Researchers at Hacktron disclosed a vulnerability chain in Cluely, an Electron-based AI assistant that reads the user's screen and microphone. They found it in July 2025 and published in February 2026. The main window had no will-navigate handler, so a link in the AI's markdown response could navigate the whole app to an attacker-controll…
FortiGuard Labs analyzed a SectopRAT variant that is embedded in legitimate software to evade detection. The malware uses a multi-stage loader to extract its payload from files, then applies API hashing, indirect function calls and in-memory loading to run the final .NET payload. Once running, it sets up encrypted communication with its C…
SmartLoader is a commodity loader in active deployment, attributed to Malware-as-a-Service infrastructure linked to LummaStealer delivery in recent campaigns. Reverse engineering shows it is built almost entirely from off-the-shelf parts: a stock signed LuaJIT 2.1.0-beta3 interpreter, a commercial Lua VM obfuscator from the game-cheat sce…
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 …
The npm account dirtyblanket published nine typosquatted packages on September 29, 2026 in 33 minutes, eight copying Express and one copying React. On Linux, a preinstall hook fetches node.js through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, which pulls the worm linux.sh from Codeberg and runs it with bash. The worm installs CHAOS, an open-so…
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…
Darktrace researchers documented a new campaign distributing CikaBika Bot, a Rust-based remote access trojan controlled entirely through Discord. The infection chain starts with a disk image named PropositionProjet.img, which contains a French-language decoy PDF and a Windows shortcut disguised as a Word document. A Nim loader extracts th…
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 …
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…
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 …
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…
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 …