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ClearFake Deploys Crypto Stealer That Uses Vulnerable Driver to Kill EDR Security Tools

Cisco Talos details ClearFake's fake-CAPTCHA chain deploying ZigCryptoStealer with a BYOVD attack that kills EDR processes, observed at a Ukrainian government organization in April 2026.

ClearFake compromises websites, injects JavaScript via a malicious Cloudflare Worker, retrieves instructions from BNB Smart Chain contracts (EtherHiding), and presents a fake Google CAPTCHA that tricks Windows users into pasting a command that loads a remote library over WebDAV via rundll32. The crypto-stealer branch uses DLL side-loading with a signed Chrome component to launch ZigCryptoStealer, which hijacks clipboard cryptocurrency addresses, alongside a signed but vulnerable Windows driver used in a BYOVD attack to terminate EDR processes. A parallel branch delivers Amatera secondary payloads that install a hidden remote-access client providing operator desktop control, with Cisco Talos tracking the remote-loader activity as UAT-10820. Talos observed unusual remote library execution at a Ukrainian government organization in April 2026 and assesses the attacks are part of a broader theft operation rather than a single targeted campaign.

Cyber Security Newsupdated · 4d agofirst · 6d agoMalware in the wild 4 sources1

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.

GBHackers · 2d agoMalware3· 1 read

Windows 11 Security Update KB5124008 Breaks Always-On VPN Connections

Microsoft's September 2026 Windows 11 update KB5124008 breaks certificate-based Always On VPN on some enterprise clients, forcing admins to pause rollout.

Microsoft's September 8, 2026 cumulative update KB5124008 for Windows 11 24H2 (build 26100.9445) and 25H2 (build 26200.9445) breaks certificate-based Always On VPN tunnels on some enterprise clients, with connectivity restored after uninstalling the update and rebooting. The issue was first detailed on Microsoft Q&A on September 9 by an administrator using Intune-deployed VPN profiles with RRAS and NPS on Windows Server 2019. The same mandatory Patch Tuesday package fixes two actively exploited zero-days, CVE-2026-81963 in the Windows Update Stack and CVE-2026-85880 in Windows Advanced Local Procedure Call, so many teams are pausing only VPN cohorts rather than blocking the full rollout.

Cyber Security Newsupdated · 1d agofirst · 4d agoVulnerability in the wild 20 sourcesCVE-2026-81963CVE-2026-858801

Fake GTA 6 Installer Steals Browser Passwords, Discord Tokens and Crypto Data From Gamers

Huntress found fake GTA 6 installer ISOs spreading NJRAT, DCRAT, Mercurial Grabber and a Chaos ransomware wiper that steals credentials.

Huntress analyzed a malicious ISO disguised as a leaked GTA 6 build, distributed via SEO poisoning, torrent sites, and social media, with some images exceeding 100 GB and padded with junk data. The installer stages game-named executables in %TEMP% and deploys NJRAT, DCRAT, and the Mercurial Grabber infostealer, harvesting browser passwords, Discord tokens, Roblox and Minecraft session data, Windows product keys, and cryptocurrency details, with exfiltration via a Discord webhook. A Chaos ransomware variant launched through gta6.exe deletes shadow copies, disables Windows recovery, encrypts files up to 200 MB with AES, and overwrites larger files, effectively acting as a wiper attributed to the 'ASHA Hacker Team'. A Visual Basic script displays a fake 'license not found' error to conceal the already-installed payloads.

GBHackersupdated · 5d agofirst · 5d agoMalware in the wild 4 sources

Slovakia Warns of Cyber Risks in Road Speed Cameras

Slovakia's NBÚ warns that speed camera systems from SODASUS, Simicon and NEROline pose cyber risks including undocumented remote access.

Slovakia's National Security Authority (NBÚ) warned of a significant cyber threat tied to several road speed camera products: NERO R-ONE units sold by Cyprus-based SODASUS, and Cordon-series cameras made by Russia's Simicon and sold by Croatia's NEROline. A security analysis requested by the Interior Ministry found weak protections, mismatches between documented and actual communication settings and software versions, unclear hardware/software provenance, and pre-configured remote-access mechanisms outside operator control. NBÚ warned that compromised cameras could expose vehicle and licence-plate data, tamper with records, or serve as a foothold into public-sector networks lacking segmentation. The Interior Ministry reportedly removed the units from its pilot deployment and asked the supplier to replace them with equipment meeting Slovak and EU security requirements.

