The Hacker News

"CPUID breach distributes STX RAT via trojanized CPU-Z HWMonitor downloads."

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

CPUID Breach Distributes STX RAT via Trojanized CPU-Z and HWMonitor Downloads

Apr 12, 2026Malware / Threat Intelligence

Unknown threat actors compromised CPUID ("cpuid[.]com"), a website that hosts popular hardware monitoring tools like CPU-Z, HWMonitor, HWMonitor Pro, and PerfMonitor, for less than 24 hours to serve malicious executables for the software and deploy a remote access trojan called STX RAT. The incident lasted from approximately April 9, 15:00 UTC, to about April 10, 10:00 UTC, with the download URLs for CPU-Z and HWMonitor installers replaced with links to malicious websites. In a post shared on X, CPUID confirmed the breach, attributing it to a compromise of a "secondary feature (basically a side API)" that caused the main site to randomly display malicious links. It's worth noting that the attack did not impact its signed original files. According to Kaspersky , the names of the rogue websites are as follows - cahayailmukreatif.web[.]id pub-45c2577dbd174292a02137c18e7b1b5a.r2[.]dev transitopalermo[.]com vatrobran[.]hr "The t...

Secure Coding Best Practices [Cheat Sheet]

WizSecure Coding / DevSecOps

Secure coding starts long before production. Reduce risk early with practical secure coding and design best practices.

Adobe Patches Actively Exploited Acrobat Reader Flaw CVE-2026-34621

Apr 12, 2026Vulnerability / Endpoint Security

Adobe has released emergency updates to fix a critical security flaw in Acrobat Reader that has come under active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability, assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2026-34621 , carries a CVSS score of 8.6 out of 10.0. Successful exploitation of the flaw could allow an attacker to run malicious code on affected installations. It has been described as a case of prototype pollution that could result in arbitrary code execution. Prototype pollution refers to a JavaScript security vulnerability  that permits an attacker to manipulate an application'sobjects and properties. The issue impacts the following products and versions for both Windows and macOS - Acrobat DC versions 26.001.21367 and earlier (Fixed in 26.001.21411) Acrobat Reader DC versions 26.001.21367 and earlier (Fixed in 26.001.21411) Acrobat 2024 versions 24.001.30356 and earlier (Fixed in 24.001.30362 for Windows...

Citizen Lab: Law Enforcement Used Webloc to Track 500 Million Devices via Ad Data

Apr 11, 2026Surveillance / Digital Advertising

Hungarian domestic intelligence, the national police in El Salvador, and several U.S. law enforcement and police departments have been attributed to the use of an advertising-based global geolocation surveillance system called  Webloc . The tool was developed by Israeli company Cobwebs Technologies and is now sold by its successor Penlink after the two firms merged in July 2023 , according to a report published by the Citizen Lab. Penlink, founded in 1986, is a provider of "mission-critical communications and digital evidence collection and analysis software" to law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and across the world. U.S. customers of the Webloc include Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. military, Texas Department of Public Safety, DHS West Virginia, NYC district attorneys, and various police departments in Los Angeles, Dallas, Baltimore, Tucson, Durham, and in smaller cities and counties like the City of Elk Grov...

GlassWorm Campaign Uses Zig Dropper to Infect Multiple Developer IDEs

Apr 10, 2026Malware / Blockchain

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged yet another evolution of the ongoing GlassWorm campaign, which employs a new Zig dropper that's designed to stealthily infect all integrated development environments (IDEs) on a developer's machine. The technique has been discovered in an Open VSX extension named " specstudio.code-wakatime-activity-tracker ," which masquerades as WakaTime, a popular tool that measures the time programmers spend inside their IDE. The extension is no longer available for download. "The extension [...] ships a Zig-compiled native binary alongside its JavaScript code," Aikido Security researcher Ilyas Makari said in an analysis published this week. "This is not the first time GlassWorm has resorted to using native compiled code in extensions. However, rather than using the binary as the payload directly, it is used as a stealthy indirection for the known GlassWorm dropper, which now secretly infects all other I...

Browser Extensions Are the New AI Consumption Channel That No One Is Talking About

Apr 10, 2026Artificial Intelligence / Enterprise Security

While much of the discussion on AI security centers around protecting ‘shadow’ AI and GenAI consumption, there's a wide-open window nobody's guarding: AI browser extensions.  A  new report from LayerX exposes just how deep this blind spot goes, and why AI extensions may be the most dangerous AI threat surface in your network that isn't on anyone's radar. AI browser extensions don't trigger your DLP and don't show up in your SaaS logs. They live inside the browser itself, with direct access to everything your employees see, type, and stay logged into. AI extensions are 60% more likely to have a vulnerability than extensions on average, are 3 times more likely to have access to cookies, 2.5 times more likely to be able to execute remote scripts in the browser, and 6 times more likely to have increased their permissions in the past year. These extensions install in seconds and can remain...

Inside the 2026 Cyber Workforce: Skills, Shortages, and Shifts in the Age of AI

SANS InstituteAI Security / Cybersecurity

Insights to help leaders make informed decisions and show practitioners where careers are heading.

Google Rolls Out DBSC in Chrome 146 to Block Session Theft on Windows

Apr 10, 2026Malware / Browser Security

Google has made Device Bound Session Credentials  ( DBSC ) generally available to all Windows users of its Chrome web browser, months after it began testing the security feature in open beta. The public availability is currently limited to Windows users on Chrome 146, with macOS expansion planned in an upcoming Chrome release. "This project represents a significant step forward in our ongoing efforts to combat session theft, which remains a prevalent threat in the modern security landscape," Google's Chrome and Account Security teams said in a Thursday post. Session theft involves the covert exfiltration of session cookies from the web browser, either by gathering existing ones or waiting for a victim to log in to an account, to an attacker-controlled server. Typically, this happens when users inadvertently download information-stealing malware into their systems. These stealer malware families – of which there are many, such as ...

