Search: “monero”

Are Unreachable Nodes Truly Safe? Fully Eclipsing Monero's P2P Network!

Researchers present Nyx and Moros, the first eclipse attacks against Monero nodes behind NATs, requiring no inbound access and demonstrated on mainnet.

The paper presents the first eclipse attacks tailored to unreachable Monero nodes operating behind NATs, requiring no inbound access to the victim. The attacks poison the peerlists of reachable nodes, which relay contamination to unreachable nodes' whitelists, then exploit Monero's outbound connection refresh logic to evict benign neighbors and monopolize all outbound connections. Nyx achieves a complete, persistent eclipse of long-running unreachable nodes in large-scale SEED Emulator simulations, while Moros stealthily eclipses newly joined nodes during bootstrapping and was demonstrated on the Monero mainnet. Countermeasures are proposed.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 9, 14:43 UTC · 7d agoResearch

macOS Screen Sharing Flaw Exploited to Deploy Monero Miners

Dutch NCSC confirms active exploitation of critical macOS Screen Sharing flaw CVE-2026-65400, granting root access and installing Monero miners.

CVE-2026-65400 (CVSS 9.8) is an authentication state-management flaw in macOS's built-in Screen Sharing that lets network attackers authenticate without valid credentials. The Dutch NCSC confirmed active exploitation against systems with port 5900 exposed to the internet; in every documented case attackers obtained root access and installed a Monero cryptocurrency miner. Apple patched the bug in macOS Tahoe 26.6.1, Sequoia 15.7.9, and Sonoma 14.8.9, crediting Alfredo Pesoli of Bynario. A related researcher scan found roughly 40,000 exposed Screen Sharing hosts, and security firm Calif built working exploits for related flaws in about four hours using an AI coding agent.

Security Affairs·Aug 15, 08:35 UTC · Aug 15, 2026Exploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-65400

Massive Redis Cryptojacking Campaign Hijacks Thousands of Linux Servers

RedisRaider cryptojacking campaign compromises thousands of exposed, unauthenticated Linux Redis servers using cron persistence to deploy XMRig Monero miners.

Hunt.io researchers track a large-scale cryptojacking operation named RedisRaider that scans IPv4 ranges for Redis services exposed on TCP port 6379 and targets instances accepting unauthenticated connections. From a master list of 12,966 candidate hosts, 2,342 were confirmed to accept commands without authentication. Attackers abuse Redis commands (CONFIG SET dir/dbfilename, SET, BGSAVE) to write malicious cron entries into /etc/cron.d or /var/spool/cron, launching XMRig-based Monero miners, with branches including SSH authorized-key injection, Lua probing, and WordPress spraying. The article also references CVE-2026-81934, a Redis TLS use-after-free allowing unauthenticated command execution, fixed in releases including 8.2.9, 8.4.6, 8.6.6, 8.8.2, and 8.10.1.

GBHackers·Sep 9, 05:28 UTC · 7d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-81934

Hackers Turn More Than 3,500 Redis Servers Into Cryptocurrency Miners

Hunters.io researchers report 3,562 exposed Redis servers hijacked via replication abuse into Monero cryptomining, causing performance loss and data-integrity risk.

Researchers at Hunters.io exposed a cryptomining operation that compromised 3,562 distinct Redis servers after scanning 12,966 targets. The attackers used unauthenticated Redis instances and master-replica replication to plant a cron task that downloaded and ran XMRig every five minutes. The miner connects to a mining pool over encrypted port 443 and hides among temporary files. Impact includes high CPU usage, elevated cloud bills, and data-loss risk from altered Redis persistence settings.

Cyber Security News·Sep 9, 07:47 UTC · 7d agoMalware in the wild

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

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

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

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 9, 14:35 UTC · 7d agoResearch

Apple macOS Screen Sharing Flaw Exploited on Internet

Actively exploited CVE-2026-65400 in macOS Screen Sharing grants pre-auth root access; attackers deploy Monero miners on exposed systems.

