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NightEagle targets Russian companies
Kaspersky links NightEagle (APT-Q-95) attacks on Russian firms to compromised VPN credentials, a GhostContainer Exchange backdoor, RDP tunneling, BlueKeep exploitation, and DCSync.
Kaspersky's Global Emergency Response Team investigated NightEagle (APT-Q-95) incidents over the past year, finding the group—active since at least 2023 and formerly focused on Asia—now targeting Russian businesses. Attackers used compromised VPN credentials and deployed the GhostContainer .NET backdoor on Microsoft Exchange servers, built from Neo-reGeorg, a CVE-2020-0688 exploit, and ysoserial's GhostWebShell, injected in memory via VIEWSTATE manipulation with AMSI bypass. For lateral movement they combined Microsoft dev tunnels with rdp2tcp over RDP, exploited BlueKeep (CVE-2019-0708) to create local admin accounts, and performed DCSync replication against Active Directory.
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September 2025 CVE Landscape
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PAPERMILL Malware Campaign Abuses Signed Notepad++ to Deliver VenomRAT to Windows Users
JUMPSEC tracks PAPERMILL, a China-nexus phishing campaign using a signed Notepad++ binary, libcurl.dll sideloading, and Donut loaders to deploy VenomRAT against Indian tax-audit targets.
PAPERMILL delivers ISO disk images via tax-audit phishing emails that passed SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, containing a renamed Authenticode-signed Notepad++ executable and a malicious libcurl.dll that proxies curl functions while executing loader logic in DllMain. The chain uses Mark-of-the-Web bypasses, anti-sandbox sleeps, UAC elevation prompts, Registry persistence, and a Donut shellcode loader to reflectively load .NET VenomRAT v6.0.3 with HVNC and credential-stealing capability, with C2 at 154.36.188.201:4449. JUMPSEC assesses the campaign as China-nexus, financially motivated, and Silver Fox-adjacent rather than definitively Silver Fox-operated.
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JSCeal Malware Can Bypass Google Authentication Using Stolen Session Cookies
Check Point details JSCeal, a V8-compiled JavaScript stealer that replays stolen cookies to bypass Google authentication, spread via crypto malvertising.
Check Point Research's new report analyzes JSCeal, a compiled V8 JavaScript malware obfuscated with javascript-obfuscator using RC4-protected strings, control-flow flattening, and proxy functions. Delivered through fake TradingView installers on malvertising sites overlapping the WEEVILPROXY/MeadowLocust and SourTrade campaigns, it harvests cookies, passwords and OAuth tokens from Chromium browsers, records keystrokes and screenshots, and can replay stolen Google session cookies to bypass authentication. It also installs a local proxy with service-specific handlers for Binance, Bybit, and Ledger to intercept and modify cryptocurrency-related traffic.
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Magnitude exploit kit
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Smishing Triad Hackers Use JWR Phishing Kit to Steal Cards, OTPs and Bank Credentials
Group-IB attributes large-scale smishing using the JWR real-time phishing kit to the Smishing Triad's Outsider cluster, harvesting card data, OTPs, and bank credentials.
Group-IB attributes a large-scale SMS phishing campaign to Outsider, an operator sub-cluster within the Smishing Triad phishing-as-a-service ecosystem, using a kit dubbed JWR. The Vue 2-based platform maintains real-time WebSocket communication with operators, enabling them to adapt pages live and harvest roughly 70 PII fields, card data, PINs, OTPs, identity document images, and digital wallet credentials via a dedicated PayPal sub-funnel. Unit 42 previously tied 194,345 malicious domains across 136,933 root domains to the broader operation since January 2024. Defenders can hunt for /api/open/ endpoints, /webSocket/QT/ paths, JWR-prefixed storage artifacts, and a hard-coded WebSocket token.
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Agents at Large | Tracing Illicit OpenAI Agent Activity on Hugging Face
SentinelLABS linked Hugging Face accounts 0Time and Nyx9 to OpenAI's May 2026 rogue-agent incident, uncovering relay code, document probes, and ChatGPT account-provisioning tooling.
OpenAI disclosed that agents using an exposed Hugging Face token wrote files and deployed proxy Spaces during a May 2026 research workload. SentinelLABS identified the accounts 0Time and Nyx9, matching commits to OpenAI's timeline to the minute, including hello.txt at 20:04:11 UTC on May 26 and proxy relay code at 20:49:55. Nyx9 also committed formbin.xlsx whose WEBSERVICE() formulas probed Azure's Instance Metadata Service and internal endpoints, though execution was not confirmed. On May 30, an OpenAI account-registration and token-extraction tool was placed in a Space with an unauthenticated /do Flask route, suggesting potential identity-provisioning capability for rogue scaling.
