Attackers are increasingly targeting the processes used to establish or recover identity rather than attacking the login itself. Specops explains how stronger identity verification can help organizations prevent fake workers and social engineering attacks from gaining legitimate access.
Threat actors have already compromised over 270 Zimbra instances in remote code execution attacks targeting a high-severity Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) vulnerability. The ZCS email and collaboration suite is used by hundreds of millions of people and organizations, including thousands of businesses and hundreds of government agencies worldwide. Synacor patched the security flaw (tracked as CVE-2026-73570), which allows unauthenticated attackers to gain code execution remotely by exploiting a command injection weakness in the SNMP monitoring component when SNMP notifications are enabled, with the release of ZCS version 10.1.20 on July 20. CERT Polska, the Polish Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), first flagged the vulnerability as targeted in the wild last Monday, when it also warned security teams to check their logs for suspicious activity, including the Zimbra service restarting unexpectedly, and for files created in the /opt/zimbra/jetty/webapps/, /opt/zimbra/jetty_base/webapps/, and /tmp/ folders by user zimbra over the last 30 days.
Law enforcement agencies from 22 countries helped identify 263 suspects and arrested 58 individuals linked to cybercrime networks coordinated by African crime groups. The "Operation Jackal IV" international joint action targeted West African criminal networks between November 2025 and June 2026. The operation also focused on disrupting the Black Axe cybercrime syndicate, known for its involvement in global-scale cyber-enabled financial fraud. Most commonly, Black Axe and similar criminal rings are targeting victims in romance scams, cryptocurrency and investment scams, or business email compromise fraud, but they've often also been linked to violent crimes. During Operation Jackal IV, Argentinian law officers made 17 arrests, and they linked 196 suspects to a major Crime-as-a-Service network that provided West African organized crime groups with web domains and money-laundering support.
Explore Unit 42 research on AI-enabled malware. Learn how existing behavioral detection and endpoint analytics stop AI-authored code before execution. The post The State of AI-Enabled Malware August 2026: From Brand Abuse to Agentic Execution appeared first on Unit 42.
U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) adds Oracle flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added an Oracle HTTP Server and Oracle Weblogic Server Proxy Plug-in flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-21962 (CVSS score of 10,0), to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. CVE-2026-21962 is a critical, unauthenticated vulnerability affecting the Oracle HTTP Server and Oracle WebLogic Server Proxy Plug-in for Apache HTTP Server and IIS. An attacker does not need an account or valid credentials. With network access, they can exploit the flaw remotely through HTTP and potentially compromise the affected server. Successful exploitation could allow the attacker to access, modify or delete critical data, potentially gaining broad access to information available through the affected components. “Oracle HTTP Server and Oracle WebLogic Server Proxy Plug-in contain an improper access control vulnerability that can result in unauthorized creation, deletion, or modification access to critical data as well as unauthorized access to critical data or complete access to all Oracle HTTP Server and Oracle WebLogic Server Proxy Plug-in accessible data,” CISA reports. The vulnerability also has a scope-change impact, meaning an attacker who exploits it could potentially affect other systems or applications connected to the vulnerable Oracle components. The flaw affects versions: 12.2.1.4.0, 14.1.1.0.0 and 14.1.2.0.0. In practical terms, this is dangerous because an internet-accessible Oracle WebLogic proxy component could provide an attacker with a path into critical backend systems without requiring authentication. In March 2026, CloudSEK researchers detected attacks targeting several known flaws in Oracle WebLogic against its honeypot network. Attackers also targeted CVE-2026-21962 along with older WebLogic RCE vulnerabilities, including CVE-2020-14882/14883, CVE-2020-2551 and CVE-2017-10271. “This report analyzes attack data collected from a high-interaction honeypot simulating a vulnerable Oracle WebLogic Server (v14.1.1.0.0) over a 12-day period (Jan 22 – Feb 3, 2026). The primary focus is the immediate and widespread exploitation of the newly disclosed, critical unauthenticated Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability, CVE-2026-21962 (CVSS: 10.0).” ” reads the report published CloudSEK. “In addition to CVE-2026-21962, the honeypot captured attacks targeting other persistent, critical WebLogic RCE flaws, including CVE-2020-14882/14883 (Console RCE), CVE-2020-2551 (IIOP RCE), and CVE-2017-10271 (WLS-WSAT RCE). This confirms that threat actors continue to rely on a small set of highly-effective, simple-to-exploit vulnerabilities to compromise WebLogic environments.” According to Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities, FCEB agencies have to address the identified vulnerabilities by the due date to protect their networks against attacks exploiting the flaws in the catalog. Experts also recommend that private organizations review the Catalog and address the vulnerabilities in their infrastructure. CISA orders federal agencies to fix the flaw by August 27, 2026. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, CISA)
Bad actors are attempting to exploit two severe unauthenticated authentication bypasses in the Xecurify miniOrange SAML 2.0 Single Sign On plugin that make it possible for an attacker to sign in as any WordPress user, including administrators. The vulnerabilities, as disclosed by Patchstack, are listed below - CVE-2026-61979 (CVSS score: 8.1) - An unauthenticated privilege escalation
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday added a maximum-severity security flaw impacting Oracle HTTP Server and Oracle WebLogic Server to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-21962 (CVSS score: 10.0), allows an unauthenticated attacker with network access via HTTP to
An unpatched vulnerability in Calix GS7 XGS (GS5239XG) residential routers used by multiple U.S. broadband providers allows remote, unauthenticated attackers to create port-forwarding rules that can expose local network devices to the public internet.
