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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

New macOS malware steals passwords by posing as Apple’s crash-reporting tool Jamf Threat Labs has uncovered a new macOS infostealer named CrashStealer that disguises itself as Apple’s crash-reporting tool to steal passwords, Keychain data, and cryptocurrency wallets. The malware was first spotted in May while it was still under development. By early July, Jamf was seeing in-the-wild detections, indicating it had moved into active use. “Unlike much of the commodity stealer activity on macOS, which is built on AppleScript droppers or thin Objective-C wrappers, CrashStealer is implemented in native C++ around an internal class the authors named MacOSData,” the researchers wrote. “It validates the victim’s login password locally before harvesting, collects broadly across browsers, cryptocurrency wallets, password managers and the Keychain, encrypts what it collects with AES-GCM before exfiltrating over libcurl, and persists by copying and re-signing itself.” Signed installer starts the attack The attack starts with a disk image named “Werkbit Setup.” When opened, it mounts a volume containing a single application, Werkbit.app. Its executable, named veltod, launches the next stage of the infection. Werkbit Setup (Source: Jamf) The dropper is a universal binary signed with the Developer ID “Emil Grigorov (WWB7JA7AQV)” and carries a stapled notarization ticket. This lets it pass Gatekeeper, macOS’s built-in protection against untrusted software, on first launch. “Notably, the disk image itself is signed as well, not just the application inside it, which is uncommon in malicious DMG delivery where the container is typically left unsigned,” they added. Jamf reported the Developer Team ID behind the signature to Apple after confirming its use in the campaign. The installer was hosted on werkbit[.]io, a domain registered in late June, close to the build date of the dropper analyzed. Downloading it requires a meeting PIN, limiting access to people who already have the code. The report links the activity to other domains and shared infrastructure, indicating CrashStealer is one piece of a broader operation. GitHub delivers the next stage After launch, the veltod executable contacts a GitHub repository and downloads a file that supplies a command to fetch a script from a separate server. The script decodes its commands at runtime before downloading the next stage. The script downloads CrashReporter.dmg, mounts it, and copies the application bundle into a hidden folder before deleting the disk image. The payload uses the icon, display name, and bundle identifier of Apple’s crash-reporting component to resemble a system utility. Malware targets passwords, browsers, and cryptocurrency wallets CrashStealer displays a password prompt designed to look like a macOS system dialog. It checks the password locally with the dscl command, a built-in macOS tool used to verify user credentials, and asks again if the password is wrong. After receiving the correct password, the infostealer unlocks the login Keychain and copies it into a hidden staging folder. It also collects data from Documents, Downloads, and other user folders, skipping executables, installers, disk images, and bulky archive or media files to limit the amount of data collected. It also targets Chromium browser profiles, Firefox login data, about 80 cryptocurrency wallet extensions such as MetaMask, Phantom, Coinbase Wallet, Trust Wallet, and Exodus, as well as 14 password managers, among them 1Password, Bitwarden, LastPass, Dashlane, and Keeper. Collected files are encrypted one by one with AES-256-GCM before being stored, then packed into hidden ZIP archives and uploaded to a command-and-control server with libcurl, a networking library commonly used to transfer data over HTTP and HTTPS. Although CrashStealer targets the same types of data as other macOS infostealers, its native C++ implementation and client-side encryption set it apart, leading the researchers to classify it as a separate malware family. Persistence and anti-analysis CrashStealer copies itself to another location and applies a new ad hoc signature to the copied binary. It installs the copy as a LaunchAgent named “com.apple.crashreporter.helper,” allowing it to run each time the user logs in. The malware also includes code designed to slow analysis, with flattened control flow, strings decrypted only at runtime, and debugger checks placed at more than one point during startup. Jamf’s report provides indicators of compromise, file names and hashes, delivery infrastructure details, and filesystem artifacts left behind after an infection.

A new form of malware is targeting macOS users by impersonating Apple’s built-in crash-reporting component to trick victims into installing a password-stealing payload. As detailed by Jamf Threat Labs, CrashStealer is a macOS infostealer designed to harvest login details, cryptocurrency wallets and any other data stored on the system or in the browser. Written in C++, CrashStealer was first detected in early July. It is delivered through a disk image that impersonates Apple’s built-in crash-reporting component. The initial way the CrashStealer attack chain begins has not been detailed, but during at least the second stage of the attack, the user is directed to a signed and Apple-notarized dropper, distributed as a disk image named "Werkbit Setup.” Crucially, this disk image is signed with a valid Apple developer ID and a notarization ticket, which enables it to clear Apple Gatekeeper, the macOS security feature designed to prevent malware execution on first launch. "The presence of a Developer ID shows us that the application was signed by a developer who purchased a signing certificate. That certificate is then used to cryptographically sign the malicious application, making it appear more legitimate," Jaron Bradley, Director of Jamf Threat Labs told Infosecurity. "Many infostealers skip this step, since it requires purchasing a certificate and is typically followed by submitting the app to Apple's notarization servers. The payoff for successfully getting through this process is fewer security prompts on the victim's screen when they attempt to open the application," he added. The user is encouraged to run an application, which looks convincingly like a legitimate software installer. If the user does run the installation, the application reaches out to a GitHub API, which decodes a jumbled script, which after it is decoded becomes a downloader-installer that fetches the CrashStealer payload. Researchers noted that this process is helped along by how the disk image exploits an application bundle which has been designed to impersonate Apple's built-in crash-reporting component, further helping the malware to evade detection. Stealing Login Credentials Once installed, the infostealer displays a native password prompt styled to resemble a genuine macOS authorization request. This is an effort by the attackers to ensure that they have stolen the correct system login credentials for the machine. With this confirmed, CrashStealer moves towards its true goal: stealing usernames, passwords and any other credentials stored in the browser, as well as stealing logins for cryptocurrency wallets, password managers and other keychain data that provides them with access to accounts. “CrashStealer's delivery chain shows real care: rather than a bare, unsigned lure, the operators front the attack with a signed and notarized dropper that clears Gatekeeper before quietly fetching, re-signing and launching the payload,” Thijs Xhaflaire, senior threat and detections researcher at Jamf Threat Labs, said in a blog posted, published on July 13. “What sets it apart from the commodity stealer crowd is less what it collects than how it is built: client-side AES-GCM encryption of the collected files, and an emphasis on analysis resistance through control-flow flattening, encrypted strings and layered anti-debugging,” he added. Researchers note that while CrashStealer appears to have some overlaps with other forms of MacOS malware such as Atomic (AMOS), and MacSync its native C++ implementation and client-side encryption set it apart as a different variant of malware. After confirming that a Developer Team ID was used to distribute malicious payloads, Jamf Threat Labs reported it to Apple, which revoked the deleloper ID immediately. Infosecurity has contacted Apple for comment.

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new macOS information stealer called CrashStealer that's capable of harvesting sensitive data from compromised systems. Unlike other information stealers that are built on AppleScript droppers or Objective-C-based wrappers, CrashStealer is implemented in native C++, according to Jamf Threat Labs. "It validates the victim's login password locally before harvesting, collects broadly across browsers, cryptocurrency wallets, password managers, and the keychain, encrypts what it collects with AES-GCM before exfiltrating over libcurl, and persists by copying and re-signing itself," security researcher Thijs Xhaflaire said in a report shared with The Hacker News. CrashStealer is said to be distributed by means of a signed and Apple-notarized dropper that's distributed as a disk image file named "Werkbit.app." Because both the disk image and binary are notarized and carry a valid developer ID ("Emil Grigorov (WWB7JA7AQV)"), it passes Gatekeeper checks. The disk image itself originates from the domain "werkbit[.]io," which was registered in June 2026. In an interesting twist, the download is gated behind a meeting PIN, meaning the installer is served only to those site visitors who arrive with the right code rather than everyone. The discovery of additional domains and shared backend infrastructure tied to the same operation points to CrashStealer being part of a larger, multi-platform campaign. Once mounted, the disk image presents the user with an installation setup screen that instructs them to right-click the app and choose "Open" to get them to run it. Once launched, the "veltod" executable contacts a GitHub repository ("github.com/mgothiclove") to retrieve a file named "sys.cache." The file is then used to extract a curl command and pull a shell script, which acts as a downloader to fetch and stage the next payload ("CrashReporter.dmg") and saves it to the "/tmp" directory. The malware, upon execution, establishes persistence as a LaunchAgent, resists analysis, presents a password prompt and validates the entered credential locally, unlocks the login keychain using the validated password, lists installed security and analysis tooling, before proceeding to collect browser data, cryptocurrency wallet extensions, password manager data, and keychain material. The complete list of data harvested is below - Credentials from Chromium-family browsers, including Google Chrome, Brave, Microsoft Edge, Opera and Opera GX, Vivaldi, Chromium, and Naver Whale Roughly 80 cryptocurrency wallet extensions, including MetaMask, Phantom, Coinbase, Trust Wallet, Rabby, OKX Wallet, Exodus, Keplr, Solflare, and Backpack 14 password managers, including 1Password, Bitwarden, LastPass, Dashlane, Keeper, KeePassXC, NordPass, Enpass and RoboForm Files from ~/Documents and ~/Downloads directories The harvested data is then packaged into a ZIP archive and exfiltrated to an attacker-controlled server ("179.43.166[.]242"). "CrashStealer's delivery chain shows real care: rather than a bare, unsigned lure, the operators front the attack with a signed and notarized dropper that clears Gatekeeper before quietly fetching, re-signing and launching the payload," Jamf said. "What sets it apart from the commodity stealer crowd is less what it collects than how it is built: client-side AES-GCM encryption of the collected files, and an emphasis on analysis resistance through control-flow flattening, encrypted strings and layered anti-debugging."

Betti RHC, la prima graphic novel al mondo dedicata alla cybersecurity awareness, ha finalmente il suo sito ufficiale. Uno spazio tutto suo dove scoprire il progetto, sfogliare le copertine degli episodi e immergersi nel mondo di Betti: la giovane laureanda in informatica che, dopo la morte misteriosa del padre, si trasforma nell'hacker più potente del mondo. Una storia avvincente che, episodio dopo episodio, affronta una minaccia digitale diversa — dal phishing al ransomware, fino al cyberbullismo — e insegna a riconoscerla e a difendersi, senza che sembri mai una lezione. Sul sito trovate tutto ciò che rende Betti un progetto diverso dal solito: la sua filosofia, le anteprime delle tavole e il racconto di come nasce ogni volume. Perché dietro Betti RHC c'è solo lavoro umano: ogni tavola è disegnata interamente a mano dagli artisti del Gruppo Arte di Red Hot Cyber, senza alcun uso di intelligenza artificiale. E a garantire che ogni storia sia realistica e tecnicamente corretta c'è la supervisione degli hacker etici del gruppo HackerHood, che mantengono il racconto fedele al mondo reale della sicurezza informatica. C'è spazio anche per le aziende, che possono usare Betti come strumento di awareness diverso dai soliti corsi: acquistare i volumi, personalizzarli con il proprio brand o sponsorizzare nuovi episodi. E come primo regalo, l'episodio "Byte the Silence", dedicato al cyberbullismo, è scaricabile gratuitamente per uso personale. Perché la miglior difesa, in fondo, è una bella storia. 👉 Scopri tutto su https://betti.redhotcyber.com/

Cybercriminals are finding new ways to trick people into compromising their own devices and accounts. One campaign used a sponsored ad on X to target Mac users, while another technique, dubbed ConsentFix, steals Microsoft 365 accounts without installing malware. Verified X account used in Mac ClickFix attack Researchers have discovered a ClickFix-style attack running as a sponsored advertisement on X. The ad was posted from a verified account, adding an extra layer of credibility to the scam. ClickFix campaigns use convincing lures—historically fake “human verification” screens, and now a fake download for DynamicLake, a legitimate macOS utility that turns your MacBook’s notch into an unofficial but functional version of Apple’s Dynamic Island. This type of attack requires the user to paste a command from the clipboard, making it depend heavily on user interaction. Image courtesy of Jamf In reality, people who clicked the link were redirected to the lookalike domain dynamicmacisland[.]com, where they were instructed to open Terminal and paste installation commands that silently installed malware. The campaign combines three worrying trends: ClickFix-style social engineering using Terminal commands, lookalike domains that mimic trusted Mac apps, and paid advertising infrastructure used to scale attacks to a large audience. The malware reportedly delivers several variants of the Atomic Stealer infostealer. This pattern mirrors previous cases where Google Ads promoted fake software installers, including malicious sponsored listings that delivered malware when users searched for trusted developer tools. The lesson is clear: paid placement and verification badges are no guarantee of safety, especially when attackers deliberately design campaigns to evade automated screening. The campaign abused X’s advertising platform, with the malicious ad appearing under a verified account. The researchers reported the advertisement to X and contacted the account owner. The ad appears to have since been removed. ConsentFix steals accounts instead of installing malware Windows users are also being warned about the next generation of ClickFix attacks, called ConsentFix. ConsentFix is different because ,where ClickFix turns you into the installer, ConsentFix turns you into the identity provider. Instead of tricking you into running malware, it uses social engineering to get you to hand over your cloud login tokens through the browser without ever asking you to run malware or type your password. “It can start with something as mundane as dragging a link into your browser. Three seconds later, a threat actor has the tokens needed to take over your Microsoft 365 account, and you never did anything that traditional security awareness training would flag.” For example, a phishing email may arrive containing a link, often hosted on trusted platforms such as Dropbox. Sometimes it’s protected with a password, which also makes it harder for security tools to inspect. If the target clicks on the link, they’ll see what looks like a standard Microsoft sign-in page and be asked to complete the process by dragging a localhost callback link into the browser. That’s when the trap closes. Without realizing it, the victim hands over session tokens to the attacker, giving them access to email and other Microsoft 365 services without needing a password or completing multi-factor authentication (MFA). The method has reportedly been shared on a Russian cybercrime forum, making it easy enough for less experienced cybercriminals to steal Microsoft 365 accounts. How to stay safe The best protection is knowing these attacks exist and recognizing what they look like. So keep reading our blog. But there’s more you can do: Don’t trust links that arrive unexpectedly—whether by email, text message, social media, or even through verified accounts or sponsored search results. Think things through before following instructions that seem unusual or that you don’t fully understand. When filling out credentials, always check the address in the browser bar. Is that the one you expected? If not, stop. Use an up-to-date, real-time anti-malware solution with web protection. Pro tip: Did you know the free Malwarebytes Browser Guard browser extension protects you against malicious websites and ClickFix attacks? It also blocks ads and trackers, so that’s a bonus. Stop threats before they can do any harm. Malwarebytes Browser Guard blocks phishing pages and malicious sites automatically. Free, one click to install. Add it to your browser →

