Four OpenClaw Flaws Enable Data Theft, Privilege Escalation, and Persistence  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 15, 2026 Vulnerability / AI Security Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a set of four security flaws in OpenClaw that could be chained to achieve data theft, privilege escalation, and persistence. The vulnerabilities, collectively dubbed Claw Chain by Cyera, can permit an attacker to establish a foothold, expose sensitive data, and plant backdoors. A brief description of the flaws is below - CVE-2026-44112 (CVSS score: 9.6/6.3) - A time-of-check/time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition vulnerability in the OpenShell managed sandbox backend that allows attackers to bypass sandbox restrictions and redirect writes outside the intended mount root.

On-Prem Microsoft Exchange Server CVE-2026-42897 Exploited via Crafted Email  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 15, 2026 Microsoft / Vulnerability Microsoft has disclosed a new security vulnerability impacting on-premise versions of Exchange Server that it said has come under active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-42897 (CVSS score: 8.1), has been described as a spoofing bug stemming from a cross-site scripting flaw. An anonymous researcher has been credited with discovering and reporting the issue.

CISA Adds Cisco SD-WAN CVE-2026-20182 to KEV After Admin Access Exploits  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 15, 2026 Vulnerability / Credential Theft The U.S.Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added a newly disclosed vulnerability impacting Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, requiring Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to remediate the issue by May 17, 2026. The vulnerability is a critical authentication bypass tracked as CVE-2026-20182 . It's rated 10.0 on the CVSS scoring system, indicating maximum severity.

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller Auth Bypass Actively Exploited to Gain Admin Access  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 14, 2026 Vulnerability / Network Security Cisco has released updates to address a maximum-severity authentication bypass flaw in Catalyst SD-WAN Controller that it said has been exploited in limited attacks. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-20182 , carries a CVSS score of 10.0. "A vulnerability in the peering authentication in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller, formerly SD-WAN vSmart, and Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager, formerly SD-WAN vManage, could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to bypass authentication and obtain administrative privileges on an affected system," Cisco said .

Stealer Backdoor Found in 3 Node-IPC Versions Targeting Developer Secrets  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 14, 2026 Developer Security / Supply Chain Attack Cybersecurity researchers are sounding the alarm about what has been described as "malicious activity" in newly published versions of node-ipc. According to Socket StepSecurity , three different versions of the npm package have been confirmed as malicious - node-ipc@9.1.6 node-ipc@9.2.3 node-ipc@12.0.1 "Early analysis indicates that node-ipc@9.1.6, node-ipc@9.2.3, and node-ipc@12.0.1 contain obfuscated stealer/backdoor behavior," Socket said. "The malware appears to fingerprint the host environment, enumerate and read local files, compress and chunk collected data, wrap the payload in a cryptographic envelope, and attempt exfiltration through a network endpoint selected via DNS/address logic." StepSecurity said the heavily obfuscated payload is triggered when the package is required at runtime, and attempts to exfiltrate a broad set of developer and cloud secrets to an external command-and-control (C2) server.

ThreatsDay Bulletin: PAN-OS RCE, Mythos cURL Bug, AI Tokenizer Attacks, and 10+ Stories  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 14, 2026 Hacking News / Cybersecurity News Everything is still on fire. This week feels dumb in the worst way — bad links, weak checks, fake help desks, shady forum posts, and people turning supply chain attacks into some cursed little game for clout and cash. Half of it feels like crap we should have fixed years ago.

Ghostwriter Targets Ukrainian Government With Geofenced PDF Phishing, Cobalt Strike  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 14, 2026 Hacktivism / Data Theft The Belarus-aligned threat group known as Ghostwriter has been attributed to a fresh set of attacks targeting governmental organizations in Ukraine. Active since at least 2016, Ghostwriter has been linked to both cyber espionage and influence operations targeting neighboring countries, particularly Ukraine. It's also tracked under the monikers FrostyNeighbor, PUSHCHA, Storm-0257, TA445, UAC‑0057, Umbral Bison (formerly RepeatingUmbra), UNC1151, and White Lynx.

PraisonAI CVE-2026-44338 Auth Bypass Targeted Within Hours of Disclosure  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 14, 2026 Vulnerability / API Security Threat actors have been observed attempting to exploit a recently disclosed security vulnerability in PraisonAI , an open-source multi-agent orchestration framework, within four hours of its public disclosure. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-44338 (CVSS score: 7.3), a case of missing authentication that exposes sensitive endpoints to anyone, potentially allowing an attacker to invoke the API server's protected functionality without a token. " PraisonAI ships a legacy Flask API server with authentication disabled by default," according to an advisory released by the maintainers earlier this month.

