ToxicPanda 2.0 targets 349 financial apps and abuses Android Wireless Debugging to gain deeper device access and steal banking credentials. ToxicPanda used to be a Europe-focused nuisance targeting a manageable list of banks. That version is gone. Zimperium’s zLabs team just documented ToxicPanda 2.0, and the numbers alone tell the story: 349 targeted financial institutions across 16 countries, up from 16 apps in the previous version, plus a command set that ballooned to 167 remote instructions. The infection starts with a fairly standard trick dressed up in a new coat of paint. The malware poses as a dropper, requesting VPN permissions through a fake installation screen, then quietly uses that access to block communication from Google Play Protect while it decrypts and installs the real payload hiding inside the app’s own asset files. Once installed, it leans on Android’s Accessibility Service, the same feature legitimate screen readers and automation tools rely on, to see and interact with everything happening on the victim’s screen. ToxicPanda was once a malware mainly targeting a small number of European banks. That has changed. Zimperium’s zLabs team has documented ToxicPanda 2.0, which now targets 349 financial institutions in 16 countries, compared with just 16 apps before. It also has 167 different commands that attackers can send remotely. The attack starts with a common trick. The malware pretends to be a legitimate app and asks for VPN permissions through a fake installation screen. It then uses this access to block Google Play Protect while secretly installing the real malware hidden inside the app’s files. Once installed, ToxicPanda abuses Android’s Accessibility Service. This feature is normally used by legitimate tools such as screen readers, but the malware uses it to monitor the victim’s screen and interact with apps and data on the device. “By abusing the Android Accessibility Service, threat actors can steal every UI element on the screen, alongside an overlay-based credential theft mechanism targeting 349 financial institutions, compared to the previous version, which targeted only 16 banking applications, the latest iteration demonstrates a significant expansion in targeting scope and capabilities.” reads the report published by Zimperium’s zLabs. “Several commands previously identified as unimplemented in Cleafy’s analysis are now fully operational, expanding the malware’s remote control and fraud capabilities.” What sets this version apart isn’t just scale, it’s a genuinely new privilege escalation trick built around a feature most people have never touched: Android’s Wireless Debugging framework. The malware automates the entire process of turning it on, tapping the build number seven times to unlock developer options, toggling wireless debugging, and then scraping the six-digit pairing code straight off the screen using accessibility permissions. From there it performs the actual cryptographic pairing handshake itself, gaining shell-level access to the device without the victim ever realizing developer mode got switched on. ToxicPanda was once a malware mainly targeting a small number of European banks. That has changed. Zimperium’s zLabs team has documented ToxicPanda 2.0, which now targets 349 financial institutions in 16 countries, compared with just 16 apps before. It also has 167 different commands that attackers can send remotely. The attack starts with a common trick. The malware pretends to be a legitimate app and asks for VPN permissions through a fake installation screen. It then uses this access to block Google Play Protect while secretly installing the real malware hidden inside the app’s files. Once installed, ToxicPanda abuses Android’s Accessibility Service. This feature is normally used by legitimate tools such as screen readers, but the malware uses it to monitor the victim’s screen and interact with apps and data on the device. The real danger comes from its ability to use Android Debug Bridge (ADB). Once connected, ToxicPanda can run commands through ADB without showing the usual permission requests. This allows it to give itself more permissions, remove Android restrictions on background activity, enable important components without the user knowing, and maintain access to the device. “The malware also introduces an automated click-based mechanism to abuse Android Wireless Debugging (ADB), enabling privilege escalation and shell-level access on compromised devices. Additionally, it can steal lock screen credentials by placing overlays on top of the lock screen.” continues the report. The credential theft itself runs on two separate tracks. For banking and crypto apps specifically, the malware watches which app the victim opens, matches it against a list of 349 targets, and either overlays a fake login screen or deploys an invisible transparent layer to capture every touch and PIN entry directly. Separately, it can now overlay a convincing fake version of the phone’s own lock screen to steal the device PIN, pattern, or password outright, which hands attackers a way back in even after the initial infection window closes. Several capabilities that security firm Cleafy had previously flagged as unfinished in an earlier ToxicPanda variant are now fully working. The