developers

AI Surge in CyberSecurity Redefining Threat & Defense; Reshaping Software Development & Security

Currently enterprise Cyber Security strategy with AI has become a game changer, reshaping is critical for both threat and defense. Embracing Gen AI for a robust defensive system empowers organizations to analyze vast amount of data is key requirement for enterprise security where software development is key to enterprise security , embracing ‘security by design’.

In 2024-2025, we have witnessed how mainstream enterprise deployment of AI has changed the strategic cyber security requirement. Thereby creating a strong defense mechanism around enterprise security, redefining the threat landscape and shaping software development.

AI is changing the way we look at products being a risk multiplier. How organization balancing innovation with protection?

AI can track and break commonly used passwords within minutes. So this is scary as more powers are in the hands of hackers, on the other side AI can improve password security again a boon. The Dark Web is already selling Fraud GPT and Worm GPT.

For Organizational cyber security strategy AI is being used now to tackle threats and cyber defense. Again AI has the capability to accelerate the speed of cyber attacks.

So what are leaders deciding when chasing AI based products. The way leaders are looking at products is products that give practical and actionable outlook and being embedded in delivery workflows.

Strategically, this means evolving away from rigid, checkbox-based compliance toward dynamic, adaptive security models that reflect how modern teams really build software—especially in AI-accelerated environments.

As per statistics 2025 witnessed the following AI based cyber attacks.16% of all breaches in 2025 involved attackers using AI. (IBM),and other AI attacks included 37% used phishing attacks and 35% used deepfake attacks. (IBM). 63% of breached organizations had no AI governance policy or were still developing one, highlighting the governance gap around AI adoption (IBM).

OpenText has released their survey and the report entails, AI is rapidly changing the threat landscape for organizations . Organizations are navigating a high-stake balancing act to enable innovation while managing risk.

Here are the key findings

Top AI-related concerns among respondents include data leakage (29%), AI-enabled attacks (27%), and deepfakes (16%).

95% of respondents are confident in their ability to recover from a ransomware attack, but only 15% of those attacked fully recovered their data.

88% allow employees to use GenAI tools, yet less than half (48%) have a formal AI use policy.

Enterprises lead AI governance (52%) compared to SMBs (43%) by having a formal AI policy in place.

52% report increased phishing or ransomware due to AI; 44% have seen deepfake-style impersonation attempts.

Surge in AI Threats via sophisticated attacks

One of the reasons cited by threat researchers is organizations are embracing GenAI, allowing employees to use generative AI tools and few less then 50% have a formal AI-use or data privacy policy in place, the report noted.

This is added with hackers innovative way in tricking using AI, bypassing any defense mechanism which is traditional. 

AI tools are now being used to create such convincing phishing emails, fake websites and even deepfake videos to injecting malicious code giving leverage to cyber criminals

In the last few months we witnessed how Ransomware attacks round the world surged and quite complex in nature as third-party service providers or software supply chains were prime targets. The Qantas airline breach and M&S data beach that hit UK’s top retail brand.

While Qantas did not to Information Age whether AI voice deepfakes were used in the breach, the cybercrime group experts believe may be linked to the hack — dubbed ‘Scattered Spider’ — has a track record of using voice-based phishing (or ‘vishing’) in its attacks. This is clear AI being used and surge is quite high in AI based cyber attacks.

AI for Cyber Defense for Organizational Cyber Security Strategy

It is not hackers who are benefiting but for Organizations it is a game changer as AI being used to detect attack at faster pace meaning mean time.

Findings of this survey reinforces that protecting against ransomware now depends not just on internal defenses, but also on how effectively organizations’, partners, and technology providers collaborate to close security gaps before they are exploited.

Key pointer for building pragmatic and strategic choices and this approach starts with embracing security by design approach in developmental life cycle.

  • Continuously Embedding security in developer workflows keeping automating, scanning, policy enforcement and anomaly detection in tools used by developers.
  • Cybersecurity AI tools are better at identifying patterns and anomalies in large datasets including vulnerabilities. teams have to highly prioritize and contextualize them in term of developing products.
  • Supposedly there is an attack and the security tools not able to detect. So continuous testing is mandatory.
  • Developers can favor simple solutions that favors pragmatic security patterns and transparency in architecture. In this way trust is developed with clients.

Few important developers keep in focus is to sponsor bug bounties, publish advisories using standards like the Common Security Advisory Framework (CSAF) and provide context on severity and exploitability.

