Search: “Microsoft Silverlight”

Passkey-themed phishing attacks lead to Microsoft 365 data theft

Microsoft links ShinyHunters- and Helix-affiliated actors to passkey-themed vishing and device-code phishing that compromises Microsoft 365 accounts and steals cloud data.

Microsoft attributes passkey- and SSO-themed social engineering activity, observed since May 2026, to Storm-3121 (linked to ShinyHunters and Falcon) and Storm-3032 (tied to BlackFile members now operating as Helix). Attackers impersonate corporate IT help desks by phone or SMS, urging fake passkey, MFA, or SSO updates and directing victims to adversary-in-the-middle phishing pages or device-code authentication flows that yield credentials, session tokens, and OAuth tokens. Post-compromise behavior includes Microsoft Graph enumeration of users, SharePoint, and OAuth grants, plus persistence via attacker-controlled MFA methods. Google Threat Intelligence tracks related activity as UNC6671, linked to the BlackFile, Helix, Falcon, Pink, and Redact extortion gangs.

BleepingComputer·updated 14:54 UTC · 4h ago·first Sep 11, 17:26 UTC · 5d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild 9 sources

The 12 Best Mobile Device Management (MDM) Solutions, Compared and Priced

A comparison of 12 MDM platforms ranks Microsoft Intune as best value for Microsoft 365 estates and Jamf, Kandji, and Mosyle for Apple fleets.

The buyer's guide compares 12 mobile device management (MDM) products, naming Microsoft Intune best value since it is included in Microsoft 365 E3/E5, and Jamf, Kandji, and Mosyle as Apple specialists with day-one OS support and automated compliance remediation. Eight of the twelve publish rates; per-device pricing punishes multi-device users, while Microsoft, Omnissa, and IBM offer per-user options. Free tiers from Mosyle, Miradore, and ManageEngine support genuine small deployments.

GBHackers·updated Sep 10, 08:19 UTC · 6d ago·first Sep 10, 08:09 UTC · 6d agoIndustry 4 sources

Understanding Angler Exploit Kit

Unit 42 explains exploit kit fundamentals, describing how landing pages profile victims, deliver exploits, and install malware payloads on Windows hosts.

Unit 42 published a primer on exploit kit fundamentals, defining vulnerabilities, exploits, malware payloads, actors, and campaigns in EK-based attacks. It explains the infection chain: a landing page profiles the victim's Windows system for vulnerable applications such as Flash Player, Java, Silverlight, and Internet Explorer, then a matching exploit executes a downloader or final payload, often delivered encrypted with XOR or RC4. The post also describes the EK-as-a-Service business model, in which leading EKs are rented for a few thousand dollars per month while buyers supply campaign infrastructure.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 09:50 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Research1

New infosec products of the month: August 2026

August 2026 roundup of security product releases from ServiceNow, Tanium, Snyk, F5, A10, Searchlight Cyber, Intezer, NETSCOUT, Tufin, and Abnormal AI.

Help Net Security's monthly product roundup covers roughly a dozen vendors. Highlights include Snyk's general availability of Evo Continuous Offensive Security with AI-powered pentesting and AI agent red teaming, Searchlight Cyber's PTEM platform combining exposure visibility with attacker intelligence, and A10 and F5 AI gateways to govern enterprise LLM and agent usage. Other updates include Abnormal AI email DLP and phishing training, NETSCOUT outbound DDoS mitigation for service providers, Intezer's native Workflows automation, and Tufin's AI-powered Segmentation Intelligence.

Help Net Security·Aug 28, 00:00 UTC · 19d agoTools

Understanding Angler Exploit Kit

Unit 42 examines Angler EK operations, including rapid zero-day adoption, fileless Bedep infections, and ransomware payloads like TeslaCrypt and CryptXXX.

Unit 42 published the second part of its Angler EK analysis, covering the kit's history since 2013, its SaaS rental model, and its focus on Flash, Internet Explorer, and Silverlight exploits. Angler integrated the CVE-2015-5119 Flash zero-day from the Hacking Team leak within hours and later added exploits for CVE-2015-2419 and CVE-2016-0034 roughly a month after Microsoft patched them. Campaigns use Angler to deliver ransomware such as CryptoWall, TeslaCrypt, and CryptXXX, plus banking trojans and stealers via EITest. Since August 2014, Angler has used fileless, in-memory execution, most often for Bedep, which later downloads CryptXXX and click-fraud malware.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 09:50 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Research in the wildCVE-2015-5119CVE-2015-2419CVE-2016-0034

Silver Fox Targets Japanese Manufacturer with 3

Chinese group Silver Fox used new vulnerable drivers and DLL side-loading to deploy ValleyRAT at a Japanese industrial manufacturer.

