• Airbnb scams have surged 30x since 2023, including a sharp rise this year
• Criminals hijack legitimate host accounts to to trick holidaymakers
• Staying safe isn't so straightforward as threats evolve

Airbnb-related scam activity has increased 30x since the first half of 2023, according to new research from Saily and NordStellar, confirming that cybercriminals continue to go after holidaymakers seeking the best deals amid rising prices.

The report ultimately concludes that attackers are now targeting the trust built by larger platforms, saving them from having to build new identities from scratch.

And to top it all off, the nature of scams is also changing, as instead of using suspicious websites to obtain victim payments or information, criminals are now targeting legitimate Airbnb host accounts which have spent years amassing positive reviews and high ratings.

Exploiting legitimate accounts and hijacking trust

While the end goal remains high volumes of vulnerable consumers, scammers have added an extra layer of victim in their pipeline. Verified Airbnb hosts are now valuable assets for criminals because they already have identity verifications, positive reviews, booking histories, years of activity and established credibility.

Once the verified account is compromised, attackers can then go on to scam higher volumes of unsuspecting victims by posting – and charging for – fake property listings.

“Travelers are getting better at spotting obvious scams,” Saily Head of Product Matas Cenys said. “Criminals know this, so they are increasingly trying to steal trust instead of building fake trust from scratch.”

Where this type of attack differs from others, though, is that the victims never leave the platform. Rather than falling victim to phishing attacks and being redirected to malicious external sites, they interact fully with supposed legitimate hosts on the Airbnb platform.

While Airbnb attacks have seen a 30x increase in around three years and a sharp rise in the last year alone, they reflect a much broader trend of attackers compromising existing trusted accounts.

The recent ramp-up in attacks could also be tied to the summer season, with holidaymakers looking to book last-minute deals in the run-up to the summer season. Urgency and pressure to keep costs low also adds to criminals’ success.

“Everything looks normal until they arrive at their destination and discover the accommodation never existed," Cenys added.

How to protect yourself from booking scams

Saily is recommending that all communication stays within the booking platform and that customers avoid payment methods suggested outside of official channels. Unusually attractive listings in high-demand destinations could also be taken with a pinch of salt, and savvy shoppers may choose to reverse image search a property to double check its authenticity.

“As travel booking becomes increasingly digital, trust becomes one of the most valuable currencies in the travel ecosystem,” Cenys warned.

As for abusing victim trust, researchers also argue that AI has aided attacks by allowing criminals to produce better fake listings more quickly.

More generally, Airbnb revealed that two in five Americans have fallen victim for an online scam, with the average loss totalling nearly $2,000. The company has introduced measures to remind its users how to avoid scams, including introducing identity verification and reminders not to leave the platform, but account takeovers can still slip under the radar.

Airbnb also holds guest payments until 24 hours after check-in to ensure that everything is as described. Anti-fraud tech also prevented around 265,000 suspicious listings from appearing on the platform in 2025, the company boasted.

The company posted a comprehensive eight-step list of how to avoid scams on its platform online, calling out pressure tactics and unusual deals.

• Xsolis confirmed a phishing‑enabled breach on Jan 22, 2026, exposing data of 1.39M individuals
• Stolen info includes names, addresses, DOBs, SSNs, health insurance, and medical treatment details; no ransom demands or dark web leaks yet
• Customers offered free credit monitoring and identity theft protection, with warnings to watch for phishing and fraud attempts

Healthcare technology company Xsolis disclosed a cyberattack in which it lost sensitive data on almost 1.4 million customers.

Xsolis is a company that uses AI to help healthcare organizations make faster and more consistent decisions about patient care and utilization management. Earlier this week, it published a data breach notification on its website, saying that it spotted the intrusion on January 22, 2026.

Apparently, after a successful phishing attack on one of its employees two days earlier, the attackers were able to access a “limited portion” of the Xsolis environment, from which they were able to exfiltrate people’s names, addresses, dates of birth, health insurance information, Social Security numbers, and medical treatment information.

Almost 1.4 million victims

This level of information is more than enough information to target these individuals with phishing or even steal their identity for more disruptive attacks elsewhere.

In a filing with the US Department of Health and Human Services, Xsolis confirmed that 1,396,519 individuals were affected by this breach.

“We have taken steps to address the incident and are committed to protecting the information entrusted to us,” Xsolis said in the announcement. “Upon learning of this incident, we immediately began an investigation and reported the incident to law enforcement. We also implemented additional safeguards to further enhance the security of information in our possession and to help prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.”

So far, there is no evidence of the data being used in follow-up attacks, or being offered on the dark web. No threat actors have yet claimed responsibility for the attack, and no one has yet demanded ransom in exchange for the files.

Xsolis told its customers to be wary of incoming messages, especially those pretending to be from the company, or using it in any other context. Customers are also offered free credit monitoring and identity theft protection services, as well as fraud alerts and credit freezes.

• Kaspersky warns of a WhatsApp phishing campaign spreading malicious VBScript files disguised as business documents
• Running them installs ManageEngine Endpoint Central, giving attackers remote access; filenames localized boosted global reach
• Victims span Brazil, India, Mexico, Singapore, UK, Spain, Taiwan, Australia, Russia, Vietnam, and Malaysia; compromise method remains unknown

WhatsApp users beware - there is a phishing campaign ongoing on the platform, seeking to infect your devices with a legitimate, but unsolicited endpoint security platform.

Security researchers Kaspersky recently published a new report detailing a campaign that starts with a compromised WhatsApp account. They could not determine how these accounts got breached but found that they were being used to reach out to the victims’ contacts and share a VBScript file masquerading as business or financial documents.

People who don’t find it strange that their contacts are suddenly sharing business documents, and end up running them, will get ManageEngine’s Endpoint Central, a unified endpoint management (UEM) and endpoint security platform built to help IT teams manage a fleet of desktops, laptops, servers, mobile devices, and other endpoints, all from a single console.

Two scripts, one malware

In this case, however, they wouldn’t be managing anything - they would just be granting remote system access to the attackers. Kaspersky says that the campaign is rather widespread, with victims located across Brazil, India, Mexico, Singapore, the UK, Spain, Taiwan, Australia, Russia, Vietnam, and Malaysia.

One of the reasons the campaign was so successful on an international level is because the filenames are localized in multiple languages, Kaspersky added.

“Based on evidence collected from multiple victims through social media reports and submitted samples, we can conclude that the threat actor had gained access to several WhatsApp accounts and used them to distribute the malicious VBScript files to contacts on the compromised users’ contact lists,” Kaspersky’s researchers said.

“At the time of writing, the exact method used to compromise these WhatsApp accounts remains unknown.”

Downloading and running the malicious files on Windows result in the deployment of two scripts that first disable UAC protections and then deploy the UEM. Kaspersky also stressed that when users open WhatsApp on the web, they must first download the files, but when they open the desktop client, the files can be executed directly via Windows Script Host.

Via BleepingComputer

• Meta paused its internal Model Capability Initiative (MCI) after an employee flagged exposure of sensitive data from mouse movement and activity tracking
• Program allegedly collected prompts, private conversations, performance data, and even tax/medical info in unencrypted form
• Meta says no improper access confirmed but is investigating; some employees still see the program running during the pause

Meta is pausing an employee-tracking program after one of the employees flagged it as exposing sensitive data.

The company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, was apparently running an internal program that was tracking employee mouse movements and digital activity. Called Model Capability Initiative (MCI), this program allegedly started in April with the goal of training Meta’s AI models through employee behavior recordings.

According to a memo released on launch, the purpose of the program was to improve the company’s AI models in areas where they struggled to replicate how humans interacted with computers, such as picking from a dropdown menu, or using different keyboard shortcuts.

Personal tax and medical information exposed?

"This is where all Meta employees can help our models get better simply by doing their daily work," the memo said at the time.

Reuters reported that an employee filed a high-priority security incident report (SEV) over the program’s exposure of employee data, including "full ​prompts and transcriptions, private ​conversations, people & performance ⁠data, DSS sensitivity ratings (1-4)." The same publication also said the program was collecting “more information than initially described” and stored it in unencrypted form.

"I have accessed both personal tax and medical information through ⁠my ​work computer, as have many thousands of employees,” the employee allegedly said. “​We were told this data would be protected and only used for valid business purposes after aggressive ​filtering."

Now, Meta confirmed pausing the program to investigate these claims.

"We have carefully designed this program ​with privacy safeguards and while we have no indication at this time that ​any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees, we're pausing it while we investigate," company spokesperson Tracy Clayton was cited saying. The company did not say for how long the program will be paused but stressed that it would take time to stop it for everyone, so some employees might still see it running.

As of Monday afternoon, the program was still running for some people, Reuters confirmed.

Via Reuters

• Tata Electronics confirmed a cyberattack but said operations remain unaffected, despite threat actor World Leaks claiming 630GB of alleged data
• Archive reportedly includes Apple/Tesla schematics, passport scans, and proprietary files; researchers found references to Pegatron, Foxconn, and Qualcomm too
• Reuters noted Tata is being extorted, though ransom details remain unclear; leaked files suggest sensitive manufacturing and engineering data exposure

Tata Electronics, the electronics and semiconductor manufacturing arm of the Tata Group conglomerate, confirmed suffering a cyberattack, but said it did not affect its operations. The scale of the breach, however, could be rather extensive.

"A few weeks ago, Tata Electronics identified a cybersecurity incident on some of our systems,” the company said in a statement to Reuters. “Our response protocols were deployed immediately, and the incident has had no impact on our operations across businesses, which remain unaffected," it said, without going into details.

This statement came almost two weeks after a threat actor called World Leaks posted a large database on its data leak site, claiming to have come from Tata Electronics, and affecting companies such as Apple and Tesla.

Sensitive files confirmed

According to Reuters, roughly a third of all iPhone production in India is done by Tata Electronics. The company supplies Apple with back panels, enclosures, and circuit board parts, among other things. For Tesla, it’s been supplying it with chips, circuit board assemblies, and vehicle motor controller units, since 2025.

World Leaks uploaded an archive of 204,341 files, weighing 630.4GB. Allegedly, it contains numerous confidential and proprietary data, including Apple and Tesla schematics, passport scans, and other sensitive files.

Reuters said Tata was being extorted for the files but did not say how much money the threat actors were demanding, or if the negotiations were progressing in any way.

Some security researchers analyzed the leaked files and said that they contained information about manufacturing and engineering processes from these two companies. Among the researchers were Cybernews, who claim to have seen “hundreds of references to Apple and Tesla”, a folder named “com.apple.factorydata”, as well as documents labeled as proprietary or confidential.

Cybernews also found files referencing other companies, too: Pegatron, Foxconn, and Qualcomm, to name a few. However, there is no evidence that any of these companies had been breached.

Via Cybernews

• Five Eyes alliance warned frontier GenAI models will enable advanced cyberattacks against businesses and governments within months
• Statement stressed cyber risk is now a leadership and business continuity issue, requiring whole‑of‑society response
• Comes amid concerns over Anthropic’s Mythos Preview and other models already showing offensive potential despite guardrails

In just a few months, high-end Generative Artificial Intelligence models (GenAI) will be capable of running cyberattacks on big businesses and government organizations, Five Eyes is warning.

The Five Eyes is an intelligence-sharing alliance between the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Formed after the Second World War, it allows the five countries to closely cooperate on intelligence and matters of national security.

Earlier this week, Five Eyes issued a new warning, saying that AI will help improve cyber defense over time, but will also accelerate the speed, scale, and sophistication, of threats: “Frontier AI models are anticipated to exceed current industry expectations, fundamentally transforming both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. The timeline is not years, it is months,” the warning reads. “In this environment, cyber resilience is integral to advancing business continuity, market confidence, and long-term value.”

All hands on deck

Five Eyes is now saying that the industry needs all hands on deck to address what’s increasingly becoming a burning issue:

“A whole-of-organisation and whole-of-society response is required,” it said. “Cyber risk can no longer be treated as a purely technical issue. This is a core business risk and leadership responsibility.”

In early April, news broke that Anthropic’s latest AI model, Mythos Preview, was so good at exploiting software vulnerabilities, that the company could not release it to the public. Instead, it only shared it with a handful of US enterprises, to give them a head start against threat actors.

While skeptics said it was nothing more than a publicity stunt, similar to what OpenAI pulled off with ChatGPT 2.0, companies that used it (for example, Mozilla), confirmed that it was, indeed, powerful enough that it needs to be kept in check.

Even models available today, despite all the guardrails, are being regularly leveraged by bad actors in different cyberattack scenarios.

Via The Guardian

• Microsoft warns of “Crypto Clipper,” a worm spreading via malicious .LNK files on USB drives
• Malware maintains persistence, connects to Tor C2, enables remote code execution, and steals clipboard crypto data
• It swaps wallet addresses, exfiltrates seed phrases/private keys, and uploads screenshots to assess target value

Microsoft is warning of an ongoing campaign targeting cryptocurrency owners with a clipboard-jacking worm.

In a new in-depth report published late last week, Microsoft’s security researchers explained that they recently analyzed a thumb drive that contained seemingly normal documents (Word files, Excel spreadsheets). However, the documents were replaced with Windows shortcut (.LNK) files which actually launched a piece of malware called Crypto Clipper.

This malware does a couple of things. First, it spreads by creating malicious .LNK files on USB drives and other removable media. It also sets up scheduled tasks to maintain persistence and automatically infect newly connected USB devices. Second, it behaves like a backdoor by regularly contacting a C2 server over the Tor network and receiving commands from the attacker. The server can also send commands to have the malware download and execute attacker-supplied code on the infected system, as well.

