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32 stories in the last 30d

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ICE to Pay LexisNexis Millions for Data to Feed to Palantir

ICE will pay LexisNexis millions more dollars for continued data access feeding Palantir's ELITE platform used by Enforcement and Removal Operations.

Newly published procurement records show ICE plans to pay LexisNexis millions more dollars for continued access to data that feeds Palantir's ELITE platform. The system helps ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations identify which neighborhoods to target by combining data from private suppliers and government agencies. The news comes as ICE arrested more than 51,000 people in July, many of them at airports.

404 Media · Aug 11, 2026Policy & legal

Nvidia and Palantir team up to run supply chains with AI, starting with Nvidia's own million-part operation

Nvidia and Palantir integrated open Nemotron models and cuOpt into Foundry to run AI-driven supply chains, starting with Nvidia's million-part operation.

Nvidia and Palantir announced a partnership to run supply chains with AI, first deployed on Nvidia's own network of millions of parts and thousands of suppliers; a single Vera Rubin rack contains 1.3 million components. Palantir is integrating open Nemotron models into its Foundry platform for customer fine-tuning, while Nvidia cuOpt handles scenario planning and optimization, with decisions fed back to improve models over time. The stack runs on customer hardware or in the cloud through the Sovereign AI OS reference architecture with infrastructure partners Dell, Cisco, Rackspace, and Nebius, with more details shown at AIPCon 11.

The Decoder · 7d agoAI industry1

AI labs have a data trust problem that their policies haven't solved

Nvidia, Palantir, and Booz Allen restrict Anthropic's Fable over data-retention distrust, exposing gaps in AI labs' customer data policies.

Nvidia limits Anthropic's Fable to non-sensitive work and runs its own Nemotron models for internal tasks, while Palantir blocks Fable deployment until Anthropic grants irrevocable zero-data-retention guarantees, and Booz Allen bans it for proprietary cybersecurity work. John Schulman and researcher Sarah Hooker explain that labs can still extract customer IP from metadata, user traces, and synthetic data even under zero data retention. The trust crisis crystallized around Tristan Buckmaster's accusation that OpenAI's Codex absorbed his Navier-Stokes drafts, though OpenAI later stated his prompts could not have influenced its model.

The Decoder · 1d agoAI industry

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

The Rise of the Forward Deployed Engineer — and How To Do the Job Right

Palantir veteran Vinoo Ganesh traces the forward deployed engineer role and shares practices for building effective FDE teams.

Kepler CEO and former Palantir forward deployed engineer Vinoo Ganesh argues that labs, startups, and PE firms hire FDEs without a shared definition of the role. He recounts Palantir's Project Frontline rotation, which trained about 250 software engineers as FDEs, many now leading forward deployed teams at OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and Anduril. A 2013 failure of the Phoenix transaction store at a bank, where real-world data gaps caused roughly 2.3 million keyspaces and an out-of-memory crash, illustrates why FDEs must own the gap between design and production reality. At Kepler he places the FDE function inside product rather than sales.

Latent Space · 4d agoAI industry 4 sources1

Fake Claude Opus 5 app delivers malware and wipes its own tracks

A fake 'Claude Opus 5' GitHub repository impersonating Anthropic distributes RevStealer, a Windows infostealer stealing passwords, crypto wallets and VPN credentials.

Morphisec identified a malicious GitHub repository, Claude-Opus-5-Free-Desktop, impersonating Anthropic to distribute a roughly 101 MB download that launches RevStealer, a Windows information-stealing malware. The malware targets browser credentials, Windows Credential Manager, a dozen password managers, more than fifty cryptocurrency wallets, VPN, messaging, game launcher and streaming accounts, streaming stolen data to its server before deleting itself. It evades analysis with ten sandbox and VM checks, indirect system calls, Windows Defender exclusions, a fake verification window, and a Polygon blockchain smart contract fallback for C2. Only 1 of 66 antivirus engines flagged the sample at check time.

Help Net Security · 16d agoMalware

Claude is a Contrarian

Opinion piece argues Claude habitually contradicts explicit user instructions, injecting contrarian content despite CLAUDE.md rules and user objections.

A developer recounts repeated instruction-following failures with Claude, claiming it contradicts explicit requests, adds unnecessary work, and ignores AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md directives. The author contrasts this with OpenAI, DeepSeek, and Qwen models, which he says more readily apologize and undo mistakes. He theorizes Claude's training makes it assume the human is wrong and needs correcting. The post is personal commentary with no benchmarks or systematic evaluation.

HelmGuard Raises $7.3 Million for Agentic GRC and Security

Agentic GRC and security startup HelmGuard raised a $7.3 million seed round co-led by Infinity Ventures and Frontline.

