Search: “torrents”

“Zlibrary my beloved”: Anthropic staff chats extolling piracy cited in Sony suit

Sony's copyright lawsuit against Anthropic now cites internal staff chats praising Z-Library piracy as evidence in the AI training-data dispute.

Sony's lawsuit against Anthropic cites internal staff chats in which employees extolled pirating books from Z-Library, according to Ars Technica. The suit forms part of the broader copyright dispute over torrented works used to train AI models. The article also notes AI-generated songs reaching the top of music charts, raising stakes for songwriters in the case.

Ars Technica · AI·Aug 31, 18:10 UTC · 16d agoAI policy

Fake GTA 6 Installer Steals Browser Passwords, Discord Tokens and Crypto Data From Gamers

Huntress found fake GTA 6 installer ISOs spreading NJRAT, DCRAT, Mercurial Grabber and a Chaos ransomware wiper that steals credentials.

Huntress analyzed a malicious ISO disguised as a leaked GTA 6 build, distributed via SEO poisoning, torrent sites, and social media, with some images exceeding 100 GB and padded with junk data. The installer stages game-named executables in %TEMP% and deploys NJRAT, DCRAT, and the Mercurial Grabber infostealer, harvesting browser passwords, Discord tokens, Roblox and Minecraft session data, Windows product keys, and cryptocurrency details, with exfiltration via a Discord webhook. A Chaos ransomware variant launched through gta6.exe deletes shadow copies, disables Windows recovery, encrypts files up to 200 MB with AES, and overwrites larger files, effectively acting as a wiper attributed to the 'ASHA Hacker Team'. A Visual Basic script displays a fake 'license not found' error to conceal the already-installed payloads.

GBHackers·updated Sep 10, 14:23 UTC · 6d ago·first Sep 10, 11:43 UTC · 6d agoMalware in the wild 3 sources

ExfilSquad Targets New Victims, Shares Data via Torrents

Extortion group ExfilSquad lists 13 new US, UK and Swedish victims and now distributes stolen data via peer-to-peer torrents.

ExfilSquad, a data-theft extortion collective that emerged in mid-2026, announced 13 new victims in the US, UK and Sweden with an August 5, 2026 negotiation deadline. The group skips ransomware, instead stealing data and threatening publication on a dark web leak site. Resecurity says its TTPs center on exploiting misconfigured Microsoft Dataverse, Power Pages, case management and CRM portals. The group now distributes stolen data through per-victim torrent trackers and web seeds, making leaks hard to contain.

Security Affairs·Aug 11, 16:45 UTC · Aug 11, 2026Threat actor in the wild

TLD Tracker: Exploring Newly Released Top

Unit 42 tracked 19 newly released top-level domains and found large-scale phishing, unwanted program distribution, and cybersquatting tied to TLD launch dates.

Researchers analyzed 19 new generic TLDs, including .zip, .bot, .ing, and .meme, released or approaching general availability over roughly 18 months. Data from passive DNS, registry zone files, newly registered domain feeds, and the Tranco top-1M list showed phishing campaigns, potentially unwanted program distribution, and domain squatting on these TLDs. Abuse correlated with each TLD's rollout phases, indicating attackers monitor general availability dates to register and weaponize domains. The IANA root database now lists over 1,000 generic TLDs.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 12:47 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Research

Think twice before installing this device promising free movies

Free movie-streaming devices quietly enroll home internet connections into residential proxy networks, exposing owners to third-party traffic and abuse risk.

Ars Technica warns that devices promising free movies in exchange for installation route users' home internet connections into residential proxy networks. The user's IP address then carries third-party traffic, potentially including malicious activity, creating legal, reputation, and detection risks for the household. The report urges caution before accepting 'free' hardware or software that monetizes your bandwidth.

Ars Technica · Security·Aug 31, 16:33 UTC · 16d agoPhishing & fraud

[AINews] OpenAI shuts off Cursor

OpenAI cut off API access to coding tool Cursor after its SpaceX acquisition, citing contract violations by Elon Musk's companies.

OpenAI disabled Cursor's access following the closing of Cursor's acquisition by SpaceX, citing its experience with Elon Musk's companies violating contracts; Cursor responded that OpenAI accounts for only 5% of its traffic. The weekly digest also covers major open-weight releases: Z.ai's GLM-5.3 (744B total/40B active, 1M context) and Tencent's Hy4-preview (770B/49B, ~#5 on Code Arena WebDev), plus Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Flash (125B/6B). vLLM published benchmarks showing no universal winner among speculative decoding methods across model families.

