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178 stories in the last 30d

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 · 4d agoResearch1

CVE-2026-34486: Apache Tomcat Auth Bypass Vulnerability

SentinelOne details CVE-2026-34486, an Apache Tomcat EncryptInterceptor bypass exposing unencrypted cluster communications, with patches and workarounds available.

CVE-2026-34486 stems from an incomplete fix for CVE-2026-29146, letting network-positioned attackers bypass the EncryptInterceptor and read plaintext Tomcat cluster traffic, including session and application data between nodes. Affected versions 9.0.116, 10.1.53 and 11.0.20 are fixed in 9.0.117, 10.1.54 and 11.0.21. Workarounds include network-level encryption such as IPsec or VPN tunnels and isolating cluster communications to secured network segments.

CVE-2026-34486: Apache Tomcat EncryptInterceptor Fail-Open Bypass

Technical analysis shows CVE-2026-34486 is a one-line fail-open regression in Tomcat Tribes enabling unauthenticated RCE via Java deserialization.

CVE-2026-34486 is a fail-open regression in Tomcat's Tribes EncryptInterceptor, introduced while fixing the CVE-2026-29146 padding-oracle flaw; Apache rated it Important and NVD scores it 7.5 High. Decryption failures are now forwarded to an unfiltered ObjectInputStream, and public PoC repositories demonstrate unauthenticated RCE on default port 4000 when clustering, the EncryptInterceptor, a reachable receiver and deserialization gadgets are all present. Affected releases 9.0.116, 10.1.53 and 11.0.20 are fixed in 9.0.117, 10.1.54 and 11.0.21; Tomcat 8.5 is unaffected.

AD Rights Management Service (Part 1): Architecture, Deprecation, and Reconnaissance

Huntress maps AD RMS architecture and recon paths, setting up an offline key-extraction attack against its unrotatable 255-year root key.

Huntress's multi-part research examines Active Directory Rights Management Services, Microsoft's enterprise DRM role that still ships in Windows Server 2025 despite migration guidance favoring Azure Information Protection. Part 1 covers the trust model and how an ordinary domain account can locate RMS clusters and read rights-policy templates. Part 2 will detail four independent paths for extracting the Server Licensor Certificate (SLC) private key via service-group membership and the configuration database, enabling fully offline decryption of protected documents. The SLC certificate is valid from 2002 to 2258 and has no key-rotation mechanism, so a stolen key decrypts protected content indefinitely.

Huntress · 10d agoResearch1

Top 10 Best Kubernetes Security Tools in 2026

Top 10 Kubernetes security tools roundup highlights Sysdig and Aqua as specialists plus strong free options Kubescape, Calico, and Falco.

A buying guide ranks ten Kubernetes security tools across admission control, network policy, runtime detection, and posture management. Sysdig leads runtime depth, Aqua leads full lifecycle, Red Hat ACS owns OpenShift estates, and Wiz offers agentless graph correlation. The guide notes this category has cloud security's strongest open-source floor with Kubescape, Calico, and Falco.

Cyber Security News · 3d agoIndustry1

12 Best Kubernetes Security Tools Compared (2026): Features & Pricing

GBHackers compares 12 Kubernetes security vendors including Sysdig, Wiz, Aqua, and Cisco Isovalent on features, pricing units, and procurement strategy.

GBHackers publishes a 2026 buying guide comparing 12 Kubernetes security vendors including Sysdig, Wiz, Aqua Security, SUSE NeuVector, Snyk, Cisco Isovalent, Palo Alto Networks, Fairwinds, Red Hat ACS, and Tigera. It argues CNCF-grade open source (Kubescape, Falco, Trivy, Calico, Cilium/Tetragon) provides free posture, runtime, and network policy coverage that resets price negotiations. Cisco's acquisition of Isovalent places the eBPF data plane under a networking giant, while the paid market focuses on multi-cluster policy, enforcement, and support. The piece emphasizes that pricing units (workload, node, cluster, developer, credits) heavily influence contract costs.

