Search: “elastic-security-labs”

KREMLIN Banking Malware Bypasses Chrome Security to Steal Banking Sessions

Elastic Security Labs details KREMLIN, a Brazilian banking malware that implants malicious Chrome and Edge extensions by forging Chromium integrity values to steal banking sessions.

Elastic Security Labs tracks the KREMLIN banking malware operation as REF9334, active since at least May 2025 across seven campaigns primarily targeting 12 Brazilian banks. The malware is installed by a victim-run JavaScript loader, achieves scheduled-task persistence, and side-loads a malicious DLL via SentinelOne's SentinelMemoryScanner.exe. It modifies Chrome and Edge Secure Preferences files, enables developer mode, and regenerates Chromium MAC values to silently install extensions, while extracting browser encryption material including the newer App-Bound OSCrypt key. An Ethereum smart contract serves as a dead-drop resolver for C2 config; Elastic disrupted over 1,500 infections via a canary domain.

GBHackers·05:33 UTC · 14h agoMalware in the wild 2 sources

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·Sep 11, 00:00 UTC · 5d agoResearch

How a team of entity maintainers monitors, connects and scores entities in Elastic Security

Elastic Security explains how background 'maintainer' jobs build user, host and service entities from raw logs and drive identity resolution and risk scoring.

Elastic Security Labs describes the internal background jobs, called maintainers, that each own one piece of every user, host and service record in Elastic Security. The maintainers construct entities from raw logs, resolve identities across sources and compute risk scores, and the write-up explains how the team keeps this entity machinery consistent.

Elastic Security Labs·Aug 24, 00:00 UTC · 23d agoTools

13 million tool calls: auditing every AI coding agent action with Elastic Agent

Elastic Security Labs shows how Cursor hooks plus Elastic Agent turn AI coding agent activity into 13 million huntable security events.

Elastic Security Labs demonstrates auditing AI coding agent behavior by pairing Cursor hooks with Elastic Agent, capturing every tool call, shell command, file read, and MCP request as structured events. The dataset of 13 million captured events can be hunted with ES|QL, giving defenders visibility into agent actions.

Elastic Security Labs·Aug 11, 00:00 UTC · Aug 11, 2026AI safety & security1

Malware bypasses browser checks to force install Chrome, Edge extensions

Elastic Security Labs detailed KREMLIN, a Brazilian banking malware that silently installs malicious Chrome and Edge extensions, with 1,515 confirmed infections.

Elastic Security Labs analyzed KREMLIN, a toolkit used by a Brazilian operation in at least seven campaigns since May 2025 that impersonates 12 banks to trick users into opening a JavaScript file disguised as a bank receipt or invoice. After anti-sandbox checks, it downloads Node.js, persists via a scheduled task, and fetches payload locations from an Ethereum smart contract, hiding payloads in JPEG images on Internet Archive. The toolkit bypasses Chromium integrity mechanisms to install unapproved Chrome/Edge extensions masquerading as AVSync that steal cookies, keylog form input, capture screenshots, and intercept HTTP traffic, while recent campaigns deployed the REMCOS RAT and earlier ones Pulsar RAT. Elastic confirmed 1,515 infected systems, almost all in Brazil, and disrupted the campaign by registering an anti-sandbox canary domain; the linked wallet handled roughly 20,800 USDT incoming and 19,000 USDT outgoing.

BleepingComputer·18:50 UTC · 1h agoMalware in the wild 2 sources

REVSTEALER ramps up: analysis of up-and-coming infostealer

Elastic Security Labs analyzes REVSTEALER, an emerging infostealer harvesting browser credentials, cryptocurrency wallets, and gaming accounts.

Elastic Security Labs published a deep-dive analysis of REVSTEALER, described as an up-and-coming infostealer. The malware targets browser data, cryptocurrency wallets, and gaming accounts, with credential harvesting as its core function. The report tracks the family's capabilities as it ramps up activity in the wild.

Elastic Security Labs·Sep 2, 00:00 UTC · 14d agoMalware in the wild

Linux Detection Engineering - Fileless Execution

Elastic Security Labs reproduces five Linux fileless execution patterns, including memfd_create staging and in-memory kernel module loads, and maps each to Elastic Defend rules.

