TECHZONE™

Hacker Runs Hermes AI Agent Unattended for Post-Exploitation at Thai Finance Ministry https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/hacker-runs-hermes-ai-agent-unattended.html Someone installed a popular AI assistant on a rented server, switched off the setting that makes it ask permission before running risky commands, and pointed it at Thailand's Ministry of Finance, which runs the country's treasury and tax collection. The agent then worked through the ministry's network on its own, checking hosts for ways to gain root access, hunting through file systems, and

Golden Chickens Resurfaces With Four New Malware Families and Modular Implants https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/golden-chickens-resurfaces-with-four.html The threat actors behind the Golden Chickens malware-as-a-service (MaaS) ecosystem have resurfaced with four new malware families, indicating that the operators are showing no signs of stopping despite extensive public disclosures into their inner workings. The malware families in question are: TinyEgg, ChonkyChicken, a modularized variant of ChonkyChicken, and a modified web browser credential

NodeBB Patches Eight AI-Found Flaws Exposing Admin Access and Private Chats https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/nodebb-patches-eight-ai-found-flaws.html Eight security flaws in NodeBB went public on Wednesday, along with the code to exploit them. Aikido Security rates all eight as high severity and says its AI pentest agents found them in a six-hour review of the forum software's source code. Every version before 4.14.0 is affected. NodeBB has fixed them all, and administrators should be on 4.14.2. The simplest one takes a settings change. A

Kimi K3 Agents Found Redis Zero-Days and Built RCE Exploit, Researchers Say https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/kimi-k3-agents-found-redis-zero-days.html Redis shipped seven security releases on July 23 after researchers published authenticated RCE PoCs for stock Redis 6.2.22, 7.4.9, 8.6.4, and 8.8.0. All four chains require RESTORE. The Streams chains also need EVAL and XGROUP; the 8.8.0 chain needs EVAL and the bundled RedisBloom module. Redis says the underlying memory flaws may lead to remote code execution. Redis 6.2.23, 7.2.15, and 7.4.10

Fake Notepad++ Plugin Delivers MATCHBOIL.V2 in UAC-0099 Attacks https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/fake-notepad-plugin-delivers.html The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has warned of a new campaign that involves the use of a malicious program that's dressed up as a Notepad++ plugin to compromise Windows systems. The activity has been attributed by the agency to a threat cluster it tracks as UAC-0099, a Russia-aligned group that has previously observed weaponizing security flaws in WinRAR software to

Russian Espionage Group Exploited Zimbra Zero-Day to Steal Mail and 2FA Codes https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/russian-espionage-group-exploited.html A Russian state-supported espionage group spent months reading Western mailboxes through a then-unknown flaw in Zimbra's webmail client. The payload goes after the last 90 days of email, the organization's entire email directory, the password saved in the browser and the codes kept for two-factor recovery. Opening the message was enough to start it. The NSA, CISA and partner agencies published

ThreatsDay: Android Spyware, PLC Attacks, AI Image Prompt Injection + 12 More Stories https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/threatsday-android-spyware-plc-attacks.html Most of this week's trouble came dressed as something useful. A package stole data. A fake extension opened remote access. A safety app became spyware. An image gave hidden orders to an AI agent. Other threats hid in open systems, weak code, and normal network traffic. The threats change every week. Subscribe, and we’ll alert you when each new ThreatsDay Bulletin is out. The danger was

Google Adds Selfie Video Recovery for Users Locked Out of Their Accounts https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/google-adds-selfie-video-recovery-for.html Google on Thursday announced a new way for users to sign-in to their accounts by letting them take a selfie video. The selfie for sign-in, per the tech giant, is another option on top of existing recovery methods to log in to an account, including an email address or a phone number. The idea is to use a video selfie as a way to regain access if a user ever gets locked out or doesn't have access

Nine-Year-Old RefluXFS Linux Flaw Gives Local Users Root on Default RHEL Installs https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/nine-year-old-refluxfs-linux-flaw-gives.html RefluXFS, a new Linux kernel flaw disclosed on July 22 and tracked as CVE-2026-64600, lets an unprivileged local user overwrite root-owned files on an XFS filesystem and gain persistent root access. Qualys said default installations of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and its derivatives, Fedora Server, and Amazon Linux can meet the conditions for exploitation. The company demonstrated the race

Check Point Patches Exploited SmartConsole Flaw Allowing Full Admin Access https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/check-point-patches-exploited.html Check Point has released security updates to address multiple vulnerabilities impacting Security Management and Multi-Domain Management (MDSM) products, including a critical flaw that has come under active exploitation in the wild. The security flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-16232 (CVSS score: 9.3), is an authentication bypass affecting the Check Point SmartConsole login process that allows an

