The Hacker News

"Iran-backed RedKitten cyber campaign targets human rights NGOs and activists."

Views expressed in this cybersecurity, cyber crime update are those of the reporters and correspondents.  Accessed on 31 January 2026, 1412 UTC.

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Russ Roberts (https://www.hawaiicybersecurityjournal.net).

Iran-Linked RedKitten Cyber Campaign Targets Human Rights NGOs and Activists

Jan 31, 2026Cyber Espionage / Artificial Intelligence

A Farsi-speaking threat actor aligned with Iranian state interests is suspected to be behind a new campaign targeting non-governmental organizations and individuals involved in documenting recent human rights abuses. The activity , observed by HarfangLab in January 2026, has been codenamed RedKitten . It's said to coincide with the nationwide unrest in Iran that began towards the end of 2025, protesting soaring inflation, rising food prices, and currency depreciation. The ensuing crackdown has resulted in mass casualties and an internet blackout . "The malware relies on GitHub and Google Drive for configuration and modular payload retrieval, and uses Telegram for command-and-control," the French cybersecurity company said. What makes the campaign noteworthy is the threat actor's likely reliance on large language models (LLMs) to build and orchestrate the necessary tooling. The starting point of the attack is a 7-Zip archive with a Farsi filename that contains...

Secured Images 101

WizDevOps / AppSec

Secure your container ecosystem with this easy-to-read digital poster that breaks down everything you need to know about container image security. Perfect for engineering, platform, DevOps, AppSec, and cloud security teams.

Mandiant Finds ShinyHunters-Style Vishing Attacks Stealing MFA to Breach SaaS Platforms

Jan 31, 2026Social Engineering / SaaS Security

Google-owned Mandiant on Friday said it identified an "expansion in threat activity" that uses tradecraft consistent with extortion-themed attacks orchestrated by a financially motivated hacking group known as ShinyHunters. The attacks leverage advanced voice phishing (aka vishing) and bogus credential harvesting sites mimicking targeted companies to gain unauthorized access to victim environments by collecting sign-on (SSO) credentials and multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes. The end goal of the attacks is to target cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to siphon sensitive data and internal communications and extort victims. The tech giant's threat intelligence team said it's tracking the activity under multiple clusters, including UNC6661, UNC6671, and UNC6240 (aka ShinyHunters), so as to account for the possibility that these groups could be evolving their modus operandi or mimicking previously observed tactics. "While this methodo...

CERT Polska Details Coordinated Cyber Attacks on 30+ Wind and Solar Farms

Jan 31, 2026Network Security / SCADA

CERT Polska, the Polish computer emergency response team, revealed that coordinated cyber attacks targeted more than 30 wind and photovoltaic farms, a private company from the manufacturing sector, and a large combined heat and power plant (CHP) supplying heat to almost half a million customers in the country. The incident took place on December 29, 2025. The agency has attributed the attacks to a threat cluster dubbed Static Tundra , which is also tracked as Berserk Bear, Blue Kraken, Crouching Yeti, Dragonfly, Energetic Bear, Ghost Blizzard (formerly Bromine), and Havex. Static Tundra is assessed to be linked to Russia's Federal Security Service's (FSB) Center 16 unit. It's worth noting that recent reports from ESET and Dragos attributed the activity with moderate confidence to a different Russian state-sponsored hacking group known as Sandworm. "All attacks had a purely destructive objective," CERT Polska said in a report published Friday. "Althoug...

Researchers Uncover Chrome Extensions Abusing Affiliate Links and Stealing ChatGPT Access

Jan 30, 2026Malware / AI Security

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered malicious Google Chrome extensions that come with capabilities to hijack affiliate links, steal data, and collect OpenAI ChatGPT authentication tokens. One of the extensions in question is Amazon Ads Blocker (ID: pnpchphmplpdimbllknjoiopmfphellj), which claims to be a tool to browse Amazon without any sponsored content. It was uploaded to the Chrome Web Store by a publisher named "10Xprofit" on January 19, 2026. "The extension does block ads as advertised, but its primary function is hidden: it automatically injects the developer's affiliate tag (10xprofit-20) into every Amazon product link and replaces existing affiliate codes from content creators," Socket security researcher Kush Pandya said . Further analysis has determined that Amazon Ads Blocker is part of a larger cluster of 29 browser add-ons that target several e-commerce platforms like AliExpress, Amazon, Best Buy, Shein, Shopify, and Walmart. The complet...