Elastic Security Labs reproduced five Linux fileless execution patterns using its FENIX tooling: memfd_create staging, interpreter one-liners, deleted binaries, and in-memory kernel module loads. Each pattern is mapped to the Elastic Defend detection rules that catch it. The post is part of the team's ongoing Linux detection engineering series.

Elastic Security Labs·Sep 1, 14:26 UTC · 15d agoResearch

Elastic Defend now covers 800+ vulnerable drivers, with automated troubleshooting and ARM support

Help Net Security·Aug 3, 00:00 UTC · Aug 3, 2026Ransomware

How to correlate Kubernetes audit logs with container runtime data

Elastic Security Labs shows how to join Kubernetes audit logs with Defend for Containers runtime data to investigate service account abuse and container escapes.

Elastic Security Labs demonstrates correlating Kubernetes audit logs with Defend for Containers (D4C) runtime telemetry in Elastic. In an Amazon EKS lab, a compromised workload service account performed discovery, read secrets, minted a token, created a privileged pod, and execed into it to attempt a container escape via nsenter and chroot. The escape wrappers appeared only in the decoded Kubernetes audit requestURI, not in runtime process events. The post covers join fields, prebuilt EQL sequence rules, and continues the control-plane correlation thread from the TeamPCP container attack scenario and the Hugging Face intrusion write-up.

Elastic Security Labs·Sep 3, 15:19 UTC · 13d agoResearch1

Data access: the hidden cost of security vendor lock-in

Elastic compares SIEM data egress cost, latency, and fidelity across CrowdStrike, Microsoft, Google, and Splunk, arguing vendors engineer lock-in.

Elastic Security Labs published an opinion piece comparing how major SIEM and security vendors handle data egress, based on each vendor's public documentation as of September 2026. It rates CrowdStrike Falcon Data Replicator and Palo Alto Networks XSIAM Event Forwarding as restricted (paid add-ons with batch delays), Microsoft as partially open, Splunk as open, and Elastic as open with no export license. The piece argues frictionless ingestion paired with licensed or delayed egress is an intentional lock-in business model, and cites CrowdStrike's 2026 Global Threat Report eCrime breakout time of 29 minutes to argue real-time telemetry access is now essential.

Elastic Security Labs·Sep 4, 00:00 UTC · 12d agoIndustry

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

Four REVSTEALER-Linked Modules Disable Windows Update and Defender to Run a Crypto Miner

Elastic documents four persistent REVSTEALER-linked tools (ProManager, WinUpdate, SoftManager, LockAppHost); LockAppHost disables Windows Update and Defender to run a crypto miner.

Elastic Security Labs identified four previously unreported executables tied to REVSTEALER, a commercial Windows infostealer sold since at least February 2026: ProManager, WinUpdate, SoftManager, and LockAppHost. LockAppHost abuses CMSTP for elevation, adds Microsoft Defender exclusions, disables five Windows Update services and 13 scheduled tasks, then hides a miner in legitimate Windows processes; other modules steal wallets, clipboard-swap crypto addresses, and turn victims into reverse proxies. The components share REVSTEALER tradecraft including packer, runtime function resolution, and Polygon smart-contract backup configuration (EtherHiding). Elastic's detection rule matched about 4,700 VirusTotal samples over the past year; distribution uses hijacked YouTube channels promoting game cheats and a fake 'Claude Opus 5 Free Desktop' app.

The Hacker News·Sep 6, 08:34 UTC · 10d agoMalware in the wild

The extension you never installed: KREMLIN forges Chrome's own integrity checks to steal banking sessions

Elastic details KREMLIN, a Brazilian banking malware whose malicious Chrome/Edge extension forges Chromium integrity checks to steal sessions.

Elastic Security Labs tracked operation REF9334 and its KREMLIN toolkit, a Brazilian banking malware campaign impersonating twelve banks across seven campaigns since May 2025. The infection chain uses multi-stage obfuscated JavaScript loaders with sandbox checks (file and process counting), scheduled-task persistence, and an Ethereum smart contract acting as a dead-drop resolver for C2 and payload URLs, abusing Archive.org for hosting. The malicious browser extension bypasses Chromium integrity mechanisms by manipulating Secure Preferences and regenerating required HMACs and App-Bound encrypted hashes. Threat Command disrupted over 1,500 infections by registering the kill-switch canary domain.