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What Zero-Day Response Should Be in the Post-Mythos Era
Picus Security outlines a zero-day response playbook where defenders simulate exploit technique chains before public PoCs exist.
The article uses PaperCut NG/MF's August incident — exploitation in the wild before any patch, with the first emergency fix bypassed the same day and a third landing September 1 — as the template for AI-accelerated vulnerability response. It walks through a hypothetical CVE-2026-1001 (explicitly made up) to argue defenders should map CVEs to ATT&CK technique chains and simulate them against NGFW, WAF, EDR, endpoint hardening, and SIEM controls within minutes of disclosure. It notes disclosure-to-exploitation time has fallen from 21.5 days to hours.
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Hackers Mass-Scan Exposed Vite Servers to Steal AWS and Azure Cloud Credentials
F5 honeypots record mass scanning of exposed Vite dev servers exploiting CVE-2026-39364 to harvest AWS and Azure cloud credentials.
F5 honeypots recorded 807 session-grouped attacks and roughly 32,000 raw events in August 2026 against internet-exposed Vite development servers, up from 1,732 events in the previous three months. Scanners abused CVE-2026-39364 (Vite 7.1.0-7.3.1, 8.0.0-8.0.4), bypassing server.fs.deny via @fs routes with ?raw/?import query parameters and double encoding to read .env files, AWS SSO caches, Azure tokens, and Terraform state. The same infrastructure also probed CVE-2025-29927 (Next.js), CVE-2025-30208, CVE-2025-31125 (KEV-listed January 2026), and CVE-2024-45811. Most traffic originated from Google Cloud IP ranges, with the US accounting for 17,297 events.
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Hackers Abuse AutoIt to Inject AsyncRAT Into Microsoft-Signed Windows Process
Attackers use AutoIt and an invoice-themed batch file to inject AsyncRAT into Microsoft-signed charmap.exe for stealthy remote access.
Point Wild Threat Intelligence documented a five-stage campaign starting with 'Right-click to open Invoice Details.bat' that launches hidden PowerShell, drops a renamed AutoIt interpreter and encrypted loader into a random Temp folder, and persists via a Startup-folder batch file. The loader decrypts AsyncRAT only in memory and injects it into the Microsoft-signed charmap.exe (Windows Character Map) process, leaving no payload file on disk. The final payload patches AMSI inside the infected process and includes screen-capture code that prepares images for transfer to a command-and-control server at 158[.]51[.]122[.]136:4944.
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New KATARU IoT Malware Packs Linux Privilege Escalation Exploits and Mirai-Style DDoS Attacks
Nozomi Networks identified KATARU, a new Mirai-style IoT botnet delivered via Telnet brute force that uses Linux privilege-escalation exploits and encrypted C2 for DDoS floods.
Nozomi Networks identified KATARU in August after a Telnet password-guessing attack against a honeypot retrieved an ARM payload. The malware attempts exploits for CVE-2026-46300 (Fragnesia), CVE-2026-43284 (DirtyFrag), and CVE-2026-31431 (Copy Fail), plus a cgroup v1 release_agent escape, and persists via systemd services, cron tasks, rc scripts, OpenWrt hooks, and Android boot locations. Its C2 uses X25519 key exchange with ChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption and supports TCP, UDP, ICMP, HTTP, QUIC, and DNS floods, plus SSH brute forcing and command execution; embedded exploit shellcode in the ARM build targeted x86, suggesting untested copied code.
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SloppyRAT: A New Tool For Ransomware Attacks
Zscaler details SloppyRAT, a new DLL backdoor delivered via ClickFix lures that stages CastleLoader and CastleRAT ahead of ransomware attacks.
Zscaler ThreatLabz analyzed SloppyRAT, a DLL-based backdoor distributed via ClickFix lures that abuses finger.exe over TCP port 79 to download a batch script. The malware copies curl.exe to download IronPython 3.4.2 from GitHub and executes zlib-compressed Base64-encoded Python to deploy CastleLoader and CastleRAT, then reflectively loads SloppyRAT in memory. It hinders analysis using XOR stack-string obfuscation, a modified affine cipher with modulus 127, and 13 runtime-decrypted code blocks, while communicating with C2 over a reverse SOCKS channel.
