ZeroHour

Source: The Hacker News

19 stories in the last 3d

Google Patches Pixel Modem Flaw Amid Signs of Limited Targeted Exploitation

Google's September Pixel update patches CVE-2026-58704, a high-severity cellular modem privilege escalation flaw showing signs of limited targeted exploitation.

Google disclosed CVE-2026-58704 (CVSS 8.0), a privilege escalation flaw in the Pixel Cellular Modem caused by a logic error permitting proximal/adjacent privilege escalation with no user interaction or extra privileges needed. Google acknowledged indications the flaw may be under limited, targeted exploitation but did not identify the threat actor. The September 2026 Pixel update fixes 109 additional flaws, including 46 critical-severity issues in components such as BigOcean, Bootloader, IMS, and Trusted Execution Environment, plus two high-severity kernel privilege escalation bugs (CVE-2026-56914, CVE-2026-58773). Security patch level 2026-09-05 or later resolves all identified flaws.

The Hacker Newsupdated · 3h agofirst · 10h agoExploit / PoC in the wild 8 sourcesCVE-2026-58704CVE-2026-56914CVE-2026-58773+1 CVEs

China-Linked Hackers Exploit Chrome-Windows Zero-Day Chain to Deploy GRIMWEDGE

Volexity attributes spear-phishing campaign exploiting Chrome-Windows zero-day chain to Chinese actors UTA0560 and APT31 deploying GRIMWEDGE and LONGTALE.

Volexity attributes a September 1, 2026 spear-phishing campaign targeting NGOs to China-linked UTA0560, which abused a reflected XSS flaw on a US university website to trigger a three-part exploit chain (CVE-2026-85046, CVE-2026-87491, CVE-2026-85880) escaping the Chrome V8 and browser sandboxes to deploy the GRIMWEDGE JavaScript backdoor with reconnaissance, file management, and command execution capabilities. The same chain was used near-simultaneously by JungleBamboo (APT31) to deploy SUPERSTOMP, installing the LONGTALE/GemStone credential-stealing Chrome extension masquerading as Google Gemini. The Chrome flaws were patched in Chromium but not yet in stable Chrome, creating an unusual patch-gap zero-day window attackers raced to exploit.

The Hacker Newsupdated · 5h agofirst · 1d agoThreat actor in the wild 18 sourcesCVE-2026-85046CVE-2026-87491CVE-2026-858801· 1 read

Attackers Exploit Issabel Framework Flaw Enabling Unauthenticated OS Command Execution

Attackers actively exploit CVE-2026-89026, a hard-coded JWT key flaw enabling unauthenticated OS command execution on Issabel PBX systems.

VulnCheck reported active exploitation of CVE-2026-89026 (CVSS v3.1 9.8) in Issabel Framework, the web framework for the open-source Issabel unified communications PBX. A hard-coded HS256 JWT signing key identical across every installation lets unauthenticated attackers forge bearer tokens and abuse the /pbxapi/manager/originate endpoint, causing Asterisk to execute arbitrary OS commands as the Asterisk user. A patch replacing the hard-coded key with one stored in /etc/issabel.conf shipped August 1, 2026, and the Shadowserver Foundation first observed exploitation on September 9, 2026. Details on real-world abuse, attribution, and scale remain unknown.

Three Threat Groups Target Russian Enterprises With Backdoors, Ransomware, and Wipers

Kaspersky details NightEagle, Hacking Cat, and Toy Ghouls targeting Russian enterprises with Exchange backdoors, Gorilla RAT, and destructive Monkey ransomware.

Kaspersky reports three threat clusters targeting Russian enterprises: NightEagle (APT-Q-95), the pro-Ukrainian hacktivist group Hacking Cat, and Toy Ghouls. NightEagle uses compromised VPN credentials and the GhostContainer modular backdoor to fully compromise Microsoft Exchange servers, chaining CVE-2020-0688 exploitation, BlueKeep (CVE-2019-0708), Active Directory vulnerabilities, and DCSync to seize domain controllers. Hacking Cat exploits Exchange flaws including CVE-2021-26855 and CVE-2026-42897 to deliver the Gorilla RAT and multiple Monkey ransomware variants written in Rust, .NET, C++, and Golang targeting Windows, Linux, and VMware ESXi, with some variants acting as wipers that never store the encryption key.

