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Identity Abuse Through Trusted Communication Channels

Unit 42 explains how attackers abuse trusted enterprise communication and collaboration channels for identity phishing and credential theft, and outlines defenses.

Palo Alto Unit 42 details how attackers exploit enterprise collaboration and communication tools as trusted channels for identity phishing and credential theft. The writeup describes abuse of presumed-trusted messaging paths and outlines defense strategies. It is guidance rather than a report of a specific incident.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 27d agoPhishing & fraud

Do Input-Level Defenses Transfer to Observation-Level Attacks on VideoLLMs?

A systematic study shows input-level adversarial defenses provide inconsistent, often near-zero protection against observation-level attacks on video LLMs.

Researchers introduce DefTEval, a controlled framework testing eleven input-level defenses against five attack types across five video LLMs. Harmful-content detection rates are frequently near zero, and defenses fail even when attacks embed harmful signals in every sampled frame. Token compression discards localized safety features and modality fusion down-weights weakened visual signals, with defense outcomes dominated by model architecture rather than the defense method.

arXiv cs.CR · 8d agoAI safety & security

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 · 2d agoResearch

Attackers Exploit Critical Langflow and Rails Flaws in Credential

VulnCheck reports active exploitation of critical Langflow CVE-2026-0768 and Rails CVE-2026-66066 for credential harvesting, with detections rising to 360.

VulnCheck observed active exploitation of CVE-2026-0768 (CVSS 9.8) in Langflow and CVE-2026-66066 'KindaRails2Shell' (CVSS 9.5) in Ruby on Rails, with detections rising from 50 on August 30, 2026 to 360 by September 1. The Rails flaw allows unauthenticated arbitrary file reads, leaking secret_key_base, Rails master key, database passwords, cloud credentials and API tokens, ultimately enabling RCE; the patch still leaves the variation-key Marshal deserialization RCE gadget functional. Observed chains include a Python credential harvester with SimpleHelp remote access via CVE-2026-5027, and weaponization of CVE-2025-3248 to enlist hosts into an XMR mining botnet after disabling auditd. More than 7,100 exposed vulnerable Ruby on Rails instances and over 15,000 successful exploitation attempts across three Langflow flaws were recorded.

The Hacker News · 15d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-0768CVE-2026-66066CVE-2026-0769+2 CVEs1

Injected and Leaked: Actively Inducing Side-Channel Leakage Using Electromagnetic Injection and Hardware Nonlinearity

Researchers introduce InjectEave, using electromagnetic injection and hardware nonlinearity to induce side-channel leakage and eavesdrop on headphone audio from 30 meters.

An arXiv paper shows electromagnetic injection can actively amplify side-channel leakage: nonlinear hardware such as amplifiers, ADCs, and power converters modulates secret electrical signals onto an injected EM carrier, upconverting low-frequency secrets into measurable EM emissions. By tuning injection frequency and amplitude, an adversary can shape the effective spectrum and entropy of the resulting leakage. The InjectEave attack demonstrated eavesdropping on wired and wireless headphone audio from up to 30 meters and in through-wall scenarios using accessible RF equipment, plus leakage of smart home device power consumption and analog sensor inputs. Case studies show closed-loop eavesdropping and manipulation of landline phone conversations, and the paper discusses mitigations.

arXiv cs.CR · 12d agoResearch

Attackers Exploit Critical Switchvox Flaw to Deploy Reverse Shells Without Credentials

Attackers exploit unauthenticated SQL injection CVE-2026-9586 in Sangoma Switchvox to run PostgreSQL commands and deploy reverse shells.

Threat actors are exploiting CVE-2026-9586 (CVSS 9.3), an unauthenticated SQL injection in Sangoma Switchvox SMB Edition 8.3 (104997), since August 30, 2026, running arbitrary SQL as the PostgreSQL superuser and achieving remote code execution. The /pa endpoint concatenates the user-controlled PhoneIP value into PostgreSQL queries; attackers can extract database contents, escalate to Switchvox web administrator, exfiltrate the cookie signing key to forge authentication, and invoke reverse shells. Sangoma patched the flaw in Switchvox 8.4.0.2 on July 14, 2026, roughly 4,000 instances are internet-exposed (mostly in the US), and honeypot activity from IP 176.65.148.184 deploys reverse shells followed by Base64-encoded process enumeration.

