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You don’t have to join the hack-back program to inherit its risk

A new US presidential memorandum creates a vetted private hack-back program, leaving participating vendors and their customers with untested legal liability and collateral risks.

The August 12 National Security Presidential Memorandum directs the National Coordination Center, run jointly by DOJ and DHS, to approve covert surveillance and disruptive Cyber Effects Operations by vetted private companies, with a forfeitable bond of at least $1 million required as a contract condition. The analysis argues the criminal shield rests on an untested reading of the CFAA exemption at 18 U.S.C. 1030(f), with no civil safe harbor, no state-law preemption and no foreign-law protection. Non-participating organizations can still inherit risk through shared infrastructure collateral damage, lack of customer disclosure, Lloyd's bulletin Y5381 state-backed attack exclusions, and threat-intelligence pipelines feeding offensive proposals.

CSO Online · 1d agoPolicy & legal

Analog Pin Directionality as an Exfiltration Attack Surface in Mixed-Signal ICs

Researchers demonstrate exfiltration through nominally input-only analog pins in mixed-signal ICs, recovering data at 10 kbps on a 55nm PPG front-end.

The paper identifies a directionality-based attack class in analog/mixed-signal (AMS) ICs where data-dependent circuit-offset modulation converts a nominally input-only pin into an outbound information channel. Three host conditions enable the attack: a closed-loop amplifier, an exposed amplifier input, and sufficiently high impedance at that pin. Silicon validation on a photoplethysmography analog front-end in 55nm CMOS showed exfiltration at up to 10 kbps with error-free PRBS recovery, under 0.001% area overhead, and only 0.03 dB SNR reduction.

arXiv cs.CR · 16h agoResearch

Have it both ways: stay discoverable in search while disallowing AI training

Cloudflare launches Disallow AI Training setting letting sites block AI training via robots.txt while staying indexed in search; Apple, Google, and Microsoft honor it.

Cloudflare announced a 'Disallow AI Training' setting that publishes a no-training preference in robots.txt so sites can block AI training (including by mixed-use crawlers) without losing search indexing. Apple, Google, and Microsoft meet Cloudflare's new 'Accountable' designation, which requires training/summary opt-out mechanisms, URL-level training visibility, and assurance that opt-outs don't affect search rankings. Cloudflare cites that under 1% of its sites block search bots while 17% block AI training, and its Block settings now apply to mixed-use crawlers as well. Granular controls over how much content appears in AI summaries are planned for early next year.

Cloudflare Blog · 1d agoTools

Hackers Steal Active Directory Password Hashes Without Attacking Domain Controllers Directly

Attackers use the DCSync technique to impersonate domain controllers and harvest AD password hashes and Kerberos keys without directly compromising domain controllers, Trellix warns.

Per Trellix, threat actors increasingly abuse Active Directory replication via DCSync, using privileged credentials to invoke DRSGetNCChanges and retrieve NTLM password hashes and Kerberos key material without running code on domain controllers. Capturing the krbtgt account hash enables forging Golden Tickets for persistent, highly privileged domain access. Because malicious replication traffic mimics legitimate DRS/RPC activity, defenders should monitor Windows Security Event ID 4662, restrict replication permissions, and investigate replication requests from non-domain-controller systems.

GBHackers · 6d agoResearch in the wild 2 sources2

ANY.RUN & SentinelOne: One Workspace, Instant Context for Rapid Response

ANY.RUN integrates its interactive sandbox, IOC lookups, and STIX/TAXII threat feeds natively into SentinelOne for faster automated malware triage.

ANY.RUN and SentinelOne launched connectors that embed interactive sandbox analysis and threat intelligence into the SentinelOne console via Singularity Hyperautomation. Suspicious files and URLs from alerts are automatically submitted to the ANY.RUN sandbox, with behavioral verdicts and risk scores returned into alert notes. On-demand IOC lookups draw on sandbox history from 16,000 organizations and 700,000 analysts. A separate STIX/TAXII feed streams verified malicious IPs, domains, and URLs through the SentinelOne Marketplace TAXII Connect app.

