TECHZONE™

Iranian Hackers Use Telegram-Controlled Malware to Spy on Dissidents and Journalists https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/iranian-hackers-use-telegram-controlled.html Cybersecurity agencies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands have detailed a Windows malware that they say Iran's intelligence service uses to spy on dissidents, journalists, and activists around the world. The malware is controlled via the Telegram messaging app and can copy a target's emails and chat messages, take screenshots, and activate the microphone to record

BambooToken Malware Uses MQTT to Control Windows and Linux Systems https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/bambootoken-malware-uses-mqtt-to.html Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a multi-platform campaign that uses the Message Queueing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol as a communication channel to control Windows and Linux systems. The emerging malware family, codenamed BambooToken, is assessed to be active since at least February 2023 and put to use in attacks targeting organizations across Asia and South America.

Human Attacker Exploits Marimo RCE, Reaches SSH Bastion in Eight Seconds https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/human-attacker-exploits-marimo-rce.html With artificial intelligence (AI) shrinking the window between vulnerability discovery and exploitation and lowering the barrier to entry for bad actors, new findings from Sysdig show that skilled human operators can move just as swiftly after gaining initial access. In one instance highlighted by the cloud security company, the threat actor pivoted from a vulnerable Marimo notebook to an SSH

Attack Chains, Not Just Attack Surfaces: Why Testing Individual Techniques Misses the Point https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/attack-chains-not-just-attack-surfaces.html Introduction Security teams have gotten pretty good at testing against what can hurt them. Can this EDR agent catch this payload? Will my organization fail the phishing simulation? Does this SIEM rule fire on this particular technique? And, in more mature organizations, this testing happens continuously rather than as a one-off exercise. But no matter how much you validate against these

Mass-Scanning Campaign Exploits Vite Flaw to Extract Cloud Credentials From Exposed Dev Servers https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/mass-scanning-campaign-exploits-vite.html Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a mass-scanning campaign that has targeted Vite deployments siphon sensitive data. The first is an automated effort aimed at internet-exposed Vite development servers that's designed to steal cloud credentials, configurations from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure instances, and infrastructure state files, per F5 Labs. The

LiteSpeed Enterprise Flaw Could Let One Hosting Account Gain Root Access on a Shared Server https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/litespeed-enterprise-flaw-could-let-one.html A critical vulnerability in LiteSpeed Web Server Enterprise could let a low-privilege website user gain root access on a shared-hosting server, cPanel warned in an advisory published on September 14. On such servers, many customers' sites run on a single machine, and an attacker with one of those hosting accounts could exploit the flaw to access or alter other sites and the server itself,

Cisco Secure Email Gateway Flaw Exploited in the Wild, Enables Root Command Execution https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/cisco-secure-email-gateway-flaw.html Cisco has warned that a new critical vulnerability impacting AsyncOS Software for Cisco Secure Email Gateway has come under active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-76461, carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10.0. It has been described as a case of insufficient validation in the email parsing logic that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker

China-Linked Hackers Exploit Chrome-Windows Zero-Day Chain to Deploy GRIMWEDGE https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/china-linked-hackers-exploit-chrome.html A Chinese threat actor has been attributed to a spear-phishing campaign that exploits recently patched security flaws in Google Chrome and Microsoft Windows to deliver a malicious JavaScript backdoor called GRIMWEDGE. Volexity, which is tracking the threat cluster under the moniker UTA0560, said the activity targeted multiple non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on September 1, 2026. "The

⚡ Weekly Recap: Rogue AI Agents, WeChat Worm, PaperCut Attacks, AI Espionage, and Rootkits https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/weekly-recap-rogue-ai-agents-wechat.html AI keeps showing up in the wrong places. Attackers are using it to speed up exploits, test defenses, and automate more of the job. Some models are also crossing lines on their own. That is not a great combination. The rest of the week is more familiar: old bugs still working, fresh exploit chains, exposed systems, weak defaults, and simple paths that should have been harder to abuse. A few of

AI Changed the Exposure Problem. Validation Needs to Change With It. https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/ai-changed-exposure-problem-validation.html There's a lot of noise around AI and cybersecurity right now. What’s actually important is far simpler, if often lost in the hubbub. Vulnerability discovery is getting faster and happening at a much greater scale, while defenders still have to work out which findings actually deserve their action. In the first half of 2026, a whopping 35,853 CVEs were published, roughly 49% more than in the

