30
30
30
AsyncRAT Malware Abuses AutoIt and PowerShell to Hide Inside Legitimate Windows Process
Point Wild details a five-stage AsyncRAT campaign using AutoIt abuse and process injection to hide a .NET RAT inside Microsoft's signed charmap.exe.
Researchers at Point Wild Threat Intelligence analyzed a campaign starting from a lure batch file ('Right-click to open Invoice Details.bat') that launches hidden PowerShell to reconstruct a Base64/XOR-obfuscated payload. The stage drops a renamed signed AutoIt interpreter and loader script into %LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp and achieves persistence via a batch file in the user's Startup folder (T1547.001). The loader decrypts the payload in memory with single-byte XOR key 0x36 and injects it into SysWOW64\charmap.exe using OpenProcess/VirtualAllocEx/WriteProcessMemory/CreateRemoteThread, with PE-sieve confirming an in-memory implanted PE and patched AMSI modules. The final AsyncRAT payload performs screen capture and data theft, with observed C2 at 158[.]51[.]122[.]136:4944 over raw TCP.
48
Hackers Use Fake LinkedIn Job Offers to Infect Developers With New Cross-Platform RATs
Iran-linked Mirage Kitten uses fake LinkedIn job challenges to deliver new cross-platform RATs NodeRabbit and PollCat to developers in fintech, aviation, and aerospace.
PolySwarm documented a campaign by Iran-linked Mirage Kitten (UNC1549) that uses fake recruiter personas and technical hiring challenges on LinkedIn to deliver the newly documented RATs NodeRabbit and PollCat, which run on Windows, Linux, and macOS. A challenge archive bundles a fake npm package (colorized_terminal 2.1.0) in node_modules that loads NodeRabbit, while a React-based challenge delivers PollCat with an attacker-controlled OTP screen. NodeRabbit persists through a malicious Visual Studio Code extension and Git post-merge/post-checkout hooks; PollCat persists via scheduled tasks, cron, and LaunchAgents. Victims were observed in fintech, aviation, and aerospace, with confirmed targets in Egypt, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan.
55
30
35
Chinese-Speaking Hackers Use Noodle RAT Backdoor to Spy on Windows and Linux Systems
Chinese-speaking actors use cross-platform Noodle RAT backdoor to maintain covert access to Windows and Linux systems across Asia-Pacific.
Noodle RAT (also ANGYREBEL/Nood RAT) has been active since at least mid-2016 and was long misidentified as Gh0st RAT or Rekoobe variants until Trend Micro and Cyberint classified it as a distinct multi-platform family. The Windows build (Win.NOODLERAT) is an in-memory modular shellcode backdoor delivered via MULTIDROP and MICROLOAD loaders, while the Linux build supports reverse shells, SOCKS tunneling, and cron persistence after web shell or public-facing service exploitation. It has appeared in intrusions in Thailand, India, Japan, Malaysia, and Taiwan and is linked to Iron Tiger, Calypso APT, Rocke, and Cloud Snooper campaigns spanning espionage and cybercrime. Recently discovered Linux builders 1.0.1 and 1.0.2 indicate the toolkit remains actively maintained.
52
30
30
30
30
30
30
30
30
30
30
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.
55
30
Google Play Early Access Abused to Push Thousands of Deceptive Android Apps
Bitdefender found abuse of Google Play's review-free Early Access program to push thousands of deceptive casino and reward apps promoted with AI deepfake ads.
Bitdefender reports threat actors are abusing Google Play's Early Access program, which blocks public reviews and ratings, to distribute thousands of deceptive casino, reward, and utility apps. A GTA imitator, 'Vice Streets: Open World,' surpassed 1 million downloads before disappearing, with apps promoted via AI celebrity deepfake ads on TikTok and Facebook and monetized through endless ad serving and payouts that never arrive. The report coincides with disclosures on Android malware families Hagaseca, Mantax Otax, StreamRat, and GoldFactory's Gigabud banking trojan with its Vwork companion app used for cloned-app financial fraud.
50
NovaCookies Campaigns Abuse Genuine Docusign Notifications to Steal Microsoft 365 Sessions
NovaCookies AitM phishing kit, a Sneaky 2FA variant, uses genuine Docusign lures to steal Microsoft 365 sessions at hundreds of organizations.