Threat researcher suggest organizations who are building in products accept all vulnerability reports, investigate them, and fix the issues. Any critically important advisory to be used for root cause analysis to improve tools, training and various threat models. Developers are suggested to give feedback for external tools if they help them evolve. Understanding no software can ever be perfect.

Offerings from IntruceptLabs are exactly what you need to develop organizational cyber defense capabilities

Intru360

Intru360 gives security analysts and SOC managers a clear view across the organization, helping them fully understand the extent and context of an attack. It also simplifies workflows by automatically handling alerts, allowing for faster detection of both known and unknown threats.

Identify latest threats without having to purchase, implement, and oversee several solutions or find, hire, and manage a team security analyst. Unify latest threat intelligence and security technologies to prioritize the threats that pose the greatest risk to your company.

Here are some features we offer:

  • Over 400 third-party and cloud integrations.
  • More than 1,100 preconfigured correlation rules.
  • Ready-to-use threat analytics, threat intelligence service feeds, and prioritization based on risk.
  • Prebuilt playbooks and automated response capabilities.

(Sources: https://www.mckinsey.com/about-us/new-at-mckinsey-blog/ai-is-the-greatest-threat-and-defense-in-cybersecurity-today)

Sources: https://investors.opentext.com/press-releases/press-releases-details/2025/OpenText-Cybersecurity-2025-Global-Ransomware-Survey-Rising-Confidence-Meets-a-Growing-AI-Threat/default.aspx)

Analyzing the newly discovered Vulnerability in Gemini CLI; Impact on Software coding

Google’s Gemini command line interface (CLI) AI agent

Its not been one month when Google’s Gemini CLI vulnerability discovered by Tracebit researchers and found attackers could use prompt injection attacks to steal sensitive data.

Google’s Gemini CLI, an open-source AI agent for coding could allow attackers exploit to hide malicious commands, using “a toxic combination of improper validation, prompt injection and misleading UX,” as Tracebit explains.

After reports of the vulnerability surfaced, Google classified the situation as Priority 1 and Severity 1 on July 23, releasing the improved version two days later.

Those planning to use Gemini CLI should immediately upgrade to its latest version (0.1.14). Additionally, users could use the tool’s sandboxing mode for additional security and protection.

Disclosure of the vulnerability

Researchers reported on vulnerability directly to Google through its Bug Hunters programme. According to a timeline provided by Tracebit, the vulnerability was initially reported to Google’s Vulnerability Disclosure Programme (VDP) on 27 June, just two days after Gemini CLI’s public release.

Impact of the vulnerability

A detailed analysis found that in the patched version of Gemini CLI, attempts at code injection display the malicious command to users. This require explicit approval for any additional binaries to be executed. This change is intended to prevent the silent execution that the original vulnerability enabled.

Tracebit’s researchers played an important role in discovering and reporting the issue which is symbol of independent security research, particularly as AI-powered tools become central to software development workflows.

LLM integral to software development but hackers are using it too

Gemini CLI integrates Google’s LLM with traditional command line tools such as PowerShell or Bash. This allows developers to use natural language prompts to speed up tasks such as analyzing and debugging code, generating documentation, and understanding new repositories (“repos”).

As developers worldwide are using LLMs to help them develop code faster, attackers worldwide are using LLMs to help them understand and attack applications faster. 

Tracebit also discovered that malicious commands could easily be hidden in Gemini CLI This is possible by by packing the command line with blank characters, pushing the malicious commands out of the user’s sight.

More vigilance required when examining and running third-party or untrusted code, especially in tools leveraging AI to assist in software development.

Through the use of LLMs, AI excels at educating users, finding patterns and automate repetitive tasks.

Sam Cox, Tracebit’s founder, says he personally tested the exploit, which ultimately allowed him to execute any command — including destructive ones. “That’s exactly why I found this so concerning,” Cox told Ars Technica. “The same technique would work for deleting files, a fork bomb or even installing a remote shell giving the attacker remote control of the user’s machine.”

Source: https://in.mashable.com/tech/97813/if-youre-coding-with-gemini-cli-you-need-this-security-update

Hackers Weaponizing AI Extension to steal Crypto Assets Through Malicious Packages

The amount of crypto  malware has doubled in the first quarter of 2025 as per research.

Kaspersky GReAT (Global Research and Analysis Team) experts have discovered open-source packages that download the Quasar backdoor and a stealer designed to exfiltrate cryptocurrency. The malicious packages are intended for the Cursor AI development environment, which is based on Visual Studio Code — a tool used for AI-assisted coding.