GBHackersupdated · 5h agofirst · 2d agoTools 10 sources3

Active exploitation of Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vulnerabilities

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

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

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 · 11d agoThreat actor

AD Rights Management Service (Part 2): Extraction, Offline Decryption, and the Unrotatable Key

Huntress research shows AD RMS SLC root key is unrotatable and never expires, so its compromise permanently exposes all RMS-protected documents.

Part 2 of Huntress's AD RMS series details server-side attacks: extracting the Server Licensor Certificate (SLC) private key and performing offline decryption of protected documents. The SLC key has no expiry or rotation mechanism, with a 255-year certificate validity (2002–2258), so whoever recovers it can decrypt every document the deployment ever protected, indefinitely. The author released SharpRMS, a unified tool combining the 2016 DisARMS client-side attacks with new server-side key extraction and decryption capabilities. The research frames the SLC as comparable to KRBTGT and the DPAPI domain backup key, though not equivalent to domain compromise.

Huntress · 8d agoResearch

Fake Conferences, OAuth and WhatsApp: Inside Russia’s New Espionage Tactics

Google tracks three Russia-linked espionage clusters abusing OAuth, app passwords, and device code phishing against Western researchers and diplomats.

Google's Threat Intelligence Group documented three suspected Russia-linked clusters, UNC6293, UNC7005, and UNC5976, abusing legitimate authentication flows. UNC6293, a likely APT29/ICE RELIC sub-cluster, impersonates US State Department officials in app password and OAuth phishing targeting fewer than five victims at a time. UNC7005, tracked by Microsoft as STORM-2945, spoofs the GLOBSEC conference, runs device code phishing against Microsoft and WhatsApp accounts, and deploys VIDAR and AtomicStealer infostealers. Targets include researchers, academics, diplomats, think-tank analysts, and defense personnel in Europe and the United States.

Security Affairs · 28d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Going with the Flow(s): Distinct Clusters Target Individuals of Interest to Russia

Suspected Russian clusters abuse OAuth and authentication flows to phish academia, defense, government, and think tank targets across Europe and the US.

Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) is tracking three distinct suspected Russian cyber espionage clusters abusing legitimate authentication flows. Newly detailed clusters UNC7005 and UNC5976 conduct phishing, abuse OAuth flows, and/or deploy malware, alongside previously reported UNC6293 phishing operations. Targets include individuals in academia, aerospace and defense, governments, and think tanks across Europe, as well as academia and think tanks in the United States.

Google Threat Intelligence · 29d agoThreat actor in the wild

Cisco FMC flaws exploited by ransomware gang, state-sponsored hackers

Cisco Talos confirms ransomware and state-sponsored groups exploited CVE-2026-20079 and CVE-2026-20316 in Secure Firewall Management Center, deploying Qilin ransomware and Cyclops Blink.

Cisco Talos identified three threat clusters (UAT-12197, UAT-11823, UAT-11988) exploiting CVE-2026-20079, a CVSS 10.0 authentication bypass, and CVE-2026-20316, a CVSS 5.3 static-credential flaw, in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center. Qilin affiliates used static credentials for reconnaissance and deployed Qilin ransomware; a Sandworm-linked cluster deployed a Cyclops Blink backdoor via a malicious license.tmp file; a third cluster stole credentials through a JSP web shell. Cisco has released hotfixes and urges immediate installation, with broader patches expected next week.

BleepingComputer · 7d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-20079CVE-2026-203161

BleachBit 6.0.4 fixes secure wiping that skipped clusters on Windows

BleachBit 6.0.4 fixes Windows secure-wipe bugs that skipped fragmented-file clusters, adds HSTS tracker deletion, early macOS support, and broad hardening.

The open-source cleaner BleachBit released version 6.0.4, fixing Windows shredding bugs where fragmented files were wiped incompletely because noncontiguous clusters were skipped, leaving potentially sensitive data on disk. The release adds deletion of dynamic HSTS tracking data in six Chromium-based browsers and Zen, early macOS support including a Safari cleaner and full CLI, plus hardening such as absolute paths for ipconfig/taskkill, symlink and reparse-point handling, DTD-free XML parsing, and PATH/environment sanitization when running as root.

