More than 1,500 user-contributed packages in the Arch Linux User Repository "AUR" were infected with malware, reports Phoronix: The last message in the thread over this security incident is noting that Arch Linux developers have deleted all the malicious commits they are aware of. Cited was this list that puts the number of malware-affected packages at 1,579... Even at 1,579 packages listed, that final updated noted, it's a "list containing many (but not all) of the affected packages". Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader couchslug for sharing the report.

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Longtime Slashdot reader Dotnaught shares a report from The Register: For the past 90 days, Microsoft has been quietly patching a firmware flaw in Surface devices that allowed the hardware to be bricked with a single packet, though only for those who have disabled Secure Core and Secure Boot. And the company's Copilot AI software inadvertently helped identify the faulty firmware. According to Jack Darcy, a security researcher based in Australia, his instance of Microsoft Copilot stumbled across the bug after being asked to adjust the screen backlighting on a Surface device. The Copilot-conjured Python script ended up rendering the researcher's laptop inoperable by overwriting the embedded controller firmware. "Copilot autonomously created and executed four progressively aggressive Python scripts during a probe for backlight control values that sent raw SSAM ioctl commands (SSAM_CDEV_REQUEST = 0xC028A501) directly to the SAM microcontroller through the SAM software path," Darcy explained to The Register. [...] "We appreciate the work of Jack Darcy and The Register for reporting this issue under a coordinated vulnerability disclosure," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. "Our investigation found that a deprecated UEFI interface could trigger a boot loop on some devices. To trigger this loop, the user must have administrator privileges and have already disabled the Secure Boot security feature. We have released updates to address the issue for most impacted devices." That means managed devices are not at risk. But those using Linux, or Windows users who have disabled Secure Core and Secure Boot for gaming, or who use custom Windows drivers, or who have USB boot enabled, may still be vulnerable if their systems haven't received the update. We're uncertain about the range of Surface devices affected. Our source said it appears to be all of them (Surface Laptops 3-6, Surface Book 1-3) except for Surface Go models. ARM variants, however, have not been tested. The report notes that Microsoft is planning to move the Surface stack to a more secure architecture based on Rust code. "Our most recent Surface for Business hardware features a major architectural shift in terms of improved reliability and security that spans our embedded controller, UEFI, but also some of our drivers," said David Abzarian, chief architect for Microsoft Surface. "We're investing in the most secure foundation for a PC by building our embedded controller firmware from the ground up in Rust (as part of leveraging and contributing to the Open Device Partnership (ODP)) in addition to a rewrite of the UEFI DXE Core in Rust; these projects are known as Secure EC and Project Patina respectively." "We're also not only shipping some of our drivers written in Rust, but also helping co-develop the framework Windows Drivers in Rust (WDR) to help enable a broad set of partners in the Windows ecosystem to capitalize on these benefits. I will also note that all of these efforts are open-source promoting one of our key security principles around transparency."

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A researcher using the name Nightmare Eclipse has released a new Microsoft Defender zero-day exploit called "RoguePlanet," which reportedly works on fully patched Windows 10 and 11 systems and can spawn a command prompt with SYSTEM privileges through a Defender race condition. The release came just hours after Microsoft fixed two previously disclosed flaws during its latest monthly Patch Tuesday drop -- its largest Patch Tuesday release ever. BleepingComputer reports: The researcher shared a proof-of-concept exploit on Tuesday afternoon in a self-hosted Git repository after saying that GitHub and GitLab repositories hosting their exploits had previously been removed by Microsoft. "The exploit is a race condition, so it's a hit or miss. I have managed to get a 100% success rate on some machines while it struggled to work on others," Nightmare Eclipse wrote in the repository. [...] Cybersecurity firm ThreatLocker told BleepingComputer that they successfully reproduced the flaw in their testing and confirmed the exploit worked against fully patched Windows 11 systems with KB5094126 installed, and shared a video demonstrating it. "Our initial analysis confirms that the RoguePlanet exploit is viable and performs as described. Organizations using application allowlisting can prevent the exploit from executing, providing an effective layer of protection against this attack," Danny Jenkins, CEO of ThreatLocker, told BleepingComputer. According to Nightmare Eclipse, RoguePlanet was originally developed as a remote code execution vulnerability that exploited Microsoft Defender's handling of files hosted