Latent Space·Aug 29, 05:11 UTC · 18d agoAI industry

Bulk AbuseIPDB reporting using command-line tools

A blogger shows how to bulk-report distributed botnet IPs scraping a self-hosted Gitea instance to AbuseIPDB using bash, awk, and jq.

The author's self-hosted Gitea instance was scraped by distributed bots using random IPs worldwide and randomized, often nonexistent User-Agent strings, generating heavy request load for days. The write-up demonstrates filtering Traefik access logs (CLF and JSON) with grep, awk, and jq to extract offending IPs, tagging them with AbuseIPDB category 19 (Bad Web Bot), deduplicating them, and building a CSV for the Bulk Reporter tool. Reports can then be submitted through the AbuseIPDB bulk-report API, respecting the 5,000-report daily limit.

Lobsters · security·Sep 9, 20:26 UTC · 7d agoTools1

Grand Theft Auto VI hype leads to malware

Fake GTA6 ISO downloads spread via SEO poisoning, torrents, and forums deliver NJRAT, DCRAT, an infostealer, and wiper ransomware.

Huntress analyzed a malicious ISO masquerading as a leaked Grand Theft Auto VI build; there is no official GTA6 demo or leaked playable copy. The fake gta6installer.exe shows a Russian 'license' message asking victims to email the attacker if the crack fails, then drops GTA6-branded files into %TEMP%. It installs multiple repurposed NJRAT copies (2023-era files) connecting to AWS-hosted IPs 35.157.111.131, 3.68.56.232, 3.67.15.169 and an ngrok tunnel, plus DCRAT communicating with a0700877.xsph.ru (141.8.197.42). The bundle also includes an infostealer and ransomware used as a wiper, in what appears to be an opportunistic, everything-at-once campaign.

Huntress·Sep 9, 14:00 UTC · 7d agoMalware in the wild

Creepy crawlies

git.kernel.org spends more CPU rendering commit pages for abusive AI-era scrapers than on all legitimate access including git clones.

Konstantin Ryabitsev reports that abusive crawler 'background radiation' at git.kernel.org consumes more CPU cycles rendering commit HTML than all legitimate access, with 14 cores across five geo-distributed nodes dedicated to scraper traffic. Simon Willison highlights the implications for crawlable web services like Datasette.

Simon Willison·Sep 7, 23:08 UTC · 9d agoAI industry1

Trends in Web Threats in CY Q2 2022: Malicious JavaScript Downloaders Are Evolving

Unit 42 detected 751,000 landing URL incidents in Q2 2022 and documented malicious JavaScript downloaders evolving to evade detection.

Unit 42 detected 751,331 landing URL incidents (253,644 unique) and 1,744,629 malicious host URL incidents (256,844 unique) from April through June 2022. Total landing URL incidents rose compared with Q1 2022, and unique host URL incidents grew 42%, indicating attackers deploying more variants. The report includes a case study of a JavaScript downloader campaign demonstrating new evasion techniques. Personal sites, blogs, and business sites were the top apparently benign entry points.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 13:05 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Research

Researchers Confirm ExfilSquad’s Access to Sensitive Data Across 13 Organizations

Researchers confirmed extortion group ExfilSquad holds stolen sensitive data from at least 13 organizations, publishing leaked datasets via torrents.

Security researchers verified that the extortion group ExfilSquad possesses sensitive data stolen from at least 13 victim organizations. The group distributed the leaked datasets publicly through torrents rather than a traditional leak site. Independent verification of the stolen data lends credibility to the group's extortion claims against its victims.

Infosecurity Magazine·Aug 14, 14:49 UTC · Aug 14, 2026Ransomware

How to Keep Malware’s Rotating Infrastructure From Becoming a Detection Gap

ANY.RUN marketing piece argues SOC detection lags rotating malware and phishing infrastructure, citing a 46-country campaign and 3DBlast kit to promote TI feeds.

ANY.RUN describes how malware and phishing campaigns rotate domains and hosting, making single-IOC blocking ineffective for SOC teams. One investigated phishing campaign spanned 46 countries with 425 kit URLs across 240 hosts, 94% of which were seen for only a single day. A phishing kit dubbed 3DBlast impersonates Microsoft 365 and Google using BitB, AiTM, OAuth device-code phishing and DOM relay techniques. The article is primarily a promotion for ANY.RUN TI Feeds and TI Lookup products.

Cyber Security News·Sep 15, 15:36 UTC · 1d agoIndustry

Cybercriminals Turn GTA VI Leaks Into Malware Bait

Attackers spread fake 113GB GTA VI builds whose 50KB payload whitelists the entire C: drive in Windows Defender, alongside credential phishing and infostealer campaigns.