Windows Zero-Days Expose BitLocker Bypasses And CTFMON Privilege Escalation  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 14, 2026 Zero-Day / Vulnerability An anonymous cybersecurity researcher who disclosed three Microsoft Defender vulnerabilities has returned with two more zero-days involving a BitLocker bypass and a privilege escalation impacting Windows Collaborative Translation Framework (CTFMON). security defects have been codenamed YellowKey GreenPlasma , respectively, by the researcher, who goes by the online aliases Chaotic Eclipse and Nightmare-Eclipse. The researcher described as "one of the most insane discoveries I ever found," likening the BitLocker bypass to functioning as a backdoor, as the bug is present only in the Windows Recovery Environment ( WinRE ), a built-in framework designed to troubleshoot and repair common unbootable operating system issues.

New Fragnesia Linux Kernel LPE Grants Root Access via Page Cache Corruption  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 14, 2026 Vulnerability / Linux Details have emerged about a new variant of the recent Dirty Frag Linux local privilege escalation (LPE) vulnerability that allows local attackers to gain root access, making it the third such bug to be identified in the kernel within a span of two weeks. Codenamed Fragnesia , the security vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2026-46300 (CVSS score: 7.8) and is rooted in the Linux kernel's XFRM ESP-in-TCP subsystem. It was discovered by researcher William Bowling of Zellic and the V12 security team.

18-Year-Old NGINX Rewrite Module Flaw Enables Unauthenticated RCE  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 14, 2026 Vulnerability / Web Server Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed multiple security vulnerabilities impacting NGINX Plus and NGINX Open, including a critical flaw that remained undetected for 18 years. The vulnerability, discovered depthfirst , is a heap buffer overflow issue impacting ngx_http_rewrite_module (CVE-2026-42945, CVSS v4 score: 9.2) that could allow an attacker to achieve remote code execution or cause a denial-of-service (DoS) with crafted requests. It has been codenamed NGINX Rift .

Microsoft's MDASH AI System Finds 16 Windows Flaws Fixed in Patch Tuesday  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 13, 2026 Vulnerability / Artificial Intelligence Microsoft has unveiled a new multi-model artificial intelligence (AI)-driven system called MDASH to facilitate vulnerability discovery and remediation at scale, adding that it's being tested by some customers as part of a limited private preview. MDASH, short for m ulti-mo d el a gentic s canning h arness, is designed as a model-agnostic system that uses bespoke AI agents for different vulnerability classes to autonomously discover, validate, and prove exploitable defects in complex codebases like Windows. "Unlike single-model approaches, the harness orchestrates more than 100 specialized AI agents across an ensemble of frontier and distilled models to discover, debate, and prove exploitable bugs end-to-end," Taesoo Kim, vice president of agentic security at Microsoft, said .

Microsoft Patches 138 Vulnerabilities, Including DNS and Netlogon RCE Flaws  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 13, 2026 Patch Tuesday / Vulnerability Microsoft on Tuesday released patches for 138 security vulnerabilities spanning its product portfolio, although none of them have been listed as publicly known or under active attack. Of the 138 flaws, 30 are rated Critical, 104 are rated Important, three are rated Moderate, and one is rated Low in severity. As many as 61 vulnerabilities are classified as privilege escalation bugs, followed by 32 remote code execution, 15 information disclosure, 14 spoofing, eight denial-of-service, six security feature bypass, and two tampering flaws.

New Exim BDAT Vulnerability Exposes GnuTLS Builds to Potential Code Execution  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 12, 2026 Vulnerability / Email Security Exim has released security updates to address a severe security issue affecting certain configurations that could enable memory corruption and potential code execution. Exim is an open-source Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) designed for Unix-like systems to receive, route, and deliver email. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-45185 (CVSS score: 9.8), aka Dead.Letter, has been described as a use-after-free vulnerability in Exim's binary data transmission (BDAT) message body parsing when a TLS connection is handled by GnuTLS.

Mini Shai-Hulud Worm Compromises TanStack, Mistral AI, Guardrails AI & More Packages  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 12, 2026 Supply Chain Attack / Malware TeamPCP , the threat actor behind the recentsupply chain attack spree, has been linked to the compromise of the npm and PyPI packages from TanStack, UiPath, Mistral AI, OpenSearch, and Guardrails AI as part of a fresh Mini Shai-Hulud campaign. The affected npm packages have been modified to include an obfuscated JavaScript file ("router_init.js") that's designed to profile the execution environment and launch a comprehensive credential stealer capable of targeting cloud providers, cryptocurrency wallets, AI tools, messaging apps, and CI systems, including Github Actions, multiple reports from Aikido Security , Endor Labs , SafeDep , Socket , StepSecurity , and Snyk show. The data is exfiltrated to the "filev2.getsession[.]org" domain.

cPanel CVE-2026-41940 Under Active Exploitation to Deploy Filemanager Backdoor  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 11, 2026 Vulnerability / Ransomware A threat actor named Mr_Rot13 has been attributed to the exploitation of a recently disclosed critical cPanel flaw to deploy a backdoor codenamed Filemanager on compromised environments. The attack exploits CVE-2026-41940 , a vulnerability impacting cPanel and WebHost Manager (WHM) that could result in an authentication bypass and allow remote attackers to gain elevated control of the control panel. According to a new report from QiAnXin XLab, the security defect has been exploited by a number of threat actors shortly after its public disclosure late last month, resulting in malicious behaviors like cryptocurrency mining, ransomware, botnet propagation, and backdoor implantation.

