A phishing campaign used Google Calendar invites, trusted redirects, and fake login pages to hijack corporate Google sessions and bypass MFA protections. Material Security examines how Operation CloudFire tracked the attacks, blocked malicious messages, and helped take down nearly 900 domains used by the attackers.
SonicWall warned customers of two security flaws affecting end-of-life Global Management System (GMS) systems that will not be patched. Global Management System (GMS) helps IT admins deploy and manage thousands of SonicWall security appliances from a single interface, but SonicWall has officially replaced it with the Network Security Manager (NSM) management platform. The two vulnerabilities were found and reported by Pentest-Tools security researchers and affect systems running SonicWall GMS 9.5.2 and earlier. The first GMS flaw disclosed this week is tracked as CVE-2026-109593, and it enables unauthenticated attackers with network access to vulnerable instances (running GMS 9.5.2 and earlier versions) to steal sensitive information by reading internal files. SonicWall also flagged a second security issue (CVE-2026-109594) that can let threat actors with high privileges access or modify information stored in the GMS database through low-complexity SQL Injection attacks.
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned federal agencies that attackers have started exploiting a recently patched high-severity WordPress vulnerability in the wild. Tracked as CVE-2026-119977, this high-severity WordPress Core flaw stems from a Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition and was reported by Picus Security researcher Umut Bayram. Successful exploitation can let remote threat actors without privileges execute code on the server in high-complexity attacks due to predictable, web-accessible staging paths used during full-package core upgrades. "A weakness in the WordPress upgrade process which can lead to remote code execution during the upgrade window," the WordPress security team said on October 28 when it released WordPress 7.1.4 with patches to address this security issue. "Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately."
U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) adds WordPress flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added a WordPress flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-119977 (CVSS score of 8.1), to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. CVE-2026-119977 is a high-severity remote code execution vulnerability affecting WordPress versions 4.7 through 7.1.3. It stems from predictable, web-accessible staging directories used during core updates. Unauthenticated attackers could exploit a race condition to execute malicious code on the server while an update is in progress, potentially compromising the website. WordPress addressed the flaw in version 7.1.4. Threat actors began scanning for CVE-2026-119977 shortly after WordPress released the security update. Wordfence recorded more than 18,500 requests targeting vulnerable staging installer paths within the first 21 hours. However, these figures document exploitation attempts, not confirmed successful compromises. “Wordfence telemetry shows that threat actors are already actively attempting to exploit the vulnerability. The first match for our new firewall rule arrived nine minutes after deployment. During the first 21 hours, we recorded more than 18,500 requests targeting staged setup-config.php installer paths.” reads the report published by Wordfence. “Two of the largest sources repeatedly polled small groups of sites for roughly 14.5 hours, behavior consistent with trying to catch the brief upgrade window. Other sources tested many staging-directory and version-name variations.” 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 November 6, 2026. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, CVE-2026-119977)
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added a security flaw in WordPress Core to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The high-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-119977 (CVSS score: 8.1), is a case of Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition that could be exploited to achieve arbitrary code
Binance reveals how fake job interviews, malware and internal AI abuse enabled attackers to steal $6.34 billion. The Binance security incident on October 29 shows how a fake recruitment process can become the entry point to critical financial infrastructure. The attackers combined social engineering, compromised developer tools, stolen credentials and abuse of an internal AI application to reach the cryptocurrency exchange’s wallet signing systems. “Woah – so the Binance hack was indeed via a dodgy job interview for one of its developers who was tricked into downloading malware as part of the “interview” – costing the company >$3bn…” the popular best seller author and cybercrime expert Geoff White wrote on LinkedIn. “Worth noting: – The 2016 hack of Bangladesh Bank also attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group of hackers was via a job application – The 2022 theft of $625m from video game Axie Infinity happened via offering an employee a juicy job offer RECRUITMENT IS RISK. If you’re not educating employees on this, start now… – The 2024 heist of $1.5b from Bybit relied on tricking an employee of its supplier into downloading a dodgy share trading app onto the work machine (so not using a recruitment lure, but still deceiving a target into downloading malware)” In its initial findings and response update, published on November 3, Binance described the operation as a “sophisticated, multi-stage campaign.” The company estimates that approximately $6.34 billion in digital assets were affected. The