The fake extension, published under the name “Solidity Language,” had accumulated 54,000 downloads before being detected and removed.

What makes this attack particularly insidious is its exploitation of search ranking algorithms to position the malicious extension above legitimate alternatives.

How the Threat actors deceive the developers

During an incident response, a blockchain developer from Russia reached out to Kaspersky after installing one of these fake extensions on his computer, which allowed attackers to steal approximately $500,000 worth of crypto assets.

The threat actor behind these packages managed to deceive the developer by making the malicious package rank higher than the legitimate one. The attacker achieved this by artificially inflating the malicious package’s downloads count to 54,000.

After the malicious extension downloaded by the developer was discovered and removed from the repository, the threat actor republished it and artificially inflated its installation count to a higher number – 2 million, compared to 61,000 for the legitimate package.

The extension was removed from the platform following a request from Kaspersky.

The attackers leveraged the Open VSX registry’s relevance-based ranking system, which considers factors including recency of updates, download counts, and ratings. The attack infrastructure reveals a well-organized operation extending beyond this single incident.

In 2025, threat actors are actively publishing clones of legitimate software packages that, once installed, execute harmful payloads ranging from cryptocurrency theft to full codebase deletion.

The discovery leads us to think how cyber criminals take advantage of the trust inherent in open-source environments by embedding harmful code. All third-party code should be treated as untrusted until proven.

The threat actor behind these packages managed to deceive the developer by making the malicious package rank higher than the legitimate one. The attacker achieved this by artificially inflating the malicious package’s downloads count to 54,000.

After installation, the victim gained no actual functionality from the extension. Instead, malicious ScreenConnect software was installed on the computer, granting threat actors remote access to the infected device.

Using this access, they deployed the open-source Quasar backdoor along with a stealer that collects data from browsers, email clients, and crypto wallets. With these tools, the threat actors were able to obtain the developer’s wallet seed phrases and subsequently steal cryptocurrency from the accounts.

Mitigation Strategies from Intruceptlabs

GaarudNode is an all-in-one  solution designed to empower development teams with the tools they need to secure their applications throughout the development lifecycle. By combining the power of SAST, DAST, SCA, API security, and CSPM, GaarudNode provides a comprehensive security framework that ensures your applications are built, tested, and deployed with confidence.

Source: https://www.kaspersky.com/about/press-releases/kaspersky-uncovers-500k-crypto-heist-through-malicious-packages-targeting-cursor-developers

Fintech Cybersecurity; Best Practices to Navigate Risk & Challenges

Fintech apps have gained momentum as Paypal, Mint, Gpay and Stash have transformed the way payment is made in financial service industries in the last few years. Fintech platforms are mostly subject to varying security standards striving the threat landscapes across different regions of geography.

In this blog we will discover how Fintech’s are growing at a pace and scaling up along with rising user base making it difficult for security teams to detect at the same pace and understand the attack surface vastness. As Fintech companies grow at pace, its impossible to keep growing with smaller infrastructure and security practices that may not be sufficient for smaller operations. Also growth in user base, makes it difficult with security teams to have proper visibility over an ever-expanding attack surface. 

IntruceptLabs has a team of certified security experts who conduct manual penetration testing, identifying different business-centric vulnerabilities that an automated scan may not identify. GaarudNode from Intrucept provides a comprehensive security framework that ensures your applications are built, tested, and deployed with confidence.

The global aspect of operation in Fintech based organizations gives rise to data sovereignty issues, where some data must be within specific geographic limits. 

The Fintech Service (FaaS) market from past few yrs is experiencing substantial growth and the global market is projected to increase by USD 806.9 billion by 2029. This growth is fueled by increasing demand for digital financial solutions and the adoption of FaaS among businesses of all sizes.FaaS provides agility, flexibility, and seamless integration, making it attractive for businesses. 

Fintech’s mining Ground for cybercriminals

Apart from consumers and legitimate users across the globe, for cyber criminals Fintech’s are mining treasures as they can quiet probably gather or steal valuable personal and financial data.

Money is constantly flowing through various associated apps and we don’t know when and how bad actors will launch clever tactics and spill of money through various associated apps .This is making cyber security posture for fintech’s difficult.

Yes, Organizations can take up cyber skilling and training seriously and help staff to use phishing-resistant multifactor authentication and robust identity-verification measures. Organisation can take up security strategies and devise it keeping uniformity in enforcement practices and incident reporting requirements.

The past decade gave a consistent rise in the number and sophistication of cyberattacks targeting financial institutions as observed.

