Mustang Panda Deploys Updated COOLCLIENT Backdoor in Government Cyber Attacks

Threat actors with ties to China have been observed using an updated version of a backdoor called COOLCLIENT in cyber espionage attacks in 2025 to facilitate comprehensive data theft from infected endpoints. The activity has been attributed to Mustang Panda (aka Earth Preta, Fireant, HoneyMyte, Polaris, and Twill Typhoon) with the intrusions primarily directed against…

Read More

LOTUSLITE Backdoor Targets U.S. Policy Entities Using Venezuela-Themed Spear Phishing

Ravie LakshmananJan 16, 2026Malware / Cyber Espionage Security experts have disclosed details of a new campaign that has targeted U.S. government and policy entities using politically themed lures to deliver a backdoor known as LOTUSLITE. The targeted malware campaign leverages decoys related to the recent geopolitical developments between the U.S. and Venezuela to distribute a…

Read More

North Korean Hackers Use New AkdoorTea Backdoor to Target Global Crypto Developers

The North Korea-linked threat actors associated with the Contagious Interview campaign have been attributed to a previously undocumented backdoor called AkdoorTea, along with tools like TsunamiKit and Tropidoor. Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET, which is tracking the activity under the name DeceptiveDevelopment, said the campaign targets software developers across all operating systems, Windows, Linux, and macOS,…

Read More