Vue lecture

WhatsApp Catches Spyware Firm NSO Defying No-Hacking Court Order

wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Meta-owned communications app WhatsApp says it recently detected and disrupted a spear-phishing attempt linked to spyware company NSO Group. The attack is allegedly in defiance of a court order that bars the spyware maker from targeting WhatsApp. WhatsApp filed a lawsuit against NSO in 2019, after it came to light that a zero-day vulnerability had been exploited to deliver spyware to users. [...] NSO has been seeking to overturn the order blocking it from targeting WhatsApp users, arguing that the company will "suffer irreparable harm." According to WhatsApp, the spyware maker has violated the permanent injunction. The messaging app reported on Monday that it had recently learned of a social engineering attack that attempted to trick users into clicking on malicious links. WhatsApp has only shared a few domains as an indicator of compromise (IoC), but says it was able to link the attack to NSO, pointing to similarities to previously reported one-click phishing campaigns tied to the spyware company. WhatsApp says it also caught the attackers creating test accounts and groups. Those accounts and groups have been disabled, but further action is also being taken. WhatsApp says it is asking a federal court to hold NSO in contempt for allegedly violating a permanent injunction barring it from targeting WhatsApp and its users. The company also said it is making a "significant contribution" to the Spyware Accountability Initiative, a fund aimed at exposing and stopping spyware abuse.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  •  

New IronWorm Malware Hits 36 Packages In npm Supply-Chain Attack

A new npm supply-chain attack has infected 36 packages with Rust-based infostealer malware called IronWorm. According to BleepingComputer, the malware "targets 86 environment variables (key-value pairs) and 20 credential files that may contain OpenAI, AWS, Anthropic, and npm credentials, vault configuration files, SSH keys, and Exodus cryptocurrency wallet files." From the report: According to researchers at supply-chain and devops company JFrog, IronWorm is written in Rust, hides behind an eBPF kernel rootkit, and communicates with the operator over the Tor network. The Rust-based malware self-propagates by using stolen credentials for publishing on npm; this includes secrets associated with npm's Trusted Publishing workflow. Once it compromises a developer or CI environment, it can publish trojanized versions of packages owned by the victim, which then infect additional developers and CI systems. This behavior is conceptually similar to Shai Hulud, which had its code published on GitHub recently. Although JFrog researchers did not find a clear connection between IronWorm and Shai Hulud, they observed the same commit names in both supply-chain attacks. This opens the possibility that the new malware is an evolution of TeamPCP's payload, since IronWorm appears to be "a custom, carefully built implant from an operation with its own infrastructure." [...] The company provides a list of all impacted package names and their versions in the report and recommends that developers upgrade to fixed releases, rotate their keys, and enable two-factor authentication (2FA) for all accounts. At the same time, Endor Labs and StepSecurity have spotted a very similar but distinct attack involving a JavaScript-based malware named binding.gyp, performing registry poisoning and GitHub Actions infection, unfolding during the same time-frame.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  •  

Red Hat npm Packages Compromised to Spread a Credential-Stealing Worm

Aikido Security says more than 30 official @redhat-cloud-services npm packages were compromised with a credential-stealing worm called "Miasma," a variant resembling the open-sourced Mini Shai-Hulud supply-chain malware. "The packages were published via GitHub Actions OIDC, indicating the CI/CD pipeline was compromised rather than an npm token," the report says. "If you have installed any affected package versions since June 1, 2026, treat all CI secrets, cloud credentials, SSH keys, and npm tokens as compromised and rotate them immediately." From the report: Each compromised package declares a preinstall script in its package.json that executes node index.js automatically on every npm install, before any application code runs and before the developer has any indication something is wrong. The index.js file is 4.2 MB payload hidden behind multiple layers of obfuscation. As with previous Mini Shai-Hulud attacks, the payload performs a broad credential sweep across cloud providers, CI/CD environments, and developer tooling. On the CI side it targets GitHub Actions secrets including GITHUB_TOKEN and ACTIONS_RUNTIME_TOKEN. For cloud credentials it collects AWS access keys and session tokens, GCP application default credentials and service account key files, and Azure service principal credentials and managed identity tokens. It also sweeps for HashiCorp Vault tokens, Kubernetes service account tokens and kubeconfig files, npm and PyPI publish tokens, SSH private keys, Docker registry credentials, GPG keys, and any .env files it can find across the filesystem.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  •  
❌