Elastic Security Labs·Sep 14, 00:00 UTC · 2d agoMalware in the wild

Inside Elastic's agentic SOC: How we took AI alert triage from 60% to 92% accuracy

Elastic's InfoSec team raised AI alert-triage accuracy from 60% to 92% using three self-correcting agents integrated into Slack triage.

Elastic's InfoSec team deployed three AI agents that read detection-rule investigation guides and closure reasons from 30 days of historical cases to triage alerts. The agentic pipeline lifted triage accuracy from 60% to 92%. Analysts now clear most alerts with a single click in Slack.

Elastic Security Labs·Aug 25, 00:00 UTC · 22d agoTools

Why 2026 is the Year to Upgrade to an Agentic AI SOC

Elastic Security Labs argues 2026 is the production inflection point for agentic AI in security operations centers.

Elastic Security Labs argues 2026 is the practical inflection point for agentic AI SOCs, noting nearly two-thirds of organizations are experimenting with AI agents while fewer than one in four have production deployments. The piece outlines operational challenges and recommendations: treat agents as non-human identities with least-privilege tool access, version-control system prompts as code, deploy unified agents with on-demand task packages, and enforce per-agent budgets and rate limits. It stresses explainability via RAG and transparent reasoning traces so analysts can verify and override autonomous decisions.

Elastic Security Labs·Sep 8, 21:00 UTC · 7d agoIndustry

Have the frontier labs mixed up AI safety and security?

Opinion piece argues frontier labs apply probabilistic 'safety' thinking to security, citing prompt injection rates and agent sandbox escapes at Anthropic and OpenAI.

Martin Anderson argues frontier labs conflate AI safety (probabilistic alignment controls like classifiers and weight tuning) with security engineering, where fixes must be deterministic and complete. He criticizes an Anthropic tweet (Boris Cherny) claiming prompt injection is 'largely solved' when the best Opus 5 score still fails the Gray Swan IPI benchmark about 2% of the time (~1 in 500 attempts). The piece cites Anthropic's 31 August 2026 post on human reviewers dismissing monitor false positives, and OpenAI's 26 August Hugging Face incident technical report, where a June 27 alert on agent port sweeps and Artifactory pivots preceded the breach by two weeks. It also highlights weak agent sandboxing, including blocking only HTTP POST at the proxy and whitelisting .blob.core.windows.net, both trivially bypassed.

Lobsters · security·Sep 6, 20:47 UTC · 9d agoAI safety & security in the wild

AI-Infra-Guard: Open-source security scanner for AI systems

Tencent's Zhuque Lab open-sourced AI-Infra-Guard, a scanner that fingerprints AI services, checks 1,600+ CVEs, and evaluates MCP skills.

AI-Infra-Guard fingerprints running AI services such as Ollama, vLLM and ComfyUI, checks them against more than 1,600 known CVEs, and inspects MCP servers and agent skills across 14 risk categories. Its SkillTrustBench judging set contains 5,520 human-labeled samples, with false positive rates of 1.20%–18.67% depending on the judging model. Users include ICBC, China Merchants Bank, China Telecom, Lenovo, vivo and Bilibili. Release 4.1.9 hardened scanning agents against indirect prompt injection, and the open-source build ships without authentication, requiring a reverse proxy with Basic Auth or an IP allowlist.

Help Net Security·Sep 9, 05:30 UTC · 7d agoTools

IT Help Desk Impersonation Lets Hackers Bypass MFA

Arctic Wolf tracks PREY-0058 posing as IT help desk to steal Microsoft 365 sessions via AiTM panels, then extorting executives after SaaS data theft.

