Search: “Hive”

16 stories in the last 30d

AI-agent campaign exploited PaperCut CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078, compromising 440 servers at 395 organizations and reaching Domain Admin in 12.

GreyNoise tracked a likely Russian-speaking actor that used AI agents (OpenAI Codex, a DeepSeek model) to exploit an authentication bypass (CVE-2026-81578) and unsafe-reflection RCE (CVE-2026-82078) in PaperCut NG/MF starting August 31, 2026. At least 440 servers across 395 organizations in 48 countries were compromised, with one US high school going from initial access to Domain Admin in seven minutes. Escalation relied on LSASS and registry credential harvesting, pass-the-hash, the noPac technique (CVE-2021-42278/CVE-2021-42287), new Domain Admin accounts, and DCSync to steal NTDS.DIT data. Operators staged registry hives, used Ligolo tunneling and certutil Base64 encoding for exfiltration, and one attempt was blocked by Cloudflare WAF.

GBHackersupdated Sep 11, 10:05 UTC · 5d agofirst Sep 10, 05:20 UTC · 6d agoExploit / PoC in the wild 7 sources CVE-2026-81578 CVE-2026-82078 CVE-2021-42278+1 CVEs1

Agents Gone Wild: An AI-Orchestrated Global Campaign Against PaperCut NG/MF

AI-orchestrated campaign exploited PaperCut NG/MF RCE (CVE-2026-81578/82078), compromising 440+ instances at 395 organizations in 48 countries.

GreyNoise tracked a likely Russian-speaking actor using AI (OpenAI Codex harness plus a DeepSeek model) to develop, test, and deploy exploits for PaperCut NG/MF (CVE-2026-81578, CVE-2026-82078) starting 31 August 2026. The actor compromised at least 440 PaperCut instances across 395 organizations in 48 countries, achieving domain admin at 12 victims — fastest time to domain admin was five minutes and a US high school was fully compromised in seven minutes. Attack paths involved LSASS memory and registry secret harvesting, pass-the-hash to domain controllers, noPac attacks, account additions to Domain Admins, and DCSync to exfiltrate full NTDS.DIT credential dumps. Impact scope suggests access development potentially for handoff, with prior PaperCut intrusions historically leading to extortion.

GreyNoiseSep 9, 00:00 UTC · 8d agoThreat actor in the wildCVE-2026-81578 CVE-2026-82078 CVE-2021-42278+1 CVEs1

TWINLOOT Abuses SharePoint and Teams to Steal Credentials and Move Across Networks

Ontinue disclosed TWINLOOT, a Python implant hiding C2 in SharePoint dead drops and Teams TURN relays, harvesting credentials and pivoting via reverse SOCKS5.

Ontinue's Cyber Defense Center identified TWINLOOT during a July 2026 campaign investigation: a modular, PyArmor-hardened Python implant (a 39 MB bootstrap-fat.pyc loader) whose entire C2 infrastructure lives inside trusted Microsoft services. Tasking flows through SharePoint Online file dead drops polled every 15 seconds via the Microsoft Graph API, while interactive operator access uses WebRTC DataChannels relayed by Microsoft Teams TURN servers; Graph traffic is driven by the victim's own headless Edge browser. The implant harvests Windows credentials with fake lock screens, offers a reverse SOCKS5 pivot for lateral movement to SMB, RDP, WinRM, and MSSQL, executes commands, and persists on hosts. Initial access is assessed to be Teams social engineering masquerading as IT support, prompting a PowerShell command to download the payload.

The Hacker NewsAug 18, 15:17 UTC · 29d agoMalware

Hackers Turn Windows Shadow Copies Into a Tool for Credential Theft and Ransomware

Attackers abuse Windows VSS shadow copies to delete recovery points before ransomware and to extract NTDS.dit/SAM credentials, demanding context-aware detection.

Threat actors are weaponizing the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for two purposes: destroying local recovery points via vssadmin.exe, wmic.exe, diskshadow.exe, wbadmin.exe, and bcdedit.exe before encryption, and accessing static copies of locked files such as NTDS.dit and SAM for credential theft. Ransomware families tied to shadow-copy removal include Akira, Black Basta, BlackCat, Conti, LockBit, Qilin, RansomHub, REvil, Ryuk, and WannaCry. Huntress's analysis of the Nightmare-Eclipse tool showed the BlueHammer technique chaining a Windows Defender timing issue with a VSS snapshot to dump the SAM database and decrypt NT hashes. Defenders should correlate VSS operations with parent process, hive access, and subsequent encryption activity, and maintain immutable off-host backups.

GBHackersSep 15, 05:51 UTC · 1d agoResearch in the wild1

Chinese Hackers Use AI Agents in Multi

China-linked campaign used the SecFlow AI-agent framework (Claude, Qwen, DeepSeek) to automate intrusions against government targets in Taiwan, Indonesia, China and Vietnam.