on remote SMB shares. "In initial development, it was confirmed that this vulnerability was a remote code execution," the researcher explained in a blog post. "It required an attacker to coerce a victim to open a .vhd(x) in a remote SMB server, succesful exploitation resulted in defender overwriting its own files and obviously the end outcome was an RCE." The researcher says another attack scenario could lead to remote code execution simply by coercing a victim into opening an SMB share if symlink evaluation settings were enabled. However, the researcher claims Microsoft silently hardened Defender in mid-May by patching "mpengine!SysIO*" API, which blocked junction attacks. "Rewriting RoguePlanet to make it functional again drained my soul and I couldn't complete the other scenarios and for now it remains unclear if RoguePlanet is limited to LPE or there is some sort of way to turn it into an RCE," the researcher wrote.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Researchers have analyzed a high-severity vulnerability in Linux that's able to escalate untrusted users to root by exploiting a bug you don't often see: a single errant character inside the kernel. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-23111, is located in nf_tables, a subsystem of the Linux kernel that provides packet filtering capabilities. It's used to manage firewall rules and replaces older subsystems such as iptables, ip6tables, arptables, and ebtables. The presence of a single mis-issued exclamation point in code implementing nf_tables introduced a use-after-free, a class of vulnerability that corrupts memory by placing malicious code at memory addresses that haven't been properly freed of their previous contents. CVE-2026-23111 can be exploited by an unprivileged user or process to elevate system rights to root. The exploit works by disrupting the deletion of verdicts -- a determination within the nf_tables framework that determines if a packet matches a rule calling for a certain action to be performed. This process can use what are known as catchall elements, which act as a wildcard in the event a lookup doesn't match any other element in the set. When a verdict map is deleted from memory, catchall elements are deactivated and a chain's reference counter is decremented. When errors occur the deletion can be reversed and the counter incremented. CVE-2026-53111 allows for that process to be altered. As a result, the exploit can decrement the variable an arbitrary number of times and then delete and free the chain when some objects still point to it. Although the kernel vulnerability was fixed in February, multiple proof-of-concept exploits have since emerged, including one from FuzzingLabs in April and another from Exodus Intelligence that works on Debian and Ubuntu.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Microsoft has shut down a wave of its own repositories on GitHub, including those related to Azure and AI coding agents, as it investigates a data breach, according to research from cybersecurity researchers and a statement given to 404 Media by Microsoft. Hackers planted malware that would harvest peoples' credentials when they opened it in AI coding tools like Claude Code or Gemini CLI, according to one set of researchers. The exact contours of the breach are unclear, but researchers say Microsoft has disabled more than 70 of its own repositories, and pointed to a particular package that was previously compromised. Last week, cybersecurity website OpenSourceMalware.com, which acts as a clearing house for indicators of supply chain attacks so defenders can secure their own networks, and which also publishes its own write-ups, wrote about the mass disabling of Microsoft GitHub repositories. "GitHub disabled 73 Microsoft repositories across four of its GitHub organizations -- the entire Azure Functions org, the whole Durable Task family, and a row of AI sample apps -- in a 105-second sweep on June 5," the website wrote on Friday. Is it very unusual for any company, let alone Microsoft, to disable so many of its own repositories in one go. They include 49 related to Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing arm, and some concerning AI agents. The shutdown repositories also include ones related to durabletask, a Microsoft development tool. Researchers from StepSecurity wrote on Friday that the GitHub closures came after a malicious commit was pushed to the durabletask repository. That attack planted configuration files that would harvest peoples' credentials when they opened the repository in Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Cursor, or VS Code, StepSecurity wrote. Microsoft said in a statement: "Our priority is to protect customers and the broader ecosystem. We temporarily removed some repositories as we investigated potential malicious content. Some of these repos have been restored after review, while others may remain offline while work continues. As part of our investigation, we notified a small number of customers who may have pulled down content from the affected repositories. We will continue to investigate, and if anything further is identified that requires customer action, we will reach out directly through our established support channels."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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