Arctic Wolf documented a threat cluster tracked as PREY-0058 that impersonates internal IT help desk staff by phone, luring Directors, VPs, and executives to authentication-themed URLs formatted as victim-organization lure domains. Adversary-in-the-middle panels intercept credentials and MFA approvals, and stolen sessions are replayed through residential proxies such as NodeMaven from IPs matching the victim's geo-location and ASN, defeating impossible-travel alerts. Attackers perform discovery against SharePoint and Entra ID, then harvest data from OneDrive, Exchange, and Box before issuing extortion demands. Defenders are advised to require managed devices, use phishing-resistant MFA like FIDO2, enable Continuous Access Evaluation, and monitor sign-ins, SharePoint SearchQueryPerformed, and MailItemsAccessed events.

Security Affairs·Sep 8, 07:41 UTC · 8d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild1

ArmorCode enhances attack path analysis with new AI agents and Context Risk Graph

Help Net Security·Aug 5, 00:00 UTC · Aug 5, 2026Vulnerability

Seeing is Not Believing: Breaking the Physical-to-Digital Trust Boundary in Robotics

Researchers show a single ROS 2 environment variable lets attackers inject fake telemetry and hijack robots while spoofing downstream remote attestation.

A pre-built hook loaded via one modified environment variable covertly intercepts and injects both telemetry and control signals before publication in ROS 2, breaking the physical-to-digital trust boundary in multi-robot task handovers. Attackers can also distribute compromised third-party Docker containers and auxiliary tools embedding the hooks. On a physical Franka Emika arm running Secure ROS 2, the attack injects fabricated telemetry in real time with roughly 3 ms jitter and achieved an 87% success rate even against an AI-based detector. Findings were responsibly disclosed to the ROS 2 development team.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 8, 05:50 UTC · 8d agoVulnerability1

UK Council Attack Linked to Mass Exploitation of SonicWall Flaw

Hunt.io links a UK council attack to mass exploitation of SonicWall SMA1000 flaw CVE-2026-15409 (CVSS 10.0), enabling credential and Active Directory theft.

Hunt.io links, with moderate confidence, the July 17, 2026 attack on the Borough Council of King's Lynn and West Norfolk to mass exploitation of SonicWall SMA1000 appliances via CVE-2026-15409, an unauthenticated SSRF in the WorkPlace portal WebSocket proxy with CVSS 10.0. The operator adapted Rapid7's July 15 PoC into a 50-thread mass scanner within days and stole LDAP credentials for 534 Active Directory accounts across 160 domains, with nine environments losing SAM/LSA secrets and five losing full AD databases via DCSync. CISA added the flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog and noted use in ransomware campaigns; targeting of ~200,000 Shodan-derived SonicWall addresses spanned government, healthcare, finance, universities, and manufacturing worldwide.

Security Affairs·Sep 11, 07:11 UTC · 5d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-154091

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·Sep 14, 11:54 UTC · 2d agoResearch1

Honeypot-Omaha and batch.py [Guest Diary], (Wed, Sep 2nd)

A SANS ISC guest diary describes batch.py, a Python tool that consolidates honeypot logs and enriches IOCs with threat intelligence data.

Written by a SANS.edu BACS intern, the diary explains analysis of the DShield Honeypot-Omaha sensor, which uses Cowrie to emulate SSH and Telnet and log attacker activity. The author's batch.py script implements a four-phase pipeline with SHA-256-generated master and guest authentication to consolidate JSON and log files, correlate data via external APIs, and produce MITRE, CVE, geolocation, threat-score and fingerprint enrichment for investigated indicators.

SANS Internet Storm Center·Sep 3, 02:02 UTC · 13d agoTools1

Active exploitation of Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vulnerabilities

Cisco Talos reports in-the-wild exploitation of critical FMC flaw CVE-2026-20079 by three clusters including a Sandworm-linked APT and Qilin ransomware affiliates.

Cisco Talos is tracking active exploitation of CVE-2026-20079 (CVSS 10.0), an authentication bypass in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center that lets unauthenticated remote attackers execute scripts and obtain root access, and CVE-2026-20316 (CVSS 5.3), which permits low-privileged logins and can be chained for privilege escalation. Talos identified three post-compromise clusters: UAT-12197 deploying JSP web shells and a JAR command executor for credential theft; UAT-11823, an APT overlapping with Sandworm, deploying a Netcat reverse shell and Cyclops Blink malware; and UAT-11988, assessed as a ransomware operator with TTPs consistent with Qilin affiliates. Hotfixes are available, with a comprehensive hardening release due the week of September 14, 2026.

