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Analyzing a Go-Based IoT Self-Propagating DDoS Botnet

Akamai researchers published an analysis of a Go-based, self-propagating IoT botnet used for DDoS attacks.

Akamai's security research team published an analysis of a self-propagating DDoS botnet written in Go that targets IoT devices. Detailed technical findings were not available in the provided source text, which included only the title.

Akamai Blog · 13d agoMalware in the wild

TuxBot v3: Inside an IoT Botnet Framework With LLM

Unit 42 uncovers TuxBot v3, an LLM-assisted IoT botnet framework with 17-architecture builds, Telnet brute-forcing, and DDoS capabilities.

Palo Alto Unit 42 identified TuxBot v3 Evolution, a modular IoT botnet framework derived from AISURU, Wuhan-lineage botnets, and MHDDoS. The C-based bot brute-forces Telnet with 1,496 credential pairs, targets over 30 IoT device families, and communicates with a Go-based C2 over encrypted TCP with multiple fallback mechanisms including DGA, P2P, and DNS TXT. LLM-assisted development left hallucinated crypto implementations and broken exploit modules in the analyzed samples, though roughly 70% of core functionality works. Researchers warn polished production builds likely exist, raising the threat potential.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 28d agoMalware1

New IoT Malware Uses Public Linux Exploits to Gain Root and Launch DDoS Attacks

Nozomi details KATARU, an IoT botnet that brute-forces Telnet, exploits public Linux kernel flaws for root access, and launches multi-protocol DDoS attacks.

KATARU, discovered after honeypot Telnet brute-force activity from a Vietnamese IP, downloads an ARM payload (vlxx.arm) and attempts privilege escalation by editing /etc/passwd or exploiting CVE-2026-46300 (Fragnesia), CVE-2026-43284 (Dirty Frag), and CVE-2026-31431 (Copy Fail). It combines Mirai-style TCP, UDP, ICMP, HTTP, QUIC and DNS floods with application attacks against Minecraft, FiveM, OpenVPN and WireGuard. The malware uses X25519 and ChaCha20-Poly1305 encrypted C2, unusually broad persistence across systemd, cron, init frameworks, and Android hooks, plus anti-debugging and decoy traffic to hinder analysis. Implementers copied x86 shellcode into the ARM binary and reused an RFC 7748 test-vector key, indicating low-quality but rapidly evolving commodity development.

GBHackersupdated · 4d agofirst · 5d agoMalware in the wild 2 sourcesCVE-2026-46300CVE-2026-43284CVE-2026-31431

Risky Bulletin: Two TeamPCP members arrested in Australia

Australian Federal Police arrested two alleged TeamPCP members behind supply-chain worm attacks that stole over 500,000 credentials from compromised open-source libraries.

The AFP arrested alleged TeamPCP leader Ruben Thomson, 21, and Louis Gaebler, 23, near Perth; both were charged and remain in custody. The group inserted a self-spreading credential-stealing worm into open-source projects including Trivy, KICS, LiteLLM, and Telnyx, harvesting more than 500,000 credentials used for network access, ransomware, extortion, and sales. About 78,000 tokens and secrets from nearly 2,200 organizations leaked online last month, and the FBI supported the investigation that began in April.

Risky Business News · 19d agoPolicy & legal in the wild1

Kimwolf v7: An Evolution of the Kimwolf Botnet

Unit 42 details Kimwolf v7 botnet evolution hitting Android IoT devices with HTTP/2 DDoS fingerprinting and ENS-based C2.

Palo Alto Unit 42 analyzes Kimwolf v7, the latest evolution of the Kimwolf botnet targeting Android-based IoT devices. The variant introduces HTTP/2 DDoS fingerprinting, Ethereum ENS-based C2 resolution, and Tor backup routing for operational resilience.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 11, 2026Malware in the wild

Home & Small Office Wireless Routers Exploited to Attack Gaming Servers

Unit 42 details an updated Gafgyt botnet variant exploiting Zyxel, Huawei, and Realtek router vulnerabilities to recruit devices for DoS attacks on gaming servers.

Unit 42 researchers identified an updated Gafgyt variant derived from the JenX botnet that combines three remote code execution exploits: CVE-2017-18368 (Zyxel P660HN-T1A), CVE-2017-17215 (Huawei HG532), and CVE-2014-8361 (Realtek RTL81XX chipset). Shodan scans show more than 32,000 wireless routers worldwide potentially vulnerable to these exploits. The exploits act as droppers, pulling architecture-specific binaries from a malicious server (185.172.110.224), and the botnet performs denial-of-service attacks against gaming servers, most notably Valve Source engine servers.