ANY.RUN · 1d agoTools

Investing Together: Wiz Defend and Google Security Operations

Wiz ships a Content Pack for Google Security Operations enabling shared investigations, Blue Agent AI analysis, bidirectional sync and cloud telemetry streaming.

Wiz announced deeper integration between Wiz Defend and Google Security Operations via a shared data model and an official Wiz Content Pack with out-of-the-box rules, dashboards, search queries, playbooks, and response policies. Wiz Blue Agent AI-powered threat investigations, correlating cloud context, runtime signals, and identity data, are now accessible directly within Google SecOps. Status, severity, and comments bidirectionally sync in real time, and sensor runtime events can be streamed into Google SecOps for hunting and retention.

Wiz Blog · 1d agoTools1

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 · 6d agoMalware in the wild1

When scanners miss the attack: how Cloudflare Client-Side Security protects storefronts

Cloudflare's Page Shield ML uncovered four malicious JavaScript campaigns on storefronts, including affiliate fraud and a remote-backdoor script, that VirusTotal and URLScan missed.

Cloudflare's Page Shield ML detected four client-side JavaScript operations (eight payloads) in live traffic on online storefronts, enabling affiliate commission hijacking, clickless affiliate theft via hidden iframes, user tracking with a remote-code backdoor, and cloaking of paid mobile visitors. Seven of the eight payloads were absent from VirusTotal and URLScan returned no malicious verdict for any, including a Lnkr-family payload indexed unclassified for roughly 2.5 years. Detection relies on a graph neural network over JavaScript syntax trees, an LLM second opinion on Workers AI, and a frontier-model ensemble voting across benign, magecart, other malware, and cryptomining labels.

Cloudflare Blog · 13h agoMalware in the wild

Mapping out your unknown: A threat hunter’s guide to GitHub

Datadog Security Labs publishes a threat-hunting guide with audit-log queries to detect GitHub token theft, device code phishing, and source code exfiltration.

Datadog's threat-hunting guide covers GitHub audit log queries for detecting compromised accounts, stolen personal access tokens, and malicious OAuth app authorizations. Attackers typically obtain credentials through phishing, credential stuffing, leaked secrets, or device code phishing, then map private repositories, exfiltrate source code, and pivot into connected cloud and CI/CD environments. The guide maps detections to MITRE techniques like T1078 and T1528 and documents GitHub logging quirks affecting attribution, token metadata, and visibility fields.

Datadog Security Labs · 1d agoResearch in the wild1

Closing the Loop: Bidirectional Fully Encrypted Protocols

Researchers show naively composing unidirectional fully encrypted protocols is detectable and construct provably secure bidirectional FEPs, validated in Rust.

The paper introduces formal security definitions for bidirectional fully encrypted protocols (BiFEPs), covering exact shaping, delivery, protocol-state integrity, private half-close, and cross-direction isolation. It shows trivially composing two unidirectional FEPs enables detection attacks via cross-direction dependencies like traffic imbalance and connection tear-down. The authors construct provably secure BiFEPs for datastream and datagram settings, validated with a Rust implementation; no surveyed deployed protocol provides the full set of properties.

arXiv cs.CR · 1d agoResearch

Cyble Introduces Major Upgrade to its Executive Monitoring Module

Cyble upgraded Executive Monitoring in Cyble Vision, unifying impersonation, exposure, and mention findings with AI scoring and multi-channel alerting.

Cyble released a major upgrade to Executive Monitoring within its Cyble Vision platform, consolidating Mentions, Impersonations, Exposures, and a new Surface Mentions source (blog and news coverage) into a single findings stream. The release adds AI-generated verdicts and recommendations, per-executive Risk and Reputation scoring for board reporting, and richer onboarding with aliases, reference images, and addresses to cut same-name false positives. Alerting now supports data residency, bulk import, delivery via email, WhatsApp, and SMS, an Access API, and branded executive PDF reports; the upgrade is live with no customer action required.

Cyble · 6d agoTools

Search results are sending people to fake Bitrefill checkouts

Scam sites impersonating Bitrefill's crypto checkout appear in search results, tricking victims into sending up to $1,990 in crypto directly to scammers.