Stealing wallet data

Finally, Crypto Clipper acts as a clipboard clipper by monitoring the Windows clipboard for cryptocurrency wallet addresses, seed phrases, and private keys. If it spots a wallet address, it can replace it with a different one, owned by the attackers, so that any tokens sent by the victim go to the attacker, instead. It can also steal and exfiltrate copied seed phrases and private keys, which can be used to load a victim's crypto wallet on a separate device.

To help attackers assess the value of a target, the malware periodically captures screenshots of the victim's screen and uploads them through the Tor network.

“This malware family shows how lightweight, script-based stealers can deliver outsized impact when paired with anonymized communications and runtime tasking,” Microsoft said. “The combination of Tor-routed C2, clipboard targeting, screenshot capture, and remote code execution gives attackers both immediate monetization paths and continued control over compromised devices.”

Microsoft did not say if the malware targeted any specific countries or regions, nor did it discuss the number of victims.

Via Ars Technica

• Check Point Research warns Prime Day (June 23–26, 2026) is fueling a surge in malicious Amazon‑themed domains
• 6,843 domains registered Dec–May; nearly 10% flagged malicious/suspicious, with June showing 1 in 13 domains risky
• Shoppers urged to avoid Google searches for Amazon, verify URLs, and treat “too good to be true” deals with caution

Thousands of new domains were registered in the weeks and months leading up to Amazon Prime Day, most of which are malicious and created to steal consumer data and possibly money. This is according to a new report from Check Point Research (CPR), in which the security outfit warns about Prime Day being the perfect storm for every cybercriminal.

Amazon’s Prime Day is set to take place between June 23 and 26, 2026. During these four days, thousands of retailers in 25 countries will offer great deals on their goods and services, creating one of the biggest retail events on the planet. Consequently, they’ll also be creating one of the biggest cyberattack events on the planet, as well:

“Major retail moments bring together the three ingredients’ attackers exploit most: a globally trusted brand, time-limited urgency, and massive purchase intent at scale,” CPR warns, adding that phishing emails, fake websites, fraudulent offers, and account takeover attempts all surge during this period.

How to defend against Prime Day scams

For events such as this one, crooks prepare months in advance. CPR found that between December 2025 and May 2026, there were 6,843 new Amazon-themed domains registered worldwide, most of which were set up in April (1,446). May 2026 added another 1,267 domains.

Obviously, not all of them will be malicious, but CPR said that almost one in ten (9.2%) were already classified as either malicious or suspicious, and in the first week of June, one in every thirteen was labeled the same way.

“This pattern reflects a broader build-up of malicious infrastructure ahead of the event, with multiple Amazon-themed domains designed to exploit brand trust, urgency, and high purchase intent at scale,” the researchers warned.

To stay safe this Amazon Prime Day, always double-check the website you’re visiting, always go to Amazon's legitimate domain (https://www.amazon.com/) rather than relying on Google search results, and remember - if something is too good to be true, it most likely is.

• OALABS analyzed a novice attacker’s full working directory showing 14 breaches carried out with Claude Code and Codex agents
• Attacker used vague prompts; AI agents handled reconnaissance, exploit writing, and data harvesting, bypassing guardrails with ease
• Logs revealed attacker’s identity and location in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

A newbie cybercriminal managed to break into 14 organizations and steal sensitive data, just by using Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex agents. This is according to cybersecurity researchers OALABS, who recovered and analyzed the attacker’s entire working directory.

The researchers used this news as yet another proof that advanced Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) models are significantly lowering the barrier for entry into cybercrime, and to sound the alarm that the security community needs to step up.

“In many cases, the attacker supplied only vague, low-skill prompts and allowed Claude to fill in the gaps: researching exposed services, identifying possible vulnerabilities, writing exploit code, validating access, and harvesting data,” the researchers said. “The attacker did not need to be an expert operator; they simply had to use the correct framing for their prompts. The agent supplied much of the structure and technical execution that the attacker appeared to lack.”

Doxxing the attacker

OALABS could not find evidence that the stolen data was monetized in any way, either by being sold on the dark web, or by extorting the victim companies. They did, however, find numerous pieces of evidence about the attacker’s identity and whereabouts.

According to the researchers, the attacker did not run the AI agents on his own infrastructure, but rather on a third-party server, and when that third party discovered malicious activity, they downloaded the entire working directory and shared it with the researchers.

“Because the agents were local to the host, their full session logs were recovered, including the attacker’s prompts, the tools used, the internal monologue of the large language model (LLM), and any policy violations recorded during the sessions,” the researchers said.

OALABS was thus able to analyze more than 1,000 agent sessions, seeing how the attacker was able, with ease, to bypass most of the agents’ guardrails. Among the sessions were also the threat actor’s CV with his full name, location, education history, and LinkedIn profile, as well as his IP address which showed that he was located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Via Helpnet Security

• QiAnXin XLab uncovered “AryStinger,” malware exploiting old D-Link/Linksys router flaws (CVE‑2013‑3307, CVE‑2016‑5681) to build a proxy/reconnaissance network
• So far 4,300 routers infected, mostly in South Korea (48%) and China (32%), with QNAP NAS devices also targeted via CVE‑2025‑11837
• Compromised devices enable scanning, tunneling, and covert control; researchers advise monitoring logs, binaries in /tmp/bin, and suspicious processes like syswapd0h or syswapd0w

Cybersecurity researchers QiAnXin XLab are warning about an ongoing campaign to create a distributed reconnaissance and proxy network out of people’s routers and NAS devices.

The campaign targets outdated and unsupported routers (mostly D-Link and Linksys), powered by Realtek’s RTL819X chips which were a popular choice between 2012 and 2015. The attackers are leveraging two (ancient) vulnerabilities, CVE-2013-3307 in Linksys models and CVE-2016-5681 in D-Link ones, to infect the devices with a previously undetected piece of malware called AryStinger.

According to the researchers, AryStinger is used during the reconnaissance and planning stages of a more serious cyberattack. Devices infected with this malware can scan the internet, fingerprint services, enumerate subdomains, tunnel traffic, and run commands on demand, all while hiding the location (and true identity) of the attackers.

Targeting NAS devices

“Once compromised by malware like AryStinger that possesses reconnaissance and covert control capabilities, it is equivalent to a hacker placing a permanent "invisible listening device" and "attack springboard" within your network,” the researchers said.

QiAnXin’s XLab says that So far, AryStinger infected 4,300 routers, but stresses that this is not the final number and with the campaign ongoing, will rise even more.

The majority of the victims are located in South Korea (48%) and China (32%), with notable mentions being Sweden, Malaysia, and Singapore.

AryStinger also targets QNAP’s NAS devices, leveraging a code injection flaw in the device’s Malware Remover. This flaw, tracked as CVE-2025-11837, was first discovered during last year’s Pwn2Own event, and was patched in November 2025. The researchers don’t know how many of these devices are currently infected, and say the 4,300 figure only relates to routers.

The researchers did not attribute this attack to any particular threat actor.

To defend against AryStinger, the researchers recommend monitoring the logs for any outbound connections to the C2 and download domains (found here), checking /tmp/bin for unrecognized binaries, and looking for processes named syswapd0h or syswapd0w.

Via The Hacker News

• Millions of Brazilians received an unauthorized government alert
• The text simply read ‘misanthropi4’ and it’s unknown who sent it
• The government has denied it was responsible, pointing towards hackers

If you’re based in the US, you might know about AMBER alerts, also known as Wireless Emergency Alerts, which are mass-broadcast messages sent to every smartphone in a designated area. Several other nations have similar platforms in place, including Brazil — but many Brazilians recently learned that their emergency alert system wasn’t quite as secure as they might have hoped.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, millions of Brazilians were jolted awake by a mysterious message from the country’s alert system. The alert level was classified as “extreme,” and concerningly, it’s thought it was the work of hackers rather than any official body.

The message, which was sent to civilians in the southern state of Paraná and the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, among others, simply read “misantropi4.” That’s an approximation of the Portuguese word “misanthropia,” (with the final A swapped for a 4). As with the English word “misanthropy,” it means a hatred or distrust of humanity.

The message was accompanied by a loud alarm sound normally reserved for particularly severe thunderstorms. Since the text was sent shortly after midnight local time, it ensured that many people were woken up in the middle of the night.

Brazilian authorities said that the emergency message system was taken offline after a probable hacker attack, suggesting that this was more than just a simple text sent out in error by the government. Indeed, there was no event or natural disaster serious enough to warrant the alert being activated at the time, which further points towards bad actors being responsible.

A potentially devastating attack

The fact that hackers were able to breach a government system that has the potential to communicate with every mobile device in a given area of the country has worrying implications, both for the ways civilians could be manipulated and for the security of government institutions as a whole.

A text from a known government source is likely to be trusted more than one from an unknown number. With access to Brazil’s emergency broadcast system, hackers could potentially send out fraudulent messages that might have a larger impact than normal. That opens the door for all kinds of nefarious activities.

For now, this attack seems to have had a relatively minor impact. For many Brazilians posting on social media, the text was confusing more than anything else.

Last-Educator3947 on Reddit, for example, said “I live in the town where the alert was first sent. It happened five minutes after the Brazil x Haiti World Cup game. My anxious brain associated misanthropy with a violent attack on the people celebrating in the streets after the game. I thought it was an incel Discord hacker sending a message to start a ‘The Purge’-style attack.” They then added: “I’m laughing now but I barely slept last night.”

Reddit user Magnon, meanwhile, summed up the situation by saying that it, “Sounds like an anime villain just spawned.”

According to the International Cyber Digest newsletter on X, this breach could be linked to a previous hack of a Brazilian government employee who was infected with an infostealer. International Cyber Digest claims that stolen credentials included government logins, emails, developmental and staging environments, and more.

Whether or not this is what gave hackers access to the Brazilian government’s alert system isn’t yet known. Either way, it demonstrates the power that hackers can accrue if they find a way into supposedly secure governmental systems. While this alert saga turned out to be relatively harmless, that might not be the case next time.

• NordPass survey of 7,800+ users found 40–50% still store passwords in browsers for convenience
• This practice leaves credentials exposed to malware, account compromise, or device theft, especially with password reuse
• Experts urge switching to passkeys or dedicated password managers with zero‑knowledge encryption for stronger protection

Most consumers still store their passwords in the browser, despite the cybersecurity community’s repeated cries over the risky practice.

Recently NordPass, a company building a password manager, polled 7,861 people in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the US, on their password storing habits, and learned that the vast majority (between 40% and 50%) save their secrets just in their browser.

"Convenience and ease of use dominate as the top two drivers, confirming that browser password saving is overwhelmingly a comfort-driven behavior — with cost and passive auto-save prompts playing a secondary but consistent role," says Karolis Arbaciauskas, head of product at NordPass and its parent organization, Nord Security.

Password managers are a better option

Whenever a user creates, or types in a password, the browser would offer the option to store it. However, if the device is infected with malware, if the browser account gets compromised, or if someone gains access to the computer, these passwords can easily be stolen.

To make matters worse, NordPass says that many users set the same passwords across numerous services, creating a “digital house of cards that collapses if just one account is breached.”

For years now, the cybersecurity community has been recommending either the use of passkeys, or a password manager for more secure storage. NordPass says that a small percentage of respondents combine between browsers and password managers, in which the latter is more used as a backup option. However, that backup will do little good if the browser is compromised.

"Browser-based password managers are certainly a better choice than simply reusing or slightly altering the same password everywhere. However, dedicated password managers offer distinct advantages, such as encryption based on zero-knowledge architecture. This means all data is encrypted on your device before it ever leaves your computer or smartphone, ensuring that not even the developers can access your passwords — let alone anyone else," says Arbaciauskas.

How to store passwords securely

• Use a dedicated password manager
• Secure your password manager using two-factor authentication
• Make use of security checkup features to check for reused or weak passwords
• Always use a strong, unique password for each account
• Use dark web monitoring to check for leaked usernames, email addresses, and passwords

• Infoblox Threat Intel finds 65%+ of its cloud customers made DNS queries to residential-proxy domains in 2026
• Residential proxies could result in legal exposure or reputational damage if threat actors abuse them
• While not all residential proxies are illegal, abusers take advantage of anonymity coupled with cheap, unauthorized residential proxies to perform tasks that may be unethical, if not outright illegal at times

Users installing free VPNs, streaming apps, and even productivity apps might be unaware that they are often unintentionally the product themselves.

The old adage about there being no free lunch rings true here with many of these 'free' services essentially renting out the identity of an unsuspecting victim's network to strangers, many of which use it for malicious reasons.

The practice, which is considered fair game by many such applications has security and privacy implications in addition to users being flagged for fraud or extra verification as IP reputation systems at datacenters account for requests seemingly originating from a victim's network.

Blending in for a reason

The service being used here is called a 'residential proxy,' and while legitimate providers may exist, many of the sources are dubious to say the least. This is because demand for 'clean' residential proxies is both tremendous and consistent.

Research from Infoblox Threat Intel indicates that the situation is more dire than previously assumed, as nearly two thirds (65%) of its Threat Defense Cloud customers made DNS queries to domains used to access or orchestrate residential proxy networks in 2026, totaling over 500 billion such queries per month.

This is different from anonymizers like Tor or commercial VPNs, which produce anonymized traffic via voluntary nodes for the former and datacenter IPs for the latter. It leverages existing hardware on one's residential network, such as home routers, phones, IoT gadgets, or anything else that can essentially run a proxy service.