Researchers found that a 113GB file claiming to be a playable Grand Theft Auto VI build is 99.99% empty data hiding a tiny malicious payload that excludes the entire C:\ drive from Windows Defender and kills security software, preparing systems for follow-on attacks. Related lures include fake GTA 6 Windows installers using DLL side-loading, a fake 'GTA 6 Mobile' app redirecting to infostealer and ransomware infrastructure, and counterfeit Rockstar Social Club login pages harvesting credentials. The fakes ride genuine leak momentum from the leaker CyberLeek, and Kaspersky separately documented over 19 million attempted downloads of game-themed malware in a year, with GTA, Minecraft, and Call of Duty the most abused brands. No legitimate playable GTA VI build is circulating; the game launches November 19 on consoles.

Security Affairs·Aug 24, 17:27 UTC · 23d agoMalware in the wild

ApateWeb: An Evasive Large-Scale Scareware and PUP Delivery Campaign

Unit 42 uncovers ApateWeb, a campaign using over 130,000 domains and multilayered redirects to deliver scareware, adware and PUPs to millions of users.

Unit 42 discovered ApateWeb, a large-scale campaign using a network of more than 130,000 domains to deliver scareware, potentially unwanted programs, adware including a rogue browser and browser extensions, and scam pages. The campaign uses a three-layer structure with deceptive emails as the entry point, centralized victim tracking via UUIDs, intermediate adware or anti-bot redirections, and evasion tactics such as cloaking, bot detection error pages, and wildcard DNS abuse. Activity spiked since August 2022, with several hundred attacker-controlled sites remaining in Tranco's top 1 million rankings and millions of monthly hits; Unit 42 blocked an estimated 3.5 million sessions across 74,711 devices in November 2023.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 12:48 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Phishing & fraud in the wild

Security Affairs newsletter Round 590 by Pierluigi Paganini

Weekly Security Affairs newsletter roundup aggregating top cybercrime, malware, APT and AI security stories including ExfilSquad, Kimwolf v7 and Kimsuky AI use.

This is the Round 590 weekly newsletter from Security Affairs, linking to the week's major stories rather than reporting a single incident. Headlines include ExfilSquad extortion, a 7.3M chess.com record leak, Kimwolf botnet v7, SharePoint exploitation after a public PoC, Kimsuky integrating AI, and China-linked autonomous-style attacks. It is a digest and promotional item with no standalone technical details.

Security Affairs·Aug 16, 08:31 UTC · Aug 16, 2026Industry

Almost Half of Malware Samples Communicate Direct to IP

Unit 42 analysis of 4 million malware reports finds 45% of C2-active samples connect directly to hard-coded IPs, bypassing DNS defenses.

Palo Alto Unit 42 analyzed over 4 million Advanced WildFire dynamic analysis reports and found that 45.32% of malware samples with C2 activity made at least one direct-to-IP connection, accounting for 23.17% of all C2 connection attempts. The firm proposes zero trust IP (ZT-IP), an enforcement approach that verifies whether outbound destinations were ever sanctioned by a DNS response. ZT-IP analysis surfaced Phorpiex ransomware droppers fetching payloads directly from C2 IPs, a persistent data exfiltration campaign using an obfuscated \GET protocol, and Mozi P2P botnet payloads delivered to IoT devices without DNS. Only 1% of benign samples connected directly to untrusted IP addresses.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 12:45 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Research

ThreatsDay: GhostJacking AI Attacks, EtherHiding ClickFix, Cursor CLI Flaw + 17 More Stories

A weekly bulletin aggregating short security updates, including the City-Forum data-theft campaign, a ShipMonk breach, a Cursor CLI flaw, and GhostJacking AI attacks.

The Hacker News ThreatsDay Bulletin bundles roughly 20 short updates across cloud services, AI tools, malware, breaches, and scams. Highlights include the City-Forum campaign pulling data from unauthenticated guest access in Salesforce Experience Cloud and ServiceNow Service Portals since March 2025, and a ShipMonk breach exposing Trezor customer order data for orders in seven countries between May 10 and August 8, 2026. Other items cover a patched Cursor CLI flaw that let cloned repositories run commands before the workspace-trust prompt, Okta's analysis of the Work Panel vishing console used by actors like UNC6671, and GhostJacking AI agent hijacking via a patched Claude Desktop sandbox escape. Meta also launched an on-device WhatsApp Scam Alert machine learning model that keeps message content on the device.