Malwarebytes documents a cluster of lookalike domains copying Bitrefill's gift card checkout, surfaced via search engine results rather than email. Victims choose an amount up to $1,990 and pay in Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDC, USDT, Solana, or Litecoin to scammer-controlled addresses, with no recourse since crypto payments are irreversible. Domains use typosquatting and Punycode/IDN homoglyph tricks, and the fake sites run commercial analytics software to measure and optimize victim conversion. Bitrefill's security team is working with takedown specialists to remove the sites.

Malwarebytes Labs · 2d agoPhishing & fraud

12 Best CNAPP Platforms Compared (2026): Features & Pricing

Independent comparison of 12 CNAPP platforms finds identical estates draw quotes 2-3x apart; Microsoft Defender for Cloud is the only fully published per-resource option.

A vendor-independent buyer's guide compares twelve CNAPP platforms including Prisma Cloud, CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security, Wiz, Uptycs, Aqua, Zscaler, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud on pricing mechanics, procurement leverage, and capability-per-dollar. It finds quotes swing 2-3x on identical estates because vendors define 'workload' differently. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is highlighted as the only major with fully published per-resource rates.

GBHackers · 2d agoIndustry1

HBO Max Reddit Account Hijacked to Spread PasteSwitch ClickFix Malware

Hijacked HBO Max verified Reddit account ran 108 ClickFix malvertising ads delivering AMOS and Amatera stealers plus crypto clippers to macOS and Windows users.

Threat actors hijacked HBO Max's verified Reddit account (u/hbomax) to run 108 malicious ClickFix ads over 48 hours in a campaign tracked as PasteSwitch, researched by Hudson Rock and ADAMnetworks. macOS victims were served curl | zsh chains deploying MacSync and Atomic macOS Stealer (AMOS), which harvest browser credentials, Telegram data, Apple Notes, and macOS passwords, while fake Ledger, Trezor, and Exodus apps targeted BIP39 seed phrases. Windows users received an InstallFix chain using an MP3/HTA polyglot with mshta and PowerShell, scheduled-task persistence, AMSI disabling, and in-memory Amatera Stealer that hid C2 traffic (77.91.65.13:443) behind a facebook.com TLS SNI. AnimateClipper and ZigClipper components swapped copied crypto wallet addresses and used Binance Smart Chain contracts as mutable C2 dead drops; Reddit paused the ads and the initial access path remains undisclosed.

GBHackersupdated · 1d agofirst · 2d agoMalware 7 sources

Event-Native Symbolic-Temporal Spike Encoding Framework for Heterogeneous Cyber Streams

An event-native spike encoding framework lets recurrent spiking neural networks run intrusion detection directly on heterogeneous packet and CAN bus streams.

The paper maps heterogeneous cyber events—categorical identifiers, local frequency context, and inter-event timing—directly into sparse spike-compatible inputs for spiking neural networks. This avoids flow aggregation and fixed windows that add buffering latency and obscure temporal structure in traditional IDS pipelines. Compact recurrent SNNs under edge-oriented neuromorphic hardware constraints achieve a hybrid anomaly metric of 0.987 on packet-level Network IDS and 0.980 on message-level CAN IDS.

arXiv cs.CR · 2d agoResearch1

Rapid7 Named Among Notable Vendors in Forrester MDR Landscape: Why the Future is Exposure-informed, Preemptive MDR

Rapid7 touts its listing in Forrester's Q3 2026 MDR Landscape, arguing MDR must converge with exposure management for measurable risk reduction.

Forrester's Managed Detection and Response Services Landscape, Q3 2026 names Rapid7 among notable providers and predicts MDR services will converge with exposure and posture improvement. Rapid7 pitches its exposure-informed, preemptive MDR built on its own SIEM, combining vulnerability findings and asset risk scoring with detection and response. The service includes unlimited incident response and a human-led, AI-enhanced investigation model. Forrester advises buyers to demand providers prove investigations rather than narrate dashboards.

