The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned federal agencies that threat actors are now exploiting a critical MLflow vulnerability. MLflow is an open-source AI engineering platform for large language models (LLMs) and agents backed by the Linux Foundation, with over 30 million monthly downloads, used by thousands of organizations to debug, evaluate, optimize, and monitor AI applications. Tracked as CVE-2026-64849, this critical DNS-rebinding server-side request forgery (SSRF) bypass in MLflow's outbound webhook delivery was patched in version 3.15.0 and can be used by attackers without privileges to remotely access internal services or cloud metadata configurations on unpatched instances. "The default MLflow Tracking Server (mlflow server, no authentication, default SQLite backend) exposes the model-registry webhooks API unauthenticated, including a synchronous POST /api/2.0/mlflow/webhooks/{id}/test endpoint that returns the upstream response status and body to the caller," MLflow's security team says in a security advisory issued three weeks ago.
A new Android malware named Manic targeting users in multiple European countries has a fallback mechanism for exfiltrating data through nearby infected devices. The malware has been active since at least February and combines spyware, banking fraud, and remote control capabilities. It targets at least 169 banking, government/eID, payment, crypto wallet, messaging, and authenticator/2FA apps, with users in Ukraine being the primary focus. Mobile security company ThreatFabric analyzed the Manic malware and found that it uses transparent overlays on the numeric keypads of legitimate applications to capture victims' taps and reproduce them through Android Accessibility, allowing the legitimate applications to continue functioning normally. After obtaining Accessibility and notification access permissions, the malware can capture the lock PIN/password, intercept notifications and SMS messages, collect files and location data, monitor the screen, and provide remote control to operators via WebRTC sessions.
The US charged 17 Iranians over a years-long hacking campaign that stole 31TB from universities, companies and government agencies worldwide. Eight years after the original indictment first went public, US prosecutors just added eight more names to the list. The Justice Department unsealed a superseding indictment this week charging 17 members of the Mabna Institute, an Iran-based operation running hacking campaigns since at least 2013 on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other government and university clients. According to DoJ, the group compromised systems at 144 US universities and 178 foreign ones, plus at least 42 US private companies, 11 foreign companies, five federal and state government agencies, and two nongovernmental organizations. They pulled more than 31 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property out of those systems, along with entire employee email inboxes wherever they had access. “The Mabna Institute stole more than 31 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property from these universities, as well as the email accounts of employees at the private sector companies, government agencies, and NGOs.” reads the press release published by DoJ. “The defendants conducted many of these intrusions on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), one of several entities within the government of Iran responsible for gathering intelligence, as well as other Iranian government and university clients. Nine of the 17 defendants charged in the S2 indictment were previously charged in a 7-count indictment announced in March 2018. The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman.” The hackers targeted more than 100,000 professor accounts worldwide and broke into about 8,000 of them in around 24 countries. They used stolen credentials to access research papers, theses, dissertations and academic journals, which were then sold online. The stolen material was offered through websites such as Megapaper.ir and Gigapaper.ir. Customers could buy academic resources or use compromised professor accounts to access university libraries. The operation turned stolen academic credentials and research into a profitable business. One name on the new charge sheet connects this case to something much more publicly memorable. Behzad Mesri, listed among the newly added defendants, was separately charged years ago with breaking into HBO’s systems, stealing proprietary data, and attempting to extort the company for roughly $6 million in Bitcoin. This indictment ties him and four co-defendants to that same intrusion as part of the broader Mabna Institute operation, connecting a headline-grabbing entertainment industry hack to a much larger state-linked espionage campaign. The financial damage extends well beyond stolen research. According to the indictment, other defendants ran password spray attacks against private companies and at least two government entities, causing victims to spend more than $20 million investigating and cleaning up after the intrusions. ““Today’s charges, which include eight additional defendants, reveal the broader network allegedly behind a sweeping, state-sponsored campaign to steal research and intellectual property from American universities, businesses, and government institutions,” said U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald for the Southern District of New York. “More than eight years after making the original indictment public, these charges make clear that the passage of time will not deter us from identifying and pursuing those who target the United States from abroad. Cyber operations have become a central