There are videos that were never meant to be played. Specialists from Censys discovered a campaign in which structurally valid MP4 files, impossible to reproduce on any player, serve only as camouflage to smuggle a remote access tool: NetSupport Manager, a legitimate application converted into a dangerous RAT.
The file passes as normal media in automated inspections, which is precisely its purpose. Technically it is correct, but it lacks dimensions and decoding parameters. Almost all of its content, around 99.95% of its 6.5 MB, is a hidden UUID box, a marker that indicates to the malware where the payload is stored inside the false container. As Censys describes it, it is "a convincing shell designed solely to pass automated file-type inspections while masking the transport of a large script".
As almost always in these cases, the initial push comes from a victim's mistake through the ClickFix technique: a fake CAPTCHA or a "paste and run" instruction convinces the user to execute a malicious command. The first-stage dropper verifies the computer name looking for sandbox traces, hides the PowerShell window and downloads the MP4 impersonating Chrome's user agent, so the traffic looks like ordinary video streaming. Then it decrypts, decompresses and leaves a secondary script in the %TEMP% folder.
The operators constantly rotate file names, from 333.mp4 to web02message.mp4, and use Russian-language business sites as a facade for their command-and-control infrastructure. So coordinated is the operation that Censys observed two gateway domains registered barely 77 seconds apart.
With NetSupport Manager installed, attackers gain complete visibility over the infected system: credential theft, espionage, lateral movement, cryptocurrency mining or resale of access to other groups.
The good news: just opening one of these MP4 files does not compromise your computer. The bad news: a single click on a false verification is enough. To protect yourself, never paste commands into the Run dialog or PowerShell that come from websites, distrust pages that ask you to "confirm you are human" with strange key combinations, block PowerShell execution for standard users through group policies and rely on solutions that analyze file content, not just the extension.
#Cybersecurity #ClickFix #Malware #Trojans #MP4
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Leaked courses from Andrew Tate's private club, the War Room, reveal far more than money-making tips and dating advice. Members were being taught how to bribe officials, spot surveillance, and dig up compromising material on wealthy and powerful people, all while the Tate brothers sit in a Miami federal detention centre fighting extradition to the United Kingdom.
An anonymous security researcher uncovered the materials while examining the publicly visible code behind Tate's infrastructure. No hacking was required: the sites themselves exposed internal links and technical metadata, and part of the supposedly private content remained accessible due to poorly configured protections. In total, the researcher found more than 12 TB of material. The collective DDoSecrets described an archive of 11.16 TB containing over 100,000 files, though access to this collection is granted only to journalists and researchers.
Part of the War Room material is already public. In June, DDoSecrets published around 19.55 GB of video courses, and back in December 2024 it released 75 recordings of closed meetings and events totalling 14.9 GB. The new discovery significantly expands what's known about the project's internal media library.
One of the most striking programs, called Operator, instructed participants on how to bribe government employees abroad. For low-ranking police officers, the course suggested modest payments of between $20 and $50. It also covered how to behave during interrogations and taught counter-surveillance techniques, including ways to notice when someone might be following you.
Another closed course, Penetrating the Elite, proposed applying intelligence-style tactics against wealthy and influential individuals. Students were told to find a target's weak spots, get close to them, and turn the information gathered into leverage during business negotiations. The materials claimed this approach had already been used against a well-known Hollywood director, a UFC athlete, a Fortune 500 executive and an Arab billionaire. There is no independent confirmation of these claims.
Separate lessons focused on relationships. Women were categorised by their supposed degree of vulnerability, and members were encouraged to control their partner's social circle, clothing, daily routine and even diet. The Date Magnet System course taught men to build an attractive but artificial lifestyle image and to approach roughly 20 women a day.
If you're concerned about your own privacy in a world where surveillance tactics like these are being sold as courses, some basics go a long way: use end-to-end encrypted messaging, limit what personal information you share publicly, watch for repeated strangers or vehicles around you, disable location tracking on apps you don't trust, and never assume that a private community online keeps its contents private.
#AndrewTate #DDoSecrets #WarRoom #Leaks #Surveillance
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The week started with a cryptographic wake-up call from the G7: everything encrypted today could be decrypted by quantum computers within a few years, so the shift to post-quantum algorithms must begin right now. While the world prepares for that transition, the FBI tore down a Chinese cyber espionage infrastructure, Nvidia swallowed Hugging Face for nearly $13 billion, and ransomware crews kept healthcare and federal agencies on high alert.
