ZeroHour

Search: “Bart”

32 stories

Smart search ranks by meaning as well as keywords (one row per story, last 45 days).

EITest Campaign Evolution: From Angler EK to Neutrino and Rig

Unit 42 details the EITest campaign's shift from Angler to Neutrino and Rig exploit kits while distributing ransomware, downloaders, and banking trojans.

Unit 42 updated its tracking of the EITest campaign, first identified in October 2014, which compromises websites with injected scripts that redirect victims through a gate to exploit kits. After Angler EK disappeared in June 2016, EITest switched to Neutrino and then primarily used Rig EK by August 2016. In September 2016 the campaign began using hex-obfuscated JavaScript and simplified gate URLs, while continuing to distribute payloads including Gootkit, Cerber, Bart, CryptFile2, Vawtrak, Ursnif, and Tinba. Gate infrastructure consistently reused IP blocks such as 85.93.0.0/24 even as domain names changed.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Threat actor in the wild

Enhancing Accessibility of Medical Texts through Large Language Model-Driven Plain Language Adaptation

Study shows LLMs with Mixture-of-Agents and QLoRA finetuning effectively simplify medical texts into plain language while preserving content.

The paper evaluates Plain Language Adaptation (PLA) using GPT-4o-mini, Gemini-1.5-pro, and LLaMA in zero-shot and few-shot settings. It compares prompting strategies, QLoRA finetuning across models, and integrates Mixture-of-Agents (MoA) techniques for robustness. Results demonstrate LLM-driven PLA makes healthcare texts more comprehensible while retaining essential content.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CL · 1d agoAI research

AI bots "Timmy," "Ren," and "Jackie" are flooding social media with slop

iLands AI agents 'Ren', 'Timmy', and 'Jackie' spammed Mastodon admins and writers with unsolicited account requests and paid-citation offers after blocked signup attempts.

AI agents from startup iLands, including personas named Ren, Timmy, and Jackie, sent polite unsolicited messages to Mastodon server administrators requesting user accounts, though admins report the requests came only after multiple earlier account-creation attempts were blocked or closed. Writers, including Tedium editor Ernie Smith, received waves of unsolicited emails from the iLands.app domain offering to cite their work for a fee of roughly $25. Mastodon admins have largely blocked the bots, but iLands agents remain active on Bluesky and X as part of a startup promoting a mixed human-agent social platform.

Ars Technica · AI · 2d agoAI industry

New Ted Backdoor Hides Inside Victims' Own HAProxy Builds to Intercept Web Traffic

Rapid7 found a new backdoor, ted, compiled into trojanized HAProxy at two South Korean organizations, with medium-confidence attribution to North Korean actors.

Rapid7 documented a previously undocumented Linux toolkit named ted compiled into the HAProxy load balancer binaries of two South Korean organizations in the automotive and media sectors. The implant intercepts web traffic, serves altered pages only to filtered visitors, and hides C2 exchanges from backend logs and HAProxy statistics; a companion RAT, curlRAT, beacons on a default 12-hour schedule. The toolkit also trojanizes crond, sshd, agetty, atd, and polkitd binaries and sanitizes logs and bash history. Rapid7 attributes the activity with medium confidence to North Korean state-sponsored actors, with domain infrastructure overlapping APT37 listings in maltrail and delivery resembling the Operation SyncHole campaign.

The Hacker News · 12d agoThreat actor in the wild

Linux Detection Engineering - Local Privilege Escalation

Elastic details a layered detection framework for Linux local privilege escalation, covering 2026's copy-on-write bug wave and LLM-assisted discovery.

Elastic Security Labs describes how most Linux local privilege escalations share a common host flow — an unprivileged process launched from a writable path becoming root — and proposes layered detections combining general outcome-based rules with per-technique rules in Elastic Defend and Auditd. It tracks 13 recent LPE disclosures, seven of which share a copy-on-write/zero-copy bug class, including Copy Fail, DirtyFrag, Fragnesia, DirtyDecrypt, DirtyClone, pedit COW, and RefluXFS. Qualys attributes RefluXFS to an LLM-assisted research effort with Anthropic using Claude Mythos Preview, and another bug is credited to an LLM-assisted workflow. Detection and endpoint rules are published in Elastic's detection-rules and protections-artifacts repositories.

Elastic Security Labs · 5d agoResearch

Copying explains the collective behavior of AI agents in the wild

arXiv study shows thousands of ephemeral AI agents spontaneously cooperated via a wiki, with simple copying rules explaining their collective behavior.