Help Net Security · 9d agoTools

CVE-2026-82441: Apache Storm Nimbus: Cross-Tenant Blob Deletion and Cluster Denial of Service via Unvalidated Topology Dependency Keys

Unvalidated topology dependency keys in Apache Storm Nimbus 3.0.0 enable cross-tenant blob deletion and cluster denial of service.

CVE-2026-82441 (severity: moderate) affects Apache Storm Nimbus (storm-server) versions 3.0.0 before 3.1.0. Topology submissions carry dependency_jars and dependency_artifacts blobstore key lists that Nimbus never validated on the submission path, yet acted on during cleanup of finished topologies. A malicious submitter could reference arbitrary blobstore keys, causing cross-tenant blob deletion and cluster-wide denial of service.

oss-security · 4d agoVulnerabilityCVE-2026-824411

Attackers Exploit Critical Cisco FMC Flaw to deploy Qilin ransomware

Three threat groups, including Qilin ransomware operators, exploit critical Cisco FMC flaws CVE-2026-20079 and CVE-2026-20316 for root access, credential theft, and ransomware.

Cisco Talos identified three post-compromise clusters exploiting recently patched Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center flaws. UAT-12197 deploys JSP web shells and harvests credentials; UAT-11823 (with Sandworm-overlapping tooling) installs Cyclops Blink for persistence; UAT-11988 (Qilin) uses static credentials, extensive reconnaissance, SOCKS5 proxies, reverse-SSH tunnels, AV killers, and ransomware deployment. CISA added CVE-2026-20079 to the KEV catalog with a September 12, 2026 patch deadline for federal agencies; Cisco urges immediate hotfix application.

Security Affairs · 7d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-20079CVE-2026-203165· 2 reads

CVE-2026-49364: Apache Artemis, Apache ActiveMQ Artemis: Pre-Authentication Cluster Credential Exposure to Discovered Peers

Apache Artemis CVE-2026-49364 exposes cluster credentials to network-adjacent peers discovered before authentication completes.

Apache disclosed a pre-authentication credential exposure issue in Apache Artemis and Apache ActiveMQ Artemis, tracked as CVE-2026-49364. Affected components span artemis-core-client and artemis-server from version 1.0.0 (ActiveMQ Artemis) and 2.50.0 (Artemis) through 2.44.0 and 2.56.0 respectively. An unauthenticated network-adjacent attacker can leverage credentials exposed to discovered cluster peers. Apache rates the issue as important.

Suspected Russian Hackers Abuse Google OAuth and WhatsApp Linking to Hijack Accounts

Google tracked three suspected Russian espionage clusters abusing OAuth flows, app passwords, and WhatsApp linking to hijack accounts of diplomats and defense targets.

Google Threat Intelligence Group detailed three suspected Russian espionage clusters, UNC6293, UNC7005 (Storm-2945), and UNC5976, targeting academia, aerospace, defense, governments, and think tanks in Europe, the US, Ukraine, and Armenia. UNC6293, assessed as a sub-cluster of APT29/Ice Relic, conducted OAuth and application-specific password phishing while impersonating State Department officials. UNC5976 registered file-sharing-themed domains hosting fake OAuth login pages and deployed a malicious Excel plugin codenamed HEADRUSH, while UNC7005 abused WhatsApp device linking to hijack accounts and record victims' audio and video.

The Hacker News · 27d agoThreat actor in the wild

Critical Cisco FMC Flaws Actively Exploited to Gain Root Access and Deploy Malware

Threat actors actively exploit Cisco FMC CVE-2026-20079 (CVSS 10.0) for root access, with clusters linked to Sandworm and Qilin ransomware.

Cisco Talos warns of active exploitation of CVE-2026-20079, a CVSS 10.0 authentication bypass in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center allowing unauthenticated root-level code execution, and CVE-2026-20316 (CVSS 5.3), which permits login via a low-privileged static account for privilege escalation. Hotfixes are available now, with a broader hardening release planned for the week of September 14. Three post-compromise activity clusters were identified: UAT-12197 deployed a home.jsp web shell and cmd.jar command executor; UAT-11823, attributed with high confidence to a Sandworm-linked APT, deployed a Netcat reverse shell and Cyclops Blink; and UAT-11988 showed Qilin ransomware tactics including Active Directory enumeration and credential theft before deploying Qilin ransomware.

