Search: “destructive-malware”

How Attackers Abuse VSS, and How Huntress Detects It

Huntress details how attackers abuse Windows Volume Shadow Copies for ransomware recovery sabotage and NTDS.dit credential theft, plus detection logic.

Huntress explains that attackers abuse VSS in three ways: deleting shadow copies to inhibit recovery before ransomware detonation, creating shadow copies to extract the NTDS.dit Active Directory database for offline credential theft, and manipulating shadow copy configuration. Because backup agents and RMM tools routinely create and delete shadow copies, raw events are too noisy to alert on alone. Huntress detections instead correlate VSS activity with lateral movement and credential harvesting over a time window, such as an observed sequence of PsExec spawning SYSTEM shells on a domain controller, vssadmin create shadow, a blocked deletion attempt, and DNS reconnaissance against another host.

Huntress·Sep 14, 13:00 UTC · 2d agoResearch

Researchers Uncover 10,000+ Malware Loaders Behind YouTube and SEO Poisoning Campaign

Unit 42 uncovers CL-CRI-1171, a two-year pay-per-install campaign distributing 10,000+ OfferLoader samples via YouTube and SEO poisoning.

Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 tracked a campaign as CL-CRI-1171, an infection-as-a-service platform operating for at least two years. It used 11 YouTube gaming channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers and SEO-poisoned download pages for trojanized WinDirStat and Bluetooth driver installers to distribute OfferLoader, a disposable loader embedded in Inno Setup installers. Payloads delivered included Insomnia RAT (Node.js and Python backdoors), ARKTunnel (a WebSocket-based RAT using LSB steganography), and Docro Hijacker (Chrome browser hijacker), with later infections delivering GCleaner and Socks5Systemz. Over 200 rotating domains across .xyz, .cfd, .space, and .info TLDs were used, with gating filters that served broken links or decoy pages to scanners and researchers.

GBHackers·Sep 11, 12:24 UTC · 5d agoMalware in the wild2

Malicious LiteLLM Releases Tied to Trivy Hack May Have Exposed 2,100+ Organizations

Malicious LiteLLM 1.82.7/1.82.8 PyPI releases tied to the Trivy TeamPCP campaign harvested cloud, SSH, and database credentials, potentially exposing 2,500+ organizations.

CloudSEK reported that two malicious LiteLLM releases on PyPI (versions 1.82.7 and 1.82.8, live about 40 minutes on March 24) harvested cloud keys, SSH keys, Kubernetes tokens, and database passwords, with captured loot files mapping potential exposure to more than 2,500 organizations including NVIDIA, Cisco, Deloitte, Volkswagen, FedEx, Siemens, and X Corp. The campaign is part of TeamPCP (tracked by Google as UNC6780), linked to the Aqua Security Trivy scanner compromise tracked as CVE-2026-33634 and added to CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on March 26. The payload used a litellm_init.pth file executed at Python interpreter startup and exfiltrated secrets to models.litellm[.]cloud; the FBI's FLASH-20260702-01 advisory urged rotation of CI/CD, publishing, and cloud credentials.

The Hacker News·Aug 12, 08:05 UTC · Aug 12, 2026Data breach in the wildCVE-2026-33634

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·Aug 19, 13:00 UTC · 28d agoPhishing & fraud

Attack hides malware in PNGs and drops custom reverse tunnel on victims' machines

A ClickFix social engineering wave delivers a multi-stage attack that hides malware in PNG files and installs a custom reverse tunnel.

The Register reports a new wave of ClickFix social engineering attacks that trigger a multi-stage infection chain on victim machines. The attack reportedly conceals malware inside PNG image files and deploys a custom reverse tunnel tool for attacker access. Further technical details are limited in the available text.

The Register · Security·Aug 31, 18:26 UTC · 16d agoMalware in the wild

Google Doc Sidebar Sends Mac and Windows Users Down Different Paths to Malware

Huntress analysts trace one X direct message into separate Mac and Windows malware chains delivering AMOS infostealer and NetSupport Manager RAT.

Huntress SOC analysts dissected a malware campaign distributed via an X direct message styled as a Google Docs sidebar. macOS users were routed to the AMOS infostealer, while Windows users received NetSupport Manager remote access malware. The write-up details how a single message branched into two distinct delivery paths per operating system.

Huntress·Sep 11, 16:36 UTC · 5d agoMalware in the wild

Your threat feed is someone else's database: What ingesting malware intel at scale takes

GitHub's Dependabot lead shares five production lessons for ingesting community malware intelligence feeds across eight package ecosystems at scale.

GitHub's Dependabot team monitors over 30 million repositories and extended malicious-package advisories from npm to eight package ecosystems by ingesting OpenSSF's malicious-packages intelligence. The team catalogued roughly 18 new malicious npm packages per day in the year ending May 2026. The write-up argues that provenance with batch reverts, fingerprinting to catch echo-chamber duplicates, and heavyweight normalization are the make-or-break engineering for feed ingestion. It also recommends automated publishing with import caps and anomaly flagging, and quarantining malformed records rather than silently repairing them.