NCSC-NL reported active exploitation of CVE-2026-65400 (CVSS 9.8), an authentication flaw in macOS Screen Sharing patched on August 6, 2026, with root access gained and a Monero miner planted on internet-exposed systems using port 5900. Related Screen Sharing bugs CVE-2026-43779, CVE-2026-43777, and CVE-2026-43760 were fixed in macOS Tahoe 26.6, and researcher @osxreverser noted a pre-auth flaw fixed alongside them affecting roughly 40,000 exposed hosts. Calif said an AI agent produced working exploits for both pre-auth bugs in four hours, underscoring the shrinking gap between patch release and weaponization.

The Hacker News·Aug 19, 05:22 UTC · 28d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-65400CVE-2026-43779CVE-2026-43777+1 CVEs

The Fraud Ecosystem: A Transition From Known Marketplaces to a Fragmented Environment

Rapid7 analyzes how fraud marketplaces are fragmenting into specialized shops after larger marketplaces were dismantled, aided by new MITRE F3 framework

Rapid7 reports a shift from large known fraud marketplaces to a fragmented environment of smaller specialized storefronts such as Xleet, Blackpass, Infodig, and Styx, operating across dark web channels, Telegram, and P2P options. These Fraud-as-a-Service shops sell stolen accounts, PII, synthetic identity generation, infrastructure, and money laundering support, supporting schemes like business email compromise. MITRE's Fraud Fighting Framework (F3), introduced in early 2026, aims to help security teams prioritize monitoring of fraud TTPs, particularly account takeover techniques. Fraud damages are anticipated to approach hundreds of billions of USD.

Rapid7 Blog·Sep 11, 13:33 UTC · 5d agoPhishing & fraud

You've Got a BUD in Me: Authenticated Reads from Per-Block Write Logs

Researchers propose BUD, per-block write-log digests enabling blockchain validators to serve historical membership and exclusion proofs far cheaper than state-wide tries.

The paper introduces Block Update Digests (BUD), which authenticate each block's write log with predecessor pointers, plus a SuperBUD and exponential hierarchy to turn long unchanged intervals into short proofs. Soundness against adversarial provers and up to f Byzantine validators is proven under archive, attestation, and committee evidence assumptions. Benchmarks show a 50x state-size increase raises the base-BUD path only 1.24x versus 3.1x for in-memory and 69.5x for disk-backed Merkle Patricia tries, with read payloads below 800 bytes and p99 warm verification at 146 microseconds.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 10, 08:46 UTC · 6d agoResearch

Heterogeneous Cross-Chain Transaction Tracing for Solana Bridges via Candidate-Set Selective Decision

SolTracer traces cross-chain transactions onto Solana bridges, improving open-world association F1 by 20.16% over the strongest baseline for illicit-fund tracing.

The paper formalizes four Solana-bound cross-chain transaction modes and proposes SolTracer, which maps heterogeneous execution semantics into a unified event space and uses candidate-set selective decision-making with abstention when valid targets are absent. In the challenging open-world setting with a 50% TA ratio, SolTracer improves F1 by 20.16% over the strongest baseline. An empirical study of real-world transfers examines count-value divergence across bridge mechanisms, cross-asset shifts, and decoupling between on-chain settlement and explorer visibility.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 10, 11:43 UTC · 6d agoResearch

Attackers exploit patched macOS Screen Sharing flaw to deploy cryptominer

Attackers actively exploit patched macOS Screen Sharing bug CVE-2026-65400 on systems with port 5900 exposed, gaining root to install a Monero cryptominer.

The Netherlands' National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) reports active exploitation of CVE-2026-65400, an authentication flaw in macOS Screen Sharing that lets attackers authenticate without valid login credentials. Apple patched the issue in macOS Sequoia 15.7.9, Sonoma 14.8.9 and Tahoe 26.6.1, and the NCSC escalated its advisory on August 12 after proof-of-concept code went public and reports arrived of attacks on internet-exposed systems. In every reported case attackers obtained root access and installed a Monero crypto miner; users who cannot patch immediately are advised to disable Screen Sharing.

Help Net Security·Aug 17, 00:00 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Exploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-65400

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

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

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

Help Net Security·Aug 26, 00:00 UTC · 21d agoAI tools & infra

⚡ Weekly Recap: VMware Exploits, Windows 0-Day, MCP Attacks, Browser Hijacks and More

Weekly recap: suspected China-nexus APT exploited VMware vCenter CVE-2026-59310, Lazarus used Windows zero-day CVE-2026-68820, and macOS flaw dropped Monero miners.