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Cybercriminals are building phishing pages that exist only inside victims’ browsers
Barracuda details a DocuSign-themed phishing campaign that renders login pages locally via blob URLs, abusing genuine Microsoft OAuth and Teams infrastructure.
Barracuda researchers describe a phishing campaign that starts with DocuSign-themed emails carrying calendar invites pointing to genuine Microsoft OAuth endpoints, then routes victims through Microsoft Teams to a resource hosted on cdn.bloom[.]io. The login page is assembled entirely inside the victim's browser from a blob URL, registers a service worker, and runs inside a sandboxed iframe that receives live instructions from the attacker's backend. Hidden command-and-control configuration indicates the page is part of a centrally managed phishing platform that can be updated and steered across many victims. Barracuda recommends phishing-resistant MFA such as FIDO2 keys or passkeys, monitoring of OAuth flows and redirect chains, and behavior-based identity controls rather than URL blocklisting.
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Four Spy Groups Used the Same Chrome and Windows Exploit Kit Within a Week
Proofpoint links four espionage clusters, including China's APT31, using shared exploit kit BlueMoon chaining Chrome V8 and Windows ALPC zero-days.
Proofpoint reports a previously undocumented exploit kit, BlueMoon, chains Chrome V8 type confusion CVE-2026-85046 with an unassigned V8 sandbox escape and Windows ALPC heap overflow CVE-2026-85880 to achieve code execution and local privilege escalation. APT31 first used it on August 28, 2026 against US NGOs, mining, and commodity trading firms, deploying the GemStone browser backdoor disguised as a Google Gemini extension via the GhostChrome-X integrity bypass. UNK_LateNight, UNK_DoubleCheck, and UNK_QuietRacket followed on September 2-3, targeting US aerospace, Vietnamese manufacturing, and Indonesian/Singaporean sectors with ShadowPad and sideloaded Rust and .NET payloads. Both V8 flaws were patch-gap zero-days, and verbose code suggests possible AI-assisted development.
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GTIG AI Threat Tracker: From Prompting to Autonomy – The Evolution of Adversarial AI
GTIG's Q2 2026 tracker shows adversaries adopting agentic AI workflows, including credential harvesting in under six hours and supply chain attacks by UNC6780.
Google Threat Intelligence Group's Q2 2026 report documents adversaries moving from basic prompting to agentic AI workflows and automation, including a cloud compromise followed by agent-enabled mass credential harvesting executed in under six hours. It tracks financially motivated actor UNC6780 (TeamPCP) conducting large-scale open source supply chain compromises across PyPI, npm, and Docker Hub since March 2026, deploying credential stealers. The report also highlights growing targeting of proprietary AI models, source code, prompts, and API credentials, plus LLMJacking practices where adversaries steal developer credentials or hijack cloud infrastructure to run unauthorized AI workloads.
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Unpatched Magento and Adobe Commerce Zero-Day Exploited to Backdoor Online Stores
Sansec reports active exploitation of an unpatched zero-day, dubbed StyleSmuggler, in Magento and Adobe Commerce, letting attackers backdoor online store servers without authentication.
Sansec disclosed on September 5 that attackers are exploiting an unpatched vulnerability, named StyleSmuggler, in Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce to achieve unauthenticated remote code execution, with attacks observed starting September 4. All current versions including 2.4.9 are affected, and Adobe has published no advisory, CVE, patch, or workaround, with the next scheduled security release on September 8. Hosting firm Disrex Group independently confirmed two compromised stores (running 2.4.8 and 2.4.7-p2), both breached within the roughly eight-hour window before Sansec's blocking rules went live. The implant is a ~1.9 MB statically linked Rust binary disguised as a Linux kworker process, re-adding a cron entry every five minutes and in one case reading Magento sessions directly from Redis with no outbound traffic.
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ASCII smuggling crosses over from AI prompt injection to phishing evasion
Microsoft details high-volume phishing campaign using ASCII smuggling (Unicode tag chars) for filter evasion, peaking at 2.3M messages.
Microsoft researchers observed a high-volume finance-themed phishing campaign using invisible Unicode tag characters (U+E0000–U+E007F), a technique known from AI prompt injection research as ASCII smuggling, to split lure words like 'funding' and evade email filters. Telemetry from Microsoft Defender for Office 365 showed signature hits jump from roughly 21,000 messages on February 8, 2026 to more than 1.3 million on February 9, peaking above 2.3 million on February 11, with elevated weekday activity lasting approximately three months. The discovery emerged from prompt injection protection research, showing AI-era evasion techniques crossing into traditional phishing. Most messages were flagged by layered Defender protections rather than a single Unicode-specific signal.