Rapid7 Blog · 2d agoIndustry

Unmasking Cloud Identities: From Behavioral Clustering to Automated Detection

Unit 42 clusters behavior of 40,000+ AWS identities from 125 cloud environments to map functional roles and enable lightweight SQL-based detection.

Palo Alto Unit 42 built an unsupervised behavioral clustering model using UMAP and HDBSCAN on AWS CloudTrail logs to map cloud identities to functional roles such as administrators, backup services, security tooling and DevOps. The study analyzed over 40,000 identities across 125 cloud environments over two months. The researchers show that heuristics extracted from the clustering map can be implemented in standard SQL, enabling role classification at scale without running a continuous ML pipeline. The methodology extends to audit logs from other cloud providers, SaaS and Kubernetes.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 2d agoResearch

The Fraud Ecosystem: A Transition From Known Marketplaces to a Fragmented Environment

Rapid7 analyzes how fraud marketplaces are fragmenting into specialized shops after larger marketplaces were dismantled, aided by new MITRE F3 framework

Rapid7 reports a shift from large known fraud marketplaces to a fragmented environment of smaller specialized storefronts such as Xleet, Blackpass, Infodig, and Styx, operating across dark web channels, Telegram, and P2P options. These Fraud-as-a-Service shops sell stolen accounts, PII, synthetic identity generation, infrastructure, and money laundering support, supporting schemes like business email compromise. MITRE's Fraud Fighting Framework (F3), introduced in early 2026, aims to help security teams prioritize monitoring of fraud TTPs, particularly account takeover techniques. Fraud damages are anticipated to approach hundreds of billions of USD.

Rapid7 Blog · 5d agoPhishing & fraud

Top 10 Best Enterprise Browsers in 2026

2026 enterprise browser guide ranks Island first and notes Mammoth Cyber's wind-down plus corrections to standard vendor shortlists.

An editorial guide assesses ten enterprise browser options, ranking category creator Island first for last-mile DLP and BYOD controls, followed by Palo Alto's Talon browser as a Prisma Access/SASE surface and Google Chrome Enterprise Premium for DLP on already-deployed browsers. It corrects common lists, noting SlashNext is browser-adjacent phishing and BEC defense rather than a managed browser, and that Mammoth Cyber has wound down independent operations. Microsoft Edge for Business is positioned as effectively free policy depth for Microsoft 365 estates, with Menlo Security offering an isolation-plus-browser blend.

Cyber Security News · 6d agoIndustry1

Protecting organizations from AI-assisted executive impersonation and invoice fraud

Microsoft tracked a campaign of over one million AI-crafted CEO-impersonation emails seeking ~$50,000 ACH payments with fabricated ServiceNow invoices.

Between August 3 and 5, Microsoft detected a campaign of more than one million fraud emails, 87.7% of them targeting US enterprise users, sent through multiple third-party email delivery service accounts. The actor impersonated CEOs, CFOs, and presidents of targeted companies, urging accounts payable staff to process an ACH payment of nearly $50,000. Lures layered executive impersonation, lookalike domains, a fabricated ServiceNow 'Annual Subscription' invoice personalized to the recipient, and forged forwarded email threads; Microsoft found no evidence ServiceNow or the referenced executives were compromised. Microsoft observed indicators consistent with generative AI-assisted template creation, while leftover inconsistencies such as missing forwarding headers and mismatched display names gave defenders detection cues.

Microsoft Security Blog · 6d agoPhishing & fraud1

BambooToken: The Malware That Speaks MQTT to Stay Under the Radar

Lumen's Black Lotus Labs uncovered BambooToken, a Windows and Linux malware family using MQTT broker-based C2 and DLL sideloading across Asia since February 2023.

Lumen Black Lotus Labs identified BambooToken, a multiplatform malware family that exchanges commands through MQTT brokers so infected hosts never contact the C2 server directly, active from at least February 2023 through July 2026. The Windows variant sideloads via Tendyron's OnKey hardware-token software used in Chinese banking and government, or impersonates Kingsoft Office, without either vendor's signing certificate being compromised; a Linux build appeared by December 2025 with shell, file transfer, and system information commands. Victims include MikroTik and DrayTek routers in Singapore, Cambodia, and Vietnam reached after internet-wide SNMP scanning, and Lumen cannot attribute the family to any known actor.