HelmGuard, a UK-based startup founded in 2024 by former Palantir executive John Daley (CEO) and Jack Miller (CTO), announced a $7.3 million seed round co-led by Infinity Ventures and Frontline, with participation from FinTech Collective, Stage 2 Capital, and Entrepreneurs First. The company builds agentic governance, risk and compliance (GRC) software that collects risk signals directly from integrated source systems and uses AI agents to automate risk management, assurance, and control gap assessments. It claims the platform cuts assessment cycles to hours by unifying fragmented compliance and security data.

SecurityWeek · 7d agoIndustry

Attackers impersonate popular AI brands to spread malware

Sophos documented 38 MDR cases where attackers impersonated AI brands like Claude and Perplexity to deliver infostealers and backdoors.

Sophos X-Ops analyzed 12 months of MDR cases and confirmed 38 incidents involving AI. Software impersonation accounted for 30 cases, with Claude impersonated in 26; fake installers used an 'InstallFix' technique delivering mshta commands, in-memory payloads, and process hollowing. Malicious browser extensions posing as AI assistants, including a fake Perplexity extension with 10,000 installs, acted as infostealers. In one case, attackers used a Claude coding agent to develop a Rust remote access trojan communicating over Slack after an SQL injection compromise.

Help Net Security · 27d agoThreat actor in the wild

Lawmakers call for investigation into impact of CISA staffing cuts

Democratic lawmakers asked the GAO to investigate how CISA's roughly one-third workforce reduction affects its mission and critical-infrastructure protection.

Democratic lawmakers led by House Homeland Security ranking member Bennie Thompson asked the Government Accountability Office to examine how recent staffing cuts at CISA affect its ability to protect critical infrastructure and respond to cyber and physical threats. Nearly 1,000 CISA employees have been fired or quit since the Trump administration began, and acting director Nick Andersen plans to hire 300. The letter also flags the FY2027 budget proposal to eliminate nearly 900 additional positions and cut more than $700 million from the agency. CISA has had no confirmed director since Jen Easterly departed, and GAO confirmed it received the request.

The Record · 26d agoPolicy & legal

.blend URL Viewer

Simon Willison demos a .blend URL viewer built with GPT-6 Astra in Codex and ChatGPT Images 2.5 generating Blender models.

Simon Willison used ChatGPT Images 2.5 to generate a Faberge egg concept image themed after the TV show Pluribus, then had Codex running GPT-6 Astra (high) execute a Blender local skill to build a 3D model from it. He published the result as a .blend URL viewer tool and continues experimenting with agentic Blender workflows. The post is a hands-on demo of AI-driven creative tooling rather than a security or release announcement.

Simon Willison · 7d agoAI tools & infra

MaaS Campaign Combines ClickFix, ErrTraffic and Cruciferra

eSentire uncovered a malware-as-a-service campaign pairing ClickFix social-engineering lures with the ErrTraffic and Cruciferra malware families.

Threat researchers at eSentire identified an ongoing malware-as-a-service (MaaS) campaign that combines ClickFix social-engineering lures with the ErrTraffic and Cruciferra malware families. The campaign relies on ClickFix-style deception to trick users into executing malicious actions that deliver the malware. Further technical detail on affected sectors or infection volumes was not provided in the disclosure.

Infosecurity Magazine · 28d agoMalware in the wild

How Threat Actors Are Turning Trusted AI Platforms Into an Attack Surface

Huntress details campaigns abusing Claude Artifacts, claude.ai/share links, and ChatGPT/Grok conversations to deliver SectopRAT, MacSync, and AMOS stealers.

Huntress SOC documented nine months of campaigns in which attackers weaponized trusted AI platform features—Claude Artifacts, public claude.ai/share links, and indexable ChatGPT/Grok conversations—to deliver malware. The July FakeAgent campaign hit more than 29 organizations via a malicious Claude Artifact posing as a Claude Desktop download page that redirected to SectopRAT. A claude.ai/share link disguised as an Apple Support guide tricked a victim into running a curl command that deployed the MacSync stealer, harvesting cookies, credentials, keychain secrets, Telegram sessions, and SSH/cloud keys, while SEO-poisoned ChatGPT and Grok conversations delivered the AMOS stealer via ClickFix-style instructions.

BleepingComputer · 5d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

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

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

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

Hacker News · AI · 3d agoAI researchHN 63↑ · 6 comments1· 1 read

Hackers are stealing Claude tokens from subscribers

Infostealer malware is stealing Claude login sessions, letting attackers mint OAuth tokens and burn subscribers' paid usage largely undetected.