The kicker is that most of these services never obtain permission from a 'host' or bury such clauses deep in their End-User License Agreement (EULA), often leading unsuspecting victims to 'help' with malicious activities such as fraud, unpermitted data scraping, and even streaming services that bypass regional limitations.

Victims suffer because not only do such services essentially freeload on their existing connections, slowing down their internet, but it could also result in their IP addresses or networks being marked as untrustworthy or even fraudulent if the occurrences remain regular. This could open them up to legal trouble: It is hard, time-consuming, and sometimes downright impossible to prove that you were the conduit rather than the perpetrator for said activities.

Avoiding this is easier said than done, but there are ways to reduce susceptibility to this kind of abuse. A software audit should be your first line of defense. Knowing what runs on all your devices and whether it is trustworthy or not is key to preventing exposure.

One should pay particular attention to free VPNs, cheap IoT devices from dubious manufacturers, streaming software, and even browser extensions, all of which can expose one to threat actors. Investing in a router or software service that blocks such requests would also go a long way, as would leveraging Protective DNS to monitor your network.

To start, users can also use services to monitor and check their IP's risk profile, allowing them to determine whether they are already a victim of abuse.

• Nearly two-thirds of victims believe AI tools enabled their fraud experience
• One in ten victims handed over money within just five minutes
• Scammers moved across multiple platforms in 63% of incidents

Messaging scams are becoming increasingly sophisticated as criminals use AI to imitate trusted people, familiar brands, and everyday conversations.

New research from Kaspersky suggests these schemes are succeeding with alarming speed, often convincing victims to hand over money within minutes.

The findings indicate that digital experience alone may no longer provide reliable protection against modern fraud attempts.

AI-powered scams are becoming faster and more convincing

The study found that nearly two-thirds of scam victims globally, or 64.5%, believed AI tools played a role in the fraud attempts directed at them.

In the United Kingdom, 54% of respondents suspected criminals used deepfakes or synthetic voices to impersonate relatives, friends, or legitimate organizations, allowing scammers to create convincing scenarios that closely resemble genuine interactions and trusted relationships.

According to the research, more than half of UK victims completed payments or shared sensitive information within 30 minutes of initial contact.

More than 1 in 10 victims, representing 12.2%, did so within 5 minutes, demonstrating how rapidly these operations unfold.

Researchers also found nearly two-thirds (63%) of incidents moved across multiple communication platforms, helping fraudsters maintain credibility while avoiding suspicion.

The most common scams involved investment opportunities, affecting 40% of respondents, followed by fake delivery alert at 38% and brand impersonation schemes at 35%.

Dr. Elisabeth Carter, forensic linguist and criminologist at Kingston University London, said fraudsters create situations that appear entirely reasonable at the time.

“Fraudsters use recognised contexts, familiar social settings and embedded linguistic norms to make victims feel their decision-making is rational and reasonable in the moment,” Carter explained.

“What is actually happening is that they construct false realities in which those decisions end up causing financial and psychological harm.”

Financial losses continue to grow as reporting remains low

The financial consequences extend beyond isolated incidents, particularly during a period when many households already face economic pressures.

Kaspersky found that victims in the UK lose an average of £458.45 per scam, while 9.1% reported losses exceeding £1,000, with more than a quarter (28%) saying they experienced three or more scam attempts within six months.

Researchers noted that millennials were especially vulnerable to investment-related fraud, with 40% reporting exposure to financial opportunity schemes.

The study also found over half (52%) of all scams occurred during the previous five months, suggesting the problem continues to accelerate rather than stabilize.

Marc Rivero, Lead Security Researcher at Kaspersky's Global Research and Analysis Team, warned that criminal groups are operating at an unprecedented scale.

“AI is accelerating the trend, helping scammers convincingly imitate brands, familiar voices, and personal relationships,” said Marc Rivero, Lead Security Researcher at Kaspersky's Global Research and Analysis Team.

“Simply being aware is no longer sufficient protection. People need to recognise risks earlier, before being pressured into hasty decisions."

Security specialists recommend combining caution with technical safeguards, including antivirus software capable of detecting malicious links in real time.

They also encourage stronger credential protection through a password manager and broader awareness of evolving scam tactics.

• Shadowbyt3$ claims Nintendo of America breach, stealing ~1GB of employee data from TinyPulse survey platform and demanding $2M ransom
• Nintendo confirmed third‑party TinyPulse compromise, stressing no customer or financial data affected and most info dated years back
• Hackers later leaked alleged employee messages; authenticity unverified, suggesting failed negotiations or pressure tactics

Nintendo of America has confirmed suffering a third-party data breach incident, but played down its severity.

An “extortion-as-a-service” hacking group called Shadowbyt3$ recently claimed to have breached Nintendo of America, a subsidiary of the Japanese gaming giant, operating in the United States, Canada, and some Latin America countries, and exfiltrated sensitive data on its employees.

The crooks said they stole almost 1GB of internal data, which included personal details belonging to the company’s employees, and gave Nintendo of America 48 hours to engage in negotiations before leaking the files and demanded $2 million in ransom.

What is TinyPulse?

The group claims to have nabbed people’s names, email addresses, analytics and survey data, bank statements, and W-9 forms containing employee IDs, progress plans, and reports between 2016 and 2026. They later added that the breach didn’t affect the company’s gaming department, but rather employees who used TinyPulse.

TinyPulse is an employee engagement and feedback platform companies use to measure how employees feel about their workplace. It is best known for sending short, frequent "pulse surveys” to collect honest feedback from staff.

In a statement given to BleepingComputer, Nintendo of America confirmed the third-party data breach.

“We are aware of an issue involving TinyPulse, a third-party service used for internal employee surveys at Nintendo of America,” the company told the publication. “Nintendo’s systems have not been compromised, and no personal customer or financial data has been accessed."

"The data involved is limited to internal survey content comprising a small subset of our employees, and most of the information dates back several years,” the company stressed, adding that it is now “working with the service provider to address the issue”.

Shadowbyt3$ later shared a link to a data set allegedly containing direct messages and conversations between employees. This either means the negotiations broke down, or that the crooks were simply trying to put Nintendo under more pressure. No analysts yet confirmed the authenticity of the leaked information.

Via BleepingComputer

• Apple patches CVE‑2025‑20701, a high‑severity Bluetooth flaw in Beats Studio Buds enabling eavesdropping within range
• Researchers showed attackers could chain related bugs to hijack headphones, issue phone commands, and read/write device memory
• Fixed in Beats Firmware Update 1B211, auto‑installed when pairing with iPhone, iPad, or Mac

Apple has fixed a high-severity vulnerability in its Beats Studio Buds wireless earbuds that allowed threat actors to eavesdrop on people’s conversations if they were in Bluetooth range.

The vulnerability was discovered in 2025 by security researchers Dennis Heinze and Frieder Steinmetz of ERNW. It has been assigned CVE-2025-20701 and was given a severity score of 8.8/10 (high).

The researchers explained it stemmed from a missing authentication weakness in the Bluetooth BR/EDR radio, and also published a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit that showed how malicious actors might initiate a call and listen in on people’s conversations, as long as they were within Bluetooth range.

Issuing a patch

"In most cases, these vulnerabilities allow attackers to fully take over the headphones via Bluetooth. No authentication or pairing is required," they said. "The vulnerabilities can be triggered via Bluetooth BR/EDR or Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). Being in Bluetooth range is the only precondition. It is possible to read and write the device’s RAM and flash."

They also managed to pull the call history, stored contacts, and even succeeded in calling a number, after extracting the Bluetooth link keys from a vulnerable device’s memory.

"The range of available commands depends on the mobile operating system, but all major platforms support at least initiating and receiving calls," they said, but added that "real attacks are complex to perform" and should likely target only high-value targets because they require technical sophistication and physical proximity.

The team also showed it was possible to chain this vulnerability with two other ones impacting the same component (CVE-2025-20700 and CVE-2025-20702), to use the Bluetooth Hands-Free Profile (HFP) to issue commands to the phone.

Apple has now released a new security advisory, confirming it released a fix for the flaw.

“An attacker within Bluetooth range may be able to listen through the microphone of a device which is not yet paired and actively seeking pair requests,” the advisory reads. “This is a vulnerability in open-source code and Apple Software is among the affected projects. The CVE-ID was assigned by a third party.”

Apple fixed the bug in Beats Firmware Update 1B211, which will be automatically installed next time users pair their headphones with their iPhone, iPad, or mac devices.

Via BleepingComputer

• Microsoft’s Defender Security Research Team discloses “AutoJack,” a vulnerability chain in AutoGen Studio enabling RCE via malicious websites
• Flaws included localhost channel misuse, skipped login checks, and arbitrary code execution, letting agents run attacker‑supplied programs
• Issue existed only in early GitHub builds, fixed before release; highlights need for strict authentication and isolation of local control planes

Microsoft's Defender Security Research Team has disclosed a vulnerability chain in AutoGen Studio that lets a single malicious website achieve remote code execution (RCE) on a device running an AI agent.

AutoGen Studio is a program built by Microsoft Research for developing AI agents. The vulnerability chain was dubbed “AutoJack”, and it consists of three flaws which, when looked at separately, aren’t particularly troubling. Chained together, however, is a whole different story.

“The technique, which we call AutoJack, jacks the agent into becoming the attacker’s last-mile delivery vehicle by crossing the localhost trust boundary that many developer tools rely on,” Microsoft explained in its report.

Patching the bugs

First, AutoGen Studio had a local control channel that only accepted connections from “localhost”, which is a good way to block outside attackers.

However, an AI agent's web browser also counts as “localhost”, meaning these connections would get accepted, too. Then, for this particular channel, login checks were skipped.

The app had several ways to require a username and password, but the part of the code handling this specific local channel was left wide open.

Finally, the channel would run almost anything it was told to run. Microsoft’s researchers managed to get an arbitrary program running, meaning threat actors could do the same, albeit with malicious code, instead.

In theory, the attack would work like this: the victim would instruct their AI agent to summarize a specific website. By doing so, the agent would be told to download and run malicious code which could be anything from backdoor malware to infostealers.

The good news is that Microsoft found this issue and reported it before the bug ever reached regular users. The official downloadable version of AutoGen Studio never had this problem, since it only existed in an early, in-development version on GitHub. The AutoGen team managed to fix it since then.

“If an agent can browse untrusted pages and also talk to privileged local services, loopback can become an attack surface and control planes must be authenticated, authorized, and isolated,” Microsoft concluded.

• Paradigm Shift discovered “usbliter8,” a hardware flaw in A12/A13 iPhone and S4/S5 Apple Watch chips allowing jailbreak via USB data handling
• Exploitation requires physical access and Raspberry Pi, but enables bypassing iOS restrictions and deep system compromise
• Apple cannot patch; only unaffected models (pre‑A12 or A14+) are secure, making device replacement the sole mitigation

Security researchers Paradigm Shift have discovered a vulnerability in older iPhone and Apple Watch models which can be used to jailbreak the devices. What makes this vulnerability special is the fact that there is no fix for it - the only way to really be secure is to replace the device with a newer model.

The good news is that exploiting the flaw isn’t that simple. It cannot be done remotely since the attacker needs to have physical access to the device, and needs to hook it up to a Raspberry Pi.

It is still an important finding, and one which puts stolen iPhones (or those confiscated by law enforcement) at risk.

Handling incoming data

The researchers dubbed the bug usbliter8, and say it affects iPhone XS's A12 chip, the Apple Watch Series 4's S4 chip, and the iPhone 11's A13 SoC. Furthermore, the S5 (powering the Apple Watch Series 5, first-generation SE, and HomePod mini), was said to be vulnerable as well

The vulnerability stems from how these chips’ USB controllers handle incoming data. They don’t properly reset memory addresses between data transfers, letting the attacker place unauthorized code into the chip’s protected memory.

Therefore, according to Paradigm Shift, the bug can be abused for jailbreaking the device, meaning attackers could bypass iOS security restrictions entirely, install software at the deepest level of the system, and potentially extract data stored on the device.

Since this is a physical hardware design flaw, rather than a software bug, Apple can’t fix it with an update, and the only way to really remain secure is to move to a different model which isn’t affected by usbliter8. That includes either earlier SoCs (older than A12), or A14 and newer chips.

Paradigm Shift said it notified Apple of its findings, and thanked the company for its “prompt response, constructive engagement, and cooperation throughout the disclosure process”.

• Iranian hackers accessed two Cal Water systems and leaked 5GB of data
• A poorly secured GPS tool gave attackers a direct path inside Cal Water
• Administrative credentials for seven California districts were published in plaintext online

Tehran-linked threat group Handala has claimed it successfully breached California Water Service and released a 5GB data dump as proof.

Cal Water is one of the largest investor-owned water utilities in the United States, serving millions of residential and commercial customers across California.

Handala described the breach as direct retaliation for recent US military actions in Iran, claiming it could disrupt water access but deliberately chose not to — for now.

How a GPS tool became the entry point

Cybersecurity firm Dataminr analyzed the published data and identified two separate systems that Handala accessed during the breach.

The first was a customer billing database containing names, addresses, phone numbers, account numbers, and payment histories across multiple Cal Water districts.

The second was an internal RTKBase deployment — an open-source GPS base station platform used by field crews maintaining water infrastructure across California.

The RTKBase instance had been running continuously for approximately 783 hours at the time of access, with GPS correction data streaming across seven identified Cal Water districts.

Those districts included Bakersfield, Chico, Salinas, Stockton, Visalia, San Mateo, and a regional engineering segment spread across California.

The researchers believe that the GPS platform was not the end goal — it was the entry point into deeper infrastructure.