The Hacker News · 14d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-9586

Inside 90 days of attacks on AI infrastructure

Wiz honeypots recorded 90 days of active campaigns attacking LiteLLM, MCP servers, and AI frameworks via RCE, blind prompt injection, and credential theft.

Wiz deployed AI infrastructure honeypots and observed active attack campaigns over a 90-day window. Attackers targeted LiteLLM, MCP servers, and popular AI frameworks using techniques including remote code execution, blind prompt injection, and memory credential theft. The findings show exposed AI infrastructure is being actively targeted in the wild.

Wiz Blog · 20d agoAI safety & security in the wild

Scam Attacks Taking Advantage of the Popularity of the Generative AI Wave

Unit 42 finds about 225 generative AI-themed domains registered daily since ChatGPT's launch, with nearly 29 percent suspicious, fueling scams and PUP delivery.

Palo Alto Networks analyzed new domain registrations containing generative AI keywords such as chatgpt, prompt, and sora since ChatGPT's November 2022 launch, observing around 225 GenAI-related registrations per day. About 28.75 percent of these domains are suspicious, a rate 22 times higher than for general new domains, with registration spikes aligning with milestones like Bing ChatGPT integration, the GPT-4 release, new GPTs, and OpenAI's Sora announcement. Over 72 percent of the domains use gpt or chatgpt keywords, and gpt domains show a 76 percent suspicious rate. Case studies cover PUP delivery, spam distribution, and monetized domain parking, with 35 percent of traffic to these domains directed at suspicious ones.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Phishing & fraud in the wild1

On Identifying Adversarial Intent Injection in AI-Native 6G Networks

Dual-path CNN and AutoEncoder framework detects adversarial intent injection in AI-native 6G networks, reaching 0.97 accuracy and 0.98 F1.

The paper defines a fine-grained threat model for adversarial intent injection in AI-native 6G intent-based networking, where malicious policies are disguised within benign intent flows. It evaluates four injection strategies: stealth-mode, random distribution, increasing frequency, and decreasing frequency. A dual-path detection framework combines a CNN using TF-IDF features for supervised detection with an AutoEncoder trained only on benign data for one-class detection, reaching 0.97 accuracy and 0.98 F1-score, roughly 9% and 36% gains over the state-of-the-art baseline.

arXiv cs.CR · 6d agoResearch

A revisit of remote Spectre attacks on Cloudflare Workers

Cloudflare details its 2024-2025 reassessment of remote Spectre attacks on Workers, covering new attack primitives and hardened defenses.

Cloudflare reassessed the feasibility of remote Spectre attacks against its Workers serverless infrastructure across 2024 and 2025. The write-up describes new attack primitives including Spectre gadgets, remote timers, and techniques for achieving co-location with victim workloads. It also explains new defenses that further harden Cloudflare Workers against speculative-execution side channels.

Cloudflare Blog · 28d agoResearch

Automating Attack Graph Construction for Agentic Pentesting. Towards Neuro-Symbolic Vulnerability Hunting

Semi-automated pipeline converts Trivy, Semgrep, Nmap output into MulVAL attack graphs for agentic pentesting, 53.7% mean vulnerability coverage in CyBench.

The paper presents a semi-automated pipeline that parses Trivy, Semgrep, and Nmap findings into MulVAL predicates and uses an LLM-assisted process to build domain-specific Datalog rules linking scanner evidence to attack techniques. MulVAL/XSB then performs symbolic inference to generate structured, auditable attack paths for agentic pentesting. Evaluated on 54 web CTF tasks from CyBench, every task produced at least one goal-reaching graph with 53.7% mean ground-truth vulnerability coverage, 51.9% full coverage, and an 83.9% noise-path rate. Median end-to-end runtime was 24.9 seconds, making the pipeline runtime-practical for agentic workflows.

arXiv cs.CR · 2d agoResearch

Scalable Composition of Byzantine Agreements under Reorder Attacks

Researchers present the first adversary model combining party corruption with channel reordering attacks, establishing tight security thresholds for composed Byzantine agreement protocols.

The paper presents the first adversary model combining party corruption with adversarial channel attacks that reorder messages across multiple Byzantine agreement executions. It proves impossibility results for authenticated BA under parallel composition when n ≤ 3t or n ≤ 2c + 2t + 1, with matching possibility results when n > max{3t, 2c + 2t + 1}. The authors provide general black-box compilers plus erasure-correcting-code variants that achieve constant multiplicative communication overhead for long messages.

arXiv cs.CR · 7d agoResearch

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

Threats Making WAVs - Incident Response to a Cryptomining Attack

Guardicore researchers dissect a cryptomining attack that hid a cryptominer inside WAV files, mapping the full infection chain and response steps.