FBI attributed the incident to the North Korea-linked APT “TraderTraitor,” also tracked as Lazarus Group and APT38. “Our current investigation indicates that this was a sophisticated, multi-stage campaign. It was not a single isolated breach or a simple phishing incident.” reads the update published by the crypto firm. “The attackers combined a range of techniques, including social engineering by fake recruitment interviews, malicious software downloads, compromised internal AI tooling, endpoint compromise, and an advanced transaction-authorisation method.” The operation began months before the theft. In June 2026, an engineer from Binance’s Wallet DevOps team downloaded a tampered Homebrew installation while searching online for a popular AI coding tool. Binance detected the suspicious activity, replaced the device and rotated the associated credentials, but information about the engineer’s role and colleagues had already been exposed. The attackers then targeted another software engineer through a legitimate job-hunting platform. In September, someone posing as a Project Director arranged two interviews: first with an HR representative, then with someone claiming to be the CEO of a fictitious company. During the first video interview, the supposed HR representative shared a social media account containing personal photos and videos to establish credibility. At the end of the second interview, the engineer was asked to download a technical assignment containing a malicious code repository onto his work computer. The malware executed during setup, replacing a legitimate development tool component with a malicious version. It used obfuscation to evade detection, executed commands and established communication with an attacker-controlled server. Binance said its endpoint security tools didn’t detect the malware at the time. “The second interview was conducted in a popular social chat app, near the end of the interview, Engineer B was instructed to download an “assignment” containing a malicious code repository onto his work computer.” states the firm. “The repository contained malicious code that executed during the setup process, initiating a series of unauthorized activities.” The compromise then moved beyond the affected workstation. On October 20, attackers used the compromised computer to abuse an internal AI tool and gain access to the systems of two other employees, including the Wallet DevOps engineer initially targeted in June. They discovered that his computer contained a token with container deployment permissions. This is one of the more significant aspects of the incident. The report doesn’t identify a vulnerability in the AI model itself. Instead, it shows how an internal application can become an attack pivot when an adversary gains access to a compromised employee’s environment and the permissions available to that user. “The attacker leveraged the compromised computer of engineer B and used an internal AI tool to gain control over the Wallet DevOps Engineer A and another Wallet Software Engineer C.” states the report. “The attacker soon discovered Wallet DevOps Engineer A had a container deployment permission token on his computer.” On October 29, the attackers used stolen credentials to access another engineer’s computer, deploy a container and execute a malicious script. This gave them access to Binance’s internal wallet signing service, allowing them to initiate transactions outside the normal withdrawal process. The transfers involved several blockchain networks. Five Binance hot wallets sent 233.46 million XRP to an attacker-controlled address, while other transfers involved approximately 970,500 SOL, 44.2 million OP and 18,270 BTC. The attackers also exploited Ethereum’s EIP-7702 authorization mechanism to grant a malicious smart contract partial execution rights over a Binance hot wallet. “EIP-7702 allows an account to delegate certain execution rights to a smart contract without exposing the private key. In this case, the attacker used that mechanism to give an attacker-controlled smart contract partial execution rights over a Binance hot wallet.” the company states. Suspending withdrawals wasn’t enough to stop the transfers because the malicious authorizations already existed on-chain and operated independently of Binance’s normal withdrawal infrastructure. Binance had to develop a specific procedure to revoke them. The use of Multi-Party Computation (MPC) meant there was no single private key that could immediately invalidate the unauthorized permissions. The final unauthorized transfer, involving 2,961.9 ETH, was finalized at 23:56 UTC. Binance cleared the malicious authorization at 00:10 UTC on October 30. The company estimates that approximately $6.34 billion in assets were affected, of which around $2.85 billion had been frozen or intercepted as of its November 3 update. Binance says it will absorb the financial impact and has already replenished 98% of the affected token assets, based on figures reported on October 31. The exchange has rebuilt the affected wallet infrastructure and internal AI tool, replaced compromised devices, revoked associated credentials and tokens, and strengthened endpoint monitoring and wallet-service controls. It is also engaging independent cybersecurity firms to review the incident. The attack highlights the need to treat recruitment processes, developer workstations and internal AI applications as part of the corporate attack surface. Technical assignments should run in isolated environments, deployment credentials should be short-lived and tightly restricted, and internal AI tools should never inherit unnecessary access to sensitive systems. Binance also said its security team had detected and prevented 57 suspected North Korea-linked cyber threat cases during 2026. These