A maximum-severity vulnerability in the GiveWP plugin for WordPress allows an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the hosting server. The security issue is identified as CVE-2026-82222 and affects GiveWP through version 4.16.7.1. It was reported by bug researcher Udin Chan on July 28 through the Patchstack vulnerability intelligence platform. The GiveWP plugin has more than 100,000 installs and allows collecting donations and managing fundraising campaigns. Patchstack researchers explain that exploiting the vulnerability is possible by chaining three distinct issues: Successful exploitation depends on the attacker having an account on the target site. However, Patchstack says that an exposed unauthenticated registration action allows creating an account even if registration is disabled.
A 68-year-old has been sentenced in the U.K. to more than six years in prison for operating an illegal IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) service that generated £980,812 ($1.3 million) over three years. An investigation by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) at the City of London Police found that Milan Ibrahim ran a "sophisticated operation" that provided illegal IPTV services to users in the UK and abroad. According to PIPCU, Ibrahim sold illegal broadcasts from major rights holders such as the BBC, ITV, Sky, the Premier League and the Motion Picture Association. The police seized and shut down all servers they found during the operation, disrupting the illegal streams that users of the IPTV service received. “The investigation revealed that the business operated on 80 servers from premises in Chorley and generated £980,812 over a three-year period,” announced the City of London Police.
Over 8,300 Internet-exposed Gitea instances are still unpatched against a critical security flaw exploited in ongoing remote code execution attacks, according to cybersecurity watchdog Shadowserver. The code injection vulnerability (CVE-2026-60004) targeted in these attacks was reported by Salesforce security researcher Shai Rod, and it allows authenticated attackers to execute arbitrary shell commands with the privileges of the Gitea service account by submitting malicious patches via the diffpatch API endpoint. While successful exploitation requires repository write access to repositories hosted on vulnerable servers, Gitea comes with self-registration enabled by default, allowing unauthenticated attackers to register an account, create a new repository, and trigger the vulnerability without prior credentials.
BlueDelta (APT28) uses webhook.site and Microsoft Edge to hide HOOKEDGE espionage traffic targeting European governments. Recorded Future’s Insikt Group documented a campaign by BlueDelta, the Russian GRU-linked group that overlaps with the group APT28, running an entire espionage operation against European government targets using webhook.site, a service built for developers to test HTTP requests, as its command-and-control backbone. The campaign ran from late September 2025 through early April 2026, targeting government and diplomatic organizations in Romania, Spain, and Türkiye. “The campaigns delivered a lightweight Windows batch-script backdoor, dubbed “HOOKEDGE,” via macro-enabled Microsoft Word documents using diplomatic-themed lures, including material impersonating Spain’s Ministry of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes, created shortly after a September 2025 meeting between Spanish and Moldovan officials.” states the report by Insikt Group. “Insikt Group assesses with moderate confidence that this activity was conducted by BlueDelta (which overlaps with APT28, Fancy Bear, and Forest Blizzard), a Russian state-sponsored threat group attributed to the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU).” The attackers used a fairly old-school trick: macro-enabled Word documents. One of them looked like a real meeting agenda from Spain’s Ministry of the Presidency and appeared shortly after an actual meeting between Spanish and Moldovan officials. The timing was interesting because it came just before Moldova’s September 2025 parliamentary elections. The document looked credible enough to make the phishing attempt believable. The backdoor, called HOOKEDGE, is surprisingly simple. It uses a Windows batch script and relies on two webhooks. One receives commands, while the other sends the stolen data back to the attackers. Every 30 minutes, a scheduled task downloads a command file through Microsoft Edge, runs it and sends the results to another endpoint. The malware uses Edge to make the traffic look like normal web activity, making it harder for security tools to spot. That reliance on a real browser for both tasking and exfiltration is the cleverest part of the whole design. “A notable aspect of HOOKEDGE is its use of msedge.exe for both tasking and exfiltration. By generating network traffic through a legitimate web browser rather than a commonly abused LotL binary (LOLBin) or a custom binary, the malware blends its communications with normal enterprise browsing activity.” continues the report. Recorded Future explains, and that’s really the entire evasion strategy in one sentence: don’t build something exotic, just make your traffic look exactly like an employee checking a website. BlueDelta didn’t build HOOKEDGE from scratch either. It shares deep code