IT News Analysis

1

SideCopy Broadens India Targeting to Academia With ReverseRAT Spear-Phishing

The threat actor known as SideCopy has been observed using spear-phishing lures to target academic institutions in India, expanding their strategic focus beyond government entities. "SideCopy campaign operations typically initiate through spear-phishing campaigns that leverage the abuse of mshta.exe to execute malicious scripts and circumvent standard security protocols," Trellix researchers Boggavarapu R S S Srinivas Gupta and Ravishankar N C said in a technical report. "This delivery mechanism facilitates the deployment of a remote access trojan (RAT), which serves as the central pillar of their offensive infrastructure." Active since at least 2019, SideCopy (aka TAG-140) is an advanced persistent threat (APT) group that originates from Pakistan, and shares overlaps with the Transparent Tribe cluster. Historically, the threat actor has primarily targeted Indian defense forces and government officials. In a report published in June 2026, Seqrite Labs a...

Sep 22, 2026

2

Do You Need to Protect AI, Use AI, or Govern AI? SANS has Mapped All Three.

Free frameworks, guidelines, and role-based AI security training, gathered in one place.

3

One Hidden Meta Muse Setting Could Let Attackers Turn the AI Assistant Into a Backdoor

Malware already running on a Mac can quietly take over Meta's Muse assistant and use the broad access its owner granted the app, security researcher Patrick Wardle has shown in a  proof-of-concept  released on September 21. It works by changing a hidden setting so that when the user taps the microphone and dictates a prompt, the words go to the attacker instead of Meta. The flaw is in the Mac version of Muse, and it only works if an attacker can already run code as the logged-in user. It cannot break into a Mac on its own. But Wardle told The Hacker News that a remote attacker could hijack Muse and steal its token through a ClickFix trick, which fools the user into running a single command with nothing to download or install. Muse is the personal AI agent Meta  launched this month  in the United States. Once a user turns it on, it can work across their files, email, messages, calendar, shopping and smart-home apps, using whatever access the person chooses to g...

Sep 22, 2026

4

WordPress Comment2Shell Flaw Can Turn Anonymous Comment XSS Into RCE via Admin Session

A new flaw in WordPress core let an anonymous visitor leave a comment that planted a hidden script on the page. If a logged-in administrator later opened that page, the script could run code on the site's server. WordPress fixed the flaw, tracked as  CVE-2026-93485  and dubbed " Comment2Shell ," on September 17 in  version 7.1.1  and told site owners to update right away. The researcher who reported it said he is not aware of it being used in attacks, and it is not on the U.S. government's list of actively exploited software flaws. Patchstack, the company that assigned that identifier, rated the flaw 7.1 out of 10 on the CVSS scale. WordPress checks a comment for dangerous HTML when it is saved, then reformats it when the page is shown, and the flaw sat in the gap between those two steps. Rafie Muhammad, the security researcher who reported the bug, laid out the full chain in  a write-up  on September 21. The trick was a line break placed inside th...

Sep 22, 2026

5

Zyxel and Veeam Flaws Under Active Exploitation With Command and SYSTEM Access

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday added a now-patched security flaw impacting Zyxel GS1900 series switches to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-7273 (CVSS score: 8.8), is a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability that could result in arbitrary operating system (OS) command execution. "A stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in the CGI program of the Zyxel GS1900 series switch firmware could allow a LAN-based, unauthenticated attacker to exploit the flaw and potentially execute OS commands via a crafted HTTP request," Zyxel said in an advisory released in June 2026.  The issue has been addressed in the following versions -

Sep 22, 2026

6

Fake LastPass Authenticator Installer Abuses Microsoft-Signed Driver to Kill Antivirus and EDR

A fake LastPass Authenticator installer offered on GitHub installs a Windows kernel driver that shuts off antivirus and other security software before a password stealer runs if a victim downloads and runs it, researchers at LastPass and Delphos Labs said on September 17. Microsoft's own hardware-compatibility program signs the driver, scored zero detections on VirusTotal when researchers checked it in August, and was not on Microsoft's list of blocked drivers. LastPass says none of its own systems, services, or customer vaults were touched, and that the attackers only borrowed its name. The lure is a fake GitHub page (github.com/LastPass-Authenticator) that ranks in search results for terms like "LastPass Authenticator download" and looks like a real LastPass product page. Clicking the download button sends the visitor through several GitHub pages to an attacker server, which serves a large ZIP file. The real LastPass Authenticator comes from lastpass.com and ...

Sep 21, 2026

7

Mikko Hyppönen and Enterprise CISOs on What AI-Speed Attacks Actually Change

Join the summit where leading security teams lay out how they prepare for attackers with AI on their side.

8

Contagious Interview Campaign Compromises 30,000 Devices, Steals $10.71M in Crypto

The North Korean threat actors behind the Contagious Interview campaign have compromised at least 30,000 devices located in more than 100 countries and siphoned funds or account credentials from over 7,000 cryptocurrency wallets, according to a new joint cybersecurity advisory . The primary targets of the campaign are individual web designers, engineers, and specialists in cryptocurrency, blockchain, and Web3 technologies. In all, the threat actors are estimated to have plundered at least $10.71 million worth of cryptocurrency from victims. The alert comes courtesy of cybersecurity and intelligence agencies from Japan, the U.S., Australia, and Germany. The activity is tracked by the broader cybersecurity community under the monikers CL-STA-0240, DeceptiveDevelopment, DEV#POPPER, Famous Chollima, Gwisin Gang, PurpleBravo, Tenacious Pungsan, UNC5342, Void Dokkaebi, and WaterPlum. The cyber threat group "conducts cyber attacks by infiltrating unsuspecting job seekers' com...

Sep 21, 2026

9

Google Fined €403 Million Over GDPR Violations Tied to Location Data

Google has been  fined €403 million  for breaking the EU's data protection law, the GDPR, in the way three of its features handled people's location data from May 2018 to February 2020. Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC), Google's lead regulator in the EU, also ordered the company to make its processing comply with the law within 6 months. The DPC has not said publicly which processing the order covers, and it says its full decision will be published later. The three features are Web & App Activity, Location History and Location Accuracy. Web & App Activity is a Google account setting that, when turned on, lets Google process data about a user's activity on its sites and apps. That data can include location. Location History, which users must opt in to, keeps track of where they go with their signed-in mobile devices, even when they are not using a Google service. For both cases, the DPC found that Google breached the GDPR's rules on law...

Sep 21, 2026

10

⚡ Weekly Recap: Cisco 0-Day, AI Agent RCE, ClickFix Attacks, ClickFix Surge, and Browser Hijacks

A browser. A plugin. A package. A login screen. Normal stuff. That is basically the problem this week. The trouble keeps showing up inside things people already trust: code that takes a bad turn, old payloads coming back, exposed systems, weak checks, fake fixes, and attack paths that look almost too easy. Even the research side is getting messy, with more findings, more automation, and not always more clarity. Nothing here needs much drama. Just a lot of small doors left open. Here’s what happened. ⚡ Threat of the Week Cisco Warns of Actively Exploited ISE Auth Bypass — Cisco 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 exp...

Sep 21, 2026