Security Affairs · 13h agoMalware in the wild

Cohesity adds recovery capabilities for AI agents and the data they manage

Cohesity launched Agent Resilience to discover, protect, and recover AI agent memory, configuration, and agent-managed data, debuting with Amazon Bedrock integration.

At Cohesity Catalyst, Cohesity introduced Agent Resilience within Cohesity Data Cloud, protecting AI agent memory and configuration with snapshot architecture, immutable backups, and clean-room recovery, plus recovery for databases and file systems that agents manage. It launches with Amazon Bedrock integration, support for Microsoft and Google platforms planned, and general availability targeted for year-end. The company cited Gartner's prediction that up to 40% of enterprise applications will include task-specific agents by 2026, and Cohesity research showing 56% of organizations are unprepared to detect or contain unintended agent actions while 58% lack confidence in verifying AI model integrity after attacks. Cohesity also outlined an Autonomous Cyber Resilience vision using agentic workflows and introduced the AI Resilience Academy.

Help Net Security · 22h agoTools

Rubrik MCP gives AI agents controlled access to security intelligence

Rubrik launched MCP support exposing Rubrik Security Cloud APIs to enterprise AI agents with RBAC, configurable permissions, and OWASP MCP Top 10 guardrails.

Rubrik announced Rubrik MCP (Model Context Protocol), giving organizations' AI agents a secure, programmable path to Rubrik's data, identity, and application intelligence via the Rubrik Security Cloud API schema. Teams can save multi-step recovery or compliance workflows as reusable, deterministic tools, with role-based access control parity and OWASP MCP Top 10 aligned guardrails. Rubrik engineered its agent architecture with Anthropic's teams for multi-step reasoning in incident response, and says Rubrik AI is now trusted by one-third of its global customers.

Help Net Security · 23h agoTools1

1Password's AI patching benchmark is misleading

Trail of Bits reanalysis says 1Password's 26% AI clean-fix rate is misleading; 86% of eligible patches blocked exploits.

Trail of Bits critiques 1Password's FLAWED AI patching benchmark, arguing its 26% clean-fix headline mixes trials where agents were instructed to apply wrong fixes (22% of data) with trials that prohibited compiling or testing (36%). Restricting to reasonable conditions, 2,634 of 3,067 patches (86%) blocked the supplied exploit. Trail of Bits also reports 12.5% of 2,265 developer first fixes failed in its own 2024-2026 assessments, and released post-patch-validation and review-walkthrough agent skills.

Lobsters · security · 1d agoResearch1

Schneider Electric SCADAPack x70 Products

CISA advisory: Schneider Electric SCADAPack x70 RTUs contain CVE-2026-81861, an insufficiently protected credentials flaw allowing unauthorized access to RTU configuration.

CISA advisory ICSA-26-258-04 discloses CVE-2026-81861 affecting all versions of Schneider Electric SCADAPack 47x, 47xi, 47xd, 470R, 57x, 3xx, and 32 remote terminal units. The CWE-522 insufficiently protected credentials vulnerability could expose authentication information and permit unauthorized access to RTU configuration through the Secure Lock functionality. The flaw carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 6.5 (medium), and the products are deployed worldwide in critical manufacturing and energy sectors. Abhinav Agarwal reported the vulnerability to CISA.

CISA Advisories · 1d agoAdvisoryCVE-2026-81861

Weekly Cybersecurity Newsletter – Top 50 Biggest Cybersecurity Stories of the Week

GBHackers weekly digest rounds up 50 stories including Microsoft's 973-CVE patch drop, exploited Cisco FMC flaws, and Claude agent attacks.