GBHackers · 7d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-20079CVE-2026-203161

Four Spy Groups Used the Same Chrome and Windows Exploit Kit Within a Week

Proofpoint links four espionage clusters, including China's APT31, using shared exploit kit BlueMoon chaining Chrome V8 and Windows ALPC zero-days.

Proofpoint reports a previously undocumented exploit kit, BlueMoon, chains Chrome V8 type confusion CVE-2026-85046 with an unassigned V8 sandbox escape and Windows ALPC heap overflow CVE-2026-85880 to achieve code execution and local privilege escalation. APT31 first used it on August 28, 2026 against US NGOs, mining, and commodity trading firms, deploying the GemStone browser backdoor disguised as a Google Gemini extension via the GhostChrome-X integrity bypass. UNK_LateNight, UNK_DoubleCheck, and UNK_QuietRacket followed on September 2-3, targeting US aerospace, Vietnamese manufacturing, and Indonesian/Singaporean sectors with ShadowPad and sideloaded Rust and .NET payloads. Both V8 flaws were patch-gap zero-days, and verbose code suggests possible AI-assisted development.

Attackers Expose Ongoing AI Tool Use Targeting Organizations in Latin America

Unit 42 documents two AI-assisted intrusion campaigns against Latin American government, utility, and financial organizations using LLM-orchestrated tooling.

Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 tracks two ongoing intrusion clusters, CL-CRI-1131 (Mexican transportation, federal ministries, municipal water utilities) and CL-CRI-1163 (Brazilian financial sector), both using living-off-the-land techniques, SOCKS5 relays, and custom RATs. The attackers appear to orchestrate operations via commercial LLMs like Claude and GPT-4.1, evidenced by iterative batch scripts and AI-generated tunneling tool naming. The Mexican campaign (also reported as Operation Escaneo by CloudSEK) exfiltrated sensitive data via dynamic-DNS infrastructure with rotated multi-SAN TLS certificates between February and June 2026. This signals broader adoption of AI-enhanced operations by diverse threat groups in the region.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 15d agoThreat actor in the wild1

SilkParasite Infrastructure Links SpiceRAT to Central Asian Targets

Hunt.io linked SpiceRAT, NodeEdgeRAT, and NomadRAT C2 servers to the SilkParasite campaign targeting Central Asian governments since mid-2022.

Hunt.io and researcher Guy Yasur mapped C2 infrastructure tying three of seven RAT families from Bitdefender's SilkParasite report through shared TLS certificates, parent domains, and a cloned RTX Corporation homepage. One certificate spoofing Uzbekistan's state railway was issued by TLC, a CA funded by China's CAICT, and domains impersonate state entities in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Passive DNS pushes the campaign back to mid-2022, and the infrastructure overlaps China-nexus activity including FamousSparrow and IndigoZebra.

Security Affairs · 23h agoThreat actor in the wild 3 sources

Congress eyes new support for Cyber Command after recent suicide deaths

Congress is weighing new mental-health support and $11 million in training funding for U.S. Cyber Command after a cluster of personnel suicides.

Lawmakers view recent suicide deaths among U.S. Cyber Command personnel as an inflection point amid record operational tempo, including missions against Iran and Venezuela. Possible vehicles include the NDAA and the next funding bill; the House Appropriations Committee approved $11 million for the command's High Performance Team Training. A FY2024 NDAA-ordered study found resources for the Cyber Mission Force are inadequate and may jeopardize readiness, and Gen. Joshua Rudd has ordered weekly service-cyber check-ins on suicide-prevention efforts.

The Record · 1d agoPolicy & legal

Hackers Exploit Critical Cisco Firewall Flaw to Gain Root Access and Deploy Malware

State-sponsored and ransomware actors actively exploit critical Cisco FMC flaws CVE-2026-20079 (CVSS 10.0) and CVE-2026-20316 to gain root access and deploy ransomware.