Marimo RCE Flaw CVE-2026-39987 Exploited Within 10 Hours of Disclosure

Apr 10, 2026Vulnerability / Threat Intelligence

A critical security vulnerability in Marimo , an open-source Python notebook for data science and analysis, has been exploited within 10 hours of public disclosure, according to findings from Sysdig. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-39987 (CVSS score: 9.3), a pre-authenticated remote code execution vulnerability impacting all versions of Marimo prior to and including 0.20.4. The issue has been addressed in version 0.23.0 . "The terminal WebSocket endpoint /terminal/ws lacks authentication validation, allowing an unauthenticated attacker to obtain a full PTY shell and execute arbitrary system commands," Marimo maintainers said in an advisory earlier this week. "Unlike other WebSocket endpoints (e.g., /ws) that correctly call validate_auth() for authentication, the /terminal/ws endpoint only checks the running mode and platform support before accepting connections, completely skipping authentication verification." In other words, at...

Backdoored Smart Slider 3 Pro Update Distributed via Compromised Nextend Servers

Apr 10, 2026Malware / Website Security

Unknown threat actors have hijacked the update system for the Smart Slider 3 Pro plugin for WordPress and Joomla to push a poisoned version containing a backdoor. The incident impacts Smart Slider 3 Pro version 3.5.1.35 for WordPress, per WordPress security company Patchstack. Smart Slider 3 is a popular WordPress slider plugin with more than 800,000 active installations across its free and Pro editions. "An unauthorized party gained access to Nextend’s update infrastructure and distributed a fully attacker-authored build through the official update channel," the company said . "Any site that updated to 3.5.1.35 between its release on April 7, 2026, and its detection approximately 6 hours later received a fully weaponized remote access toolkit." Nextend, which maintains the plugin, said an unauthorized party gained unauthorized access to its update system and pushed a malicious version (3.5.1.35 Pro) that remained accessible for approximately six hours, before ...

EngageLab SDK Flaw Exposed 50M Android Users, Including 30M Crypto Wallet Installs

Apr 09, 2026Vulnerability / Mobile Security

Details have emerged about a now-patched security vulnerability in a widely used third-party Android software development kit (SDK) called  EngageLab SDK that could have put millions of cryptocurrency wallet users at risk. "This flaw allows apps on the same device to bypass Android security sandbox and gain unauthorized access to private data," the Microsoft Defender Security Research Team said in a report published today. EngageLab SDK offers a push notification service , which, according to its website, is designed to deliver "timely notifications" based on user behavior already tracked by developers. Once integrated into an app, the SDK offers a way to send personalized notifications and drive real-time engagement. The tech giant said a significant number of apps using the SDK are part of the cryptocurrency and digital wallet ecosystem, and that the affected wallet apps accounted for more than 30 million ins...

UAT-10362 Targets Taiwanese NGOs with LucidRook Malware in Spear-Phishing Campaigns

Apr 09, 2026Malware / Windows Security

A previously undocumented threat cluster dubbed UAT-10362 has been attributed to spear-phishing campaigns targeting Taiwanese non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and suspected universities to deploy a new Lua-based malware called LucidRook. "LucidRook is a sophisticated stager that embeds a Lua interpreter and Rust-compiled libraries within a dynamic-link library (DLL) to download and execute staged Lua bytecode payloads," Cisco Talos researcher Ashley Shen said . The cybersecurity company said it discovered the activity in October 2025, with the attack using RAR or 7-Zip archives lures to deliver a dropper called LucidPawn, which then opens a decoy file and launches LucidRook. A notable characteristic of the intrusion set is the use of DLL side-loading to execute both LucidPawn and LucidRook. There are two distinct infection chains that lead to LucidRook, one using a Windows Shortcut (LNK) file with a PDF icon and another involving an executable that masquer...

ThreatsDay Bulletin: Hybrid P2P Botnet, 13-Year-Old Apache RCE and 18 More Stories

Apr 09, 2026Hacking News / Cybersecurity News

Thursday. Another week, another batch of things that probably should've been caught sooner but weren't. This one's got some range — old vulnerabilities getting new life, a few "why was that even possible" moments, attackers leaning on platforms and tools you'd normally trust without thinking twice. Quiet escalations more than loud zero-days, but the kind that matter more in practice anyway. Mix of malware, infrastructure exposure, AI-adjacent weirdness, and some supply chain stuff that's... not great. Let's get into it. Resilient hybrid botnet surge Phorpiex Botnet Detailed A new variant of the botnet known as Phorpiex (aka Trik) has been observed, using a hybrid communication model that combines traditional C2 HTTP polling with a peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol over both TCP and UDP to ensure operational continuity in the face of server takedowns. The malware acts as a conduit for encrypted payloads, ma...

The Hidden Security Risks of Shadow AI in Enterprises

Apr 09, 2026Data Security / Artificial Intelligence

As AI tools become more accessible, employees are adopting them without formal approval from IT and security teams. While these tools may boost productivity, automate tasks, or fill gaps in existing workflows, they also operate outside the visibility of security teams, bypassing controls and creating new blind spots in what is known as shadow AI. While similar to the phenomenon of shadow IT, shadow AI goes beyond unapproved software by involving systems that process, generate, and potentially retain sensitive data. The result is a category of risk that most organizations are not yet equipped to govern: uncontrolled data exposure, expanded attack surfaces, and weakened identity security. Why shadow AI is spreading so quickly Shadow AI is expanding rapidly across organizations because it is easy to adopt and instantly useful, yet largely unregulated. Unlike traditional enterprise software, most AI tools require little to no setup, allowing employ...