Hunt.io documented a second China-linked campaign wiring commercial AI models into live cyberespionage, reconstructing the SecFlow orchestration system from five accidentally exposed open directories. Targets included Taiwan's Kuomintang Party archives, Indonesia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, mainland Chinese government and education systems, and Vietnamese industrial hosts. The most extensive compromise hit a Fengtai District government Office Automation environment, yielding LSASS and registry hive theft, 822 user records and 1.28GB of attachments including patient health data. Tooling included a GLUTTON webshell hiding payloads in PNG pixels via steganography and a fake MySQL deserialization service for client-side code execution.

Security AffairsSep 4, 11:00 UTC · 12d agoThreat actor in the wild

CISA Shares 17 Techniques Used by Hackers to Compromise Active Directory

CISA and five international agencies publish joint guidance detailing 17 techniques attackers use to compromise Microsoft Active Directory environments.

CISA, NSA, and the Australian Signals Directorate's ACSC, with contributions from Canadian, UK, and New Zealand cyber centers, released technical guidance on 17 Active Directory attack techniques. It covers AD Domain Services, AD Certificate Services, and AD Federation Services, including Kerberoasting, DCSync, Golden Ticket, Golden SAML, Skeleton Key, and Shadow Credentials. The guidance recommends treating domain controllers, CAs, AD FS servers, and Entra Connect systems as Tier 0 assets with phishing-resistant MFA, Kerberos pre-authentication enforcement, and disabling NTLM/SMBv1.

Cyber Security NewsSep 15, 16:05 UTC · 1d agoAdvisory

Conti ransomware gang member sentenced to 4 years in prison

US court sentences Ukrainian Conti ransomware member Oleksii Lytvynenko to four years; the gang extorted over $150M from 1,000+ victims.

Ukrainian national Oleksii Oleksiyovych Lytvynenko, 44, was sentenced to four years in prison for his role in Conti ransomware attacks between 2021 and 2022, after being arrested by Irish police in July 2023 and extradited to the US. He pleaded guilty in June 2026 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, admitting he controlled stolen data from 12 victims and helped develop a loader used in the gang's double extortion attacks. Per the DOJ, Conti attacked more than 1,000 victims across 47 US states and 31 foreign countries, with victim payouts exceeding $150 million as of January 2022. Conti shut down in 2022 and later split into groups including BlackCat, Black Basta, Hive and Quantum.

BleepingComputerupdated Sep 11, 16:07 UTC · 5d agofirst Sep 11, 06:48 UTC · 5d agoPolicy & legal 7 sources1

Credential Theft: How Attackers Steal & Use Stolen Credentials

Huntress explains how attackers steal credentials through phishing, AitM, infostealers, and dumping, then use them for lateral movement, BEC, and ransomware.

Huntress published an educational overview of credential theft, citing that roughly 70% of confirmed data breaches begin with stolen credentials. It details acquisition methods including phishing, adversary-in-the-middle attacks that capture MFA session tokens, infostealers (nearly a quarter of threats Huntress observed in 2025), Mimikatz-based credential dumping, credential stuffing, and password spraying. The piece then covers post-theft actions such as lateral movement, privilege escalation, account takeover, business email compromise, and ransomware, and closes with behavioral detection guidance and layered prevention strategies.

HuntressSep 10, 16:00 UTC · 6d agoResearch

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.

GBHackersupdated Sep 10, 08:06 UTC · 6d agofirst Sep 10, 06:02 UTC · 6d agoThreat actor in the wild 2 sources1

Windows Defender ShieldCrash 0-Day Lets Attackers Read Arbitrary Files as SYSTEM

Unpatched Windows Defender zero-day 'ShieldCrash' PoC lets local attackers read arbitrary files as SYSTEM, apparently bypassing the CVE-2026-69414 patch.

Researcher MSNightmare published a skeleton proof-of-concept for 'ShieldCrash', an unpatched Microsoft Defender flaw enabling arbitrary file reads with SYSTEM privileges that reportedly persists on supported Windows versions after September 2026 updates. It appears to bypass the recent fix for the Malware Protection Engine elevation-of-privilege flaw CVE-2026-69414 (ShieldBreak), patched in engine version 1.1.26080.3. SYSTEM-level file disclosure could expose credentials, application secrets and registry hives and support post-compromise reconnaissance. No active exploitation is confirmed and Microsoft had issued no specific patch or mitigation at disclosure time.

GBHackersSep 9, 08:40 UTC · 7d agoExploit / PoC CVE-2026-69414

Hackers Disable Endpoint Protection and Deploy Sliver Across Compromised Windows Domain

The Hunter's Ledger tracked campaign UTA-2026-024 using Sliver C2, Domain Admin account creation, and Ethereum-based C2 rotation to compromise a US organization's Windows domain.

