A massive search-hijacking campaign involving 319 Chrome extensions with a combined 13.4 million reported installations redirected users' searches through tracking servers to generate advertising revenue from Bing and Yahoo. A new report by Socket's John Tuckner expands on the researcher's April 2025 discovery of 57 Chrome extensions with 6 million users, adding 264 newly identified add-ons with another 8.7 million users. "These extensions were created by a handful of organized operators all working from the same idea: quietly take over the browser's default search engine, route every query through a suspicious proxy server, and collect partner referral payments from Yahoo or Bing under a syndication partner ID," explained Tuckner. The extensions, with the full list shared at the bottom of Socket's report, pretend to be PDF converters, manual finders, safe search, and AI search tools. However, for the most part, the extensions simply redirect users' searches through a series of sites until they land on Bing or Yahoo.
AI agents can control authenticated browsers, interact with corporate applications, and access sensitive data while appearing to act as legitimate employees. Keep Aware examines three ways agents operate inside browsers and why traditional security tools may struggle to distinguish their activity from human users.
US election websites show improved security, but weak email protection, non-.gov domains and third-party tracking still expose voters to risks. Millions of Americans will use websites to check their registration, find polling places or track ballots before the November 3 election. However, a new study finds that many county election websites still have security weaknesses involving domain names, email authentication, encrypted connections and third-party tracking. Mysterium VPN’s 2026 County Election Website Security Census examines 2,081 county election websites across the United States. “42% of county election websites aren’t on .gov (869 of 2,081 identified). That’s down from 57% in 2024.” states the report. “Weighted by population, it’s 28% because the big counties moved first.” That’s an improvement from 57% in the company’s 2024 census. However, the findings reveal persistent weaknesses that could expose voters to impersonation, misleading websites and unnecessary data collection. These findings concern public information websites and their contact domains. They do not establish that voting machines, ballot-counting systems or election results have been compromised. The researchers started with 3,144 US counties and county equivalents but identified county-run election information pages for 2,081. Of these, 869 used domains outside .gov. Only verified US government organizations can register a .gov domain, making it a useful way for voters to identify official government websites. The study found that larger counties had made more progress: when weighted by population, 28% of residents lived in counties whose election pages used non-.gov domains. Texas accounted for 169 non-.gov sites, including 134 using the older co.<county>.tx.us structure. Arizona and Nebraska had no identified non-.gov county election sites. The FBI and CISA previously warned that criminals were using fake election websites to spread false information and collect personal data. Moving to .gov and redirecting older addresses can reduce confusion, although the domain alone cannot guarantee that every aspect of a website is secure. Election offices communicate with voters about registration, identification requirements and missing ballots. Weak email authentication can make it easier for attackers to impersonate these offices. Of 1,977 readable election pages, 965 displayed a contact address. After excluding consumer email services, researchers examined 942 county-controlled domains. “Of the 1,977 election pages whose content we could read, 965 display a contact address. Twenty-three of those are at consumer providers like Gmail. As in 2024, we set them aside, because Gmail’s security policy is Gmail’s, not the county’s.” states the report. “That leaves 942 county-controlled election email domains.” The study reported that 23% had no DMARC record, while 28% used p=none, a monitoring-only policy that does not request quarantine or rejection of unauthenticated messages. Another 30% requested quarantine and 19% rejection. Together, the first two groups account for roughly 51% of domains without an enforced DMARC policy. The report’s underlying counts total 941 rather than the stated 942, a discrepancy that requires clarification. The share of domains without DMARC fell from 41% in 2024 to 23% in 2026. SPF, another email authentication mechanism, was present on 98% of checked domains. Smaller counties performed worse. Among the third of counties with the fewest residents, 34% of election contact domains lacked DMARC, compared with 12% among the largest counties. Non-.gov domains also showed weaker protection: 32% lacked DMARC, compared with 16% of .gov domains. These findings indicate an association, not proof that adopting .gov automatically improves email security. DMARC enforcement can reduce certain forms of domain spoofing, but it cannot prevent every impersonation attempt, lookalike domain or attack involving compromised accounts. The researchers found 28 websites with consistent HTTPS failures among the 2,081 tested. Fifteen lacked a working HTTPS service, seven presented certificates for the wrong domain, and others had expired or untrusted certificates or failed to establish a secure connection. Another 178 websites would serve election pages over unencrypted HTTP if visitors requested them that way. Only 