The RTKBase web interface was accessible via standard HTTP port 10000 across multiple district locations, making it straightforward for outside actors to locate and access.

It was deployed on lightweight hardware that offered minimal resistance against unauthorized entry from the internet.

Administrative credentials for the platform appeared in the published dump in plaintext, giving anyone who downloaded it immediate access to the entire system.

Full network infrastructure details for all seven districts were equally exposed, leaving Cal Water's security team with virtually nothing intact to protect.

A pattern that should concern every water utility

Handala's history makes the "chose not to disrupt" framing worth treating with considerable skepticism from any serious security perspective.

The group deployed a destructive wiper against Stryker in March 2026 that disrupted manufacturing and shipping — following the same data-theft-first pattern documented in this breach.

"Handala's operational pattern frequently involves an initial claim followed by escalated action," Dataminr's report concluded.

"Security teams should treat the current disclosure as a possible precursor to a destructive follow-on and posture accordingly."

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an advisory this year warning of Iranian groups targeting US water sector technologies.

This breach is an indication that Iranian cyber threats to US water infrastructure are no longer theoretical.

Cal Water has not publicly acknowledged the breach, but affected customers now face elevated phishing risks given that their names, addresses, phone numbers, and account details are publicly available.

Via Security Affairs

• Cybernews analyzed 10 Android companion apps for kids' AI/robotic toys and reported half of all declared permissions are considered dangerous by Android guidelines
• The investigation found 3rd party trackers in 7 out of the 10 applications they examined
• Researchers also detected two advertising, two profiling and one location tracker as part of their investigation

With AI toys becoming increasingly adopted by families, security firms are ringing the alarm about what this means for privacy in a post-LLM world.

Modern AI toys incorporate LLM models, allowing users, including children, to talk to and otherwise interact with them, and granting unprecedented access and permissions that enable them to harvest sensitive data with ease if a bad actor were involved.

Cybernews recently examined 10 toys from various brands and found that many had excessive permissions at the application level, which could expose them to abuse or data harvesting.

Why is an AI toy also a privacy concern?

Most users tend to grant permissions to Android applications on a whim without reading the fine print, but that might have extended to another frontier altogether: AI toy apps.

Cybernews' recent study, which focused on 10 different Android companion apps for children (Loona, Dash & Dot, Sphero, mBlock, Miko, Eilik, SPIKE™ LEGO® Education, Ozobot Evo, Petoi, and AIBI Pocket), found that all of them asked for permissions classified as 'dangerous' by Android.

All 10 applications required precise location access, which isn't concerning on its own, since these do need it to search for their corresponding toys using Bluetooth Low Energy (LE), but the permission requirements go much further than that.

As many as six required access to microphones, five requested camera access, and eight requested Bluetooth scanning capabilities. One could argue that these are required by some of the toys to function, but some of these are used in some capacity against the regulation updates made to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule by the FTC.

The rules that strengthened "key protections for kids’ privacy online," as per the then-FTC chair, Lina M. Khan, limited data retention, required opt-in consent for targeted advertising to children, and required disclosures to prevent data abuse.

This has not stopped AI toys from building behavioral profiles of their target users, as Cybernews found trackers in 7 of the 10 applications it analyzed. While most of these were crash reporting and analytics-related, two of the applications had advertising and profiling trackers, and one of them (Loona) also had a location tracker.

This might run contrary to data minimization regulations at a time when the world is already grappling with a social media ban for children under 16 in the UK, following Australia's footsteps.

"Data minimization for children's apps is essential. Responsibility falls both on developers to request fewer permissions and minimize sensitive trackers, and on parents to take greater control over the technology available to their children," the researchers said.

"Unlike adults, children are less likely to understand what data is being collected, how it may be used, or the privacy implications of sharing it.”

• Iran-linked group claims prolonged access to sensitive FBI drone data
• World Cup security enters spotlight after hackers issue public warning
• Handala expands attention with claims involving American institutions recently

An Iran-linked hacking group has claimed access to FBI drone systems and issued threats referencing the ongoing FIFA World Cup in the United States.

Monitoring organization SITE Intelligence Group says the group known as Handala said it had maintained access to surveillance information gathered through FBI-operated drones for months.

The claim emerges amid heightened concerns over cyber activity linked to Iran following military developments involving the United States, Israel, and Tehran earlier this year.

Hackers claim access to FBI drone surveillance systems

Handala alleged that it obtained access to imagery and intelligence collected by first-person view drones reportedly used in counterterrorism operations.

The group claimed those systems included capabilities such as facial recognition technology and license plate identification functions used during surveillance activities.

In a message cited by SITE, Handala warned authorities to strengthen security surrounding World Cup events while making references to FPV drone operations.

"Better tighten your World Cup security, we don't like some of those teams at all," the group said.

"Don't forget: FPVs are everywhere; you never know when one might end up right in your team's bus."

Those remarks have drawn attention because the FBI is already deploying drones around World Cup stadiums to monitor unauthorized aircraft activity.

Authorities have also imposed flight restrictions over stadiums hosting tournament matches and over related fan gathering locations.

However, questions remain regarding the accuracy of Handala's claims and the authenticity of the evidence released alongside its statements.

SITE reported that photographs and videos published by the group were described as material originating from compromised FBI drones.

One video cited as proof was later disputed by SITE, which said the footage had actually been produced in December 2024.

According to the monitoring organization, that video was created by a software company promoting technology used by a US police department during tornado damage assessment operations.

Previous incidents fuel concerns despite disputed evidence

Handala has attracted attention in recent months through a series of claims involving American and Israeli organizations.

In March, the group said it had compromised the email account of FBI Director Kash Patel before releasing personal photographs and additional material online.

More recently, it claimed to have breached California Water Service and even released a 5GB data dump as proof.

The organization is widely regarded as operating in alignment with Iranian interests, although public attribution remains a matter of ongoing assessment.

The Justice Department previously warned that Iranian actors could increase cyber operations following US and Israeli military strikes on Tehran in February.

Those developments contributed to a broader conflict across the Middle East and raised concerns about retaliatory activity against American institutions.

Firewall and antivirus protections remain important for organizations, although incidents involving surveillance systems often extend beyond enterprise defenses.

The State Department has offered rewards of up to $10 million for information leading to the identification of members connected to the group.

Via CBSNews

• Trend Micro found criminals abusing Claude’s “Shared Chats” feature to spread infostealers via ClickFix and malvertising
• Fake Apple Support chats on claude.ai, promoted through Google Ads, tricked macOS developers into pasting malicious commands
• Anthropic banned the accounts and disabled malicious conversations, promising further abuse mitigations

Security researchers Trend Micro have detected criminals abusing a legitimate feature in Claude AI to trick software developers into downloading malware. The campaign also includes malvertising, as well as the tried-and-true ClickFix method.

The goal of the campaign is to infect software developers - primarily those building AI tools on macOS environment - with infostealers.

Targets from Russian-speaking countries are spared, it seems, while the majority of the victims are located in Taiwan (30% of all traffic). This country is followed by Japan, Singapore, and the US.

Scam accounts banned

At the center of the attack is a feature called “Shared Claude Chats”, which allows users to create clickable links of previous conversations they’ve had with the AI. These chats can then be shared with other people via a public URL. Crooks created conversations showing fake Apple Support instructing the user how to install Claude Code (a command-line coding assistant).

However, the instructions are nothing but the standard ClickFix scam - they tell the user to bring up the Terminal and paste a command, which triggers a chain reaction resulting in an infostealer infection.

The second step is to advertise these URLs to the right target audience, which was being done via Google Ads. The miscreants were able to buy ads on Google’s network and set them up so that anyone searching for “Claude Code on Mac” (or similar keywords) would be shown these URLs as the first result.

Since the sites are hosted on the claude.ai domain, there was nothing seemingly suspicious about the links.

Trend Micro is not the first company to warn about this campaign. In mid-May this year, security researcher Berk Albayrak posted a new warning on LinkedIn, detailing almost an identical campaign. Same approach, same targets and most importantly - same exclusions.

The researchers are saying Anthropic investigated and banned the accounts responsible and disabled the malicious shared conversations. The AI company is allegedly “implementing additional abuse mitigations”.

• Nisos uncovers large DPRK employment fraud campaign embedding operatives in US tech firms
• 22 agents submitted 166k+ applications, landing 21k+ interviews and 76 job offers using stolen identities, AI tools, and local stand‑ins
• Targets were mostly software/data roles; scheme blended deception and AI tactics to generate salaries and access systems for regime revenue

Security researchers have uncovered a massive North Korean operation aimed at getting state-sponsored operatives hired in US-based technology firms.

Nisos published an in-depth report detailing how the group used stolen identities, AI tools, remote access technologies, and even locals, to get hired.

Shockingly, the campaign resulted in 76 job offers, roughly 3.5 offers per agent.

Heavy use of AI

Nisos said the investigation started when a suspected North Korean operative applied for a remote AI architect position with the company.

Working with law enforcement, the company uncovered a cell of 22 individuals who have, between December 2024 and September 2025, submitted at least 166,893 job applications, landing more than 21,645 interviews with US companies.

The operation was well organized, Nisos said, and had administrators, managers, team leads, operatives, and more. Members communicated via Discord, used performance-tracking dashboards, and identity brokers.

Each operative managed multiple employment personas at the same time, and tracked different metrics such as number of applications submitted, interviews completed and offers received.

To increase their legitimacy, the scammers relied heavily on AI. They used AI-generated resumes, AI-assisted interview coaching, as well as real-time response generation during interviews. Furthermore, they used voice-training applications to improve their chances of securing the job, and when they were required to show up in person or go through onboarding sessions, they brought local stand-ins who were later paid in ERC20 cryptocurrency (Ethereum).

Most of the time, they targeted software engineering, development, and data-related roles (70%). Salaries for these positions ranged between $55,000 and $230,000.

“DPRK employment fraud has evolved into a highly organized and scalable operation that blends human deception, technical tradecraft, and AI-enabled tactics,” said Ryan LaSalle, CEO of Nisos. “What makes this threat particularly concerning is that these actors are no longer relying solely on traditional cybercrime. They are embedding themselves within organizations, collecting salaries, gaining access to systems and data, and generating revenue for the regime through seemingly legitimate employment.”

• Check Point Research uncovers PR‑style campaign distributing a Rust clipboard hijacker disguised as legitimate software
• Attackers used phishing sites, GitHub/SourceForge projects, fake YouTube channels, and even newswire press releases to boost credibility
• Malware swaps crypto wallet addresses from clipboard, with “Ghost Networks” manipulating reputation systems to evade detection

Hackers have launched a fully fledged, multi-platform PR campaign to trick people into thinking that the malware they’re distributing is actually legitimate software, experts have warned.

A report from Check Point Research warned that even those doing regular due diligence might get tricked.

At the center of the campaign is a clipboard jacker - a piece of infostealer malware that monitors the victim’s clipboard for cryptocurrency wallet strings. When it detects one, it replaces it with a different one belonging to the attackers. That way, when a victim tries to send money from one wallet to another, they end up paying the attackers instead. Both Windows and macOS users are at risk.

Abusing newswire sites

“The threat actor uses multiple channels to promote and distribute a Rust clipboard hijacker, starting with a dedicated phishing page as the central hub and extending to GitHub and SourceForge projects promoted by fake accounts,” the company said.

“A dedicated YouTube channel, using AI‑generated narrators, suspicious view spikes, and highly positive (likely coordinated) comments, further reinforces the illusion of popularity and trustworthiness.”

To distribute the malware, the attackers ran a rather aggressive PR campaign: they set up a dedicated phishing page, multiple GitHub and SourceForge projects and accounts, as well as a fake YouTube channel. But the most surprising part is distributing news articles through newswire sites.

Newswire sites are services that distribute company press releases and announcements to media outlets, journalists, websites, and investors. Most newswire services allow anyone to submit and distribute press releases, usually for a fee, but they are generally seen as a legitimate source of trustworthy news.

At the same time, the hackers went the extra mile to make sure the clipboard jacker isn’t flagged as malware. By using numerous fake accounts (so called “Ghost Networks”) they’re manipulating reputation-driven systems like VirusTotal, tricking researchers and potential users into thinking the programs are a false positive.

“Even if this campaign is not primarily aimed at large enterprises, it shows that attackers no longer rely only on classic malware distribution techniques to reach victims,” the researchers concluded. “Instead, they can manipulate reputation systems, crowd‑sourced feedback, and cross‑platform promotion to lower suspicion and attract more users.”

Via The Hacker News

• Researcher Bob Diachenko uncovers “FortiBleed,” a massive archive of 73,932 Fortinet/FortiGate VPN credentials from brute‑force and exploitation campaigns
• Data included plaintext usernames, emails, and passwords for major firms (Chevron, Samsung, Toyota, AT&T, NATO contractor, etc.), with billions of login attempts logged
• Fortinet says leak is a resharing of past incidents and brute‑forced data, urging password rotation and MFA to minimize risk

A database containing tens of thousands of login credentials for major global corporations was found sitting online, in one of the larger data leak incidents this year.

Security researcher Bob Diachenko posted a new report on LinkedIn, saying he discovered an archive of Fortinet and FortiGate VPN credentials, counting 73,932 firewall URLs.

"Massive Fortinet/FortiGate bruteforce/active exploitation campaign uncovered in action," he said.

Fortinet responds

Diachenko named the campaign “FortiBleed”, and said the archive contained usernames, email addresses, and passwords (in plaintext) for companies such as Chevron, Samsung, Foxconn, Comcast, AT&T, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Sinopec, and State Grid.

