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"Claimed bug hunter likely used LLM to build PhantomRaven npm stealer."

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

Claimed Bug Bounty Hunter Likely Used LLM to Build PhantomRaven npm Stealer

Sep 18, 2026Malware / Cybercrime

A financially motivated threat actor has been linked to the development and distribution of a JavaScript (JS)-based information stealer known as PhantomRaven via the npm package registry. "The developer likely wrote the malware using a large language model (LLM), an assessment made with high confidence based on verbose comments, placeholder code, and statistical token-analysis patterns," CrowdStrike's Counter Adversary Operations said in an analysis published this week. PhantomRaven was first flagged by Koi Security and DCODX in late October 2025, calling attention to a slopsquatting and typosquatted campaign in which more than 100 malicious packages were uploaded to npm to steal authentication tokens, CI/CD secrets, and GitHub credentials from developers' machines. The software supply chain attack used these packages as a cover to retrieve a remote dynamic dependency (RDD) from an external server so that the libraries themselves are not flagged by security ...

RatHat Android Malware Abuses ADB to Retain Shell Access After Uninstall

Sep 18, 2026Mobile Security / Malware

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new Android malware called RatHat that's assessed to be operated by China-based threat actors and features an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered system to navigate and control compromised devices. "Distributed primarily via targeted smishing (SMS/text phishing) and malvertising campaigns leading to deceptive third-party download portals, RatHat uses an automated multi-stage infection pipeline," Zimperium researchers Gianluca Braga, Vishnu Pratapagiri, and Fernando Ortega said . "Once deployed, it pairs Accessibility abuse with autonomous local ADB (Android Debug Bridge) self-pairing to break out of the standard Android application sandbox, staging independent native daemons that execute with shell-level privileges." RatHat is propagated via deceptive phishing sites promoted via malvertising, smishing campaigns, and third-party forums that trick unsuspecting users into installing malware-laced APKs. These pa...

AI Security's Greatest Hits

WizAI Security / Cheat Sheet

Get 7 of the most widely used AI security resources in one pack. Each asset provides practical tools for securing AI apps, models, and agents.

Critical Check Point Management Flaw Lets Unauthenticated Attackers Run Code as Root

Sep 17, 2026Vulnerability / Enterprise Security

A critical vulnerability in Check Point's Security Management and Log Servers could allow an attacker without login credentials to run code as root on those servers over the network. The Security Management Server is the system that controls firewall policy and administrator access. Check Point has released a fix through its LivePatch update channel and says it has no indication that the flaw has been exploited. Check Point told The Hacker News that the vulnerable path runs only through the Trusted Clients setting, which controls which hosts may connect to the management server through SmartConsole. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-91843 and rated 9.8 out of 10 on the CVSS scale by Check Point, is a stack overflow in the login process, which handles requests before a user is authenticated. Internet scanning company Censys said the overflow is triggered by a login request that carries a very long username. Check Point said in a notice on its  CheckMates community  on...

ThreatsDay: Self-Rewriting Agents, 800+ Flaws Patched, Insider SIM Swaps and 22 More New Stories

Sep 17, 2026Hacking News / Cybersecurity News

Attackers keep finding new keys. The funny part is that defenders keep inventing where to store them. This week, those keys sit in AI tools, exposed services, old bugs, weak logins, and software sold like a monthly subscription. Some attacks use new tricks. Others just reuse what was already lying around. Both work often enough. So the threat landscape is not getting cleaner. It is just getting more places to make the same mistake. Here’s what showed up this week. The threats change every week. Subscribe, and we’ll alert you when each new ThreatsDay Bulletin is out.

Critical Docker Sandboxes Flaw Lets Malicious Guest Code Read and Modify macOS Host Files

Sep 17, 2026Vulnerability / Artificial Intelligence

Malicious code running inside a Docker Sandboxes virtual machine on macOS could escape the project directory shared into it and read or change files anywhere else on the host, Docker warns in a  security announcement  on September 15. The escape runs with the rights of the host account that runs the virtual machine. The flaw,  CVE-2026-77179 , is rated Critical, affects versions 0.28.0 up to but not including 0.42.0 on macOS, and was fixed in  0.42.0  on September 7. Docker Sandboxes runs each AI coding agent in its own small virtual machine with the project directory shared in. The code that could escape is whatever runs inside that machine, such as a coding agent that has been turned against its user, or anything malicious the agent installs and runs. Docker has not reported any exploitation. CISA's added assessment on the CVE record lists exploitation as none, and the flaw is not in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog as of the ca...