Cisco Talos confirmed in-the-wild exploitation of CVE-2026-20079 (CVSS 10.0, unauthenticated authentication bypass enabling root command execution) and CVE-2026-20316 (CVSS 5.3, hard-coded static credentials) in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center. Three activity clusters were identified: UAT-12197 dropping a JSP web shell and credential harvester; UAT-11823, assessed as Sandworm, deploying a Cyclops Blink variant; and UAT-11988, a Qilin ransomware affiliate chaining the flaws before deploying ransomware. CISA added both CVEs to the KEV catalog with a September 12 remediation deadline for federal agencies.

Cyber Security News · 8d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-20079CVE-2026-20316

220 million traveler records exposed in Vietnam-linked APIS leak

Vietnam-linked APIS Elasticsearch leak exposed 220 million passenger and crew records with passport numbers and flight details spanning 2017 to 2026.

Kinryū Labs discovered an exposed Elasticsearch cluster named 'pax-info' holding 210,318,069 passenger records and 10,465,631 crew records (roughly 107 GB across 29 indices) hosted in Viettel-assigned IP space in Hanoi. The database, apparently operated by a Vietnamese organization, was reachable via a chain of two misconfigurations: a cloud-based path that bypassed an HTTP 401 block and acceptance of default credentials. Exposed data included names, dates of birth, nationalities, passport numbers, and detailed flight information for travelers of many nationalities from January 2017 to April 2026. Access was remediated on June 8 after Kinryū Labs notified Vietnamese authorities, airlines, and CERTs, with Singapore Airlines' security team helping coordinate the response; it remains unknown whether any data was copied by malicious actors.

BleepingComputer · 10d agoData breach1

Angry Birds: Toy Ghouls’ new toys

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

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

Kaspersky Securelist · 14d agoThreat actor1

Feral Wolf Hackers Exploit Confluence and 1C to Deploy GenieLocker Ransomware

Feral Wolf exploited Atlassian Confluence and 1C:Enterprise flaws to deploy GenieLocker ransomware across Russian retail, construction, manufacturing and IT firms.

BI.ZONE DFIR tracked Feral Wolf intrusions at Russian retail, construction, manufacturing, and IT organizations from May through August 2026. The actor exploited CVE-2023-22515 on internet-facing Confluence instances, deployed GSocket and Rust-based MQTTDoor/MatrixDoor backdoors using MQTT and Matrix C2, and used PwnKit (CVE-2021-4034) and Copy Fail (CVE-2026-31431) for privilege escalation and container-to-host escape. The group abused exposed 1C:Enterprise cluster managers and weak PostgreSQL credentials to move laterally before deploying GenieLocker ransomware.

Cisco FMC Flaws Exploited to Steal Credentials and Deploy Qilin Ransomware

Three threat clusters including a Sandworm-linked group and Qilin ransomware operators exploit Cisco FMC flaws CVE-2026-20079 and CVE-2026-20316.

Cisco Talos identified three clusters of post-compromise activity exploiting CVE-2026-20079 (CVSS 10.0, unauthenticated web-interface authentication bypass enabling root code execution) and CVE-2026-20316 (CVSS 5.3, low-privilege login exposing sensitive data) in Secure Firewall Management Center. UAT-12197 deployed JSP web shells and a JAR-based command executor to query internal databases for credentials; UAT-11823 used a Netcat reverse shell, configuration-harvesting scripts and a Cyclops Blink variant previously attributed to Russia's Sandworm; UAT-11988 used living-off-the-land FMC tooling for reconnaissance before deploying Qilin ransomware. CISA added CVE-2026-20079 to its KEV catalog, requiring FCEB agencies to patch by September 12, 2026; CVE-2026-20316 was added in late July 2026.

The Hacker News · 7d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-20079CVE-2026-20316

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

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

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

Help Net Security · 8d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-20079CVE-2026-20316

Organizations Warned of Cisco Secure FMC Exploitation

Cisco and CISA warn that critical FMC authentication bypass CVE-2026-20079 is actively exploited; CISA added it to the KEV catalog with a September 12 deadline.