New Mirai-Based Evooo1Bot Botnet Targets Linux Devices

FortiGuard Labs disclosed Evooo1Bot, a Mirai-based Linux botnet active since July 2026 that hijacks routers and IoT devices for DDoS, credential theft, and SOCKS5 proxying.

Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs disclosed Evooo1Bot, a previously undocumented Linux botnet active since July 2026 that reuses Mirai's DDoS engine while adding encrypted C2, SSH brute-force scanning, credential sniffing, and SOCKS5 proxy modules. The bot exploits 18 known CVEs across Alcatel, NETGEAR, Tenda, D-Link, Telesquare, and Mitsubishi devices, some dating back to 2007, and communicates exclusively over port 443 to blend with HTTPS traffic. Compromised hosts can be turned into SOCKS5 relays for anonymous traffic forwarding or monetization via proxy services. The malware uses AES-256-CTR, ChaCha20, and XOR obfuscation with a 28-command administration interface.

Security Affairs · 29d agoMalware in the wildCVE-2007-3010CVE-2016-6277CVE-2018-14558+7 CVEs

NETSCOUT expands Adaptive DDoS Protection with outbound attack mitigation

NETSCOUT extended Adaptive DDoS Protection to detect and mitigate outbound DDoS traffic at source, targeting IoT botnet attacks like Turbo-Mirai.

NETSCOUT announced an extension of its Adaptive DDoS Protection (ADP) for service providers to automatically detect and mitigate outbound DDoS traffic from compromised subscriber devices such as broadband routers and IoT devices. The capability addresses Turbo-Mirai-class botnets capable of multi-terabit attacks and integrates with Arbor Sightline, Arbor Threat Mitigation System, the ATLAS Intelligence Feed, and ASERT analysts. Source-side mitigation aims to reduce outages, transit costs, peering damage, and abuse complaints at ISPs.

Help Net Security · 29d agoTools

ThreatsDay: 296K IoT Botnet, 100+ Water Systems Targeted, SharePoint RCE Chain + 27 New Stories

Weekly ThreatsDay bulletin details a ShinyHunters-style social engineering hit on ReliaQuest, the 296,000-device Dysphoria IoT botnet, and several new malware families.

ReliaQuest confirmed a social engineering attack on August 22, 2026, in which an attacker used a fake SSO page and MFA push approval to gain brief view-only access to an identity dashboard, with tactics matching ShinyHunters, which has since listed the firm on its leak portal. The Shadowserver Foundation reported the Dysphoria botnet has compromised nearly 296,000 IoT devices for DDoS attacks and recently added residential proxy capability. Cisco Talos documented JWR, an operator-driven phishing-as-a-service framework linked to The Outsider that harvests credentials, identity documents, and 2FA codes over an encrypted WebSocket. New malware coverage includes the Octagon Android fraud bot ($1,400/month), the C2Looper Rust backdoor delivered via ClickFix, and the Aeternum loader that moved C2 to the Polygon blockchain.

The Hacker News · 14d agoMalware in the wild

Muhstik Botnet Attacks Tomato Routers to Harvest New IoT Devices

Unit 42 found a Muhstik botnet variant brute-forcing Tomato router web authentication to harvest IoT devices for crypto mining and DDoS attacks.

Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers in December 2019 identified a new Muhstik botnet variant scanning Tomato routers on TCP 8080 and brute-forcing default admin credentials, targeting roughly 4,600 exposed devices found via Shodan. The variant also scans WordPress and Webuzo installations and exploits the Oracle WebLogic deserialization flaw CVE-2019-2725 for unauthenticated remote code execution. Muhstik, active since March 2018, self-propagates like a worm and typically monetizes infections through cryptocurrency mining and DDoS attacks controlled via an IRC C2 channel.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 28d agoMalware in the wildCVE-2019-2725

New Mirai-Based Linux Botnet ‘Evooo1Bot’ Turns Victims Into Proxies

A newly observed Mirai-based Linux botnet dubbed Evooo1Bot compromises edge devices and turns them into persistent proxies for threat actors.

Evooo1Bot is a newly identified Linux botnet built on the Mirai framework but enhanced with additional advanced capabilities. The malware compromises edge devices and converts them into persistent proxies, likely for relay or resale use. The botnet's evolution beyond stock Mirai highlights continued targeting of poorly secured IoT and edge systems.