Island disclosed NovaCookies, a $320/month adversary-in-the-middle phishing-as-a-service platform that relays Microsoft 365 sign-ins through attacker infrastructure to capture credentials, MFA codes, and authenticated sessions. Campaigns abuse genuine Docusign envelopes and Microsoft/Google redirect hops so each step looks legitimate, with lure domains on .vu and alternating-case labels such as PwPt-sHaRe. Proofpoint assesses NovaCookies as a Sneaky 2FA variant with added flows for Okta and Entra domains federated to GoDaddy, and a fully managed PhaaS model. It has targeted hundreds of organizations in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, Israel, and the U.A.E., and is advertised via Telegram with anti-analysis checks like a Cloudflare gate.
45
30
BengalSEO Poisons Bing Search Results to Deliver MayaBot and Tech Support Scams
DFIR Report exposes BengalSEO, an India-based SEO-poisoning operation running since 2015, delivering MayaBot malware and tech support scams via Bing results.
The DFIR Report details BengalSEO, a financially motivated cluster operating from Rajasthan, India, since at least 2015, run through two IT service providers: WeConnect Solutions LLC and Garage2Global. The group uses black-hat SEO techniques—backlinks, DOM injection, DOM shuffling, keyword stuffing—to push lure pages to the top of Microsoft Bing results, routing victims through a traffic distribution system to either the custom MayaBot malware (which delivers an XMRig cryptominer and enables C2) or tech support scam call centers. A Vizio decoy page had 2,000 backlinks from 167 unique external domains, and Matomo analytics is used for victim fingerprinting, with the tracking domain appearing in 1,112 urlscan.io results.
50
30
30
Smishing Hackers Can Watch Every Keystroke as Victims Enter Card Details and OTPsnew
Group-IB details the JWR smishing kit, used by the Outsider cluster, that streams keystrokes and OTPs to fraudsters in real time via WebSocket.
Group-IB linked the JWR phishing kit to an operator cluster it tracks as Outsider within the broader Smishing Triad ecosystem. Fake toll, parcel, and delivery messages lead to live phishing pages that capture card numbers, passwords, and one-time passcodes before victims submit forms. The kit supports up to 32 guided pages, AES-256-CTR wrapped traffic with keys embedded per message, rotating short links and domains, and WordPress or Shopify integration markers, enabling account takeover and unauthorized payments.
58
30
30
30
Terranova Security provides expanded tier options, special offers, enhanced partner portal interface
30
35
30
New DDRop Attack Breaks Intel TDX and AMD SEV-SNP Confidential Computing
DDRop uses a sub-$200 DDR5 interposer to drop memory writes, breaking Intel TDX and AMD SEV-SNP confidentiality guarantees.
Researchers at KU Leuven, ETH Zurich, Durham University, and Google will present DDRop at ACM CCS 2026, a first active interposer attack on DDR5 that silently drops memory writes so processors keep reading stale encrypted data, exploiting the missing freshness guarantee in Intel TDX, Intel Scalable SGX, and AMD SEV-SNP. On Intel TDX's default logical integrity mode it enabled reading victim VM memory, toggling debug mode, and forging remote attestation; AMD SEV-SNP was limited to copying pages between VMs. TDX's stronger cryptographic integrity blocks cross-VM attacks but likely not attestation forgery. The team will release board designs, firmware, and attack code on GitHub; no evidence of real-world use exists and no simple patch is available.
55
30
PAPERMILL Hackers Abuse Signed Notepad++ to Deploy VenomRAT in Tax Audit Attacks
PAPERMILL phishing campaign abuses a signed Notepad++ copy and tax-audit lures to deploy VenomRAT against targets in India.
JUMPSEC tracks PAPERMILL as an emerging cluster whose emails pass SPF, DKIM, and DMARC and deliver tax-audit themed disk images. The mounted image pairs a legitimately signed, renamed executable with a rogue libcurl.dll for DLL sideloading, then uses a Donut shellcode loader to run VenomRAT 6.0.3 in memory with hidden VNC, data-stealing, and file-grabbing capabilities. The loader includes anti-analysis checks and RunOnce persistence, and lures plus China-connected infrastructure overlap with the Silver Fox ecosystem, though attribution remains unconfirmed.
55
35
45
VMware increases visibility, enables compliance and enhances security for containerized applications
30
30