Cato Networks detailed a Silver Fox campaign against a Japanese industrial manufacturing organization combining new vulnerable-driver abuse (BootRepair.sys and EnPortv.sys alongside wsftprm.sys), DLL side-loading via Zeon Corporation PDF binaries, and NTDLL unhooking to deliver ValleyRAT (Winos 4.0), a Gh0st RAT variant. The chain starts with an invoice-themed phishing lure hosting attacker-controlled content on legitimate QQ and Tencent Cloud services. Shellcode is injected into svchost.exe via thread-context hijacking, and a dual watchdog design pairs payload monitoring with a scheduled-task batch script for persistence. A separate 180-day VirusTotal retrohunt found 146 Atlas RAT samples across six PDB builds, though the Silver Fox link remains circumstantial.

The Hacker News·Aug 27, 10:50 UTC · 20d agoThreat actor in the wild

Microsoft named a Leader in the Frost Radar™: Cloud Workload Protection Platforms, 2026

Microsoft was named a leader in the 2026 Frost Radar for Cloud Workload Protection Platforms, cited for Defender for Cloud runtime security.

The 2026 Frost Radar for Cloud Workload Protection Platforms placed Microsoft in its leadership tier, calling the company a visionary leader. Microsoft attributes the recognition to unified runtime security delivered through Microsoft Defender for Cloud. The post is vendor marketing with no incident, vulnerability, or technical detail.

Microsoft Security Blog·Aug 19, 17:30 UTC · 28d agoIndustry3

Counterfeit installers to system compromise: Tracking a deceptive software download campaign

Microsoft tracks a counterfeit software-installer campaign compromising multinationals' China operations, moderately linked to the Silver Fox (Yinhu) actor.

Microsoft Defender Experts is tracking an active campaign using spoofed software download sites for brands such as Razer, Kaspersky, Microsoft Edge, Calibre, and Baidu Netdisk on .com.cn and .hl.cn domains, delivering installer archives whose hashes change per download, indicating server-side payload generation. The implants establish persistence, weaken security protections, and communicate with attacker-controlled infrastructure, with confirmed compromises across healthcare, manufacturing, gaming, technology, logistics, government, and education. Microsoft assesses with moderate confidence that the activity matches the publicly reported Silver Fox (Yinhu) fake software campaign; it has not attributed it to a nation-state actor.

Microsoft Security Blog·Sep 1, 22:48 UTC · 14d agoThreat actor in the wild1

New infosec products of the week: August 14, 2026

Vendors A10 Networks, ScienceLogic, Searchlight Cyber, and DataGrout/SelectHub released new security and AI operations products this week.

A weekly product roundup covering four releases: ScienceLogic Skylar AI 2.5 with expanded secure deployment options, Searchlight Cyber's Preemptive Threat Exposure Management platform combining exposure visibility with threat intelligence, the general availability of the A10 AI Gateway for routing and governing enterprise AI traffic, and DataGrout's LLM inference optimization and AI governance platform.

Help Net Security·Aug 14, 00:00 UTC · Aug 14, 2026Tools

Fake Software Installers Disable Windows Update and Weaken Microsoft Defender

Fake software-download sites distribute installers that disable Windows Update and weaken Defender, attributed to China-linked cluster Silver Fox.

Microsoft says an active campaign uses counterfeit vendor websites on .com.cn and .hl.cn infrastructure with Chinese-language lures to deliver server-side generated installers that establish scheduled-task persistence, add Defender exclusions, delete shadow copies, and stop services including wuauserv, UsoSvc, uhssvc and WaaSMedicSvc. Victims span healthcare, manufacturing, gaming, technology, logistics, government and education, primarily China-based operations of multinationals and Chinese-speaking users. Microsoft assesses with moderate confidence the activity matches the Silver Fox (Yinhu) cluster, historically tied to Gh0st RAT and ValleyRAT, with C2 over non-standard ports like 5090 and 7088-7090 via domains iualef[.]net and oijfwe[.]net. Kaspersky separately detailed a QN Wallpaper DLL-sideloading chain delivering ValleyRAT.

The Hacker News·Sep 2, 16:41 UTC · 14d agoMalware in the wild

Nightmare-Eclipse Strikes Again with 'ShieldCrash' Windows Exploit

A researcher known as Nightmare-Eclipse published another zero-day exploit, dubbed ShieldCrash, targeting Windows Defender.