Now that is posing significant threats to the stability and trust within the financial ecosystem as financial losses increase due to cyber breaches or data hack and causing operational disruptions including reputational damage.

Navigating the risk & challenges affecting Fintech service (FaaS)

Fintech security is directly related to API security as API’s are responsible for smooth functioning of ‘Fintech as a platform’.

It is the same API’s that are prime target of cyber criminals as there has been increase in Cloud computing, mobile apps usage and Internet of Things (IoT) all have accelerated the adoption of APIs. 

API’s are used by developers to integrate third party services ,also increase the functionable features and create solutions that are innovative in nature. Any flaw in API security could substantially damage the endpoints and is a common vulnerabilities. API ‘s can become insecure when endpoints finds failure to validate input, leading to injection attacks.

User identity Theft

Authentication vulnerabilities are issues that affect authentication processes and make websites and applications susceptible to security attacks in which an attacker can masquerade as a legitimate user.

Any flaw in authentication and authorization will give way to account compromises with insecure password that are crackable or single-factor authentication in systems lacking additional verification step. Authentication is a vital part of any website or application since it is simply the process of recognizing user identities.

Having authentication vulnerabilities have serious repercussions — whether it’s because of weak passwords or poor authentication design and implementation.

Threat actors use these vulnerabilities to get access into systems and user accounts to:

  • Steal sensitive information
  • Masquerade as a legitimate user
  • Gain control of the application
  • Destroy the system completely

Supply chain risk or third party integration

Often fintech applications interact with external services or providers. Any weaknesses arising in Supply chain from backdoors are embedded within financial apps via compromised third-party code. So many Vendor fail the risk assessments as they are unable to identify risks well before integration. 

Mostly fintech functions are mobile transfers require Apps interacting with traditional banks having legacy infrastructure to support. Integrating the modern high-tech apps with the legacy systems often used by established financial institutions is a difficult technical challenge. 

Regulatory Compliance

Fintech firms operate under regulatory landscape that is complex and changing and must comply with various frameworks, including GDPR,PCI etc, and few local financial regulations based on geographical points or country wise .

These regulations add up to lot of over head expenses and if something overlaps

The regulations adds massive, unnecessary overhead, as requirements often overlaps creating chaos. Complying with local regulations, requires resources that can be diverted away from other security efforts.

Moreover, if a Fintech platform ventures into multiple markets, it must comply with local regulations, which often requires a race against time and diverts resources away from other security efforts.

Enterprise security can prevent cyber attacks by enforcing account lockouts, rate limiting, IP-based monitoring, application firewalls, and CAPTCHAs.

AI Soft Spot by Cyber criminals

Now cyber criminals are using AI and machine learning to automate the testing process and find zero-day vulnerabilities—especially in APIs. Perhaps the most observed impact AI has had on cybercrime has been an increase in scams, particularly those leveraging deepfake technology. In certain dark web forums where experimentation takes place, few threat actors are claiming to employ AI to bypass facial recognition technology, create deepfake videos and adopt techniques to summaries large amount of data.

Cyber security best practices for Faas

The outputs derived from assessment of security testing must encompass the entire attack surface, including APIs, mobile applications and other interfaces to develop roadmaps to improve security. In any event of security breach any incident response planning by organizations will help to identify, mitigate threat and recover. 

GaarudNode from IntruceptLabs

GaarudNode is an all-in-one  solution designed to empower development teams with the tools they need to secure their applications throughout the development lifecycle. By combining the power of SAST, DAST, SCA, API security, and CSPM, GaarudNode provides a comprehensive security framework that ensures your applications are built, tested, and deployed with confidence.

The dashboard presents findings with ratings and remediation steps, allowing developers to easily address critical issues.

What else you get from GaarudNode?

  • Identifies security flaws early in the development process by scanning source code, helping developers detect issues like insecure coding practices or logic errors.
  • Tests running applications in real-time to identify vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and other runtime threats.
  • Detects vulnerabilities in third-party libraries and open-source components, ensuring that your dependencies don’t introduce risks.
  • Continuously tests and monitors your APIs for vulnerabilities such as authentication flaws, data exposure, and insecure endpoints.

Sources: https:www.apisec.ai

Phishing Crusade Targeted approx 12,000 GitHub Repositories; Victims directed to “gitsecurityapp”

A large-scale phishing campaign has targeted nearly 12,000 GitHub repositories with phony security alerts, reported BleepingComputers.