China-Linked UAT-8099 Targets IIS Servers in Asia with BadIIS SEO Malware

Jan 30, 2026Server Security / Cyber Espionage

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new campaign attributed to a China-linked threat actor known as UAT-8099 that took place between late 2025 and early 2026. The activity, discovered by Cisco Talos, has targeted vulnerable Internet Information Services (IIS) servers located across Asia, but with a specific focus on targets in Thailand and Vietnam. The scale of the campaign is currently unknown. "UAT-8099 uses web shells and PowerShell to execute scripts and deploy the GotoHTTP tool, granting the threat actor remote access to vulnerable IIS servers," security researcher Joey Chen said in a Thursday breakdown of the campaign. UAT-8099 was first documented by the cybersecurity company in October 2025, detailing the threat actor's exploitation of IIS servers in India, Thailand, Vietnam, Canada, and Brazil to facilitate search engine optimization (SEO) fraud. The attacks involve infecting the servers with a known malware referred to as BadIIS. The hacking gro...

When Zoom Phishes You: Unmasking a Novel TOAD Attack Hidden in Legitimate Infrastructure

Prophet SecurityArtificial Intelligence / SOC

Prophet AI uncovers a Telephone-Oriented Attack Delivery (TOAD) campaign weaponizing Zoom's own authentication infrastructure.

Badges, Bytes and Blackmail

Jan 30, 2026Cybercrime / Threat Intelligence

Behind the scenes of law enforcement in cyber: what do we know about caught cybercriminals? What brought them in, where do they come from and what was their function in the crimescape? Introduction: One view on the scattered fight against cybercrime The growing sophistication and diversification of cybercrime have compelled law enforcement agencies worldwide to respond through increasingly coordinated and publicized actions. Yet, despite the visibility of these operations, there remains no comprehensive overview, to our knowledge, on how law enforcement is addressing cybercrime globally. Publicly available information is dispersed across agencies, jurisdictions, case-specific reporting (e.g., "Operation Endgame") [1] , and reporting formats, offering fragmented insights rather than a cohesive understanding of what types of crime are being targeted, what actions are taken, and who the offenders are. This results in isolated glimpses rather than a consistent global picture. Therefor...

Ex-Google Engineer Convicted for Stealing AI Secrets for China Startup

Jan 30, 2026Artificial Intelligence / Economic Espionage

A former Google engineer accused of stealing thousands of the company's confidential documents to build a startup in China has been convicted in the U.S., the Department of Justice (DoJ) announced Thursday. Linwei Ding (aka Leon Ding), 38, was convicted by a federal jury on seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets for taking over 2,000 documents containing the tech giant's trade secrets related to artificial intelligence (AI) technology for the benefit of the People's Republic of China (PRC). "Silicon Valley is at the forefront of artificial intelligence innovation, pioneering transformative work that drives economic growth and strengthens our national security," said U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian. "We will vigorously protect American intellectual capital from foreign interests that seek to gain an unfair competitive advantage while putting our national security at risk." Ding was indicted in March 2024 for ...

SmarterMail Fixes Critical Unauthenticated RCE Flaw with CVSS 9.3 Score

Jan 30, 2026Vulnerability / Email Security

SmarterTools has addressed two more security flaws in SmarterMail email software, including one critical security flaw that could result in arbitrary code execution. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-24423 , carries a CVSS score of 9.3 out of 10.0. "SmarterTools SmarterMail versions prior to build 9511 contain an unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability in the ConnectToHub API method," according to a description of the flaw in CVE.org. "The attacker could point the SmarterMail to the malicious HTTP server, which serves the malicious OS [operating system] command. This command will be executed by the vulnerable application." watchTowr researchers Sina Kheirkhah and Piotr Bazydlo, CODE WHITE GmbH's Markus Wulftange , and VulnCheck's Cale Black have been credited with discovering and reporting the vulnerability. The security hole has been addressed in version Build 9511, released on January 15, 2026. The same build also patches another c...