GitHub Cuts Public Bug Bounty Payouts, Moves Top Rewards to VIP Tier https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/github-cuts-public-bug-bounty-payouts.html Beginning July 27, 2026, GitHub will cut public bug bounty payouts by at least half at every severity level. Critical findings will drop from $20,000-$30,000+ to a fixed $10,000, while its permanent invite-only VIP tier will pay $30,000 or more. Reports filed before that date, including those already in GitHub's growing triage queue, will retain the previous payout terms. GitHub said the

Ubuntu snap-confine Flaw Could Give Local Users Root on Default Desktop Installs https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/ubuntu-snap-confine-flaw-could-give.html Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new local privilege escalation (LPE) vulnerability in snap-confine that an unprivileged user can trigger to obtain root access and gain complete control of a target environment. The high-severity flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-8933 (CVSS score: 7.8), impacts default installations of Ubuntu Desktop 24.04, 25.10, and 26.04. The disclosure comes as

Adobe Acrobat Extension Flaw Let Malicious Sites Read WhatsApp Web Data https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/adobe-acrobat-extension-flaw-let.html Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a now-patched vulnerability chain in the Adobe Acrobat Chrome extension that has over 314 million users, which, if exploited, could facilitate a silent hijack of a user's WhatsApp data. The shortcoming has been codenamed HermeticReader by Guardio Labs. It's officially tracked as CVE-2026-48294 (CVSS score: 7.4), with the vulnerability

Hackers Exploit Windmill Flaw to Read Arbitrary Server Files Without Authentication https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/hackers-exploit-windmill-flaw-to-read.html A high-severity security flaw impacting open-source developer platform Windmill has come under active exploitation in the wild, per VulnCheck. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-29059 (CVSS score: 7.5), a case of unauthenticated path traversal impacting Windmill's "get_log_file" endpoint ("/api/w/{workspace}/jobs_u/get_log_file/{filename}"). "The filename parameter is concatenated into

The Fastest Path to AI Adoption Runs Through Security https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/the-fastest-path-to-ai-adoption-runs.html Security leaders who build fast, visible paths to AI adoption are becoming the most valued partners in their organizations. AI governance done right gives security teams the visibility they need, employees the tools they want, and CISOs the strategic influence they have earned. According to McKinsey's State of AI report, 76 percent of employees now use AI in some capacity at work, up from 55

Why Modern SOCs Need Multi-Layered Detections https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/why-modern-socs-need-multi-layered.html The cycle is over. For years, cybersecurity followed a familiar pattern: defenses improved, attackers adapted, and the back-and-forth continued. Today, AI-equipped attackers are simply outpacing defenses. Most intrusions now bypass endpoint and malware-based detection entirely. The CrowdStrike Global Threat Report estimates around 79% of attacks are malware-free, as threat actors rely on

Police Dismantle Kratos Phishing Kit Built to Steal Microsoft 365 Sessions and Bypass MFA https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/police-dismantle-kratos-phishing-kit.html German and US law enforcement have taken down the core infrastructure of Kratos, described by German investigators as one of the world's most widely used criminal phishing kits, and Indonesian authorities arrested the man they say developed and ran it. In a joint announcement on Monday, the Frankfurt public prosecutor's cybercrime unit (ZIT) and Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA)

Trojanized Newtonsoft.Json Fork Hides Game-Rigging Code in a Working Library https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/trojanized-newtonsoftjson-fork-hides.html Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a NuGet typosquat that's unlike the typical information-stealing malware distributed via package registries: usual info-stealers: it's designed to rig live game results on Digitain. The package, named "Newtonsoftt.Json.Net," masquerades as the Newtonsoft.Json library and is a trojanized fork. Seven versions of the package have been published to the

Microsoft Azure DevOps MCP Flaw Lets Hidden PR Comments Hijack AI Review Agents https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/microsoft-azure-devops-mcp-flaw-lets.html A single invisible comment in an Azure DevOps pull request can turn a reviewer's own AI coding agent against them, driving it into projects the attacker has no rights to reach and quietly leaking what it finds. The flaw is in Microsoft's official Azure DevOps MCP server, and it works because one of its tools returns pull request descriptions without a prompt-injection guardrail the company had

OpenAI Says Its AI Models Escaped Sandbox, Targeted Hugging Face to Cheat Benchmark https://thehackernews.com/2026/07/openai-says-its-own-ai-models-escaped.html OpenAI on Tuesday said a combination of its artificial intelligence (AI) models, including GPT-5.6 Sol and an "even more capable pre-release model," was behind the security incident that targeted Hugging Face's production infrastructure last week. The AI company said the models were operating with "reduced cyber refusals for evaluation purposes" that might otherwise limit their ability to