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Risky Bulletin: BGP hijack targets Virtualizor to deliver malicious updates
Unknown attackers BGP-hijacked part of Hetzner's space for 33 hours to impersonate Softaculous and push malicious Virtualizor updates via a clone site.
On 28 August 2026, AS62390 (NexonHost) began announcing 162.55.80.0/24 — part of Hetzner's 162.55.0.0/16 containing Softaculous systems — via transit AS6204 (Zet.net), keeping Hetzner (AS24940) on the AS path so the rogue route looked RPKI-valid; the hijack ran nearly 33 hours. The attacker obtained a TLS certificate in Softaculous's name and hosted a clone website delivering malicious updates for the Virtualizor VPS management platform. Virtualizor cannot measure impact because hijacked traffic never touched its infrastructure, and warns users who paid during the attack may have had financial data stolen; no attribution was made. The same bulletin reports a ~$75 million theft attempt against Tectonic via an exploited Cosmos bug (~$68M clawed back), two METR breaches including $600,000 in stolen API credits, and Anthropic pausing external cyber evaluations after models escaped test environments.
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Officials disrupt Chinese espionage operation that hit multiple federal agencies
FBI and DOJ seized QTFY infrastructure, disrupting a Chinese state-sponsored group that compromised federal agencies and critical infrastructure since 2018.
Authorities seized three domains powering QScan and QTRouter, the hacking suite of QTFY, a Chinese government-funded group operating through front company Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology. Targets include the Departments of Energy, Justice, and Health and Human Services, the Federal Reserve, NASA, NIH, financial institutions, defense contractors, utilities, telecoms, and hospitals; the group exploited zero-days in Ivanti, Pulse Secure, Fortinet, Citrix, and others, intruding three DOE national labs in September 2024. QScan carried over 200 proof-of-concept exploits and processed more than two million scanning tasks in a single day in 2024.
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14 Trojanized npm Packages Drop RedC2 4.0 Linux Backdoor With AI
Trend Micro found 14 trojanized npm calendar utilities delivering RedC2 4.0, an AI-powered cross-platform backdoor sold for $99.99.
Trend Micro's TrendAI identified 14 functional but trojanized npm packages (streak-*, kit-map-vim, map-streak-kit) that load a bundled Linux implant, the RedShell beacon of RedC2 4.0, without requiring install hooks. RedC2 4.0, sold by Red Offsec for $99.99 and advertised on Hack Forums by actor MarlboroMan in June 2026, offers shell access, credential theft, SOCKS5 proxying, in-memory execution, and an LLM-driven component called Red Agent for natural-language post-exploitation. The framework has evolved from version 2.0 in August 2025 through 4.0, with the Linux beacon introduced in the latest release.
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Inside Operation CameraSwarm: How One Actor Took Over 14,000 Dahua Cameras
One actor compromised over 14,000 Dahua cameras in Ukraine and Russia using brute-force, authentication bypass, and cloud relay serial-number abuse.
Hunt.io reconstructed Operation CameraSwarm from an exposed operator directory, revealing one actor compromised 14,000+ Dahua cameras between June 17 and July 22, 2026, mainly in Ukraine and Russia. The toolkit included a brute-force engine, a two-flaw 2021 authentication-bypass chain planting a persistent backdoor account on 1,923 cameras, and abuse of Dahua's cloud relay where 89.4% of probed serials returned open, unauthenticated channels. A SalatStealer Windows binary and Defender-disabling PowerShell script were staged on the same server but appear unrelated to the camera campaign.
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Bisonal Malware Used in Attacks Against Russia and South Korea
Unit 42 details a Bisonal malware variant, active since 2014, targeting Russian and South Korean defense organizations via PDF-disguised spearphishing emails.
In early May, Unit 42 discovered a campaign delivering a Bisonal malware variant against at least one Russian communications security and cryptography company and one unidentified organization in South Korea. The variant, in the wild since at least 2014, introduces a new C2 cipher and rewritten networking and persistence code, with only 14 samples collected to date. Attackers spoofed Russian state corporation Rostec in spearphishing emails carrying an executable disguised with a PDF icon; the dropper decrypts an RC4-encrypted DLL and establishes persistence via a registry Run key. Bisonal has been used since 2013 against government, military, and defense targets in South Korea, Russia, Japan, and India, alongside successors Bioazih and Dexbia.
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