Beginning in August 2025, a sophisticated intrusion was discovered where attackers used log poisoning techniques to deploy a web shell on vulnerable phpMyAdmin panels. The threat actors exploited misconfigured web applications to plant China Chopper web shells, controlled via AntSword, before deploying Nezha, an open-source monitoring tool, to facilitate remote command execution. This led to the deployment of Ghost RAT on compromised systems. Analysis revealed over 100 compromised machines, predominantly located in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong. The attackers demonstrated technical proficiency through multi-stage operations, utilizing AWS and VPS infrastructure, with indicators pointing to China-nexus threat actors. The campaign highlights increasing abuse of legitimate publicly available tools to achieve malicious objectives while maintaining plausible deniability.
A Chinese web-development framework called DCloud Uni-App has become the technical foundation for over 236,000 scam domains since 2022, powering fake cryptocurrency exchanges, pig-butchering operations, wallet drainers, gambling platforms, and brand-impersonation sites. The framework gained prominence after the 2024 RainbowEx cryptocurrency scam in Argentina, which defrauded residents of San Pedro. Similar operations include the Lightning Shared Scooter Co. (LSSC) scam in the United States, which caused millions in losses across multiple states, and the currently-active Yuechi Sharing Technology Ltd. bicycle-sharing investment scam. These operations use legitimate hosting providers, with approximately 6% utilizing bulletproof hosting, particularly CTG Server. The scams target victims globally through WhatsApp, Telegram, and social media, converting victims into recruiters for pyramid-style operations. Enterprise exposure reaches over 985 distinct organizations across 25 industry verticals, with over five m...
An ongoing malware campaign is targeting WhatsApp users in multiple countries with deceptive messages that push VBScript files, leading to remote system access. [...]
An active malware campaign has been discovered distributing malicious VBScript files through WhatsApp direct messages since June 2026. The operation affects users across multiple countries, with Malaysia experiencing the highest concentration of victims. Attackers compromise WhatsApp accounts and send weaponized VBS files disguised as business and financial documents to contacts. The multi-stage infection chain ultimately deploys legitimate ManageEngine Endpoint Central RMM software, providing persistent remote access to compromised systems. The scripts employ heavy obfuscation, Chinese-language comments, and modify Windows UAC settings. Infrastructure overlaps with ValleyRAT and Gh0st RAT operations suggest possible Chinese-speaking operators, though attribution remains uncertain. The campaign primarily targets individual users through opportunistic rather than focused methods, exploiting social engineering techniques with localized filenames in multiple languages.
Global law enforcement, including agencies from the Netherlands, Canada, United States, and Germany, coordinated Operation Endgame to disrupt TA569, a prominent cybercriminal group tracked since 2018. The operation targeted SocGholish infrastructure, taking down over 100 servers and domains while remediating 14,971 compromised websites. TA569 pioneered web inject techniques using fake browser updates to distribute malware, often leading to ransomware attacks. The group compromised high-traffic websites across multiple industries, affecting millions of visitors globally. Their attack chains involved traffic distribution systems like Keitaro TDS and ParrotTDS, delivering GhoLoader payloads that could lead to ransomware deployment in enterprise environments. Law enforcement actions included server disruption and website disinfection, significantly impacting the threat actor's operations, infrastructure, and reputation within the cybercriminal ecosystem.
A sophisticated smishing and phishing operation active since the second half of 2025 has impersonated over 267 brands across 72 countries, with particular concentration in Latin America. The campaign generated 4,389 phishing domain instances, with Mexico accounting for 1,851 cases. Telecommunications is the most targeted sector with 1,754 instances, followed by financial services and consumer rewards programs. The operation employs fake Cloudflare error pages as decoys, revealing malicious content only to victims matching specific geofencing and mobile device criteria. Data exfiltration occurs through encrypted WebSocket channels using binary encoded payloads. Approximately 30% of infrastructure is hosted on Tencent Cloud and Alibaba US servers, fronted by Cloudflare to mask hosting IPs. The attack chain progresses from SMS lures through progressive credential harvesting, ultimately capturing complete credit card details including CVV codes.
The Iranian IRGC-affiliated threat actor Nimbus Manticore launched sophisticated cyber operations during Operation Epic Fury, the US military campaign against Iran beginning February 28, 2026. The campaigns targeted organizations in aviation and software sectors across the United States, Europe, and Middle East using career-themed phishing lures. For the first time, the actor employed SEO poisoning techniques and introduced MiniFast, a previously undocumented backdoor showing signs of AI-assisted development. The operations leveraged AppDomain hijacking and abused legitimate Zoom installer execution flows for malware deployment. The actor demonstrated rapid adaptation capabilities during wartime conditions, maintaining high operational availability while expanding targeting to US-based aviation companies. Multiple campaign waves were observed from February through April 2026, with persistent infrastructure and evolving techniques.
In early May 2026, Instructure confirmed a breach affecting its Canvas learning platform after detecting unauthorized activity on May 1. ShinyHunters exploited the Free-For-Teacher account program, compromising the Canvas platform directly and exposing names, email addresses, student IDs, and private messages. The exposure window ran from April 30 to May 7, 2026. ShinyHunters claims 3.6 TB of data covering approximately 275 million users across 9,000 schools globally, including institutions in the US, Australia, and EU. This represents ShinyHunters' second attack against Instructure in eight months. Instructure shut down the Free-For-Teacher program permanently, rotated API keys and privileged credentials, and engaged forensic investigators. The stolen data enables personalized phishing campaigns targeting students and faculty, with attackers potentially having write access sufficient to deface login pages at multiple institutions.