The Hunter's Ledger tracked an intrusion at one unnamed US organization as UTA-2026-024, staged from exposed server 193.233.202.17 with a Sliver beacon. Operators created a non-expiring Domain Admin account, enabled RDP with NLA disabled, dumped SAM, SYSTEM and SECURITY hives plus LSASS memory, and disabled eight endpoint protection services. A Node.js implant resolved its C2 server from an Ethereum smart contract that rotated domains five times in five months, while SYSTEM scheduled tasks with backdated dates and DNS allowlist manipulation provided persistence. The infrastructure ties to a confirmed ransomware incident, but no encryptor deployment was proven in this intrusion.

Cyber Security NewsSep 8, 12:10 UTC · 8d agoThreat actor in the wild

PaperCut Flaws Exploited in Attacks on U.S. and European Schools

Attackers are chaining recently disclosed PaperCut flaws CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078 to steal credentials and create privileged accounts at US and European schools.

Arctic Wolf researchers observed threat actors exploiting PaperCut servers via CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078, chaining an authentication bypass with remote code execution. Post-exploitation included creating a privileged account named Administrator17, downloading credential-harvesting tools with certutil, Meterpreter Java payloads, and registry hive collection to recover the Windows BootKey and reach the SAM database. PaperCut disclosed active exploitation on August 27, 2026, and CISA added both flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on August 31. PaperCut has a history of exploitation, including attacks that delivered LockBit ransomware.

Security AffairsSep 5, 18:49 UTC · 11d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-81578 CVE-2026-820781

Attackers Exploit PaperCut Flaws to Steal Credentials From Schools and Universities

Attackers exploit newly disclosed PaperCut auth bypass CVE-2026-81578 and RCE CVE-2026-82078 to steal credentials from schools and universities in the US and Europe.

Arctic Wolf observed threat actors chaining CVE-2026-81578 (authentication bypass) and CVE-2026-82078 (remote code execution) in PaperCut to execute commands, perform reconnaissance, and create privileged accounts on servers at K-12 schools and universities in the US and Europe. Post-exploitation includes registry hive collection with lsa_collect.exe delivered via certutil, Meterpreter Java payloads from 194.180.48.134, and searches of PaperCut config files for passwords, LDAP bindings, and tokens. Stolen logins could provide a pathway into other critical systems across compromised environments.

The Hacker NewsSep 5, 07:31 UTC · 11d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-81578 CVE-2026-820781

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 42Sep 3, 10:00 UTC · 13d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Researcher Releases FalconFlank PoC Showing Privilege Escalation in CrowdStrike Falcon

Researcher Chaotic Eclipse released FalconFlank, a zero-day privilege escalation PoC abusing CrowdStrike Falcon's Office macro remediation; CrowdStrike is investigating and issued a tech alert.

Researcher Chaotic Eclipse published FalconFlank, a proof-of-concept zero-day local privilege escalation in CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor that abuses the Microsoft Office malicious macros remediation feature, tested on fully updated Windows 11 25H2 and Windows Server 2025. CrowdStrike said it is investigating, advised disabling the Microsoft Office File Suspicious Macro Removal policy, and pointed customers to a FalconFlank tech alert, noting cloud anti-malware protection remains active. The article also covers related PoCs from the same researcher: HardBreacher against Kaspersky (fixed via update), ShieldBreak (CVE-2026-69414) against Microsoft Defender, an unpatched patch bypass of CVE-2026-50656, GreenSection against NVIDIA, and PrettyPrague against Avast, which Gen Digital patched in versions 26.7.11086 and 26.8.11125.

The Hacker NewsSep 3, 06:26 UTC · 13d agoExploit / PoC CVE-2026-69414 CVE-2026-50656

August 2026 Patch Tuesday forecast: How do we deal with the patch apocalypse?

August 2026 Patch Tuesday forecast urges risk-based triage as AI inflates CVE volume, flags actively exploited SharePoint RCE CVE-2026-50522 and LegacyHive Windows flaw.

July 2026 Patch Tuesday set records with over 600 CVEs, including 405 for Windows 11 and Server 2025, though only two were exploited zero-days and one was publicly disclosed. The author recommends prioritizing known-exploited and internet-facing vulnerabilities, matching patches to high-risk systems, and accelerating ring-based deployment toward Microsoft's suggested three-day turnaround. Notable items include actively exploited SharePoint RCE CVE-2026-50522 enabling machine key theft, the unassigned LegacyHive Windows User Profile Service flaw, and several end-of-servicing dates for Windows and Exchange.

Help Net SecurityAug 25, 06:52 UTC · 22d agoIndustry in the wildCVE-2026-505221