"Thousands of top vendor instances are listed in the files like this (see screenshot). This one alone has 21,634 domain names - from Chevron to Fortinet itself. All - with potentially working passwords to the FortiGate appliances obtained through various means."

Diachenko told BleepingComputer the archive was created by a Russian-speaking threat actor that’s been harvesting credentials for FortiGate SSL VPN instances. After analyzing the database, he concluded that the attackers brute-forced their way in, running more than 1.1 billion credential attempts against more than 320,000 FortiGate instances, as well as 2.1 billion attempts against 160,600+ Microsoft SQL Server systems.

Besides, they also nabbed SSL VPN authentication hashes which they later cracked and used to log into Active Directory environments.

Multiple organizations around the world were “fully compromised”, Dianchenko also said, stressing that a Turkish NATO defense contractor was among them. This organization allegedly lost classified documents thanks to this breach.

Multiple security outfits confirmed the authenticity of the leak, including Hudson Rock and security researcher Kevin Beaumont.

Fortinet told the publication that the database is not from a new breach, but rather a collection of secrets stolen in previous incidents.

"Based on our analysis, the data involved is a resharing of data from previous incidents, as well as bruteforcing of credentials, and is not related to any recent incident or advisory. Organizations that follow routine best practices, including regularly refreshing security credentials, as per guidance in this March blog, face minimal risk from credential compromise detail referenced in the reporting,” Fortinet said. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to rotate any Fortinet VPN passwords and set up MFA wherever it’s possible and missing.

"Fortinet continues to investigate these reports with the security of our customers as our top priority.”

Via BleepingComputer

• Microsoft confirms RoguePlanet as CVE‑2026‑50656, an elevation‑of‑privilege flaw in Defender’s Malware Protection Engine
• Disclosed by Chaotic Eclipse as a race‑condition zero‑day granting SYSTEM privileges on fully patched Windows 10/11
• Seventh exploit in their campaign; PoC validated by ThreatLocker, with Microsoft promising a fix despite ongoing feud

Microsoft has assigned a unique identifier for the recently-disclosed RoguePlanet vulnerability and confirmed it is now working on a fix.

"Microsoft is aware of an elevation of privilege in the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine in Microsoft Defender publicly referred to as 'RoguePlanet,' the company said in a recently disclosed security advisory.

"We are working to provide a high quality security update that addresses this vulnerability. We will provide information in this CVE when the update is available."

Chaotic Eclipse's grudge

A security researcher with the alias Chaotic Eclipse recently disclosed a zero-day vulnerability in a fully patched Windows 11 device, just hours after Microsoft released its June Patch Tuesday cumulative update.

Chaotic Eclipse is waging a personal crusade against Microsoft, whom they’re accusing of being disrespectful and poorly handling vulnerability disclosures. RoguePlanet is the seventh zero-day exploit they disclosed in a matter of months. This bug, described as a “race condition vulnerability”, grants attackers SYSTEM privileges on fully patched Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices.

Before that, they also published BlueHammer, RedSun, GreenPlasma, MiniPlasma, YellowKey, and UnDefend flaws. Some of them affect Microsoft Defender, and some BitLocker and other Windows components.

They published a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) exploit in a self-hosted Git, after saying that both GitHub and GitLab repositories hosting earlier work got removed by Microsoft.

"The exploit is a race condition, so it's a hit or miss. I have managed to get a 100% success rate on some machines while it struggled to work on others," they explained. Security researchers ThreatLocker confirmed to the publication that the flaw works and even recorded a video to demonstrate how it works.

Microsoft now tracks RoguePlanet as CVE-2026-50656. Earlier it said it considered legal action when people engage in “malicious activity causing real harm to our customers”. Chaotic Eclipse seems unphased by these warnings, which some interpreted as threats.

Via BleepingComputer

• Researcher “BobDaHacker” found FIFA API flaw letting anyone hijack live TV streams and commentator feeds
• Bug stemmed from lack of authorization checks; FIFA patched quickly but did not credit the finder
• Experts warn it highlights CWE‑602 and the danger of confusing authentication with authorization

A bug in an internal FIFA system allowed anyone to modify what gets streamed to TV broadcasters, and what goes to TV commentators narrating the FIFA 2026 World Cup matches. Luckily for everyone, the bug was discovered by a white hat hacker and remedied before any malicious actors could leverage it.

Asecurity researcher with the alias BobDaHacker recently reported being able to take full control over the TV stream. They did it by registering as a player agent of FIFA’s official agent registration platform and then abusing a vulnerability in FIFA’s back-end API to access multiple internal platforms.

The vulnerability was that the API did not check the accounts for proper authorization - and as a result, they could control what people would see on their TVs during the matches, as well as what the commentators would see on their monitors.

Authentication is not authorization

“A single attacker could hijack every camera simultaneously. An attacker could have rickrolled the entire FIFA World Cup,” BobDaHacker said. We could have witnessed a “Dark Knight Rises” moment, too.

For Brett Winterford, Vice President at Okta Threat Intelligence, FIFA dodged a major bullet today: “The average global live audience of a FIFA WorldCup match is 175 million viewers. Imagine a person with the worst motivations discovers a bug that enables them to modify that livestream.”

“That bug happened. Thankfully a security researcher found it first.” Not everyone seems to be that thankful, though. According to TechCrunch, FIFA issued a fix mere hours after BobDaHacker reported it, but did not acknowledge them for their work.

Winterford believes the bug is yet another example of CWE-602: Client-Side Enforcement of Server-Side Security.

“It’s also another good reminder for developers: don’t treat authentication as authorization. Authentication deals with verifying a user is who they say they are, authorization deals with what the user is allowed to access.”

• Government filing triggered panic over alleged VRChat user data exposure
• VRChat denies any breach, calling the notice completely fabricated and misleading
• Notice claims millions of users affected through cloud system access

Confusion has emerged around claims that millions of VRChat users were affected by a major data security incident after an official publication of a breach notice.

The notice alleged that data linked to over 2.4 million users had been exposed following unauthorized access to the platform's cloud environment between May 10 and May 12 2026.

However, VRChat has disputed the report entirely, stating that it has no evidence that its systems, user data, or infrastructure were compromised.

VRChat disputes report describing exposure of 2.4 million users

The controversy began after a data incident notice appeared through the Maine Attorney General's office claiming that the information of 2,436,782 users had been leaked.

According to the notice, the exposed data includes usernames, email addresses, subscriber status, login histories, device details, hardware identifiers, IP addresses, and linked Steam or Meta account identifiers.

The document also stated that passwords, payment card information, financial records, and government identification documents used for age verification were unaffected.

The alleged incident attracted attention because VRChat is one of the largest social virtual reality platforms.

It serves millions of users who have created tens of millions of content items since launching in 2014.

However, VRChat has vehemently denied the authenticity of the report, calling it a “fake breach report.”

"VRChat did not submit this Notice of Data Incident, and the employee/email cited does not exist,” said Charles Tupper, VRChat's head of community.

“We have no reason to believe that our data or systems have been compromised. We are in the process of contacting the Maine Attorney General's office to have this removed."

Questions emerge over the authenticity of the government filing

Following the company's response, further scrutiny raised additional questions surrounding the reported breach and its origins.

Attempts to verify details listed within the notice encountered difficulties, including a phone number that was no longer operational and an email address that produced no response.

Investigations also reportedly failed to identify records linking the named employee cited within the filing to VRChat.

The company said it was working with the Maine Attorney General's office to have the notice removed while seeking clarification regarding how the report appeared.

Had the reported intrusion been genuine, it would have represented one of the larger disclosed incidents involving a virtual reality platform.

The alleged breach report also differed from many large-scale incidents because it did not mention identity theft monitoring or credit protection services commonly offered after major data exposures.

For now, the dispute leaves an unusual situation in which a government-published breach notice alleges a major compromise while the company named in the filing insists no attack occurred.

From VRChat’s rebuttal, this report seems to be an administrative error or a fabricated submission.

The latter is most likely because the perpetrators reportedly fabricated a fake notice that appeared to come from VRChat and was allegedly sent to users.

Intriguingly, the Office of the Maine Attorney General was later forced to pull its reporting portal offline after multiple fake disclosures ended up on the website - including the VRChat incident.

Another fraudulent disclosure impersonating Discord also ended up on the platform.

Via The Register

• Attackers are now targeting physical systems inside data center environments
• Power infrastructure vulnerabilities could shut down entire computing networks instantly
• Cooling system breaches may trigger overheating across server facilities

Modern data centers face a growing threat from cybercriminals who now target physical infrastructure components rather than just software systems, as attackers know compromising a single power device or climate control unit could trigger massive operational failures across entire computing facilities.

The financial stakes are extraordinarily high because downtime in these facilities often costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour.

Recent research from Claroty's Team82 has now uncovered severe vulnerabilities in two essential categories of data center equipment widely deployed across major facilities, raising concerns for users everywhere.

The silent risks hiding inside power and climate systems

The first set of problems affects Vertiv's Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) network cards, which maintain stable electricity during grid fluctuations or blackouts.

Any successful exploit of these flaws could effectively shut down every server and router depending on that power protection system.

The second discovery involves deeply buried weaknesses within Trane Tracer SC+ HVAC controllers that regulate temperatures in server rooms.

An attacker exploiting these issues could execute unauthenticated remote code and gain complete control over a building's environmental management systems without any prior access credentials.

Standard protections such as antivirus software may not fully cover these systems because they directly control physical infrastructure rather than just data.

This creates a risk where malware or targeted attacks could affect both digital services and the physical environment supporting them.

“Data centers must make a fundamental shift in how they redefine their cyber and operational resilience goals, given that a single cyber incident can lead to physical disruption, create safety hazards, or cause catastrophic downtime,” said Amir Preminger, CTO of Claroty and head of Team82.

“Our research shows that the risk to data center stability is very real and very present. Data center operators must move quickly to treat CPS protection as a business imperative to drive risk reduction and maintain operational uptime.”

Preminger also noted that increasing demand from cloud computing and AI is making these systems more critical than ever before.

The vulnerabilities were disclosed to manufacturers Trane and Vertiv, who worked with researchers to fix the issues before public release.

Data center operators need to act fast

The world now depends heavily on AI workloads running exclusively inside data centers that governments and industry increasingly treat as critical infrastructure.

Threat actors are simultaneously deploying AI-enabled attacks while targeting physical systems that sit outside traditional security perimeters.

A compromised UPS device cannot be fixed by rebooting a server because the power path itself becomes the attack surface.

Similarly, a weaponized HVAC controller could trigger automatic shutdowns across entire server rooms to prevent permanent hardware destruction.

Every data center operator must recognize that cyber-physical convergence means a single intrusion can cross from digital to physical domains almost instantly.

Securing power equipment and climate control panels against remote code execution is now just as critical as protecting customer databases.

No security team can afford to treat power gear and HVAC panels as secondary concerns behind firewalls and encryption protocols.

• Kali365 is a sophisticated phishing-as-a-service platform, also known as Octopi365 and Freedom365, that targets Microsoft accounts
• It was first detected by security firm Huntress in May 2026 when examining a slew of Microsoft 365 logins originating from China
• The FBI issues a warning detailing the process as part of a public service announcement

Phishing attacks are hardly new, with an estimated 3.4 billion malicious emails sent daily, accounting for a mammoth 1.2% of all email traffic.

Google alone blocks approximately 100 million phishing emails daily, as threat actors continue to evolve their approaches, using unique campaigns, AI-generated content, and, lately, QR codes to lure unsuspecting victims.

A recent phishing-as-a-service toolkit detected by cybersecurity company Huntress, however, stands out for its sophistication, scale, and success rate.

A sophisticated phishing service for hire

What makes Kali365 unique versus its peers is the scale at which it operates and the methods it uses. Unlike most phishing operations, it is a tool with at least 33 built-in templates that impersonate Microsoft products and services, 100 API endpoints, and role-based access control for phishing teams.

In addition to being an AI-enabled phishing, it also has a sophisticated payout pipeline, a crypto payment gateway integration, tiered access to the software suite, and, for those looking for a complete offering, a desktop application for operators.

Kali365 and its variants and clones, such as Octopi365 and Freedom365, do not, however, directly compromise or bypass MFA; instead, they use a set of highly legitimate emails and calls to action that then steal session cookies and OAuth tokens, allowing access to a victim's account.

The process itself is seamless; a potential victim sees a Microsoft website, an SSL certificate, and no warnings that they are effectively handing over access to a bad actor, who then uses their authenticated token to access their account. The AI-generated lures themselves are sophisticated, but as the FBI points out, they still require a user to be phished via email, with many impersonating "trusted cloud productivity and document-sharing services."

The more damning use of AI, however, is where Anthropic's Claude AI model is used to read intercepted email threads, score them for fraud potential, and draft convincing reply messages, complete with fabricated banking details and a manufactured sense of urgency, to be sent from the victim's own mailbox.

While the FBI's warning stands, it also somewhat acknowledges that this is not an easy phishing attempt to avoid, given the scale, the multitude of phishing attack vectors, and the "legitimate" look it has compared to most of its competition. Resolving this would require a change on Microsoft's end to close security loopholes that enable such authentication transfers, but for now, any affected individuals can only report their experiences here.

• Kaspersky found Steam Workshop wallpapers weaponized to deliver malware via Wallpaper Engine
• Dozens of malicious “application wallpapers” downloaded tens of thousands of times, spreading backdoors, infostealers, miners, and ransomware
• Valve removed the infected uploads, but users warned attackers could easily re‑upload new ones

Steam Workshop, a community platform built into Steam that allows users to share custom content, was being used to infect gamers with malware, researchers have claimed.