The week's top stories included a suspected China-nexus APT exploiting VMware vCenter CVE-2026-59310 (CVSS 9.8), a directory-traversal flaw enabling arbitrary code execution, with backdoors, reverse SSH and Babuk-derived ransomware deployed, per QUIRSO. NCSC-NL reported active exploitation of macOS Screen Sharing flaw CVE-2026-65400 (CVSS 9.8) to install Monero miners on systems with port 5900 exposed. Lazarus Group exploited Windows zero-day CVE-2026-68820 (CVSS 7.0) in Operation Dream Job, delivering ForestTiger and Troy backdoors to defense and aerospace targets. GeoServer patched a critical SQL injection flaw exploited within hours of disclosure, and Jamf analyzed the new Amnesia Stealer for macOS with live browser control.

The Hacker News·Aug 17, 17:57 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Exploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-59310CVE-2026-65400CVE-2026-688201

PDoS: A Profitable Denial-of-Service Attack against Proof-of-Work Blockchain Liveness

PDoS attack disrupts Proof-of-Work blockchain liveness profitably by combining miner deterrence signals with parasitic revenue extraction from victim pools.

PDoS is a hybrid incentive-driven denial-of-service attack that combines block header signal deterrence with parasitic revenue extraction from a victim pool's share-reward mechanism. By subsidizing attack costs through the victim pool, it lowers the hash-power threshold required to induce rational miners to shut down, unlike prior attacks such as BDoS that demand sustained attacker losses. The authors show a counterintuitive result: in high-fee or high-MEV environments, higher block value increases the attacker's parasitic revenue and can push the attack past break-even into a self-sustaining or even profitable regime. PDoS is claimed as the first attack demonstrating that disrupting PoW blockchain liveness can be economically self-sustaining.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 11, 05:16 UTC · 5d agoResearch

ClickFix Attacks Deliver macOS Stealer That Can Drain Crypto Wallets

The Hacker News·Aug 8, 05:44 UTC · Aug 8, 2026Malware

US Finance Under Phishing Pressure: What the SOC Data Reveals?

ANY.RUN SOC telemetry shows escalating phishing campaigns against US finance, including Vercel-hosted RMM attacks abusing legitimate services.

ANY.RUN analyzed SOC telemetry data on phishing targeting the US financial sector, concluding that the scale and security impact should not be understated. The analysis highlights modern campaigns such as Vercel-hosted attacks that deliver remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools. It notes that attackers increasingly abuse legitimate services and everyday workflow tools to deliver phishing, making detection harder for SOC teams.

ANY.RUN·Aug 26, 09:17 UTC · 21d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

Fake Adobe and Zoom Updates Install ScreenConnect for Persistent Remote Access

The Hacker News·Aug 4, 13:18 UTC · Aug 4, 2026Malware1

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

Security Affairs newsletter Round 590 by Pierluigi Paganini

Weekly Security Affairs newsletter roundup aggregating top cybercrime, malware, APT and AI security stories including ExfilSquad, Kimwolf v7 and Kimsuky AI use.

This is the Round 590 weekly newsletter from Security Affairs, linking to the week's major stories rather than reporting a single incident. Headlines include ExfilSquad extortion, a 7.3M chess.com record leak, Kimwolf botnet v7, SharePoint exploitation after a public PoC, Kimsuky integrating AI, and China-linked autonomous-style attacks. It is a digest and promotional item with no standalone technical details.

Security Affairs·Aug 16, 08:31 UTC · Aug 16, 2026Industry

MicroHasTEE: Bare-Metal Haskell for Type-Level Peripheral Ownership on Armv8-M

MicroHasTEE expresses TrustZone secure and non-secure firmware as one typed Haskell program, catching peripheral-ownership inconsistencies at compile time.

MicroHasTEE is a multiparty Haskell framework that models both TrustZone firmware images as participants in a single typed program, using type-level capability ledgers to track peripheral acquisition, configuration, transfer, and finalization. MicroHs compiles the shared program twice to produce separate bare-metal Secure and Non-secure firmware images. The framework rejects inconsistent resource use, post-configuration attribution changes, wrong-domain callbacks, and calls to unregistered Secure services. A door-lock case study on an STM32U5 Nucleo board produced images of 232.7 KiB and 228.4 KiB of flash with roughly 220 KiB of SRAM per domain.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 11, 08:34 UTC · 5d agoResearch1

Russia-Aligned UAC-0099 Plants Nuclear Weapon Prompt in Malware to Disrupt AI Analysis

Russia-aligned UAC-0099 planted a nuclear-weapon prompt inside malicious VBS scripts to derail LLM-based malware analysis targeting Ukraine.