Guardicore security researchers present a full analysis of a cryptomining attack that concealed a cryptominer inside WAV audio files. The report documents the complete attack chain from detection through infection, network propagation, and malware analysis. It also includes recommendations for optimizing incident response processes in data centers.

Akamai Blog · 8d agoMalware in the wild

Hackers Abuse YouTube Gaming Channels and SEO Poisoning to Deploy RATs and Chrome Hijacker

Unit 42 exposed CL-CRI-1171, a pay-per-install operation using YouTube gaming channels and SEO poisoning to deliver RATs and a Chrome hijacker.

Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 identified over 10,000 OfferLoader samples and 11 YouTube channels pushing trojanized installers via gaming lures and SEO-poisoned searches for tools like WinDirStat and Bluetooth drivers. Trojanized Inno Setup installers spawn three payload branches: Insomnia RAT (dual Node.js/Python backdoor that disables Microsoft Defender), ARKTunnel (undocumented RAT hiding its payload in a bitmap image and tunneling TCP/UDP), and Docro Hijacker (alters Chrome protected preferences to hijack search and affiliate links). The pay-per-install model sells each infection to multiple buyers, reaching gamers as well as corporate and government endpoints.

Cyber Security News · 2d agoMalware in the wild1

gr-PHYSEC: Real-time Channel-based Key Generation for Physical Layer Secure Wireless Communications

gr-PHYSEC GNU Radio module derives symmetric encryption keys from wireless channel randomness using a neural network, validated on robotic platforms with ADALM-Pluto SDRs.

The paper introduces gr-PHYSEC, a GNU Radio out-of-tree module for real-time physical-layer key generation that derives symmetric keys from the wireless channel's inherent randomness instead of pre-shared secrets. A trained neural network extracts channel features between trusted parties during probe exchanges; features are quantized into binary keys, reconciled via Reed-Solomon encoding, and secured with SHA-512 hashing before direct use for encryption. Real-world experiments at the FAU CAAI connected robotics testbed using ADALM Pluto software-defined radios and NVIDIA Jetson Orin demonstrated low key disagreement rates and NIST-verified randomness. Source code is publicly available on GitHub.

arXiv cs.CR · 2d agoResearch

Has MIMO decoding been proved hard from lattice problems?

Researchers show the published lattice-hardness proof for MIMO decoding fails, as Regev's LWE reduction structure does not carry over to non-modular MIMO.

The paper re-examines Dean and Goldsmith's proposed polynomial-time reduction from lattice problems to MIMO decoding, which adapted Regev's reduction for learning with errors (LWE). Prior works had presented attacks and counterexamples against the construction, leaving the reduction's precise validity unclear. The authors identify which structural features of the LWE reduction fail to transfer to the non-modular MIMO setting, showing the published proof does not establish the claimed hardness of MIMO decoding. They distinguish flaws in the hardness proof from direct attacks on specific parameter choices and do not rule out physical layer security for MIMO systems in general.

arXiv cs.CR · 12d agoResearch

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

Rethinking Indirect Prompt Injection as a Test-Time Search Problem

Researchers frame indirect prompt injection as test-time search, showing added attacker compute improves vulnerability discovery and exploitation against tool-using agents.

The paper models indirect prompt injection as a test-time search over a task-dependent attack surface shaped by the environment, user task, and injection goal. The authors build an agentic attacker with a dedicated search harness that performs reconnaissance, structured strategy reasoning, and adaptive evaluation using victim-agent feedback. Experiments show more attacker test-time compute improves discovery and exploitation of injection vulnerabilities, with explicit strategy management needed to avoid redundant search. The results argue that agentic security evaluations should characterize attacker search procedures and compute budgets rather than treating attack success as budget-independent.

arXiv cs.CR · 13d agoAI safety & security

The MAL Simulator: Cyber Operations Simulation based on Attack & Defense Graphs

MAL Simulator grounds attack-defense graph simulations in a CRATE-emulated network, training RL attacker and defender agents where attackers outperform search methods.