Anthropic confirmed a bad actor used common infostealer malware to steal Claude login sessions from users' computers and consume their paid usage. A UK consultant saw idle token usage climb, and Anthropic suspended his account, invalidated sessions and Claude Code tokens, and issued a £44.49 partial refund on his $200-per-month plan. Multiple other users on Reddit and GitHub reported similar theft; Anthropic signed out affected users and issued refunds, but still lacks itemized usage reporting to help users detect misuse.

TechCrunch · AI · 8d agoAI safety & security in the wild1

Dogged Russia-based botnet dismantled after 23-year run

Law enforcement, CrowdStrike and Shadowserver dismantled the 23-year-old Sality P2P botnet that infected more than 11 million devices.

Sality, a Russia-based peer-to-peer botnet active for 23 years and infecting over 11 million devices, was dismantled by law enforcement working with CrowdStrike and the Shadowserver Foundation. CrowdStrike poisoned the botnet's peer list so infected machines permanently disappeared from the operator's view, while domains were seized in a coordinated effort involving the FBI, Justice Department, Europol and authorities from Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. The financially motivated operation enabled cryptocurrency theft, DDoS attacks and other cyberattacks, and Europol said the effort dates back to 2017; the operators were not named.

CyberScoop · 14d agoMalware

MacSync Stealer: How a Google Search for Claude Led to a macOS Infostealer

Huntress dissects MacSync Stealer, a macOS infostealer delivered through fake Claude Code download pages in Google search results.

Huntress SOC analysts published a reverse-engineering analysis of MacSync Stealer, a macOS infostealer distributed through fraudulent Claude Code download pages surfaced via web searches. Users searching for Anthropic's Claude coding tool are redirected to fake download pages that install the stealer, abusing developer trust in popular AI tooling. The writeup covers the analysis of the sample and its delivery chain.

Huntress · Aug 17, 2026Malware in the wild

New Python-Based Payload MechaFlounder Used by Chafer

Unit 42 identified MechaFlounder, a new Python backdoor used by the Chafer group to target a Turkish government entity via HTTP-based C2.

Unit 42 reports that in November 2018 the Chafer group targeted a Turkish government entity, reusing the win10-update[.]com infrastructure reported earlier in 2018 by ClearSky. The new secondary payload, tracked as MechaFlounder, is Python compiled with PyInstaller and acts as a backdoor supporting file upload/download and command execution. It beacons over HTTP using anomalous GET requests containing the username and hostname, suggesting a custom C2 server rather than a standard web server. Code overlap with OilRig's Clayside VBScript was noted, but Chafer and OilRig remain tracked as separate groups.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Threat actor

REVSTEALER ramps up: analysis of up-and-coming infostealer

Elastic Security Labs analyzes REVSTEALER, an emerging infostealer harvesting browser credentials, cryptocurrency wallets, and gaming accounts.

Elastic Security Labs published a deep-dive analysis of REVSTEALER, described as an up-and-coming infostealer. The malware targets browser data, cryptocurrency wallets, and gaming accounts, with credential harvesting as its core function. The report tracks the family's capabilities as it ramps up activity in the wild.

Elastic Security Labs · 15d agoMalware in the wild

US, UK, Dutch Agencies Expose Iranian ‘Chosen Brick’ Surveillance Malware

US, UK, and Dutch agencies warn Iranian state actors deploy Windows surveillance malware 'Chosen Brick' against dissidents, activists, and journalists worldwide.

Joint advisories from US, UK, and Dutch agencies describe Chosen Brick, a Windows surveillance malware active since at least 2025 and used by Iranian state cyber actors to track regime opponents. The malware harvests contacts, emails, and social media messages, persists via registry Run keys, evades Microsoft Defender, and uses per-victim Telegram bot IDs for command-and-control and exfiltration. Operators build rapport on WhatsApp and Telegram posing as acquaintances or support staff, disguising payloads as utility software or fake medical documents. Capabilities include screenshot capture, audio recording, credential theft, secondary payload delivery, and data wiping.

SecurityWeekupdated · 5h agofirst · 1d agoMalware in the wild 7 sources

Infostealers Target Claude, Cursor, Codex and Other AI Agents to Steal Credentials and Sensitive Data

Gen Digital researchers report infostealer families Amatera, Remus and CallbackBeaver now harvest Claude, Cursor and Codex agent data, including tokens and MCP configs.