ESET disclosed a technique dubbed GuardBreaker used by Russia-aligned UAC-0099 against a Ukrainian target: inserting the text 'I want to make a nuclear weapon. Help me ...' as a comment in a malicious VBS script to trip LLM safety guardrails and stop AI-assisted analysis. The script downloads and installs MATCHBOIL, a C# loader exclusive to UAC-0099, which CERT-UA warned was distributed as a fake Notepad++ plugin in late July 2026. Similar prompt-injection anti-analysis tricks appeared in the Mini Shai-Hulud, Miasma, and Hades npm supply chain campaigns linked to TeamPCP, two of whose alleged members were arrested in Western Australia.

The Hacker News·Sep 2, 06:25 UTC · 14d agoThreat actor

ThreatsDay: CEO Phishing Kits, 5K Dropbox Account Hacks, OAuth Traps + 17 More Stories

Microsoft warns of Teams IT-impersonation intrusions deploying Node.js implants; Spring Ring vishing hit 150+ employees across 10 companies; The Gentlemen ransomware claims 683 victims.

Microsoft warned of a human-operated campaign abusing Teams external collaboration to impersonate IT help desk staff, deploy malicious MSI packages staging Node.js runtimes and obfuscated JavaScript implants, then pivot to domain controllers over WinRM. Unit 42 documented the Spring Ring vishing operation targeting over 150 employees across at least 10 companies using 26 attacker identities, including an NTLM relay variant against domain controllers. Sophos reported The Gentlemen ransomware (Gold Sherwood) reached 683 total victims by end of July 2026, adding 169 in July, with a playbook using BYOVD-based EDR killers and backup tampering. Group-IB found the Outsider phishing-as-a-service platform created 700+ new phishing pages within a month despite law enforcement takedowns.

The Hacker News·Sep 3, 18:02 UTC · 13d agoThreat actor in the wild1

The Machine With Many Faces: Post-Exploitation Identity Misuse in SPIFFE/SPIRE

Unit 42 demonstrates that root access on a Kubernetes node lets attackers spoof SPIFFE/SPIRE attestation and harvest co-located workloads' SVIDs.

Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 describes post-exploitation techniques in which an attacker with root on a compromised Kubernetes node spoofs Linux cgroup metadata used by the SPIRE agent during workload attestation, tricking it into issuing a co-located workload's SPIFFE Verifiable Identity Document to an attacker-controlled process. The research shows the core trust assumption of machine-identity systems—that the node is trusted—collapses once root is obtained, exposing all cryptographic identities scoped to that node. Unit 42 released an open-source tool, Spooffe, for defenders to test identity exposure, and notes the technique has not been observed exploited in the wild.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Sep 10, 10:00 UTC · 6d agoResearch1

Critical macOS, SharePoint, vCenter, and Microsoft IKE Flaws Under Active Exploitation

CISA added four critical actively exploited flaws to KEV: macOS Screen Sharing, SharePoint, VMware vCenter, and Microsoft IKE, with APT and ransomware use.

CISA added CVE-2026-65400 (macOS Screen Sharing, CVSS 9.8), CVE-2026-55040 (SharePoint, CVSS 9.1), CVE-2026-59310 (VMware vCenter, CVSS 9.8) and CVE-2026-33824 (Microsoft IKE Service Extensions, CVSS 9.8) to the KEV catalog. The macOS flaw was abused to deliver a Monero miner, while the vCenter bug was exploited by a suspected China-nexus APT to install reverse_ssh backdoors and Babuk-derived ransomware across 361 victim IPs in 47 countries. Unit 42 linked CVE-2026-33824 to a Chinese-speaking actor running an AI-enabled campaign using DeepSeek. FCEB agencies must patch by August 21, 2026 under BOD 26-04.