Infosecurity Magazine · Aug 14, 2026Malware in the wild

Php Servers And Iot Devices Cyber

Infosecurity Magazine headline reports a cyber campaign targeting PHP servers and IoT devices; no further details available.

The Infosecurity Magazine headline indicates a cyber campaign against PHP servers and IoT devices. Article text was unavailable, so techniques, scale and attribution are unknown.

Infosecurity Magazine · Aug 16, 2026Malware1

Go-Based macOS Malware Steals Crypto and Secrets

Security researchers detected Go-based macOS malware stealing cryptocurrency, passwords, and other secrets from infected systems.

A Go-based malware variant targeting macOS has been detected in active use. The malware steals cryptocurrency, passwords, and other sensitive secrets from infected Macs.

Infosecurity Magazine · Aug 10, 2026Malware in the wild

Almost Half of Malware Samples Communicate Direct to IP

Unit 42 analysis of 4 million malware reports finds 45% of C2-active samples connect directly to hard-coded IPs, bypassing DNS defenses.

Palo Alto Unit 42 analyzed over 4 million Advanced WildFire dynamic analysis reports and found that 45.32% of malware samples with C2 activity made at least one direct-to-IP connection, accounting for 23.17% of all C2 connection attempts. The firm proposes zero trust IP (ZT-IP), an enforcement approach that verifies whether outbound destinations were ever sanctioned by a DNS response. ZT-IP analysis surfaced Phorpiex ransomware droppers fetching payloads directly from C2 IPs, a persistent data exfiltration campaign using an obfuscated \GET protocol, and Mozi P2P botnet payloads delivered to IoT devices without DNS. Only 1% of benign samples connected directly to untrusted IP addresses.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Research

Evooo1Bot Linux Botnet Exploits Known Flaws to Turn Edge Devices Into SOCKS5 Proxies

Fortinet researchers documented Evooo1Bot, a new Mirai-derived Linux botnet active since July 2026 that exploits known edge-device flaws to build SOCKS5 proxy networks.

Fortinet FortiGuard Labs identified Evooo1Bot, a previously undocumented Linux botnet built on the leaked Mirai source code, active in the wild since July 2026 and targeting internet-facing edge devices. It exploits numerous known CVEs in routers and devices from D-Link, Tenda, Telesquare, Zyxel, Hikvision, Atlassian Confluence, WSO2, TP-Link, NETGEAR, and others, delivering a bot binary via a wget.sh loader from 91.92.40.118 that clears bash history. The bot offers encrypted C2 on port 443, SSH brute-force scanning, credential sniffing, DDoS over DNS/TCP/UDP, an HTTP exploit dispatcher, and converts infected hosts into SOCKS5 proxies for anonymizing follow-on operations.

The Hacker News · Aug 17, 2026Malware in the wildCVE-2007-3010CVE-2016-6277CVE-2018-14558+15 CVEs

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 · 13d agoThreat actor in the wild

HYDRA: Quantifying Botnet Resource Thresholds for Efficient Link-Flooding Attacks on LEO Satellite Networks

HYDRA models link-flooding attacks on LEO satellite constellations as botnet minimization, matching prior disruption with 34% fewer bots and 23% less traffic.

HYDRA formulates link-flooding attack variants against LEO constellations such as Starlink and Kuiper as botnet minimization problems, quantifying the smallest bot subset and traffic allocation needed to disrupt communications between targeted geographic areas. Under matched stealth constraints it matches the ICARUS attack's disruption using 34% fewer bots and 23% less aggregate traffic, sustaining over 97% attack success as topology evolves. The framework also evaluates five mitigations, including routing diversification, ingress policing, distance-based constraints, source throttling, and botnet attrition.

arXiv cs.CR · 1d agoResearch

New Chaos Variant Targets Misconfigured Cloud Deployments, Adds SOCKS Proxy

Darktrace says the Chaos botnet now targets misconfigured cloud deployments like Hadoop and added a SOCKS proxy for traffic relaying.

Darktrace identified a new 64-bit ELF variant of the Chaos botnet targeting misconfigured cloud deployments, expanding beyond the malware's traditional focus on routers and edge devices. Captured in a deliberately misconfigured Hadoop honeypot instance, the intrusion began with an HTTP request creating an application that ran embedded shell commands to fetch the Chaos agent binary from pan.tenire[.]com, set chmod 777 permissions, execute it, and delete the artifact to reduce forensic traces. The restructured variant adds a SOCKS proxy feature letting compromised systems ferry attacker traffic, while removing SSH-based spread and router-exploit functions, suggesting monetization beyond crypto mining and DDoS-for-hire. Possible Chinese origin is suggested by language artifacts and infrastructure; the delivery domain was previously used in Silver Fox's Operation Silk Lure phishing campaign delivering ValleyRAT.

