Rapid7's Q3 2026 threat landscape report finds that high-severity vulnerabilities were exploited an average of three days after disclosure, with 71% exploited within the first seven days. 79% of them are classed as 'holy grail' flaws, meaning remote and needing no credentials or user interaction. Ransomware remains the dominant threat. Th…
FortiGuard Labs describes a large-scale, global campaign that uses heavily obfuscated JScript droppers to launch an AutoIt/Lua-based loader with low detection rates. The loader delivers several popular RATs and infostealers, including a version of Snake Keylogger. The infection chain relies on business email compromise tactics, impersonat…
Russian firm Solar (a Rostelecom subsidiary) reported a nearly two-year intrusion at an unnamed Russian healthcare organization, attributed to the Belarus-aligned hacktivist cluster Partisan Zmiy (Cyber Partisans). Solar found the compromise in December 2025, but the earliest signs date to early 2024. Unlike the group's usual destructive …
BRONZE SANDCASTLE (written Bronze Sandcastle by thehackernews.com) is a previously undocumented intrusion set disclosed by SophosLabs on 2026-10-21. It is assessed as China-based or China-aligned and has been active since mid-2025 (thehackernews.com). Between August 2025 and August 2026 it compromised victims in the Philippines, Taiwan, A…
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…
Qilin and Settra ransomware groups are actively exploiting CVE-2026-0257, an authentication bypass in PAN-OS GlobalProtect and Prisma Access disclosed in May 2026, according to ReliaQuest. Because access arrives through the victim's own VPN, it can resemble legitimate remote work and go unnoticed until credential theft, lateral movement, …
Researchers at SafeDep analyzed a macOS implant recovered from a compromised workstation. Infection began on 2026-07-26 with a paid YouTube video ad impersonating TradingView that led to a fake .pkg installer. The malware is a remote-controlled task runner, not a single-purpose stealer. It persists via a LaunchAgent that re-fetches a shel…
SentinelOne reports observing APT29 (Midnight Blizzard / Cozy Bear, Russia's SVR) running the CaptiveCrunch campaign, disclosed by Microsoft in July 2026, across multiple customer environments in three regions. The operation abuses captive-portal behaviour and forged name resolution to push fake browser updater downloads to roaming Window…
CISA ran concurrent red team assessments at two organizations: Organization A (Government Services and Facilities) and Organization B (Water and Wastewater Systems). Both reached full domain compromise and accessed sensitive business systems (SBSs) and cloud resources. Organization A did not detect or contain the activity. Organization B …