⚡ Weekly Recap: Linux Rootkit, macOS Crypto Stealer, WebSocket Skimmers and More  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 11, 2026 Cybersecurity / Hacking Rough Monday. Somebody poisoned a trusted download again, somebody else turned cloud servers into public housing, and a few crews are still getting into boxes with bugs that should’ve died years ago — the same old holes, same lazy access paths, same “how the hell is this still open” feeling. One report this week basically reads like a guy tripped over root access by accident and decided to stay there.

Ollama Out-of-Bounds Read Vulnerability Allows Remote Process Memory Leak  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 10, 2026 Vulnerability / Data Breach Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a critical security vulnerability in Ollama that, if successfully exploited, could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to leak its entire process memory. The out-of-bounds read flaw, which likely impacts over 300,000 servers globally, is tracked as CVE-2026-7482 (CVSS score: 9.1). It has been codenamed Bleeding Llama by Cyera.

cPanel, WHM Release Fixes for Three New Vulnerabilities — Patch Now  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 09, 2026 Vulnerability / Web Hosting cPanel has released updates to address three vulnerabilities in cPanel and Web Host Manager (WHM) that could be exploited to achieve privilege escalation, code execution, and denial-of-service. The list of vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2026-29201 (CVSS score: 4.3) - An insufficient input validation of the feature file name in the "feature::LOADFEATUREFILE" adminbin call that could result in an arbitrary file read. CVE-2026-29202 (CVSS score: 8.8) - An insufficient input validation of the "plugin" parameter in the "create_user API" call that could result in arbitrary Perl code execution on behalf of the already authenticated account's system user.

Linux Kernel Dirty Frag LPE Exploit Enables Root Access Across Major Distributions  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 08, 2026 Linux / Vulnerability Details have emerged about a new, unpatched local privilege escalation (LPE) vulnerability impacting the Linux kernel. Dubbed Dirty Frag , it has been described as a successor to Copy Fail (CVE-2026-31431, CVSS score: 7.8), a recently disclosed LPE flaw impacting the Linux kernel that has since come under active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability was reported to Linux kernel maintainers on April 30, 2026.

Ivanti EPMM CVE-2026-6973 RCE Under Active Exploitation Grants Admin-Level Access  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 07, 2026 Vulnerability / Network Security Ivanti is warning that a new security flaw impacting Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) has been explored in limited attacks in the wild. The high-severity vulnerability, CVE-2026-6973 (CVSS score: 7.2), is a case of improper input validation affecting EPMM before versions 12.6.1.1, 12.7.0.1, and 12.8.0.1. It allows "a remotely authenticated user with administrative access to achieve remote code execution," Ivanti said in an advisory released today.

PCPJack Credential Stealer Exploits 5 CVEs to Spread Worm-Like Across Cloud Systems  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 07, 2026 Threat Intelligence / Cloud Security Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new credential theft framework dubbed PCPJack that targets exposed cloud infrastructure and ousts any artifacts linked to TeamPCP from the environments. "The toolset harvests credentials from cloud, container, developer, productivity, and financial services, then exfiltrates the data through attacker-controlled infrastructure while attempting to spread to additional hosts," SentinelOne security researcher Alex Delamotte said in a report published today. PCPJack is specifically designed to target cloud services like Docker, Kubernetes, Redis, MongoDB, RayML, and vulnerable web applications, allowing the operators to spread in a worm-like fashion, aswell as move laterally within the compromised networks.

PAN-OS RCE Exploit Under Active Use Enabling Root Access and Espionage  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 07, 2026 Vulnerability / Cyber Espionage Palo Alto Networks has disclosed that threat actors may have attempted to unsuccessfully exploit a recently disclosed critical security flaw as early as April 9, 2026. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-0300 (CVSS score: 9.3/8.7), a buffer overflow vulnerability in the User-ID Authentication Portal service of Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS software that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code with root privileges by sending specially crafted packets. While fixes are expected to be released starting May 13, 2026, customers are advised to secure access to the PAN-OS User-ID Authentication Portal by restricting access to trusted zones, or by disabling it entirely if it's not used.

ThreatsDay Bulletin: Edge Plaintext Passwords, ICS 0-Days, Patch-or-Die Alerts and 25+ New Stories  Ravie Lakshmanan  May 07, 2026 Hacking News / Cybersecurity News Bad week. Turns out the easiest way to get hacked in 2026 is still the same old garbage: shady packages, fake apps, forgotten DNS junk, scam ads, and stolen logins getting dumped into Discord channels like it’s normal. Some of these attack chains don’t even feel sophisticated anymore.