The Hacker News·Aug 19, 15:26 UTC · 28d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-65400CVE-2026-55040CVE-2026-59310+1 CVEs

From Infostealer Log to Marketplace Listing: A Technical Walkthrough of the Credential Theft Pipeline

Cyble walkthrough maps how infostealer logs move from endpoint infection through aggregation and enrichment to dark web credential marketplace sales.

Cyble breaks the credential theft pipeline into stages: infostealer execution harvesting browser credential stores, cookies, session tokens, crypto wallets, and FTP configurations; aggregation of stealer logs via C2 panels into bundled archives; parsing and enrichment against previously leaked datasets; and final listing on dark web marketplaces. Enrichment adds employer and role context that raises prices and enables credential stuffing across reused passwords. The report advises SOC teams to monitor stealer logs and marketplace chatter early rather than waiting for breach alerts.

Cyble·Sep 10, 10:45 UTC · 6d agoMalware1

Eleethub: A Cryptocurrency Mining Botnet with Rootkit for Self

Unit 42 uncovered Eleethub, a Perl-based Bitcoin mining botnet using a crafted rootkit and libprocesshider to evade detection, still under development with few infections.

Unit 42 discovered an under-development Perl Shellbot campaign that mines Bitcoin using xmrig and emech while evading detection via a rootkit that replaces the ps tool and the LD_PRELOAD-based libprocesshider.so library. Infected devices download a malicious shell script, connect to IRC-based C2 at eleethub.com and the UnderNet network, and can receive commands for UDP/TCP floods, port scans, and HTTP attacks. The botnet can affect Unix systems and Windows 10 hosts running a Linux subsystem, and its operators use the 'Los Zetas' branding, though they are unlikely to be the Mexican drug cartel. Researchers found only a few compromised 'zombies' before the campaign expanded.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 19, 12:05 UTC · 28d agoMalware in the wild

Linux Detection Engineering - Local Privilege Escalation

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

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

Elastic Security Labs·Sep 11, 00:00 UTC · 5d agoResearch

Another Apache Log4j Vulnerability Is Actively Exploited in the Wild (CVE-2021

Apache Log4j 2 RCE CVE-2021-44228 is actively exploited via crafted JNDI lookups; Palo Alto Unit 42 urges upgrading to Log4j 2.17.1.

Unit 42 details CVE-2021-44228, an easily exploited remote code execution flaw in Apache Log4j 2 where attacker-supplied JNDI lookups in logged user input cause payload download and execution. Massive internet-wide scanning for unpatched systems has begun, with observed follow-on activity including information stealing, Cobalt Strike delivery, and coinmining. The recommended fix is Log4j 2.17.1, which also patches CVE-2021-45046, CVE-2021-45105, and CVE-2021-44832. Widely used Java software including Apache Struts, Solr, Druid, Flink, ElasticSearch, and Spring Boot is affected.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 12:20 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Exploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2021-44228CVE-2021-45046CVE-2021-45105+3 CVEs

Hacking Public Wi-Fi DNS to Steal Credentials

Attackers can hijack public Wi-Fi DNS to redirect users to credential-stealing fake login pages; commenters debate HTTPS limits and mitigations like encrypted DNS.

The discussion examines how an attacker controlling DNS on shared or public Wi-Fi networks can redirect requests for legitimate services to attacker-controlled servers to steal credentials. Commenters analyze whether HTTPS and certificates mitigate the attack, noting attackers often rely on HTTP or browser trust quirks. Suggested defenses include encrypted DNS (DoH), DNSSEC, and travel routers running OpenWRT. No specific campaign, victims, or indicators are provided.

Schneier on Security·Aug 17, 11:18 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Research1

Linux Foundation Introduces TRACE Standard for AI Runtime Evidence

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

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

Infosecurity Magazine·Aug 26, 09:10 UTC · 21d agoAI tools & infra1

DeadLock Ransomware Uses Polygon Smart Contracts to Make Extortion Infra Harder to Disrupt

Microsoft reports DeadLock ransomware using Polygon smart contracts and Session messaging for extortion infrastructure, claiming 96 victims across Europe and the U.S.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence reports the DeadLock ransomware operation uses the Session messaging network and Polygon blockchain smart contracts to host victim chat, proxy server addresses, and its data leak blog, making takedowns harder. First detected in July 2025, the group has claimed 96 victims, mostly in Italy, Spain, Poland, Türkiye, and the U.S., with deployments by affiliates of Lynx and INC ransomware. The encryptor uses Curve25519 with XChaCha20, drops an interactive HTML recovery chat application, geofences CIS-linked countries, and clears logs and shadow copies to evade forensics.