#CyberSecurity #PostQuantum #RansomwareWatch #DataPrivacy #WeeklyNews
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For years, the idea that Mac users can skip antivirus software was treated as gospel. Apple's marketing built an empire on the message that macOS simply doesn't get infected. Well, new global data from Kaspersky is here to ruin that comfortable story: over the past year, 12% of macOS users reported a malware infection, compared to just 9% on Windows. That's a third more threats hitting the platform everyone assumed was bulletproof.
Here's the twist: it's not that Macs are inherently weaker. It's that confidence breeds carelessness. Only 35% of Mac owners run dedicated security software, versus 42% of Windows users. The habit gap shows up everywhere else too. On macOS, just 51% avoid opening suspicious emails or links compared to 62% of Windows users, complex passwords are used by 45% versus 52%, and multifactor authentication trails at 46% against 51%. Only in a few privacy-related practices, like reviewing privacy settings or checking whether leaked credentials are exposed, do Mac users come out slightly ahead.
It's not just malware. During the last year, macOS users reported more phishing incidents (12% vs 9%), more online scams and fraudulent investment schemes (16% vs 13%), more privacy violations (11% vs 8%) and a noticeably higher rate of personal data theft: 12% compared to 7% on Windows.
The threat landscape has fundamentally shifted. Cybercriminals no longer build attacks around a specific operating system. Instead, they lean on phishing and supply chain attacks, techniques that hit anyone regardless of whether they're typing on a MacBook or a Windows laptop. The old argument that Macs were safe simply because fewer people used them died the moment attackers realized Mac users pay real money and guard it poorly.
#MacSecurity #MalwareTrends #PhishingAlert #CyberHygiene #PrivacyMatters
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Smart TVs have quietly become one of the biggest privacy blind spots in the average household, and a new investigation shows just how far LG has taken things. Researchers led by Gamers Nexus, working alongside Level1Techs, spent weeks putting an LG OLED G5 under the microscope with packet-capturing tools like Wireshark. What they found reads like something out of a surveillance manual.
The most alarming discovery came right away. The television kept listening through its microphone even in standby mode, while the screen looked completely dark. With the network disconnected, that audio was stored locally. The moment connectivity came back, everything got uploaded. In other words, unplugging the cable doesn't erase what was captured, it just postpones the upload.
But the TV wasn't satisfied with watching its owner. It actively scanned the local network, fingerprinting smartphones, smartwatches and other gadgets, and even cataloged nearby Wi-Fi networks along with their signal strength. All of this flows back to LG Ad Solutions, the company's advertising division, which openly brags about holding data from 216 million smart TVs worldwide, 49 million of them in the United States.
That's LG's own pitch to advertisers, promoting the ability to dominate the living room using data harvested from a television people paid thousands of dollars for. The company has publicly insisted its sets "do not collect, record or store ambient conversations," a statement that sits very awkwardly next to the researchers' findings.
Automatic Content Recognition, or ACR, takes what makes the practice worse: it snapshots the screen and samples audio to identify exactly what you're watching, even when the TV is used purely as an HDMI monitor. A compromised set could therefore capture sound from calls or presentations routed through that cable. And these panels aren't confined to living rooms: they hang in hospitals, waiting rooms, boardrooms and hotels, which raises uncomfortable questions about patient and corporate confidentiality.
If you own an LG smart TV, the researchers' advice is blunt: take it off the network entirely. Pull the Ethernet cable out physically, disable Wi-Fi in the TV's settings, and don't count on an external streaming box like an Apple TV as a fix, because the TV keeps spying on its own regardless. If you have several sets and can't isolate them all, block LG's telemetry domains at the router or firewall level, though the device may still log data locally. And as a universal habit, switch off ACR and personalized advertising in any smart TV's privacy menu, mute the microphone where possible, and assume every "smart" screen in your home phones home by default.
#SmartTV #LG #Privacy #DataCollection #Surveillance
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When it comes to open-source intelligence, one of the most common starting points is a simple username. People tend to reuse the same alias across dozens of platforms, which makes it a surprisingly powerful pivot for mapping someone's digital footprint. That's exactly where nexfil shines: a high-speed username lookup tool written in Rust, built for speed above everything else.