The MAL Simulator is a cyber operations simulator built on the Meta Attack Language (MAL), enabling decision-driven attack and defense simulations adaptable to new domains without modifying source code. Case studies trained defensive and offensive agents, grounded in data collected from an emulated network implemented in the CRATE cyber range. The trained attacker policy reached designated targets more efficiently than compared search methods, and the trained defender induced lower costs than a naive heuristic under noisy alerts, though defender performance dropped significantly against an RL attacker.

arXiv cs.CR · 1d agoResearch

Papercut AI Swarm Attack Heralds Changes for Cyber Kill Chain

Dark Reading reports AI-driven 'swarm' attacks like the PaperCut incident now span recon, lateral movement and exfiltration, forcing a rethink of the cyber kill chain.

Dark Reading examines how attackers are incorporating AI across the full kill chain, from building lab environments to stage and test agentic attacks through reconnaissance, lateral movement, and exfiltration. It cites a swarm-style AI attack on PaperCut systems as evidence that AI-enabled attackers are changing established defense and detection models.

Dark Reading · 5d agoThreat actor

Network Abuses Leveraging High-Profile Events: Suspicious Domain Registrations and Other Scams

Unit 42 found scammers surge deceptive domain registrations around major events like the 2024 Paris Olympics to run phishing and counterfeit merchandise scams.

Unit 42 analyzed newly registered domains (over 200,000 detected daily from zone files, WHOIS, and passive DNS) containing event-specific keywords, using the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics as a case study. Threat actors register lookalike domains to sell counterfeit merchandise, push fraudulent services, and run phishing, as previously seen with COVID-19-themed and fake ChatGPT tool scams. The article recommends monitoring domain registrations, DNS and URL traffic trends, textual patterns, and verdict change requests to catch event-themed abuse early.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Phishing & fraud in the wild

Understanding the Security Boundary of Obfuscation-based On-Device LLM Protection

Researchers formalize obfuscation primitives for TEE-protected on-device LLMs and show a Collapse attack breaks ArrowCloak, TSQP, and LoRO, then extend the boundary.

The paper formalizes obfuscation primitives for TEE-Shielded LLM Partition (TSLP) schemes that offload computationally intensive layers from a Trusted Execution Environment to external GPUs. A novel primitive-guided attack, Collapse, demonstrates a shared vulnerability in prominent published methods including ArrowCloak (Security'25), TSQP (S&P'25), and LoRO (NeurIPS'25). The authors then introduce two new obfuscation primitives and integrate them with existing constructs to formulate an extended security boundary (O_ext).

arXiv cs.CR · 7d agoAI safety & security

Untracked Nightmares: The Threats Hiding Behind Commodity Infrastructure

Unit 42 exposes CL-CRI-1171, a pay-per-install network spreading malware like Insomnia RAT via YouTube channels and SEO poisoning for over two years.

Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 details CL-CRI-1171, a cybercrime cluster operating a pay-per-install (PPI) marketplace that has delivered multiple malware families for at least two years. The group used at least eleven YouTube gaming channels with hundreds of thousands of followers, plus SEO poisoning promoting trojanized software such as a Bluetooth driver and WinDirStat, infecting gamers and corporate endpoints including critical infrastructure and government entities. A single shared loader delivered payloads including Insomnia RAT, ARKTunnel, Docro Hijacker, GCleaner and Socks5Systemz between July 2025 and April 2026, with more than 10,000 distinct loader samples and over 200 rotating C2 domains identified. YouTube terminated the malicious channels after Unit 42 notified the platform.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 7d agoMalware in the wild1

ThreatsDay: GhostJacking AI Attacks, EtherHiding ClickFix, Cursor CLI Flaw + 17 More Stories

A weekly bulletin aggregating short security updates, including the City-Forum data-theft campaign, a ShipMonk breach, a Cursor CLI flaw, and GhostJacking AI attacks.

The Hacker News ThreatsDay Bulletin bundles roughly 20 short updates across cloud services, AI tools, malware, breaches, and scams. Highlights include the City-Forum campaign pulling data from unauthenticated guest access in Salesforce Experience Cloud and ServiceNow Service Portals since March 2025, and a ShipMonk breach exposing Trezor customer order data for orders in seven countries between May 10 and August 8, 2026. Other items cover a patched Cursor CLI flaw that let cloned repositories run commands before the workspace-trust prompt, Okta's analysis of the Work Panel vishing console used by actors like UNC6671, and GhostJacking AI agent hijacking via a patched Claude Desktop sandbox escape. Meta also launched an on-device WhatsApp Scam Alert machine learning model that keeps message content on the device.

The Hacker News · 29d agoIndustry

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.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 29d agoMalware in the wildCVE-2017-18368CVE-2017-17215CVE-2014-83611