Citizen Lab, working with the SHARE Foundation, confirmed with high confidence that the iPhone of Vladan Đokić, Rector of the University of Belgrade and a prominent supporter of the Serbian student movement, was infected with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware in 2026. The infection used a zero-click exploit, so the victim took no action. The fi…
The Citizen Lab reported on October 19 that the iPhone of Vladan Đokić, rector of the University of Belgrade and a prominent supporter of Serbia's student protest movement, was infected with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware in 2026. The finding came six days before Serbia's October 25 snap parliamentary election. The infection used a zero-clic…
The Security Affairs Malware Newsletter Round 119 is a weekly digest of malware research published by Pierluigi Paganini. It lists reports on IronChain ransomware, the evolution of XWorm from infostealer to surveillance platform, and the Hirudo banking malware spread through fake updates and patched banking apps. It also covers PEERSTITCH…
Hakai Security has released the Beerus Framework for iOS, following the v1.1 Android release in July. It is a defensive-side, offensive-security testing tool, not a threat campaign. It runs on jailbroken iOS devices and is built on Frida and Palera1n. It offers a single GUI for dynamic instrumentation, IPA extraction, memory dumping, prox…
Recorded Future's Insikt Group (report of October 16) tracks a suspected Chinese-speaking actor, TAG-217, linked to attacks on South Korean financial institutions. The actor used Claude Code, DeepSeek, Grok and Zhipu AI alongside ARTEX, an open-source Chinese-language AI penetration testing framework. Public reporting cited in the investi…
Citizen Lab reports that Candiru spyware was delivered to devices at Al Jazeera Media Network through targeted online advertisements, in a zero-click attack that only required the malicious ad to render on the victim's device. Citizen Lab calls the technique AdFection and says its report is the first public technical confirmation of merce…
Symantec reports that the Russia-linked APT28 (aka BlueDelta, Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard), tracked by Symantec as Swallowtail, targeted entities in two NATO member states. Victims include a law enforcement agency, a naval shipbuilder and a manufacturer of military aircraft engines. In the shipbuilder intrusion in late July 2026, operator…