For at least half a year, gamers that used the platform to download certain wallpapers were being served various malware, Kaspersky recently explained.

This campaign has been running since at least late 2025, Kaspersky said - with some sources noting the majority of the victims are in Russia and China.

Dozens of malicious wallpapers

Steam is a hugely popular digital distribution platform for PC games, developed by a company called Valve. Baked into it is Workshop, a community tool where gamers can share mods, maps, skins, wallpapers, and other add-ons for games and applications.

Among other things, Steam Workshop allows gamers to use Wallpaper Engine, a desktop customization application that supports more than just “static” image wallpapers. With it, gamers can have videos, interactive animations, and even entire applications, displayed as a wallpaper.

And that is where the problem lies - hackers have been using application wallpapers as delivery mechanisms for different malware, including backdoors and cryptojackers.

"We discovered dozens of these malicious application wallpapers floating around Steam Workshop, and each one had already been downloaded thousands – or even tens of thousands – of times," Kaspersky said.

Looking deeper into the weaponized wallpapers, Kaspersky found that the malware is often either bundled in the package, or delivered inside a password-protected archive. The payload itself gets executed automatically the moment the user installs the wallpaper, it was said. In one example, Kaspersky was served a backdoor, and in another, an infostealer. Lumma and Vidar infostealers, cryptocurrency miners, botnet loaders, RanEngine, and even ransomware strains, were all being distributed this way.

Kaspersky disclosed its findings only after Steam identified and removed all of the malicious wallpaper applications. However, users should approach with caution, because there’s nothing stopping the threat actors from simply uploading new ones.

Via BleepingComputer

• Zimperium finds new Android banking trojan “Rokarolla” targeting 217 banking/crypto apps
• Distributed via spoofed sites, third‑party stores, and social media; dropper masquerades as Google Play Protect
• Steals credentials via invisible overlays, hides itself, and adds extra spying features like keystroke logging, call blocking, and screen recording

Security researchers Zimperium discovered Rokarolla, a powerful Android banking trojan capable of stealing login credentials and other valuable information from more than 200 banking and crypto applications.

Rokarolla is being distributed through standalone (spoofed) websites, third-party app stores, and social media. It was not found on the Google Play Store or other official Android repositories.

These malicious websites are advertising Google Chrome and TikTok apps, but when users download them, they first get a dropper that pretends to be Android’s built-in anti-malware solution Google Play Protect. This dropper then offers Chrome and TikTok, laden with malware.

How to spot Rokarolla

Upon installation, Rokarolla will do what most banking trojans do - ask for extensive permissions, including the Accessibility service permissions which are the usual malware red flag.

Other permissions that should be cause for concern include access to SMS and calls, as well as access to notifications.

If the victims grant all these permissions, Rokarolla will first profile the device and scan it for one of 217 banking and crypto apps.

After that, whenever the user brings up one of those apps, Rokarolla will display an invisible overlay to capture the login credentials, as well as PIN codes and unlock patterns. The trojan has numerous tricks up its sleeve to avoid scrutiny and remain hidden, including displaying fake installation screens, hiding the application icon from the app drawer, silencing audio and vibrations, and keeping the screen awake.

It can also extract contact information and WhatsApp contacts, grab keystrokes, record the screen, block incoming calls, and send screenshots.

Usually, banking trojans like Rokarolla target specific geographies and languages. Zimperium did not say which parts of the world were most at risk, or how many people were possibly infected. Those who only download apps from official repositories such as the Google Play Store or Galaxy Store are not at risk.

Via BleepingComputer

• Symantec confirms DragonForce ransomware operators used Microsoft Teams TURN relays for covert C2 traffic
• Custom Go‑based RAT “Backdoor.Turn” masked malicious activity as normal Teams communications
• First in‑the‑wild use of “Ghost Calls” technique; campaign shows highly sophisticated tradecraft with Scattered Spider links

Experts have warned cybercriminals are using Microsoft Teams relays as command-and-control (C2) infrastructure, blending malicious traffic with benign corporate communications.

In Microsoft Teams, a relay is a server that helps carry audio and video traffic when a direct connection between participants isn’t possible (for example, they’re on a corporate network or behind a firewall).

According to security researchers Symantec, in December 2025 ransomware operators DragonForce targeted a major US services company, likely abusing an unknown flaw in an SQL or MSSQL server to get a foothold on their target’s network and, among other things, deployed a custom backdoor malware called ‘Backdoor.Turn’.

Who is DragonForce?

Symantec says this backdoor abuses the Traversal Using Relays around NAT (TURN) protocol, a feature Teams uses when two (or more) participants cannot establish a direct connection. That way, defenders only see Teams traffic which isn’t usually scrutinized.

BleepingComputer says this technique was first demonstrated in 2025 by Praetorian, who dubbed it ‘Ghost Calls’, however this is the first time anyone’s actually used it in the wild.

“Backdoor.Turn, a Go-based RAT, is the first known malware to abuse Microsoft Teams' TURN relay servers to mask command-and-control traffic,” Symantec said.

DragonForce is an old group, by ransomware standards, first spotted back in 2023. It has been linked to the infamous Scattered Spider organization and, back in 2025, adopted a drug cartel model.

By offering a white-label affiliate model, it allows others to use their infrastructure and malware while branding attacks under their own name With this model, affiliates don’t need to manage the infrastructure and DragonForce takes care of negotiation sites, malware development and data leak sites.

Symantec said that the attackers running this campaign “use exceptionally sophisticated cyber tradecraft”. A full list of Indicators of Compromise (IoC) can be found on this link.

• Cybernews found exposed Elasticsearch database with 24 billion plaintext credentials from 36 sources
• Archive (~8TB) compiled infostealer logs, Telegram leaks, and prior breach data; regularly updated
• Owner unknown; mix of English/Russian sources, including 260M records tied to “Darkside” channels

A colossal database containing 24 billion records was found sitting on the internet, available to anyone who knew where to look, including usernames, passwords, and login URLs, all stored in plaintext.

The Elasticsearch database was discovered earlier this month by security researchers from Cybernews, who believe it is a compilation of different logs generated by various infostealers.

“The credential data leak is dangerous simply because of its enormous size,” Cybernews said. “Since the data leaked online, billions of affected accounts are at serious risk of takeovers, especially if they are not protected with multi-factor authentication.”

Identity unknown

The archive was locked down soon after being discovered, barring the Cybernews team from doing any deeper analysis - although they did manage to determine that the information came from 36 different sources, “varying from Telegram channels to combined data collections of previous data breaches and datasets exported directly from live target servers.”

The archive was more than eight terabytes in size makint it among the biggest archives ever discovered. Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine how many of the entries are duplicate, although it’s safe to assume that at least some of them are.

Cybernews also wasn’t able to determine the age of the findings but stressed that based on the February 2026 news article contained in the data leak, it could conclude that the cluster was being regularly updated.

The identity of the database’s owner remains a mystery. Most of the Telegram sources listed inside were in English, but some were also in Russian. Furthermore, around 260 million records came from Telegram channels with the work “Darkside” in them, referencing a now defunct ransomware group that was responsible for the catastrophic attack on Colonial Pipeline a few years ago.

Whoever it is, they seem to be actively monitoring the cybersecurity landscape and updating the collection frequently.

• Check Point Research warns summer vacation scams are surging, with hospitality/travel firms hit by 2,291 weekly attacks in May 2026 alone
• Attack volume doubled vs. May 2023; 47k+ new travel domains registered, 1 in 112 already flagged malicious
• Booking, Airbnb, and Skyscanner spoofed; travelers urged to verify domains before entering personal or payment data

Scams targeting people looking to book their summer vacations are spiking, researchers have claimed - and not only that, but the volume of attacks is significantly larger than last year, or the year before, indicating a growing problem.

Security experts Check Point Research found that in May 2026 alone, the hospitality, travel, and recreation sector recorded 2,291 average weekly cyberattacks per organization. The attacks rose 24% month-over-month, while the volume more than doubled compared to May 2023.

Cumulatively, over the last three years, the company found there has been a 122% increase in attacks on the industry.

Spoofed website

At the same time, the global year-over-year rise across all industries was just 2% which, CPR argues, means criminals are specifically targeting holiday-goers:

“This is not a general uptick in cyber crime that happens to touch travel. It is a deliberate, seasonal intensification targeting an industry that processes enormous volumes of personal and financial data precisely when people are distracted, rushing, and eager to secure a good deal."

A major part of these scams are phishing emails and fraudulent, spoofed websites, and these have shot up significantly. In May 2026alone, CPR says there were 47,318 new travel-related domains registered, which is up 33% from April and up 19% compared to May last year.

To make matters even worse, among these domains one in every 112 is already classified as either malicious, or suspicious. That doesn’t mean that the other 111 are legitimate, it simply means many others are laying dormant for now, waiting to be activated as summer traffic peaks.

If you are looking to book a flight, or accommodation, any time soon, make sure to double-check the domain you’re visiting, since major platforms like Booking, Airbnb, and Skyscanner, have already been spoofed thousands of times with fake websites stealing sensitive data and even money.

• Legitimate software is now the most dangerous weapon in a hacker's arsenal, HP warns
• Tax deadline phishing emails are opening doors that security scanners never flag
• Fake dating app downloads are delivering full remote access to attackers instantly

Cybercriminals are exploiting legitimate remote access applications such as LogMeIn and ScreenConnect to take control of victim devices without triggering standard security alerts, experts have warned.

HP's latest Threat Insights Report, covering January through March 2026, documents how attackers are deliberately blending malicious activity into normal IT behavior to avoid detection.

The report draws on data from millions of endpoints running HP Wolf Security across the period under review, and found the campaigns follow a consistent pattern built around social engineering rather than technical exploits.

How trust becomes the weapon

Legitimate software becomes the perfect disguise precisely because security tools are least likely to flag applications they already recognize and trust.

When an attacker controls a familiar remote access tool on a victim's device, nothing in the security stack raises an alarm.

That invisibility starts at the very first step — attackers used tax year-end phishing emails and fake desktop application downloads, including fraudulent dating website installers, to persuade users into installing remote access tools that they control.

Once installed, those tools gave attackers total device control while appearing indistinguishable from routine IT activity.

"What stands out in these campaigns is how easily legitimate remote access tools are being turned into entry points for attackers," said Patrick Schläpfer, Principal Threat Researcher at HP Security Lab.

"By combining trusted software with carefully designed social engineering — tied to events like the end of the tax year — it's getting even harder to distinguish what can and can't be trusted."

Separate campaigns uncovered in the same period used fake cryptocurrency wallet recovery tools distributed through code-sharing platforms and media download sites.

Those tools, rather than helping users recover lost wallets, harvested credentials, wallet data, and system information before packaging everything into archive files for exfiltration.

The emoji-heavy scripts used in these attacks showed characteristics consistent with AI-assisted coding.

This suggests that vibe coding tools are now lowering the barrier for building functional malware.

Malware hides in plain sight

HP's report also documented ClickFix campaigns disguising malware as audio files through convincing fake websites and realistic CAPTCHA prompts.

Victims unknowingly execute the malicious code in the background while believing they were completing routine security checks.

At least 11% of email threats identified by HP Wolf Security during the period bypassed one or more email gateway scanners entirely.

Executable files accounted for the largest share of malware delivery at 39%, followed by archive files at 38% and PDF documents at 10%.

"These attacks don't look like break-ins — they look like business as usual, blending in with normal IT activity and avoiding the warning signs associated with malware," said Alex Holland, Principal Threat Researcher at HP Security Lab

Holland added that organizations should restrict unnecessary privileges, control software installation, and isolate risky activity such as downloads and unknown links.

Enterprise security teams are advised to adjust their defenses to account for attacks that look legitimate, rather than suspicious.

• Maine AG’s breach reporting portal abused with fake notices impersonating Discord and VRChat
• False reports submitted via public intake system; later confirmed hoaxes and removed
• Portal taken offline for investigation, with companies still able to file but public access suspended

The Office of the Maine Attorney General has been forced to pull its reporting portal offline after multiple fake disclosures ended up on the website.

The breach notification portal is a public intake system for legally required data breach notices - so if an organization suffers a breach that affects Maine residents, it can submit its notification through this portal instead of sending an email or snail mail. Once submitted, the Attorney General’s office reviews the notice and usually publishes it, so the public can see confirmed incidents affecting residents.

However recently, fraudulent disclosures impersonating Discord and VRChat ended up on the platform, with the latter having to issue a statement saying the filing was submitted using a fake employee name.

Disabling the portal

Soon after, the Maine AG Office confirmed the reports, saying the fakes were submitted through the state’s reporting system.

"The Office of the Maine Attorney General has been made aware of an apparent abuse of our data breach reporting system," it was said in the statement.

"After conversations with VRChat, one of two affected companies, it has become clear that the reported data breaches were hoaxes submitted by an unknown entity unrelated to either company. These false reports have been removed from the database. We have no knowledge of any recent legitimate data breach reports from either VRChat or Discord."

To prevent similar abuse in the future, the Maine AG Office launched an investigation and temporarily disabled public access to the portal.

"We don’t have any independent knowledge of the breaches, the submitting entity fills out the information, and it goes directly onto the site. We will review the one you’ve flagged, thank you," Maine Attorney General's Office told BleepingComputer.

Companies can still submit breach notifications through the reporting service, but the general public looking for information will need to contact the Office directly.