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new macOS information stealer called PamStealer that employs a series of clever tricks to infect systems and siphon sensitive data. The stealer, discovered by Jamf Threat Labs, is distributed as a compiled AppleScript (.scpt) file impersonating Maccy, a legitimate open-source clipboard manager. It has been codenamed PamStealer owing to its ability to validate the victim's login password through the macOS Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) before capturing it. The malware is delivered in two stages: A compiled AppleScript distributed inside a disk image that's designed to download and stage a follow-on payload. The secondary artifact is a Rust-based infostealer capable of credential theft, browser data collection, persistence, and exfiltration. The initial access vector for the malware is a lookalike site ("maccyapp[.]com") that mimics Maccy ("maccy[.]app"). The AppleScript ("Maccy.scpt") present within the disk image executes a self-contained JavaScript for Automation (JXA) downloader that fetches and stages the stealer payload using native Objective-C APIs. What's notable here is that the script, once launched via the Script Editor, displays instructions to run it using the "⌘ + R" keyboard shortcut or clicking the Run button from the Script Editor, causing the malicious logic hidden in the file below a large block of empty lines to be executed. "Notably, this works even when the file still carries the com.apple.quarantine attribute, which is what makes the approach attractive to attackers as Apple continues to tighten Gatekeeper and Terminal," security researcher Thijs Xhaflaire said. "Combined with a Rust-based second stage and a password capture workflow that validates credentials locally through PAM, the result is a quieter execution chain than we typically observe in commodity macOS stealers." The AppleScript dropper incorporates environment-aware features that allow the execution to continue only after fingerprinting the host and determining it's running on Apple Silicon. It does this by deriving a key based on the fingerprint, which includes details like the CPU architecture, locale, keyboard layout, and the time zone, and then using it to unlock an encrypted configuration that contains the payload URL and install path. On Intel-based Macs, the derived decryption key differs and fails to decode the configuration, resulting in the termination of the dropper. The script also avoids execution within sandboxed or analysis environments, as well as systems whose time zone, system locale, and keyboard input resolve to countries located in Eastern Europe, such as Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Georgia. Once the checks pass, the script reaches out to the external server and downloads a Mach-O binary written in Rust that masquerades as the Finder app and is responsible for harvesting data from web browsers, cryptocurrency wallet extensions, iCloud Keychain, and clipboard content. The captured information is then encrypted and exfiltrated to attacker-controlled infrastructure ("avenger-sync[.]live") over an outbound HTTP request. Besides coercing the user into granting it full file system access, the stealer serves a native password prompt that collects the victim's system password, and then validates the entered password by cross-checking it via the PAM API. If the validation fails, it asks the user to re-enter the password, and repeats the loop until the correct password is supplied. "Once a valid password is captured, the stealer shows a second, counterfeit alert: 'Maccy is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash,' a close copy of the genuine Gatekeeper message," Jamf said. "This is a decoy. By the time it appears, the payload has already run, captured the password and registered for persistence, so the message serves only to make the victim discard the lure and assume the download was broken." Also built into the Rust binary is a small arm64 Mach-O that impersonates macOS System Settings and is used for setting up persistence. The development has prompted Alex Rodionov, the developer of Maccy, to include a warning on their website and the GitHub repository, urging users to stay away from fake websites mimicking the tool. "Beware of fake websites impersonating Maccy. Malicious sites (such as maccyapp[.]net and maccyapp[.]com) distribute malware disguised as Maccy. Maccy[.]app is the only official website," Rodionov said. "Together, these behaviors illustrate how commodity macOS stealers continue to evolve, adopting quieter execution chains and native implementations that reduce traditional detection opportunities while remaining compatible with standard macOS features," Jamf said.

New infosec products of the week: July 3, 2026 Here’s a look at the most interesting products from the past week, featuring releases from Digi International, iboss, Jamf, and Netzilo. Digi International’s DANI automates network diagnostics and device management Digi International has announced the launch of DANI, the Digi Artificial Network Intelligence agent, a purpose-built AI network operations agent natively embedded in a networking device management platform, Digi Remote Manager (DRM). Embedded directly within DRM as a value-added service, DANI enables network operators and managed service providers to monitor and diagnose network issues, identify root causes and surface recommended actions through a single conversational interface. Jamf enables AI Governance and shadow AI detection on Mac Jamf has announced general availability of AI Governance, a new capability within Jamf for Mac that enables IT and security teams to discover actively-used AI tools, enforce policy controls, and generate audit-ready reporting. Netzilo adds runtime governance for AI agents across major platforms Netzilo has announced expanded AI agent governance and runtime enforcement capabilities for Amazon Bedrock AgentCore and other major AI agent harnesses. Netzilo AIDR builds a runtime graph of agent behavior, including tool calls, file reads, network requests, skill acquisitions, and multi-stage action sequences. The platform correlates behaviors that may appear harmless in isolation but indicate risk when viewed together, helping security teams detect threats such as prompt injection, indirect prompt injection, tool poisoning, capability hijacking, privilege escalation, and multi-stage data exfiltration. New iboss platform gives organizations instant visibility into AI tools and usage iboss has launched the AI Security Platform, a new service that gives any organization visibility into the AI tools its people are using, free of charge. The platform tracks prompts, sessions, users, and risk in real time across ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and dozens of other services, covering both browser-based tools and desktop AI applications such as Cursor.

Jamf enables AI Governance and shadow AI detection on Mac Jamf has announced general availability of AI Governance, a new capability within Jamf for Mac that enables IT and security teams to discover actively-used AI tools, enforce policy controls, and generate audit-ready reporting. Many organizations struggle to confidently audit and report on AI tool usage across their device fleet, including both sanctioned applications and unsanctioned or prohibited tools. AI Governance provides comprehensive visibility into which AI applications are in use, along with detailed insights into how they behave on the endpoint. This enables organizations to understand AI activity at a level that network- and cloud-based reporting solutions alone cannot provide, helping security teams identify risk, support compliance, and make informed governance decisions. With launch support for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and OpenAI Codex, the capability provides deep governance coverage across model access, tenancy, network permissions, file system controls, MCP server restrictions, and other vendor-specific AI configurations. A vendor control tracking engine continuously monitors supported AI platforms for new or updated controls, helping organizations keep governance policies current as AI tools rapidly evolve. All of these policies are in place offline and before a user’s first login to an AI agent, enforcing a foundational day-zero and tamper-resistant policy baseline. Native Mac control plane for enterprise AI AI tools run natively on Apple Silicon and operate as processes that existing network proxies and cloud-based tooling cannot fully see or govern. No existing tool unifies platform-native device management, deep AI tool configuration coverage, and a workflow that translates governance intent into vendor-correct configuration on macOS. Jamf AI Governance closes that gap by enabling visibility of shadow AI and providing granular AI configurations natively, deployed in minutes, through the same endpoint management control plane that admins use today, offering: Visibility: AI application visibility and shadow AI discovery surface AI tools, agents, and LLM runtime across the fleet (including CLI-based developer tools and background agents) using Jamf’s existing telemetry agent, which uses native and high-performance macOS frameworks. No new agent is required. Control: AI access policy controls let IT define sanctioned tools, deploy access policy at scale, and scope different postures to different teams. Vendor-correct configurations can be applied automatically at scale. Governance: An executive AI posture report provides CIOs and CISOs with a snapshot-in-time summary of AI usage. The capability offers SIEM compatibility and is designed to assist companies in reporting against their existing compliance frameworks. “AI adoption across the enterprise is moving faster than existing technology policies can keep up,” said Beth Tschida, CEO at Jamf. “Organizations need governance that matches the way AI tools actually operate on Mac. This means visibility into what’s running, policy controls enforced directly on the endpoint, and reporting that helps security teams demonstrate compliance. Our AI Governance capability delivers that natively from the same platform customers already trust to manage and secure Apple devices.” “Like many organizations, we want to enable teams to use AI tools productively while maintaining appropriate governance and oversight,” said Sam Lalli, Security Engineering & SOC Manager at Eventbrite. “What impressed us about Jamf’s AI Governance was how quickly we could apply policy across our Mac fleet without adding another point solution or creating friction for developers. Having this critical capability built into the same device management platform we already use, really simplifies AI governance for our team.” Beyond essential visibility and control, Jamf’s AI Governance policies can more effectively deploy and govern partner AI solutions. IT and security teams can use Jamf to discover AI tools running across MacOS devices and register those agents directly with Okta for AI Agents. This gives each one a managed identity and scoped access to only the resources it is allowed to reach. Jamf controls which MCP servers can run on the device while Okta controls what cloud resources those MCP servers can reach. Rather than long-lived static keys, agents use short-lived, vaulted credentials, and every action is authorized and logged from the endpoint to the cloud. The Okta integration deploys directly from Jamf’s console without manual API setup or certificate management required. Organizations can also configure their preferred agent builder platform, such as Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, ensuring AI traffic routes through and is processed on sanctioned cloud infrastructure. With Jamf handling device visibility and policy enforcement, and Okta managing agent identity and access, organizations can answer: which agents ran on which endpoints, what they were authorized to reach, and what they did along the path from a MacOS device to the SaaS app. “While some enterprise AI agents run locally, they access data across a vast cloud ecosystem, requiring coordinated security between the endpoint and identity layers,” said Harish Peri, SVP & GM of AI Security, Okta. “By anchoring Okta for AI Agents to Jamf’s endpoint enforcement, every agentic connection on a managed Mac is authenticated, authorized, and fully visible from the device to the data. Together, we’re helping organizations become secure agentic enterprises by giving them more control over what AI agents can access and on whose behalf.” AI governance urgency is accelerating The need for enterprise AI governance is accelerating as organizations adopt AI-powered tools across employee workflows. Jamf’s recently released AI Governance Survey found that organizations with deeply integrated AI are 40% more likely to report an incident than those still in the exploration phase, suggesting AI governance is quickly becoming an operational requirement rather than a future planning exercise. Gartner mentions, “With spending on AI governance expected to reach $492 million in 2026 and surpass $1 billion by 2030, organizations are reassessing the tools and strategies needed to stay ahead of both regulatory and operational risk.” Further, in its Top Cybersecurity Trends for 2026 report, Gartner also says that, “Cybersecurity leaders must identify both sanctioned and unsanctioned AI agents, enforce robust controls for each and develop incident response playbooks to address potential risks.”

