The China-aligned state-sponsored threat actor known as FamousSparrow has been observed deploying a previously unreported backdoor called SparroWocky in attacks targeting multiple countries in Latin America since at least August 2025. "SparroWocky is a modular, C++ backdoor," ESET security researchers Alexandre Côté Cyr and Romain Dumont said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News

OpenAI on Wednesday disclosed six new instances of "unexpected or concerning model behavior" that took place over the past six months, while sharing a new framework for reporting, tracking, investigating, and disclosing model misalignment in a bid to improve transparency. "As AI systems grow more advanced and more widely deployed, we need to build a broader and better-informed consensus on the

The Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) has released BIND 9.20.29 and 9.21.26 to fix fourteen security flaws it disclosed on 16 September in BIND 9, its open-source DNS server software. One of them affects any BIND server that answers DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH). A sender with no credentials can crash the server process, named, with a single request that carries an invalid SIG

A security breach at Gyazo, Helpfeel's image-sharing service, exposed about 23.62 million user records, including email addresses and password hashes, the Kyoto-based company said in a notice published Wednesday. It also exposed about 490 million image metadata records, mostly for images from January 2019 or earlier, including the IDs that make up Gyazo image links. Helpfeel said

Cisco has warned of a fresh maximum-severity security flaw impacting Identity Services Engine (ISE) that has come under active exploitation. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-76460 (CVSS score: 10.0), could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to bypass authentication. "This vulnerability is due to insufficient authentication control on an API endpoint," Cisco said. "An attacker

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Tuesday announced the court-authorized seizure of internet domains associated with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS)-for-hire service known as NightmareStresser. The domains in question are: nightmare-stresser[.]com and nightmarestresser[.]org. Visitors to the site are now greeted by a seizure banner that states - "This domain has been seized by the

A critical security flaw in Issabel Framework, a web-based framework for the open-source unified communications PBX software, has come under active exploitation. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-89026 (CVSS v3.1 score: 9.8/CVSS v4.0 score: 9.3), which can allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to execute arbitrary operating system (OS) commands by taking advantage of a hard-coded

Enterprises in Russia have emerged as the target of three threat activity clusters tracked as NightEagle, Hacking Cat, and Toy Ghouls, according to multiple reports from Kaspersky. The cybersecurity vendor said it has identified attacks mounted by NightEagle (aka APT-Q-95), a threat actor known to be active since at least 2023, that involve new techniques for persistence and lateral movement.

Security researchers at Forever Security have shown that one ordinary browser extension could take control of the AI assistants built into five Chromium-based products: Gemini Live in Chrome, Perplexity Comet, Microsoft Edge, Opera Neon and the Claude in Chrome extension. Once the extension was installed, it could access each product's built-in AI with a single click. On Comet, Edge,

Mandiant says an attacker hijacked an active AI coding-assistant session at an unnamed software-as-a-service provider and later spread Shai-Hulud across about 100 internal code repositories. Before the repository spread, the assistant recommended software that the attacker had poisoned, and the recommendation was accepted. The worm stole repository secrets and source code for the

Parallels Desktop for Mac has a flaw that lets an ordinary local account run code as root, the highest level of access on a Mac, software company JFrog said this week. The attack needs code already running on the machine as a normal user, so it does not work over the network. JFrog says the fix is in Parallels Desktop 27, a version that Intel Macs cannot install. Yuval Moravchick, who leads

N0va is targeting organizations across North America and Europe with phishing campaigns that impersonate trusted services and abuse legitimate authentication flows. Successful attacks can give threat actors access to valid accounts without relying on obvious malware activity. From there, a single compromised identity can open the door to sensitive data, business systems, and additional cloud

Google has disclosed that a high-severity security flaw in its Pixel Cellular Modem has come under exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-58704 (CVSS score: 8.0), is a privilege escalation flaw. "In Cellular Modem, there is a possible permission bypass due to a logic error in the code," according to a description of the bug in the NIST National Vulnerability Database

A leaked credential shows up in a criminal marketplace, or a vulnerability gets a disclosure advisory, and either one can be weaponized against a real target before most security teams have triaged the alert. Attackers are combining that kind of intelligence with AI-assisted exploitation to accelerate the path from exposure to breach faster than most security programs are built to react.

Acronis has warned that a high-severity security flaw in its Backup plugin for cPanel and Web Host Manager (WHM) deployments has been exploited in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-87886 (CVSS score: 7.8), is described as a case of local privilege escalation due to insecure file permissions. It affects the following versions - Acronis Backup plugin for cPanel & WHM (Linux

Threat actors are exploiting a critical security flaw in WooCommerce Wholesale Lead Capture, a premium WordPress plugin that has more than 6,000 active installs. "This vulnerability can be leveraged by unauthenticated attackers to upload arbitrary files, including PHP backdoors, and achieve remote code execution," Wordfence said. The WordPress security company said it has blocked over

A critical security flaw in WSO2 API Manager has come under active exploitation in the wild, according to findings from watchTowr. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-5430 (CVSS score: 9.8/10.0), is a case of improper verification of a cryptographic signature that could result in account takeover. Hacktron Team has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw. "JWT authentication

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a previously undocumented Brazilian banking malware operation that delivers a toolkit called KREMLIN. Elastic Security Labs is tracking the activity under the moniker REF9334. Active since at least May 2025, the threat actor has used lures that impersonate a dozen Brazilian banks and install a malicious browser extension on Google Chrome and

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

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.