malware can automatically click through OEM-specific permission dialogs across Xiaomi, Samsung, Huawei, and other manufacturers’ customized Android builds, request Device Administrator privileges using a fake “system service” prompt, and even remotely force-reset a victim’s lock screen password using legitimate Android device management APIs. It can also load an attacker-controlled webpage inside a full-screen overlay on command, a feature that simply didn’t exist in prior versions. Distribution has shifted too, with samples now getting served from Amazon AWS-hosted storage buckets rather than whatever ad-hoc infrastructure earlier campaigns used. “The updated campaign also reveals a shift in distribution methods, with ToxicPanda 2.0 samples being delivered through Amazon AWS-hosted buckets, indicating the attackers are leveraging cloud infrastructure for malware delivery.” states the report. Using major cloud providers for malware delivery isn’t new, but it does complicate blocking efforts, since flagging an entire AWS IP range as malicious tends to take down a lot of legitimate traffic along with it. None of this requires a sophisticated zero-day, which is honestly the more unsettling part. Every capability here abuses a feature Android ships intentionally, Accessibility Services, Wireless Debugging, Device Administrator APIs, all designed for legitimate accessibility and enterprise device management. “As mobile banking threats like ToxicPanda become increasingly sophisticated, conventional signature-based security layers are no longer sufficient to protect enterprise mobile endpoints.” concludes the report. If you’re responsible for securing mobile endpoints, this is less a “patch something” problem and more a “detect abnormal use of normal features” problem, and that’s a considerably harder thing to build detection around. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, ToxicPanda 2.0)
Windows named pipes provide fast interprocess communication, but weak access controls can expose privileged services to untrusted processes. ThreatLocker explains how endpoint verification, command authorization, strict input validation, and narrowly scoped privileges can help secure named-pipe communication.
U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) adds Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) flaw CVE-2026-73570 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. CERT Polska, Poland’s national computer emergency response team, confirmed this week that threat actors are actively exploiting the critical vulnerability in Zimbra Collaboration Suite. The flaw allows unauthenticated remote code execution and was patched less than a month ago. “The CERT Polska team informs about an actively exploited OS Command Injection vulnerability in Zimbra Collaboration Suite.” reads the advisory published by CERT Polska. “The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2026-73570 , allows an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary shell commands with the privileges of the zimbra user . The vulnerability affects instances that have the SNMP trap service enabled via the snmp_notify parameter and the swatchdog service running (enabled by default).” The vulnerability affects systems with SNMP trap notifications enabled and the swatchdog service running, which is enabled by default. The technical root cause is a sanitization failure in the SNMP monitoring component. Zimbra released version 10.1.20 on 20 July 2026 to address the issue. The fix came 28 days before active exploitation was confirmed, which is not a wide window, but apparently wide enough. The attack surface only exists when the optional zimbra-snmp package is installed and SNMP notifications are active, but swatchdog, the service that processes those notifications, is running by default on most installations. Below are recommendations by CERT Polska: “Due to the ongoing campaign exploiting this vulnerability, we recommend: verifying Zimbra logs /var/log/zimbra.log for the following entries: Service status change: <szkodliwy ładunek> changed from stopped to running Service status change: <szkodliwy ładunek> changed from running to stopped verification of files created by user zimbra in the last 30 days in the following directories: /opt/zimbra/jetty/webapps/ /opt/zimbra/jetty_base/webapps/ /tmp/ If you discover any signs of potential exploitation of this vulnerability, please contact our team immediately.” 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 24, 2026. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, CISA)
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced on Friday that ByteDance-owned TikTok will pay $400 million to settle a 2024 lawsuit accusing the company of violating child privacy laws in the country. As part of the settlement, the social media platform will pay $300 million immediately, and an additional $100 million "upon entry of an order vacating a prior consent decree entered against
Attackers are targeting CI/CD pipelines and developer tools instead of application code, requiring total SDLC visibility and strict security controls The post Connecting the Dots: Securing the Overlooked Corners of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) Supply Chain appeared first on Unit 42.
