Morning Brief

At least four espionage groups, most with suspected links to China, are using a new exploit kit that chains two Chromium-based browser flaws and one Microsoft Windows bug to break into organizations' networks in the US and Southeast Asia. Mark Kelly, a threat researcher at email security shop Proofpoint, told The Register that the researchers don't know exactly who was targeted, nor how, and so far the damage appears limited. “In terms of organizations targeted, we saw fewer than 20 organizations globally targeted across the activity highlighted," he said. "However, the true number is almost…

A lot of this week’s security news has the same awkward answer to one question: “Why was that allowed to work?” An extension asks for access and takes too much. A trusted service becomes part of a phishing chain. An old bug still gets results. An exposed system stays exposed. A package looks useful right up until it isn’t. Different stories, same basic problem: the path in was often already

This One Goes to Sixteen! Another banger from Metasploit with sixteen new modules, including ten exploit modules, with five on the CISA KEV list. Cisco, Papercut, Sonicwall, Jetbrains, and Langflow all have exploit modules, and not to be outdone, we even have a Metasploit scanner to watch the watchers! New module content (16) Elasticsearch ingest-attachment Apache Tika XFA XXE Local File Read Authors: Bourbon Offensive Security Services and Jean-Marie Bourbon Type: Auxiliary Pull request: #21739 contributed by kmkz Path: scanner/http/elasticsearch_tika_xfa_xxe CVE reference: CVE-2025-66516…

GitLab has released patches to address multiple flaws, including a maximum-severity security vulnerability that has witnessed in-the-wild probes within hours of public disclosure. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-85706 (CVSS score: 10.0), a path traversal issue in the repository commits API that could allow an unauthenticated user to read arbitrary files from the GitLab server under

KATARU is a newly observed IoT malware strain that can turn poorly secured devices into DDoS attack nodes. The sample was captured after an attacker used repeated Telnet password guesses against a honeypot, then downloaded an ARM payload. It shows how old entry points still give attackers a foothold. The malware resembles the Mirai botnet family in its ability to flood targets with traffic, but carries wider tools. It can attempt to gain root access, stay active through reboots, hide command traffic, and run commands supplied by its operators. A compromised device can therefore be harder to…

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added a critical GitLab vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-85706 , to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, warning that attackers are actively exploiting the flaw. The issue affects GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition deployments and carries a maximum CVSS severity score of 10.0. CVE-2026-85706 is a path traversal vulnerability in GitLab’s repository commits API. GitLab said that, under certain conditions, an unauthenticated attacker could exploit improper path confinement and missing authentication…

A China-linked hacking group exploited a flaw in Sogou Input Method, one of the most widely used tools for typing Chinese characters on Windows, to install a backdoor on victims' computers, security company Gen Digital said in research published Thursday. The attack started with a crafted link and ended with the attacker able to do anything the logged-in user could do. Tencent, which owns

Wiz Research has identified active, in-the-wild exploitation of three critical and high-severity vulnerabilities impacting JFrog Artifactory (CVE-2026-42016, CVE-2026-42018 & CVE-2026-82329). Attackers are chaining these vulnerabilities to bypass authentication and gain administrative control.

This vulnerability allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on affected installations of Adobe Photoshop. User interaction is required to exploit this vulnerability in that the target must visit a malicious page or open a malicious file. The ZDI has assigned a CVSS rating of 7.8. The following CVEs are assigned: CVE-2026-75862.