Security Affairs · 23d agoAdvisory

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 · 2d agoMalware in the wild1

Hackers Deploy New SloppyRAT via ClickFix to Enable Ransomware Lateral Movement

Zscaler ThreatLabz reports SloppyRAT, a new Windows RAT delivered via ClickFix lures that supports reconnaissance, reverse SOCKS proxying, and lateral movement for ransomware affiliates.

Zscaler ThreatLabz first observed SloppyRAT in June 2026, delivered through multi-stage ClickFix chains that abuse finger.exe, a renamed curl.exe, and IronPython to load a reflective Python payload. The C++ implant implements 47 PowerShell-like commands via native APIs and direct syscalls, modifies Microsoft Defender settings, and establishes a reverse SOCKS proxy that lets operators pivot into internal networks. It is linked to CastleLoader and CastleRAT components and uses certificate-pinned HTTPS C2 with an EtherHiding fallback via Polygon JSON-RPC. Zscaler assesses it as an intrusion-enablement tool for ransomware operations, though flawed persistence logic suggests the family is still under development.

GBHackersupdated · 5d agofirst · 5d agoMalware in the wild 3 sources

Hackers Use ClickFix Lures to Deploy MacSync Stealer and Bypass macOS Security.

ClickFix malvertising campaigns deliver MacSync, a macOS infostealer sold as MaaS that bypasses Gatekeeper via Terminal commands and steals credentials.

Threat actors use ClickFix social-engineering lures, SEO poisoning, and malvertising impersonating brands like Claude, ChatGPT, Zoom, and Docker to trick users into pasting curl-to-zsh commands into Terminal, evading Gatekeeper and notarization checks. The MacSync Stealer (formerly Mac.c, emerged April 2025, linked to developer 'Mentalpositive') is a 64-bit Mach-O stager with single-byte XOR string obfuscation that daemonizes, polls C2 with custom API-key headers, streams AppleScript payloads into osascript, and persists via fake LaunchAgents. It steals browser credentials, Keychain data, SSH keys, session tokens, and crypto wallets, exfiltrating archives in 10MB HTTP PUT chunks. Microsoft documented more than 30 related MacSync domains.

GBHackersupdated · 6d agofirst · 6d agoMalware in the wild 2 sources

Hackers Use LLMs to Generate Exploit Scripts and Automate Post-Exploitation Across Latin America

Unit 42 says Latin American attackers used LLMs to automate post-exploitation in campaigns hitting Mexican government, water utilities, and Brazilian financial firms.

Unit 42 identified two campaigns in Latin America whose operators used commercial LLMs (Claude, GPT-4.1) behind a self-hosted NextChat interface to generate and debug post-exploitation scripts. Cluster CL-CRI-1131 compromised a transportation organization, Mexican federal ministries, and water utilities in Mexico and Ecuador, using native Windows tools and Volume Shadow Copies to dump the SAM registry hive and NTDS.dit. Cluster CL-CRI-1163 targeted Brazilian financial organizations with job-themed phishing, custom RATs, and a Go-based reverse SOCKS5 tunneling utility called SockTz, with nine versions deployed within roughly two hours. Trend Micro tracks related AI-augmented activity as SHADOW-AETHER-040 and SHADOW-AETHER-064.

GBHackersupdated · 6d agofirst · 6d agoThreat actor in the wild 2 sources1

GoldFactory Weaponizes Open-Source Vwork App Cloner in Gigabud Banking Malware Attacks

Group-IB says GoldFactory's Gigabud Android trojan uses Vwork, a weaponized Shelter fork, to clone banking apps into isolated Work Profiles and evade bank-side detection.

Group-IB's 'Hook for Gold' investigation found GoldFactory ships Vwork, a modified fork of the open-source Shelter app, alongside its Gigabud Android banking trojan, active since 2022. Vwork abuses Android Work Profile provisioning to clone banking apps into an isolated environment, weakening the link between detected malware signals and fraudulent transactions. Gigabud has targeted victims in Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and beyond via fake airline, tax, and government apps requesting Accessibility and overlay permissions. In Indonesia, telemetry recorded about 1,469 compromised devices and roughly $960,939 in estimated losses between February and July 2026.