A newly uncovered campaign abuses the Trillion (formerly Trellian) AdTech network, mimicking the flow of a Traffic Direction System (TDS) to trick visitors of typo-squatted domains into downloading Microsoft Store apps that contain browser hijacking malware. While the abuse of AdTech networks to deliver malware isn’t new, this campaign highlights incredibly similar tactics to VexTrio and previous TDS networks; further blurring the line between AdTech and malicious TDS systems.
The DarkSword exploit kit has been used by both state-sponsored hackers and commercial spyware vendors. The post Apple Rolls Out DarkSword Exploit Protection to More Devices appeared first on SecurityWeek .
Endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools are widely deployed and far more capable than traditional antivirus. As a result, attackers use EDR killers to disable or bypass them. The malicious “msimg32.dll” used in Qilin ransomware attacks, which is a multi-stage infection chain targeting EDR systems. It can terminate over 300 different EDR drivers from almost every vendor in the market.
In January 2026, Nacogdoches Memorial Hospital experienced a data breach where a threat actor infiltrated the hospital's internal network and exfiltrated personal and health information of approximately 250,000 individuals. The breach involved unauthorized access to sensitive patient data, potentially including medical records and personally identifiable information (PII). No specific vulnerability or exploit details have been disclosed, and no known exploits are reported in the wild. The incident highlights risks associated with healthcare network security and data protection. Organizations handling sensitive health data should review their network defenses and incident response plans. The breach underscores the importance of robust access controls, network segmentation, and continuous monitoring in healthcare environments. Given the medium severity and lack of detailed technical information, the threat primarily impacts confidentiality and privacy. Healthcare providers globally should be vigilant against similar attacks targeting patient data. Mitigation should focus on strengthening internal network security, employee training, and rapid detection of intrusions.
Mercor, an AI recruiting firm, suffered a supply chain attack involving the LiteLLM component, resulting in the theft of approximately 4TB of data as claimed by the Lapsus$ threat group. The incident highlights risks associated with third-party AI software dependencies in recruitment technology. Although no known exploits are currently active in the wild, the breach could expose sensitive candidate and corporate information, impacting confidentiality and trust. The attack underscores the importance of securing supply chains, especially for AI-driven platforms handling personal data. Organizations relying on similar AI recruiting tools should be vigilant and assess their exposure to LiteLLM or related components. Mitigation requires thorough supply chain audits, enhanced monitoring of third-party software, and rapid incident response capabilities. Countries with significant AI technology adoption and recruitment sector reliance, such as the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Australia, and South Korea, are most at risk. Given the medium severity rating, the threat poses a moderate risk primarily to confidentiality with limited immediate availability or integrity impact. No authentication or user interaction is required for exploitation, but the attack vector is indirect via supply chain compromise.
The CrystalX Remote Access Trojan (RAT) is a newly identified malware capable of spying on victims, stealing sensitive information, and modifying device configurations. Although it is described as sophisticated, there are currently no known exploits in the wild and no specific affected software versions have been identified. The malware's capabilities suggest it targets confidentiality and integrity by enabling unauthorized surveillance and data theft. The threat is assessed as medium severity due to the lack of widespread exploitation and limited technical details. Organizations should monitor for unusual device behavior and implement strong endpoint detection measures. Countries with significant use of Windows-based systems and high-value targets in sectors like finance, government, and critical infrastructure are most at risk. Proactive threat hunting and network segmentation can help mitigate potential impacts. Immediate patching recommendations are unavailable, so focus should be on detection and containment strategies.
Today, most malware are called “fileless” because they try to reduce their footprint on the infected computer filesystem to the bare minimum. But they need to write something… think about persistence. They can use the registry as an alternative storage location.
Active since September 2025, Yurei is a double extortion ransomware campaign. The operators run their own Tor data leak site with a low number of victims listed at the time of writing. It is reportedly derived from Prince Ransomware, an open-source ransomware family written in Go. Check Point researchers noted that all samples were first submitted to VirusTotal from Morocco, and that one sample did not include a ticket ID, indicating that this could be a test build, possibly uploaded by the developer themselves. Yurei ransomware samples also contained a link to SatanLockv2, based on the presence of the PDB path string “D:\satanlockv2” present in the Yurei samples.
Hasbro, a major toy manufacturer, has been targeted by a cyberattack currently under investigation. The company is assessing the full extent of the incident, including whether any sensitive files or data have been compromised. No specific technical details, attack vectors, or exploited vulnerabilities have been disclosed yet. There are no known exploits in the wild related to this incident at this time. The severity is currently assessed as medium based on limited information. Organizations should monitor for updates and review their security posture, especially those in the toy and manufacturing sectors. The attack highlights the ongoing risk of cyber threats to large consumer goods companies. Immediate containment and forensic analysis are critical to understand the breach scope. This incident may have implications for supply chain security and customer data protection. Defenders should prioritize incident response readiness and data protection strategies.
The new CrystalX remote access Trojan combines pranks with full control over the victim’s computer. It also spies on its victims, steals their cryptocurrency and accounts, and uses advanced methods to bypass protection. We explain how it works, and how to avoid infection.
