Author: HackWatchit

A novel tapjacking technique can exploit user interface animations to bypass Android’s permission system and allow access to sensitive data or trick users into performing destructive actions, such as wiping the device. Unlike traditional, overlay-based tapjacking, TapTrap attacks work even with zero-permission apps to launch a harmless transparent activity on top of a malicious one, a behavior that remains unmitigated in Android 15 and 16. TapTrap was developed by a team of security researchers at TU Wien and the University of Bayreuth (Philipp Beer, Marco Squarcina, Sebastian Roth, Martina Lindorfer), and will be presented next month at the USENIX Security Symposium. However, the…

Over the last decade, the adoption of digital technologies has brought unprecedented opportunities for innovation, economic growth and improved public services. As governments and businesses around the world accelerate the integration of new technologies, such as AI, ensuring the security and integrity of data has become imperative. Amid rising geopolitical tensions and growing cyber threats, trust is now more than ever a critical foundation for digital progress. Many of the regulatory frameworks in Europe, such as GDPR, NIS2, DORA and the AI Act, are designed to foster digital progress as well as manage associated risks. These frameworks call for solutions…

Barracuda Networks launched Barracuda Entra ID Backup Premium – a comprehensive, cost-effective solution to safeguard Microsoft Entra ID environments from accidental and malicious data loss. With fast, reliable recovery of vital identity data, the new offering strengthens cyber resilience and helps ensure secure, uninterrupted access to business applications and services. Seamlessly integrated with the BarracudaONE platform, Barracuda Entra ID Backup Premium provides users with centralized visibility into backup status, data health and storage insights through a unified dashboard. It is built to support both single and multi-tenant environments, making it an ideal solution for IT teams and managed service providers…

Hackers weaponize Shellter red teaming tool to spread infostealers Pierluigi Paganini July 09, 2025 Hackers are abusing the legitimate red teaming tool Shellter to spread stealer malware after a licensed copy was leaked. Elastic Security Labs has identified several malware campaigns using the commercial AV/EDR evasion tool SHELLTER. The tool was originally built for legitimate red team operations, however, threat actors have now adopted it to bypass security measures and deploy malware. Since April 2025, attackers have repeatedly used SHELLTER in infostealer attacks, as shown by license metadata. To counter this abuse, Elastic released a dynamic unpacker to analyze and…

A data exposure has come to light at Rockerbox, a tax credit consultancy based in Texas, USA. Cybersecurity researcher Jeremiah Fowler recently uncovered a non-password-protected database highlighting a significant security lapse, the findings of which were reported by vpnMentor and shared with HackRead.com. Rockerbox, identified as a tax credit consulting company, helps businesses across the United States identify and manage employer-focused tax incentives through programs like the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC), Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC), R&D credits, and Empowerment Zone credits. Scope of Compromised Data The exposure involved an alarming 245,949 records, totalling 286.9 GB of data. This…

Microsoft today released updates to fix at least 137 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and supported software. None of the weaknesses addressed this month are known to be actively exploited, but 14 of the flaws earned Microsoft’s most-dire “critical” rating, meaning they could be exploited to seize control over vulnerable Windows PCs with little or no help from users. While not listed as critical, CVE-2025-49719 is a publicly disclosed information disclosure vulnerability, with all versions as far back as SQL Server 2016 receiving patches. Microsoft rates CVE-2025-49719 as less likely to be exploited, but the availability of proof-of-concept…

A second-quarter survey of 18 mainstream news outlets logged 1,116 Bitcoin (BTC) stories and measured sentiment at 31% positive, 41% neutral, and 28% negative, according to Bitcoin analysis firm Perception.The data reveal a significant gap between finance-focused media that cover the market extensively and legacy publications that rarely address it.Sparse coveragePerception counted two Bitcoin articles in The Wall Street Journal, 11 in the Financial Times, and 11 in The New York Times. These totals trailed every finance-oriented title in the sample and even lagged mid-tier general outlets. Audiences that rely on these newspapers for market intelligence received almost no information on…

Executive Summary Unit 42 researchers have identified a growing threat to cloud security: Linux Executable and Linkage Format (ELF) files that threat actors are developing to target cloud infrastructure. We predict that threat actors targeting cloud environments will start using more complex tools in their exploits. This will include reworking, improving and tailoring existing tools that historically only targeted Linux operating systems (OS). The ELF malware samples threat actors use will include backdoors, droppers, remote access Trojans (RATs), data wipers and vulnerability-exploiting binaries. During our investigation, we focused on five ELF-based malware families, each of which threat actor groups have…

in fashion. DeepSeek-R1, Gemini-2.5-Pro, OpenAI’s O-series models, Anthropic’s Claude, Magistral, and Qwen3 — there is a new one every month. When you ask these models a question, they go into a chain of thought before generating an answer. A simple demonstration of what reasoning looks like. When asked a question, the Language Model (LM) generates a chain of thought first, followed by the answer. (Illustration by the Author) I recently asked myself the question, “Hmm… I wonder if I should write a Reinforcement Learning loop from scratch that teaches this ‘thinking’ behaviour to really small models — like only 135…