The Hacker News · 29d agoMalware1

Large DDoS attack knocks Norwegian public services offline

A large DDoS attack on Norwegian IT partner Vivicta disrupted 10 government services, including ID-porten used by over 4.5 million users, for 30+ hours.

Norway's Digitalisation Agency (Digdir) said a distributed denial-of-service attack that began Monday targeted the infrastructure of its IT partner Vivicta and lasted around 30 hours at varying intensity, with some services still affected Tuesday. Disrupted services included ID-porten, a national digital identity gateway used by more than 4.5 million people, which many government services and parts of the health sector, such as online pharmacies and the electronic prescription system, rely on for authentication. Digdir said attackers did not gain access to sensitive information, and it was the third DDoS incident since June, reportedly two to three times larger than the previous one. Attribution and possible links between the incidents remain unclear.

The Record · 22d agoThreat actor

Kimwolf v7 Hides DDoS Traffic Behind Chrome Fingerprints and Ethereum

Unit 42 details Kimwolf v7, an Android TV botnet upgrade using HTTP/2 Chrome-fingerprint DDoS floods and Ethereum ENS-based C2 across 1.8M+ infected devices.

Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 identified Kimwolf v7 on February 3, 2026, an upgrade to an Android TV botnet active since August 2025 and linked to the AISURU botnet, which has infected over 1.8 million devices. The new version adds an HTTP/2-based DDoS flood that mimics full Chrome browser fingerprints, consolidates 43 attack commands into 15 methods covering layers 3-7, and resolves C2 addresses via Ethereum Name Service using five hard-coded public blockchain RPC endpoints, backed by a Tor hidden service and a local proxy on 127.0.0.1:23075. It spreads through residential proxies to Android TV boxes with ADB enabled on port 5555 and masquerades as netd_service. The botnet is associated with the record 31.4 Tbps DDoS attack in November 2025.

Security Affairs · Aug 12, 2026Malware in the wild

Gaming the system: how a Chinese-speaking actor turned Brazilian government sites into an SEO weapon

Check Point identifies Chinese-speaking group Gambling Goblin hijacking Brazilian government domains via malicious Apache modules for SEO-manipulated gambling phishing.

Check Point Research tracks a sustained campaign since mid-2025 against Brazilian government and educational organizations by Gambling Goblin, a Chinese-speaking cybercrime cluster linked to Earth Berberoka. Attackers compile and install malicious Apache modules that silently reverse-proxy visitors to phishing pages impersonating Google Play, Microsoft Store, and Amazon, chaining compromised high-reputation domains to inflate search rankings. The group deploys a heavily obfuscated Linux toolkit including DownPro, AlphaAgent, oRAT, a 3snake-based credential stealer, and SSH brute-forcers, with parallel phishing networks localized for Vietnamese, Spanish, and English victims.

Check Point Research · 14d agoThreat actor

Old Wine in the New Bottle: Mirai Variant Targets Multiple IoT Devices

Unit 42 analyzed the Mirai IZ1H9 botnet variant exploiting Tenda, LB-Link, DCN and Zyxel flaws to build DDoS-capable IoT botnets.

Unit 42 observed the Mirai IZ1H9 variant on April 10, 2023, using a shell script downloader lb.sh from 163.123.143.126 to infect exposed Linux servers and networking devices. Campaigns running since November 2021 share infrastructure, near-identical bot functions and the XOR key 0xBAADF00D. The malware exploits CVE-2023-27076 (Tenda G103), CVE-2023-26801 (LB-Link), CVE-2023-26802 (DCN DCBI-Netlog-LAB) and a Zyxel RCE flaw. Compromised devices join a botnet used for DDoS attacks, and the downloader deletes logs and modifies iptables to block SSH, Telnet and HTTP recovery.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Malware in the wildCVE-2023-27076CVE-2023-26801CVE-2023-26802

New Mirai variant adds stealth capabilities to notorious botnet code

FortiGuard Labs reports new Mirai-derived botnet Evooo1Bot actively exploits unpatched routers and edge devices, adding encrypted C2, stealthy SSH scanning, and proxying.