GBHackers' September 7-12, 2026 newsletter summarizes the 50 biggest cybersecurity stories of the week. Highlights include Microsoft patching a record 973 CVEs with two exploited zero-days, active exploitation of Cisco FMC, Check Point VPN and Ivanti flaws, China-linked crews chaining Chrome and Windows zero-days, AI agents mass-exploiting PaperCut to compromise 440 servers, and the emergence of Panzer cross-platform ransomware. It also covers Anthropic and OpenAI agentic AI incidents and CrowdStrike's SafeMind launch.

GBHackers · 1d agoIndustry in the wild

12 Best Browser Isolation Solutions Compared (2026): Features & Pricing

2026 comparison ranks Zscaler, Cloudflare, Menlo Security, Garrison (Everfox), Authentic8 and Kasm among twelve remote browser isolation solutions.

Guide compares twelve RBI products across four architectures: pixel streaming, DOM/vector reconstruction, platform-embedded SSE isolation, and self-hosted containers. Zscaler and Cloudflare lead RBI delivered inside SSE platforms, while Menlo Security leads isolate-everything efficacy and Garrison (Everfox) provides hardware-grade isolation for government use. Most offerings price per user per month.

GBHackers · 2d agoTools

Revolut Data Breach Via Fake Government Requests – What We Know So Far

Revolut confirmed attackers extracted customer KYC records by sending fraudulent data requests from a spoofed or compromised government agency email domain.

Revolut confirmed a data breach in which an unauthorized party obtained sensitive customer records by submitting fraudulent information requests from an email account on a legitimate government agency domain with valid SPF/DKIM/DMARC authentication. Disclosed data could include full names, dates of birth, passport or driving-license copies, onboarding facial images, IBANs, account statements, withdrawal records, and complete transaction histories including Bitcoin activity. Crypto investigator ZachXBT assessed the operation targeted high-net-worth users, while a threat actor using the name 'IAmNotAVillain' claimed Italian law-enforcement departments were compromised over six months with 147 GB of material, claims that remain unverified. Revolut says only a limited number of customers were affected, blocked the email address, and notified regulators and affected customers, stating its systems and funds were not compromised.

Cyber Security News · 2d agoData breach

In Other News: InjectEave Attack, SIM Swapper Sentenced, Glasswing Findings Review

SecurityWeek weekly roundup covers exploited WordPress Super Forms flaw CVE-2026-14894, a $10M bounty on an Iranian cyber official, InjectEave attacks, and more.

SecurityWeek's weekly roundup aggregates short items across the threat landscape, including Microsoft's report of invisible Unicode tag characters used in financial phishing lures at up to 2.37 million messages per day, and active exploitation of critical WordPress Super Forms plugin flaw CVE-2026-14894 to deploy PHP webshells. Policy items include a $10 million US bounty for IRGC-CEC Cyber Operations Command lead Amir Yaryab, a 16-month prison sentence for ex-AT&T employee Kenneth Carter over SIM swaps with nearly $600,000 in intended losses, and the US arraignment of Russian Sergei Anatolyevich Filimonov over credential harvesting. Technical items include InjectEave electromagnetic side-channel attacks tested on 11 devices, an FBI warning on OAuth consent phishing, and VulnCheck's finding that only 202 of 26,153 Anthropic Project Glasswing findings were fixed.

SecurityWeek · 5d agoIndustry in the wildCVE-2026-148942

Introducing automatic remediation policies with Cloudflare CASB

Cloudflare CASB now offers automatic remediation policies that revoke risky SaaS file shares or trigger webhooks within five minutes of detection.

Cloudflare introduced automatic remediation policies for its CASB product, letting security teams define event-driven logic that revokes risky file shares, dispatches custom webhooks, or forwards findings to SOAR platforms without manual intervention. Native remediation actions currently support Microsoft and Google Workspace file and folder findings, with a target of completing remediation within five minutes of detection. The engine is built on the Cloudflare developer platform, using Cloudflare Queues, Workers and Workflows for durable execution with automatic retries and rate-limit backoff.

Cloudflare Blog · 5d agoTools

Subgroup Packing for Batched PASTA Transciphering

Interleaved subgroup packing cuts PASTA homomorphic transciphering server cost by a median 1.60x at the expense of remaining noise capacity.