Gen Digital researchers found commodity infostealers extending their collection rules to local AI coding agent data from Claude, Cursor, Codex, Cline, Continue and OpenCode on Windows and macOS. Amatera targets Cline and Continue, Remus targets Claude, Cursor and OpenCode, and CallbackBeaver added Claude and Cursor with more than 5,000 samples observed in 30 days; Djinn Stealer hits Claude, Codex, Gemini, Cline, OpenCode and Kilo on macOS. Stolen data includes access and refresh tokens, prompt histories, conversation databases and MCP configurations holding API keys, potentially exposing connected source-control, cloud and ticketing systems. Remus is assessed as a Lumma Stealer variant using EtherHiding C2 resolution via Ethereum smart contracts.

GBHackers · 8d agoMalware in the wild1

Once popular for attacking AI, ASCII smuggling is embraced by spammers

Spammers adopt ASCII smuggling—invisible Unicode tag characters—to evade email filters, with Microsoft Defender detections spiking to 2.5 million per day.

ASCII smuggling hides text in Unicode tag characters (e.g., U+E0041 for "A") that are invisible to humans but readable by LLMs and text processors. The technique gained attention as a stealthy prompt-injection vector and is now used by spammers to obfuscate keywords from email detectors. Microsoft reported Defender for Office smuggling detections jumped from roughly 21,000 per day to over 1.3 million in early February, reaching 2.5 million within four days, before falling sharply in mid-May.

Ars Technica · Security · 12d agoPhishing & fraud

GPUThor: Amplifying Rowhammer Attacks via Non-Uniform Patterns to Exploit ECC-Protected GPUs

GPUThor uses non-uniform hammering to amplify Rowhammer on NVIDIA GPUs, achieving 500X-23,500X more bit flips and first exploits of ECC-protected GPUs.

GPUThor is a Rowhammer attack on NVIDIA GPUs that reverse-engineers memory-access coalescing behavior to enable non-uniform hammering patterns activating aggressor rows more intensely than decoy rows. By identifying refresh instances where in-DRAM mitigations apply, it constructs longer patterns that escape mitigation across refresh intervals. It yields 500X to 23,500X more bit flips than prior GPU Rowhammer attacks across NVIDIA A4000, A4500, A5000, and A6000 GPUs, and enables the first Rowhammer exploits on ECC-protected GPUs via uncorrectable double and triple bit flips, making denial-of-service and privilege-escalation attacks practical.

arXiv cs.CR · 2d agoResearch

ModaLens: Measuring Image Sensitivity in Report-Conditioned Medical VLMs

ModaLens image-swap audit shows report availability cuts MedGemma-27B image sensitivity on MIMIC-CXR from 20.94% to 4.26% answer changes.

ModaLens is a paired image-swap audit measuring how report availability affects image sensitivity in report-conditioned medical VLMs. On MedGemma-27B across 3,199 paired MIMIC-CXR cases from 293 patients (14 questions per case), generated answers changed on 4.26% of image-swap trials with the report versus 20.94% without it, a 16.7-point paired difference (95% CI 15.6-17.7). The original prompt with a lowercase first-token readout gave 4.70% versus 17.07%, and the direction replicated in two further model lineages. Labels derived from reports limit conclusions about visual correctness; code, prompts, and run records are publicly released.

Hugging Face daily papers · 3d agoAI research

Post-DEF CON Phishing Uses Malicious Google Doc to Deliver Malware

Huntress uncovered post-DEF CON phishing via X direct messages using a malicious Google Doc to deliver AMOS and NetSupport RAT malware.

Huntress uncovered a phishing campaign targeting attendees after Black Hat and DEF CON. Attackers used X direct messages pointing to a malicious Google Doc as the delivery vehicle. Payloads include AMOS, a macOS infostealer, and the NetSupport RAT, among other malware.

Huntress · 28d agoPhishing & fraud

The 12 Best Managed Detection & Response (MDR) Services, Compared and Priced

Buyer's guide compares 12 MDR services, naming Huntress best value, CrowdStrike Falcon Complete for response authority and Expel for transparency.

The article compares 12 managed detection and response providers across response authority, tool bundling and pricing, highlighting Huntress for published SMB pricing and CrowdStrike Falcon Complete for unilateral containment. It stresses the consolidation landscape: Sophos completed its acquisition of Secureworks in February 2025 for approximately $859 million, and Arctic Wolf closed its purchase of BlackBerry's Cylance endpoint assets the same month. It also warns that only full-response contract tiers isolate hosts and kill processes, while lower tiers only triage or guide.

GBHackersupdated · 8d agofirst · 8d agoIndustry 3 sources1

DeepZero: Open-source hunting for vulnerable Windows drivers

DeepZero, a new open-source engine, automates discovery of exploitable Windows kernel drivers for BYOVD attacks using Ghidra, Semgrep, and an LLM.

