ESET Research reports that the China-aligned APT group FamousSparrow has been using a new modular C++ backdoor, SparroWocky, since at least August 2025. The backdoor has replaced SparrowDoor as the group's main implant. From mid-2025 into 2026, about 90% of the group's targets in ESET telemetry were in Latin America, mostly governmental e…
Kaspersky analysis of an installer first classified as adware (MD5 c24e99f9437feacaa63766a3cde3fe3d) found that it delivers the ValleyRAT backdoor. The installer drops a modified, signed Chinese wallpaper tool, QN Wallpaper, and uses it for DLL sideloading of a malicious libcef.dll. The adware's advertising function does not work. Attacke…
Toy Ghouls (aka Bearlyfy, Laboo.boo, Feral Wolf), a financially motivated group targeting Russian organizations since 2025, was observed in early July 2026 using a custom backdoor for the first time. Kaspersky GERT identified two versions, mqtt-bird-agent 0.1.0 (C2 over the public HiveMQ MQTT broker) and matrix-bird-agent 0.1.0 (C2 over a…
Kaspersky identified MovieReaper, a previously unknown modular, multi-stage crimeware framework distributed since mid-August 2026 through movie-themed torrents, including fake "The Odyssey (2026)" releases. Rather than compromising individual trackers, the actor modified the public torrent file repository itorrents.org, so trackers relyin…
Unit 42 attributes with high confidence to an Iranian state-aligned actor, tracked as CL-STA-1178, a campaign called Blinder Tunnel. In March 2026 it targeted an individual in Iraq's critical infrastructure sector, after infrastructure staging that began as early as November 2025. The actor impersonated the Dubai Airports IT department an…
Researchers at SafeDep identified imgdecode, a malicious npm package tied to the long-running MALFEX supply chain campaign first documented by Checkmarx and CloudSEK. Published on September 30, 2026 by user "malfexteste8", it has been downloaded 979 times and was still available at the time of reporting (latest version 1.0.3). MALFEX has …
In April 2026, Kaspersky GERT responded to an incident at a Middle East manufacturing organization where the actor gained domain admin-equivalent control of Active Directory. The actor created and linked a malicious GPO named PAYLOAD at the domain root. It pushed ransom notes, a wallpaper and lock screen, a logon banner and a local admini…
SafeDep reports that the npm package imgdecode (versions 1.0.0-1.0.3, publisher malfexteste8) is part of the MALFEX campaign, which targets Windows developers. After npm removed earlier JavaScript loaders, the operator moved the loader logic into a compiled Node.js native addon (a Windows DLL). On require('imgdecode') from an interactive …
Kaspersky researchers report that the APT group Mirage Kitten has moved from native C/C++/Go malware to Node.js and JavaScript implants, NodeRabbit and PollCat. Both are cross-platform RATs delivered through spear-phishing by fake recruiters on LinkedIn and other job platforms, using trojanized coding-challenge archives hosted on Amazon S…
Elastic Security Labs is tracking REF8801, a campaign in which a fake Web3 venture capital accelerator, Apex Accelerator (Apex Foundation), targets cryptocurrency startups and founders with malicious npm packages. The packages, @apexacc/cli and @apexacc/audit, pose as an AI advisor and an MCP-based security scanner, with offers of free Cl…
This SentinelOne analysis argues that EDR killing, mostly through bring your own vulnerable driver (BYOVD), has grown from one-off tooling into a maintained, shared and sold capability. Ransomware actors disabled security tools in about 48% of 2024 intrusions, and BYOVD is the fastest-growing method within that figure. The article traces …
The Citizen Lab disclosed AdFection on 15 October 2026. It calls this the first public technical confirmation of zero-click mercenary spyware delivered to real devices through targeted online advertising. The Israeli ad firm Discover-Tech (spelled Discovere-Tech by bleepingcomputer.com) posed as a legitimate ad company while acting as a b…