Help Net Security·Sep 3, 00:00 UTC · 13d agoResearch1

Keyv-Linked npm Worm Poisons Hundreds of Packages, Plants Claude Code and VS Code Hooks

The Hacker News·Aug 4, 15:03 UTC · Aug 4, 2026Malware1

Malware Can Abuse Windows Hello for Business Keys for Persistent Entra ID Access

The Hacker News·Aug 7, 09:55 UTC · Aug 7, 2026Malware in the wild

Hackers Abuse VSSAdmin to Extract NTDS.dit and Delete Windows Recovery Copies

Huntress details intruders using PsExec and VSSAdmin on domain controllers to steal NTDS.dit credentials and delete shadow copies before ransomware.

Huntress analysts identified attackers launching SYSTEM-level command shells via PsExec on a domain controller, then running 'vssadmin create shadow' to snapshot and copy the NTDS.dit Active Directory database. Shadow copies were later deleted to destroy local recovery options ahead of a likely ransomware stage. Huntress recommends correlating VSS creation/deletion events with remote execution, DNS enumeration, and lateral movement rather than alerting on any single VSS event.

Cyber Security News·Sep 15, 08:29 UTC · 1d agoThreat actor in the wild

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·Sep 15, 02:59 UTC · 1d agoResearch

Doubloon Dredger Abuses Notion to Harvest Authentication Tokens

Doubloon Dredger malware abuses Notion and malicious PDFs to steal Microsoft authentication tokens from victims.

Doubloon Dredger is a malware campaign that abuses Notion and malicious PDF files to harvest Microsoft authentication tokens. Using a legitimate collaboration service likely helps the operation blend into trusted SaaS traffic and evade detection. Stolen Microsoft authentication tokens can enable account access without knowing user passwords.

Infosecurity Magazine·Aug 24, 13:00 UTC · 23d agoMalware in the wild1

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·Sep 14, 08:01 UTC · 2d agoMalware in the wild1

Windows Malware Detector as a Compound AI System: Trade-Offs in Accuracy, Efficiency, and Adversarial Robustness

Researchers model industrial Windows malware detection as a Compound AI System, quantifying trade-offs between detection accuracy, efficiency, and adversarial robustness under tiered attacker knowledge.

Industrial Windows malware detectors combine rule-based mechanisms with ML-based static and dynamic analyses, but their architectures are rarely publicly disclosed. The authors propose a methodology balancing detection performance, computational cost, and robustness, plus system-level threat models capturing whole-pipeline evasion rather than isolated components. Experiments on real-world data show training time reductions with marginal detection loss, while more knowledgeable attackers craft increasingly effective adversarial examples. The paper derives deployment guidelines from the observed efficiency-robustness trade-off.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 8, 08:04 UTC · 8d 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, 12:45 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Research

Russian State-Sponsored Hackers Use Claude to Rebuild Malware After Detection

Anthropic disrupted APT29-linked GTG-20006, which used Claude to autonomously rebuild malware, hijack hotel Wi-Fi DNS, and target 20-plus Ukrainian, European, and US-linked organizations.

Anthropic attributed the campaign to GTG-20006, aligned with Midnight Blizzard (APT29/Cozy Bear), which developed an AI-driven process that monitors its implants against security products and autonomously rebuilds and redeploys detected malware. Targets included military intelligence, diplomatic, and defense organizations in Ukraine and Europe, plus Middle East and Asian maritime agencies; the actor compromised at least three hotel Wi-Fi vendors via DNS hijacking and served ClickFix lures delivering Windows, Android, and iOS malware such as PowerChrome, GiftDrop, and DarkSword. Operations also included a North African breach exfiltrating over 300,000 national identity records and 500,000-plus company registry entries, an Embassy Kit device-code phishing campaign stealing Microsoft 365 tokens from at least eight organizations, and WhatsApp account takeover using headless browsers. The campaign overlaps with CaptiveCrunch reporting from ReliaQuest, Microsoft, Google, and Lumen Black Lotus Labs.

The Hacker News·updated 13:01 UTC · 7h ago·first Sep 11, 14:10 UTC · 5d agoThreat actor in the wild 18 sources2

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.

GBHackers·updated Sep 11, 14:17 UTC · 5d ago·first Sep 11, 09:07 UTC · 5d agoMalware in the wild 2 sourcesCVE-2026-46300CVE-2026-43284CVE-2026-31431

FrostyGoop’s Zoom-In: A Closer Look into the Malware Artifacts, Behaviors and Network Communications

Unit 42 dissects FrostyGoop OT malware, which sent Modbus TCP commands to disrupt heating for 600+ apartment buildings in Ukraine.

Palo Alto Unit 42 analyzed new FrostyGoop/BUSTLEBERM samples, the ninth known ICS-centric malware, first used against a Ukrainian municipal energy company by sending Modbus TCP commands to ENCO control devices. The attack caused a two-day heating outage affecting over 600 apartment buildings during sub-zero temperatures. The Go-compiled malware accepts Modbus register operations and timing parameters via command-line arguments or a JSON configuration file, uses an obscure open-source Modbus library, and checks the Windows BeingDebugged flag to evade debuggers. Unit 42 telemetry recorded over 1 million Modbus TCP devices exposed to the internet between September and October 2024.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 19, 12:04 UTC · 28d agoMalware in the wild

Why Is SHAP Not a Reliable Standalone Explanation Framework for Malware Detection?

arXiv paper shows SHAP gives unreliable standalone explanations for malware detection, with attribution dilution and sign reversal in dependent PE feature spaces.