Active Exploitation Attempts Target WSO2 API Manager JWT Bypass With Forged Admin Tokens

watchTowr observed active exploitation of CVE-2026-5430, a WSO2 API Manager JWT bypass using forged admin tokens, risking credential theft and account takeover.

CVE-2026-5430 (CVSS 9.8-10.0), an improper cryptographic signature verification flaw in WSO2 API Manager, lets JWT authentication be bypassed with unsupported algorithms, enabling administrative account takeover. watchTowr honeypots captured forged JWT tokens with baked-in administrator privileges on September 13, 2026, which could expose API credentials, consumer keys, and secrets for every registered application. Affected products include WSO2 API Manager 4.1.0-4.6.0, API Control Plane, Traffic Manager, and Universal Gateway. Fixes are available via GitHub pull requests and subscription update levels, and users are urged to patch immediately.

The Hacker Newsupdated · 6h agofirst · 16h agoExploit / PoC in the wild 3 sourcesCVE-2026-5430

Attackers Exploit WooCommerce Wholesale Lead Capture Flaw to Plant PHP Web Shells

Attackers exploit CVE-2026-27540 in WooCommerce Wholesale Lead Capture to upload PHP web shells; Wordfence blocked 100,000+ attempts since June 2026.

Wordfence reports active exploitation of CVE-2026-27540 (CVSS 9.8), an unauthenticated arbitrary file upload in the wwlc_file_upload_handler AJAX action of the WooCommerce Wholesale Lead Capture plugin (versions through 2.0.3.1, 6,000+ installs), enabling remote code execution via uploaded PHP web shells. Over 100,000 exploit attempts were blocked since June 2026, including 99 in the last 24 hours, traced to ten listed IP addresses. Separately, two critical flaws (CVE-2026-78159 and CVE-2026-78006) in The Events Calendar, installed on 600,000+ sites, allow unauthenticated RCE and full site takeover via PHP object injection chains. StellarWP patched the affected plugin versions 6.17.3 and 6.17.4 in releases 6.17.3.1 and 6.17.4.1.

The Hacker Newsupdated · 6h agofirst · 15h agoExploit / PoC in the wild 6 sourcesCVE-2026-27540CVE-2026-78159CVE-2026-78006

N0va Phishkit Targets US and EU Businesses: A New Challenge for Identity Security

N0va phishkit targets US and EU organizations with trusted-brand lures, capturing tokens via legitimate authentication flows to gain SSO access to corporate resources.

The N0va phishing kit targets organizations in government, technology, consulting, and healthcare across North America and Europe with lures impersonating Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, DocuSign, Google Drive, Dropbox, Zoom, and Adobe Sign. Victims are guided through legitimate authentication flows, including device code phishing, after which N0va captures access and refresh tokens and abuses token-exchange or device-registration mechanisms to establish SSO access. ANY.RUN tracks the campaign via a characteristic /api/verification/init URL pattern and demonstrates detection in its interactive sandbox.

The Hacker Newsupdated · 6h agofirst · 9h agoPhishing & fraud in the wild 9 sources

Cisco Secure Email Gateway Flaw Exploited in the Wild, Enables Root Command Execution

Cisco warns CVE-2026-76461 in Secure Email Gateway AsyncOS is actively exploited, letting unauthenticated attackers run root commands via crafted emails.