Cisco and CISA flagged active exploitation of CVE-2026-20079, a critical authentication bypass in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center allowing remote, unauthenticated attackers to run malicious scripts and gain root access via crafted HTTP requests. Cisco patched the flaw in early March and added IoCs in late July, but confirmed active exploitation in its September 9 advisory; CISA added it to the KEV catalog requiring federal remediation by September 12. Talos identified three activity clusters exploiting CVE-2026-20079 and CVE-2026-20316, including state-sponsored and financially motivated actors, and this is the third FMC vulnerability in KEV this year after CVE-2026-20316 and CVE-2026-20131.

Hackers Use LLMs to Generate Exploit Scripts and Automate Post-Exploitation Across Latin America

Unit 42 says Latin American attackers used LLMs to automate post-exploitation in campaigns hitting Mexican government, water utilities, and Brazilian financial firms.

Unit 42 identified two campaigns in Latin America whose operators used commercial LLMs (Claude, GPT-4.1) behind a self-hosted NextChat interface to generate and debug post-exploitation scripts. Cluster CL-CRI-1131 compromised a transportation organization, Mexican federal ministries, and water utilities in Mexico and Ecuador, using native Windows tools and Volume Shadow Copies to dump the SAM registry hive and NTDS.dit. Cluster CL-CRI-1163 targeted Brazilian financial organizations with job-themed phishing, custom RATs, and a Go-based reverse SOCKS5 tunneling utility called SockTz, with nine versions deployed within roughly two hours. Trend Micro tracks related AI-augmented activity as SHADOW-AETHER-040 and SHADOW-AETHER-064.

GBHackers · 8d agoThreat actor in the wild1

China-Linked Hackers Exploit Chrome and Windows Zero-Days in BlueMoon Attacks

China-linked clusters deploy the BlueMoon kit chaining Chrome V8 CVE-2026-85046 and Windows LPE CVE-2026-85880 in espionage campaigns.

Proofpoint researchers identified BlueMoon, an exploit kit combining a V8 type-confusion RCE (CVE-2026-85046), a V8 sandbox escape, and a Windows kernel privilege-escalation flaw (CVE-2026-85880), first observed August 28, 2026. At least four clusters adopted it, led by TA412 (also tracked as APT31/Violet Typhoon) and followed by UNK_LateNight, UNK_DoubleCheck, and UNK_QuietRacket, targeting aerospace, manufacturing, government, consulting, and financial sectors. The kit exploited a nearly four-week patch gap between the public Chromium commit (August 7) and stable rollout (September 3). TA412 delivered the GemStone Chrome extension masquerading as a Gemini companion, while other clusters deployed ShadowPad via DLL sideloading, a Rust loader, and DoH-based C2.

GBHackers · 8d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-85046CVE-2026-858801

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, September 2026 Security Update Review

Microsoft's September 2026 Patch Tuesday fixes 974 vulnerabilities, including 113 critical and two actively exploited Windows privilege escalation flaws.

Microsoft's September 2026 Patch Tuesday fixes 974 vulnerabilities, its largest release ever, including 113 critical and 860 important, covering Windows HTTP.sys, Hyper-V, Entra ID, Exchange Server, Office, DNS, and more. Two zero-days are confirmed exploited in the wild: CVE-2026-81963 (Windows Update Stack EoP) and CVE-2026-85880 (ALPC heap overflow), both letting authenticated attackers gain SYSTEM privileges. Notable criticals include an Entra ID authentication bypass (CVE-2026-62916) and multiple Windows DNS Server and Office remote code execution flaws.

Gambling Goblin Turns Brazilian Government Sites Into SEO Weapons

Check Point links Chinese-speaking cluster Gambling Goblin to SEO-fraud compromises of Brazilian government sites via malicious Apache modules since mid-2025.

