalation exploits and encrypted C2 for DDoS floods.

Nozomi Networks identified KATARU in August after a Telnet password-guessing attack against a honeypot retrieved an ARM payload. The malware attempts exploits for CVE-2026-46300 (Fragnesia), CVE-2026-43284 (DirtyFrag), and CVE-2026-31431 (Copy Fail), plus a cgroup v1 release_agent escape, and persists via systemd services, cron tasks, rc scripts, OpenWrt hooks, and Android boot locations. Its C2 uses X25519 key exchange with ChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption and supports TCP, UDP, ICMP, HTTP, QUIC, and DNS floods, plus SSH brute forcing and command execution; embedded exploit shellcode in the ARM build targeted x86, suggesting untested copied code.

Cyber Security News·Sep 11, 14:17 UTC · 5d agoMalware in the wild 2 sourcesCVE-2026-46300CVE-2026-43284CVE-2026-31431

Retrospectively Reverse-Engineering Apple's Neural Engine

A developer reverse-engineers Apple's M1 Neural Engine architecture, mapping compute cores, MAC datapaths, and schedulers to explain the NPU's decline as transformers displaced CNN workloads.

A developer who previously maintained a reverse-engineered Linux driver for Apple's Neural Engine (ANE) published a retrospective deep dive mapping the M1 ANE's full internal architecture: compute, datapath, scheduler, memory, and execution model. The M1 ANE has 16 compute cores with 128 FP16 (or 256 INT8) MAC lanes each, totaling 2048 parallel MAC lanes, using 32-bit Q16.16 fixed-point accumulation with FP16 readout and an accumulator that saturates at 2^15. The author argues the ANE's dataflow was architected around the predictable reuse patterns of 2017-era CNN workloads (dating to the A11 Bionic), which autoregressive transformer decode broke, limiting its usefulness for general ML. With Apple's M5 folding ANE cores into GPU cores to tout LLM performance, the post frames this as the beginning of the end for the standalone NPU.

Hacker News · AI·Sep 12, 07:54 UTC · 4d agoAI researchHN 54↑ · 7 comments2

Suspected China-Nexus Actor Exploits VMware vCenter Flaw, Deploys Babuk

QUIRSO attributes exploitation of VMware vCenter CVE-2026-59310 to a suspected China-nexus actor that hit 361 IPs in 47 countries, deploying backdoors and Babuk.

German incident response firm QUIRSOS assessed with moderate confidence that a suspected China-nexus actor, likely operating in UTC+08:00 hours, exploited VMware vCenter flaw CVE-2026-59310 (CVSS 9.8 directory traversal) beginning five days after Broadcom's July 29 patch. The campaign compromised 361 unique victim IPs across 47 countries, most in Germany, the US, Turkey, Iran, and France. The actor abused cron jobs, a XOR-obfuscated 'linuxFile' WebSocket backdoor with systemd/cron persistence, a JSP web shell, SSH authorized-keys manipulation, and a reverse SSH tool, with one Babuk deployment reported. A separate vCenter 'vcenter_admin' account creation consistent with CVE-2026-59309 exploitation was also observed from August 1.

The Hacker News·Aug 17, 16:59 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Threat actor in the wildCVE-2026-59310CVE-2026-593091

Claude, Codex, and Hermes installed unowned code inside corporate networks

Analysis found 227 install commands from Claude, Codex, and Hermes agents inside corporate networks pointing to packages with no verifiable owner.

Researchers found 227 install commands issued by the AI coding agents Claude, Codex, and Hermes inside corporate environments, with the referenced packages having no clear owner. The finding highlights agentic software supply-chain risk, as AI agents can pull unverified third-party code into production networks without organizational oversight. The article is published in Ars Technica's security section and frames this as an emerging governance gap for AI-driven development.

Ars Technica · Security·Aug 27, 14:00 UTC · 20d agoAI safety & security in the wild2

Almost Half of Malware Samples Communicate Direct to IP

Unit 42 analysis of 4 million malware reports finds 45% of C2-active samples connect directly to hard-coded IPs, bypassing DNS defenses.

Palo Alto Unit 42 analyzed over 4 million Advanced WildFire dynamic analysis reports and found that 45.32% of malware samples with C2 activity made at least one direct-to-IP connection, accounting for 23.17% of all C2 connection attempts. The firm proposes zero trust IP (ZT-IP), an enforcement approach that verifies whether outbound destinations were ever sanctioned by a DNS response. ZT-IP analysis surfaced Phorpiex ransomware droppers fetching payloads directly from C2 IPs, a persistent data exfiltration campaign using an obfuscated \GET protocol, and Mozi P2P botnet payloads delivered to IoT devices without DNS. Only 1% of benign samples connected directly to untrusted IP addresses.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 12:45 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Research

Automating Attack Graph Construction for Agentic Pentesting. Towards Neuro-Symbolic Vulnerability Hunting

Semi-automated pipeline converts Trivy, Semgrep, Nmap output into MulVAL attack graphs for agentic pentesting, 53.7% mean vulnerability coverage in CyBench.

The paper presents a semi-automated pipeline that parses Trivy, Semgrep, and Nmap findings into MulVAL predicates and uses an LLM-assisted process to build domain-specific Datalog rules linking scanner evidence to attack techniques. MulVAL/XSB then performs symbolic inference to generate structured, auditable attack paths for agentic pentesting. Evaluated on 54 web CTF tasks from CyBench, every task produced at least one goal-reaching graph with 53.7% mean ground-truth vulnerability coverage, 51.9% full coverage, and an 83.9% noise-path rate. Median end-to-end runtime was 24.9 seconds, making the pipeline runtime-practical for agentic workflows.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 14, 13:13 UTC · 2d agoResearch

Kimwolf v7 Android Botnet Makes HTTP/2 DDoS Traffic Look Like Legitimate Browsing

New Kimwolf v7 Android botnet adds HTTP/2 DDoS floods with Chrome fingerprints and takedown-resistant ENS/Tor C2.

Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 discovered Kimwolf v7, an evolution of the Kimwolf/AISURU Android and IoT botnet first tracked in February 2026. The new version performs HTTP/2 floods mimicking Chrome browser fingerprints and uses Ethereum Name Service, Tor hidden services, and a local proxy for resilient C2. The botnet targets Android TV boxes via ADB on port 5555 and offloads propagation to an external loader.

The Hacker News·Aug 15, 00:00 UTC · Aug 15, 2026Malware in the wildCVE-2024-36401

SEMA-GUARD: Semantic and Graph-Based Vulnerability Detection in Assembly Code

SEMA-GUARD uses semantic analysis and graph neural networks to detect vulnerabilities in assembly code, achieving 85.1% accuracy on a Juliet-derived benchmark.

SEMA-GUARD is a framework that detects vulnerabilities in compiled programs when source code is unavailable, targeting malware, firmware, and embedded systems analysis. It enriches control flow graphs with low-level execution semantics including stack manipulations, memory accesses, and data flow. Evaluated on a Juliet Test Suite set compiled to assembly and split into function-level chunks, it achieves 85.1% accuracy and an F1 score of 0.801, outperforming purely statistical or structural approaches.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 15, 14:35 UTC · 1d agoResearch1

Sandworm-Linked Cyclops Blink Returns With Network Scanning and Packet-Sniffing Capabilities

Sophos uncovers a 64-bit Cyclops Blink variant on hacked Cisco FMC appliances, adding internal network scanning and selective packet capture; linked to Sandworm.

Sophos CTU analyzed a new 64-bit x86-64 Cyclops Blink implant (timezone_check) deployed on Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center appliances compromised via CVE-2026-20079 authentication bypass and CVE-2026-20316 low-privileged login. The activity is assessed with high confidence as Russian-nexus, with a moderate-confidence link to Sandworm (IRON VIKING, also tracked as Seashell Blizzard). The implant runs a parent controller plus five worker modules, masquerades as [kworker/0:1], persists via SysV init scripts at /lib/tz/timezone_check, and beacons to hard-coded C2 89.34.96.56 over a custom TLS protocol on ports 43856 and 49172. New module 0x11 scans internal IPv4 networks for SSH, SMB, LDAP, VMware, HTTP/HTTPS and VPN services, while module 0x12 performs filtered packet capture that can expose cleartext credentials, cookies and tokens.

GBHackers·Sep 14, 09:27 UTC · 2d agoMalware in the wild 9 sourcesCVE-2026-20079CVE-2026-20316

SCHERI: Provably Secure Speculation Under the Constant-Time Policy for CHERI (Extended Version)

Researchers formally prove existing CHERI speculation proposals leak secrets and present SCHERI, a processor design with end-to-end Spectre-resistant constant-time guarantees.

The paper builds a formal framework reasoning jointly about capability safety, speculative execution, and information-flow security on CHERI architectures. It demonstrates that existing secure-speculation proposals fail to preserve constant-time confidentiality guarantees and can transiently leak isolated secrets. The authors present SCHERI, a new processor design formally proven to provide end-to-end secure speculation for the constant-time policy, resilient to Spectre attacks.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 15, 16:33 UTC · 1d agoResearch

StyleSmuggler: Magento and Adobe Commerce 0-day RCE (CVE-2026-75650) under active attack

Sansec details actively exploited StyleSmuggler 0-day (CVE-2026-75650, CVSS 10.0) unauthenticated RCE in Magento and Adobe Commerce, patched by Adobe hotfix APSB26-146.

Sansec is investigating StyleSmuggler, an actively exploited unauthenticated remote code execution chain in Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce, now tracked as CVE-2026-75650 with CVSS 10.0. Adobe released hotfix VULN-39341 via APSB26-146 (priority 1) on September 7 for versions 2.4.4 through 2.4.9, but stores were being exploited for roughly three days before the fix existed. The implant is a Rust backdoor that disguises itself as kworker, fc-cache, or chronyd processes and exfiltrates host data in MessagePack records sent as fake NTP replies over UDP port 123. Adobe advises rotating the encryption key and every credential it protected, and Sansec stresses patching does not clean already-compromised stores.

Sansec (Magento / e-commerce security)·Sep 5, 00:00 UTC · 12d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-756501

An Empirical Security Analysis of Open-Source Software Used in Onboard Satellite Systems

Study of 126 onboard satellite OSS repositories finds 2,827 security findings, 72% medium severity or higher, dominated by memory safety and code quality weaknesses.

Researchers performed an empirical security analysis of 126 public repositories of open-source software used in onboard satellite systems using SBOM generation, software composition analysis, static application security testing, infrastructure-as-code analysis, and secret scanning. After cleaning and deduplication the pipeline produced 2,827 findings, with medium-severity findings accounting for 49% and 72% classified medium or higher. A CWE-based taxonomy mapped all findings to eight weakness families, with Memory Safety and Code Quality dominating, followed by Input Validation and Injection. Project-developed code accounted for 81.4% of findings, though external dependency code remained relevant; findings do not establish mission-specific exploitability.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 14, 11:54 UTC · 2d agoResearch1