Hackers are attempting to exploit two critical authentication bypass vulnerabilities in the miniOrange SAML 2.0 Single Sign On plugin for WordPress that can be used to forge SAML responses and log in as administrators. The miniOrange SAML SSO plugin turns a WordPress site into a SAML service provider, letting users log in through corporate identity platforms such as Microsoft Entra ID, Okta, Google Workspace, or OneLogin instead of separate WordPress credentials. Created by Xecurify, miniOrange is a family of seven plugins, with a free version that has 10,000 downloads and 30,000 customers for the other six. The two vulnerabilities observed in exploitation attempts are tracked as CVE-2026-61979 and CVE-2026-15981 and can be chained together to bypass authentication. Because the miniOrange SAML SSO plugin accepts the signature algorithm from incoming SAML responses instead of enforcing the configured one, an attacker can leverage CVE-2026-61979 to select HMAC-SHA1. This causes the plugin to treat the RSA public key from the identity provider (IdP) as the shared secret.
A fake 113GB GTA VI build is packed with malware, using massive empty files to hide a tiny malicious payload. GTA VI hype has reached the point where people are volunteering to infect their own computers just to check if a leak is real. Someone on X asked their followers to “take one for the team” and test a 113GB file claiming to be a playable Grand Theft Auto VI build, according to Tom’s Hardware’s reporting. Someone did, and the results were exactly what you’d expect. A user that goes online with the handler @Aidas29506493 analyzed the file and found that it was completely fake and contained malware. Almost all of its 113GB consisted of empty data, with a tiny malicious payload hidden inside. did some reverse engineering. it is fully fake and full of viruses pic.twitter.com/An6VnSNTkd — Aidas (@Aidas29506493) August 22, 2026 “The decompiled bytecode literally contains commands to whitelist the entire C:\ drive in Windows Defender (powershell Add-MpPreference -ExclusionPath %SystemDrive%\) and kill security software (taskkill -f),” The researcher added in a post on X. They also added in another response, “It’s not 100 GB of actual code—it’s just a tiny 50 KB virus padded with 99.99% empty junk (literally endless zeroes).” It’s not 100 GB of actual code—it’s just a tiny 50 KB virus padded with 99.99% empty junk (literally endless zeroes). — Aidas (@Aidas29506493) August 22, 2026 The malware became obvious when researchers examined its code. It included commands to exclude the entire C: drive from Windows Defender and shut down other security software. Anyone who ran it could effectively disable their antivirus before the malware launched its next stage. This was not an accidental side effect, it was a deliberate step to prepare the system for further attacks. This particular fake didn’t appear in a vacuum. According to to the website IGN, that fake GTA 6 downloads have flooded piracy and torrent sites throughout the recent leak wave, riding genuine momentum from a leaker going by CyberLeek, who’s been releasing real gameplay clips and map footage in protest of Rockstar’s digital pre-order plans. That real leak activity is exactly what makes the fake downloads believable, since fans searching for CyberLeek’s actual content are primed to trust whatever else shows up alongside it. Every time GTA 6 appears in the news because of leaked footage, people quickly share it across Discord, mirror sites and other platforms. This creates the perfect conditions to trick users with fake downloads and phishing pages. With real and fake content mixed together, it becomes harder for users to tell what is safe. The scams go beyond huge fake game files. Researchers have found fake GTA 6 websites offering Windows installers that use DLL side-loading to run malware. They also found a fake “GTA 6 Mobile” app that redirects users to a domain linked to infostealers and ransomware. Other fake Rockstar Social Club login pages try to steal users’ account credentials. None of this should be surprising given the numbers involved. Kaspersky separately documented over 19 million attempted downloads of malware disguised as popular game titles across a single year, with GTA, Minecraft, and Call of Duty topping the list of abused brands specifically because of their large, dedicated communities. Big anticipated titles are a magnet for this stuff regardless of whether there’s an active leak cycle happening, and GTA VI right now has both the hype and the leak chaos simultaneously. There is no legitimate playable build of GTA VI circulating anywhere, full stop. The game launches November 19 on consoles, with a PC version to follow, and the only responsible move for anyone tempted by a torrent claiming otherwise is to close the tab. If the file looks too good to be true and it’s a hundred gigabytes of an unreleased AAA game showing up on a torrent site months early, it’s not a leak, it’s bait. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, GTA VI Leaks)
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