Free Assessment: Identify Hidden Internal Risk

BitdefenderAttack Surface / Threat Detection

Discover unnecessary user access to risky tools, shadow IT, based on real user behavior.

Iran-Linked Handala Hack Tied to HEAVYGRAM Telegram Backdoor That Can Steal Passwords

Sep 17, 2026Cyber Espionage / Malware

The Iran-linked "hacktivist" persona known as Handala Hack has been attributed to a Telegram-based surveillance backdoor called HEAVYGRAM and a Delphi-based utility known as CRUDEEXCLUDE . "HEAVYGRAM offers builtin commands supporting remote command execution, system, network and process information discovery, data and Telegram session files exfiltration, screenshot capture, DLL sideloading, file cleanup, and persistence via Windows autorun registry keys," Group-IB said . On the other hand, CRUDEEXCLUDE is a Delphi-based Windows utility employed to prepare environments for the deployment of subsequent stages such as HEAVYGRAM. First observed in late July 2024, the malware is often disguised as a legitimate application with a graphical user interface (GUI), and configures Microsoft Defender exclusion paths for defense evasion. The findings build upon an alert the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) first issued in March 2026 and again earlier this wee...

Critical Unbound DNSSEC Validator Flaw Could Allow RCE via a Malicious DNS Zone

Sep 17, 2026Vulnerability / DNS Security

Every release of the Unbound DNS resolver before 1.26.1 has a critical heap overflow in its DNSSEC validator, maintainer NLnet Labs said in an  advisory  on Wednesday. An attacker who controls a malicious zone and queries a vulnerable resolver can trigger it, enabling remote code execution. Unbound 1.26.1, released the same day, fixes the bug, tracked as  CVE-2026-81642 , along with eight other flaws. One of the eight,  CVE-2026-82717 , is a heap corruption bug in CNAME synthesis reported by Ben Morris of Anthropic. It could also lead to remote code execution "under certain systems and compilation options," NLnet Labs said. NLnet Labs has not reported exploitation of either bug, and CISA's entry for CVE-2026-81642 marked exploitation as "none" on Wednesday. NLnet Labs rates the DNSKEY flaw Critical, with a CVSS score of 4.0 (9.1), and its scoring lists a network attack vector requiring no privileges or user interaction. NVD listed the CVE as "Await...

Can You Prove a New CVE Is Exploitable Before Attackers Do? Learn How in This Webinar

Sep 17, 2026Security Operations / Artificial Intelligence

A new CVE drops. Your scanner finds it. The severity score looks ugly. But that still does not answer the question that matters: Can it actually be exploited in your environment? Mythos-class AI is compressing the time between disclosure and working exploitation, while many security programs still validate risk on weekly or quarterly cycles. The dangerous gap is no longer just technical. It is measured in time. 📅 Save Your Spot Today: How to Prove You're Ready for Mythos-Class Attacks . Can’t join live? Register anyway. We’ll send the webinar recording after the session, so you can watch it later, whenever it fits your schedule, and still see the full, fresh CVE-to-validation workflow. Stop prioritizing on severity alone A high score tells you a vulnerability could be serious. It does not prove that an attacker can use it against you. Security teams need faster answers: Is the affected asset exposed? What attack techniques does exploitation require? Do ...

CISO's Expert Guide to Agentic Pentesting for Websites

Sep 17, 2026Application Security / AI Agent

Attackers now weaponize new vulnerabilities in about five days (Mandiant, part of Google Cloud). The median organization takes 43 days to patch one (Verizon DBIR 2026). A new free guide explains how autonomous AI agents are closing that gap, and what security leaders must demand before pointing one at production. TL;DR Exploitation is now the front door. It starts 31% of breaches (Verizon DBIR 2026), the #1 initial-access vector, while annual pentesting leaves an estimated 90% of the estate untested. The capability is proven, not projected. An autonomous system topped HackerOne's US leaderboard in 2025 (XBOW), and peer-reviewed agents exploited 87% of one-day flaws unaided (Fang et al., 2024). Continuous beats periodic, measurably. Programmatic testing makes teams 4.5x more likely to fix criticals within three days (Cobalt, 2026). It's an AI agent in your production. Hold it to a bar. Provable coverage, an independent validator, blast-radius guardrails, and a...