instrument of national power, and attacks on American and allied institutions carry direct consequences for our security and economic strength. This office and our partners will continue to protect American innovation and pursue accountability for the individuals behind these attacks.”” Five of the newly charged defendants, Mesri, Galekuhi, Kahzadian, Fayaz, and Ballojeh, now carry a combined bounty attached to their names. The State Department’s Rewards for Justice program is offering up to $10 million for information leading to their location, funneled through a Tor-based tip line for anyone willing to share what they know. Given that most of these defendants are almost certainly still in Iran and unlikely to face a US courtroom anytime soon, that reward is really the only lever prosecutors currently have. An indictment isn’t a conviction, and every defendant here remains legally presumed innocent unless proven otherwise in court. But the FBI’s own framing of the case makes the intended message pretty clear regardless of what happens next: eight years between the original charges and this expanded version isn’t hesitation, it’s the department demonstrating that an open case file doesn’t have an expiration date, even when the people on it never set foot on American soil. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, Iranians) Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, Iranians)
StopAndProtect turned nearly 2,000 hacked WordPress sites into a criminal network for malware delivery, data theft, surveillance and ransomware. Check Point Research uncovered a cybercrime operation, dubbed StopAndProtect, that has turned thousands of hacked WordPress websites into a shared platform for malware delivery, data theft, surveillance and ransomware. The operation is a good reminder that a compromised website isn’t just a problem for its owner. It can become part of someone else’s attack infrastructure. “StopAndProtect is a newly identified operation that combines file encryption with data theft. The criminals abuse thousands of hacked WordPress websites as their infrastructure – using them to spread the malware, control infected machines, and store stolen documents, screenshots, and activity logs (records created by malware to track its actions, progress, or status during execution).” reads the report published by Check Point. Researchers first identified the campaign in May 2026. The operation starts with a fake CAPTCHA based on the ClickFix technique: visitors are told to prove they’re human, but the instructions actually push them into copying and running a PowerShell command. From there, the infection unfolds through several downloaders and loaders before deploying different malware components. StopAndProtect uses a toolkit of different malware rather than a single strain. Its components can encrypt files, steal documents, lock screens and even provide attackers with a chat channel to communicate with victims. That last point is important because StopAndProtect doesn’t always behave like traditional ransomware. In many cases, the operators first collect file lists and then choose specific files to steal. Encryption or screen locking may come later, depending on what the attackers find and what they want to do with the victim.research. The criminals used compromised WordPress sites for several jobs at once. The sites hosted malware stages, delivered commands, received logs and stored stolen files. Check Point discovered this because one of the servers exposed a directory listing through a PHP script, revealing more files, logs and open folders than the operators probably intended. The campaign appears to have reached close to 2,000 compromised WordPress domains. Many of the sites were running old versions of WordPress or outdated plugins, and one site examined by researchers was still using a 2021 version with almost 40 known weaknesses, including SQL injection, authentication bypasses and arbitrary file upload issues. “In one scenario, we suspect that the malware operator infected themselves and accidentally uploaded some of their desktop files to the collection server. This archive contains the source code of an automation tool for managing injected payloads at scale on compromised WordPress sites.” continues the report. “It also contains a few text files listing close to 2,000 compromised WordPress domains, giving us a hint about the size of the operation.” continues the report. The infection chain is straightforward enough to understand, even if it becomes more complex after the first step. A visitor sees a fake CAPTCHA, follows the instructions, runs PowerShell, and downloads further stages written in .NET. The malware can then encrypt files, spread through SMB shares and USB devices, steal credentials, capture screenshots, collect selected documents or show a ransom message. “We first noticed a ransomware family called StopAndProtect in the middle of May 2026. Further analysis of the infrastructure reveals that the infection chain starts with a ClickFix social-engineering technique, which prompts victims to execute a PowerShell command. This leads to two stages of additional downloaders and loaders written in .NET, followed by several main functional components, such as ransomware, SMB/USB worm, LockScreen, VBS spreader, chat utility and credential stealer.” continues the report. “Although the name StopAndProtect was originally given to the ransomware component, we decided to call the whole operation StopAndProtect, as it does not deploy ransomware on all its victims. In many cases, the attackers silently exfiltrate lists of files and later specific files from the infected machines.” The operators also built tools to manage the infected websites at