Pixel Zero-Click on, Redis RCE, China C2s, RAT Adverts, Crypto Scams & 15+ Tales

Authorities entities in Afghanistan have been on the receiving finish of a spear-phishing marketing campaign dubbed Operation Nomad Leopard that employs bogus administrative paperwork as decoys to distribute a backdoor named FALSECUB by the use of a GitHub-hosted ISO picture file. The marketing campaign was first detected in late December 2025. “The ISO file comprises three information,” Seqrite Lab stated. “The LNK file, Doc.pdf.lnk, is accountable for displaying the PDF to the sufferer and executing the payload. The PDF file, doc.pdf, comprises the government-themed lure.” The ultimate payload is a C++ executable that is able to receiving instructions from an exterior server. The exercise has not been attributed to any particular nation or recognized hacker group. “The marketing campaign seems to be carried out by a regionally targeted risk actor with a low-to-moderate sophistication stage,” the Indian cybersecurity firm added.

The U.Okay. authorities is warning of continued malicious exercise from Russian-aligned hacktivist teams like NoName057(16) focusing on crucial infrastructure and native authorities organizations within the nation with denial-of-service (DoS) assaults. The tip purpose of those assaults is to take web sites offline and disable entry to important companies. “Though DoS assaults are sometimes low in sophistication, a profitable assault can disrupt complete methods, costing organisations vital time, cash, and operational resilience by having to analyse, defend towards, and get better from them,” the U.Okay. Nationwide Cyber Safety Centre (NCSC) stated.

Google-owned VirusTotal has disclosed particulars of an info stealer marketing campaign that depends on a trusted executable to trick the working system into loading a malicious DLL (“CoreMessaging.dll”) payload – a way referred to as DLL side-loading – resulting in the execution of secondary-stage infostealers designed to exfiltrate delicate information. Each the executable and the DLL are distributed by way of ZIP archives that mimic installers for reputable functions like Malwarebytes (e.g., “malwarebytes-windows-github-io-6.98.5.zip”) and different packages.

SpecterOps researcher Daniel Mayer has launched a beacon object file (BOF) – a compiled C program designed to run throughout the reminiscence of a post-exploitation agent like Cobalt Strike Beacon – that interacts with the Home windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) by immediately invoking the WSL COM service, avoiding course of creation for “wsl.exe” completely and permitting operators to listing all put in WSL distributions and execute arbitrary instructions on any WSL distribution that the BOF finds.

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed an lively malicious marketing campaign that makes use of ads positioned on reputable web sites to lure customers into downloading “converter” instruments for changing photos or paperwork. These companies share the same web site template and go by names like Easy2Convert, ConvertyFile, Infinite Docs, and PowerDoc. Ought to a person find yourself try to obtain this system, they’re redirected to a different area that really hosts the C# dropper information. “Within the foreground, these instruments often work as promised, so customers don’t turn out to be suspicious,” Nextron Programs stated. “Within the background, nonetheless, they behave nearly identically: they set up persistent distant entry trojans (RATs) that give the risk actor steady entry to the sufferer system.” Particularly, the executable is designed to determine persistence utilizing a scheduled job, which factors to the primary payload, a .NET software that initiates communication with a distant server, executes .NET assemblies obtained from the server, and sends the outcomes again by way of an HTTP POST request.

Let’s Encrypt stated its short-lived TLS certificates with a 6-day lifetime at the moment are usually obtainable. Every certificates is legitimate for a interval of 160 hours from the time it’s issued. “Brief-lived certificates are opt-in and now we have no plan to make them the default presently. Subscribers which have absolutely automated their renewal course of ought to have the ability to swap to short-lived certificates simply if they need, however we perceive that not everyone seems to be in that place and customarily snug with this considerably shorter lifetime,” Let’s Encrypt stated. To request one, operators should choose the “shortlived” profile of their ACME consumer. Brief-lived certificates are opt-in and there are not any plans to make them the default presently, the non-profit certificates authority added.