and structural overlap with HEADLACE, a backdoor the same group used years earlier, right down to identical JavaScript variable names and the same base64 encoding scheme for automated downloads. “HOOKEDGE’s code and structural design have significant overlap with HEADLACE, a backdoor used by BlueDelta in previous campaigns.” states the report. Recorded Future assesses with moderate confidence that HOOKEDGE is a direct evolutionary successor, maintained by the same operators rather than a fresh tool built by a different team, which fits BlueDelta’s long-documented habit of refining working tradecraft instead of reinventing it. The operation also included a triage mechanism worth understanding on its own. Once a victim showed signs of being worth deeper attention, active communication with the initial webhook endpoints, BlueDelta deployed a second HOOKEDGE payload configured to check in every five minutes instead of thirty, giving operators much faster interactive control over higher-value targets. That two-tier setup also solved a practical infrastructure problem: webhook.site’s free tier caps out at 100 requests per endpoint, so spreading routine and high-priority tasking across separate endpoints kept any single one from getting exhausted mid-operation. BlueDelta kept tuning the operation continuously rather than treating it as a finished product. Beaconing intervals stretched from 30 minutes to 61, deliberately timed to slip past sandbox environments that typically only watch a sample’s behavior for an hour. The group added canary tracking pixels named things like mailopened.jpg and docopened.jpg to monitor exactly when a phishing email got opened versus when the document itself got opened versus when macros actually executed, essentially building analytics for their own phishing funnel. “The malicious document also contains a hidden image referencing a remote webhook URL: hxxp://webhook[.]site/62114596-33f5-47fb-9012-0223529e5a13/docopened[.]jpg. This serves as a document-open “canary,” alerting BlueDelta operators when a victim opens the lure. Later variants used the filename doc.jpg in place of docopened.jpg.” states Insik. “Insikt Group also identified webhooks using the filename mailopened.jpg, indicating that BlueDelta likely used a similar canary mechanism to monitor when recipients opened phishing emails, providing operators with visibility into campaign delivery success before any payload execution.” That kind of detailed tracking of what victims do would look very familiar to a marketing team. The difference is that here the targets are victims, not customers. For defenders, the useful indicators are quite clear. Block macros in documents downloaded from the internet, monitor scheduled tasks that launch scripts from user-writable folders, and flag Microsoft Edge running in headless mode or making automated connections to file-sharing and webhook services that the organization does not normally use. You don’t need sophisticated tools to spot these behaviors. Even a well-configured monitoring system should be able to detect them early. The worrying part is that a persistent, state-backed group can still rely on a small set of behaviors that defenders can identify and block. For defenders, the actionable pieces here are concrete rather than abstract. Block macro execution from documents that arrived over the internet, watch for scheduled tasks spawning script interpreters from user-writable folders, and specifically flag Microsoft Edge running in headless mode or making automated requests to file-hosting and webhook services your organization doesn’t actually use for anything legitimate. None of this requires exotic tooling to catch, which is oddly reassuring: a threat group this persistent and state-backed is still, at its core, relying on the same handful of detectable behaviors that a properly configured monitoring setup would catch on day one. “BlueDelta is likely to continue conducting initial access campaigns against European government and diplomatic organizations in support of Russian intelligence collection. Given the enduring strategic importance of European governance, NATO-related affairs, and diplomatic engagement with former Soviet republics, the intelligence requirements driving this activity are unlikely to diminish in the near term.” concludes the report. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, BlueDelta)
ServiceNow released security patches for three new maximum-severity AI Platform vulnerabilities that can be exploited in code injection, SQL injection, and privilege escalation attacks. The ServiceNow AI Platform (formerly known as the Now Platform) is an enterprise-grade Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that helps integrate AI into core enterprise workflows and powers more than 100,000 enterprise AI apps at 85% of all Fortune 500 companies. In a Thursday advisory, the company said it patched its cloud-based platform against the three critical security flaws (CVE-2026-18885, CVE-2026-18886, and CVE-2026-74820) and advised customers to secure their self-hosted instances. The first is a code injection vulnerability that can allow attackers to execute arbitrary code, the second stems from a code injection weakness that enables them to escalate privileges, and the third allows threat actors to access or modify instance data through SQL injection attacks.