GBHackersupdated · 4d agofirst · 6d agoMalware in the wild 6 sources

ClearFake WebDAV infection chain delivers Amatera stealer, ZigCryptoStealer, and NetSupport Manager

Cisco Talos details ClearFake WebDAV chains delivering Amatera stealer to a Ukrainian government organization, with cryptocurrency and credential theft payloads.

Cisco Talos investigated DLL executions named 'verification.google' via WebDAV UNC paths at a Ukrainian government organization, tracking the actor as UAT-10820 and assessing with moderate confidence the activity is Russian and opportunistic rather than targeted. The infection chain uses ClearFake JavaScript injected via a Cloudflare Worker, EtherHiding storage on BNB Smart Chain contracts, and a ClickFix fake Google CAPTCHA prompt to deliver Amatera stealer. Secondary payloads differ by C2: one loader deploys ZigCryptoStealer with a Go reverse TCP proxy and a vulnerable driver that kills EDR, while the other installs an unauthorized NetSupport Manager with a Russia-based C2. Similar Amatera chains were separately documented by Malwarebytes and Blackpoint Cyber, but with no shared infrastructure.

Cisco Talos · 8d agoMalware in the wild1

PEEP Turns Chrome and Edge Into Post-Compromise Backdoors for Host Command Execution

SOCRadar disclosed PEEP, a post-exploitation Chromium extension toolkit that turns Chrome and Edge into host-level backdoors via native messaging and C2 polling.

SOCRadar researchers detailed PEEP, a Chromium-based post-exploitation toolkit masquerading as a 'Smart Bookmarks' extension injected directly into Chrome and Edge profiles by forging Secure Preferences integrity values, bypassing Web Store checks. A native-messaging host binary (nm_host.exe) extends the browser agent to host-level command execution, file management, credential theft, and session hijacking, while the extension polls C2 endpoints at 206.237.30.232 or xfjcc.fun every 30 seconds over plaintext HTTP and exfiltrates browsing history, cookies, and tab metadata. PEEP is derived from the open-source RedExt red teaming framework, adds PowerShell persistence scripts, and includes a Linux-targeting Python script, suggesting cross-platform intent. The activity is unattributed but contains Chinese-language artifacts; a C2 /health endpoint showed 34 agent entries and 10 active sessions.

The Hacker News · 8d agoMalware in the wild

Qatar’s Digital Boom Has a Blind Spot: What the 2025-26 Threat Data Is Telling Us

Cyble's Qatar Threat Landscape Report 2025-26 finds Qilin dominated local ransomware while access brokers concentrated on Qatari BFSI and retail access sales.

Cyble's Qatar Threat Landscape Report 2025-26 describes a concentrated threat environment where Qilin accounted for essentially all observed ransomware activity in the country in 2025, including an October campaign, with The Gentleman, Everest, Crypto24, and Payload sharing the space in 2026. Access brokers are selling compromised access, with BFSI and retail accounting for more than half of underground listings, while the education sector sees the most breach and leak incidents. Exploitation activity surged for enterprise remote-access products from Microsoft, Fortinet, Ivanti, and Citrix. The report was published ahead of the CYSEC Qatar summit and cites Qatar's data privacy law and National Cyber Security Agency initiatives.

Cyble · 8d agoThreat actor in the wild

US Becomes Top Target in RMM Phishing Campaign Spanning 46 Countries

ANY.RUN linked 601 RMM-tool phishing cases across 46 countries, with the US the top target at 45% of observed activity.

A phishing campaign that tricks victims into installing legitimate remote monitoring and management (RMM) software spans 46 countries, with around 45% of observed activity targeting the United States, according to ANY.RUN. Lures include Canada Revenue Agency tax forms, UPS shipping notices, Adobe PDF pages, Social Security Administration themes and invoices, delivered through rapidly rotated Vercel, GitHub Pages and Netlify infrastructure. Researchers identified 425 kit URLs across 240 hosts, 94% of which appeared for only a single day, while stable kit indicators such as font1.woff2 and the secure.html to project/*.zip chain tie the infrastructure together.