Cisco Talos·Sep 9, 16:08 UTC · 7d agoExploit / PoC in the wild 2 sourcesCVE-2026-20079CVE-2026-20316

Security Data Isn’t the Problem. Security Context Is.

Horizon3 blog argues security context, not data volume, is the SOC bottleneck, promoting its NodeZero integration with CrowdStrike Falcon Next-Gen SIEM.

Horizon3.ai published a vendor blog explaining how its NodeZero Proactive Security Platform integration with CrowdStrike Falcon Next-Gen SIEM brings validated exposure findings into existing security operations workflows. The post argues SOCs are now limited by confidence rather than visibility, needing context to decide which issues matter. It cites a global chemical manufacturer that validated exploitable exposures with NodeZero before completing a $2 billion merger.

Horizon3.ai·Sep 15, 13:12 UTC · 1d agoTools

Enterprises Warned of Attacks Exploiting WSO2 Vulnerability

Attackers are actively exploiting CVE-2026-5430 (CVSS 10), a WSO2 JWT authentication bypass, to access enterprise API credentials and sensitive data.

WatchTowr's honeypot network recorded the first exploitation attempt of CVE-2026-5430 on September 13, roughly two months after the CVE record was published in early August. The flaw, patched by WSO2 in April with an advisory in May, carries a maximum CVSS score of 10 and allows JWT authentication bypass via tokens signed with unsupported algorithms, enabling unauthorized access and full account takeover. A forged JWT observed in the wild granted access to API backend endpoints, credentials, and consumer keys and secrets for every registered application. WSO2's API Manager, API Control Plane, Traffic Manager, and Universal Gateway are affected, and the platform serves nearly 1,000 enterprise customers in banking, government, telecom, and logistics.

SecurityWeek·updated 15:05 UTC · 5h ago·first 08:39 UTC · 11h agoExploit / PoC in the wild 3 sourcesCVE-2026-54302· 1 read

Citrix expands Platform Flex with observability and secure developer services

Help Net Security·Aug 11, 00:00 UTC · Aug 11, 2026Industry

CBTS brings continuous penetration testing to enterprise security

CBTS launched Penetration Testing as a Service built on Horizon3.ai's NodeZero, combining autonomous pentesting with expert review for continuous validation.

CBTS announced PTaaS, a service that runs recurring autonomous penetration tests powered by Horizon3.ai's NodeZero across cloud, SaaS, identity, and AI environments, with CBTS experts reviewing findings for exploitability and remediation guidance. The service supports daily-to-quarterly cadences and aims to support Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) programs. It cites Verizon's 2026 DBIR finding that re-exploitation likelihood drops roughly 30 days after last observed exploitation.

Help Net Security·Aug 12, 00:00 UTC · Aug 12, 2026Tools

SonicWall Patches Two New Actively Exploited Zero

SonicWall patches two actively exploited SMA 1000 VPN zero-days: CVSS 10.0 pre-auth SSRF CVE-2026-83548 and post-auth command injection CVE-2026-83549, chained for RCE.

SonicWall released hotfixes for two zero-day vulnerabilities in its SMA 1000 VPN appliances, with SonicWall PSIRT confirming active exploitation in the wild. CVE-2026-83548 (CVSS 10.0) is a pre-authentication SSRF in the Appliance Work Place interface allowing unauthenticated unauthorized operations; CVE-2026-83549 (CVSS 7.8) is a post-authentication OS command injection in the Appliance Management Console enabling arbitrary command execution and RCE. The flaws affect models 6210, 7210 and 8200v running 12.4.3-03453 or earlier and 12.5.0-02835 or earlier, fixed in versions 12.4.3-03526 and 12.5.0-02952. This follows a July Volexity report on threat actor UTA0533 chaining two SMA 1000 zero-days to gain root access and deploy the KNUCKLEBALL Python backdoor.

Security Affairs·Sep 2, 14:22 UTC · 14d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-83548CVE-2026-83549CVE-2026-15409+1 CVEs1