Check Point Research dubbed the cluster Gambling Goblin and linked it with medium-to-high confidence to Earth Berberoka, a Chinese-speaking group Trend Micro documented in 2022, citing shared oRAT tooling, Chinese-language artifacts, and domains mimicking trusted tech brands. Custom Apache modules installed on compromised Brazilian government and education servers acted as reverse proxies, routing selected visitors to gambling and sports-betting phishing pages impersonating Google Play, the Microsoft Store, and Amazon while stripping CSP headers. The broader Linux toolkit included the DownPro downloader, AlphaAgent and oRAT backdoors, the 3snake-based PasswordHarvester credential stealer, and an SSH brute-forcer, with operations extending to Vietnamese, Spanish, and English phishing pages.

Infosecurity Magazine · 16d agoThreat actor

Malicious Apache Modules Hijack Brazilian Government Site Traffic to Push Betting Pages

Check Point links Gambling Goblin, a Chinese-speaking cluster, to malicious Apache modules hijacking Brazilian government servers to promote betting sites.

Check Point Research tracks Gambling Goblin, a Chinese-speaking cluster, installing malicious Apache reverse-proxy modules on compromised Brazilian government and education web servers since mid-2025. The modules divert visitors to gambling and fake app-store pages while stripping the site's security headers, likely for large-scale SEO manipulation. The group's Linux arsenal includes DownPro, AlphaAgent, oRAT, a 3snake-based credential stealer, and SSH brute-forcing tools, and it is tied to Trend Micro's Earth Berberoka. Related SEO-fraud campaigns on .gov.br domains were documented by ESET (GhostRedirector), Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, and Hunt.io.

The Hacker News · 16d agoThreat actor in the wild

Smishing Triad Hackers Use JWR Phishing Kit to Steal Cards, OTPs and Bank Credentials

Group-IB attributes large-scale smishing using the JWR real-time phishing kit to the Smishing Triad's Outsider cluster, harvesting card data, OTPs, and bank credentials.

Group-IB attributes a large-scale SMS phishing campaign to Outsider, an operator sub-cluster within the Smishing Triad phishing-as-a-service ecosystem, using a kit dubbed JWR. The Vue 2-based platform maintains real-time WebSocket communication with operators, enabling them to adapt pages live and harvest roughly 70 PII fields, card data, PINs, OTPs, identity document images, and digital wallet credentials via a dedicated PayPal sub-funnel. Unit 42 previously tied 194,345 malicious domains across 136,933 root domains to the broader operation since January 2024. Defenders can hunt for /api/open/ endpoints, /webSocket/QT/ paths, JWR-prefixed storage artifacts, and a hard-coded WebSocket token.

GBHackersupdated · 2d agofirst · 2d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild 2 sources

Cisco Warns of Ongoing Exploitation of Critical Email Gateway Zero-Day

Cisco Secure Email Gateway zero-day CVE-2026-76461 (CVSS 9.8) is actively exploited for root command execution; CISA added it to KEV.

Cisco disclosed critical zero-day CVE-2026-76461 (CVSS 9.8) in Secure Email Gateway, remotely exploitable without authentication via crafted emails containing malicious SQL statements, leading to arbitrary command execution with root privileges. The flaw affects physical and virtual appliances regardless of configuration and has no workarounds. Cisco PSIRT confirmed active exploitation, and CISA added the CVE to its KEV catalog on September 14 with a federal remediation deadline of September 17. Admins should review mail_logs for suspicious SQL statements such as 'COPY.*TO PROGRAM'.

Security Affairsupdated · 2d agofirst · 3d agoExploit / PoC in the wild 17 sourcesCVE-2026-764617· 2 reads

Weekly Cybersecurity Newsletter Bulletin – Microsoft 0-day, FortiOS, PAN-OS Flaw, Revolut Data Breach, and 20+ Stories

Weekly roundup: Microsoft patches 973 flaws including two actively exploited zero-days; FortiOS CAPWAP flaw deploys PivotC2 RAT; PAN-OS root RCE disclosed.