The paper studies how record word layout affects the cost of PASTA transciphering, where a server converts symmetrically encrypted records into homomorphic ciphertexts. A subgroup layout interleaves records so cyclic shifts preserve positions, reducing required displacements from 255 to 128 versus contiguous packing. In HElib across twelve paired corpora under six homomorphic keys, the median direct-to-subgroup server cost ratio is 1.60 including fresh generation, conversion, and two queries, but with less remaining noise capacity.

arXiv cs.CR · 6d agoResearch1

Hackers Deploy New SloppyRAT via ClickFix to Enable Ransomware Lateral Movement

Zscaler ThreatLabz reports SloppyRAT, a new Windows RAT delivered via ClickFix lures that supports reconnaissance, reverse SOCKS proxying, and lateral movement for ransomware affiliates.

Zscaler ThreatLabz first observed SloppyRAT in June 2026, delivered through multi-stage ClickFix chains that abuse finger.exe, a renamed curl.exe, and IronPython to load a reflective Python payload. The C++ implant implements 47 PowerShell-like commands via native APIs and direct syscalls, modifies Microsoft Defender settings, and establishes a reverse SOCKS proxy that lets operators pivot into internal networks. It is linked to CastleLoader and CastleRAT components and uses certificate-pinned HTTPS C2 with an EtherHiding fallback via Polygon JSON-RPC. Zscaler assesses it as an intrusion-enablement tool for ransomware operations, though flawed persistence logic suggests the family is still under development.

GBHackersupdated · 6d agofirst · 6d agoMalware in the wild 3 sources

Google Play Early Access Abused to Push Thousands of Deceptive Android Apps

Bitdefender found abuse of Google Play's review-free Early Access program to push thousands of deceptive casino and reward apps promoted with AI deepfake ads.

Bitdefender reports threat actors are abusing Google Play's Early Access program, which blocks public reviews and ratings, to distribute thousands of deceptive casino, reward, and utility apps. A GTA imitator, 'Vice Streets: Open World,' surpassed 1 million downloads before disappearing, with apps promoted via AI celebrity deepfake ads on TikTok and Facebook and monetized through endless ad serving and payouts that never arrive. The report coincides with disclosures on Android malware families Hagaseca, Mantax Otax, StreamRat, and GoldFactory's Gigabud banking trojan with its Vwork companion app used for cloned-app financial fraud.

The Hacker Newsupdated · 5d agofirst · 6d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild 6 sources

WordPress Uses AI to Stop Malicious Plugin Updates Before They Reach Millions of Websites

WordPress.org now auto-blocks plugin updates flagged by AI review after a backdoor incident, adding a supply-chain gate for millions of sites.

Since June 5, 2026, every WordPress.org plugin and theme release passes a mandatory six-hour cooldown while multiple AI models and Jetpack Scan analyze code changes and produce a consolidated security score; releases above the risk threshold are blocked automatically. The change followed a July 28, 2026 incident where a backdoor was pushed into a plugin with roughly 20,000 active installs, which Wordfence flagged and the Plugins Team pulled 26 minutes later before distribution. Authors are notified of blocking findings and can republish corrected releases or appeal false positives to the Plugins Team.

Cyber Security Newsupdated · 6d agofirst · 6d agoTools 3 sources1

The Machine With Many Faces: Post-Exploitation Identity Misuse in SPIFFE/SPIRE

Unit 42 demonstrates that root access on a Kubernetes node lets attackers spoof SPIFFE/SPIRE attestation and harvest co-located workloads' SVIDs.

Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 describes post-exploitation techniques in which an attacker with root on a compromised Kubernetes node spoofs Linux cgroup metadata used by the SPIRE agent during workload attestation, tricking it into issuing a co-located workload's SPIFFE Verifiable Identity Document to an attacker-controlled process. The research shows the core trust assumption of machine-identity systems—that the node is trusted—collapses once root is obtained, exposing all cryptographic identities scoped to that node. Unit 42 released an open-source tool, Spooffe, for defenders to test identity exposure, and notes the technique has not been observed exploited in the wild.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 6d agoResearch1

Chinese hackers use SparroWocky malware in govt espionage attacksnew

ESET reports China-linked FamousSparrow deployed a new modular backdoor, SparroWocky, in year-long espionage attacks on Latin American government organizations.

