All news with #key leakage tag

WhatsApp flaw allowed discovery of 3.5B registered numbers

🔍 Researchers from the University of Vienna and SBA Research found a flaw in WhatsApp's contact discovery that let them enumerate valid numbers globally, confirming about 3.5 billion registered accounts. By abusing the lookup mechanism they could probe numbers across 245 countries at rates exceeding 100 million checks per hour from a single IP. The technique also exposed public (non-private) keys, timestamps, profile photos and About text, enabling inference of device OS, account age and linked secondary devices, prompting Meta to add rate limits and tighter visibility rules.

65% of Top Private AI Firms Exposed Secrets on GitHub

🔒 A Wiz analysis of 50 private companies from the Forbes AI 50 found that 65% had exposed verified secrets such as API keys, tokens and credentials across GitHub and related repositories. Researchers employed a Depth, Perimeter and Coverage approach to examine commit histories, deleted forks, gists and contributors' personal repos, revealing secrets standard scanners often miss. Affected firms are collectively valued at over $400bn.

Claude code interpreter flaw allows stealthy data theft

🔒 A newly disclosed vulnerability in Anthropic’s Claude AI lets attackers manipulate the model’s code interpreter to silently exfiltrate enterprise data. Researcher Johann Rehberger demonstrated an indirect prompt-injection chain that writes sensitive context to the interpreter sandbox and then uploads files using the attacker’s API key to Anthropic’s Files API. The exploit exploits the default “Package managers only” network setting by leveraging access to api.anthropic.com, so exfiltration blends with legitimate API traffic. Mitigations are limited and may significantly reduce functionality.

Malicious npm Packages Steal Developer Credentials

⚠️ Security researchers revealed 10 typosquatted npm packages uploaded on July 4, 2025, that install a cross-platform information stealer targeting Windows, macOS, and Linux. The packages impersonated popular libraries and use a postinstall hook to open a terminal, display a fake CAPTCHA, fingerprint victims, and download a 24MB PyInstaller stealer. The obfuscated JavaScript fetches a data_extracter binary from an attacker server, harvests credentials from browsers, system keyrings, SSH keys and config files, compresses the data into a ZIP, and exfiltrates it to the remote host.

CISOs Urged to Accelerate Post-Quantum Cryptography Plans

🔐 Enterprises acknowledge that quantum computing threatens current public-key cryptography, yet progress toward post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is uneven and slow. A PwC report finds fewer than 10% prioritize PQC in budgets, only 3% have fully implemented leading measures, 29% are piloting, and 49% have not started. Financial services, government, telecom and cloud are moving faster, while manufacturing, healthcare and industrial sectors lag due to legacy systems, skills shortages, and standards uncertainty. Experts advise inventories, pilot programs, crypto agility, and investment before the 2030 deprecation deadline to avoid 'harvest now, decrypt later' risks.

Crimson Collective Targets AWS Cloud Instances for Theft

🔒 Researchers report the 'Crimson Collective' has been targeting long-term AWS credentials and IAM accounts to steal data and extort companies. Using open-source tools like TruffleHog, the attackers locate exposed AWS keys, create new IAM users and access keys, then escalate privileges by attaching AdministratorAccess. They snapshot RDS and EBS volumes, export data to S3, and send extortion notices via AWS SES. Rapid7 urges organisations to audit keys, enforce least privilege, and scan for exposed secrets.

Critical 10.0 RCE Flaw in Redis Exposes 60,000 Instances

⚠ The popular Redis in-memory data store received an urgent patch for a critical use-after-free vulnerability tracked as CVE-2025-49844 (RediShell), which can escape the Lua script sandbox and achieve remote code execution on the host. Exploitation requires authentication, but many deployments disable it; researchers estimate roughly 60,000 internet-exposed instances lack authentication. Redis released fixes on Oct. 3 across multiple branches and administrators are urged to patch exposed servers immediately and enable hardening controls.

Malicious Rust crates on Crates.io exfiltrate crypto keys

🔒Two malicious Rust crates published to Crates.io scanned developer systems at runtime to harvest cryptocurrency private keys and other secrets. The packages, faster_log and async_println, mimicked a legitimate logging crate to avoid detection and contained a hidden payload that searched files and environment variables for Ethereum-style hex keys, Solana-style Base58 strings, and bracketed byte arrays. Discovered by Socket, both crates were removed and the publisher accounts suspended; affected developers are advised to clean systems and move assets to new wallets.

Malicious Rust crates stole Solana and Ethereum keys

🛡️ Security researchers discovered two malicious Rust crates impersonating the legitimate fast_log library that covertly scanned source files for Solana and Ethereum private keys and exfiltrated matches to a hardcoded command-and-control endpoint. Published on May 25, 2025 under the aliases rustguruman and dumbnbased, the packages — faster_log and async_println — accumulated 8,424 downloads before crates.io maintainers removed them following responsible disclosure. Socket and crates.io preserved logs and artifacts for analysis, and maintainers noted the payload executed at runtime when projects were run or tested rather than at build time.