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a set of trojanized npm packages that masquerade as working calendar and streak utilities but are engineered to stealthily deliver an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered Linux implant dubbed RedC2 4.0. "When the module loads, it locates the bundled binary, marks it executable, and launches it as a detached background process," TrendAI, Trend Micro's
UMass Amherst researchers showed expired Visa contactless cards can make real purchases by exploiting an unsigned expiry field in Visa’s EMV kernel. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst demonstrated at USENIX Security 2026 in Baltimore that expired Visa contactless credit cards can complete real purchases, including transactions at live retail and grocery merchants, by exploiting a gap in how the payment protocol handles expiration dates. The paper is titled “Zombie Cards Back Online: Reviving Expired Credit Cards for Contactless Payments,” and the name is accurate. Raja Hasnain Anwar, Gerard DeCunha, and Muhammad Taqi Raza built the attack around a structural weakness in EMV, the contactless payment protocol used by Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover. “A central source of fragility is that the EMV contactless protocol is a selectively authenticated transaction flow. Many data objects are exchanged in plaintext between the card and terminal [2], and only a subset is later bound to cryptographic verification via Offline Data Authentication (ODA) and issuer-verified cryptograms.” reads the paper. “In consequence, an adversary who obtains a man-in-the-middle position on the NFC channel can tamper with decision-critical fields that are consumed by the terminal but are not end-to-end integrity protected. Prior NFC attacks [10–12, 44], including relay-based manin-the-middle techniques, exploit this gap by manipulating transaction-relevant objects in transit while leaving cryptographic checks intact.” The attack exploits a specific design decision in Visa’s Kernel 3, the software layer that implements the EMV protocol for Visa transactions. A Visa contactless transaction presents the expiration date twice: once in a field the payment terminal reads (tag 5F24, the Application Expiration Date) and once in a field the issuing bank reads (tag 57, Track 2 Equivalent Data). These two representations should be tied together by a cryptographic signature, but in Visa’s implementation they aren’t. The relay attack changes only the expiry date that the payment terminal sees, replacing it with a future date while leaving the data sent to the bank unchanged. The card’s digital signature remains valid because it does not cover the expiry date. As a result, the bank receives a transaction that appears legitimate and passes its normal security checks. In simple terms, an attacker can change the expiry date between the card and the terminal without breaking the card’s cryptographic protection. The relay itself is two NFC-capable Android phones running custom software over Wi-Fi: one emulates a card, one emulates a terminal. Each communication round trip added roughly 20 milliseconds for relay alone and about 50 milliseconds with the date modification, keeping the per-transaction average around 415 milliseconds, within Visa’s 500-millisecond command limit. None of the test hardware used EMV’s optional Relay Resistance Protocol, which would have detected the added latency by bounding permissible response times. Mastercard, American Express, and Discover all blocked the attack. Mastercard’s terminal checks consistency between the two expiry representations during record parsing and treats a mismatch as a card data error. American Express binds the expiration date into the data covered by offline authentication, so a modified value produces a hash mismatch. Discover’s kernel wraps the modified transaction objects into the verified transaction hash, and those also failed. Visa’s Kernel 3 does none of these things. The outcome also depended on the issuing bank. The researchers tested three banks with expired and replaced physical Visa cards and found three distinct policies, not a clean pass or fail split. Bank A accepted the modified transactions at $1.00, $100.00, and $500.00 in the lab, and completed purchases of $2.79 at a retail merchant and $3.19 at a grocery merchant on campus. Bank A also accepted transactions from both the expired original card and its replacement against the same account simultaneously, a separate finding that Anwar described as alarming. Bank B detected the modification but still accepted some transactions. A third bank tested on Discover’s kernel detected the edit and declined; however, it also showed