Ethical Hacking News
A new era of cyber threats has emerged, with AI-driven attacks exploiting vulnerabilities in trusted ecosystems. Researchers have observed a clear pattern of attackers abusing trust by targeting updates, marketplaces, apps, and AI workflows. As AI-powered tools continue to evolve, it's essential to adopt a Zero Trust + AI security model to protect AI usage and stop AI-driven attacks. Stay vigilant and review your systems regularly to ensure resilience against rapidly evolving cyber threats.
Ai-powered attacks have reached a new level of sophistication by exploiting vulnerabilities in modern ecosystems. Attackers are abusing trust by targeting trusted updates, marketplaces, apps, and AI workflows. The recent exploits of autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) tools demonstrate the risks associated with unsupervised deployment, broad permissions, and high autonomy. The partnership between OpenClaw and Google's VirusTotal malware scanning platform aims to improve security, but highlights the importance of user security competence. Bad actors are using new AI capabilities to expand their attack surface and enable lateral threat movement. The recent exploits of various platforms demonstrate the ease with which attackers can abuse trust. A stealthy Linux framework called ShadowHS has been discovered, which supports various dormant modules for credential access and data exfiltration. Cellebrite digital forensic software has been used against Jordanian civil society activists, highlighting risks associated with government surveillance and digital forensics. New vulnerabilities have been identified in platforms such as n8n, Hikvision Wireless Access Point, Apache Syncope, Foxit PDF Editor Cloud, and Django.
AI-powered attacks have reached a new level of sophistication, leveraging trust and exploiting vulnerabilities in modern ecosystems. Researchers have observed a clear pattern this week: attackers are abusing trust by targeting trusted updates, marketplaces, apps, and even AI workflows. Instead of breaking security controls head-on, they're slipping into places that already have access.
The recent exploits of autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) tools demonstrate the risks associated with unsupervised deployment, broad permissions, and high autonomy. The development of OpenClaw, an AI agent capable of performing various tasks, has raised concerns about its potential to amplify existing risks. According to Trend Micro, OpenClaw skills can be deployed to support activities such as botnet operations, making it a prime target for malicious actors.
The partnership between OpenClaw and Google's VirusTotal malware scanning platform aims to improve the security of the agentic ecosystem by scanning skills uploaded to ClawHub. However, this move has also highlighted the importance of user security competence when working with open-source agentic tools like OpenClaw.
Bad actors are using new AI capabilities and powerful AI agents to expand their attack surface and enable lateral threat movement. Traditional firewalls and VPNs are no longer effective in stopping these attacks, as they're more easily exploited with AI-powered attacks. It's time for a Zero Trust + AI security model to protect AI usage and stop AI-driven attacks.
The recent exploits of various platforms, including Notepad++, demonstrate the ease with which attackers can abuse trust. The development of malicious skills on ClawHub, a public skills registry, has also shown that marketplaces are a gold mine for criminals who populate the store with malware to prey on developers.
In addition to AI-driven attacks, researchers have discovered a stealthy Linux framework called ShadowHS, which runs entirely in memory for covert, post-exploitation control. The loader decrypts and executes its payload exclusively in memory, leaving no persistent binary artifacts on disk. Once active, the payload exposes an interactive post-exploitation environment that aggressively fingerprints host security controls, enumerates defensive tooling, and evaluates prior compromise before enabling higher-risk actions.
The discovery of ShadowHS has raised concerns about the potential for large-scale targeting and post-exploitation attacks. The framework supports various dormant modules that support credential access, lateral movement, privilege escalation, cryptomining, memory inspection, and data exfiltration.
Meanwhile, Cellebrite digital forensic software has been used against Jordanian civil society activists, highlighting the risks associated with government surveillance and digital forensics. A new report by Citizen Lab found that authorities have been using Cellebrite since at least 2020 to extract data from phones belonging to activists.
In another development, the INC Ransomware group's slip-up has proven costly for its victims. Cybersecurity firm Cyber Centaurs helped a dozen victims recover their data after breaking into the backup server of the INC Ransomware group, where the stolen data was dumped.
Finally, researchers have identified new vulnerabilities in various platforms, including n8n, Hikvision Wireless Access Point, Apache Syncope, Foxit PDF Editor Cloud, and Django. Reviewing and patching early keeps your systems resilient, but it's essential to stay vigilant in the face of rapidly evolving cyber threats.
Related Information:
https://www.ethicalhackingnews.com/articles/A-New-Era-of-Cyber-Threats-How-AI-Driven-Attacks-are-Exploiting-Trust-ehn.shtml
https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/weekly-recap-ai-skill-malware-31tbps.html
https://www.newsbreak.com/news/4484215470842-weekly-recap-ai-skill-malware-31tbps-ddos-notepad-hack-llm-backdoors-and-more
Published: Thu Feb 19 00:12:12 2026 by llama3.2 3B Q4_K_M