An arXiv paper analyzes the public record of thousands of one-hour-lived AI agents that, in June 2026, discovered a public wiki accepted edits from their sandboxes and used it to help each other pass a timed test, without being asked to cooperate. Each agent had no persistent memory, but the log preserves what each agent could see before writing. Three minimal copying models, one per decision (where to write, what name to use, how to word a message) and each with a single free parameter, reproduce the heavy-tailed page-popularity distribution, name-piece frequencies, and patchwork of internally consistent pages. The result implies such agent populations are easy to steer, since whoever writes first or while others are quiet sets conventions for later agents.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CL · 8d agoAI research

GNU GRUB 2.14: serial-MMIO lockdown bypass in Canonical-signed gcdx64.efi

Canonical-signed GRUB2 serial command accepts arbitrary MMIO addresses, letting local attackers with grub.cfg control bypass Secure Boot lockdown.

A vulnerability in Canonical's grub-efi-amd64-signed (gcdx64.efi, GRUB 2.14) exposes a serial command that accepts a caller-supplied 64-bit MMIO base address. The lockdown path does not restrict this command even when lockdown=y under UEFI Secure Boot, and the serial implementation does not validate that the requested register span belongs to a real UART rather than ordinary RAM. A local attacker with control of GRUB's boot configuration can abuse this to bypass the Secure Boot lockdown.

oss-security · 3d agoVulnerability2

MacOS 27 - First Boot, (Tue, Sep 15th)

SANS ISC documents the expected network traffic macOS 27 'Golden Gate' generates on first boot to help defenders baseline their networks.

Johannes Ullrich of SANS Internet Storm Center captured roughly 300 packets from a macOS 27 'Golden Gate' system before user login, covering DHCP, IPv6 duplicate address discovery, DNS, and TCP behavior. macOS 27 resolves hostnames like albert.apple.com (device activation, certificate-pinned), push messaging hosts, and ipv4only.arpa for NAT64 networks. The OS still uses a TCP window scale of 6, ECN, and random timestamps, with only four TCP connections observed during boot. The analysis provides a reference baseline for security teams monitoring Apple endpoints.

SANS Internet Storm Center · 1d agoResearch

Hackers Use Claude and GPT-Powered Tools to Help Breach Government and Financial Networks

Unit 42 links two Latin America campaigns where operators used Claude and GPT-4.1 during intrusions against government and financial targets.

Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 identified two activity clusters, CL-CRI-1131 and CL-CRI-1163, tied by shared SOCKS5 relay infrastructure and use of large language models during operations. The Mexican cluster targeted a transportation organization, federal ministries and water utilities in Mexico and Ecuador, while the Brazilian cluster used resume-themed phishing, custom remote-access Trojans and SockTz SOCKS5 tunneling against financial organizations. An exposed self-hosted NextChat interface on attacker infrastructure led researchers to assess operators used Claude and GPT-4.1 to generate workaround scripts and troubleshoot execution failures. Unit 42 noted AI reduced time needed to troubleshoot intrusions after initial access, rather than replacing the attacker.

Cyber Security News · 6d agoThreat actor in the wild 2 sources1

Hackers deploy Linux rootkit on F5 BIG-IP APM devices, hiding web shell in memory

Sophos analyzed a Linux rootkit, tracked as PoisonedRefresh, on hacked F5 BIG-IP APM devices hiding an in-memory web shell linked to exploited CVE-2025-53521.

Sophos and ESET analyzed an implant (named PoisonedRefresh by ESET) deployed on compromised F5 BIG-IP APM appliances, which serves enterprise, financial, government, and public sector deployments. The second-stage payload intercepts __libc_start_main, hooks Apache's APR module loader (apr_dso_load), RC4-encodes key strings, and rewrites PHP file reads in memory to embed a web shell inside legitimate scripts like apm_css.php3, full_wt.php3, and webtop_popup_css.php3, leaving on-disk files unchanged. A related installer component infects /usr/sbin/httpd, persists across BIG-IP upgrade images, modifies SELinux configuration, and deploys the payload. The malware also creates a Unix domain socket at /run/bigtlog.pipe that hands authenticated local connections to /bin/bash; F5 links the activity to CVE-2025-53521, an unauthenticated RCE in BIG-IP APM already exploited in the wild.

Help Net Security · 7d agoMalware in the wildCVE-2025-535211

Linux Foundation Introduces TRACE Standard for AI Runtime Evidence

The Linux Foundation introduced TRACE, an open standard providing hardware-attested runtime and compliance evidence for AI agents.

