All news with #malware tag

🛡️ This week's recap highlights sophisticated, real-world threats that bypass conventional defenses. Actors like Curly COMrades abused Hyper-V to run a hidden Alpine Linux VM and execute payloads outside the host OS, evading EDR/XDR. Microsoft disclosed the Whisper Leak AI side-channel that infers chat topics from encrypted traffic, and a patched Samsung zero-day was weaponized to deploy LANDFALL spyware to select Galaxy devices. Time-delayed NuGet logic bombs, a new criminal alliance (SLH), and ongoing RMM and supply-chain abuses underscore rising coordination and stealth—prioritize detection and mitigations now.

🔒 Researchers identified three malicious VS Code extensions tied to the GlassWorm campaign that together had thousands of installs. The packages — ai-driven-dev.ai-driven-dev, adhamu.history-in-sublime-merge, and yasuyuky.transient-emacs — were still available at reporting. Koi Security warns GlassWorm harvests Open VSX, GitHub, and Git credentials, abuses invisible Unicode for obfuscation, and uses blockchain-updated C2 endpoints. Defenders should audit extensions, rotate exposed tokens and credentials, and monitor repositories and wallet activity for signs of compromise.

⚠ The GlassWorm malware campaign has resurfaced on OpenVSX, delivering malicious payloads via three new VSCode extensions that have been reported as downloaded over 10,000 times. The extensions use invisible Unicode obfuscation to execute JavaScript and harvest credentials and cryptocurrency wallet data through Solana transactions. Koi Security says the attacker reused infrastructure with updated C2 endpoints and that investigators accessed an attacker server, recovering victim data and identifying multiple global victims.

⚠️ Researchers found nine NuGet packages published under the developer name shanhai666 that combine legitimate .NET libraries with a small sabotage payload set to trigger between 2027 and 2028. The malicious code uses C# extension methods to intercept database and PLC operations and probabilistically terminate processes or corrupt writes. Socket advises immediate audits, removal from CI/CD pipelines, and verification of package provenance.

⚠️ Socket has identified nine malicious NuGet packages published in 2023–2024 by the account "shanhai666" that contain time‑delayed logic bombs intended to sabotage database operations and industrial control systems. The most dangerous, Sharp7Extend, bundles the legitimate Sharp7 PLC library and uses C# extension methods plus an encrypted configuration to trigger probabilistic process terminations (≈20%) and silent PLC write failures (≈80% after 30–90 minutes). Several SQL-related packages are set to activate on staged dates in August 2027 and November 2028, and the packages were collectively downloaded 9,488 times. All nine malicious packages have been removed from NuGet; attribution remains uncertain.

⚠️ A proof-of-concept ransomware strain dubbed Ransomvibe was published as a Visual Studio Code extension and remained available in the VSCode Marketplace after being reported. Secure Annex analysts found the package included blatant indicators of malicious functionality — hardcoded C2 URLs, encryption keys, compression and exfiltration routines — alongside included decryptors and source files. The extension used a private GitHub repository as a command-and-control channel, and researchers say its presence highlights failures in Microsoft’s marketplace review process.

⚠️ Researchers flagged a malicious Visual Studio Code extension named susvsex that auto-zips, uploads and encrypts files on first launch and uses GitHub as a command-and-control channel. Uploaded on November 5, 2025 and removed from Microsoft's VS Code Marketplace the next day, the package embeds GitHub access tokens and writes execution results back to a repository. Separately, Datadog disclosed 17 trojanized npm packages that deploy the Vidar infostealer via postinstall scripts.

🔒 Datadog Security researchers found 17 npm packages (23 releases) that used a postinstall downloader to execute the Vidar infostealer on Windows systems. The trojanized modules masqueraded as Telegram bot helpers, icon libraries, and forks of libraries like Cursor and React, and were available for about two weeks with at least 2,240 downloads before the accounts were banned. Organizations should adopt SBOMs, SCA, internal registries, add ignore-scripts policies, and enable real-time package scanning to reduce supply chain risk.

🔒 A malicious VS Code extension named susvsex, published by 'suspublisher18', was listed on Microsoft's official marketplace and included basic ransomware features such as AES-256-CBC encryption and exfiltration to a hardcoded C2. Secure Annex researcher John Tuckner identified AI-generated artifacts in the code and reported it, but Microsoft did not remove the extension. The extension also polled a private GitHub repo for commands using a hardcoded PAT.

🔎VirusTotal ran VT Code Insight, an AI-based Mach-O analysis pipeline against nearly 10,000 first-seen Apple binaries in a 24-hour stress test. By pruning binaries with Binary Ninja HLIL into a distilled representation that fits a large LLM context (Gemini), the system produces single-call, analyst-style summaries from raw files with no metadata. Code Insight flagged 164 samples as malicious versus 67 by traditional AV, surfacing zero-detection macOS and iOS threats while also reducing false positives.