A cyberattack on Manchester Airports Group exposed data of 8.7 million customers across Manchester, Stansted, and East Midlands airports. Manchester Airports Group disclosed that an unauthorised third party accessed customer data belonging to approximately 8.7 million people across three of England’s busiest airports: Manchester, London Stansted, and East Midlands. “Manchester, London Stansted and East Midlands airports have been hit by a cyber-attack in which hackers accessed the data of about 8.7 million customers.” reads the report published by The Guardian. “The incident involved data related to “car park, lounge and fast-track bookings and in-airport wifi sign-ups”, and the hackers obtained email addresses, phone numbers, vehicle registration numbers and postcodes, said Manchester Airports Group (MAG), which operates the three hubs.” MAG says it learned about the incident on Tuesday, August 25, after attackers breached the system over the weekend. The affected data included car park bookings, lounge and fast-track security reservations, and airport Wi-Fi sign-ups. Attackers accessed email addresses, phone numbers, vehicle registration numbers, and postcodes. The system did not store bank or payment details. According to MAG, most of the 8.7 million affected customers only lost their email addresses, while the impact varies depending on which services they used. The attack did not disrupt airport operations or flights. As a precaution, MAG temporarily suspended its Manage My Booking service, but all existing reservations remain valid. Customers who need to change a booking within the next 72 hours can use a dedicated phone line. “We would urge you to be particularly cautious of unexpected emails, calls or text messages claiming to be from us. We will never contact you unexpectedly to ask for payment or banking information. We apologise for any inconvenience or concern this may cause.” reads the email sent by Stansted to affected customers. That warning is relevant because the combination of an email address, a phone number, and the knowledge that someone recently made a parking or lounge booking gives a convincing starting point for a targeted phishing message. Attackers don’t need payment data if they can impersonate the airport convincingly enough to obtain it themselves. The timing adds pressure. The attack landed during the peak summer travel season, with millions of families flying back into the UK before the school year begins. The three airports combined handled around 54 million passengers last year, and MAG recently reported a record 66 million passengers across its network. The scale of the data exposure reflects the sheer volume of ancillary services these airports sell, and how much personal data those services routinely collect. The wifi registration system is the detail worth noting: signing into airport wifi typically requires a name, email, and phone number at minimum, and that information now belongs to whoever executed this breach. MAG says it quickly contained the incident, brought in external cybersecurity experts and notified the relevant authorities. No group has claimed responsibility, and investigators have not publicly linked the attack to any specific actor. The incident adds to a growing list of cyberattacks against UK infrastructure. Earlier in August, Iran-linked hackers took a British power plant offline for four days, marking the first confirmed case of Iranian actors shutting down a UK generator. Last year, attacks disrupted production at Jaguar Land Rover and targeted Marks & Spencer, Harrods and the Co-op. Heathrow also faced flight delays and cancellations after attackers disrupted check-in and boarding systems used by several European airports. MAG’s breach adds further pressure on UK infrastructure operators to strengthen their cyber defenses. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, UK Airport Operator MAG)
Security researcher Olivier Laflamme has disclosed two independent root remote code execution (RCE) chains affecting the Unitree G1 EDU, including a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) path that can reach root on the robot's Locomotion PC. The flaws are tracked as CVE-2026-76639 and CVE-2026-76640, with the first involving a network-adjacent path through chat_go and bashrunner and the
Google is introducing new network security protections in Android 17 to strengthen connection privacy, address cellular vulnerabilities, and protect the privacy of users’ home networks. Android 17 adds support for Encrypted Client Hello (ECH), a new privacy standard that operates in conjunction with private DNS to hide profiling metadata, including visited domain names. ECH acts as a privacy extension for TLS, the protocol that secures HTTPS connections, encrypting the opening part of the TLS handshake that reveals the contacted hostname via the Server Name Indication (SNI). Even if the connection to a website or service is secure, internet service providers (ISPs) and Wi-Fi operators can still see the destination, which can be collected for commercial profiling purposes. Android users benefit from ECH when browsing with Chrome 117 and later or Firefox 119 and later, but Android 17 incorporates the protection at the platform level.