included fake job interviews, malicious developer tools, compromised software packages and browser extensions, fake video-conferencing applications and campaigns designed to steal credentials or deploy remote-access malware. The incident is another reminder that attackers don’t always need to break directly into critical infrastructure. Sometimes, compromising the people and tools that manage it is enough. “We are sharing this initial report because security improves when the industry learns together.” concludes the update. In September, Japan’s National Police Agency, the FBI, the US Department of Defense’s Cyber Crime Center, and intelligence agencies from Australia and Germany published a joint advisory about a group called WaterPlum, better known as Contagious Interview. The name says it all. The job interview is the infection vector. The numbers in the advisory are hard to shrug off. At least 30,000 devices infected across more than 100 countries, funds or credentials stolen from over 7,000 cryptocurrency wallets, and a total of 1.7 billion yen, roughly $10.71 million, funneled back to North Korea. The victims are almost always the same type: freelance developers and specialists in blockchain and Web3 work. Japan’s NPA and the FBI assess that both WaterPlum operators and some North Korean IT workers report to the same place, the 313 General Bureau of the Munitions Industry Department, under the Workers’ Party’s Central Committee. That’s not a loose affiliation. It’s an org chart. The trap itself is almost embarrassingly simple. WaterPlum actors pose as recruiters or hiring managers, often impersonating real AI, crypto, or NFT companies, and reach out on social media, job boards, and freelance platforms. Candidates get invited to a technical interview, then told to download a file to complete a coding test or fix a supposed bug on the video call. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, Binance)
Large language model hijacking attacks, also known as LLMjacking, are generating large fraudulent cloud charges, with some organizations losing more than $100,000 per day. Companies can record costs as high as $1 million due to fraudulent calls using stolen API keys, researchers at Google's Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) and Mandiant in analyzed incidents. Based on their observations, there are "two distinct operational clusters coordinating to compromise and monetize enterprise LLM infrastructure." The researchers identified two categories of threat actors: those who scan for publicly exposed LLM endpoints and those who steal valid API keys from unprotected machines. After gaining initial access, the attackers sell it to services known as LLM mixers, which provide their subscribers with unauthorized access to LLMs.
Cybersecurity company Barracuda Networks warned customers to patch two vulnerabilities that can let attackers run commands with root privileges. The first is a critical flaw (CVE-2026-116606) stemming from an Email Security Gateway (ESG) authentication weakness that attackers can exploit to modify an appliance's global configuration, while the second (CVE-2026-111560) lets threat actors with admin permissions inject OS commands that run as root. However, Barracuda said successful exploitation also requires access to the administrative interfaces of targeted devices and advised customers to use appropriate network access controls and restrict access to trusted internal networks to limit exposure. "Successful exploitation requires an attacker to have access to the administrative interface of an affected product. If exploited in combination, these vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to bypass authorization controls and obtain root access to the device," the company explained.
Google has expanded its Cloud Vulnerability Reward Program (VRP) with a new top-tier reward for high-impact architectural security flaws. Starting this month, researchers can earn $250,000 for Root-in-Cloud bugs, including tenant-isolation bypasses and complex cross-service logic flaws that let attackers gain full administrative control over arbitrary Google Cloud organizations. "To earn this premier reward, you must demonstrate full administrative control, the equivalent of 'roles/owner' or complete IAM control, over arbitrary Google Cloud organizations or projects with no prior access or special project setup," said Chris Betz, Google Cloud's Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). "Additionally, valid vulnerability reports demonstrating remote code execution (RCE) in underlying Google production infrastructure (Borg) or achieving root-in-prod will automatically be evaluated by the Google Cloud VRP panel for root-in-cloud eligibility."
Hackers who breached Harvard University's Alumni Affairs and Development systems in November 2025 stole data linked to more than 850,000 unique email addresses, according to breach notification service Have I Been Pwned. Harvard is a private Ivy League research university with over 20,000 faculty and staff, over 24,500 undergraduate and graduate students, and more than 400,000 alumni worldwide. As the university discovered on November 18, 2025, the attackers gained access to the personal information of students, alumni, donors, staff, and faculty members, including email addresses, telephone numbers, home and business addresses, event attendance records, donation details, and "biographical information pertaining to University fundraising and alumni engagement activities." However, Klara Jelinkova, Harvard's Vice President and University Chief Information Officer (CIO), said the breached IT systems didn't store Social Security numbers, passwords, payment card information, or financial information.
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