LastPass announced that hackers accessed support cases containing customer data from its Salesforce environment after stealing the company's OAuth tokens in the Klue supply chain attack earlier this month. The password management platform says its products, services, and infrastructure were not affected by the incident and that customer vaults remained secure. “On June 12th, LastPass was made aware of an incident that occurred at Klue (klue.com), a third-party market intelligence platform utilized by our go-to-market teams, which integrates with our Salesforce and Gong systems,” LastPass says. "We immediately launched an investigation and learned that, as part of this incident, an unauthorized actor was able to obtain OAuth tokens Klue held for many of its customers, including LastPass.” “The threat actor then used these credentials to access LastPass customer data within our Salesforce environment.” The investigation into the incident did not reveal any evidence that the attacker accessed Gong-related data, which typically includes customer calls and emails. According to LastPass, the following data may have been exposed: Customer names Phone numbers Email addresses Physical addresses Support case information Sales/CRM-related data Attackers may leverage the above information in phishing and social engineering attacks. The general recommendation for users is to be cautious of unsolicited communications over the phone or email, especially those that request sensitive details. The master password should not be shared with anyone. The Klue supply chain attack was claimed by the Icarus extortion group, who compromised the infrastructure of the AI-powered market intelligence platform and stole OAuth tokens that connected customers' Salesforce environments. Icarus hackers gained access to Klue's infrastructure using compromised legacy credentials for an integration service. This gave them access to OAuth tokens that connected Klue to various third-party services. The incident impacted multiple organizations, including Recorded Future, Tanium, Jamf, Sprout Social, Gong, and Insurity. The threat actor exfiltrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) data and launched an extortion campaign. LastPass has disabled employee access to Klue, rotated the exposed API/OAuth tokens, and notified law enforcement while the investigation is underway. The company also warned about the threat actors using the sender domains baccarat.com[.]au, robinskitchen.com[.]au, house[.]com.au, noting that only communications from the official support channels should be trusted. 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

At least nine organizations have publicly acknowledged the impact of the supply chain attack on market intelligence platform Klue. The incident occurred on June 11-12 and affected Klue’s integration with Salesforce, resulting in data being exfiltrated from the Salesforce instances of multiple Klue customers, including several cybersecurity firms. On Friday, Klue confirmed previous security reports that the attackers used compromised legacy credentials to access its systems and compromise Salesforce integrations. “The attacker used that access to obtain OAuth tokens used to connect Klue with certain third-party platforms, including Salesforce, and subsequently accessed data within a number of connected customer environments,” Klue said. The company revoked the affected credentials and tokens, disabled the integrations across multiple services, and has been investigating the attack together with CrowdStrike and law enforcement. “Based on our investigation to date, the incident was limited to the affected third-party platforms, and there is no evidence that customer content stored within the Klue platform was impacted,” the company said. To date, at least nine Klue customers have disclosed impact from the incident, including cybersecurity firms HackerOne, Huntress, Jamf, OneTrust, Recorded Future, Snyk, and Tanium. Insurity and Sprout Social also notified their customers of the incident. All the affected companies pointed out that the intrusion was limited to the Salesforce instances and did not involve their systems, as Klue said in its incident notice. Across the board, the hackers stole business information from the affected organizations’ Salesforce CRMs, including sales account data and business contact information, such as names, email addresses, job titles, phone numbers, and business addresses. Salesforce disabled the Klue integration in the wake of the incident, and revenue intelligence platform Gong did the same on Friday, warning that the hackers exploited its Klue integration to access internal licensed user data. “We can confirm no direct impact on call recordings or customer transcripts. Examples of data accessed included user names, user business titles, and user emails,” Gong said. In its analysis of the incident, Huntress suggested that a threat actor named Icarus might have been responsible for the attack. Since then, Icarus has added Klue to its Tor-based leak site, claiming responsibility for the attack and threatening to publish the information stolen from Klue customers’ Salesforce instances. Per the threat actor’s posts, the data would be released on June 22, unless Klue and the affected organizations engage in negotiations. Related: Cybersecurity Firms Impacted by Klue Supply Chain Attack Related: Atomic Arch Supply Chain Attack Hits 1,500 AUR Packages Related: ‘SymJack’ Attack Turns AI Coding Agents Into Supply Chain Attack Delivery Systems Related: Laravel-Lang Packages Poisoned for Malware Delivery

How security teams are getting credential visibility into developer endpoints As we noted in our earlier analysis, attackers already know secrets are on your developers’ machines, the only question is whether security teams do. The supply chain attack calendar of 2026 has been relentless. Megalodon backdoored 5,500 GitHub repositories in six hours. TrapDoor spread across npm, PyPI, and Crates.io simultaneously, planting persistence inside AI coding assistant config files. Miasma compromised 32 official Red Hat packages by abusing GitHub’s trusted publishing. Each campaign shared the same objective: reach developer machines and harvest the credentials sitting on them. Developer workstations have become a high-value target precisely because they concentrate credentials that no perimeter control covers, shell histories, .env files, local caches, cloud CLI configs, and now AI agent directories. Today, GitGuardian is addressing that gap directly with Developer Endpoint Protection: the ability to find every credential on every developer machine, built into ggshield, the CLI already deployed across the GitGuardian customer base. What it does Scans the full endpoint, including AI tooling. The scanning engine processes 500,000 files in under three minutes and completes subsequent scans in seconds using intelligent caching. All scanning is local. Credentials never leave the machine in clear text. Beyond traditional file paths, it covers the locations AI coding agents now write to: prompt histories, tool output logs, agent config files, and inventories of which AI tools and MCP servers are running on each machine, surfacing unauthorized or potentially malicious MCPs before they can exfiltrate data. Detects live attacks with honeytokens. Honeytokens placed on developer machines fire the moment an infostealer validates one of those credentials. Instead of discovering a breach weeks later in a log review, security teams get attribution-rich alerts in real time, before the credential is used. Feeds into the broader platform. Endpoint findings surface directly in the GitGuardian dashboard alongside vault, repository, and cloud data, connecting endpoint exposure to the NHI governance and secrets security workflows teams already use. When an incident lands, teams can answer immediately: what was on this machine, what services does it reach, and what needs to be revoked first. Designed for enterprise deployment Developer Endpoint Protection is built for organizations that need more than a proof of concept. It supports MDM-based rollout via Intune and Jamf, structured output forwarding to SIEM, API-based data retrieval, configurable exclusions with CPU and memory limiting, and cross-platform coverage across Windows, Linux, and macOS. Because it extends ggshield rather than introducing a new tool, teams already using GitGuardian for pre-commit hooks and CI/CD scanning can deploy without adding another agent or workflow. Why now Supply chain attackers have already updated their model. Machine identities and developer machine credentials are a primary objective, not an afterthought. Megalodon, TrapDoor, Miasma, and the campaigns that preceded them, including Shai-Hulud and NX, all demonstrate the same calculus: compromising one developer machine or CI workflow is often enough to reach production credentials, repository access, and cloud environments in a single step. AppSec programs that stop their visibility at repositories and CI pipelines are working with an incomplete map of where credentials actually live. Developer Endpoint Protection is how GitGuardian extends that map to the machines themselves. Developer endpoints are the most under-monitored surface in secrets security. The organizations that know what credentials are on their fleet recover faster when the next campaign lands. The ones that don’t find out during the breach.

ClickFix campaign delivers Mac malware via fake Apple page Security researchers at Jamf have uncovered a new ClickFix-style attack targeting Mac users via a fake Apple-themed webpage offering instructions on how to “reclaim disk space on your Mac”. The malicious page (Source: Jamf) ClickFix for everybody ClickFix is a social engineering technique that cons victims into running malicious commands on their own machine, usually by pretending the commands are needed to fix a problem or perform routine upkeep. This technique was initially aimed at Windows users, but in time, macOS and Linux users also started getting targeted. “The go-to approach for ClickFix [macOS] techniques has long been convincing users to copy and paste malicious commands into Terminal under the guise of troubleshooting or routine system maintenance. Apple took direct aim at this in macOS 26.4, introducing a security feature that scans commands pasted into Terminal before they’re executed,” Jamf researchers noted. For that reason, attackers have switched to using a browser-triggered workflow to launch Script Editor, a code editor for the AppleScript and Javascript for Automation scripting languages. (Both Terminal and Script Editor are installed by default on macOS.) The lure and the end result From the victims’ point of view, the attack looks like this: They visit the malicious page and follow the instructions They click the provided “Execute” button The page shows a prompt asking them to allow the website to open Script Editor The Script Editor is opened and is pre-populated with the attackers’ script Depending on the macOS version they use, they may or may not see an additional warning against running the script If they ignore the warning and allow the script to be saved on the disk and executed, the script will covertly download an Atomic Stealer (aka AMOS) variant and execute it. Atomic Stealer is a subscription product, sold to criminals who then deploy it however they like. It’s capable of collecting system information, stealing data stored in Keychain (Apple’s built-in password management system), autofill data, passwords, cookies, and credit card information from browsers, cryptocurrency wallets, and more. Jamf researchers have shared indicators of compromise related to this malware delivery campaign. Subscribe to our breaking news e-mail alert to never miss out on the latest breaches, vulnerabilities and cybersecurity threats. Subscribe here!

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new set of malicious npm packages that are designed to steal cryptocurrency wallets and sensitive data. The activity is being tracked by ReversingLabs as the Ghost campaign. The list of identified packages, all published by a user named mikilanjillo, is below - react-performance-suite react-state-optimizer-core react-fast-utilsa ai-fast-auto-trader pkgnewfefame1 carbon-mac-copy-cloner coinbase-desktop-sdk "The packages themselves are phishing for sudo password with which the last stage is executed, and are trying to hide their real functionality and avoid detection in a sophisticated way: displaying fake npm install logs," Lucija Valentić, software threat researcher at ReversingLabs, said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The identified Node.js libraries, besides falsely claiming to download additional packages, insert random delays to give the impression that the installation process is underway. At one point during this step, the user is alerted that the installation is running into an error due to missing write permissions to "/usr/local/lib/node_modules," which is the default location for globally installed Node.js packages on Linux and macOS systems. It also instructs the victim to enter their root or administrator password to continue with the installation. Should they enter the password, the malware then silently retrieves the next-stage downloader, which then reaches out to a Telegram channel to fetch the URL for the final payload and the key required to decrypt it. The attack culminates with the deployment of a remote access trojan that's capable of harvesting data, targeting cryptocurrency wallets, and awaiting further instructions from an external server. ReversingLabs said the activity shares overlaps with an activity cluster documented by JFrog under the name GhostClaw earlier this month, although it's currently not known if it's the work of the same threat actor or an entirely new campaign. GhostClaw Uses GitHub Repositories and AI Workflows to Deliver macOS Stealer Jamf Threat Labs, in an analysis published last week, said the GhostClaw campaign uses GitHub repositories and artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted development workflows to deliver credential-stealing payloads on macOS. "These repositories impersonate legitimate tools, including trading bots, SDKs and developer utilities, and are designed to appear credible at a glance," security researcher Thijs Xhaflaire said. "Several of the identified repositories have accumulated significant engagement, in some cases exceeding hundreds of stars, further reinforcing their perceived legitimacy." In this campaign, the repositories are initially populated with benign or partially functional code and left unchanged for an extended period of time to build trust among users before introducing malicious components. Specifically, the repositories feature a README file that guides developers to execute a shell script as part of the installation step. A variant of these repositories feature a SKILL.md file, primarily targeting Al-oriented workflows under the guise of installing external skills through AI agents like OpenClaw. Regardless of the method used, the shell script initiates a multi-stage infection process that ends with the deployment of a stealer. The entire sequence of actions is as follows - It identifies the host architecture and macOS version, checks if Node.js is already present, and installs a compatible version if required. The installation takes place in a user-controlled directory to avoid raising any red flags. It invokes "node scripts/setup.js" and "node scripts/postinstall.js," causing the execution to transition to JavaScript payloads, enabling it steal system credentials, deliver the GhostLoader malware by contacting a command-and-control (C2) server, and remove traces of malicious activity by clearing the Terminal. The script also comes with an environment variable named "GHOST_PASSWORD_ONLY," which, when set to zero, presents a full interactive installation flow, complete with progress indicators and user prompts. If it's set to 1, the script launches a simplified execution path focused primarily on credential collection without any extra user interface elements. Interestingly, in at least some cases, the "postinstall.js" script displays a benign success message, stating the installation was successful and that users can configure the library in their projects by running the "npx react-state-optimizer" command. According to a report from cloud security company Panther last month, "react-state-optimizer" is one of several other npm packages published by "mikilanjillo," indicating that the two clusters of activity are one and the same - react-query-core-utils react-state-optimizer react-fast-utils react-performance-suite ai-fast-auto-trader carbon-mac-copys-cloner pkgnewfefame darkslash "The packages contain a CLI 'setup wizard' that tricks developers into entering their sudo password to perform 'system optimizations,'" security researcher Alessandra Rizzo said. "The captured password is then passed to a comprehensive credential stealer payload that harvests browser credentials, cryptocurrency wallets, SSH keys, cloud provider configurations, and developer tool tokens." "Stolen data is routed to partner-specific Telegram bots based on a campaign identifier embedded in each loader, with credentials stored in the BSC smart contract and updated without modifying the malware itself." The initial npm package captures credentials and fetches configuration from either a Telegram channel or a Teletype.in page that's disguised as blockchain documentation to deploy the stealer. Per Panther, the malware implements a dual revenue model, where the primary income is from credential theft relayed through partner Telegram channels, and the secondary income is through affiliate URL redirects stored in a separate Binance Smart Chain (BSC) smart contract. Valentić told The Hacker News that the use of fake progress indicators mimicking legitimate installation progress and the deployment of the same GhostLoader RAT indicates that the seven npm packages it discovered at the start of February 2026 are "most likely the first wave of this campaign." "This campaign highlights a continued shift in attacker tradecraft, where distribution methods extend beyond traditional package registries into platforms such as GitHub and emerging AI-assisted development workflows," Jamf said. "By leveraging trusted ecosystems and standard installation practices, attackers are able to introduce malicious code into environments with minimal friction."