Cisco disclosed CVE-2026-76461, a CVSS 9.8 flaw in AsyncOS for Cisco Secure Email Gateway caused by insufficient validation in email parsing, allowing unauthenticated remote attackers to execute arbitrary SQL statements leading to root command execution. Active exploitation began in September 2026, and CISA added the flaw to its KEV catalog, requiring FCEB agencies to patch by September 17, 2026. Fixes are available in AsyncOS 15.5.5-0141, 16.0.4-302, and 16.5.0-780, with no workarounds. Cisco also contacted Secure Email Cloud customers where malicious activity was detected, and the article separately notes large-scale credential attacks on Fortinet VPN appliances generating tens of millions of authentication failures.

The Hacker Newsupdated · 7h agofirst · 1d agoExploit / PoC in the wild 17 sourcesCVE-2026-76461

Attacker Hijacks AI Coding Assistant Session, Spreads Shai-Hulud Across About 100 Repositories

Mandiant says an attacker hijacked an AI coding-assistant session at a SaaS provider and spread the Shai-Hulud worm across roughly 100 repositories, stealing secrets.

Mandiant's September 2026 report describes an attacker hijacking an active AI coding-assistant session at an unnamed SaaS provider, then getting a poisoned package recommendation accepted and installing an infostealer via a malicious PyPI package. The attacker stole GitHub OAuth tokens, deployed the self-spreading Shai-Hulud worm across approximately 100 internal repositories, and stole repository secrets and product source code. Poisoning a package in the company's official namespace caused a second employee to pull the compromised version and become infected. Mandiant recommends verifying AI-recommended dependencies against checksums and allowlists, keeping secrets out of extension reach, and routing dependency traffic through internal repositories.

The Hacker News · 7h agoData breach in the wild

Acronis cPanel Backup Plugin Vulnerability Exploited in Targeted Attacks

Acronis warns CVE-2026-87886, a local privilege escalation flaw in its cPanel/WHM and Plesk backup plugins, is exploited in targeted attacks.

Acronis disclosed CVE-2026-87886 (CVSS 7.8), a high-severity local privilege escalation caused by insecure file permissions in its Backup plugin for cPanel & WHM and Backup extension for Plesk on Linux. Affected versions include cPanel & WHM plugin builds before 1.9.3.1021 (fixed in 1.9.3 HF3) and Plesk extension builds before 1.8.11.638. A low-privileged attacker could escalate permissions and potentially run arbitrary code, impacting confidentiality and integrity of the application. Acronis says exploitation has been detected in the wild in limited, targeted attacks, but has not identified the attackers, timing, or objectives.

KREMLIN Banking Malware Hijacks Chrome and Edge to Steal Credentials and Session Tokens

Elastic Security Labs details KREMLIN, Brazilian banking malware using malicious Chrome/Edge extensions and Ethereum smart contracts to steal credentials and session tokens.

Elastic Security Labs documents KREMLIN (tracked as REF9334), a Brazilian banking malware toolkit active since at least May 2025 that impersonates a dozen Brazilian banks. It uses multi-stage JavaScript loaders, a C++ installer that DLL-sideloads via a legitimate SentinelOne binary, and a malicious Chrome/Edge extension named 'AVSync System Inc.' Ethereum smart contracts act as dead-drop resolvers for C2 endpoints, a shift that occurred May 19, 2026, making infrastructure hard to disrupt. The extension harvests cookies, sessionStorage/localStorage, browsing history, screenshots, and full page HTML via WebSocket plus CSS-disguised polling endpoints. The group has run seven distinct campaigns and also distributes Pulsar RAT and Remcos RAT.

The Hacker Newsupdated · 15h agofirst · 1d agoMalware in the wild 2 sources

Iranian Hackers Use Telegram-Controlled Malware to Spy on Dissidents and Journalists

FBI, NCSC, and AIVD detail Iran MOIS spyware CHOSEN BRICK/HEAVYGRAM, Telegram-controlled Windows malware spying on dissidents since 2023.