Dark Reading reports that the disgruntled researcher tracked as Nightmare-Eclipse continued a vendetta against Microsoft by publishing a new zero-day exploit named ShieldCrash for Windows Defender. The brief report does not detail affected versions, exploitation prerequisites, or whether exploitation has been observed.

Dark Reading·Sep 10, 15:29 UTC · 6d agoExploit / PoC1

Attackers Use Passkey Phishing to Hijack Microsoft Cloud Accounts and Exfiltrate Data

Microsoft details two campaigns: million-email CEO impersonation ACH fraud and passkey-themed vishing that hijacks Microsoft cloud accounts for data theft and extortion.

Microsoft disclosed a campaign that sent over one million CEO-impersonation scam emails between August 3-5, 2026, targeting U.S. accounts payable departments with fake ServiceNow subscription invoices to induce ACH transfers, using generative AI to tailor templates. A second campaign detected since May 2026 uses passkey/MFA-themed voice phishing posing as the IT help desk, redirecting victims via SMS to counterfeit Microsoft sign-in pages and adversary-in-the-middle or device-code flows to hijack accounts. Post-compromise activity includes adding attacker-controlled authentication methods, high-volume Microsoft Graph activity, SharePoint and OneDrive downloads, and mailbox collection via REST APIs. Microsoft attributes initial access to Storm-3121 (linked to ShinyHunters and Falcon extortion) and Storm-3032 (UNC6671, a BlackFile splinter operating the Helix extortion brand).

The Hacker News·Sep 13, 10:11 UTC · 3d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild2

Top 10 Best Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) Solutions in 2026

A 2026 buyer's guide ranks UEM platforms, recommending Intune for Microsoft 365 shops, Jamf for Apple estates, and SOTI for rugged devices.

The guide ranks ten unified endpoint management platforms for 2026, recommending Microsoft Intune for Microsoft 365 organizations, Jamf for Apple-heavy estates, and SOTI for rugged, kiosk, and industrial devices. It notes VMware Workspace ONE now operates as Omnissa after Broadcom divested the End-User Computing division, and that BlackBerry sold Cylance to Arctic Wolf in February 2025 while retaining BlackBerry UEM. The article provides a coverage checklist spanning Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux, kiosks, legacy on-prem Windows, and wearables/IoT.

Cyber Security News·Sep 9, 07:32 UTC · 7d agoIndustry

Phishing Campaign Sends Millions of Emails Using Invisible Unicode to Evade Filters

Microsoft warns of a high-volume phishing campaign using invisible Unicode characters to split keywords like 'funding' and evade filters, peaking at 2.37 million daily messages.

Microsoft's Security Research team documented a high-volume phishing operation inserting deprecated Unicode Tags characters (U+E0000-U+E007F) inside financial keywords such as 'funding' so literal-string and regex email filters stop matching them. The campaign ran on a weekly cadence with 1-2.37 million weekday messages between February and May 15, 2026, peaking on February 26, 2026. It used hundreds of disposable finance-themed sender domains and relayed mail through ActiveCampaign's click-tracking infrastructure (acemlnd[.]com, activehosted[.]com), lending legitimate platform reputation. Microsoft ties the activity to an AI-assisted SBA loan phishing campaign that Fortra's FIRE team disclosed in September 2025.

The Hacker News·Sep 4, 15:57 UTC · 12d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

Passkey-themed social engineering leads to identity and cloud compromise

Microsoft tracks ongoing cloud intrusions where passkey-themed helpdesk lures enable AiTM credential theft, MFA persistence, and SharePoint data theft.

Microsoft Security Research is tracking active cloud-based intrusions, observed since May 2026, that begin with helpdesk impersonation calls and SMS lures urging urgent passkey, MFA, or SSO updates. The lures lead to adversary-in-the-middle phishing or device-code authentication flows that capture credentials and session tokens or grant actor access, after which the actors add authentication methods, conduct Microsoft Graph reconnaissance, and download SharePoint and OneDrive content via REST APIs. Phishing domains embed victim organization names as subdomains (e.g., contoso.add-passkey[.]com), are often registered with Nicenic, and go operational within hours. Microsoft advises revoking sessions and removing unauthorized authentication methods for confirmed compromises.

Microsoft Security Blog·Sep 9, 17:41 UTC · 7d agoThreat actor in the wild2

Chaotic Eclipse Released A PoC For NVIDIA GreenSection Memory Corruption Zero-Day

Researcher Chaotic Eclipse released GreenSection, a PoC exploit for an NVIDIA Windows user-mode shared-memory flaw enabling out-of-bounds writes and potential dwm.exe compromise.