Apple ha rilasciato il primo aggiornamento attraverso un meccanismo automatico che molti utenti non conoscono ancora: i Background Security Improvements. Prima di entrare nel merito della vulnerabilità corretta, è utile capire cosa sia questo nuovo strumento e perché rappresenta un cambiamento significativo nel modo in cui Apple gestisce la sicurezza dei propri dispositivi. Indice degli argomenti I Background Security Improvements sono aggiornamenti di sicurezza leggeri, mirati e silenziosi, distribuiti automaticamente in background senza richiedere un aggiornamento completo del sistema operativo e, soprattutto, senza richiedere il riavvio del dispositivo. Sono disponibili a partire da iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1 e macOS 26 e si applicano a componenti specifici come il motore browser WebKit, le librerie di sistema e altri framework critici. In parole semplici, possiamo immaginare di tappare una perdita d’acqua senza smontare l’intero impianto idraulico di casa. I Background Security Improvements fanno esattamente questo: correggono un componente specifico (come, ad esempio, il motore che gestisce le pagine web) senza toccare il resto del sistema operativo e senza interrompere il lavoro in corso. Apple non è la prima azienda a percorrere questa strada: Microsoft ha introdotto una tecnologia analoga con gli hotpatch su Windows 11 Enterprise e Linux offre da anni meccanismi di live patching del kernel. Ma per l’ecosistema Apple si tratta di una vera novità, destinata a diventare uno strumento centrale nella gestione del rischio su miliardi di dispositivi. Chi segue la sicurezza Apple ricorderà i Rapid Security Response, introdotti con iOS 16 nel 2022 con uno scopo analogo: correzioni puntuali e rapide tra un aggiornamento e l’altro. I Background Security Improvements ne rappresentano l’evoluzione diretta, con alcune differenze rilevanti. I Rapid Security Response erano identificabili da un suffisso nella versione di iOS (ad esempio iOS 16.4.1 (a)), richiedevano a volte il riavvio del dispositivo e potevano essere disinstallati manualmente dall’utente ripristinando la versione base. I Background Security Improvements seguono la stessa logica di denominazione, aggiungendo il suffisso “(a)” alla versione corrente del sistema operativo, ma Apple sottolinea che la loro applicazione è ancora più trasparente e a basso impatto. Da sottolineare che se un Background Security Improvement viene rimosso manualmente, il dispositivo torna alla versione base senza alcun aggiornamento di sicurezza applicato. Un comportamento identico a quello dei Rapid Security Response che, però, impone una riflessione: la possibilità di disinstallare patch di sicurezza è una funzione di usabilità che può diventare un vettore di rischio se non gestita correttamente nelle policy aziendali. WebKit, lo ricordiamo, è il motore di rendering web alla base del browser Safari e di tutti i browser disponibili su iOS e iPadOS, inclusi Chrome e Firefox. In altre parole, anche se sul nostro iPhone usiamo Chrome, il codice che effettivamente interpreta e visualizza le pagine web è WebKit. Questo rende ogni vulnerabilità in WebKit potenzialmente applicabile a qualsiasi browser su qualsiasi dispositivo Apple. La Same Origin Policy (SOP) è uno dei principi fondamentali della sicurezza del web. Stabilisce che una pagina web può accedere solo alle risorse che provengono dalla stessa origine, ossia dallo stesso dominio, protocollo e porta. In pratica, impedisce a un sito malevolo aperto in una scheda del browser di leggere i dati presenti in un’altra scheda aperta, ad esempio, sulla pagina personale della nostra banca online, sulla nostra webmail o su qualsiasi altro servizio. In pratica, in un possibile scenario di attacco, un utente visita un sito web apparentemente innocuo come può essere un articolo condiviso sui social, una pagina di e-commerce o una landing page di phishing ben costruita. La pagina contiene codice JavaScript malevolo che, sfruttando la vulnerabilità CVE-2026-20643, viola la Same Origin Policy e legge dati da un’altra scheda aperta nel browser: cookie di sessione, token di autenticazione, contenuto di pagine web aperte. Il tutto in modo silenzioso, senza che l’utente si accorga di nulla. La vulnerabilità risiede specificamente nella Navigation API di WebKit, un’interfaccia JavaScript che consente alle applicazioni web di controllare e monitorare la navigazione nel browser. Il problema è una cross-origin issue: attraverso questa API era possibile, in condizioni specifiche, accedere a informazioni provenienti da origini diverse da quella corrente, violando esattamente il confine che la Same Origin Policy dovrebbe proteggere. La causa alla base di questo malfunzionamento è una validazione insufficiente dell’input all’interno della Navigation API. Apple ha quindi corretto il problema rafforzando i controlli di validazione, rendendo impossibile per il codice malevolo sfruttare il percorso vulnerabile. La nota positiva è che, al momento del rilascio della patch, non sono stati ancora segnalati casi di sfruttamento attivo della vulnerabilità che, è bene sottolineare, è stata scoperta e comunicata in modo responsabile (responsible disclosure) prima che chiunque ne facesse uso malevolo documentato. Un elemento sicuramente positivo, ma che non riduce l’urgenza di applicare il fix. La vulnerabilità CVE-2026-20643 appena corretta da Apple non è un episodio isolato: WebKit è, storicamente, uno dei componenti maggiormente presi di mira nell’ecosistema della Mela dai ricercatori di sicurezza e dagli attori malevoli. E ciò avviene per una ragione molto semplice: correggere WebKit significa correggere tutti i browser su tutti i dispositivi Apple contemporaneamente, con un impatto potenziale enorme. Solo nelle settimane precedenti a questo aggiornamento, Apple aveva già emesso un fix per un’altra vulnerabilità zero-day, tracciata come CVE-2026-20700, già attivamente sfruttato che consentiva l’esecuzione arbitraria di codice su iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS e visionOS. Senza dimenticare, a inizio marzo, il rilascio delle patch per altre quattro vulnerabilità sfruttate nel contesto del Coruna exploit kit, una suite di exploit che ha preso di mira dispositivi Apple con iOS 13 in versione 17.2.1. Questo contesto rafforza la rilevanza strategica dei Background Security Improvements in un ecosistema in cui le vulnerabilità browser vengono scoperte e talvolta sfruttate attivamente in tempi molto brevi. E questo significa che la capacità di distribuire fix mirati in ore anziché in settimane è una difesa concreta, non solo una comodità operativa. Alla luce dell’analisi tecnica della vulnerabilità corretta da Apple nel suo motore di rendering WebKit, gli utenti e i responsabili della sicurezza aziendale possono adottare alcune buone regole di igiene cyber. Verificare che i Background Security Improvements siano abilitati: per farlo, dal menu Impostazioni/Privacy e sicurezza/Background Security Improvements assicurarsi che la voce Installa automaticamente sia attiva. Se è disattivata, il fix per CVE-2026-20643 non verrà applicato automaticamente. Verificare la versione installata: dopo l’aggiornamento automatico, la versione del sistema operativo dovrebbe mostrare il suffisso “(a)”, ad esempio iOS 26.3.1 (a). La verifica si effettua accedendo al menu Impostazioni/Generali/Info. Non rimuovere manualmente l’aggiornamento: Apple consente la disinstallazione delle patch installate nel proprio sistema operativo, ma riportare il dispositivo alla versione base senza Background Security Improvements significa riesporsi alla vulnerabilità. Aggiornare le policy MDM per includere i Background Security Improvements: verificare che le soluzioni di Mobile Device Management (Apple Business Manager, Jamf, Microsoft Intune con supporto Apple ecc.) gestiscano correttamente questa nuova tipologia di aggiornamento e non la blocchino per policy di approvazione manuale. Monitorare l’inventario delle versioni con precisione: il suffisso “(a)” è semanticamente rilevante per la sicurezza. I tool di asset management e vulnerability management devono essere in grado di distinguere tra iOS 26.3.1 e iOS 26.3.1 (a) in quanto indicano due stati di sicurezza diversi. Aggiornare i playbook di incident response: con l’introduzione dei Background Security Improvements, il ciclo di vita di una vulnerabilità Apple si accorcia significativamente. I processi di valutazione e risposta alle CVE Apple devono tenerne conto. Comunicare la novità agli utenti finali: molti utenti non sanno cosa siano i Background Security Improvements e potrebbero disabilitarli per curiosità o per ridurre i consumi in background. Una comunicazione interna chiara riduce questo rischio. I Background Security Improvements rappresentano un cambiamento di paradigma nel modo in cui Apple gestisce la sicurezza dei propri dispositivi. La logica è quella già applicata con successo da Microsoft con gli hotpatch su Windows: separare il fix di sicurezza dall’aggiornamento di funzionalità, riducendo il tempo di esposizione senza imporre il costo operativo di un aggiornamento completo. Questa è, nella sostanza, la risposta di Apple a una realtà che il settore ha dovuto affrontare: il tasso di scoperta di vulnerabilità nei motori browser è troppo elevato per attendere i cicli mensili o bimestrali di aggiornamento del sistema operativo. Quando una vulnerabilità WebKit viene scoperta, ogni giorno di attesa è un giorno in cui miliardi di dispositivi rimangono esposti. Il vero banco di prova di questa tecnologia sarà nella coerenza della sua applicazione: Apple dovrà dimostrare di essere disposta a usarla non solo per vulnerabilità scoperte in modo responsabile da ricercatori collaborativi, ma anche e soprattutto per le falle zero-day sfruttate attivamente, dove la velocità di distribuzione del fix è la differenza tra contenimento e danno su scala globale.

SailPoint improves visibility and control over unauthorized AI use SailPoint has announced the launch of SailPoint Shadow AI Remediation, the latest component of its real-time AI governance and security framework. This solution enables organizations to discover, monitor, and secure the use of unauthorized AI tools, known as “shadow AI,” helping to mitigate the security and compliance risks associated with the rapid growth of artificial intelligence. As employees turn to AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others to enhance productivity, they often do so outside of approved IT channels. This “shadow AI” introduces a critical challenge for enterprises: creating a significant blind spot and loss of control for security leaders over how employees interact with these platforms. SailPoint Shadow AI Remediation addresses this by providing real-time visibility into how employees use these tools, including monitoring document uploads and interaction frequency. This capability is crucial in an environment where, according to a report that was recently published, 80% of organizations report their AI agents have performed unintended actions, such as accessing or sharing inappropriate data. SailPoint Shadow AI Remediation helps organizations: Gain real-time visibility into shadow AI usage: Organizations gain immediate visibility into how employees are utilizing unmonitored AI tools. This visibility tackles the critical risk of sensitive data exposure from employees unknowingly uploading confidential files into unapproved AI models. Enable proactive remediation and centralized oversight: Security teams are empowered to actively prevent misuse by blocking unauthorized uploads, redirecting users to sanctioned AI tools, or prompting them for business justification. This centralized oversight helps reduce security gaps and promotes compliance in an increasingly AI-driven world. Facilitate easy deployment with minimal user impact: Designed for an effortless rollout, the solution can be deployed via a simple browser extension using standard device management tools like Intune or JAMF, requiring no networking or infrastructure updates. This allows for implementation of applicable security measures without disrupting the end-user experience. “Many vendors are trying to solve the shadow AI problem with isolated browser or endpoint tools, but that misses the bigger picture. This is fundamentally an identity challenge,” said Chandra Gnanasambadam, EVP of Product and Chief Technology Officer at SailPoint. “We believe controlling AI usage is best achieved through a platform-centric approach that unifies identity, data, and security intelligence in real-time. Our real-time AI governance and security framework is built on this principle. By linking human and non-human identities, we provide the context needed to not just see shadow AI, but to govern it effectively. Shadow AI delivers robust real-time visibility, proactive remediation, and seamless deployment, all deeply integrated with the SailPoint Platform,” Gnanasambadam added. The release of Shadow AI Remediation is an important milestone for SailPoint’s real-time AI governance and security framework. This framework unifies Agent Identity Security, Machine Identity Security, Data Access Security, and now Shadow AI Remediation to provide a holistic approach to securing AI. By integrating AI tool usage activity into SailPoint’s Identity Security Cloud, organizations can enrich their identity graph, adding important context that enables more intelligent decisions about access and risk. We believe SailPoint’s platform-centric approach, which links human and non-human identities with data and security intelligence, uniquely positions the company to help businesses navigate the complexities of AI security.