ESET researchers observed FamousSparrow using SparroWocky, a modular C++ backdoor replacing the earlier SparrowDoor tool, against government targets in Argentina, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. Deployed via DLL side-loading with an RC4-encrypted payload mapped in memory, it captures screenshots, acts as a TCP proxy, and hooks CreateThread so malicious threads appear as AnimateWindow. Persistence uses a ProcAuditManager Windows service or SnapCart registry key; ESET tracked at least 18 C2 addresses and published IoCs.

BleepingComputer · 50m agoThreat actor in the wild

Top 10 Best Google Cloud (GCP) Security Tools in 2026

An editorial scorecard ranks the top ten Google Cloud security tools for 2026, with Wiz, Sysdig, and Security Command Center leading on correlation, GKE runtime, and native depth.

The roundup evaluates ten GCP security tools across five weighted criteria including GCP-native depth, correlation, runtime protection, multicloud parity, and value. Google Security Command Center is positioned as the included native floor, while Wiz and Sysdig top the weighted scores at 4.50, followed by Prisma Cloud at 4.40. The piece notes Forseti is deprecated and that Lacework is now Fortinet's FortiCNAPP, and flags diligence around Google's acquisition of Wiz. It is an editorial assessment, not a lab test, with pricing compared by model only.

Cyber Security News · 1h agoIndustry

Microsoft shares workaround for Windows domain login issues

Microsoft confirms September 2026 Windows updates trigger domain trust failures via Machine Identity Isolation and shares a workaround for Windows 11 enterprises.

Microsoft confirmed the September 2026 security updates (KB5124008 for Windows 11 24H2/25H2, KB5124012 for 26H1) cause Windows to honor Machine Identity Isolation enforcement settings, breaking domain trust on systems not connected to Windows Server 2025 domain controllers. Admins report valid credentials failing with domain trust and credential errors. The workaround requires disabling Machine Identity Isolation via the same management method that enabled it (Intune, group policy, or registry) and resetting the secure channel with Test-ComputerSecureChannel. Microsoft previously shipped out-of-band fixes for Remote Desktop, Hyper-V, and USB audio issues from the same updates.

BleepingComputer · 1h agoAdvisory

Riverbed NPM 360 uses AI to predict and prevent network disruptions

Riverbed launched Network 360 observability offerings embedding agentic AI (Riverbed IQ and Q) into AppResponse and NetProfiler for predictive network troubleshooting.

Riverbed announced its Network 360 intelligent network observability solutions, natively integrating the agentic AI layers Riverbed IQ and Riverbed Q into AppResponse and NetProfiler, with NPM+ extending visibility across remote users, Zero Trust, and public cloud. Riverbed IQ applies causal, predictive, generative, and agentic AI to correlate network evidence, identify root causes, and recommend actions, while Q provides a natural-language conversational assistant for investigations. The launch aims to shift NetOps teams from manual, reactive troubleshooting to AI-guided workflows that predict and prevent disruptions before user impact.

Help Net Security · 3h agoIndustry

CISA decides weekly vulnerability bulletin isn't necessary anymore

CISA will discontinue its weekly vulnerability bulletin on September 28, pushing users toward KEV, alerts, and CVE data under risk-based prioritization.

CISA announced its weekly vulnerability bulletin will stop on Monday, September 28, as part of a shift from static CVSS severity scores to a modern, risk-based approach detailed in a June Binding Operational Directive. The directive prioritizes federal remediation based on exposure, exploitation evidence, control granted by exploitation, and whether exploitation can be automated. CISA directs bulletin subscribers to rely instead on its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, cybersecurity alerts and advisories, and the CVE catalog, requiring users to enable those subscriptions in GovDelivery or Granicus to avoid missing critical notices.

The Register · Security · 13h agoPolicy & legal