34% sent an HSTS header, which instructs compatible browsers to insist on encrypted connections. Sixty-three certificates were due to expire within 30 days of Election Day. A separate test examined third-party connections when election pages loaded in a clean browser, without clicks or scrolling. Of 1,930 measured pages, 84% contacted at least one company identified as a tracker by Disconnect or DuckDuckGo. The median page contacted six third-party domains. Google Analytics or Tag Manager appeared on 60% of websites, while Meta Pixel appeared on 3%. Mysterium suggests that some tracking results from default settings in website platforms rather than deliberate decisions by election officials. The presence of third-party code does not, by itself, establish unlawful tracking or prove exactly what information was collected. Still, counties should review whether these connections are necessary on pages designed to provide basic voting information. The study examined recognizable election-related domain names across several extensions, including .gov, .com, .org, .net, .us and .vote. Researchers identified 2,074 matching names that resolved to an address. Of these, 121 were registered outside government control. Thirty-eight hosted unrelated websites, eight were offered for sale, 73 displayed basic server or hosting pages, and two served gambling or spam content. The researchers also found 73 counties with a working .gov version of the name used by their non-.gov election website, suggesting that some had secured the official address without completing the migration. A separate test generated 14,456 single-character misspellings of 77 state and large-county election domains. Researchers found 245 registered variants and identified 26 that served parked, placeholder or unrelated pages after excluding potentially coincidental matches. The study does not establish that these registrations were malicious or identify their owners. However, a voter who mistypes an address or guesses the wrong domain ending could reach a third-party website instead of an official source. Across the seven states that decided the 2024 presidential election, 43% of identified county election websites were outside .gov, down from 55% in 2024. In these states, 26% of election contact domains lacked DMARC, compared with 39% two years earlier. However, 55% still lacked an enforced policy. The nine states whose 2026 Senate races were rated toss-up or lean in mid-October showed similar concerns: 53% of identified county election sites were outside .gov, while 44% of election contact domains lacked enforced DMARC. These figures measure website and email configurations. They are not evidence that an election has been compromised. Mysterium recommends that eligible government organizations complete the move to .gov, redirect old addresses, enforce email authentication policies and configure HTTP-to-HTTPS redirects and HSTS. Counties should inventory legitimate email senders before tightening DMARC policies to avoid disrupting valid communications. They should also review advertising pixels and unnecessary third-party connections, monitor certificate expiration dates and consider registering defensive versions of their domains. For voters, the report recommends starting with the state election office listed on USA.gov and following its link to the relevant county website. Voters should avoid trusting unsolicited messages or plausible-looking search results without checking the destination. If an election-office email comes from an unexpected address, voters should verify it using an independently obtained official telephone number. An unusual address is a reason to check, not proof of fraud, since the study found that some legitimate offices still use consumer email services. The researchers combined Census Bureau county data with official websites recorded in Wikidata and checked them against CISA’s .gov registry. They tested displayed contact addresses, email authentication records, certificates, redirects, tracking requests and lookalike domains. The study identified 2,081 election pages, compared with 2,913 in the 2024 manual survey. Automated discovery favored larger counties with better-structured websites, leaving smaller counties underrepresented even though some had weaker protections. The comparisons indicate progress but are not a perfectly matched before-and-after assessment. Different tests also used different sample sizes, and the tracking analysis measured a single page load from one location. The observations reflect October 17, 2026, rather than continuous monitoring. The findings provide a useful snapshot of public-facing election website security, but individual results should be rechecked before drawing conclusions about a specific county. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, Election Website)
U.S. law enforcement has seized the primary domain of Virtualine, a bulletproof hosting service advertised on cybercrime forums for facilitating illegal activities. The service also operated under the names Secury, Massgod, Spamhouse, Lanedo, and Omegatech, and promised to shield customers from legal complaints and requests from law enforcement and other authorities. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) confirmed that Virtualine marketed services that permitted “illegal/black hat activities” ranging from phishing, spamming, and carding to port scanning. The FBI seized the primary domain of the service, virtualine[.net], following an investigation that involved Germany’s Polizei Hessen, the Netherlands’ Politie Midden-Nederland, the U.K.’s National Crime Agency, as well as private partners OverRIPE and Lumen.