Traditional username enumeration tools check platforms one by one and can take ages to finish. Nexfil takes a different approach, relying on multiprocessing and finely tuned requests to verify a given username across more than 350 services about ten times faster than the usual alternatives.
Instead of waiting minutes for results, you get them in a fraction of the time, which makes a real difference during live investigations.
Nexfil deliberately avoids bloat. There are no unnecessary extras, no confusing menus, just a clean and efficient workflow: give it a username and it reports where that alias exists. This makes it ideal for quickly checking the online presence of a person or a company during the early stages of an OSINT investigation, without wasting time on features you will never use.
Since this technique is so easy to execute, it is worth taking precautions on the defensive side too. Using unique usernames for each service breaks the chain that links your accounts together. Avoid reusing your gaming alias on professional platforms like LinkedIn or GitHub, and keep your accounts set to private whenever possible. It is also worth periodically searching your own nicknames to see what a stranger could find, because reducing cross-platform correlation is one of the simplest yet most effective privacy measures available.
#OSINT #UsernameSearch #PrivacyTools #Reconnaissance #DigitalFootprint
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We have some important news for our community. We have decided to abandon donations through Telegram, and the reason is simple: The @tribute platform collects a huge amount of data along the way. Defending privacy while using tools that harvest your information simply doesn't make sense, so we're switching to a way of contributing that actually matches our values.
From now on, you can support the channel with Bitcoin, Ethereum or TRON. Crypto donations let you contribute without exposing your identity, without intermediaries and without third parties building a profile out of your generosity.
Any amount, no matter how small, helps us keep the channel updated, ad-free and fully independent.
Every contribution goes straight into keeping this project alive: researching new threats, publishing weekly news, reviewing open-source security tools and spreading awareness about surveillance and digital rights. By donating, you're not just supporting a channel, you're taking an active part in the defense of the right to privacy.
Thank you for being here, for sharing our articles and for believing in this cause. Together we are stronger.
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Most people believe that ignoring unknown numbers keeps them safe. The WeWorm attack proved the opposite: just an incoming call was enough to turn a smartphone into the next link in a digital infection chain.
Researchers at Calif built WeWorm as a laboratory zero-click worm targeting WeChat, the messaging giant whose ecosystem reaches 1.44 billion monthly users across Weixin and WeChat. Even without answering the call, the victim's account was taken over, and then the compromised account automatically started calling its own contacts to repeat the attack. The demonstration worked between Android and iOS devices with zero interaction from the owners.
At the heart of WeWorm sits a memory corruption bug in the VoIP stack of WeChat, the component that handles voice calls. There is one catch: the attacker must already be in the victim's friends list. But after the first compromise, that condition stops mattering, because the hijacked account can call its trusted contacts and continue the chain on its own.
In the test, a Pixel 10a called an iPhone 17e and gained control of WeChat while the phone was still ringing. The captured iPhone then called a second Pixel 10a and repeated the whole process. The entire exploit took mere seconds.
Answering the call did not save the device, and rejecting it only stopped that specific attempt, since the attacker could simply ring again.
The exploit hands over full control of the WeChat account: reading and sending messages, making calls, acting on behalf of the owner. WeWorm alone does not seize the entire phone, though Calif sees full device takeover as a plausible scenario if chained with other Android or iOS bugs, something never confirmed in the demo.
Neural networks played a starring role here. Calif says AI helped uncover the flaw, the remote code execution exploit was ready in about two days, and a full working worm took roughly another week. The team learned of the issue on July 23 and had the cross-platform demonstration done by August 11.
Tencent got word on July 24. Versions 8.0.77 for Android and 8.0.76 for iOS, released on August 21, neutralize the attack, and by August 28 Calif confirmed a server-side block covering all users. So far, there are no signs of WeWorm spreading in the wild.
And that is the uncomfortable part. Attacks like this ignore old habits: it does not matter whether you pick up or not. Keep WeChat updated at all times, install updates the day they ship, think twice before adding unfamiliar contacts to your list, and turn on any extra account protection the app offers. Silence is no longer a defense.
#Cybersecurity #ZeroClick #WeChat #MobileThreats #AIHacking
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Every developer knows the feeling: you land on a GitHub repository that could solve exactly the problem you have, only to spend the next hour drowning in undocumented code and a README written three years ago by someone who quit the project. That frustration is precisely what a new open-source assistant called Git-Friend was built to eliminate.