the simultaneous-card problem without any modification at all. There is another finding that makes the issue more serious. Researchers changed the Consumer Device Cardholder Verification Method flag at five US banks, and the transactions worked at most of them. This flag controls how the terminal verifies the cardholder, and attackers can change it because the payment data can be modified while it travels between the card and the terminal. There is also another problem with Kernel 3. It sends the issuer a Terminal Verification Results value filled with zeros. This means the bank cannot tell whether the terminal checked the card’s expiry date or whether that check failed. The bank must therefore approve the transaction without seeing what the terminal actually detected. “Across all tests, the dominant factors that determine attack success or failure are: (i) the EMV kernel in use and whether expiry data fields are cryptographically bound to authenticated protocol outputs; (ii) issuer-side lifecycle enforcement, especially whether authorization is tied only to the active account and PAN or also to the specific card instrument and expiration date; and (iii) whether terminal-side validation results are visible to the issuer via TVR. In contrast, transaction amount1 , merchant category, and POS terminal brand did not independently determine the transaction outcome.” continues the paper. The researchers disclosed the findings to Visa in May 2025 and followed up in December 2025. The paper records that Visa acknowledged the report, said it passed initial triage, and indicated it was undergoing reproduction by Visa’s red team. No CVE has been assigned. Neither Visa nor any of the notified banks confirmed any mitigation as of the paper’s acceptance. The Register asked Visa for comment and received no response. The countermeasures the paper proposes sit at the kernel, terminal, and issuer layers: bind the expiry date cryptographically to an issuer-verifiable signature, require terminals to compare both expiry representations and make mismatches visible to the issuer, and have issuers authorize against the PAN-and-expiry combination rather than the PAN alone. For cardholders, the researchers recommend destroying the chip and magnetic stripe of expired cards rather than discarding them intact. Given that the attack requires only the expired physical card or sustained NFC proximity to it, that guidance is now slightly less hypothetical than it was before this paper. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, Visa)
A previously unknown malware family dubbed SynkLoader is being distributed in Microsoft Teams phishing campaigns to steal credentials via a fake lock screen. The attacker impersonates the target company's IT help desk, a tactic Microsoft highlighted earlier this year as increasingly common in multi-stage attacks. Expel’s security researcher Marcus Hutchins explains that the attacks direct the victim to install a fake “PowerShell Cleaner” executable (.MSI) hosted in Microsoft Azure, making the download appear trustworthy. Analysis of the malware showed "compile dates and file timestamps indicating it was first compiled and distributed around July 28, 2026." The installer extracts a PowerShell script named cleaner.ps1 and a ZIP archive containing the Python framework, a malicious Python script, precompiled Python libraries, and several fake Microsoft runtime DLLs.
Microsoft says ongoing issues causing games to crash or fail to launch after installing the August 2026 Windows updates may be caused by peripherals with RGB lighting. As Microsoft explained when it confirmed it's investigating on Wednesday, this known issue affects games like ARC Raiders, MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and The Finals on systems running Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2. "Following the release of Windows updates on August 11, 2026 (KB5121003) and later, Microsoft received reports of issues involving inability to run games as expected," Microsoft said on the Windows release health dashboard. On impacted PCs, users are also experiencing gaming freezes, "EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION" errors, and even unexpected system restarts. In a Thursday update, Microsoft said the gaming issues may be caused by drivers or components installed by RGB devices on affected Windows systems.
Using the same email, phone number, payment method, and other identifiers makes it easier for data brokers and attackers to profile your activity. Anonyome Labs explains how separate digital personas can reduce correlation and limit the impact of breaches, spam, and identity theft.
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