scale. Check Point found an automation utility that could upload and delete files, enable or disable fake CAPTCHA pages, change redirects and manage additional payloads across the compromised sites. It was written with Visual Basic 6, a technology old enough to have a pension plan, but apparently still useful when the job is mass-managing hacked servers. The campaign also collected a remarkable amount of victim information. From mid-May to the end of July 2026, researchers found more than 700 archives containing stolen files, passwords, wallet information, screenshots and activity logs. One exposed directory held more than 20,000 screenshot files, while the researchers collected roughly 31,000 screenshots during the monitoring period. Some of the captured images showed victims’ desktops, browser activity, antivirus windows, ransom messages and lists of encrypted files. The malware could also monitor WhatsApp activity, search for a contact name and capture the person’s details, including a phone number. That moves the campaign well beyond file encryption: it becomes a surveillance operation with a ransomware component attached.research. Check Point counted more than 6,000 unique IP addresses associated with the campaign by 24 July 2026. The largest groups came from the United States, Russia and India, although IP location does not necessarily identify the victims’ real location or the operators behind the operation. The WordPress side of the story is familiar. Sites are compromised because owners don’t update the core platform, plugins or themes, or because administrative accounts are protected badly. Once attackers obtain access, they can install hidden must-use plugins that load automatically and create file-upload functions capable of accepting PHP files, which may lead to remote code execution. For website owners, the basic response is still the right one: update WordPress and every plugin, remove anything unsupported, protect administrator accounts with strong passwords and multi-factor authentication, review installed plugins and check for unexpected PHP files or unfamiliar administrator accounts. Web server logs, outbound connections and recent file changes deserve particular attention if a site may have been compromised. For visitors, the warning is more specific. A CAPTCHA should not ask someone to open PowerShell, paste a command into a terminal or disable security controls. If a webpage tells you to leave the browser and run instructions on your computer, close it. The CAPTCHA isn’t testing whether you’re human. It’s testing whether you’ll do the attacker’s work for them. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, WordPress)
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a critical flaw in the Elementor Pro WordPress plugin that, if successfully exploited, could lead to remote code execution. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-32475, carries a CVSS score of 9.0 out of 10.0. It has been described as a case of unrestricted upload of a file with a dangerous type. "The flaw lives in the Forms module's File
A suspected ransomware affiliate is posing as a ransomware recovery service called "Ransom Busters," contacting victims before the attacks become public and claiming it can provide decryption keys and delete stolen data for a fee. GuidePoint Security's Research and Intelligence Team (GRIT) disclosed this activity after responding to several recent ransomware attacks in which victims received emails from Ransom Busters offering to help recover from the attack. The messages were suspicious because they were sent to victims before the attacks became public, raising questions about how they knew about the cyberattacks in the first place. Ransom Busters claimed it exploited vulnerabilities in administrative panels used by ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operations, giving it access to encryption keys and data stolen from victims.
A suspected ransomware affiliate is posing as a ransomware recovery service called "Ransom Busters," contacting victims before the attacks become public and claiming it can provide decryption keys and delete stolen data for a fee. GuidePoint Security's Research and Intelligence Team (GRIT) disclosed this activity after responding to several recent ransomware attacks in which victims received emails from Ransom Busters offering to help recover from the attack. The messages were suspicious because they were sent to victims before the attacks became public, raising questions about how they knew about the cyberattacks in the first place. Ransom Busters claimed it exploited vulnerabilities in administrative panels used by ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operations, giving it access to encryption keys and data stolen from victims.
Japanese cloud and data center service provider Sakura Internet disclosed that hackers accessed its sales management system, where customer contract and membership information is stored. In an update today to the initial notification from Monday, the company says the incident may have impacted up to 1,360,563 member accounts. However, as the investigation continues, the exact number of affected accounts remains to be determined. Sakura Internet is a major Japanese digital infrastructure company providing web hosting, VPS, public cloud, data-center, and GPU computing services. It has been selected as a domestic provider for Japan’s Government Cloud program, making it a strategic entity in the country that reduces dependence on foreign hyperscalers. According to the firm’s announcement, hackers accessed its IT system on August 9. The incident was discovered later during the investigation of a separate breach at the Sakura Rental Server service.