Git-Friend is an AI-powered GitHub companion built with React, TypeScript and Firebase. Instead of forcing you to scroll endlessly through commits and folders, it puts three practical helpers in one place: a smart AI chat that resolves Git and GitHub doubts on the fly, a README generator capable of turning a neglected project into clean, professional documentation, and Gitmoji support to keep your commit history readable and consistent.
For open-source contributors, it lowers the barrier of making a project approachable to newcomers. For team leads, it standardizes documentation and commit conventions across a whole organization. And if you are just starting out with Git, having an assistant explain best practices in plain language beats copying commands from Stack Overflow without understanding them. The project is completely free and welcome to contributions, so anyone can raise an issue, get assigned and improve the tool.
The code is fully available on GitHub, so you can clone it, run it locally with your own API keys and start exploring repositories in a friendlier way. Sometimes the best security and productivity tips come from the simplest tools, and this one fits right in.
#GitFriend #GitHub #OpenSource #AI #DevTools
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Forwarded from ANY.RUN
Phishing activity in the past 7 days ๐
๐ Track latest phishing threats in TI Lookup
#TopPhishingThreats
๐ Track latest phishing threats in TI Lookup
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IoT side channel (correlation) attack using WiFi.
Heuristic surveillance data is both widely under-reported and difficult to mitigate without tossing your devices and living in the stone age.
Heuristic surveillance data is both widely under-reported and difficult to mitigate without tossing your devices and living in the stone age.
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A previously undocumented Linux toolkit, dubbed Ted, has been found compiled directly into the HAProxy load balancers of two South Korean organizations, where it intercepted web traffic and served altered pages to selected visitors. According to researchers at Rapid7, the implant points to a targeted and highly stealthy operation.
Ted is not a HAProxy vulnerability. Installing it requires code execution on the target host and the ability to swap the running binary for a trojanized build, compiled directly into the victim's own installation, in this case version 2.8.12. This deep integration lets the implant abuse the load balancer's native filter API, internal memory pools, event scheduler, and process management infrastructure to intercept traffic, while legitimate load balancing keeps working normally.
The real danger lies in the position this software occupies: the load balancer is the SSL/TLS termination point, which means it decrypts every HTTPS connection before forwarding traffic to backend servers. Once the backdoor was live, the attackers could read, modify, and log every decrypted session passing through it without ever touching a backend server.
Evasion was baked into Ted's design from the ground up. Commands from the attacker's infrastructure arrived disguised as requests for a specific image path, terminating at the load balancer without ever reaching a backend server. The implant then decremented HAProxy's live connection counters, effectively erasing the connection from the load balancer's own statistics. As a result, nothing showed up in monitoring dashboards, backend logs, or load balancer statistics.
Before serving a manipulated page, the implant filtered requests using several criteria, including User-Agent, URL, referrer patterns, and client IP addresses, delivering malicious content only to chosen visitors in a watering-hole style loop. It also manipulated HTTP headers to hide any evidence of the tampered page from the visitors themselves.
Rapid7 Labs attributed the framework with medium confidence to North Korean state-sponsored actors, placing the two victims in South Korea's automotive and media sectors. Keep in mind that attribution at this confidence level should be treated as indicative rather than definitive. Beyond the backdoor itself, the campaign included trojanized versions of crond, agetty, atd, sshd, and polkitd.
The trojanized SSH daemon worked as a keylogger for harvesting passwords, while a companion remote access trojan, curlRAT, enabled data exfiltration, remote command execution, and script injection from internal servers. Evidence suggests the attackers may have gained their initial foothold through an exposed Groupware portal, a popular Korean enterprise collaboration platform.
#CyberSecurity #TedBackdoor #HAProxy #ThreatIntelligence #Espionage
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Most OSINT resources online are scattered blog posts or abandoned tool lists. Signal & Shadow, created by Derek Bowler, takes a different approach: it treats open-source intelligence as a full investigative discipline, with structured methodology, verified reporting and a reference library that covers nearly every investigative domain you can think of.
The heart of the project is The Signal, an investigative newsletter with a published verification standard behind it. A recent example shows the depth of its work: France 24 geolocated a contested wedding-strike site in Iran, and the analysis measures a 135-metre gap between the strike location and its likely target, a discrepancy that CENTCOM's own statement leaves unaddressed. This is not opinion; it is geolocation, measurement and corroboration applied to contested footage, the kind of analysis often reserved for state agencies.