The Hacker News · 12d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

New pro-Ukraine hacker group targets Russian companies with custom ransomware

F6 links new pro-Ukraine ransomware group VantaCore, likely a Thor rebrand, to seven attacks on Russian firms using custom tooling and multimillion-dollar demands.

Russian cybersecurity firm F6 reports that VantaCore, a ransomware group believed to be a rebrand of pro-Ukrainian group Thor, has targeted at least seven Russian organizations with ransom demands reaching millions of dollars, operating as a ransomware-as-a-service operation with a Tor-based victim chat and a leak site. The group uses custom-built tooling including the VantaCore ransomware that encrypts servers and workstations, VantaCoreLoader for distribution, the VantaCoreRAT backdoor, and SnowKiller, which disables antivirus and security software. Initial access relies on poorly secured VPNs and remote-access tools, flaws in internet-facing applications, and credentials stolen from business partners. F6 notes pro-Ukrainian groups increasingly abandoned stock ransomware like LockBit 3 Black and Babuk in 2025-2026 in favor of custom malware.

The Record · 13d agoRansomware

North Korea-linked IT Workers Are Getting Hired Inside Western Companies

Huntress documented five DPRK-linked FAMOUS CHOLLIMA workers hired by Western companies in 2026 using fake identities, proxies and laptop farms.

Huntress published an investigation of five confirmed 2026 cases of North Korea-linked IT workers, tracked as FAMOUS CHOLLIMA, obtaining remote jobs at legitimate companies in IT, sales, marketing and healthcare. The workers use stolen or fabricated identity documents, VPNs and proxy services, and some were caught using PiKVM hardware-level control, travel routers and laptop farms to mask their true location. Detection relied on document forensics, behavioral anomalies and indicators like identical typo artifacts in electricity bills rather than network intrusions.

Security Affairs · 14d agoThreat actor in the wild

Silver Fox Targets Japanese Manufacturer with 3

Chinese group Silver Fox used new vulnerable drivers and DLL side-loading to deploy ValleyRAT at a Japanese industrial manufacturer.

Cato Networks detailed a Silver Fox campaign against a Japanese industrial manufacturing organization combining new vulnerable-driver abuse (BootRepair.sys and EnPortv.sys alongside wsftprm.sys), DLL side-loading via Zeon Corporation PDF binaries, and NTDLL unhooking to deliver ValleyRAT (Winos 4.0), a Gh0st RAT variant. The chain starts with an invoice-themed phishing lure hosting attacker-controlled content on legitimate QQ and Tencent Cloud services. Shellcode is injected into svchost.exe via thread-context hijacking, and a dual watchdog design pairs payload monitoring with a scheduled-task batch script for persistence. A separate 180-day VirusTotal retrohunt found 146 Atlas RAT samples across six PDB builds, though the Silver Fox link remains circumstantial.

The Hacker News · 19d agoThreat actor in the wild

A Single Canadian Tax Lure Spread into a 46-Country, US-First RMM Campaign

A phishing campaign using fake Canada Revenue Agency tax documents has expanded to 46 countries, with 45% of activity targeting the US via RMM tools.

ANY.RUN analysis traced a campaign that began with fake Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) T4 tax documents and grew into a broader remote-access operation spanning 46 countries. The United States accounts for 45% of observed activity. Attackers impersonate trusted organizations and document types to trick victims into installing remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools.

ANY.RUN · 22d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

North Korean Remote Workers Are Infiltrating Government and Businesses: How to Expose Them Before Hiring

Researchers expose DPRK remote IT worker infiltration tactics, including forged identities and AI-assisted interview behavior.

A joint investigation by Mauro Eldritch, Heiner García, and ANY.RUN hired suspected DPRK developers linked to Lazarus Group into controlled sandboxes, revealing forged IDs, remote-access tools, AI-assisted workflows, and VPN/VPS infrastructure. The FBI is investigating a North Korean remote IT worker who reportedly worked for a U.S. federal agency. The article outlines verification steps and indicators including VPS and AstrillVPN exit node IPs.

The Hacker News · Aug 15, 2026Threat actor in the wild