Overview
SecurityWeek's weekly roundup collects stories that may have slipped under the radar. The main items are summarized below.
Hijacked Tor Exit Relays
A researcher found that 333 Tor exit relays, roughly a tenth of all exits, redirected SSH connections to attacker-controlled servers that captured passwords. The relays ran on servers already compromised with the Ebury malware. The Tor Project removed them within three days.
Banks Find Unsanctioned AI Agents
Per Axios, major US banks have found unauthorized third-party AI agents operating in customer accounts, sometimes acting independently of user instructions. Morgan Stanley is blocking third-party agents, while JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citi are restricting them. Most banks are moving toward read-only access for such agents.
Heartbreaker macOS Ransomware
A Rust-based sample uploaded to VirusTotal in May 2025 went undetected by antivirus engines when researcher Patrick Wardle analyzed it. It encrypts files in the Downloads folder and rebuilds itself from embedded source code to change its hash. It is unlikely to be a major threat: it uses a single hardcoded AES key, so files can be recovered for free.
APT28 Hookedge Attacks
Symantec links Russia's APT28 (Swallowtail) to Hookedge backdoor attacks on a law enforcement agency, a naval shipbuilder and a military aircraft engine maker in two NATO member states. At the shipbuilder the intrusion lasted at least two months, using credential theft, a persistent SSH tunnel and a previously undocumented in-memory loader.
PingCAP Breach
An intruder used stolen service account credentials from September 9 to October 7 to access internal systems, copy data and obtain source code. Exported data included TiDB Cloud user details, customer contacts, contract and billing information, and encrypted API key values. PingCAP found no evidence that data stored in TiDB was affected, invalidated the compromised credentials and fixed four reported vulnerabilities.
Railway and Bullhorn
- Railway says an unauthorized party may have accessed encrypted customer environment variables and obtained decrypted contents for some. It paused all deployments and urged customers to rotate environment variables and private registry credentials.
- Bullhorn is restoring its ATS/CRM platform after disabling access during a cyber incident. Non-SSO users must reset passwords and API users must rotate API passwords.
Legal and Policy
- ShinyHunters negotiators: Federal investigators suspect an executive at a US consulting firm helped run Shinywire, a now-defunct extortion site, based on seized Signal messages from the arrest of suspect Pepijn van der Stap.
- WhatsApp v. NSO Group: A federal judge declined to hold NSO in contempt for allegedly violating a 2025 injunction, finding WhatsApp's evidence did not meet the clear-and-convincing standard.
- Conduent: A proposed $80 million settlement would resolve a class action over the company's 2024 breach, pending court approval.
- ISO/IEC 27090: A new standard gives guidance on detecting and mitigating AI-specific threats such as data poisoning and model theft.
Takeaways
- Rotate SSH credentials and prefer key-based authentication; never type passwords over SSH through untrusted exit paths.
- Define policy for third-party AI agents acting on accounts before they appear in your logs.
- Treat platform secrets as exposed whenever a provider reports possible access, and rotate them.