Threats Tagged 'phishing'

Noteworthy stories that might have slipped under the radar: ban on Chinese data center tech, QuickFox VPN supply chain attack, IEH Corporation mailbox breached via phishing. The post In Other News: AI Slop Limits Apple Bounties, North Carolina Port Attacks, Hackers Target Wall Street appeared first on SecurityWeek .

A 26-year-old Canadian man once described as one of the most consequential cybercrime threat actors of 2024 has pleaded guilty to computer fraud and conspiracy to hack and extort more than 165 organizations that used the cloud provider Snowflake . Connor Riley Moucka , of Kitchener, Ontario, also admitted to stealing call and text history records of more than 100 million AT&T customers. A surveillance photo of Connor Riley Moucka, a.k.a. “Judische” and “Waifu,” dated Oct 21, 2024, 9 days before Moucka’s arrest. This image was included in an affidavit filed by an investigator with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). The U.S. Justice Department said between February and October 2024, Moucka and co-conspirators used stolen login credentials to steal cloud-hosted data belonging to at least 165 customers of a U.S.-based software-as-a-service company. The hackers targeted stolen credentials for Snowflake customer accounts that did not enforce multi-factor authentication, and extorted or attempted to extort a host of well-known companies, including TicketMaster, Lending Tree, Advance Auto Parts and Neiman Marcus. Snowflake responded to the data thefts by increasing password complexity requirements and enforcing multi-factor authentication. Moucka adopted new nicknames frequently — sometimes operating multiple identities concurrently — but two of his best-known monikers were “ Judische ” and “ Waifu .” Judische’s admitted role in the Snowflake data thefts was first documented by KrebsOnSecurity in a September 2024 story about the overlap between Western, English-speaking cybercriminals and extremist groups that harass and extort minors into harming themselves or others. That September 2024 story identified Judische as a software engineer from Ontario who has been involved in numerous data breaches and voice phishing attacks against U.S. companies since at least 2020. A little more than a month later, Canadian authorities arrested Moucka on a provisional warrant from the United States. The government says Moucka and others used their unauthorized access to steal billions of sensitive customer records and download terabytes of information, “including individuals’ non-content call and text history records, banking and other financial information, payroll records, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) registration numbers, driver’s license numbers, passport numbers, social security numbers and other personally identifiable information. They then extorted victims by threatening to publish data online.” Moucka also threatened and harassed government officials and security researchers who were helping to track him down. The Justice Department said the conspirators made over $2.5 million in ransom payments, and that in at least one instance, Moucka re-extorted a victim with threats of further disclosure of the victim’s stolen data. “Moucka used the stolen data of a government officer and members of a then-former government officer’s immediate family in this re-extortion attempt,” reads a statement from the Justice Department. One of Moucka’s admitted co-conspirators is Cameron “Kiberphant0m” Wagenius , a U.S. Army soldier who pleaded guilty in July 2025 to extorting AT&T and Verizon for their customer account data. Less than a month before Wagenius’s arrest, KrebsOnSecurity published a deep dive into Kiberphant0m’s various Telegram and Discord identities over the years, revealing how the owner of the accounts told others they were in the Army and stationed in South Korea. One of several selfies on the Facebook page of Cameron Wagenius. Kiberphant0m also re-extorted victims. Immediately following Moucka’s arrest, Kiberphant0m posted on hacker forums what he claimed were the AT&T call logs for then President-elect Donald Trump and for then Vice President Kamala Harris, as well schematics allegedly stolen from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Wagenius is set to be sentenced on September 3, 2026. The government says he faces a maxim…

A phishing campaign is exploiting fears surrounding the recently disclosed COLDCARD wallet vulnerability and suspected $88.6 million Bitcoin theft to trick users into installing ScreenConnect remote access software. [...]

This report discusses how AI-powered phishing techniques have rendered traditional blocklists ineffective by enabling attackers to rapidly create disposable phishing infrastructure and evolving toolkits. It highlights that browser-level, technique-based detection provides a more resilient defense compared to relying on domain blocklists, signatures, or other known-bad indicators. The content emphasizes the challenges in tracking and mitigating phishing attacks that leverage AI to adapt quickly.

A sophisticated phishing campaign targets Windows users with fraudulent Bank of America emails, delivering ScreenConnect remote monitoring software as malware. The attack begins with convincing emails mimicking Bank of America branding, directing victims to fake security pages. Windows users receive AccountGuard.zip containing a VBS file with multiple layers of base64-encoded content. The attack chain deploys complex decoding scripts and employs a UAC bypass exploit via ICMLuaUtil COM interface to install ScreenConnect with administrator privileges. Additional components use SDDL and ACLs to hide the installation, prevent uninstallation, and conceal the malicious service. The installed client connects to command-and-control infrastructure in the UAE. Mac users encounter traditional credential phishing pages requesting banking credentials and personal information instead of receiving malware payloads.