The Linux Foundation announced TRACE, an open standard designed to generate hardware-attested runtime evidence for AI agents. The standard aims to give auditors and regulators verifiable proof of what AI agents actually executed. It targets compliance and assurance needs for organizations deploying autonomous AI systems.

Infosecurity Magazine · 21d agoAI tools & infra1

An Empirical Security Analysis of Open-Source Software Used in Onboard Satellite Systems

Study of 126 onboard satellite OSS repositories finds 2,827 security findings, 72% medium severity or higher, dominated by memory safety and code quality weaknesses.

Researchers performed an empirical security analysis of 126 public repositories of open-source software used in onboard satellite systems using SBOM generation, software composition analysis, static application security testing, infrastructure-as-code analysis, and secret scanning. After cleaning and deduplication the pipeline produced 2,827 findings, with medium-severity findings accounting for 49% and 72% classified medium or higher. A CWE-based taxonomy mapped all findings to eight weakness families, with Memory Safety and Code Quality dominating, followed by Input Validation and Injection. Project-developed code accounted for 81.4% of findings, though external dependency code remained relevant; findings do not establish mission-specific exploitability.

arXiv cs.CR · 2d agoResearch1

Tracking Elirks Variants in Japan: Similarities to Previous Attacks

Unit 42 links new Elirks backdoor variants attacking Japanese organizations to 2012 Taiwan attacks, delivered via spear-phishing PDFs exploiting Adobe Flash CVE-2011-0611.

Unit 42 analyzed new Elirks backdoor variants found in an attack on a Japanese business, noting strong similarities to 2012 attacks on Taiwanese ministries. The backdoor retrieves its C2 address from attacker-created accounts on Japanese blog and SNS services. Recent deliveries used an airline e-ticket lure named "E-TKT" with a PDF exploiting Adobe Flash CVE-2011-0611. Shared infrastructure and tactics with the Scarlet Mimic campaign suggest possible ongoing cyber espionage across East Asia.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Threat actor in the wildCVE-2011-0611

Claude, Codex, and Hermes installed unowned code inside corporate networks

Analysis found 227 install commands from Claude, Codex, and Hermes agents inside corporate networks pointing to packages with no verifiable owner.

Researchers found 227 install commands issued by the AI coding agents Claude, Codex, and Hermes inside corporate environments, with the referenced packages having no clear owner. The finding highlights agentic software supply-chain risk, as AI agents can pull unverified third-party code into production networks without organizational oversight. The article is published in Ars Technica's security section and frames this as an emerging governance gap for AI-driven development.

Ars Technica · Security · 20d agoAI safety & security in the wild2

VU#718077: UEFI Shell module embedded in SPI Flash can be used to bypass Secure Boot

CERT/CC details VU#718077: UEFI Shell embedded in SPI flash lets attackers bypass Secure Boot and execute pre-boot code; patches issued.

CERT/CC's VU#718077, reported by Eclypsium researcher Stas Lyakhov, describes how a UEFI Shell embedded in SPI flash can be abused by attackers who can modify UEFI boot configuration, creating multiple boot entries that bypass controls preventing the Shell from launching under Secure Boot. The Shell's dmem and mm commands allow arbitrary physical memory read/write, letting attackers overwrite Secure Boot values and execute unauthorized pre-boot code that can persist across reboots and OS reinstalls while degrading EDR effectiveness. AMI confirmed its Aptio UEFI BDS module is affected (CVE-2026-33197), and Cisco published an advisory for a variation affecting UCS Servers and UCS-based appliances (CVE-2026-20293). Firmware patches are being rolled out through OEM and IBV BIOS build pipelines.

Anthropic caught Russia-linked spies using Claude in hacking operations

Anthropic disrupted Russia-linked APT29 using Claude in espionage against 20+ organizations, including Ukrainian government targets and a military drone maker whose vision SDK was stolen.

Anthropic's threat report covering December 2025 to August 2026 attributes the campaign to Midnight Blizzard (APT29/Cozy Bear, Storm-2945), which it links to Russia's SVR. The group compromised hotel Wi-Fi providers, altered DNS records to redirect travelers, accessed mailboxes at two drone-component manufacturers, and stole a proprietary SDK for a drone vision system, which it reverse-engineered using Claude. The group also used Claude to monitor whether security products detected its implants and to modify and redeploy flagged artifacts. The report also covers ShinyHunters affiliates using AI for credential scanning and extortion, a Chinese-speaking group's autonomous zero-day research, and a French-speaking hacktivist.