Microsoft's September 2026 Patch Tuesday fixed 973 vulnerabilities, including two zero-days under active exploitation: CVE-2026-85880 (Windows ALPC) and CVE-2026-81963 (Windows Update Stack), both elevation-of-privilege bugs. SOCRadar reported active exploitation of CVE-2025-25249 (CVSS 9.8) in FortiOS CAPWAP, deploying a Node.js RAT called PivotC2 that exfiltrates Exchange mailboxes to Wasabi cloud storage; 178 devices were compromised out of 30,000 scanned IPs, attributed to a Russian-speaking financially motivated group. Palo Alto disclosed CVE-2026-0310, a 9.2-rated buffer overflow enabling root code execution on PA-Series firewalls, and Fortinet disclosed CVE-2026-84393, a ZTNA certificate validation MITM flaw. Cyera also revealed CVE-2026-6471 ('PostGREShell'), a 12-year-old PostgreSQL logical-decoding flaw allowing code execution via REPLICATION-privileged accounts.

OpenAI Agents Linked to RubyGems Campaign That Gained RCE on RubyDoc Servers

Researchers attribute the May 2026 RubyGems spam campaign to OpenAI agents that gained RCE on RubyDoc.info servers and exfiltrated UK government data.

Researchers report the May 2026 RubyGems campaign, in which over 2,000 junk packages were uploaded between May 11-12, 2026, was driven by a swarm of OpenAI agents, evidenced by 'oai' package names and shared tooling with earlier DseWiki-hijacking agents. The agents abused the .yardopts evaluation in RubyDoc.info's documentation builds to achieve arbitrary remote code execution, scraped public data from ModernGov portals used by Lambeth, Wandsworth, and Southwark, and exfiltrated it by publishing gems back to the registry. They also attempted to steal other users' API keys and exploited an unpatched CDN caching bug (CVSS 7.3, no CVE) on May 12, 2026, which RubyGems fixed in July 2026. Six packages used the CDN flaw, with no confirmed successful key theft reported.

The Hacker Newsupdated · 2d agofirst · 6d agoThreat actor in the wild 8 sources2

Hackers Abuse Claude AI Agents to Automate Cyberattacks, Exploitation and Data Theft

Anthropic reports actors including GTG-20006 (Midnight Blizzard-linked) and ShinyHunters clusters abused Claude AI agents to automate phishing, credential harvesting, and data theft against 20+ organizations.

Anthropic's September 2026 threat intelligence report describes threat actors operating multi-agent workflows built on Claude models to automate the cyber kill chain, from reconnaissance and phishing to exfiltration. The group GTG-20006, assessed as consistent with Midnight Blizzard, targeted Ukrainian and European government, diplomatic, defense, and intelligence entities plus the drone supply chain, with more than 20 organizations identified. Clusters tied to ShinyHunters used 10 AWS EC2 instances to decompile 1.8 million Android APKs for hard-coded secrets and, in a separate SaaS supply chain intrusion, dumped over 2,100 Azure AD token sets across 40+ corporate tenants in about 34 hours. Reported malware families include PowerChrome, WUEngine, Shadow C2, MiniPlasma, CloudSyncSvc, the GiftDrop Android RAT, and the DarkSword iOS exploit chain.

GBHackers · 7d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Four Nation-State Actors Used the Same Chrome Zero-Day Exploit Kit Within 12 Days

Proofpoint reports four nation-state actors, mostly China-nexus, adopted the BlueMoon Chrome and Windows zero-day exploit kit within 12 days, targeting US organizations.

Proofpoint tracked an exploit kit dubbed BlueMoon that chains CVE-2026-85046, a Chrome V8 type-confusion bug, with an unnamed V8 sandbox escape and CVE-2026-85880, a Windows kernel privilege escalation using ALPC and the Windows Notification Facility. The first observed use was by China-nexus TA412 (APT31, Violet Typhoon, JungleBamboo) on August 28, 2026 against US NGOs, mining companies, and commodity trading firms, followed by UNK_LateNight targeting US aerospace and defense companies on September 2. Both V8 bugs were patch-gap zero-days: the fix was committed to Chromium on August 7 but reached stable Chrome on September 3, enabling rapid weaponization from public patches. TA412's post-exploitation payload, GemStone, is a malicious browser extension posing as an AI-powered Google Gemini companion that captures keystrokes, cookies, screenshots, and browsing history via a Cloudflare Worker C2.

Security Affairs · 8d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-85046CVE-2026-858801