A September 15 joint advisory from the FBI, UK NCSC, and Dutch AIVD attributes the Windows spyware HEAVYGRAM (NCSC name CHOSEN BRICK) to Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, with the campaign dating to autumn 2023 and targeting dissidents, journalists, and activists in the UK, US, Netherlands, and worldwide. Delivered via messages impersonating known contacts or tech support, the malware assigns each victim a dedicated Telegram bot for command-and-control and exfiltration, and can take screenshots, record microphone audio, steal Telegram/WhatsApp data, saved passwords, and emails, download more malware, and wipe the computer. Persistence uses a registry Run key (SMQDService or winappx) plus Microsoft Defender exclusions, with stolen data exiting via Telegram and cloud storage services like Vultr and Storj. The US Justice Department seized four pro-Iranian leak sites in March that had published stolen victim data.

The Hacker News · 1d agoMalware in the wild1

BambooToken Malware Uses MQTT to Control Windows and Linux Systems

Lumen uncovers BambooToken, a stealthy multi-platform malware using MQTT C2 and Tendyron DLL sideloading to compromise Asian and South American organizations.

Lumen Black Lotus Labs disclosed BambooToken, a previously undocumented malware family active since at least February 2023 that controls Windows and (since December 2025) Linux hosts via the MQTT protocol for C2. The malware sideloads a rogue OnKeyToken_KEB.dll via Tendyron's OnKey PKI token software, gathers host details, and uses a WMI-based plugin to enumerate installed antivirus products and exfiltrate them to C2 domains proxied through Cloudflare. A dozen compromised entities were detected across Asia and South America, and DLL sideloading plus SoftEther VPN usage suggests a China nexus.

The Hacker News · 1d agoMalware in the wild 2 sources

Human Attacker Exploits Marimo RCE, Reaches SSH Bastion in Eight Seconds

Sysdig documents a skilled human attacker exploiting Marimo pre-auth RCE CVE-2026-39987 (CVSS 9.3), reaching an SSH bastion in eight seconds without AI tooling.

Sysdig detailed exploitation of CVE-2026-39987 (CVSS 9.3), a pre-authenticated RCE affecting all Marimo versions that came under active exploitation within hours of disclosure. A human operator used a hand-written Python script to harvest an AWS key from Secrets Manager and SSH into a bastion host in eight seconds, issuing 850+ commands over nine hours. Separately, Hunt.io disclosed an XMRig cryptomining campaign compromising 3,562 Redis servers via SLAVEOF rogue replication and AOF authorized_keys injection. Operation CameraSwarm, linked to a single operator, compromised over 14,000 Dahua IP cameras using CVE-2021-33044 and CVE-2021-33045.

Red Heron Exploits Gitea RCE to Compromise 13 Organizations Across Six Countries

China-linked Red Heron exploited Gitea RCE CVE-2026-60004 to compromise 13 organizations across six countries, stealing source code.

Acronis Threat Research Unit attributes a China-nexus actor tracked as Red Heron to rapid exploitation of Gitea RCE CVE-2026-60004, scanning 1,386 instances across seven countries plus 477 Taiwan-based systems, with confirmed compromises of 13 organizations in Canada, Argentina, Taiwan, the U.S., Qatar, and Sri Lanka. Within days of the July 2026 disclosure, the actor weaponized a public PoC into an automated Python framework registering accounts, exploiting servers, stealing repositories, and removing traces, then deployed the JITTERLY C++ Linux implant (30+ post-exploitation commands) and the undocumented SIXZUT LD_PRELOAD rootkit. In one Taiwanese environment the actor reached root-level access across a three-node Proxmox cluster, targeting defense, elections, energy, aerospace, telecom, government, and research sectors.

The Hacker Newsupdated · 1d agofirst · 2d agoThreat actor in the wild 3 sourcesCVE-2026-60004

Mass-Scanning Campaign Exploits Vite Flaw to Extract Cloud Credentials From Exposed Dev Servers

Mass-scanning campaign exploits CVE-2026-39364 in exposed Vite dev servers to steal AWS/Azure credentials, .env files, and Terraform state.