Zendesk has revealed that unsecured help methods are getting used to ship spam emails. The assaults benefit from Zendesk’s capacity to permit unverified customers to submit help tickets, which then robotically generate affirmation emails which might be despatched to the e-mail deal with entered by the attacker. This automated response system is being weaponized to show the help platform right into a supply car for spam by creating pretend tickets. “These emails appear to be reputable contacts from corporations that use Zendesk to speak with their clients, and are a spam tactic often called relay spam,” the shopper relationship administration (CRM) vendor stated in an advisory. The corporate described it as a “potential aspect impact” that arises when Zendesk is about to permit unverified customers to submit requests, including that it is actively working to scale back spam and forestall new spam campaigns. It has additionally urged clients to take away particular placeholders from first-reply triggers and allow solely added customers to submit tickets.

The European Fee has proposed new cybersecurity laws mandating the elimination of high-risk suppliers to safe telecommunications networks and strengthen defenses towards state-backed and cybercrime teams focusing on crucial infrastructure. “The brand new Cybersecurity Act goals to scale back dangers within the EU’s ICT provide chain from third-country suppliers with cybersecurity considerations,” the Fee stated. “It units out a trusted ICT provide chain security framework based mostly on a harmonised, proportionate and risk-based strategy. This may allow the E.U. and Member States to collectively determine and mitigate dangers throughout the EU’s 18 crucial sectors, contemplating additionally financial impacts and market provide.” The revised Cybersecurity Act can also be anticipated to make sure that services reaching E.S. customers are examined for security in a extra environment friendly approach via a renewed European Cybersecurity Certification Framework (ECCF). The amended act will take impact instantly upon approval by the European Parliament and the Council of the E.U. As soon as adopted, member states have one yr to implement the directive into nationwide legislation.

Menace intelligence agency GreyNoise has uncovered a large-scale WordPress plugin reconnaissance exercise aimed toward enumerating doubtlessly susceptible websites. The mass scanning, noticed between October 20, 2025, and January 19, 2026, concerned 994 distinctive IP addresses throughout 145 ASNs focusing on 706 distinct WordPress plugins in over 40,000 distinctive enumeration occasions. Probably the most focused plugins are Submit SMTP, Loginizer, LiteSpeed Cache, search engine optimisation by Rank Math, Elementor, and Duplicator. The exercise touched a brand new excessive on December 7, 2025, when 6,550 distinctive classes had been recorded. Greater than 95% of the spike was pushed by a single IP deal with: 112.134.208[.]214. Customers of the aforementioned plugins are suggested to maintain them up-to-date.

The Rust undertaking has up to date Crates.io to incorporate a “Safety” tab on particular person crate pages. The tab shows security advisories drawn from the RustSec database and lists which variations of a crate could have recognized vulnerabilities. This modification provides builders a straightforward option to view related security info earlier than including the crate as a dependency. “The tab reveals recognized vulnerabilities for the crate together with the affected model ranges,” the maintainers stated. Different enhancements embody expanded Trusted Publishing help, which now works with GitLab CI/CD along with GitHub Actions, and a brand new Trusted Publishing mode that, when enabled, turns off conventional API token-based publishing in order to scale back the danger of unauthorized publishes from leaked API tokens. Trusted Publishing has additionally been up to date to dam pull_request_target and workflow_run GitHub Actions triggers. “These triggers have been accountable for a number of security incidents within the GitHub Actions ecosystem and are usually not well worth the threat,” the Crates.io group stated.

A brand new evaluation from Hunt.io has revealed that the Chinese language web area is internet hosting greater than 18,000 lively command-and-control (C2 or C&C) servers throughout 48 completely different suppliers within the final three months. China Unicom hosts practically half of all noticed servers, with Alibaba Cloud and Tencent following go well with. Greater than half of the C2 servers (about 9,427 distinctive C2 IPs) are used to manage an IoT botnet often called Mozi. A piece of the remaining C2 servers is used for exercise associated to Cobalt Strike (1,204), Vshell (830), and Mirai (703). “Throughout Chinese language internet hosting environments, a small variety of giant telecom and cloud suppliers account for almost all of noticed command-and-control exercise, supporting all the things from commodity malware and IoT botnets to phishing operations and state-linked tooling,” Hunt.io stated.

