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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With artificial intelligence (AI) shrinking the window between vulnerability discovery and exploitation and lowering the barrier to entry for bad actors, new findings from Sysdig show that skilled human operators can move just as swiftly after gaining initial access. In one instance highlighted by the cloud security company, the threat actor pivoted from a vulnerable Marimo notebook to an SSH

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a mass-scanning campaign that has targeted Vite deployments siphon sensitive data. The first is an automated effort aimed at internet-exposed Vite development servers that's designed to steal cloud credentials, configurations from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure instances, and infrastructure state files, per F5 Labs. The

Cisco has warned that a new critical vulnerability impacting AsyncOS Software for Cisco Secure Email Gateway has come under active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-76461, carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10.0. It has been described as a case of insufficient validation in the email parsing logic that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker

Microsoft is alerting of a "high-volume phishing campaign" that's using invisible Unicode tag characters to bypass email filters. "Instead of using these characters to hide instructions from people while exposing them to AI models, the attacker used them to split financial lure words such as 'funding' to prevent email filters from parsing them," the Microsoft Security Research team said. The

Threat actors are exploiting two critical security flaws in WordPress plugins Super Forms and Elementor Pro, according to findings from Wordfence. The vulnerabilities in question are - CVE-2026-14894 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A missing file type validation vulnerability in Super Forms – Drag & Drop Form Builder that allows unauthenticated attackers to upload files of any type, including

Plex is urging users to update their instances to the latest version following the release of an update that patches multiple security flaws. The fixes are available in Plex Media Server 1.43.3 and Plex Desktop 1.115.0. The streaming media service did not elaborate on what those issues are, but said CVE identifiers have been requested for them. "We recommend all server owners and Desktop users

Google on Thursday released security updates to patch 12 vulnerabilities, including one that has come under active exploitation in the wild. The high-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-85046 (CVSS score: 8.8), has been described as a type confusion bug in V8, Chrome's JavaScript and WebAssembly engine. "Type confusion in V8 in Google Chrome prior to 152.0.7977.82 allowed a remote

OpenAI on Thursday officially unveiled GPT‑6 Astra, which it described as the "world's most intelligent and aligned model." The development comes days after the artificial intelligence (AI) company said the model had reached the "Critical" cybersecurity capability threshold under its Preparedness Framework. "Astra is state-of-the-art on computer use, browsing, software engineering,