Via BleepingComputer

• Vulnerability in UpdraftPlus plugin on Awesome Motive’s marketing server enabled CDN compromise and malicious JavaScript injection
• Malware targeted logged‑in WordPress admins, harvesting tokens and creating rogue accounts for full takeover
• Site owners urged to check for fake admin accounts (‘developer_api1’, ‘dev_xxxxxx’), hidden backdoor plugins, and rotate credentials/security salts

More than a million WordPress websites were at risk of full website takeover, after a vulnerability in a plugin enabled a large-scale supply-chain attack. The attack was spotted over the weekend by the ecommerce security outfit Sansec, and later confirmed by the victim company.

According to the researchers, hackers found and exploited a vulnerability in the UpdraftPlus WordPress plugin running on a marketing server belonging to Awesome Motive, the company behind multiple popular WordPress products including OptinMonster, TrustPulse, and PushEngage.

Even though the vulnerable server was not part of the production environment, it stored credentials for the company’s content delivery network (CDN), and by using the stolen CDN API key, the attackers were able to modify JavaScript files distributed through Awesome Motive's CDN.

Targeting admins only

The compromised files were later used by OptinMonster, TrustPulse, and PushEngine, meaning the attackers’ JavaScript was served to visitors, but not all of them.

The malware only activated when a logged-in WordPress admin visited an affected site, helping it remain hidden while targeting only high-privilege users. The malicious script then harvested administrator authentication tokens and WordPress nonces, using them to create new admin accounts.

In the next step, the attackers installed additional malicious plugins, established command-and-control infrastructure, and began exfiltrating sensitive data. The malware also enabled web shell functionality, arbitrary PHP code execution, file management features, and virtually anything else an admin might do.

Even after Awesome Motive removed the malicious CDN scripts, attackers retained control of already compromised websites through the rogue administrator accounts and hidden backdoor plugins. Therefore, website owners at risk of takeover should look for rogue admin accounts named ‘developer_api1’ or ‘dev_xxxxxx’, inspect the filesystem directly under wp-content/plugins for hidden backdoor plugins, and execute server-side malware scans.

Furthermore, they should rotate admin passwords, API keys, database credentials, and WordPress security salts.

Via BleepingComputer

• Varonis uncovered “SearchLeak,” chaining three flaws in Microsoft 365 Copilot to enable one‑click data theft
• Attack exploited prompt injection, HTML race condition, and Bing SSRF to exfiltrate inbox, OneDrive, and SharePoint data
• Microsoft patched CVE‑2026‑42824 earlier this month, rating it 10/10 critical

Experts have uncovered a way to turn Microsoft 365 Copilot into a one-click data theft tool, capable of exfiltrating sensitive information from people’s inbox, OneDrive, and SharePoint instances.

The method was recently patched by Microsoft having been developed by security researchers Varonis, who dubbed the method SearchLeak, explaining it works by chaining together three vulnerabilities.

Separately, these three can’t do much harm, but together, they are strong enough to warrant a patch.

Exfiltration proxy

The three flaws being chained are a parameter-to-prompt injection, an HTML rendering race condition, and a content-security-policy (CSP) bypass enabled by Bing server-side request forgery (SSRF).

The attack starts when a victim clicks a specially crafted Microsoft 365 Copilot Enterprise Search link. The URL holds hidden instructions in the search query parameter, telling Copilot to search the victim's emails, OneDrive files, SharePoint documents, or calendar data and include the results inside an image URL.

As Copilot generates its response, a race condition causes the browser to briefly render attacker-controlled HTML before Microsoft's sanitization process completes. This allows an image tag containing the stolen data to execute.

Finally, the image request is routed through Bing’s “Search by Image” feature, and because of the SSRF flaw, Bing can fetch the attacker-controlled URL on the victim’s behalf and bypass Content Security Policy protections. The sensitive data embedded in the URL is thus transmitted to the attacker's server, where they can recover it from web request logs

"Bing becomes an unwitting exfiltration proxy,” the researchers explained. “A classic SSRF, hiding in plain sight behind a CSP allowlist entry."

Varonis says that on the victim’s side, all they see is a normal Copilot search session, and stressed that AI has transformed simple, easily addressed vulnerabilities, such as SSRF and HTML injection race conditions, into potent vulnerabilities.

Earlier this month, Microsoft patched the flaw, assigning it a maximum severity rating (10/10 critical), and tracking it as CVE-2026-42824.

Via BleepingComputer

• Google GTIG exposes UNC6508, a PRC‑linked group exploiting REDCap servers with custom INFINITERED malware
• Attackers stole credentials, exfiltrated sensitive data via manipulated compliance rules, and hid for over a year
• Gmail accounts tied to campaign disabled; admins urged to enforce phishing‑resistant MFA, device‑bound sessions, and advanced protections

For more than a year, Chinese state-sponsored threat actors have been lurking in servers belonging to North American academic, medical, and military research organizations, deploying bespoke malware and exfiltrating sensitive files, experts have warned.

Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) published a new report detailing the recent works of UNC6508, a People's Republic of China (PRC)-nexus threat actor, who allegedly managed to exploit externally facing Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) servers to deploy a custom piece of malware called INFINITERED.

Through this malware they stole login credentials, allowing them to access the servers’ contents and remain undetected for more than a year. They then moved laterally throughout the network, exfiltrating sensitive data using a novel technique of manipulating domain content compliance rules.

"Patroit"

Google says content compliance rules are a “legitimate feature present in many cloud-based enterprise productivity suites”. Using admin accounts, the attackers created specific rules to manage email messages that contained matching predefined sets of words, phrases, and text patterns.

They named the rule “Patroit” and tasked it to BCC-forward certain emails to actor-controlled Gmail addresses.

Google has since disabled the Gmail accounts associated with this threat actor and this campaign.

In the blog, the researchers gave a rather extensive list of things admins should do to make sure they’re safe from UNC6508 and similar actors, including enforcing phishing-resistant 2-factor authentication, enrolling highly sensitive accounts into the Advanced Protection Program, and enforcing Device Bound Session Credentials with CAA for highly sensitive accounts to prevent cookie theft.

“The campaign targeted a diverse set of national, state, and private medical entities,” Google stressed. “These organizations comprise world-renowned clinical providers, premier academic centers, North American military health institutions, professional advocacy groups, and health regulatory bodies."

"Their research areas span a broad spectrum of modern medicine, from molecular discovery and clinical drug trials to state-level public health policy and military readiness. They employ thousands of people with a combined research budget in the billions of dollars.”

• The FBI has built an entire town to help train its agents
• The town contains houses, businesses, and 200 hackable servers
• The idea is to give agents hands-on experience so they’re ready for the field

In the never-ending cat-and-mouse game between hackers and law enforcement, it helps the latter to know exactly what they’re up against. Usually, that might mean sitting in a classroom and getting a little hands-on time with a hacked server or laptop. But that’s not the case with the FBI’s Kinetic Cyber Range — no, this time the US’s Federal Bureau of Investigation went out and built a whole town to keep itself sharp.

The 22,000-square-foot Kinetic Cyber Range is built to be as lifelike as possible. Pay it a visit, and you’ll find 11 different facilities, including houses, a data center, a gaming arcade, a convenience store, a hotel, and much more. It’s designed to replicate the kind of town you might find anywhere in America, yet it’s all contained within an enormous hangar at the FBI’s training campus in Huntsville, Alabama.

All the businesses and tech in the ersatz community can be hacked, allowing students to put their skills to the test. Would-be cyber officers will encounter firewalls, email systems, file directories, and more, helping to prepare them for future digital investigations. That said, the Kinetic Cyber Range is designed to ensure that nothing nefarious spills out of its secure bounds and into the wider world.

In addition to the FBI, the facility can be used by NASA, the US Army, and local law enforcement agencies. The idea is to get people up to speed with the latest cyber techs — including drone software, vehicle forensics, and the internet of things.

Facing emerging threats

Given how incredibly lucrative the cybercrime industry is for hackers and fraudsters, it makes sense for law enforcement to seek as much real-world, hands-on time as possible. Theory alone will only provide so much education, and without encountering the kinds of situations you might find in the real world, FBI agents will be a step behind their adversaries.

Speaking on the FBI’s YouTube channel, David Beachboard, Program Manager of the Kinetic Cyber Range, described the training location as “one of a kind” and said that “there is no facility like this in the world … This is about as real as it’s going to get before people go out in the field.”

Interestingly, students at the center will also be involved in various roleplay exercises that mimic those they’ll encounter outside the facility, from conducting interviews with business executives whose premises are being searched to dealing with medical staff who are concerned for patient welfare in the middle of a ransomware attack. It’s these scenarios that are difficult or impossible to fully replicate inside a classroom.

According to the FBI, more than 1,400 students have passed through the Kinetic Cyber Range since its opening in February 2025, with the training being regularly updated to cover emerging threats. As threat actors evolve, so too must those attempting to stop them. No doubt Beachboard and the FBI hope the Kinetic Cyber Range will play a key role in doing just that.

• Darktrace report warns AI amplifies cyber risk in professional sports
• 84% of clubs hit by incidents in past year; 83% saw AI used in attacks
• Average cost ~$170k per incident, with repeat hits driving annual losses up to $1.7M

Modern sports clubs operate like most large businesses, and as such, they are targeted by cybercriminals - however, the risk surfaced by the use of AI is even more amplified in this industry, compared to others.

A new report from Darktrace examined how the security risk of AI is twofold: on one end, there are criminals using the new tool to create convincing phishing lures, deepfakes, spoof brands and imitate professional athletes. On the other hand, there are sports clubs themselves using AI without proper safeguards, creating an entirely new risk surface that can be exploited.

According to Darktrace, this risk is amplified in professional sports “where live events, high-value data, public pressure, fixed schedules, and large networks of partners and suppliers all intersect at once to offer attackers maximum publicity, profit, and potential impact.”

Rising costs

To create the report, Darktrace used telemetry data from sports organizations, as well as the results of a survey of 875 security decision makers and influencers at professional sporting organizations.

That being said, more than four in five (84%) of professional sports organizations experienced at least one cyber incident in the past 12 months, while more than half (57%) were struck multiple times. What’s more, 83% detected the use of AI in these attacks, and 72% believe AI will increase cyber risk over the next year.

When it comes to damages, a single incident now costs around $170,000. While that might not sound like much for a professional sports team with high earnings, it’s worth mentioning that 57% were hit more than once, and 43% reported between six and 10 incidents in a single year. Therefore, the cumulative annual cost can go to $1.7 million.

• Incogni report finds leading job sites sell sensitive user data, often without awareness
• ZipRecruiter, LinkedIn, and Monster ranked highest for collection/sharing practices
• Millions of US job seekers at risk, with only 7% expressing concern over privacy exposure

Almost all of the leading job search sites are selling their users’ sensitive data to third parties - and most of them aren’t even aware of it.

A new report from Incogni surveyed 1,000 US workers using nine “leading job search, recruitment and professional networking platforms,” and reviewed their privacy policies and legal disclosures.

It found ZipRecruiter ranked highest for collecting and sharing personal information. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, and Monster, ranked second and third. Incogni also stressed that Microsoft faced regulatory fines and lawsuits over privacy-related issues in the past.

Users in the dark

At the same time, users either don’t know, or don’t seem to be too phased about it. More than a third (37%) of the survey’s respondents believe the platforms only share user data with potential employees.

Almost 50% said they just skim through the privacy policies when uploading resumes, and 40% said they never delete the profiles they create on job search platforms. A quarter don’t remember all the platforms that have their data, and a third (34%) uploaded their details to more than two platforms.

This is a problem that affects millions of people in the United States alone, Incogni hinted. The company says that 7.4 million Americans are currently unemployed and four in five (79.5%) of job seekers are relying on job search sites as an “essential resource”.

“It’s hard to focus on data privacy when you are worried about putting food on the table, but our research suggests that there are real risks associated with these sites,” said Darius Belejevas, head of Incogni.

“Only 7% of our survey respondents expressed concern about sharing their personal information with job search platforms; that is a shocking indictment of the lack of education about privacy risk in the U.S.”

• Novo Nordisk cyberattack exposed pseudonymized clinical trial patient data (IDs, biomarkers, lifestyle factors)
• Company insists no direct PII was leaked, reducing immediate risk of phishing or identity misuse
• Systems shut down for containment; third‑party experts investigating, core operations remain unaffected

Novo Nordisk, one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world, has confirmed it recently suffered a cyberattack in which it lost sensitive data belonging to clinical trials patients.

The company claims the data is pseudonymized and as such cannot be used in phishing scams or other follow-up attacks.

It then said the incident affected a “limited amount” of information related to patients that participated in some of its clinical trials. Since personally identifiable information, such as names or addresses, was not exposed, Novo Nordisk said it doesn’t think the participants could be identified in any way.

Shutting the network down

In a public announcement published on its website on June 11, Novo Nordisk said that it recently observed unauthorized access to a “limited number” of internal IT systems: “The incident included unauthorized access to certain personal data stored on the internal IT systems,” it said.

Instead, the crooks stole patient IDs (random alphanumeric strings) and information on trial participation, sex, year of birth, biomarkers, health and immunogenicity data, and lifestyle factors (smoking, alcohol use, etc.).

“Based on the nature of the exposed data as pseudonymized, knowledge of patient identity would require access to further information, which was not part of the incident. We therefore do not consider the incident to bear any immediate risks for our patients,” the company confirmed. It still urged its patients to remain vigilant and report any unusual things they may encounter in the coming weeks.

Novo Nordisk did not say who the threat actors were, or how many records were exposed in total, but it did stress that it brought in third-party cybersecurity experts to assess the damage. It also shut down certain IT systems to prevent further incursions, and was now working on bringing them back online, securely.