The Greatness phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform targets Microsoft 365 accounts using advanced phishing techniques including adversary-in-the-middle and device-code phishing. It spoofs RingCentral emails to bypass email security filters by exploiting whitelisting and safe-sender list trust. Post-compromise, attackers access Microsoft 365 data and services via stolen authentication tokens. The platform is sold to cybercriminals and has been active since at least mid-2022, targeting users in multiple countries. Researchers recommend auditing safe-sender lists and monitoring suspicious MFA-approved sign-ins.

HighPhishingUnited StatesCanadaUnited Kingdom+2#phishing

The 0ktapus threat group conducted a large-scale phishing campaign targeting over 130 companies, primarily aiming to steal Okta identity credentials and multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes. The attackers sent text messages with links to phishing sites mimicking the Okta authentication pages of targeted organizations. This campaign compromised nearly 10,000 accounts across more than 130 organizations, including 114 US-based firms and victims in 68 other countries. Initial attacks targeted telecommunications companies to gather phone numbers used in MFA attacks. The ultimate goal was to access internal systems and facilitate supply-chain attacks. The campaign demonstrated how attackers can bypass MFA protections through phishing. Researchers recommend using FIDO2-compliant security keys and educating users about MFA attack methods to mitigate such threats.

A sophisticated scam is spreading through WhatsApp that exploits the platform's legitimate 'Linked devices' feature to take over user accounts. Attackers compromise existing accounts and send messages to contacts asking them to vote for a friend or relative in various online contests. When victims click the provided link, they are redirected through pages appearing to be WhatsApp-related, often using the legitimate wa.me domain. The attack tricks users into authorizing a new linked session, granting attackers full access to read messages, send messages as the victim, and access contacts. The scam is particularly effective because it comes from known contacts and relies on trust and quick reactions. Once compromised, attackers can continue the scam by messaging the victim's contacts, creating a chain of account takeovers without triggering traditional security alerts.

In this article The CaptiveCrunch campaign Storm-2945 and Midnight Blizzard CaptiveCrunch tradecraft and tooling How to protect against CaptiveCrunch activity Microsoft Defender detections and hunting guidance Indicators of compromise Since early May 2026, Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed Storm-2945, a sub-cluster of Midnight Blizzard, conducting widespread but targeted traffic manipulation attacks involving hospitality sector networks served by captive portals worldwide. Despite some tactic, technique, and procedure (TTP) similarities to the Forest Blizzard DNS hijacking operation that we publicly disclosed in April 2026, we attribute this campaign, which we call CaptiveCrunch, to Storm-2945. As reported by ReliaQuest on July 23, a portion of this activity leverages doppelganger domains mimicking Microsoft online services to conduct follow-on adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) phishing operations that abuse the device code authentication flow in Microsoft Entra ID. Microsoft Threat Intelligence has also identified active traffic manipulation attacks leading to the delivery of malware on impacted systems. Microsoft has observed Storm-2945 leveraging AI to support a significant portion of these operations. Today, we are sharing our findings on these ongoing intrusions to raise awareness of this threat and enable customers to protect their devices, especially while traveling. We provide our assessment of Storm-2945’s relationship to Midnight Blizzard and analysis of the CaptiveCrunch campaign, detailing the malware and tradecraft used in these operations. We also provide mitigation, detection, and hunting guidance to help organizations identify and defend against Storm-2945 and related activity. Microsoft Threat Intelligence would like to thank our partners at Anthropic and OpenAI for their collaboration and support during this investigation. The CaptiveCrunch campaign Since February 2026, Storm-2945 has conducted AI-augmented operations including targeted device code and OAuth code phishing campaigns leading to Entra device registration and subsequent data collection from Microsoft 365. Since early May 2026, Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed Storm-2945 manipulating DNS and HTTP traffic from networks served by captive portals to redirect user traffic through actor-controlled infrastructure. Although our investigation into the initial compromise vector for the captive portal networks is ongoing, we have observed notable commonalities in the equipment and management systems used across multiple affected networks. These similarities suggest that the activity might not be limited to isolated compromises of individual venues and could reflect access to shared services within portions of the captive portal ecosystem. Figure 1. Overview of the CaptiveCrunch attack flow As part of the CaptiveCrunch campaign, Storm-2945 has leveraged their AitM position to redirect users through actor-controlled phishing infrastructure and has also delivered malware purporting to be browser or operating system updates in response to automated connectivity checks issued by users’ browsers. Multiple variants have been delivered, including fully-featured Windows remote access trojans (RAT) in compiled Golang, with functionality to conduct system enumeration, collect files and keystrokes, steal credentials and session tokens, conduct audio and video surveillance, monitor for removable media, and provide the threat actor a remote shell on infected systems. The threat actor infrastructure leverages a variety of ClickFix techniques to elicit the user into downloading and executing the malware: Figure 2. ClickFix prompt with manual user instructions Figure 3. ClickFix prompt with additional user instructions after verification failure In addition to variants of malware targeting Windows systems, Microsoft Threat Intelligence is also aware of indications that the threat actor might be targeting Android devices with similar techniques as the ClickFi…

Most phishing campaigns rely on the fact that the victim is afraid to loose "something": money, access to information, ... Many brands have been impersonated by campaigns but I spotted some phishing emails that focus on AI services like ChatGPT.