Rockwell ThinManager SSRF Exposes NTLM Hashes Remotely

🔒 Rockwell Automation’s ThinManager contains a server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerability (CVE-2025-9065) affecting versions 13.0 through 14.0 that can expose the ThinServer service account NTLM hash. Authenticated attackers can trigger SMB authentication by specifying external SMB paths, causing NTLM challenge/response data to be leaked. Rockwell addressed the issue in ThinManager 14.1 and recommends upgrading; temporary mitigations include blocking NTLM over SMB, isolating control networks, and using secure remote access.

Mitsubishi MELSEC iQ-F CPU Module: Cleartext Credentials

🔒 Mitsubishi Electric disclosed a MELSEC iQ-F Series CPU module vulnerability (CVE-2025-7731) that transmits sensitive authentication data in cleartext over SLMP, enabling remote attackers to intercept credentials and read or write device values or halt program execution. Assigned CVSS v4 8.7 and described as remotely exploitable with low attack complexity, the issue affects many FX5U/FX5UC/FX5UJ/FX5S variants — Mitsubishi reports no planned patch. Mitsubishi and CISA recommend mitigations such as encrypting SLMP traffic with a VPN, restricting LAN access, isolating control networks behind firewalls, and following ICS hardening best practices.

Malicious Nx npm Packages in 's1ngularity' Supply Chain

🔒 The maintainers of nx warned of a supply-chain compromise that allowed attackers to publish malicious versions of the npm package and several supporting plugins that gathered credentials. Rogue postinstall scripts scanned file systems, harvested GitHub, cloud and AI credentials, and exfiltrated them as Base64 to public GitHub repositories named 's1ngularity-repository' under victim accounts. Security firms reported 2,349 distinct secrets leaked; maintainers rotated tokens, removed the malicious versions, and urged immediate credential rotation and system cleanup.

Password Manager Auto-Fill Flaw, Quantum Risks, Devices

🔒 In this edition of the Smashing Security podcast Graham Cluley and guest Thom Langford examine how some password managers can be tricked into auto-filling secrets into cookie banners via a clickjacking sleight-of-hand. They discuss practical defenses for website owners and hardening steps for users to protect their personal vaults. The episode also covers post-quantum concerns—"harvest-now, decrypt-later"—Microsoft’s 2033 quantum-safe commitment, and device update risks including printers, plus lighter segments like a dodgy URL "shadyfier" and repurposing an iMac G4 as a media hub.

What 17,845 GitHub MCP Servers Reveal About Risk and Abuse

🛡️ VirusTotal ran a large-scale audit of 17,845 GitHub projects implementing the MCP (Model Context Protocol) using Code Insight powered by Gemini 2.5 Flash. The automated review initially surfaced an overwhelming number of issues, and a refined prompt focused on intentional malice marked 1,408 repos as likely malicious. Manual checks showed many flagged projects were demos or PoCs, but the analysis still exposed numerous real attack vectors—credential harvesting, remote code execution via exec/subprocess, supply-chain tricks—and recurring insecure practices. The post recommends treating MCP servers like browser extensions: sign and pin versions, sandbox or WASM-isolate them, enforce strict permissions and filter model outputs to remove invisible or malicious content.

Viacom Cloud Leak Exposed Master Controls and Keys

🔒 UpGuard researchers discovered on August 30, 2017 a publicly accessible Amazon S3 bucket named “mcs-puppet” containing seventy-two .tgz backup archives that included Puppet manifests, configuration files, keys, and credentials tied to Viacom. The repository exposed AWS access and secret keys, GPG decryption keys, and scripts referencing services such as Docker, Jenkins, Splunk, and New Relic. UpGuard notified Viacom on August 31, and the exposure was secured within hours. The incident demonstrates how cloud misconfigurations can reveal master provisioning controls and enable widespread infrastructure compromise.

Amazon Engineer Exposed Credentials via Public GitHub Repo

🔒 UpGuard discovered a public GitHub repository on 13 January 2020 containing an Amazon Web Services engineer’s personal identity documents and numerous system credentials. The repository included AWS key pairs (including a file named rootkey.csv), API tokens, private keys, passwords, logs, and customer-related templates. UpGuard reported the exposure to AWS Security within hours and the repository was secured the same day. The incident highlights how rapid leak detection can prevent accidental disclosures from escalating.

Exposed NGA Data Linked to Booz Allen S3 Misconfiguration

🛡️ UpGuard analyst Chris Vickery discovered a publicly exposed S3 file repository containing credentials and SSH keys tied to systems used by US geospatial intelligence contractors. The plaintext data included access tokens and administrative credentials that could enable entry to systems handling Top Secret-level data. NGA secured the bucket rapidly after notification; Booz Allen Hamilton responded later. UpGuard preserved the dataset at government request.