🔐 Nikkei confirmed a breach of employee Slack accounts that may have exposed names, email addresses and chat histories for 17,368 registered users. The company says malware on an employee’s personal computer stole Slack authentication credentials and session tokens, enabling unauthorized access. The incident was identified in September; Nikkei implemented password changes and voluntarily reported the matter to Japan’s Personal Information Protection Commission. No reporting-source leaks have been confirmed.

🔒 South Korean police uncovered a criminal network that used a malicious app to steal customer data from massage parlours and extort clients. The group tricked nine business owners into installing software that exfiltrated names, phone numbers, call logs and text messages, then sent threatening messages claiming to have video footage. About 36 victims paid between 1.5M and 47M KRW, with attempted extortion near 200M KRW. Authorities traced activity to January 2022 across Seoul, Gyeonggi and Daegu and made arrests in August 2023.

🔔 Google’s Trust & Safety team published a November 2025 advisory describing rising online scam trends, attacker tactics, and recommended defenses. Analysts highlight key categories — online job scams, negative review extortion, AI product impersonation, malicious VPNs, fraud recovery scams, and seasonal holiday lures — and note increased misuse of AI to scale fraud. The advisory outlines impacts including financial theft, identity fraud, and device or network compromise, and recommends protections such as 2‑Step Verification, Gmail phishing defenses, Google Play Protect, and Safe Browsing Enhanced Protection.

🔒 Nikkei disclosed that unauthorized actors used malware to infect an employee’s computer, obtain Slack credentials, and access accounts on the company's Slack workspace. The firm reports that data for possibly more than 17,000 employees and business partners — including names, email addresses and chat logs — may have been stolen. Nikkei discovered the incident in September and implemented password resets and other remediation measures. The company said there's no confirmation that sources or journalistic activities were affected.

🛡️ Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) reports that cybercriminals are actively integrating large language models into malware campaigns, moving beyond mere tooling to generate, obfuscate, and adapt malicious code. GTIG documents new families — including PROMPTSTEAL, PROMPTFLUX, FRUITSHELL, and PROMPTLOCK — that query commercial APIs to produce or rewrite payloads and evade detection. Researchers also note attackers use social‑engineering prompts to trick LLMs into revealing sensitive guidance and that underground marketplaces increasingly offer AI-enabled “malware-as-a-service,” lowering the bar for less skilled threat actors.

⚠️ Google’s Threat Intelligence Group has identified a new class of AI-enabled malware that leverages large language models at runtime to generate and obfuscate malicious code. Notable families include PromptFlux, which uses the Gemini API to rewrite its VBScript dropper for persistence and lateral spread, and PromptSteal, a Python data miner that queries Qwen2.5-Coder-32B-Instruct to create on-demand Windows commands. GTIG observed PromptSteal used by APT28 in Ukraine, while other examples such as PromptLock, FruitShell and QuietVault demonstrate varied AI-driven capabilities. Google warns this "just-in-time AI" approach could accelerate malware sophistication and democratize cybercrime.

🤖 Google’s Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) reports attackers are using “just‑in‑time” AI—LLMs queried during execution—to generate and obfuscate malicious code. Researchers identified two families, PROMPTSTEAL and PROMPTFLUX, which query Hugging Face and Gemini APIs to craft commands, rewrite source code, and evade detection. GTIG also documents social‑engineering prompts that trick models into revealing red‑teaming or exploit details, and warns the underground market for AI‑enabled crime is maturing. Google says it has disabled related accounts and applied protections.

🛡️ Gootloader has resumed operations after a seven-month pause, using SEO poisoning to promote fake legal-document sites that trick users into downloading malicious ZIP archives containing JScript loaders. The campaign now employs novel evasion techniques — a custom web font that renders readable keywords in the browser while the HTML source remains gibberish, and malformed ZIPs that extract a .js in Windows Explorer but a benign .txt for many analysis tools. Infected hosts receive follow-on payloads such as Cobalt Strike, backdoors including the Supper SOCKS5 implant, and bots that provide initial access for ransomware affiliates.

🤖 Google researchers disclosed a VBScript threat named PROMPTFLUX that queries Gemini via a hard-coded API key to request obfuscated VBScript designed to evade static detection. A 'Thinking Robot' component logs AI responses to %TEMP% and writes updated scripts to the Windows Startup folder to maintain persistence. Samples include propagation attempts to removable drives and mapped network shares, and variants that rewrite their source on an hourly cadence. Google assesses the malware as experimental and currently lacking known exploit capabilities.

⚠️Google's Threat Intelligence Group reports a surge in malware that integrates large language models to enable dynamic, mid-execution changes—what Google calls "just-in-time" self-modification. Notable examples include the experimental PromptFlux VBScript dropper and the PromptSteal data miner, plus operational threats like FruitShell and QuietVault. Google disabled abused Gemini accounts, removed assets, and is hardening model safeguards while collaborating with law enforcement.