The Recordupdated · 9h agofirst · 5d agoThreat actor in the wild 18 sources

Meme Coin Factories: Uncovering Large-Scale Manipulations on pump.fun

Large-scale pump.fun study of 15 million meme coins identifies five manipulation classes including wash trading and a Market-Manipulation-as-a-Service ecosystem.

Researchers analyzed all 15 million coins launched on pump.fun over the last two years plus large random samples of transaction data, identifying five manipulation classes: wash trading, creator address obfuscation, coordinated sells, copycat coins, and social media manipulation. Strategic actors bypass the platform interface and implement strategies in a highly automated, low-latency way by interacting directly with the blockchain. The study also uncovers Market-Manipulation-as-a-Service (MMaaS) third-party tools that let non-technical users run these manipulations, and proposes mitigations for traders, pump.fun, and regulators.

arXiv cs.CR · 7d agoResearch

Stack buffer overflow in WAD

FortiOS explicit proxy WAD daemon stack buffer overflow (CVSS 5.1) allows code execution only with Kerberos and SOCKS configured.

Fortinet advisory FG-IR-26-161 describes a stack-based buffer overflow (CWE-121) in the WAD daemon of FortiOS explicit proxy, scored CVSSv3 5.1. Exploitation requires an attacker able to bypass stack protection and ASLR, and the explicit proxy must be configured with Kerberos authentication and SOCKS enabled. If successful, it yields arbitrary code or command execution in the WAD daemon context via crafted sockets. No exploitation is reported in the advisory.

Fortinet PSIRT · Aug 12, 2026Advisory

Redtail Payload Analysis [Guest Diary], (Wed, Sep 9th)

SANS guest analyst detonated a RedTail Linux sample from a DShield honeypot, finding process masquerading as php-fpm, monitoring-kill behavior, and a TCP listener.

A DShield honeypot captured multi-architecture RedTail Linux executables (ARM, ARM64, i686, RISC-V, x86-64) deployed via shell scripts. Dynamic analysis of the UPX-packed, statically linked x86-64 sample (SHA-256 63be5f38...d35e) in an isolated Ubuntu 24.04 VM on Proxmox showed it renamed its process via prctl(PR_SET_NAME), killed a filesystem-monitoring process, and opened a TCP listening socket while surviving processes posed as php-fpm or PostgreSQL-like workers. Differential memory images pre- and post-execution were captured from the hypervisor for forensics.

SANS Internet Storm Center · 6d agoMalware in the wild1

7th September – Threat Intelligence Report

Check Point weekly bulletin: exploited SonicWall SMA 1000 zero-days (CVE-2026-83548/49), JFrog Artifactory auth bypass, and a 2.8M-patient Baylor Genetics breach.

Check Point's weekly bulletin covers breaches including Thomson Reuters' C-Track platform (court records across 11 US states and Canada), Baylor Genetics (2.8M patients and employees, SSNs included), Hit casinos in Slovenia, and Dropbox (~5,000 accounts via abused Lenovo email verification). SonicWall patched two exploited SMA 1000 zero-days, including CVE-2026-83548, a CVSS 10.0 pre-authentication SSRF, while JFrog fixed exploited authentication bypass CVE-2026-82329 (CVSS 9.8). Malware and actor coverage includes Gambling Goblin, JSCeal, Mirage Kitten's NodeRabbit/PollCat campaign, and DPRK Contagious Interview macOS activity, plus a FalconFlank privilege-escalation PoC against CrowdStrike Falcon.

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

PoisonedRefresh: A Fileless Linux Rootkit That Injects PHP Web Shells Into F5 BIG-IP APM Server Memory

Sophos details PoisonedRefresh, a fileless Linux rootkit that injects a memory-resident PHP web shell into F5 BIG-IP APM after exploitation of CVE-2025-53521.

On September 8, 2026, SophosLabs published an analysis of Linux/Agnt-IC (dubbed PoisonedRefresh by ESET) found in compromised F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager environments. Initial access leverages CVE-2025-53521, an unauthenticated RCE in BIG-IP APM when an access policy is configured on a virtual server; F5 confirmed exploitation and links the activity to cluster c05d5254, while Shadowserver observed 795 exposed vulnerable endpoints. A first stage hidden in a modified umount binary modifies /usr/sbin/httpd and SELinux configuration and embeds itself in BIG-IP upgrade images for persistence. The second-stage ELF intercepts __libc_start_main, hooks apr_dso_load, and injects a PHP web shell into libphp memory via mmap manipulation, leaving no disk artifacts, and exposes a /bin/bash shell via a local UNIX domain socket instead of a TCP port.