The reference card library is organized by domain rather than alphabetically, which mirrors how real investigators work. Each card maps to a real investigative question across domains including Maritime, Aviation, SOCMINT, Financial Intelligence, Geospatial & Satellite, TELCO, Dark Web, Legal & Court Records, Corporate Intelligence, HUMINT, MEDINT, OPSEC and Geopolitical Risk. Practical examples show how deep it goes: one card cross-references Global Forest Watch loss alerts against IBAMA fines and Trase data to attribute illegal deforestation to named landowners and exporters.
Beyond the cards, the site offers step-by-step OSINT guides, methodology frameworks, and tutorials on AI techniques for investigations, plus integrated capstones such as verifying crisis footage end-to-end using geolocation, chronolocation, source verification and satellite corroboration in a single workflow. There is also a practical toolkit: an Admiralty Grader for source reliability, a Chronolocation Calculator, a Geolocation Verifier, a Hash Generator, and an OSINT Source Index. Free tier access gets you started, while the full archive unlocks everything.
Anyone doing OSINT, even passively reading, should protect their footprint. Use browser isolation (a dedicated profile or virtual machine), connect through a reputable VPN, and never log into personal accounts from the same session used for research. Prefer services with strong privacy policies, avoid clicking raw links to unknown sites, keep signed copies (hashes) of evidence you collect, and always verify a source's provenance before sharing its claims.
#OSINT #DigitalForensics #Investigation #OSINTEducation #Privacy
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The so-called "aura battles" are sweeping social feeds everywhere: challenges, poses and quick moments recorded on a phone that can turn a minor into the protagonist of the night. What starts as an innocent clip filmed for a couple of classmates can end up traveling far beyond its original context, landing in front of millions of strangers who were never meant to see it.
Once a clip spreads outside its original circle, pulling it back is nearly impossible. Strangers can stitch footage together, link profiles across platforms or spot personal details hiding in plain sight: a school badge, a street sign, a schedule glowing on a nearby screen. Memes rarely stay harmless either, because ridicule, harassment and messages from unknown adults can quickly follow a single viral moment.
Every recorded moment adds another piece to a footprint that never truly fades. Enough scattered fragments let someone map daily routines, build a fake identity or approach the child posing as a friend. And unlike an adult's trail, a minor's footprint grows silently for years before anyone measures how much of it is already out there.
The aura lasts a few seconds. The digital footprint lasts much longer, sometimes a lifetime. That's exactly why privacy, secure accounts and digital education matter more than ever in a world where any kid can become a meme overnight without ever choosing it.
#AuraFarming #DigitalFootprint #ChildPrivacy #OnlineSafety #DigitalEducation
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Automated security testing just got a serious upgrade. Strix, an open-source AI-powered penetration testing tool, has been trending lately and quickly climbed past 50,000 stars on GitHub. Instead of sitting down and manually walking through an application step by step, you hand it over to a team of AI agents that behave like real attackers: probing the app, hunting for bugs, and figuring out whether those bugs are actually exploitable.
This is where Strix stands apart from typical static scanners. It doesn't just report "SQL Injection found here." The agents actively attempt to run the exploit themselves, validate the finding, and then deliver a full report including the vulnerability, a Proof-of-Concept, and clear reproduction steps. That validation stage matters a lot, because one of the biggest headaches in security work is drowning in false positives.
By thinking like an attacker rather than just pattern-matching signatures, Strix helps teams prioritize what's truly dangerous. Findings come backed with working evidence, so developers can go straight to fixing the real problems instead of chasing ghosts.
Tools like this are powerful, but they complement rather than replace good practices. Keep your dependencies updated, enforce input validation and parameterized queries to prevent injection attacks, adopt secure coding reviews, and run regular pentests as part of your development cycle. If you use automated testing agents, always do so only on systems you own or have explicit permission to test, unauthorized testing is illegal in most jurisdictions.
#CyberSecurity #PenetrationTesting #OpenSource #AIAgents #Vulnerabilities
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Chase Hughes spent two decades building behavior profiling and influence systems for military and intelligence work.
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Privacy Not A Crime
We're really happy to have followers like this, especially on a channel as small as ours.
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