Researchers ran 281 of the most popular free VPN apps on the Google Play Store through a new testing system and found that many fail at the basics people install a VPN for, i.e., keeping their traffic private and secure.…
Tag: The Hacker News
Exposed Hacker Server Reveals WP-SHELLSTORM Backdooring Thousands of WordPress Sites
A cybercrime crew left one of its own servers wide open on the internet for three weeks, and it exposed the operation’s inner workings: the hacking tools, the activity logs, and target lists naming more than 1.4 million websites. Far…
From 17,000 to 1.1 Million Assets: How Lumen Technologies Rebuilt Exposure Management at Scale
Most enterprises assume their asset inventory is close enough to accurate. The evidence suggests otherwise. According to a survey of over 600 security leaders in the 2026 Axonius Actionability Report, only 45% of organizations consolidate their asset and exposure data…
Unpatched XRING Flaw in XQUIC Lets Remote Clients Crash HTTP/3 Servers
A single wrong variable on one line in XQUIC, Alibaba’s QUIC and HTTP/3 library, lets any remote client crash the server with a short burst of completely legal traffic. There is no patch. FoxIO researcher Sébastien Féry disclosed the flaw on…
Ransomware Negotiator Gets 70 Months in Prison for Aiding BlackCat Attacks
A 41-year-old former ransomware negotiator has been sentenced to nearly six years (i.e., 70 months) in prison in the U.S. for their role in conspiring with the now-defunct BlackCat ransomware operators to extort multiple victims and working with two other…
Attackers Exploit ‘Ill Bloom’ Vulnerability to Drain $3.1 Million From Cryptocurrency Wallets
Security firm Coinspect has disclosed a crypto wallet flaw it calls Ill Bloom, and attackers are already using it. The flaw is in how some wallet software generated its recovery phrase, the words that control the money. When that phrase is made with…
New GigaWiper Windows Backdoor Bundles Disk Wiping, Fake Ransomware, and Spyware
Microsoft has taken apart a destructive Windows backdoor it calls GigaWiper. What stands out is how it is built: not one tool but three older destructive programs bolted into one, offered as commands the operator can choose from. Each is…
Dormant GitHub Accounts Help Attackers Blend In While Mapping Corporate Orgs
Datadog Security Labs is warning of “several overlapping campaigns” that are systematically enumerating corporate GitHub organizations, repositories, and user accounts through the GitHub API. “Operators rely on automated scraping tooling with custom or legitimate-sounding user agents, leveraging GitHub ‘ghost’ accounts that…
ThreatsDay: Cloud Bucket Hijacking, Windows LPE Chain, Global Fraud Bust + 17 More Stories
Most security mess starts as admin work. A link gets clicked. A tool gets trusted. A bucket name gets reused. A setting stays loose because nobody wants to touch it. This week is full of that kind of damage. Not loud.…
npm 12 Disables Install Scripts by Default to Reduce Supply Chain Risk
GitHub has officially announced the release of npm version 12 with install scripts disabled by default, along with deprecating granular access tokens (GATs) designed to bypass two-factor authentication (2FA). The Microsoft-owned subsidiary noted that the following npm install behaviors that…
AI Attacks Move in Minutes. Join This Webinar on Building a Defense That Keeps Up
AI has changed how fast attacks move. Work that once took an attacker days now takes minutes. Using models like Mythos, attackers write tailored bait, pick targets, test what lands, and jump to the next host before your team clears…
GodDamn Ransomware Uses PoisonX Driver to Disable Endpoint Defenses
Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new ransomware family called GodDamn that employs the PoisonX kernel driver to neutralize security software as part of its defense evasion strategy. According to a new report published by the Threat Hunter Team from Symantec,…
Summer of Clearinghouses
Everyone seems to have announced a clearinghouse over the past few weeks. We did too. Ours is called Athena, and the main thing that sets it apart is that it was already real and running when we announced it —…
Microsoft Patches RoguePlanet Defender Flaw That Can Grant SYSTEM Privileges
Microsoft has released security updates for a Defender vulnerability known as RoguePlanet, nearly a month after details of the flaw became public. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-50656 (CVSS score: 7.8), is a privilege escalation issue in the Microsoft Malware Protection…
Meta’s New AI Image Tool Lets Others Use Your Public Instagram Photos in AI Images
Meta has announced that its new artificial intelligence (AI) model Muse Image lets people use public Instagram posts and reels to generate AI content, and it’s enabled by default. “You can also @-mention Instagram accounts in the Meta AI app…
Top AI Agents Built to Catch Malicious Code Can Be Tricked Into Running It
Ask an AI coding agent to scan open-source code for security holes, and it might run the attacker’s code on your own machine instead. That is the finding in a proof-of-concept published Wednesday by the AI Now Institute, an attack it calls…
Fake 7-Zip Installers Turn Devices Into Residential Proxy Nodes
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new threat actor dubbed Lurking Lizard that has been operating an end-to-end malicious residential proxy business using an infrastructure comprising more than 230 lookalike domains. The activity dates back to at least August…
GhostApproval Symlink Flaws Could Let Malicious Repos Run Code in AI Coding Agents
Researchers at Wiz found that a flaw in six popular AI coding assistants lets a booby-trapped code project quietly take control of a developer’s computer. The assistant asks permission to edit one harmless-looking file, but the write lands on a sensitive one…
AI Coding Agents Found Triggering Endpoint Security Rules Built to Catch Attackers
Sophos looked at a week of its own endpoint data and found that AI coding agents such as Claude Code, Cursor, and OpenAI Codex are setting off detection rules written to catch human intruders. The agents are not malicious. They…
New HalluSquatting Attack Could Trick AI Coding Assistants Into Installing Botnet Malware
AI coding assistants have a habit of making things up. Ask one to fetch a popular tool, and it will sometimes hand back a real-sounding name for a project that does not exist. New research, which its authors call HalluSquatting, turns…