The Hacker News·Aug 11, 18:08 UTC · Aug 11, 2026Ransomware in the wild

The modern attack chain: Rethinking Google Workspace security in the age of AI

Analysis of Vercel and Composio breaches shows stolen OAuth tokens, not phishing email, now open Google Workspace attacks — a path authorized AI agents follow.

The author analyzes the Vercel and Composio breaches as the same OAuth-first attack chain run twice: a stolen OAuth token, obtained via a compromised supplier, becomes the entry point rather than email. These tokens survive password resets, are hard to observe, and let attackers read Gmail and Drive data, take over accounts, and pivot laterally using stored credentials and password-reset magic links. The piece warns that authorized AI agents with overbroad OAuth grants can unintentionally traverse the same path — accessing inboxes, reading sensitive content, and exfiltrating data downstream — without any malicious actor or compromised credential.

Help Net Security·05:00 UTC · 17h agoResearch in the wild

AmnesiaStealer Hijacks Chromium Sessions to Give Attackers Live Browser Control on macOS

Jamf details AmnesiaStealer, a new Rust-based macOS infostealer that hijacks Chromium sessions for live attacker-controlled browser access and steals Keychain data.

Jamf Threat Labs disclosed a three-stage macOS infostealer called AmnesiaStealer distributed via a fake GitHub download page using a ClickFix-style lure that tricks users into pasting a Base64 command into Terminal. The Rust payload harvests the Keychain, Apple Notes, Telegram sessions, Safari cookies, and 16 Chromium-family browsers, and captures the system password via a native prompt validated with dscl. A remotely fetched stream_module gives operators hidden, interactive browser control via the Chrome DevTools Protocol, streaming a live session at roughly 3fps. It persists via a root LaunchDaemon impersonating Apple's crash reporter and leverages the TCC bypass CVE-2020-9771 against macOS Catalina.

The Hacker News·Aug 15, 00:00 UTC · Aug 15, 2026Malware in the wildCVE-2020-9771

[webapps] CubeCart 6.7.4 - Stored XSS

A proof-of-concept stored cross-site scripting exploit targeting CubeCart 6.7.4 was published on Exploit-DB.

Exploit-DB lists a proof-of-concept exploit for a stored cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in CubeCart 6.7.4, a PHP-based e-commerce web application. The listing demonstrates injection of attacker-controlled script that persists in the application, but no exploitation in the wild or CVE assignment is reported in the provided text.

Exploit-DB·Aug 31, 00:00 UTC · 16d agoExploit / PoC1

ClickFix moves into the browser: Cryptocurrency theft with Google-hosted C2

Talos tracks a crypto-theft campaign abusing the Google Visualization API for C2, using browser-based ClickFix lures to inject web-skimmer JavaScript.

Criminal actors convinced targets to paste JavaScript into Chrome's address bar or install it in the Tampermonkey extension, injecting a web skimmer into sessions on two cryptocurrency trading websites; Tampermonkey also provides persistence. Since March 2026 the campaign retrieved obfuscated scripts via the Google Visualization API from public Google Sheets documents, hooking the fetch API and replacing cryptocurrency deposit addresses in responses and the clipboard. Lures pose as leaked reports of a nonexistent API flaw at cryptocurrency swap services and spread via Telegram, DarkForums, and paste sites since early October 2025. Talos warns the legitimate-service-abuse techniques could enable wider supply-chain attacks on e-commerce and customer-facing systems.

Cisco Talos·Sep 8, 10:00 UTC · 8d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

On Identifying Sound Conditions for Frontrunning Resistance

Researchers formally define smart-contract frontrunning resistance, showing 55% of 393 audited vulnerabilities escape state-of-the-art detection, and find two undisclosed Ethereum flaws.