Microsoft again asked Entra ID administrators to migrate users to phishing-resistant methods to avoid sign-in disruptions before it retires SMS and voice authentication in February 2027. This retirement process applies only to Microsoft Entra ID workforce tenant authentication scenarios and not to Azure AD B2C or Microsoft Entra External ID customer identity scenarios. Before Microsoft retires SMS and voice authentication, admins should ensure all users in their organizations use a phishing-resistant method, since they will no longer be able to use them to complete multifactor authentication and log in to their accounts. Admins can choose from passkeys, QR code authentication, FIDO2 security keys, and other Entra ID-supported sign-in methods. "Microsoft-provided SMS and voice authentication will retire starting February 1, 2027. Complete your migration before rollout begins to avoid interrupting users' sign-in experience," Microsoft said in a Microsoft 365 Message Center update on Tuesday.
Attackers are actively exploiting vulnerabilities across critical network infrastructure, and PHP flaws known as "PHP2Shell" put the web management interfaces of firewalls, VPNs, application delivery controllers, and other appliances at risk. The findings come from Eclypsium's October InfraTrust Pulse, a monthly report tracking security advisories affecting network devices, servers, firmware, chips, and other infrastructure. Between September 18 and October 14, InfraTrust tracked 133 new security advisories across 18 vendors, covering 2,813 vulnerabilities. Of those advisories, 37 were rated critical, five had a maximum CVSS score of 10.0, and 58 could be exploited remotely without authentication. Sixteen newly published advisories included vulnerabilities listed in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (KEV) as they were actively exploited.
PHP2Shell shows how quickly attackers can exploit critical vulnerabilities, often before organizations have time to patch. Token Security explains why limiting the access of service accounts, API keys, and AI agents is just as important as fixing vulnerabilities to reduce the damage from a breach.
Threat actors are beginning to probe for a newly patched critical vulnerability in Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS), according to threat intelligence firm Defused Cyber. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-101767 (CVSS score: 9.8) , a case of improper authentication in the Oracle Application Object Library of Oracle E-Business Suite. It was patched by Oracle last week as part of its Critical
On Tuesday, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) confirmed that hackers have begun exploiting a critical Brotli vulnerability known as Node2Shell, Broccoli2Shell, and HTTP2Shell. Tracked as CVE-2026-111497, this critical-severity flaw stems from an out-of-bounds write weakness in the Brotli decoder used to expand data compressed with Google's widely popular Brotli lossless compression algorithm. Unprivileged attackers can use a maliciously crafted Brotli-compressed stream to trigger crashes or memory leaks and, in some cases, gain remote code execution on devices with vulnerable Brotli libraries or binaries. The security issue was first identified in the Node.js JavaScript runtime environment, but it also affects HTTP servers and clients that rely on vulnerable Brotli implementations.
U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) adds Google Brotli and Adobe Commerce and Magento flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added Google Brotli and Adobe Commerce and Magento vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog: Below are the flaws added to the catalog: CVE-2026-111497 (CVSS score: 9.2) – An unchecked return value vulnerability in Google Brotli that could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to corrupt decoder memory, expose sensitive information, cause a denial-of-service, or potentially execute arbitrary code by sending a specially crafted Brotli-compressed stream. CVE-2026-48356 (CVSS score: 9.3) – An unrestricted file upload vulnerability in Adobe Commerce and Magento that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user, potentially gaining elevated access or taking control of the victim’s account or session. Brotli is a data-compression algorithm developed by Google.It reduces the size of web content, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other text-based resources. Security researchers have observed exploitation attempts targeting CVE-2026-111497 (aka Node2Shell), a critical flaw in Google’s Brotli library. Previdian recorded one attempt by October 27, while ELLIO researchers recently detected traffic carrying a public exploit that could execute code on vulnerable systems. The activity may indicate attempts to exploit the flaw on a larger scale, but its scope remains unclear. An attacker can trigger the vulnerability to cause crashes, expose sensitive memory or remote code execution when applications decompress attacker-controlled Brotli data. Because Brotli is widely used, multiple projects and vendors have released security updates, including Node.js, PHP, Bun, and Microsoft .NET. Cybersecurity firm Wiz warned that 91% of cloud environments contain resources vulnerable to the flaw, while 82% have publicly exposed Node.js instances. The second flaw added to the catalog is an unrestricted file upload vulnerability tracked as CVE-2026-48356, dubbed PolyShell. Recently WordPress security firm Sansec warned of attacks exploiting CVE-2026-48356 to infect at least 953 of online stores. The attackers reportedly used a Magento CMS block to insert a malicious loader capable of retrieving and executing a payload hosted under their control. So far, researchers have not recovered the subsequent payload, leaving the campaign’s ultimate objectives unclear. The activity is believed to have been underway since at least July 2025 and remains ongoing. 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 flaws by October 29, 2026. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, CISA)
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