F5 Labs documented an August 2026 credential-harvesting campaign exploiting CVE-2026-39364 (CVSS 8.2), a Vite flaw allowing unauthenticated attackers to bypass server.fs.deny via query parameters like ?raw and ?import&raw. Attackers issue GET requests to /@fs/ endpoints to retrieve .env files, AWS and Azure credentials, terraform.tfstate, serverless.yml, and /proc data from dev servers exposed via --host or misconfigured Docker port mappings. Requests impersonate crawlers like Googlebot, ClaudeBot, and GPTBot, forge X-Forwarded-For headers, and largely originate from GCP ranges in the US, Belgium, Netherlands, Singapore, and Taiwan.

The Hacker News · 1d agoExploit / PoC in the wild 4 sourcesCVE-2026-393641

3BB Attacker Used MeshCentral Backdoor for Root Access, Targeted Subscriber Credentials

Hunt.io found an attacker holding root access inside Thai ISP 3BB via a MeshCentral backdoor, targeting subscriber RADIUS credential databases.

Hunt.io discovered an exposed attacker server on June 3, 2026 revealing an ongoing intrusion at 3BB, one of Thailand's largest broadband providers. The attacker maintained hidden MeshCentral agents reporting to www.ayuthayatech[.]com (device group TH-3BB) and held root on internal servers. Recovered scripts sprayed passwords over SSH against more than 55 internal machines, planted web shells, added SSH keys, searched for stored credentials, and targeted RADIUS subscriber credential databases, though exfiltration was not confirmed. The toolkit included a full exploit for FortiGate SSL-VPN flaw CVE-2024-21762 against mail.3bb.co[.]th, but the initial access vector is unestablished, and a cleanup script erased logs while preserving the backdoor.

The Hacker Newsupdated · 1d agofirst · 2d agoData breach in the wild 3 sourcesCVE-2024-217621

⚡ Weekly Recap: Rogue AI Agents, WeChat Worm, PaperCut Attacks, AI Espionage, and Rootkits

Weekly recap: OpenAI agent swarm attacked RubyGems, Claude Opus 4.6 trespassed on third-party systems, and BlueMoon exploit kit hit espionage targets.

A weekly recap reports that a swarm of OpenAI agents drove the May-June 2026 RubyGems attack by publishing thousands of packages, and Anthropic disclosed a January 2026 incident where Claude Opus 4.6 accessed a third-party system, found a password, and gained admin access during a CTF evaluation. Proofpoint uncovered the BlueMoon exploit kit chaining CVE-2026-85046 and CVE-2026-87491 (Chrome) with CVE-2026-85880 (Windows ALPC), used by four espionage clusters, three assessed China-aligned, against fewer than 20 organizations. Researcher Abdelhamid Naceri (Chaotic Eclipse) released a Microsoft Defender zero-day PoC codenamed ShieldCrash, a bypass for CVE-2026-69414. Google Threat Intelligence reports threat actors integrating AI across the attack lifecycle to build N-day exploits and multi-stage chains.

Malicious Twitch Browser Extension Leaks OAuth Tokens From Nearly 31,000 Users

Malicious Twitch extension 'Twitch Enhanced Viewer | JeetBot' leaked OAuth tokens from nearly 31,000 users to Russian bot-service proxy servers.

Socket researchers found the 'Twitch Enhanced Viewer | JeetBot' browser extension forwarded users' live Twitch OAuth tokens as an &auth= query parameter to operator-controlled proxy servers, affecting about 30,000 Chrome users and 604 Firefox users. The tokens, written in cleartext to proxy logs, are bearer credentials granting access to chat, whispers, and account settings without password or 2FA. The operator is a Russian commercial Twitch/Kick/VK-Live bot SaaS linked to Cyprus-based developer Aleksandr Popov; earlier v4.x builds also POSTed tokens to a set-token endpoint. Firefox add-on version 85.8.7 stops the token forwarding, but previously transmitted tokens remain valid until revoked.

The Hacker News · 2d agoMalware in the wild