Malicious Twitch Browser Extension Leaks OAuth Tokens From Nearly 31,000 Users https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/malicious-twitch-browser-extension.html A malicious cross-store Twitch browser extension has leaked OAuth tokens associated with nearly 31,000 users to proxy servers operated by a Russian commercial bot service. The extension, named "Twitch Enhanced Viewer | JeetBot," lists HISHIMIRO/jeetbot.cc as its developer and has the following identifiers on the Google Chrome Web Store and Mozilla Firefox Add-Ons store - Chrome -

Attackers Use Passkey Phishing to Hijack Microsoft Cloud Accounts and Exfiltrate Data https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/attackers-use-passkey-phishing-to.html Microsoft has disclosed details of two campaigns in which threat actors are abusing third-party email delivery infrastructure to blast financial fraud scam messages and using passkey-themed social engineering to breach cloud environments. The first campaign, per the tech giant, involved sending over a million scam emails between August 3 and 5, 2026, by masquerading as chief executive officers

CISA Adds 5 Actively Exploited Artifactory, ScreenConnect, and RouterOS Flaws to KEV https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/cisa-adds-5-actively-exploited.html The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added five security flaws impacting JFrog Artifactory, ConnectWise ScreenConnect, and MikroTik RouterOS to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, following reports of active exploitation in the wild. Details of the vulnerabilities are as follows - CVE-2026-42016 (CVSS score: 8.1) - An incorrect authorization

When the Whole Company Adopts AI: What It Does to Your SOC https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/when-whole-company-adopts-ai-what-it.html Over the past year, we watched a new class of alert appear in enterprise security operations centers and grow faster than anything else in the stream: alerts that were triggered by AI tools and agents. Not attacks against AI, but the ordinary, everyday footprint of an organization using it, from developers running coding agents and non-technical staff signing consumer AI tools into corporate

OpenAI Agents Linked to RubyGems Campaign That Gained RCE on RubyDoc Servers https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/openai-agents-linked-to-rubygems.html The "major malicious attack" that targeted RubyGems in May 2026 was the work of a swarm of OpenAI agents, according to a new report published by researchers Spencer Kitts, Thomas Larsen, and Sydney Von Arx. On May 12, Maciej Mensfeld, senior product manager for software supply chain security at Mend.io, disclosed details of a coordinated cyber attack that targeted the package manager for the

GitLab CVSS 10 File-Read Flaw Draws In-the-Wild Probes After Disclosure https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/gitlab-cvss-10-file-read-flaw-draws-in.html GitLab has released patches to address multiple flaws, including a maximum-severity security vulnerability that has witnessed in-the-wild probes within hours of public disclosure. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-85706 (CVSS score: 10.0), a path traversal issue in the repository commits API that could allow an unauthenticated user to read arbitrary files from the GitLab server under

Anthropic Says Seven China-Based AI Labs Ran Industrial-Scale Claude Distillation Attacks https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/anthropic-says-seven-china-based-ai.html Anthropic on Thursday said it identified and disrupted industrial-scale illicit distillation attacks against Claude from seven labs based in China, including Alibaba, Moonshot, DeepSeek, Z.ai (aka Zhipu), and MiniMax. Knowledge distillation by itself is a legitimate training method. It refers to a machine learning technique where a large, powerful AI model assumes the role of a "teacher" to

Claude Used to Automate Exploitation and Data Theft Across Multiple Victims https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/claude-used-to-automate-exploitation.html Anthropic has warned that cybercriminals and state-sponsored hackers alike are using its Claude models for cyber attacks, weapons design, propaganda, and mass surveillance between December 2025 and August 2026. The threat actors, which the artificial intelligence (AI) company has branded Generative Threat Groups (GTGs), span state-sponsored groups, financially motivated criminals, commercial

Russian State-Sponsored Hackers Use Claude to Rebuild Malware After Detection https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/russian-state-sponsored-hackers-use.html Anthropic on Thursday revealed it disrupted a campaign mounted by a Russian state-sponsored threat actor that abused Claude for developing an AI-assisted workflow to get ahead of the detection curve. The operation has been attributed to a cyber espionage group it calls GTG-20006 (where "GTG" stands for Generative Threat Group), which aligns with broader reporting linking the cluster to Midnight

Your Critical Vulnerabilities Might Not Be Your Biggest Risk https://thehackernews.com/2026/09/your-critical-vulnerabilities-might-not.html Security teams have become exceptionally talented at finding vulnerabilities. Now, it’s time to turn our attention to optimizing the process for determining which of those vulnerabilities actually create a path to compromise. A critical vulnerability may look alarming on a scanner report, but if it sits behind strong segmentation, identity controls, and other defenses that prevent an attacker