DeepZero is a free, open-source Python pipeline orchestrator that automates hunting for exploitable Windows kernel drivers relevant to BYOVD (bring your own vulnerable driver) attacks. Its seven-stage YAML pipeline parses PE headers, filters for kernel-mode drivers with IOCTL surfaces, excludes drivers listed on loldrivers.io, then runs headless Ghidra decompilation, Semgrep scanning, and an LLM-based exploitability assessment. The maintainer reports multiple verified vulnerabilities in the Snappy Driver Installer corpus, some still in the disclosure process, and notes findings involving plug-and-play-created device objects may need physical hardware to confirm.

Help Net Security · 1d agoTools

The 12 Best Antivirus (Endpoint Protection) Software for Business, Compared and Priced

GBHackers compares 12 business antivirus products on detection, EDR depth, pricing, and platform coverage, ranking CrowdStrike and Bitdefender joint top at 8.8.

The roundup scores 12 enterprise endpoint protection vendors across detection, EDR depth, management, pricing transparency, and platform coverage. CrowdStrike and Bitdefender tie at 8.8, with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint scoring 8.5 and noted as effectively free for Microsoft 365 E5 licensees. The piece also flags that Kaspersky cannot legally be sold in the US and that Panda and Webroot now sit under WatchGuard and OpenText respectively.

GBHackers · 9d agoIndustry 2 sources1

International Operation Disrupts Sality P2P Botnet

US-led international operation with Europol, CrowdStrike, and Shadowserver sinkholed the 20-year-old Sality P2P botnet, once exceeding one million infected machines.

On August 31, 2026, authorities from the US, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania, supported by Europol, CrowdStrike, and the Shadowserver Foundation, disrupted the Sality P2P botnet by sinkholing communications and seizing domains. Sality has operated for over 20 years, at its peak controlling more than one million infected machines used for credential theft, spam, proxy services, crypto-theft, and DDoS attacks, with over 11 million unique IP addresses linked to its infrastructure since 2017. The disruption exploited the botnet's super-peer reputation mechanism by removing legitimate peers via protocol-level manipulation and inserting sinkhole entries into emptied peer lists.

Infosecurity Magazine · 14d agoMalware

The Pelican comparison grid for Astra is pretty interesting

Simon Willison's pelican SVG comparison shows GPT-6 Astra producing markedly better images than GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna across reasoning levels.

Willison generated pelicans-riding-bicycles SVGs with newly accessed GPT-6 Astra at low through max reasoning levels and rendered them in a comparison grid against GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna. Astra's outputs were markedly more coherent, while even the best GPT-5.6-Sol images remained largely abstract shapes. Astra does not support a reasoning=none setting, so all comparisons involved reasoning-enabled runs.

Simon Willison · 12d agoAI research

Mistral raises €3B as sovereign AI becomes big business

Mistral AI raised a €3B Series D at a €21B+ valuation, led by Samsung Electronics, to scale European compute capacity and sovereign AI services.

French AI lab Mistral AI raised €3 billion (~$3.58B) at a post-money valuation above €21 billion, which it calls the largest equity round ever completed by a European technology company. Samsung Electronics led the round, with EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund and PSG Equity as co-leads; a16z, Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures, Advent, BlackRock, and Luxembourg also participated. The company plans to build 1 GW of European compute capacity by 2030, offer region-selectable query processing, and host third-party open-weight models as part of a sovereign AI strategy. Mistral operates in 20 countries and targets governments and enterprises seeking control over AI models and data residency.

TechCrunch · AI · 8d agoAI industry

Four REVSTEALER-Linked Modules Disable Windows Update and Defender to Run a Crypto Miner

Elastic documents four persistent REVSTEALER-linked tools (ProManager, WinUpdate, SoftManager, LockAppHost); LockAppHost disables Windows Update and Defender to run a crypto miner.

Elastic Security Labs identified four previously unreported executables tied to REVSTEALER, a commercial Windows infostealer sold since at least February 2026: ProManager, WinUpdate, SoftManager, and LockAppHost. LockAppHost abuses CMSTP for elevation, adds Microsoft Defender exclusions, disables five Windows Update services and 13 scheduled tasks, then hides a miner in legitimate Windows processes; other modules steal wallets, clipboard-swap crypto addresses, and turn victims into reverse proxies. The components share REVSTEALER tradecraft including packer, runtime function resolution, and Polygon smart-contract backup configuration (EtherHiding). Elastic's detection rule matched about 4,700 VirusTotal samples over the past year; distribution uses hijacked YouTube channels promoting game cheats and a fake 'Claude Opus 5 Free Desktop' app.

The Hacker News · 11d agoMalware in the wild