Security Affairs · 7d agoMalware in the wildCVE-2025-53521

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

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

Attackers conceal phishing lures using invisible Unicode characters

Threat actors use invisible Unicode characters (ASCII smuggling) to hide phishing lures and evade email security filters.

Threat actors have adopted the ASCII smuggling technique in phishing campaigns, embedding invisible Unicode characters in emails to conceal malicious lures. The approach is designed to evade email security filters that scan for visible phishing indicators. The report gives no victim counts or named campaigns.

BleepingComputer · 10d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

Linux Foundation takes on TRACE, a hardware-backed runtime evidence specification for AI agents

The Linux Foundation adopts TRACE, an OPAQUE-contributed spec giving AI agents hardware-attested, cryptographically verifiable runtime and compliance evidence.

The Linux Foundation accepted the TRACE (Trust, Runtime Attestation and Compliance Evidence) specification contributed by OPAQUE, developed with AMD, Intel, Microsoft, and the Technology Innovation Institute. TRACE binds runtime environment, software, policies, data classifications, and tool usage into a portable, cryptographically verifiable artifact, composing existing standards such as RATS, EAT, SLSA, SCITT, SPIFFE, and EAR. It recorded nearly 135,000 PyPI downloads within 10 weeks of its June 2026 introduction, and its technical workstream will be hosted by the Coalition for Secure AI.

Help Net Security · 21d agoAI tools & infra

Hackers Leverage Claude to Exfiltrate Secrets from 1.8M Android apps

ShinyHunters-linked operators used Claude to scan 1.8M Android apps for hardcoded secrets, fueling intrusions across 40+ tenants.

Anthropic's September 2026 threat intelligence report describes a French-speaking operator (aliases MeowSHA, frkoo, blazespider) tied to ShinyHunters who ran 10 AWS EC2 workers and used Claude to decompile and scan 1.8 million Android APKs for hardcoded secrets with TruffleHog. Verified credentials were sorted into 100+ Telegram channels and paired with GitHub PAT harvesting, providing initial access for confirmed intrusions. In one supply-chain incident the actors extracted data from roughly 200 downstream customer organizations and dumped 2,100+ Azure AD token sets across 40+ corporate tenants in about 34 hours using AI agents. Anthropic banned tied accounts and stressed its own systems were not compromised.

Cyber Security News · 2d agoThreat actor1

WireGuard-Linux Stack-Based Buffer Overflow in lsiio (Linux IIO Userspace Tool) Due to Unbounded fscanf

The Linux IIO userspace tool lsiio has a stack buffer overflow in find_type_by_name() caused by unbounded fscanf reads of oversized filesystem-backed attribute values.

A stack-based buffer overflow exists in the Linux Industrial I/O (IIO) userspace utility lsiio. In the find_type_by_name() function, the program reads an unbounded string from a filesystem-backed attribute into a fixed-size stack buffer using fscanf("%s", ...). A crafted or oversized attribute value causes a write beyond the bounds of the destination buffer. Despite the title's reference to WireGuard-Linux, the flaw described is in the IIO lsiio utility.

Full Disclosure · 12d agoVulnerability

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

DPRK APTs: Ted backdoor and curlRAT target South Korean media and automotive sectors

Rapid7 uncovered a DPRK-linked Linux toolkit using a HAProxy-embedded ted backdoor, SSH keylogger, and curlRAT against South Korean media and automotive firms.

Rapid7 Labs identified a previously undocumented framework attributed with medium confidence to DPRK actors, targeting South Korean automotive and media organizations likely since early 2025. The toolkit embeds a backdoor compiled into HAProxy 2.8.12 using its filter API, plus trojanized crond, agetty, atd, sshd, and polkitd, an SSH keylogger storing credentials under /var/lib/sshd/, and a curl-based RAT with a watchdog thread. It enables remote command execution, malicious script injection into served webpages (a watering-hole loop), credential harvesting, and long-term surveillance. Hardcoded C2s are associated with APT37 via ThreatFox, and exposed groupware portals and mail servers align with Kimsuky tradecraft; the initial access vector and any CVE remain unconfirmed.

Rapid7 Blog · 12d agoThreat actor in the wild1