Microsoft has reminded customers that systems running Home and Pro editions of Windows 11 24H2 will stop receiving updates in two months. "On October 13, 2026, Windows 11, version 24H2 Home and Pro editions, and Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB 2016 will reach end of updates," Microsoft warned in a message center update. "After this date, devices running these editions will no longer receive monthly security and non-security preview updates containing protections from the latest security threats." However, according to its support website, Windows 11 24H2 Enterprise and Education editions will remain under mainstream support until October 2027. Customers are advised to upgrade to Windows 11 25H2 (also known as the Windows 11 2025 Update), which has become generally available in September 2024 as a minor update installed through an enablement package.
Over 50,000 exposed Stripe API keys show how leaked secrets can enable fraud, data access and account abuse within hours. Ransomnews researchers have documented a large-scale leak of Stripe merchant API keys found exposed in public code repositories, GitHub Actions logs, and misconfigured web servers, with over 50,000 unique keys identified in total. The research is practical rather than theoretical: the team tested a sample of the keys, found a meaningful portion still active, and documented exactly how quickly a fraudster could exploit them. The answer is fast. “A dataset published on a data-trading forum on 18 August 2026 contains live Stripe API keys for 659 merchant accounts, along with roughly 35 GB of customer and payment data pulled from them.” reads the report published by Ransomnews. “Ransomnews analysed the files offline and reported the exposure to Stripe before publishing. Stripe itself was not compromised. The keys belong to merchants.” Researchers said that after finding an active Stripe API key, they were able to access a merchant’s customer list, create a fraudulent payment link and make a $1 test charge within 17 hours. The key alone was enough to perform these actions, highlighting the risks of exposed credentials and insufficient API protections. The operations a live Stripe secret key unlocks are extensive: listing customers and their stored payment methods, creating charges and payment intents, issuing refunds to attacker-controlled accounts, modifying webhook endpoints to intercept future payment notifications, and in some cases accessing connected accounts if the merchant had enabled Stripe Connect. A secret key is not a partial credential. It’s full API access. The sources of the leaked keys are unsurprising to anyone who has done developer security work. GitHub repositories — both public and accidentally made public, account for the largest share, typically through hardcoded keys in configuration files, .env files committed without a corresponding .gitignore entry, or keys left in code comments. GitHub Actions build logs are the second major source: when a workflow prints environment variables for debugging, any secret that wasn’t properly masked ends up in a log that anyone with repository access can read. Misconfigured web servers are another major source of exposed Stripe API keys. Researchers found over 3,000 servers revealing Stripe-related strings, with about 12% containing keys that worked against the Stripe API. The source of the 659 exposed merchant keys is unclear, but likely includes infostealer logs, public repositories, exposed environment files and misconfigured backups. The collector’s real advantage was systematically validating the keys, accessing each account and organizing the stolen data. “The dataset doesn’t say, and we are not going to guess at a single source for 659 separate merchants. The realistic candidates are the ordinary ones: secret keys sitting in infostealer logs lifted from developer machines, keys committed to public repositories, keys left in exposed environment files, keys pulled out of misconfigured backups. Stripe’s own documentation says the company scans for exactly this, and describes finding merchant keys on repositories and package registries.” concludes the report. “What the collector added was patience. Gathering keys is common. Validating several hundred of them, then systematically walking the API for each account and archiving the results into a consistent folder structure, is a different level of effort.” Stripe does provide automatic secret scanning through GitHub’s partner program, which flags Stripe keys found in public repositories and can trigger automatic revocation when a merchant opts in. The problem is that opt-in rate is low, the scanning doesn’t cover private repositories, and it has no coverage over build logs, web server misconfigurations, or other platforms where keys surface. Ransomnews also found that some merchants had rotated their keys after a GitHub exposure but left the old keys active, possibly because Stripe doesn’t revoke keys on rotation unless you explicitly delete the old one. The remediation is not complicated. Audit your current Stripe keys against your version control history to see if any have ever been committed. Rotate any key that has touched a public repository, a build log, or a configuration file that wasn’t explicitly protected. Enable Stripe’s restricted keys for any integration that doesn’t need full account access — a webhook handler doesn’t need the ability to create charges. And enable Stripe Radar rules to flag unusual charge patterns that might indicate someone else is using your key before you’ve noticed it’s gone. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, data leak)
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