Three different ClickFix campaigns have been found to act as a delivery vector for the deployment of a macOS information stealer called MacSync. "Unlike traditional exploit-based attacks, this method relies entirely on user interaction – usually in the form of copying and executing commands – making it particularly effective against users who may not appreciate the implications of running unknown and obfuscated terminal commands," Sophos researchers Jagadeesh Chandraiah, Tonmoy Jitu, Dmitry Samosseiko, and Matt Wixey said. It's currently not known if the campaigns are the work of the same threat actor. The use of ClickFix lures to distribute the malware was also flagged by Jamf Threat Labs in December 2025. The details of the three campaigns are as follows - November 2025: A campaign that used OpenAI's ChatGPT Atlas web browser as bait, delivered via sponsored search results on Google, to direct users to a fake Google Sites URL with a download button that, when clicked, displayed instructions to open the Terminal app and paste a command to it. This action downloaded a shell script, which prompts the user to enter the system password and runs MacSync with user-level permissions. December 2025: A malvertising campaign that leveraged sponsored links tied to searches for queries like "how to clean up your Mac" on Google to lead users to shared conversations on the legitimate OpenAI ChatGPT site to give the impression that the links were safe. The ChatGPT conversations redirected victims to malicious GitHub-themed landing pages that tricked users into running malicious commands on the Terminal app. February 2026: A campaign targeting Belgium, India, and parts of North and South America that distributed a new variant of MacSync delivered through ClickFix lures. The latest iteration supports dynamic AppleScript payloads and in-memory execution to evade static analysis, bypass behavioral detections, and complicate incident response. The shell script launched after running the Terminal command is designed to contact a hard-coded server and retrieve the AppleScript infostealer payload, while simultaneously taking steps to remove evidence of data theft. The stealer is equipped to harvest a wide range of data from compromised hosts, including exfiltrating credentials, files, keychain databases, and seed phrases from cryptocurrency wallets. The latest findings suggest the threat actors are adapting the formula to stay one step ahead of security tools, while weaponizing the trust associated with ChatGPT conversations to convince users to run malicious commands. The new variant observed in the most recent campaign "likely represents the malware developer adjusting to OS and software security measures to maintain effectiveness," Sophos said. "Refinements to the typical ClickFix social engineering tactics are therefore one way in which such campaigns may continue to evolve in the future." In recent months, ClickFix campaigns have used legitimate platforms like Cloudflare Pages (pages.dev), Squarespace, and Tencent EdgeOne to host bogus instructions for installing developer tools like Anthropic's Claude Code. The URLs are distributed via malicious search engine ads. The instructions, as before, deceive victims into installing infostealer malware like Amatera Stealer instead. The social engineering attack has been codenamed InstallFix or GoogleFix. According to Nati Tal, head of Guardio Labs, similar infection chains lead to the deployment of Alien infostealer on Windows and Atomic Stealer on macOS. The PowerShell command executed after pasting and running the supposed installation command for Claude Code fetches a legitimate Chrome extension package within a malicious HTML Application (HTA) file, which then launches an obfuscated .NET loader for Alien in memory, per Tal. Guardio has described GoogleFix as a malvertising campaign that takes advantage of sponsored Google search results to redirect users looking for solutions to common macOS problems to malicious pages hosted on various platforms like Grammarly, Coda, Kimi, Medium, Squarespace, and Writesonic. The result is a "turnkey, industrialized pipeline" for malware delivery, it added. "While traditional ClickFix attacks need to manufacture a reason for the user to run a command: a fake CAPTCHA, a fabricated error message, a bogus system prompt — InstallFix doesn't need any of that," Push Security said. "The pretext is simply the user wanting to install legit software." According to Pillar Security, there have been at least 20 distinct malware campaigns that have targeted artificial intelligence (AI) and vibe coding tools between February and March 2026. These include code editors, AI agents, large language models (LLM) platforms, AI-powered browser extensions, AI video generators, and AI business tools. Of these, nine have been found to target both Windows and macOS, with another seven exclusively affecting macOS users. "The reason is clear: AI/vibe coding tool users skew heavily toward macOS, and macOS users tend to have higher-value credentials (SSH keys, cloud tokens, cryptocurrency wallets)," Pillar Security researcher Eilon Cohen said. "The ClickFix/InstallFix technique (tricking users into pasting commands into Terminal) is uniquely effective against developers because curl | sh is a legitimate installation pattern. Homebrew, Rust, nvm, and many other developer tools use this exact pattern. The malicious commands hide in plain sight." Needless to say, the advantage posed by ClickFix (and its variants) has led to the tactic being adopted by multiple threat actors and groups. This includes a malicious traffic distribution system (TDS) named KongTuke (aka 404 TDS, Chaya_002, LandUpdate808, and TAG-124), which uses compromised WordPress websites and fake CAPTCHA lures to deliver a Python-based trojan called ModeloRAT. The attackers inject malicious JavaScript into legitimate WordPress websites that prompt users to run a PowerShell command responsible for initiating a multi-stage infection process to deploy the trojan. "The group continues to use this method alongside the newer CrashFix technique, which tricks users into installing a malicious browser extension to initiate infection," Trend Micro said. "The malware specifically checks whether a system is part of a corporate domain and identifies installed security tools before continuing, suggesting a focus on enterprise environments rather than opportunistic infections." That's not all. KongTuke campaigns have also been spotted using DNS TXT records in their ClickFix script. These DNS TXT records stage a command to retrieve and run a PowerShell script. Other ClickFix-style pastejacking attacks that have been detected in the wild are listed below - Using compromised websites to display lures for ClickFix pages that mimic Google's "Aw Snap!" error or browser updates to distribute droppers, downloaders, and malicious browser extensions. Using ClickFix decoys served via malvertising/phishing links to direct users to malicious pages that lead to the deployment of Remcos RAT. Using a fake CAPTCHA verification lure on a phony website promoting a $TEMU airdrop scam to trigger the execution of a PowerShell command that runs arbitrary Python code retrieved from a server. Using a bogus website advertising CleanMyMac to trick users into running a malicious Terminal command to deploy a macOS stealer named SHub Stealer and backdoor cryptocurrency wallets such as Exodus, Atomic Wallet, Ledger Wallet, and Ledger Live to steal the seed phrases. Using a fake CAPTCHA verification lure on compromised websites to run a PowerShell script that delivers an MSI dropper, which then installs the Deno JavaScript runtime to execute obfuscated code that ultimately installs CastleRAT in memory by means of a Python loader named CastleLoader. In a report published last week, Rapid7 revealed that highly trusted WordPress websites are being compromised as part of an ongoing, widespread campaign designed to inject a ClickFix implant impersonating a Cloudflare human verification challenge. The activity has been active since December 2025. More than 250 infected websites have been identified in at least 12 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czechia, Germany, India, Israel, Singapore, Slovakia, Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S. The websites have been identified as regional news outlets and local businesses. The end goal of these lures is to compromise the Windows systems with different stealer malware families: StealC Stealer, an improved version of Vidar Stealer, a .NET stealer dubbed Impure Stealer, and a C++ stealer referred to as VodkaStealer. The stolen data can then act as a launchpad for financial theft or follow-on attacks. The exact method by which the WordPress sites are hacked is presently not known. However, it's suspected to involve the exploitation of recently disclosed security flaws in WordPress plugins and themes, previously stolen admin credentials, or publicly accessible wp-admin interfaces. To counter the threat, site administrators are advised to keep their sites up-to-date, use strong passwords for administrative access, set up two-factor authentication (2FA), and scan for suspicious administrator accounts. "The best defense for individuals browsing the web is to stay cautious, maintain a zero-trust mindset, use reputable security software, and keep themselves up to date with the latest phishing and ClickFix tactics used by malicious actors," Rapid7 said. "An important takeaway from this report should be that even trusted websites can be compromised and weaponized against unsuspecting visitors."

Google on Monday announced the rollout of new Android security updates containing patches for nearly 130 vulnerabilities, including an exploited zero-day. The exploited flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-21385 (CVSS score of 7.8) and impacting the graphics component of over 200 Qualcomm chipsets, is described as an integer overflow or wraparound issue leading to memory corruption while using alignments for memory allocation. According to Jamf senior enterprise strategy manager Adam Boynton, the successful exploitation of the weakness could allow attackers to “bypass security controls and gain unauthorised control over the system”. According to Qualcomm’s advisory, the bug was reported on December 18, 2025, through the Google Android Security team. The chip maker notified its customers of CVE-2026-21385 on February 2 and disclosed the security defect on Monday. “There are indications that CVE-2026-21385 may be under limited, targeted exploitation,” Google notes in Android’s March 2026 security bulletin. The company has not shared details on the observed attacks, but these types of vulnerabilities are often exploited by commercial spyware vendors. Fixes for the bug were included in the second part of this month’s Android updates, which arrive on devices as the 2026-03-05 security patch level. This patch level resolves over 60 vulnerabilities in kernel, Arm, Imagination Technologies, MediaTek, Unisoc, and Qualcomm components. The first part of the updates, rolling out as the 2026-03-01 security patch level, contains fixes for over 50 vulnerabilities in the Framework and System components, including critical flaws leading to remote code execution (RCE) and denial-of-service (DoS). “The most severe of these issues is a critical security vulnerability in the System component that could lead to remote code execution with no additional execution privileges needed. User interaction is not needed for exploitation,” Google notes. Devices running a security level of 2026-03-05 or higher contain patches for all these vulnerabilities. On Monday, Google also announced the release of fixes for two Wear OS vulnerabilities, impacting the platform’s Framework and System components. The fresh Wear OS update also includes patches for all the security defects described in Android’s March 2026 security bulletin. Google says there are no platform-specific patches in this month’s Android Automotive OS and Android XR updates. Related: Android 17 Beta Strengthens Secure-by-Default Design for Privacy and App Security Related: Critical Dolby Vulnerability Patched in Android Related: Zyxel Patches Critical Vulnerability in Many Device Models Related: Trend Micro Patches Critical Apex One Vulnerabilities

As the cybersecurity market continues to mature, SecurityWeek’s annual M&A report provides an essential roadmap for understanding how corporate consolidation is reshaping the digital defense sector. SecurityWeek’s M&A tracker cataloged 426 deals in 2025, including 334 involving pure-play companies. The 2025 figure of 426 represents a 5% increase over 2024, signaling that the sector is once again on an upward trajectory after two years of consecutive decline. While the total number of deals is lower than the 2022 peak (455), the value and complexity of the deals appear to be higher. In addition, the market continues to move away from the ‘buying everything’ trend observed in 2021/2022 to a more strategic, international consolidation. Regional dynamics and global footprint The 2025 data shows that the market has become significantly more globalized. At 288 participations for 426 deals, the US remains involved in roughly 67% of all global cybersecurity M&A. This is a slight recovery from the 63% low in 2023, but still well below the 80% dominance seen in 2021. The UK saw a decline from 70 deals (2021) to 48 (2023). However, it rebounded to 67 in 2024 and maintained that momentum with 64 deals in 2025. The UK has solidified its position as the clear #2 global hub for cybersecurity M&A. After being overtaken in the rankings in 2024, Israel has reclaimed the 3rd position with 34 deals in 2025. Ireland and Sweden saw fewer than 10 deals in 2024 after a strong 2023. In 2025, they bounced back to 12 and 11 deals respectively. Capital allocation and valuation trends Financial details were disclosed for 74 deals for a total disclosed value of $92.5 billion. This includes 63 deals involving pure-play cybersecurity companies, with a total disclosed value of $84 billion. The total disclosed deal value has surged by approximately 82% year-over-year, which can largely be attributed to Google’s planned acquisition of cloud security giant Wiz for $32 billion. The industry has sustained its appetite for billion-dollar acquisitions, with 11 deals exceeding the $1 billion mark. In addition to Google-Wiz, seven deals involving pure-play cybersecurity firms surpassed $1 billion, including Palo Alto Networks acquiring CyberArk ($25B) and Chronosphere ($3.3B), ServiceNow’s acquisition of Armis ($7.7B) and Veza ($1B), Francisco Partners buying Jamf ($2.2B), Veeam Software acquiring Securiti AI ($1.7B), and Proofpoint acquiring Hornetsecurity ($1.8B). This suggests that large-scale platform consolidation is now a permanent fixture of the landscape. The $100M-$999M range was the primary engine of growth in 2025. This indicates that acquirers are focusing on mature, established cybersecurity companies rather than early-stage startups. This also suggests that the industry is currently in a phase of strategic scaling, where medium-sized specialized leaders are being swallowed by larger platforms to create all-in-one security suites. There has been a noticeable decline in the number of disclosed deals under $100M (down to 26 in 2025 from 32 in 2024). This implies that ‘tuck-in’ acquisitions of very small startups are either becoming less frequent or are less likely to have their financial terms disclosed compared to larger, more impactful deals. Sector deep-dive and domain expertise SecurityWeek data shows that 125 deals involved managed security solutions providers (MSSPs) in 2025, including 60 pure cybersecurity providers. This includes product distributors and companies that offer other products and services in addition to cybersecurity. While activity involving MSSPs has increased from 119 deals in 2024, it remains significantly lower than the 150+ seen in 2022 and 2023. After a sharp drop in 2024, the 2025 figure suggests the market has found its new normal. It is no longer in a freefall, but it hasn’t returned to the frantic buying spree of 2022-2023. The strategic value remains high as managed services continue to be the primary way small-to-medium enterprises consume security. While it’s important to keep track of MSSP deals, we are tracking them separately in an effort to get a better view of the other categories. Several core security sub-sectors experienced significant upward momentum in 2025, as acquirers seem to prioritize data sovereignty, identity integrity, and regulatory compliance. With 82 deals, GRC (governance, risk, and compliance) reached a five-year peak in 2025. While it has always been a top category (averaging 65 deals from 2021-2024), the jump to 82 suggests that companies are prioritizing regulatory requirements over purely technical defenses. Data protection recorded aggressive growth, surging from 44 deals in 2024 to 63 deals in 2025. This reflects an industry shift toward data-centric security. While still a smaller category, AI security is showing a clear upward trajectory. It recorded 8 deals in 2024 and has increased to 13 deals in 2025, mirroring the broader tech industry’s focus on securing LLMs and AI pipelines. After a significant slump in 2024 (dropping to 28 deals), identity has bounced back to 43 deals in 2025, returning to its historical levels from 2022 and 2023. While several sectors saw record growth, four categories experienced a cooling in M&A activity, reflecting a pivot away from reactive tools toward long-term governance and data resilience. One of them is incident response, which has seen a notable decline, dropping from a peak of 38 deals in 2024 to 25 deals in 2025. Private equity-led acquisitions have also cooled significantly. They spiked to 37 in 2023 but dropped to 18 in 2025, returning to the levels seen in 2021 and 2022. After a strong 2024 (16 deals), interest in companies specializing in industrial/OT cybersecurity appears to have leveled off, dropping back to 9 deals, the same number recorded in 2023. Application security saw a steady rise in M&A deals through 2024 (reaching 31), but dipped slightly to 26 in 2025. Two types of companies stand out for remaining steady throughout the years. Network security remains the most consistent category in the dataset. It has hovered almost exactly at the same level for four years, with roughly 40 deals announced every year between 2022 and 2025. The government contractors segment is also remarkably stable, consistently recording between 36 and 38 deals annually (except for a slight outlier of 43 in 2021). It sits at 36 deals for 2025. The 2025 data indicates a market shift away from reactive tools (incident response) and toward resilience and compliance infrastructure (GRC and data protection). While 2024 was a year of diversifying into specialized niches, 2025 appears to be a year of consolidation around the core pillars of governance and data privacy. Monthly summaries of 2025 cybersecurity M&A deals: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December. Methodology: The data was collected through news distribution services, Google searches and pitches from PR companies. The data includes companies that issued press releases announcing or mentioning acquisitions, as well as deals that have been privately reported to SecurityWeek. All deals that had a cybersecurity component have been taken into account for this study. Mergers and acquisitions that did not have an English-language announcement may not be included. The data could also include some deals that may have not been completed after they were announced. The GRC category includes governance, compliance, risk management, audit, assessment, vulnerability management, penetration testing, attack surface management, offensive security, and cyber insurance. Network security includes endpoint security, MDR, XDR, NDR, and SASE. Identity includes IAM, PAM, secure access, authentication, and authorization. Incident response includes SOAR, SIEM, SOC, and forensics. ‘Other (specialized)’ includes hardware, quantum, media and events, healthcare, brand protection, financial, online safety, SAP, recruiting, real estate, and automotive. Data protection includes encryption/cryptography, VPN, privacy, backup and blockchain. MSSP includes cybersecurity solution distributors and companies that do not develop their own products or solutions. The AI category only includes companies specializing in securing AI.