Two Ivanti EPMM Zero-Day RCE Flaws Actively Exploited, Security Updates Released

Jan 30, 2026Vulnerability / Enterprise Security

Ivanti has rolled out security updates to address two security flaws impacting Ivanti Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) that have been exploited in zero-day attacks, one of which has been added by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency ( CISA ) to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. The critical-severity vulnerabilities are listed below - CVE-2026-1281 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A code injection allowing attackers to achieve unauthenticated remote code execution CVE-2026-1340 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A code injection allowing attackers to achieve unauthenticated remote code execution They affect the following versions - EPMM 12.5.0.0 and prior, 12.6.0.0 and prior, and 12.7.0.0 and prior (Fixed in RPM 12.x.0.x) EPMM 12.5.1.0 and prior and 12.6.1.0 and prior (Fixed in RPM 12.x.1.x) However, it bears noting that the RPM patch does not survive a version upgrade and must be reapplied if the appliance is upgraded to a new version. The vulnerabilities will...

Researchers Find 175,000 Publicly Exposed Ollama AI Servers Across 130 Countries

Jan 29, 2026Artificial Intelligence / LLM Security

A new joint investigation by SentinelOne SentinelLABS, and Censys has revealed that the open-source artificial intelligence (AI) deployment has created a vast "unmanaged, publicly accessible layer of AI compute infrastructure" that spans 175,000 unique Ollama hosts across 130 countries. These systems, which span both cloud and residential networks across the world, operate outside the guardrails and monitoring systems that platform providers implement by default, the company said. The vast majority of the exposures are located in China, accounting for a little over 30%. The countries with the most infrastructure footprint include the U.S., Germany, France, South Korea, India, Russia, Singapore, Brazil, and the U.K. "Nearly half of observed hosts are configured with tool-calling capabilities that enable them to execute code, access APIs, and interact with external systems, demonstrating the increasing implementation of LLMs into larger system processes," research...

ThreatsDay Bulletin: New RCEs, Darknet Busts, Kernel Bugs & 25+ More Stories

Jan 29, 2026Cybersecurity / Hacking News

This week's updates show how small changes can create real problems. Not loud incidents, but quiet shifts that are easy to miss until they add up. The kind that affects systems people rely on every day. Many of the stories point to the same trend: familiar tools being used in unexpected ways. Security controls are being worked on. Trusted platforms turning into weak spots. What looks routine on the surface often isn't. There's no single theme driving everything — just steady pressure across many fronts. Access, data, money, and trust are all being tested at once, often without clear warning signs. This edition pulls together those signals in short form, so you can see what's changing before it becomes harder to ignore. Major cybercrime forum takedown FBI Seizes RAMP Forum The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has seized the notorious RAMP cybercrime forum. Visitors to the forum's Tor site and its clearnet domain, ramp4u...

Survey of 100+ Energy Systems Reveals Critical OT Cybersecurity Gaps

Jan 29, 2026ICS Security / Operational Technology

A study by OMICRON has revealed widespread cybersecurity gaps in the operational technology (OT) networks of substations, power plants, and control centers worldwide. Drawing on data from more than 100 installations, the analysis highlights recurring technical, organizational, and functional issues that leave critical energy infrastructure vulnerable to cyber threats. The findings are based on several years of deploying OMICRON's intrusion detection system (IDS) StationGuard in protection, automation, and control (PAC) systems. The technology, which monitors network traffic passively, has provided deep visibility into real-world OT environments. The results underscore the growing attack surface in energy systems and the challenges operators face in securing aging infrastructure and complex network architectures. Connection of an IDS in PAC systems (circles indicate mirror ports) StationGuard deployments, often carried out during security assessments, revealed vulnerabilities su...

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