The paper argues SHAP's formal guarantees are insufficient for reliable malware interpretation because the explained feature-coalition game is fixed only by analyst choices, not by malware behavior in the data. In static Portable Executable feature spaces, dependent feature groups cause conditional SHAP to dilute credit by a factor of 1/m across redundant features, attribute importance to features the model never uses, and even reverse attribution signs; interventional SHAP queries off-manifold coalitions no real executable exhibits. Experiments on EMBER-2018, EMBER-2024, and BODMAS with fixed LightGBM and XGBoost detectors confirm these effects. The authors position SHAP as a limited diagnostic requiring explicit data-distribution statements and domain validation, not a standalone explanation framework.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 4, 02:00 UTC · 12d agoResearch1

How to Keep Malware’s Rotating Infrastructure From Becoming a Detection Gap

ANY.RUN marketing piece argues SOC detection lags rotating malware and phishing infrastructure, citing a 46-country campaign and 3DBlast kit to promote TI feeds.

ANY.RUN describes how malware and phishing campaigns rotate domains and hosting, making single-IOC blocking ineffective for SOC teams. One investigated phishing campaign spanned 46 countries with 425 kit URLs across 240 hosts, 94% of which were seen for only a single day. A phishing kit dubbed 3DBlast impersonates Microsoft 365 and Google using BitB, AiTM, OAuth device-code phishing and DOM relay techniques. The article is primarily a promotion for ANY.RUN TI Feeds and TI Lookup products.

Cyber Security News·Sep 15, 15:36 UTC · 1d agoIndustry

Hackers Use Fake Claude and ChatGPT Installers to Infect Mac Users With Password-Stealing Malware

Attackers distribute MacSync macOS infostealer via fake Claude and ChatGPT installers and sponsored search ads, stealing passwords, cookies, keys, and wallets.

SEQRITE reports a malware-as-a-service campaign pushing MacSync, a macOS password stealer, through sponsored search results and fake Claude and ChatGPT download pages. ClickFix-style prompts trick users into pasting a Terminal command that launches a stager, which loads an in-memory AppleScript to harvest credentials. The malware collects browser vaults, Keychain data, SSH keys, session cookies, messaging sessions, and cryptocurrency wallets, then persists via renamed LaunchAgents and can request screen-recording permissions.

Cyber Security News·Sep 10, 09:53 UTC · 6d agoMalware in the wild 2 sources

Foul Language: WordlistLoader Disguises Malware as Ordinary Text

ClickFix-style campaigns deploy WordlistLoader, which disguises malware as ordinary text, to deliver the increasingly prevalent Amatera infostealer.

Researchers describe WordlistLoader, a new loader that disguises malicious payloads as ordinary text or wordlist files to evade detection. It is being used in ClickFix-style social engineering campaigns to deliver Amatera, an increasingly prevalent infostealer. The obfuscation technique helps the campaign slip past file-type-based inspections.

Dark Reading·Aug 24, 20:51 UTC · 22d agoMalware in the wild

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·Sep 9, 11:05 UTC · 7d agoMalware in the wildCVE-2025-535211

From 88 lines to 1: Detecting DLL hijacking with Elastic Defend

Elastic condenses 88 lines of detection logic into one Elastic Defend 9.5.0 rule catching the DLL hijacking used by a ClickFix campaign.

The ClickFix campaign side-loads a malicious mscoree.dll next to a signed Microsoft binary and also ships a driver to kill Elastic Endpoint. Elastic rebuilt the DLL as a NativeAOT library, dropped it beside the signed binary, and confirmed that Elastic Defend 9.5.0 flags the load. The post replaces 88 lines of detection logic with a single rule for DLL search-order hijacking.

Elastic Security Labs·Aug 28, 00:00 UTC · 19d agoTools in the wild

Chaotic Eclipse Released ShieldCrash, A PoC For Microsoft Defender Zero-Day

Researcher Chaotic Eclipse released ShieldCrash, a PoC showing Microsoft Defender's CVE-2026-69414 patch is incomplete, enabling arbitrary file reads as SYSTEM.

Security researcher Chaotic Eclipse published ShieldCrash, a proof-of-concept exploit for the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine privilege escalation vulnerability CVE-2026-69414 (ShieldBreak). The PoC performs arbitrary file reads with SYSTEM privileges on all supported Windows versions, including systems running the September 2026 security updates and Malware Protection Engine version 1.1.26080.3. The researcher claims Microsoft's patch fixed several exploit paths but missed a specific condition that still enables the attack. His recent releases also include zero-day PoCs targeting Nvidia, Kaspersky, Avast, and CrowdStrike Falcon.

Security Affairs·Sep 9, 07:53 UTC · 7d agoExploit / PoCCVE-2026-69414