Researcher Chaotic Eclipse (aka Nightmare Eclipse) released a PoC named GreenSection for a zero-day in NVIDIA's Windows user-mode components. Multiple NVIDIA components share a global memory section in BaseNamedObjects with full read/write access to all users; although checks prevent misuse, runtime reuse of section data can cause an out-of-bounds write. The unstable PoC crashes applications using Vulkan or OpenGL and could potentially cross user boundaries or compromise the Windows Desktop Window Manager (dwm.exe), though impact was not fully investigated. The researcher recently published similar zero-day PoCs against Kaspersky Endpoint Security, Avast Antivirus, and CrowdStrike Falcon.

Security Affairs·Sep 7, 13:42 UTC · 9d agoExploit / PoC 2 sources

New Chaos Variant Targets Misconfigured Cloud Deployments, Adds SOCKS Proxy

Darktrace says the Chaos botnet now targets misconfigured cloud deployments like Hadoop and added a SOCKS proxy for traffic relaying.

Darktrace identified a new 64-bit ELF variant of the Chaos botnet targeting misconfigured cloud deployments, expanding beyond the malware's traditional focus on routers and edge devices. Captured in a deliberately misconfigured Hadoop honeypot instance, the intrusion began with an HTTP request creating an application that ran embedded shell commands to fetch the Chaos agent binary from pan.tenire[.]com, set chmod 777 permissions, execute it, and delete the artifact to reduce forensic traces. The restructured variant adds a SOCKS proxy feature letting compromised systems ferry attacker traffic, while removing SSH-based spread and router-exploit functions, suggesting monetization beyond crypto mining and DDoS-for-hire. Possible Chinese origin is suggested by language artifacts and infrastructure; the delivery domain was previously used in Silver Fox's Operation Silk Lure phishing campaign delivering ValleyRAT.

The Hacker News·Aug 18, 12:13 UTC · 29d agoMalware1

Bitsight connects threat intelligence and exposure monitoring across the supply chain

Bitsight made Beacon generally available, combining supply-chain exposure monitoring with MCP support to feed threat intelligence into AI workflows.

Bitsight announced general availability of Beacon, which continuously monitors critical vendors for exposure, vulnerabilities, malicious activity, intrusion, stolen credentials and compromise. New Model Context Protocol (MCP) and agentic capabilities push Bitsight intelligence into AI-enabled workflows, with over 400 customers signing up for early access in one month. The company cites data that third parties now account for almost half of enterprise breaches, up over 60% year over year.

Help Net Security·Sep 14, 13:42 UTC · 2d agoTools

Impersonating IT support: how threat actors turn a remote session into enterprise-wide access

Microsoft details Teams IT-support impersonation campaigns deploying Node.js implants, AD reconnaissance, and WinRM lateral movement toward domain controllers.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence describes a human-operated campaign where attackers impersonate IT/helpdesk staff via Microsoft Teams external collaboration, talk users into granting remote sessions, and use RMM tools for interactive access. During the session they run PowerShell to silently install a malicious MSI that stages a portable Node.js runtime and obfuscated JavaScript implant for C2, executing follow-on payloads via rundll32. Operators then perform host and Active Directory reconnaissance, capture desktop screenshots, and pivot via WinRM on port 5985 to domain controllers and certificate authorities. The hands-on-keyboard chain, which can precede data theft and ransomware, blends into normal operations by relying on Teams, Quick Assist, msiexec, and Node.js; Microsoft shares hunting and mitigation guidance.

Microsoft Security Blog·Sep 2, 22:51 UTC · 13d agoThreat actor in the wild

Week in review: Cisco fixes IMC bug, Patch Tuesday forecast, Black Hat USA 2026

Help Net Security·Aug 9, 00:00 UTC · Aug 9, 2026VulnerabilityCVE-2026-66066CVE-2026-185771

IT help-desk vishing tricks executives into handing over Microsoft 365 access

Arctic Wolf tracks PREY-0058 (linked to UNC6671), a vishing campaign stealing Microsoft 365 session tokens via AiTM panels for SaaS data theft and extortion.

Arctic Wolf is tracking a campaign, PREY-0058, sharing tradecraft with Google Threat Intelligence Group's UNC6671, in which callers posing as internal IT talk employees through fake passkey/MFA setups. Operator-controlled adversary-in-the-middle pages harvest passwords and MFA approvals to seize session tokens, then actors enumerate and bulk-exfiltrate data from SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange, and Box. Extortion brands include BlackFile, Pink, Helix, Cinder, and Redact; targets are mostly US-based executives in construction, healthcare, real estate, finance, and professional services, with exfiltration shifting to residential proxies like NodeMaven.

Help Net Security·Sep 8, 11:17 UTC · 8d agoThreat actor in the wild1