Intellexa’s Predator spyware can hide iOS recording indicators while secretly streaming camera and microphone feeds to its operators. The malware does not exploit any iOS vulnerability but leverages previously obtained kernel-level access to hijack system indicators that would otherwise expose its surveillance operation. Apple introduced recording indicators on the status bar in iOS 14 to alert users when the camera or microphone is in use, displaying a green or an orange dot, respectively. US-sanctioned surveillance firm Intellexa developed the Predator commercial spyware and delivered it in attacks that exploited Apple and Chrome zero-day flaws and through 0-click infection mechanisms. While its ability to suppress camera and microphone activity indicators is well known, it was unclear how the mechanism worked. How Predator hides recording Researchers at mobile device management company Jamf analyzed Predator samples and documented the process of hiding the privacy-related indicators. According to Jamf, Predator hides all recording indicators on iOS 14 by using a single hook function (‘HiddenDot::setupHook()’) inside SpringBoard, invoking the method whenever sensor activity changes (upon camera or microphone activation). By intercepting it, Predator prevents sensor activity updates from ever reaching the UI layer, so the green or red dot never lights up. “The target method _handleNewDomainData: is called by iOS whenever sensor activity changes - camera turns on, microphone activates, etc.,” Jamf researchers explain. “By hooking this single method, Predator intercepts ALL sensor status updates before they reach the indicator display system.” The hook works by nullifying the object responsible for sensor updates (SBSensorActivityDataProvider in SpringBoard). In Objective-C, calls to a null object are silently ignored, so SpringBoard never processes the camera or microphone activation, and no indicator appears. Because SBSensorActivityDataProvider aggregates all sensor activity, this single hook disables both the camera and the microphone indicators. The researchers also found “dead code” that attempted to hook ‘SBRecordingIndicatorManager’ directly. However, it doesn’t execute, and is likely an earlier development path that was abandoned in favor of the better approach that intercepts sensor data upstream. In the case of VoIP recordings, which Predator also supports, the module responsible lacks an indicator-suppression mechanism, so it relies on the HiddenDot function for stealth. Jamf further explains that camera access is enabled through a separate module that locates internal camera functions using ARM64 instruction pattern matching and Pointer Authentication Code (PAC) redirection to bypass camera permission checks. Without indicators lighting up on the status bar, the spyware activity remains completely hidden to the regular user. Jamf notes that technical analysis reveals the signs of the malicious processes, such as unexpected memory mappings or exception ports in SpringBoard and mediaserverd, breakpoint-based hooks, and audio files written by mediaserverd to unusual paths. BleepingComputer has contacted Apple with a request for a comment on Jamf’s findings, but the company never responded. 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

New research from the Citizen Lab has found signs that Kenyan authorities used a commercial forensic extraction tool manufactured by Israeli company Cellebrite to break into a prominent dissident's phone, making it the latest case of abuse of the technology targeting civil society. The interdisciplinary research unit at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy said it found the indicators on a personal phone belonging to Boniface Mwangi, a Kenyan pro-democracy activist who has announced plans to run for president in 2027. Specifically, it has emerged that Cellebrite's forensic extraction tools were used on his Samsung phone while it was in police custody following his arrest in July 2025. The phone was returned to him nearly two months later, in September, at which point Mwangi found that the phone was no longer password-protected and could be unlocked without requiring a password. It's been assessed with high confidence that Cellebrite's technology was used on the phone on or around July 20 and July 21, 2025. "The use of Cellebrite could have enabled the full extraction of all materials from Mwangi's device, including messages, private materials, personal files, financial information, passwords, and other sensitive information," the Citizen Lab said. The latest findings follow a separate report released last month, in which the researchers said officials in Jordan likely used Cellebrite to extract information from the mobile phones of activists and human rights defenders who had been critical of Israel and spoke out in support of Palestinians in Gaza. The devices were seized by Jordanian authorities during detentions, arrests, and interrogations, and subsequently returned to them. The documented incidents took place between late 2023 and mid-2025, the Citizen Lab said. In response to the findings, a spokesperson for Cellebrite told The Guardian that the company's technology is used to "access private data only in accordance with legal due process or with appropriate consent to aid investigations legally after an event has occurred." The two cases add to a growing body of evidence documenting the misuse of Cellebrite technology by government clients. It also reflects a broader ecosystem of surveillance abuses by various governments around the world to enable highly-targeted surveillance using mercenary spyware like Pegasus and Predator. Predator Spyware Targets Angolan Journalist The development also coincides with another report from Amnesty International, which discovered evidence that the iPhone belonging to Teixeira Cândido, an Angolan journalist and press freedom advocate, was successfully targeted by Intellexa's Predator spyware in May 2024 after he opened an infection link received via WhatsApp. The iPhone was running iOS 16.2, an outdated version of the operating system with known security issues. It's currently not known what exploit was used to trigger the infection. In multiple reports published last year, Recorded Future revealed that it has observed suspected Predator operations in Angola dating back to 2024. "This is the first forensically confirmed case of the Predator spyware being used to target civil society in Angola," the international human rights organization said. "Once the spyware was installed, the attacker could gain unrestricted access to Teixeira Cândido's iPhone." "The Predator spyware infection appears to have lasted less than one day, with the infection being removed when Teixeira Cândido's phone was restarted in the evening of 4 May 2024. From that time until 16 June 2024, the attackers made 11 new attempts to re-infect the device by sending him new malicious Predator infection links. All of these subsequent attack attempts appear to have failed, likely due to the links simply not being opened." In a statement shared with The Hacker News, Recorded Future said Amnesty's findings are consistent with what it has previously observed regarding suspected Predator activity in Angola, both in terms of timing and infrastructure. "Over time, and across different country clusters, we've unsurprisingly seen a steady evolution in Predator-linked infrastructure and tactics," the Mastercard-owned threat intelligence firm said. "For example, domains that were once hosted almost exclusively on virtual private servers, as in this case, have frequently been moved behind content delivery networks to obscure the underlying infrastructure." According to an analysis published by French offensive security company Reverse Society, Predator is a commercial spyware product "built for reliable, long-term deployment" and allows operators to selectively enable or disable modules based on target activity, granting them real-time control over surveillance efforts. Predator has also been found to incorporate various undocumented anti-analysis mechanisms, including a crash reporter monitoring system for anti-forensics and SpringBoard hooking to suppress recording indicators from victims when the microphone or camera is activated, illustrating the sophistication of the spyware. On top of that, it has explicit checks to avoid running in U.S. and Israeli locales. Through what Jamf calls "surgical API hooking" targeting SpringBoard's sensor activity data provider, Predator suppresses only the recording indicators while the device remains fully operational. This subtle approach ensures that the victim's phone works as usual, but they receive no visual warning that surveillance is taking place. "These findings demonstrate that Predator's operators have granular visibility into failed deployments, [...] enabling them to adapt their approaches for specific targets," Jamf Threat Labs researchers Shen Yuan and Nir Avraham said. "This error code system transforms failed deployments from black boxes into diagnostic events."

The North Korean threat actors associated with the long-running Contagious Interview campaign have been observed using malicious Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code) projects as lures to deliver a backdoor on compromised endpoints. The latest finding demonstrates continued evolution of the new tactic that was first discovered in December 2025, Jamf Threat Labs said. "This activity involved the deployment of a backdoor implant that provides remote code execution capabilities on the victim system," security researcher Thijs Xhaflaire said in a report shared with The Hacker News. First disclosed by OpenSourceMalware last month, the attack essentially involves instructing prospective targets to clone a repository on GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket, and launch the project in VS Code as part of a supposed job assessment. The end goal of these efforts is to abuse VS Code task configuration files to execute malicious payloads staged on Vercel domains, depending on the operating system on the infected host. Notably, the task is configured with the "runOn: folderOpen" option so that it runs every time that file or any other file in the project folder is opened in VS Code. This ultimately leads to the deployment of BeaverTail and InvisibleFerret. Subsequent iterations of the campaign have been found to conceal sophisticated multi-stage droppers in task configuration files by disguising the malware as harmless spell-check dictionaries as a fallback mechanism in the event the task is unable to retrieve the payload from the Vercel domain. Like before, the obfuscated JavaScript embedded with these files is executed as soon as the victim opens the project in the integrated development environment (IDE). It establishes communication with a remote server ("ip-regions-check.vercel[.]app") and executes any JavaScript code received from it. The final stage delivered as part of the attack is another heavily obfuscated JavaScript. Jamf said it discovered yet another change in this campaign, with the threat actors using a previously undocumented infection method to deliver a backdoor that offers remote code execution capabilities on the compromised host. The starting point of the attack chain is no different in that it's activated when the victim clones and opens a malicious Git repository using VS Code. "When the project is opened, Visual Studio Code prompts the user to trust the repository author," Xhaflaire explained. "If that trust is granted, the application automatically processes the repository’s tasks.json configuration file, which can result in embedded arbitrary commands being executed on the system." "On macOS systems, this results in the execution of a background shell command that uses nohup bash -c in combination with curl -s to retrieve a JavaScript payload remotely and pipe it directly into the Node.js runtime. This allows execution to continue independently if the Visual Studio Code process is terminated, while suppressing all command output." The JavaScript payload, hosted on Vercel, contains the main backdoor logic to establish a persistent execution loop that harvests basic host information and communicates with a remote server to facilitate remote code execution, system fingerprinting, and continuous communication. In one case, the Apple device management firm said it observed more JavaScript instructions being executed roughly eight minutes after the initial infection. The newly downloaded JavaScript is designed to beacon to the server every five seconds, run additional JavaScript, and erase traces of its activity upon receiving a signal from the operator. It's suspected that the script may have been generated using an artificial intelligence (AI) tool owing to the presence of inline comments and phrasing in the source code. Threat actors with ties to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) are known to specifically go after software engineers, particular those working in cryptocurrency, blockchain, and fintech sectors, as they often tend to have privileged access to financial assets, digital wallets, and technical infrastructure. Compromising their accounts and systems could allow the attackers unauthorized access to source code, intellectual property, internal systems, and siphon digital assets. These consistent changes to their tactics are seen as an effort to achieve more success in their cyber espionage and financial goals to support the heavily-sanctioned regime. The development comes as Red Asgard detailed its investigation into a malicious repository that has been found to use a VS Code task configuration to fetch obfuscated JavaScript designed to drop a full-featured backdoor named Tsunami (aka TsunamiKit) along with an XMRig cryptocurrency miner. Another analysis from Security Alliance last week has also laid out the campaign's abuse of VS Code tasks in an attack where an unspecified victim was approached on LinkedIn, with the threat actors claiming to be the chief technology officer of a project called Meta2140 and sharing a Notion[.]so link that contains a technical assessment and a URL to a Bitbucket repository hosting the malicious code. Interestingly, the attack chain is engineered to fallback to two other methods: installing a malicious npm dependency named "grayavatar" or running JavaScript code that's responsible for retrieving a sophisticated Node.js controller, which, in turn, runs five distinct modules to log keystrokes, take screenshots, scans the system's home directory for sensitive files, substitute wallet addresses copied to the clipboard, credentials from web browsers, and establish a persistent connection to a remote server. The malware then proceeds to set up a parallel Python environment using a stager script that enables data collection, cryptocurrency mining using XMRig, keylogging, and the deployment of AnyDesk for remote access. It's worth noting that the Node.js and Python layers are referred to as BeaverTail and InvisibleFerret, respectively. These findings indicate that the state-sponsored actors are experimenting with multiple delivery methods in tandem to increase the likelihood of success of their attacks. "While monitoring, we've seen the malware that is being delivered change very quickly over a short amount of time," Jaron Bradley, director of Jamf Threat Labs, told The Hacker News. "It's worth noting that the payload we observed for macOS was written purely in JavaScript and had many signs of being AI assisted. It's difficult to know exactly how quickly attackers are changing their workflows, but this particular threat actor has a reputation for adapting quickly." To counter the threat, developers are advised to exercise caution when interacting with third-party repositories, mainly those originating from unfamiliar sources or shared directly during coding tests; review source code contents before opening them in VS Code; install only vetted npm packages. "This activity highlights the continued evolution of DPRK-linked threat actors, who consistently adapt their tooling and delivery mechanisms to integrate with legitimate developer workflows," Jamf said. "The abuse of Visual Studio Code task configuration files and Node.js execution demonstrates how these techniques continue to evolve alongside commonly used development tools."