The alerts, opened as issues on the repositories, inform users of unauthorized login attempts and provide links to change their passwords, review active sessions, or set up MFA.

If a user clicks any of these links, they’ll be taken to a GitHub authorization page for an OAuth app that will grant the attacker control of the account.

The campaign is ongoing, though GitHub appears to be responding to the attacks.

Users were directed to all links within the message to a GitHub authorization page for a malicious OAuth application called “gitsecurityapp.” If authorized, the app grants attackers full control over the user’s account and repositories, including the ability to delete repositories, modify workflows, and read or write organization data.

This consistent messaging across all affected repositories aims to create a sense of urgency and panic, prompting developers to take immediate action.

The fraudulent alert directs users to update their passwords, review active sessions, and enable two-factor authentication. However, these links lead to a GitHub authorization page for a malicious OAuth app named “gitsecurityapp.”

Upon authorization, an access token is generated and sent to various web pages hosted on onrender.com, granting the attacker full control.

(Image courtesy: Bleeping Computers)

The attack, which was first detected on March 16, remains active, though GitHub appears to be removing affected repositories.

Pointers Developers to take key inputs from this incident.

Last week, a supply chain attack on the tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action caused malicious code to write CI/CD secrets to the workflow logs for 23,000 repositories.

If those logs had been public, then the attacker would have been able to steal the secrets.

The tj-actions developers cannot pinpoint exactly how the attackers compromised a GitHub personal access token (PAT) used by a bot to perform malicious code changes as per threat researchers.

Key pointers for User saftey:

  • For users who have mistakenly authorized the malicious OAuth app revoking access to suspicious OAuth apps through GitHub’s settings.
  • Affected users should review their repository workflows, check for unauthorized private gists, and rotate their credentials to prevent further damage.
  • This attack highlights the increasing threat of phishing campaigns targeting GitHub users.
  • As GitHub continues to investigate and respond, developers must remain vigilant and verify any security alerts before taking action.
  • Rotate your credentials and authorization tokens.

 Wiz suggests that potentially impacted projects run this GitHub query to check for references to reviewdog/action-setup@v1 in repositories.

If double-encoded base64 payloads are found in workflow logs, this should be taken as a confirmation their secrets were leaked.

Developers should immediately remove all references to affected actions across branches, delete workflow logs, and rotate any potentially exposed secrets.

(Sourece: Bleeping computers)

Sophisticated Phishing Attack Exposed Over 600,000 Users to Data Theft; 16 Chrome Extensions Hacked

A sophisticated phishing attack exposed 600, 000 user data to theft as 16 Chrome Extensions got hacked amounting to credential theft. The attack targeted extension publishers through phishing emails where Developers were tricked into granting access to a malicious OAuth app via fake Chrome Web Store emails. The malicious update mimicked official communications from the Chrome Web Store, stealing sensitive user data.

This breach puts Facebook ad users at high risk of account hacking or unknown access

Summary of the attack

The phishing email was designed to create a sense of urgency posing as Google Chrome Web Store Developer Support, warns the employee of the extension removal for policy violations. The message urges the recipient to accept the publishing policy.

As per Cyberhaven, a cybersecurity firm report mentioned about the impacted firms as the attack occurred on December 24 and involved phishing a company employee to gain access to their Chrome Web Store admin credentials.

16 Chrome Extensions, including popular ones like “AI Assistant – ChatGPT and Gemini for Chrome,” “GPT 4 Summary with OpenAI,” and “Reader Mode,” were compromised, exposing sensitive user data.

Response & Recommendations:

The attackers targeted browser extension publishers with phishing campaigns to gain access to their accounts and insert malicious code.
Extensions such as “Rewards Search Automator” and “Earny – Up to 20% Cash Back” were used to exfiltrate user credentials and identity tokens, particularly from Facebook business accounts.
Malicious versions of extensions communicated with external Command-and-Control (C&C) servers, such as domains like “cyberhavenext[.]pro.”

  • Cyberhaven released a legitimate update (version 24.10.5), hired Mandiant to develop an incident response plan and also notified federal law enforcement agencies for investigation.
  • All users advised to revoke credentials, monitor logs, and secure extensions; investigations continue.
  • As per Cyberhaven, version 24.10.4 of Chrome extension was affected, and the malicious code was active for less than a day.
  • The malicious extension used two files: worker.js contacted a hardcoded C&C server to download configuration and executed HTTP calls, and content.js that collected user data from targeted websites and exfiltrated it to a malicious domain specified in the C&C payload.

Scroll to top