Australian authorities have arrested and charged two young men accused of being part of the TeamPCP hacking group linked to a string of far-reaching developer supply chain attacks. TeamPCP is a hacking group known for widespread supply-chain attacks over the past year that targeted open-source software and developer platforms to steal credentials, authentication secrets, and source code. High-profile attacks attributed to TeamPCP have impacted Trivy, LiteLLM, Telnyx, SAP, and TanStack packages, while the group has also breached the European Commission, Mistral AI, OpenAI, and GitHub. To carry out their attacks, the threat actors injected malicious code into software hosted on open-source repositories, which developers then unknowingly incorporated into their own applications on systems used by government, academic, and private-sector organizations.
CISA urges water utilities to find and secure internet-exposed PLCs after July attacks showed how easily exposed industrial systems can be compromised. Over 100 internet-exposed systems in the US water and wastewater sector got hit by cyberattacks in July 2026, and CISA’s response wasn’t just an incident report, it was a how-to guide for making sure it doesn’t happen to you next. The agency’s exposure reduction guidance, published August 21, walks through exactly how organizations can find their own internet-facing weak points before an attacker does. The pattern behind the July attacks was surprisingly simple. Most of the affected systems were programmable logic controllers (PLCs), small industrial computers that control pumps and valves. Many connected directly to cellular modems and had no firewall or gateway between them and the internet. CISA warns that this type of setup can expose PLCs to serious security risks. “Directly connecting PLCs to the internet through cellular modems can create significant security risks. However, internet exposure reduction does not mean disabling necessary remote access; organizations should remove remote access when it is unnecessary and secure it when it is necessary.” states CISA. Hackers remotely accessed exposed PLCs, changed device IP addresses and passwords, and in some cases disabled shutdown processes and alarms, creating what CISA called unsafe conditions without notifying the operators running the actual equipment. Iran is the suspected actor behind much of this activity, likely tied to the ongoing war involving the US and Israel, though officials have stopped short of a formal attribution. CISA presents reconnaissance as an ongoing process. Organizations need to know which systems they expose to the internet and can use tools such as Shodan, Censys, or CISA’s Cyber Hygiene Vulnerability Scanning service to check their own IP ranges from the outside. The review should also cover ports used by industrial systems. Besides SSH, RDP, and HTTP, CISA highlights protocols such as Modbus, EtherNet/IP, DNP3, BACnet, and OPC UA. Finding one of these ports open does not automatically mean the system has been compromised, but it does indicate an exposure that needs to be investigated and addressed quickly. Where remote access is genuinely necessary, CISA’s advice is to route everything through a secure, centrally managed gateway rather than connecting straight to a PLC, HMI, or remote terminal unit. Pair that with phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication, unique credentials instead of shared defaults, and active monitoring of traffic in and out, and you’ve closed most of the gap that let this particular wave of attacks succeed in the first place. None of this is exotic security engineering; it’s the same basic hygiene that’s been recommended for years, just finally getting attention because attackers are actually using the gap. This isn’t an isolated incident CISA is responding to reactively, either. The water sector attacks sit inside a much larger pattern of nation-state interest in US and allied critical infrastructure, from China’s Volt Typhoon reportedly pre-positioning malware inside American infrastructure as a potential wartime disruption tool, to Russian-linked campaigns testing water and energy systems across Europe as part of broader pressure on NATO. If a foreign government is willing to spend years quietly waiting inside a power grid, an exposed PLC with a factory-default password isn’t a minor oversight, it’s an open invitation. “CISA urges all critical infrastructure organizations to route all necessary remote access through a secure gateway, firewall, VPN, or other centrally managed access solution, rather than connecting directly to a PLC, human-machine interface (HMI), or remote terminal unit (RTU).” concludes CISA. “The July 2026 malicious cyber activity targeting WWS Sector entities demonstrates the consequences of directly exposing PLCs to the internet. Threat actors remotely accessed internet-exposed PLCs, changed device IP addresses and passwords, and caused loss of monitoring and control functionality and, in some cases, operational disruptions.” If you run anything with the letters PLC, SCADA, ICS, or HMI in its job description, this guidance isn’t optional reading for next quarter. Go run the scan today, because the alternative is finding out the hard way that someone else already ran it for you. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, Water Utilities)
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