MacOS DigitStealer malware poses as DynamicLake, targets Apple Silicon M2/M3 devices A new infostealer is targeting macOS users by masquerading as the legitimate DynamicLake UI enhancement and productivity utility and possibly Google’s Drive for desktop app. Multi-stage delivery Dubbed DigitStealer by Jamf researchers, this threat is unusually sophisticated. Before it’s run, a bash script – also executed entirely in-memory – checks the system’s country setting and terminates if it indicates that the machine is located in specific regions. It also checks whether the machine is virtual and whether it’s running on an Apple Silicon M2 chip or newer (by checking for specific hardware features). “The malware avoids running on virtual machines, Intel-based Macs, and whether by design or mistake, systems using the M1 chip, even though it is also part of the Apple Silicon family. Instead, it targets devices with newer ARM features introduced with M2 or later,” the researchers found. If it “decides” the conditions are favorable, the scripts retrieves four separate payloads and starts dropping and running them. The first payload is a simple AppleScript infostealer that asks users to enter their passwords and if they do, it starts exfiltrating credentials, small user files (documents, notes, etc.), and resets the macOS TCC database (where macOS records which apps are allowed to access sensitive data or system features). The second payload zips and exfiltrates data from various popular browsers, the Keychain database, VPN configurations, Telegram’s tdata folder (which can be used to hijack Telegram accounts), and cryptocurrency wallet files from Ledger, Electrum, Exodus, Coinomi, etc. The third payload replaces the app.asar file for the Ledger Wallet/Ledger Live crypto application with a trojanized version, thus making it connect to an attacker-operated server and essentially hijacking it, allowing the attacker to intercept or manipulate the victim’s crypto wallet data. The fourth payload drops and loads a Launch Agent on the target system for persistence, and it dynamically retrieves payloads from the attacker’s server each time it runs. Initially, that final payload is a backdoor – a JavaScript for Automation (JXA) with full AppleScript powers – but the attacker can change the payloads at will. Tricking users into running the “app” “The sample that was discovered comes in the form of an unsigned disk image titled DynamicLake.dmg,” the researchers shared. “After digging further, we identified a few additional disk images tied to this campaign.” The DynamicLake.dmg has been distributed via the https[:]//dynamiclake[.]org, a domain and site imitating that of the legitimate macOS utility of the same name. Users who have been tricked into visiting this spoofed site are instructed to drag the file (actually the initial script) into the Mac’s Terminal, thus bypassing Gatekeeper. The served malware installer (Source: Jamf) Be careful when downloading Mac apps “Attribution for this specific variant remains unclear currently. However, the techniques used suggest a deeper understanding of the macOS operating system and a continued focus on evading detection,” the researchers noted. Malware authors continue abusing legitimate services and distribution methods to bypass macOS security controls and improve their chances of success, they added. In the last few months, attackers have been creating convincing replicas of GitHub repos for popular Mac apps and using the “drag-to-Terminal” trick to get unsuspecting users into running malicious scirpts. (The usual process to install an app is to drag it to the Application folder.) More recently, a Reddit user reported seeing this fake DynamicLake app as well as a fake version of AirPosture, which may or may not lead to a DigitStealer infection. Users should be careful when searching for and installing new apps: Double-check you are on the right site / Github repo Use VirusTotal to scan the downloaded installer before running it Never drag an app to the Terminal You can use specialized apps to verify the app’s/installer’s signature Subscribe to our breaking news e-mail alert to never miss out on the latest breaches, vulnerabilities and cybersecurity threats. Subscribe here!

Google and Wiz said the antitrust review initiated by the United States Department of Justice into their planned $32 billion acquisition has been cleared. The companies announced reaching an agreement on the terms of an acquisition in March 2025. News of a Justice Department antitrust review into Google’s planned acquisition of the cloud security giant came to light in mid-June. The goal of the probe was to determine whether the deal would harm competition in the cybersecurity market. During the recent WSJ Tech Live California event, Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport confirmed that his company had cleared the regulatory hurdle, noting they are “still in the journey between signing and closing”. The DOJ recently signaled the clearance of the merger by issuing an early termination of its investigation, indicating it will not challenge the deal further. “We look forward to completing the review process in other jurisdictions,” a Google spokesperson told the media. “The acquisition of Wiz is expected to close in 2026, subject to customary closing conditions.” A possible acquisition of Wiz by Google was first announced in July 2024, when the deal was reportedly valued at $23 billion. Wiz walked away, saying that it had decided to pursue an IPO. The new $32 billion deal between the two companies is the biggest cybersecurity acquisition ever, followed by Palo Alto Networks’s deal to acquire CyberArk for $25 billion. Cisco acquired Splunk for $28 billion in 2024, but that was a hybrid security and observability play, rather than a pure cybersecurity deal. Wiz has developed solutions designed to find and address security flaws in enterprise cloud deployments. Google has long sought to strengthen its presence in the enterprise cybersecurity space and the addition of Wiz technologies to Google Cloud — alongside Mandiant — will help the tech giant establish an end-to-end security platform, covering proactive defense, threat intelligence, and incident response. Google said Wiz security products will remain accessible across all major cloud platforms, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud. Additionally, customers will continue to have access to Wiz’s offerings through partner security solutions. [ Read: What’s Behind Google’s $32 Billion Wiz Acquisition? ] Agnidipta Sarkar, chief evangelist at zero trust microsegmentation company ColorTokens, commented, “This strategic collaboration between Wiz and Google Cloud will likely result in more integrated security solutions for clients in the cloud sector. The industry is expected to see a continuation of innovation in cloud security, thereby delivering increased value to clients. This acquisition may also provide substantial advantages for Google’s enterprise cloud business.” Karen Walker, CFO at cloud security provider Sysdig, a Wiz competitor, said some Wiz customers have concerns. “Organizations are increasingly building infrastructure across multiple cloud and on-prem environments. For Wiz customers who’ve come to expect cloud security independence, the path forward has become a lot murkier. Wiz customers operating in other clouds are suddenly at risk of becoming second-class citizens, facing higher costs and slower innovation,” Walker explained. “At its scale, Google will naturally align Wiz more tightly with its own platform and roadmap, and the other cloud providers are likely to be less open to sharing their roadmap with Wiz. This roadmap sharing between partners is so important for security companies to stay aligned with cloud innovation,” Walker added. Related: Jamf to Go Private Following $2.2 Billion Acquisition by Francisco Partners Related: Cybersecurity M&A Roundup: 45 Deals Announced in October 2025

Forty-five cybersecurity merger and acquisition (M&A) deals were announced in October 2025. Out of the 45 deals, roughly a quarter had publicly reported financial terms. A majority of deals were smaller, highly strategic acquisitions focusing on acquiring high-value tech or talent. Private equity firms were active in both large-scale buyouts and consolidation plays, showing confidence in GRC and other mature platforms. In fact, GRC companies were involved in over a dozen deals. The data shows an effort to consolidate GRC platforms, particularly through the integration of niche expertise such as third-party risk management and AI governance. Half a dozen deals involved identity and authentication firms, with several major companies looking to add next-generation features such as passwordless authentication and identity threat detection and response into their core identity platforms. While a majority of the target companies are based in the United States, a significant number of deals involve Australian companies, with several transactions pointing to consolidation within the local market. Here are some of the most important cybersecurity M&A deals announced in October 2025: Real-time event and risk detection solutions provider Dataminr is acquiring threat intelligence firm ThreatConnect for $290 million in cash and equity. The goal is to combine Dataminr’s data signals platform with ThreatConnect’s deep internal data capabilities to create agentic AI-powered intelligence that is tailored to each customer’s needs. Identity solutions provider Imprivata has bought identity threat detection and response company Verosint. Imprivata said the acquisition will enable it to add AI-powered risk intelligence to its platform. By integrating Verosint’s risk engine, Imprivata can continuously detect and respond to identity-based threats. Private equity firm Francisco Partners has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Apple device management and security firm Jamf in a $2.2 billion deal. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2026, when Jamf will become a privately held company. Identity, access and device management company JumpCloud has acquired Breez, an identity threat detection, investigation, and response (ITDR) platform. The acquisition accelerates JumpCloud’s security roadmap, bringing ITDR tools and expertise directly into its platform. With Breez’s technology, JumpCloud expands its ability to detect, investigate, and respond to identity threats. LevelBlue, one of the world’s largest managed security service providers, announced a definitive agreement to acquire extended detection and response (XDR) provider Cybereason. Following the acquisition, Cybereason’s XDR technology and digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) capabilities will be integrated into LevelBlue’s portfolio of managed security services. The controversial spyware maker NSO Group has been acquired by a group of American investors led by Hollywood producer Robert Simonds, transferring controlling ownership of the firm out of Israel. The deal has been reportedly valued at several tens of millions of dollars. Automated security validation and penetration testing firm Pentera has acquired DevOvean, which specializes in remediation management, for $30 million. The integration of DevOcean capabilities will enable Pentera to reduce remediation overload, enrich findings with organizational context, speed up remediation, and enforce SLA-driven remediation. Ping Identity has signed an agreement to acquire Keyless, a London-based firm specializing in privacy-preserving biometric authentication. The deal will bring Keyless’ Zero-Knowledge Biometrics technology to the Ping Identity Platform. The deal enables Ping to help enterprises verify users securely, without ever storing or sharing sensitive biometric data. RecordPoint, a data management and AI governance firm, has bolstered its capabilities through the acquisition of Redactive, a Melbourne-based startup that helps companies make AI adoption secure, compliant, and scalable. The goal of the deal is to accelerate the development of RecordPoint’s AI governance platform with new threat management capabilities. Redactive’s technology enhances RecordPoint’s capacity to address emerging AI cyber threats targeting highly sensitive data. Business advisory firm Riveron announced its acquisition of Eden Data, an Austin-based advisory firm known for its deep cybersecurity and GRC expertise. The deal expands Riveron’s Risk Advisory offerings, combining financial controls, operational risk, and emerging technology expertise under one roof. Attack surface management and threat intelligence firm Searchlight Cyber has acquired risk management company Intangic. The move enhances Searchlight’s ability to help organizations measure, monitor and mitigate cyber risk across their external environments. Twilio has entered into an agreement to acquire Stytch, an identity platform for AI agents. Stytch’s experts and technology will help Twilio build an intelligent identity layer across its platform. This is driven by the need to authenticate both human users and the emerging AI Agents that act on their behalf. Cloud network security firm Vectra AI announced the acquisition of network observability company Netography. As part of the deal, Netography Fusion will join the Vectra AI portfolio as Vectra Fusion, delivering agentless, cloud-native observability to enable proactive, preemptive cyberattack defense for hybrid and multi-cloud environments. This marks the second company led by Netography CEO Martin Roesch to be acquired. Data portability and resilience solutions provider Veeam Software has announced plans to acquire data security posture management (DSPM) company Securiti AI for $1.725 billion in cash and stock. The acquisition will unite their capabilities and enable Veeam to eliminate the challenge of managing fragmented data. Related: Cybersecurity M&A Roundup: 40 Deals Announced in September 2025 Related: Cybersecurity M&A Roundup: 27 Deals Announced in August 2025

Private equity firm Francisco Partners has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Apple device management and security firm Jamf in a $2.2 billion deal. Jamf provides a platform designed to help organizations manage and secure all of their Apple devices, simplifying app deployment, updates, and patching. Francisco Partners is set to acquire all the outstanding shares of Jamf common stock for $13.05 per share in an all-cash transaction, which represents a 50% premium over the stock’s average price in the 90 days before September 11, 2025. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2026, when Jamf will become a privately held company and its shares will no longer be publicly listed. The company will continue to operate as Jamf and will maintain its headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Jamf reported strong performance in the third quarter of 2025 and expects to exceed the previously forecasted $178 million in revenue and $42.5 million in non-GAAP operating income. Earlier this year, Jamf announced the acquisition of IAM platform Identity Automation for $215 million. Francisco Partners has invested in more than 500 technology companies and it has raised over $50 billion in capital. SecurityWeek’s cybersecurity M&A tracker contains more than 320 deals announced to date in 2025. More than a dozen of those deals involved private equity companies. Related: Cybersecurity M&A Roundup: 40 Deals Announced in September 2025

Jamf adds AI forensics to help organizations detect and respond to mobile threats Jamf announced the beta release of AI Analysis for Jamf Executive Threat Protection, a new AI-powered capability designed to accelerate and simplify mobile forensic analysis. Jamf Executive Threat Protection is a mobile forensics solution that helps organizations detect sophisticated attacks targeting high-value users such as executives, journalists, and political figures. In recent years, Apple has sent threat notifications to users in more than 150 countries about potential exposure to mercenary spyware, a growing risk for mobile devices. With the introduction of AI Analysis, Jamf adds an intelligent layer to its threat detection and response capabilities, offering security and forensics teams expert-level insight into potential device compromises. For instance, if a device shows a targeted, remote attack against an app, AI Analysis provides a complete summary of the incident, including unusual app behaviors, identifying if the devices was hacked or code execution occurred, and recommendations for next steps. “AI Analysis acts as an embedded forensic expert that can review suspicious activity in minutes and provide clear, actionable summaries,” said Henry Patel, Chief Strategy Officer at Jamf. “By using AI to translate complex telemetry into plain-language recommendations, we’re helping security teams respond faster and more confidently to potential mobile threats. What previously took hours or even days of manual analysis can now be summarized in minutes, significantly reducing investigation cycles.” The new feature enables customers to analyze device activity with a single click. Once analysis is complete, AI Analysis produces a concise summary and recommended next steps, along with a detailed report to support immediate response or collaboration across teams. This capability moves beyond traditional analysis by using AI to interpret complex forensic data, delivering a clear narrative of a potential attack and outlining actionable remediation steps, a process that typically requires time and highly specialized human analysis. By automating and streamlining the manual research typically required for mobile threat analysis, AI Analysis shortens escalation times and reduces the need for deep forensic expertise — helping organizations protect their high-risk users more efficiently.