FortiGuard Labs has identified Evooo1Bot, a previously undocumented Linux malware based on the Mirai botnet code, which has been actively exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities in internet-facing hardware for at least a month. Targeted devices include routers and edge hardware from Alcatel, D-Link, Mitsubishi Electric, Netgear, Tenda and Telesquare, with telemetry showing activity in North and South America, Europe, India, China and Japan. Beyond Mirai's usual DDoS functions, the variant adds encrypted C2 communications, a honeypot-aware SSH scanner, a sniffer for unchanged default credentials, and abuse of the SOCKS protocol to turn compromised devices into persistent proxies for concealing origin and pivoting into internal networks.

The Record · Aug 13, 2026Malware in the wild

A Feature-Rich Embedded NIDS with eBPF/XDP: Detector and Architecture Trade-offs

eBPF/XDP-based NIDS with Isolation Forest reaches 0.965 live F1 on DDoS replay; gRPC microservices match monolithic accuracy within 2ms overhead.

The paper presents a DDoS-focused network intrusion detection system for transport networks built with Ericsson, combining a statistical baseline with an Isolation Forest trained on flow features from GoFlowMeter, an open-source Go implementation of CICFlowMeter, plus eBPF/XDP kernel-level traffic filtering. On a Raspberry Pi 5 testbed replaying CIC-DDoS2019 as real traffic, the Isolation Forest achieves 0.965 recall/F1 live in the monolithic variant, catching low-volume attack windows the baseline misses. gRPC microservices nearly match monolithic accuracy adding under 2ms per window, while the Kafka pipeline trails by roughly nine percentage points and adds about 27ms.

arXiv cs.CR · 5d agoResearch

The AI Supply Chain Has a Security Problem, and Much of It Is Sitting on the Open Internet

Researchers counted 36,769 publicly reachable self-hosted AI endpoints, only about 2% behind HTTP authentication, exposing Ollama, vLLM, and Flowise to abuse.

A Mysterium VPN study found 36,769 self-hosted AI endpoints reachable through internet scanning, with only 2.02% returning an HTTP authentication challenge. Open WebUI accounted for 18,529 reachable instances, Ollama for 6,935 fingerprinted hosts, and 5,223 agent-builder and workflow platforms were exposed, often holding API keys, database credentials, and other secrets. The report highlights LLMjacking risk from exposed Ollama APIs, a critical Flowise bug (CVE-2026-40933), leaked n8n tokens, and prior SentinelOne/Censys research finding roughly 175,000 exposed Ollama hosts in 130 countries.

Banking Trojans: Ursnif Global Distribution Networks Identified

Unit 42 maps banking-trojan distribution networks: spam botnets push Shiotob downloaders and Ursnif, KINS, Tinba at Japan and European targets via compromised web servers.

Unit 42 identified the distribution networks behind banking trojan attacks against Japan, Italy, Spain, Poland, Australia, and Germany. A spam botnet delivered 75 unique Shiotob (Bebloh/URLZone) variants across 7 million spam emails, with Shiotob acting mainly as a downloader that installs Ursnif and the Pushdo spam bot from C2 commands. Over 200 malicious files were hosted on 74 compromised, mostly European small-business web servers between April 2015 and January 2017, with localized invoice and photo-themed email lures per target country.

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

New infosec products of the week: August 21, 2026

Weekly product roundup covering NETSCOUT outbound DDoS mitigation, F5 AI Gateway enhancements, Intezer Workflows, and Tufin TOS 5.3.

NETSCOUT extended Adaptive DDoS Protection to automatically mitigate outbound attack traffic for service providers. F5 enhanced its AI Gateway and integrated it into the F5 AI Security Platform for unified AI access governance. Intezer launched Workflows, native automation and response inside its platform without a separate SOAR, and Tufin released Orchestration Suite 5.3 with AI-powered Segmentation Intelligence for multi-vendor environments.

Help Net Security · 26d agoTools

Sality, one of the longest

US and European authorities, with CrowdStrike and Shadowserver, disrupted the 20-year-old Sality peer-to-peer botnet, severing 15,000+ infected machines from operators.

US and European authorities disrupted the Sality botnet, active since at least 2003, in an operation involving the DOJ, CrowdStrike, the Shadowserver Foundation and agencies in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. Researchers reverse-engineered the botnet's peer-to-peer architecture and injected false data into infected machines' 'super peer' lists, cutting more than 15,000 systems off from their operators. For the past eight years Sality primarily distributed EggJagger, malware that replaces clipboard cryptocurrency addresses and is estimated to have netted the operator at least $150,000. No arrests were announced, and CrowdStrike assesses the operator works from Russia's Bashkortostan region.

The Record · 14d agoMalware in the wild