A 33-year-old former IT guide for Sweden’s Armed Forces has been detained on suspicion of passing info to Russia’s intelligence service, based on the Swedish Prosecution Authority. The suspected prison exercise occurred all through 2025 and till January 4, 2026, however Swedish authorities suspect the espionage could have been ongoing since 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The suspect, who has denied any wrongdoing, labored as an IT guide for the Swedish army from 2018 to 2022, per the AFP. The investigation is alleged to be nonetheless in early phases. In February 2021, a 47-year-old Swedish tech guide was charged with espionage for allegedly promoting details about truckmaker Scania and Volvo Vehicles to a Russian diplomat for a number of years. He was sentenced to 3 years in jail later that September.

Important vulnerabilities (from CVE-2026-22236 via CVE-2026-22240) have been disclosed within the Bluvoyix platform of Bluspark International, a cloud-based answer that is used to assist shippers handle their provide chain information, which might have allowed a foul actor to achieve full management of the platform and entry buyer and cargo information. They might have enabled entry to buyer accounts and observe freight and element shipments, in addition to enabled full entry to the platform’s API with out the necessity for authentication. This loophole might have been weaponized to create administrator accounts for follow-on exploitation. The vulnerabilities have since been patched, however not earlier than a protracted disclosure course of. Safety researcher Eaton Zveare, who has beforehand uncovered security holes in platforms utilized by automotive corporations, stated the “admin entry made it attainable to view, modify, and even cancel buyer shipments going again to 2007.”

Cryptocurrency scams obtained no less than $14 billion value of cryptocurrency in 2025, a leap from $12 billion reported within the yr prior. The typical rip-off cost extracted from victims additionally elevated from $782 to $2,764. Excessive-yield funding and pig butchering remained essentially the most dominant classes by quantity, whilst impersonation scams – which contain fraudsters posing as reputable organizations equivalent to E-ZPass to control victims into transferring funds – surged 1,400%. Primarily based on historic developments, the 2025 determine is projected to exceed $17 billion as extra illicit pockets addresses are recognized within the coming months, Chainalysis stated. Scammers have been discovered more and more leveraging deepfake expertise and AI-generated content material to create convincing impersonations in romance and funding scams. “Main rip-off operations turned more and more industrialized, with subtle infrastructure, together with phishing-as-a-service instruments, AI-generated deepfakes, {and professional} cash laundering networks,” the corporate stated. “Pig-butchering networks throughout Southeast Asia, drawing closely on CMLNs [Chinese money laundering networks], generate billions of {dollars} yearly and depend on layered pockets buildings, exchanges, shell corporations, and casual banking channels to launder funds and convert crypto into real-world property, together with actual property and luxurious items.”

A gaggle of 5 Venezuelan nationals has pleaded responsible or been sentenced for his or her involvement in a multi-state ATM jackpotting thefts between September 14 and 16, 2024, that used subtle malware to steal 1000’s of {dollars} throughout Georgia, Florida, and Kentucky. The group, Hector Alejandro Alvarado Alvarez (20), Cesar Augusto Gil Sanchez (22), Javier Alejandro Suarez-Godoy (20), David Josfrangel Suarez-Sanchez (24), and Giobriel Alexander Valera-Astudillo (26), focused varied monetary establishments by deploying malware or accessing the ATM’s supervisor mode to set off money withdrawals. Members of the group had been caught on digital camera finishing up the assaults and had been recognized based mostly on fingerprints left behind on the ATM machines. They resist 30 years in jail, adopted by rapid deportation.

Google Challenge Zero has launched a zero-click exploit (Half 1, Half 2, and Half 3) that may compromise Android smartphones by way of the Dolby audio decoder. The exploit is made attainable as a result of the Google Messages software robotically processes incoming audio attachments within the background for transcription functions and decodes them with out requiring person interplay. The exploit leverages CVE-2025-54957 to achieve arbitrary code execution within the mediacodec context of a Google Pixel 9, after which makes use of CVE-2025-36934, a use-after-free within the BigWave driver, to escalate privileges from mediacodec to kernel on the machine. “The time funding required to seek out the required vulnerabilities was small in comparison with the impression of this exploit, particularly for the privilege escalation stage,” researcher Natalie Silvanovich stated. “The time wanted to seek out the bugs for a 0-click exploit chain on Android can nearly actually be measured in person-weeks for a well-resourced attacker.” Whereas Dolby patched the flaw in October 2025, Samsung was the primary cell vendor to patch the vulnerability the subsequent month. Pixel gadgets didn’t get the patch till January 5, 2026. A patch for the BigWave driver flaw was shipped to Pixel gadgets on January 6, 2026.

