News
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FinCEN: Ransomware Payments Fell in 2024 After 2023 Peak, Report Shows
FinCEN reported 4,194 ransomware incidents from 2022–2024 with more than $2.1 billion in payments; activity peaked in 2023 and fell in 2024 after law enforcement disruptions of major gangs.
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Poland detains three Ukrainian nationals over alleged use of advanced hacking equipment
Polish police arrested three Ukrainian nationals, aged 39–43, accusing them of attempting to damage IT systems and obtaining data important to national defence; officers seized hacking equipment including a Flipper device, multiple SIM cards and other electronics, and have detained the men for three months pending trial.
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Google adds User Alignment Critic to Chrome to protect Gemini agentic browsing
Google is introducing a separate, isolated LLM called User Alignment Critic in Chrome to vet actions taken by Gemini-powered agentic browsing. The architecture also uses origin restrictions, user prompts for sensitive steps, prompt-injection detection and automated red-teaming; Google is offering bounties up to $20,000 and has not given a public rollout date.
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Critical Sneeit WordPress plugin RCE actively exploited, security firm reports
A critical remote code execution flaw (CVE-2025-6389) in the Sneeit Framework WordPress plugin is being exploited in the wild; Wordfence said attackers have created admin accounts and uploaded web shells. The issue affects versions up to 8.3 and was fixed in 8.4. Separately, VulnCheck observed an ICTBroadcast exploit delivering a DDoS botnet called “frost.”
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MuddyWater using UDP-based backdoor ‘UDPGangster’ in Turkey, Israel and Azerbaijan campaigns
Fortinet FortiGuard Labs says MuddyWater has been using a UDP-based backdoor named UDPGangster to target users in Turkey, Israel and Azerbaijan via spear-phishing Word documents that rely on macros; the backdoor includes persistence mechanisms and extensive anti-analysis checks before contacting a UDP command-and-control server.
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Leaked Intellexa Materials Link Predator Spyware to Zero-Day Exploits and Diverse Delivery Vectors
Leaked documents and technical analysis link Intellexa’s Predator spyware to exploitation of multiple zero-day vulnerabilities and a range of delivery methods, including messaging links and malicious ads, according to Amnesty International, Google Threat Intelligence and Recorded Future; Pakistan has denied the allegations.
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CISA details BRICKSTORM backdoor used by PRC-linked hackers against vSphere and Windows environments
CISA has published technical details of BRICKSTORM, a Golang backdoor used by PRC-linked threat actors to maintain stealthy, long-term access to VMware vSphere and Windows environments; CrowdStrike and other firms link the tool to UNC5221 and Warp Panda, while the Chinese embassy has denied the allegations.
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Cloudflare says emergency React2Shell patch caused brief network outage
Cloudflare said an emergency change to its Web Application Firewall to mitigate the critical React2Shell vulnerability briefly made its network unavailable, causing widespread 500 errors. The React flaw can allow unauthenticated remote code execution and researchers report active exploitation and circulating proof-of-concept exploits.
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JPCERT/CC confirms active exploitation of command injection in Array AG gateways
JPCERT/CC says a command injection vulnerability in Array Networks AG Series gateways has been exploited since August 2025 to drop web shells; Array fixed the flaw in May and users are urged to apply ArrayOS 9.4.5.9 or disable DesktopDirect and block semicolon-containing URLs if they cannot patch immediately.
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UK’s NCSC pilots Proactive Notifications to warn organisations of exposed devices
The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre has begun piloting Proactive Notifications, a Netcraft-delivered service that scans public internet data to warn organisations about exposed devices and recommend updates; it complements the NCSC’s Early Warning alerts but is not a replacement and has no announced end to the pilot phase.