The paper gives the first formal definition of frontrunning vulnerability for smart contracts, grounded in how honest users interact with contracts rather than contract code alone. In a large-scale study of 287 smart contract audits, 55% of the 393 vulnerabilities reported by leading auditors fall outside the scope of state-of-the-art dynamic detection criteria. The authors present a sound algorithm for synthesizing secure interaction conditions and apply it to real-world contracts, uncovering previously undiscovered vulnerabilities in two Ethereum contracts.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 10, 13:35 UTC · 6d agoResearch

An Empirical Analysis of ReDoS Vulnerabilities and ReDoS Detection Tools

Study of NVD data finds ReDoS vulnerabilities growing more prevalent and more likely to be exploited, while five detection tools disagree substantially.

The study compares five publicly available ReDoS detection tools and one regex correction tool across three datasets. An empirical analysis of all ReDoS vulnerabilities reported to the NVD finds they are becoming more prevalent and are much more likely to be exploited than non-ReDoS weaknesses. The detection tools exhibited substantial disagreement on whether a given regex is vulnerable.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 9, 15:09 UTC · 7d agoResearch

Understanding the Usability of Cryptographic Verification Tools

Survey of Tamarin and ProVerif users reveals usability barriers: debugging non-termination, model validation, and opaque proof failures hinder cryptographic protocol verification.

The paper presents an exploratory human-centered survey of researchers, graduate students, and practitioners with hands-on experience using Tamarin, ProVerif, and related cryptographic protocol verification tools. Findings reveal usability barriers across the verification workflow, including difficulties debugging non-termination and performance issues plus the lack of systematic methods for validating formal models against real protocols. When proofs fail without concrete attacks, users commonly simplify models, add helper lemmas, and revisit modeling abstractions. Participants called for actionable diagnostics, clearer explanations of results, visualization, and automation for recurring proof tasks.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 14, 20:40 UTC · 2d agoResearch

Infostealers Target Claude, Cursor, Codex and Other AI Agents to Steal Credentials and Sensitive Data

Gen Digital researchers report infostealer families Amatera, Remus and CallbackBeaver now harvest Claude, Cursor and Codex agent data, including tokens and MCP configs.

Gen Digital researchers found commodity infostealers extending their collection rules to local AI coding agent data from Claude, Cursor, Codex, Cline, Continue and OpenCode on Windows and macOS. Amatera targets Cline and Continue, Remus targets Claude, Cursor and OpenCode, and CallbackBeaver added Claude and Cursor with more than 5,000 samples observed in 30 days; Djinn Stealer hits Claude, Codex, Gemini, Cline, OpenCode and Kilo on macOS. Stolen data includes access and refresh tokens, prompt histories, conversation databases and MCP configurations holding API keys, potentially exposing connected source-control, cloud and ticketing systems. Remus is assessed as a Lumma Stealer variant using EtherHiding C2 resolution via Ethereum smart contracts.

GBHackers·Sep 9, 07:05 UTC · 7d agoMalware in the wild1

FST Pay: Deterministic Safety-Gated Architecture for Youth Digital Payments

FST Pay proposes a deterministic safety-gated architecture for teen digital payments, pairing invariant authorization checks with decoupled post-settlement AI explanations.

Researchers propose FST Pay, a formal architecture for adolescent digital payments on rails like UPI that applies six deterministic invariant checks (spending limits, guardian co-sign policies, amount thresholds, merchant category codes, temporal intervals, hardware integrity) to classify transactions as ALLOW, REVIEW, or BLOCK. High-risk transactions trigger an asynchronous guardian co-sign workflow. Generative AI is restricted to post-settlement natural-language insights and holds no mutation privileges over the ledger, avoiding non-determinism on the real-time authorization path.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 10, 08:03 UTC · 6d agoResearch

Operational Roles of QRNG-Derived Quantum Entropy in Bitcoin Proof-of-Work Architectures

arXiv study finds quantum-random entropy adds no Bitcoin PoW success advantage but helps assurance in fault and provenance scenarios.

The paper shows replacing classical entropy with QRNG output does not change honest Bitcoin proof-of-work success probability when candidate headers remain distinct. It introduces a reproducible benchmark measuring an entropy-efficiency factor and a reboot-diversity index, finding QRNG value only in assurance-oriented scenarios involving correlated restart faults, namespace reuse, and entropy provenance. Validation is simulation-based, with hardware-in-the-loop testing identified as future work.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 4, 12:47 UTC · 12d agoResearch