A malvertising marketing campaign detected by Sophos in September 2025 used Google Adverts to redirect victims to misleading websites that promoted a trojanized PDF enhancing software referred to as AppSuite PDF Editor. The appliance, as soon as put in, appeared reputable to customers, however stealthily delivered an info stealer dubbed TamperedChef focusing on Home windows gadgets. The actively evolving risk cluster is thought to make use of techniques like delayed execution, staying dormant for about 56 days earlier than activating the infostealer habits to make sure persistence. The time interval aligns with the everyday 30-60-day cycle of paid promoting campaigns. TamperedChef is assessed to be part of a wider marketing campaign often called EvilAI. In line with telemetry information gathered by the cybersecurity firm, over 100 methods had been affected by the marketing campaign, with the vast majority of the victims positioned in Germany (~15%), the U.Okay. (~14%), and France (~9%). “Victims of this marketing campaign span quite a lot of industries, notably these the place operations rely closely on specialised technical gear – probably as a result of customers in these industries ceaselessly search on-line for product manuals, a habits that the TamperedChef marketing campaign exploits to distribute malicious software program,” the corporate stated.

A brand new phishing marketing campaign has been noticed utilizing phony pharmaceutical invoices to trick recipients into opening ZIP archives containing JavaScript that, upon execution, makes use of PowerShell to obtain a malicious PNG picture hosted on the Web Archive. “However this is not really a typical PNG. Effectively, it’s, however with extras,” Swiss Submit Cybersecurity stated. “The attackers embedded a Base64-encoded payload after the IEND chunk of the PNG, which marks the official finish of the picture information. The file nonetheless renders as a legitimate picture in any viewer. The precise malware sits between two customized markers, BaseStart- and -BaseEnd.” The extracted payload between these markers is used to launch a malware loader often called VMDetectLoader, which is accountable for persistence, setting checks, and launching PureLogs Stealer, a commodity stealer developed by a risk actor often called PureCoder. It is value noting that VMDetectLoader has been beforehand used to ship DCRat in assaults focusing on Colombia.

A big-scale mortgage phishing operation in Peru has been found abusing pretend mortgage affords to reap delicate private and banking info (financial institution card particulars, on-line banking password, and a 6-digit PIN code) from unsuspecting customers. The marketing campaign is propagated by way of social media ads. The risk actors behind the operation have created roughly 370 distinctive domains impersonating banks in Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Chile, and Ecuador since 2024. “This specific phishing targets people via a seemingly reputable mortgage software course of, designed to reap legitimate card credentials and corresponding PIN codes,” Group-IB stated. “These credentials are then both offered on the black market or utilized in additional phishing actions.” As quickly as the small print are entered on the pretend websites, a script operating within the background on the net web page validates the knowledge utilizing the Luhn algorithm to make sure that the entered bank card particulars and authorities identification quantity are real.

A risk actor tracked as Larva-25012 is making use of a pretend Notepad++ installer as a lure to distribute proxyware in assaults focusing on South Korea. The installers, written in C++ and hosted on GitHub, are promoted via commercial pages on web sites posing as obtain portals for cracked or in any other case unlawful software program. “These installers drop the downloader malware DPLoader. As soon as registered within the Home windows Process Scheduler, DPLoader executes persistently and retrieves instructions from its C&C server. All PowerShell scripts noticed thus far have included logic to put in varied Proxyware instruments,” AhnLab stated. “As well as, the attacker is actively altering strategies to evade detection — equivalent to injecting Proxyware into the Home windows Explorer course of or leveraging Python-based loaders.” The target of those assaults is to put in proxyware on the sufferer’s machine with out their information, and monetize their unused web bandwidth by promoting it to 3rd events. Larva-25012 is assessed to be lively since no less than 2024, distributing a number of varieties of proxyware, together with DigitalPulse, Honeygain, and Infatica.