China-Aligned FamousSparrow Deploys SparroWocky Backdoor Across Latin America

Sep 17, 2026Malware / Cyber Espionage

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 ahead of publication. "Its architecture and the techniques used by its authors indicate strong knowledge of anti-analysis tricks and Windows internals." SparroWocky is so named for the fact that early iterations of the malware have been found to contain the first stanza of Jabberwocky , a famous nonsense poem written by the English author, poet, and mathematician Lewis Carroll in around 1855. The latest findings from ESET indicate that the cyber espionage group , which shares some level of overlap with Earth Estries and Salt Typhoon, has replaced SparrowDoor with Spar...

OpenAI Reveals Six Model Incidents Involving Hidden Failures and Unauthorized Uploads

Sep 17, 2026Artificial Intelligence / Vulnerability

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 progress of alignment research," OpenAI said. "We do not believe that the AI industry has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer." "Decisions about how AI development should proceed in the months and years to come need to draw on evidence that people outside the companies building frontier models can examine for themselves." The six incidents are outside of the recently disclosed misaligned activity targeting Hugging Face , DseWiki , and RubyGems . Details of the inc...

BIND 9 Update Fixes 14 Flaws, Including an Unauthenticated Crash Over DNS-over-HTTPS

Sep 17, 2026Vulnerability / DNS Security

The Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) has released  BIND 9.20.29 and 9.21.26  to fix fourteen security flaws it  disclosed  on 16 September in BIND 9, its open-source DNS server software. One of them affects any BIND server that answers DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH). A sender with no credentials can crash the server process, named, with a single request that carries an invalid SIG(0) signature, if the sender closes the connection before named finishes checking the signature. ISC said in its advisories that it is not aware of any of the fourteen being exploited. Which Release Fixes What The fixed releases, described in ISC's  release notes , are: BIND 9.20.29, on the current stable branch: fixes all fourteen BIND 9.21.26, on the development branch: fixes thirteen, because CVE-2026-19662 does not affect 9.21 BIND 9.20.29-S1, the Supported Preview Edition for support customers: fixes all fourteen ISC lists no workarounds for any of the...

Gyazo Breach Exposes 23.62 Million User Records and 490 Million Image Metadata Records

Sep 17, 2026Data Breach / Web Security

A security breach at Gyazo , Helpfeel's image-sharing service, exposed about 23.62 million user records, including email addresses and password hashes, the Kyoto-based company said in a  notice  published Wednesday. It also exposed about 490 million image metadata records, mostly for images from January 2019 or earlier, including the IDs that make up Gyazo image links. Helpfeel said those IDs could be used to view the images without permission, and that it has temporarily disabled viewing of some of them. Helpfeel asked every Gyazo user to change their password and to change it on any other service that uses the same or a similar one. It also asked users to watch for suspicious emails or messages related to the incident. The attacker gained access through a vulnerability in Gyazo's image upload server, ran arbitrary commands on Helpfeel's systems, and accessed Gyazo's database, the company said. It has not said what kind of flaw it was. Helpfeel said no pay...

Cisco Warns of New Zero-Day ISE Auth Bypass (CVSS 10.0) Exploited in Active Attacks

Sep 17, 2026Vulnerability / Web Security

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 could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted request to an affected API endpoint. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to gain unauthorized access to the affected device by bypassing the web-based management interface." The issue affects Cisco ISE and Cisco ISE Passive Identity Connector (ISE-PIC), regardless of device configuration. It has been addressed in the following versions -

U.S. Seizes NightmareStresser Domains Linked to Hundreds of Thousands of DDoS Attacks

Sep 17, 2026Cybercrime / DDoS-for-Hire

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 Federal Bureau of Investigation in accordance with a seizure warrant pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §§ 981(a)(1)(A) and (b), 982(b)(1), and 1030(i) (1)(A); and 21 U.S.C. § 853 issued by the United States District Court for the District of Alaska as part of a joint international law enforcement operation and action by: United States Attorney's Office for the District of Alaska, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Anchorage Field Office, [and] Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)." These so-called booter services are usually advertised as stress testing utilities but have been used to...

Attackers Exploit Issabel Framework Flaw Enabling Unauthenticated OS Command Execution

Sep 16, 2026Vulnerability / Web Security

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 JSON Web Token (JWT) signing key. The Issabel Framework "contains a hard-coded HS256 JWT signing key in the pbxapi index.php file that is identical across every installation, allowing unauthenticated remote attackers to forge valid bearer tokens," VulnCheck said in an alert. "Attackers can use the forged token to call the manager '/pbxapi/manager/originate' endpoint with the System application parameter, causing Asterisk to execute arbitrary OS commands as the Asterisk user." A patch for the vulnerability was pushed on August 1, 2026, and plugs the flaw by r...