Apple on Monday released a fresh round of security updates that address a single medium-severity vulnerability affecting both iOS and macOS. Tracked as CVE-2025-43400, the security defect is described as an out-of-bounds write issue in the operating system’s FontParser component that could lead to a denial-of-service (DoS) condition or memory corruption. “Processing a maliciously crafted font may lead to unexpected app termination or corrupt process memory,” Apple explains. According to advisories from the Hong Kong CERT and Akaoma Cybersecurity, the vulnerability can be exploited remotely, without privileges, although user interaction is required. “The flaw could be triggered by a malicious font delivered via a document, email attachment, or web content, and may lead to unexpected application termination or memory corruption,” Jamf senior security strategy manager Adam Boynton said. To resolve the bug, the Cupertino-based company has rolled out updates for the recently released iOS 26 and macOS 26, but also for older versions of its mobile and desktop platforms. The updates are rolling out as iOS 26.0.1 and iPadOS 26.0.1, macOS Tahoe 26.0.1, iOS 18.7.1 and iPadOS 18.7.1, macOS Sequoia 15.7.1, and macOS Sonoma 14.8.1. The fixes were also included in visionOS 26.0.1. As SANS Institute’s Johannes Ullrich points out, Apple typically rolls out minor system updates shortly after releasing major platform iterations, and the fresh update should not come as a surprise. “It is typical for Apple to release a ‘.0.1’ update soon after releasing a major new operating system. These updates typically fix various functional issues, but this time, they also fix a security vulnerability,” Ullrich notes. Apple makes no mention of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild, but users are advised to update their devices as soon as possible. Additional information can be found on Apple’s security releases page. “Because the issue has the potential to cause service disruptions or undermine system stability, we strongly recommend updating to iOS 26.0.1 at your earliest convenience. Organizations should ensure fleet devices are kept current, enforce compliance, and monitor for OS update rollout status,” Boynton said. Related: Apple Rolls Out iOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26 With Patches for Over 50 Vulnerabilities Related: Ex-WhatsApp Employee Sues Meta Over Vulnerabilities, Retaliation

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered two new malware families, including a modular Apple macOS backdoor called CHILLYHELL and a Go-based remote access trojan (RAT) named ZynorRAT that can target both Windows and Linux systems. According to an analysis from Jamf Threat Labs, ChillyHell is written in C++ and is developed for Intel architectures. CHILLYHELL is the name assigned to a malware that's attributed to an uncategorized threat cluster dubbed UNC4487. The hacking group is assessed to have been active since at least October 2022. According to threat intelligence shared by Google Mandiant, UNC4487 is a suspected espionage actor that has been observed compromising the websites of Ukrainian government entities to redirect and socially engineer targets to execute Matanbuchus or CHILLYHELL malware. The Apple device management company said it discovered a new CHILLYHELL sample uploaded to the VirusTotal malware scanning platform on May 2, 2025. The artifact, notarized by Apple back in 2021, is said to have been publicly hosted on Dropbox since then. Apple has since revoked the developer certificates linked to the malware. Once executed, the malware extensively profiles the compromised host and establishes persistence using three different methods, following which it initializes command-and-control (C2) communication with a hard-coded server (93.88.75[.]252 or 148.72.172[.]53) over HTTP or DNS, and enters into a command loop to receive further instructions from its operators. To set up persistence, CHILLYHELL either installs itself as a LaunchAgent or a system LaunchDaemon. As a backup mechanism, it alters the user's shell profile (.zshrc, .bash_profile, or .profile) to inject a launch command into the configuration file. A noteworthy tactic adopted by the malware is its use of timestomping to modify the timestamps of created artifacts to avoid raising red flags. "If it does not have sufficient permission to update the timestamps by means of a direct system call, it will fall back to using shell commands touch -c -a -t and touch -c -m -t respectively, each with a formatted string representing a date from the past as an argument included at the end of the command," Jamf researchers Ferdous Saljooki and Maggie Zirnhelt said. CHILLYHELL supports a wide range of commands that allow it to launch a reverse shell to the C2 IP address, download a new version of the malware, fetch additional payloads, run a module named ModuleSUBF to enumerate user accounts from "/etc/passwd" and conduct brute-force attacks using a pre-defined password list retrieved from the C2 server. "Between its multiple persistence mechanisms, ability to communicate over different protocols and modular structure, ChillyHell is extraordinarily flexible," Jamf said. "Capabilities such as timestomping and password cracking make this sample an unusual find in the current macOS threat landscape." "Notably, ChillyHell was notarized and serves as an important reminder that not all malicious code comes unsigned." The findings dovetail with the discovery of ZynorRAT, a RAT that uses a Telegram bot called @lraterrorsbot (aka lrat) to commandeer infected Windows and Linux hosts. Evidence shows that the malware was first submitted to VirusTotal on July 8, 2025. It does not share any overlaps with other known malware families. Compiled with Go, the Linux version supports a wide range of functions to enable file exfiltration, system enumeration, screenshot capture, persistence through systemd services, and arbitrary command execution - /fs_list, to enumerate directories /fs_get, to exfiltrate files from the host /metrics, to perform system profiling /proc_list, to run the "ps" Linux command /proc_kill, to kill a specific process by passing the PID as input /capture_display, to take screenshots /persist, to establish persistence ZynorRAT's Windows version is near-identical to its Linux counterpart, while still resorting to Linux-based persistence mechanisms. This likely indicates that development of the Windows variant is a work in progress. "Its main purpose is to serve as a collection, exfiltration, and remote access tool, which is centrally managed through a Telegram bot," Sysdig researcher Alessandra Rizzo said. "Telegram serves as the main C2 infrastructure through which the malware receives further commands once deployed on a victim machine." Further analysis of screenshots leaked via the Telegram bot has revealed that the payloads are distributed via a file-sharing service known as Dosya.co, and that the malware author may have "infected" their own machines to test out the functionality. ZynorRAT is believed to be the work of a lone actor possibly of Turkish origin, given the language used in Telegram chats. "Although the malware ecosystem has no shortage of RATs, malware developers are still dedicating their time to creating them from scratch," Rizzo said. "ZynorRAT's customization and automated controls underline the evolving sophistication of modern malware, even within their earliest stages."

Security Three questions you should always be able to answer about your security environment All security questions are hard to answer, but these three are non-negotiable PARTNER CONTENT We've all seen those seemingly straightforward security questions that snowball into multi-day research projects across dozens of consoles, spreadsheets, and manual queries. The reality is that even the most fundamental security questions are notoriously difficult to answer with certainty. Here are five foundational questions every security leader should be able to answer immediately, why they're harder than they appear, and practical pathways to find reliable answers. 1. Do I have full visibility into all the devices accessing my environment? This is a fundamental question for any security team. Per NIST: "Physical devices and systems within the organization are inventoried." Not only does it directly map to compliance, but the principle is simple: You can only secure what you know about. Yet most organizations struggle to maintain an accurate, real-time inventory of their entire device ecosystem. Why it matters Untracked or unknown devices represent some of the highest-risk attack vectors in modern environments. They're typically unmanaged, unprotected, and unscanned, creating blind spots that attackers can actively exploit without your knowledge. In fact, Microsoft reports 90% of successful ransomware attacks start with unmanaged devices, highlighting just how critical comprehensive visibility has become. Why it's hard to answer The challenge isn't a lack of asset management tools, it's that device data lives scattered across multiple systems, each with its own perspective and gaps: MDM tools like Intune or Jamf only see enrolled devices EDR platforms like CrowdStrike only track devices with active agents Network monitoring catches devices that connect, but may miss cloud-only resources Identity logs from Okta or Azure AD show sign-ins, but not the full device context CMDB systems often contain stale or manually-maintained data Shadow IT, personal devices in BYOD environments, and remote work have exponentially increased the complexity. A device might appear in your identity logs but never be enrolled in your MDM. Conversely, decommissioned devices might linger in your CMDB long after they've left the building. Real-world discrepancies of 10-15% between asset inventories are common, even in well-managed environments. These gaps occur because different tools have different perspectives on the same environment, creating blind spots that only become visible when data is properly aggregated. This is one of the fundamental challenges we've been addressing at Prelude. How to find out Correlate multiple data sources: Cross-reference device logs from MDM/EDR tools with identity sign-ins and network connection logs from platforms like Meraki or Fortinet Automate continuous reconciliation: Implement processes that automatically flag outliers, such as devices seen in Okta but not in Intune, or network connections from unrecognized endpoints Establish authoritative sources: Define which system serves as your source of truth for different device types and contexts 2. Are all users protected by MFA and scoped with the right access controls? Identity and access management remains a thorn in the side of security teams. Even the smallest exceptions in access controls can create disproportionately large risks. Why it matters NIST CSF guidelines PR.AC-1 and PR.AC-7 emphasize enforcing identity verification and least-privilege access. The statistics are compelling: Microsoft reports that 99.9% of account compromises occur on accounts without MFA. Yet the challenge isn't just enabling MFA, it's ensuring consistent enforcement and proper access scoping across your entire user base. Why it's hard to answer MFA and access control policies are rarely as comprehensive as they appear in admin consoles: Conditional access gaps: Policies often exclude service accounts, guest users, or newly integrated applications Inconsistent enforcement: MFA might be required at login, but not for sensitive operations or across all platforms Policy complexity: Multiple overlapping policies can create unexpected gaps or conflicts Entitlement creep: Manual provisioning and role changes accumulate over time, leading to over-scoped permissions Service account sprawl: Automated accounts often lack proper oversight and may bypass standard controls The challenge is compounded by the fact that identity platforms show you what's configured, not necessarily what's being enforced in practice. How to find out Audit sign-in logs: Use your IAM tool's sign-in logs to identify logins without MFA or from unmanaged devices Test policy effectiveness: Run "What If" simulations to validate how policies behave across different user and device conditions Implement access reviews: Establish periodic reviews of role assignments and RBAC configurations to prevent privilege creep Monitor service accounts: Catalog and regularly audit service accounts for proper scoping and security controls 3. If a new attack technique emerged today, do I know if my tools would stop it? This forward-looking question examines whether your defenses are tested against current threats, not just misconfigurations or past vulnerabilities. It's about validation, simulation, and understanding how your controls map to relevant compliance frameworks or MITRE ATT&CK. Why it matters NIST CSF guidelines DE.DP-4 and RS.CO-2 promote detection validation and response testing. Control effectiveness can't be assumed. Novel attack techniques routinely bypass static signatures and untested rules. Security control validation is emerging as a critical best practice, and evaluation frameworks like MITRE exist specifically for this purpose. Why it's hard to answer Most organizations rely on vendor claims, compliance checklists, or incident response to validate their defenses, none of which provide proactive assurance: Vendor claims vs. reality: Security tools often promise broad protection, but real-world configurations may not align with marketing materials Detection drift: Rules and signatures become less effective over time due to environmental changes and threat evolution Configuration complexity: Small misconfigurations can completely undermine detection capabilities Limited testing expertise: Safe adversary simulation requires specialized knowledge and tools that most teams lack Resource constraints: Regular validation testing competes with operational priorities for time and attention The challenge is compounded by the fact that many attack techniques are designed specifically to evade common detection methods. How to find out Implement adversary emulation: Use offensive security practices or simulations to evaluate the responsive behavior from your controls Automate detection testing: Deploy safe simulation tools that can regularly test whether your controls trigger as expected Map threats to controls: Maintain an understanding of which controls protect against which attack techniques Regular purple team exercises: Combine red team simulation with blue team validation to test end-to-end response capabilities How Prelude is working to make answering these questions easier Answering these questions traditionally requires extensive manual effort across multiple consoles and complex data correlation. Our team at Prelude has been working to change this by automatically aggregating data from identity platforms, endpoint management, vulnerability scanners, and other disparate security controls into a unified view. Instead of logging into multiple systems and running manual queries, teams get real-time answers from a single dashboard. The platform continuously monitors for gaps, misconfigurations, and coverage issues, with automated alerting when drift occurs. Beyond monitoring, Prelude validates control effectiveness through safe adversary simulation, ensuring your defenses actually work when tested. Security teams are inundated with priorities from awareness training to very real incident response. Answering fundamental questions about your security posture shouldn't be this complex. Contributed by Prelude.