The company’s core business operations were not impacted by this incident, it was confirmed, and all are currently up and running.

Via BleepingComputer

• FBI dismantled Chinese PhaaS “Outsider Enterprise,” seizing servers, $100k USDT, and Telegram bot
• Service ran ~9,000 fake sites, 1M+ URLs, stealing 3.8M credit cards and causing $1.9B losses
• Google filed civil suit, says crooks blasted 2.5M fraudulent SMS in two weeks targeting Android users

The FB) has dismantled a major Chinese phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) operation called Outsider Enterprise.

In an announcement, the law enforcement agency said it seized multiple administration servers, a Shopify e-commerce storefront, and an account the attackers used to test the PhaaS, mostly SMS-based lures.

The FBI also seized around $100,000 in USDT cryptocurrency, redirected thousands of phishing pages to an FBI announcement site, and seized a Telegram bot that was used to store the stolen information.

Google files a lawsuit

Phishing-as-a-Service is a model where threat actors rent a kit that allows them to easily create fake login pages spoofing major brands, as well as send spam emails and SMS messages in bulk and exfiltrate stolen files.

The FBI says this particular PhaaS was very popular in the cybercriminal community. It was active for roughly three years, was used to generate around 9,000 fake websites, as well as at least a million fraudulent URLs. Hackers used this PhaaS to steal more than 3.8 million credit card records, resulting in around $1.9 billion in losses.

This campaign was followed by legal action from Google, too. The search engine giant filed a civil lawsuit against the PhaaS’ infrastructure and is working with major telecommunications providers to block fraudulent messages before reaching their targets.

“Our civil lawsuit targets an organized cybercrime operation known as the 'Outsider Enterprise'. Based in China and coordinating through Telegram, this network distributes "phishing kits" that allow criminals to blast out fake text campaigns that look like they’re from Google and other trusted brands," Google said.

Google claims that in just two weeks, crooks sent around 2.5 million fraudulent SMS messages to targets using Android devices. Users flagged just 55,000 of them as fraudulent.

Via BleepingComputer

• Researcher Paul found RCE via MITM in AMD’s auto‑updater, but bounty denied
• AMD imposed extended embargo, later changed disclosure rules after criticism
• Security community pushed back, saying new policy discourages transparency and undervalues researchers

A security researcher discovered a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in an AMD product, but the company allegedly denied him the bug bounty it promised for such findings.

In February 2026, a researcher called Paul discovered a potential RCE flaw via a man-in-the-middle attack (MITM) in AMD’s auto-updated software. He reported it to AMD and published a blog post about his findings.

However, AMD said MITM attacks are not covered by the bounty (despite this being an RCE flaw) and asked the researcher to pull the blog offline, which he did.

Google files a lawsuit

The company asked for a 100-day embargo on breaking the news, since additional tools were allegedly vulnerable as well. That embargo later ended up being 124 days, significantly longer than the usual 90-day window.

In its writeup, Tom's Hardware argues this alone merits reconsideration over denying the $10,000 bounty reserved for such flaws.

AMD addressed the issue by reengineering the download code in the autoupdater, but then another issue arose: the updater was actually broken and unable to update itself.

To make matters worse, after news broke that it denied the researcher the bounty, AMD allegedly updated its bug bounty disclosure rules to extend the non-disclosure requirements to cover bugs deemed out of scope. According to TechSpot, critics “immediately pointed out it appeared to be a direct response to the public criticism rather than a pre-existing policy.”

The same publication also said that the security community “pushed back hard”, since the change effectively “tells future researchers that even if a bug falls outside bounty scope, they cannot immediately disclose it publicly, removing one of the only tools researchers have to pressure companies into taking their findings seriously.”

On Reddit, the community discusses if AMD “values the researchers who bring it critical vulnerabilities”.

• Conan O'Brien fronts a new cybersecurity training video series
• Adaptive combines comedy and security awareness for corporate employees
• AI-generated scams are becoming harder for workers to identify

Cybersecurity awareness programs have struggled with a persistent problem for years — employees often treat mandatory training sessions as routine box-ticking exercises.

Adaptive Security is attempting a different approach by bringing iconic talk show host Conan O'Brien into a new training initiative focused on modern digital threats.

The New York-based company has produced a 15-part educational series featuring O'Brien to help corporate users understand growing online security risks.

Cybersecurity education gets a celebrity face

The videos examine issues including phishing attacks, impersonation attempts, voice cloning schemes, deepfakes, and other forms of fraud associated with AI technologies.

According to the company, each episode begins with a comedy segment connected to the subject being discussed before moving into the educational material.

The production involved collaboration between Adaptive Security employees and staff from Team Coco, the media company associated with O'Brien's entertainment projects.

Adaptive said the series will be available to enterprise customers using its training and cybersecurity awareness products.

Alongside the celebrity-led content, the company is also releasing additional educational videos that do not feature O'Brien.

“I teamed up with Adaptive Security just to figure out what these kids are up to. Turns out it's pretty cool,” O'Brien said in a statement.

The partnership reportedly emerged after company employees expressed appreciation for some of O'Brien's long-running comedy sketches and recurring TV segments.

Rather than focusing on entertainment audiences, however, the training material is intended for employees navigating complex workplace security challenges.

AI fraud is creating new concerns

Adaptive Security was founded in 2024 and develops products intended to help organizations recognize and respond to cyber threats.

Its offerings include security awareness courses, phishing simulations, and other services supported by a combination of proprietary and publicly available AI models.

Company executives argue that the threat landscape has changed significantly as generative AI tools become more widely available.

According to Adaptive's chief product officer, Andrew Jones, attacks have become more sophisticated and frequent.

“There’s really a before and after,” Jones said while discussing the growing influence of AI on cybercrime activity.

“There’s the before, which was pre-AI, and then there’s the after, which is after AI — and after AI, these attacks have gotten much more sophisticated.”

He added that businesses need clear strategies because emerging technologies are making fraud campaigns increasingly difficult to detect and counter.

Industry forecasts frequently cited by cybersecurity firms suggest financial losses connected to AI-enabled fraud may continue rising during the coming years.

Adaptive points to these projections as evidence of growing risks and argues that improved training may help organizations reduce their exposure.

The company has attracted significant investor backing, raising more than $140 million from several funding rounds involving prominent technology investors.

This financial support reflects broader interest in cybersecurity products as organizations face growing pressure to strengthen employee awareness programs.

For many businesses, the challenge extends beyond producing training materials and involves maintaining employee attention throughout these sessions.

Via Variety

• ShinyHunters likely behind the CVE-2026-35273 attack on Oracle's PeopleSoft
• Versions 8.61 and 8.62 affected, users urged to take "immediate action"
• Google's Mandiant informed over 100 organizations

Oracle PeopleSoft servers, used by universities, businesses and public sector organizations, are being targeted in a new attack by extortion group ShinyHunters, researchers have revealed.

The attackers claim to have compromised more than 100 organizations, and exfiltrated data from around 300 PeopleSoft instances, by exploiting a vulnerability tracked as CVE-2026-35273.

Victims have reportedly received demands signed by ShinyHunters threatening to release stolen data, unless a ransom is paid, with another researcher adding that it could be "a group impersonating them," implying the group has not yet taken accountability for the attacks.

Oracle PeopleSoft customers vulnerable to attacks and ransom demands

"This vulnerability is remotely exploitable without authentication," Oracle added in a June 10 security advisory. "If successfully exploited, this vulnerability may result in remote code execution."

Separately, researchers from Google's Mandiant they were tracking the "critical remote code execution vulnerability", rated a CVSS 9.8 score, between May 27 and June 9 2026. "Because this activity predates Oracle's June 10, 2026 advisory, the vulnerability was exploited as a zero-day," the researchers added.

Oracle is urging users to take "immediate action" to apply the patch, which fixes versions 8.61 and 8.62.

Besides Oracle's advisory, Google says it alerted over 100 global organizations whose IP addresses correlated with potentially vulnerable endpoints. Two-thirds (68%) of them were higher education institutions, and most of the victims were also based in the US.

Mandiant urges users to check logs for suspicious access between late May and early June, and to apply Oracle's security update regardless of whether or not they've been attacked.

Via BleepingComputer

• AI-generated code is growing faster than security oversight mechanisms
• Manual reviews struggle to keep pace with machine-generated software
• Security leaders fear insecure coding patterns spreading through development pipelines

Artificial intelligence coding assistants have spread across development teams faster than security frameworks can adapt to.

New Salt Security research has claimed 90% of security leaders now report active concerns about risks posed by AI-generated software.

However, organizations continue embracing AI tools because they accelerate coding tasks, reduce time spent on repetitive work, and increase software delivery speed.

Human review cannot handle AI speed

Security leaders believe that development practices designed before AI became mainstream may no longer provide sufficient oversight.

Nearly a third (29%) of respondents identified insecure coding patterns as the primary risk introduced by AI assistants.

These systems learn from massive training datasets that contain their own flaws and outdated practices.

An AI tool can generate code that appears fully functional while quietly reproducing vulnerabilities a human might have caught.

This problem resembles how antivirus software must constantly update its definitions because new threats emerge faster than signature databases can grow.

The difference here is that no central authority tracks every insecure pattern an AI might replicate - as despite the widespread anxiety that AI introduces, more than one-third of organisations still depend on manual code reviews before any launch.

Reliance on human checking becomes structurally problematic when AI produces code at volumes no team can inspect thoroughly.

That method worked when developers wrote software at human speed, but it fails when AI accelerates output dramatically.

Reviewer fatigue sets in quickly, teams apply standards inconsistently, and security requirements get interpreted differently across departments.

AI coding assistants are fundamentally changing how software is built, but governance has not kept pace,” said Roey Eliyahu, CEO and co-founder at Salt Security.

“Most organisations recognise the risks, but many are still trying to manage AI-generated code using security processes designed for a pre-AI world.”

This approach does not scale any better than using a single email inbox to handle millions of daily messages without filtering or automation.

Enterprise complexity makes enforcement harder

Larger organisations with more than 500 employees face governance challenges that smaller firms simply do not encounter.

Distributed teams use different tools, follow varied workflows, and apply security standards with inconsistent rigour across regions.

The risk of developer overreliance on AI assistants grows proportionally with team size and delivery pressure.

Security agencies, including government cybersecurity bodies, have previously warned that AI systems expand attack surfaces and complicate accountability structures significantly.

Without better visibility into where AI-generated code enters the pipeline, governance remains guesswork dressed up as process.

Treating AI coding assistants as components of the software supply chain — similar to vetting any third-party malware risk — offers a more realistic path forward than hoping manual review will somehow catch up.

• More than 12,000 servers supported a coordinated phishing infrastructure worldwide
• Google Cloud links helped phishing emails appear safer than reality
• Fake New York Times pages acted as decoys for scanners

When a suspicious email lands in your inbox promising financial rewards or urgent payment requests, the infrastructure behind that email is rarely what it appears to be.

An investigation by Comparitech revealed a coordinated spam and phishing network spanning 12,704 servers in 55 countries.

These phishing emails are tied to fake financial rewards and similar scams, using tactics designed to evade security tools such as antivirus and ransomware protection systems that many users depend on.

Trusted Google links help the campaign evade detection

The campaign begins with unsolicited emails promoting financial rewards, health products, gambling offers, or urgent payment requests through embedded links.

Rather than directing recipients immediately to attacker-controlled websites, the links first route through Google Cloud Storage pages hosted on Google's infrastructure.

That approach matters because familiar Google domains generally attract less scrutiny from users and automated filtering systems than unknown websites.

Google-owned URLs passed easily through email gateways, firewalls, and reputation filters that routinely extend trust to Google domains without deeper inspection.

Researchers found that attackers uploaded simple HTML and JavaScript files to cloud storage locations, allowing them to redirect visitors elsewhere without placing obviously malicious content on Google's servers.

This separation between the initial link and the final destination also provides operational flexibility for campaign operators.

Redirect destinations can be changed at any time without requiring modifications to emails that have already been distributed to potential victims.

During testing, researchers repeatedly encountered nearly identical landing pages displaying news content copied from The New York Times.

These pages appeared designed to serve as harmless decoys for security products, researchers, and visitors who did not meet specific selection criteria.

The infrastructure supporting these pages shared common software configurations, matching asset directories, similar redirect behaviour, and largely outdated server environments.

The scale is difficult to dismiss

The research identified the network through a single CSS file path — assets/ayt/css/main.css — repeated identically across thousands of servers.

This pattern points to a centralized deployment rather than independent operators - of the 12,704 servers identified, 99.8% ran end-of-life software with no active security updates, spread across 412 hosting providers in dozens of jurisdictions.

That geographic spread was almost certainly deliberate — takedowns targeting one provider leave the rest of the network entirely intact.

Checking 5,000 of those servers against a crowd-sourced IP reputation database revealed that 89% carried no prior abuse history.

This suggests that the infrastructure was either recently provisioned or rotated frequently enough to stay ahead of antivirus and threat intelligence systems.

Anyone who entered personal information on any page reached through one of these emails should treat that data as compromised.

Such users have to change their passwords immediately, especially where the password is reused across multiple services.

Furthermore, it is important to constantly monitor all financial accounts for unusual activities no matter how small they may appear initially.

Clicking a link without entering any information still carried a consequence. That click confirmed to the operators that the email address was live and active.

This means the email is likely to receive increased volumes of spam in the future, raising the risk of exposure to additional phishing attempts and fraudulent schemes.