The Hacker News·Aug 18, 16:30 UTC · 29d agoIndustry

Trends in Web Threats: Old Web Skimmer Still Active Today

Unit 42 detected 577,000 landing URL incidents in Q1 2022, with an old web skimmer family still actively stealing payment card data.

Palo Alto Unit 42 detected 577,275 landing URL incidents (116,643 unique) and 2,043,862 malicious host URL incidents (180,370 unique) between January and March 2022. Web threat volumes declined after the November 2021 holiday peak, but an old web skimmer family remained active. Business and economy sites overtook personal sites as the most common apparently benign entry points. Most malicious domains geolocated to the United States, Germany, and Russia, though proxy servers and VPNs obscure true locations.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 13:05 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Research

NATO and an AI startup can now name and track software vulnerabilities

CyberScoop·Aug 10, 19:50 UTC · Aug 10, 2026Vulnerability in the wild

Free streaming boxes may be routing criminal traffic through your home

Researchers found SuperBox streaming boxes and the CyberFlix TV app enroll home connections into the Popanet residential proxy network, routing criminal traffic.

Researchers found that SuperBox devices and the CyberFlix TV app, distributed through SuperBox's custom app store, contain Popanet proxy functionality that registers the device with servers controlled by the proxy operator, enrolling household connections into residential proxy networks. The reported configuration weakens Android safeguards with exposed ADB access, root-level privileges without authentication, and removal of app-install protections. Plume's research warns these proxy networks can also function as malware-delivery platforms, and the FBI notes foreign entities use residential proxies to conceal activity such as credential stuffing and account abuse. Malwarebytes advises disconnecting and replacing affected SuperBox/CyberFlix devices rather than factory-resetting them.

Malwarebytes Labs·Sep 4, 09:20 UTC · 12d agoMalware in the wild

Why AI food looks like that

Experts explain why AI-generated food images look unappetizing, citing diffusion model limitations, weak structural reasoning, and stylized training data.

The Verge examines why AI-generated food imagery from restaurants and brands often appears grotesque, citing researchers from Oxford, Naples, Zurich, and London. Diffusion models recover coarse structure before fine texture, so structural errors like extra fingers or donut shrimp get baked in early. Researchers note the models are weak at thin, continuous, terminating structures such as noodles, and reproduce the glossy conventions of professional food photography without understanding the objects. Odd internet imagery and memes in training data further skew outputs toward strange textures and clustered holes.

The Verge · AI·Sep 4, 11:00 UTC · 12d agoAI research

Counterfeit installers turn routine software downloads into enterprise breaches

Microsoft warns of a multi-sector campaign using counterfeit download sites for Edge, Kaspersky and Razer to deliver trojanized installers with persistent implants.

Microsoft Defender Experts tracked a campaign breaching organizations in healthcare, manufacturing, gaming, technology, logistics, government, and education via spoofed vendor download pages, often using .com.cn and .hl.cn domains. Installers keep the same filename while their hash changes on every download, indicating server-side payload generation that defeats file-based detection. The chain abuses msiexec.exe and scheduled tasks for persistence, adds Defender exclusions, deletes shadow copies, and disables Windows Update, with some hands-on-keyboard activity. The activity is consistent with the publicly reported Silver Fox (Yinhu) campaign, though Microsoft has not attributed it to a nation-state actor.

CSO Online·Sep 3, 11:17 UTC · 13d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Threat actors are posing as AI crawlers to hunt for exposed credentials

GreyNoise observed scanners spoofing AI crawler user agents from 824 IPs to harvest .env files and cloud credentials; no confirmed theft.

GreyNoise researchers found attackers disguising automated scanning as AI crawler traffic, using six crawler names from four AI companies including Anthropic's ClaudeBot, OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity. Between July 28 and August 23, 2026, the six names arrived from 824 IP addresses spread across 795 /24 networks that matched no published vendor ranges, shared one HTTP client fingerprint that had used more than 1,500 user agent strings, and never requested /robots.txt. The scanners targeted /.env, /.env.production, /.env.bak, and /.aws/credentials, hunting secrets, cloud access keys, private keys, and password stores, while forged Amazon crawler names appeared at greater volume under undocumented user agents. GreyNoise could not confirm whether any file was returned or any organization affected, and published all 824 addresses and targeted paths for defenders.

Help Net Security·Aug 31, 00:00 UTC · 17d agoThreat actor

PLEASE_READ_ME: The Opportunistic Ransomware Devastating MySQL Servers

Guardicore Labs uncovers the PLEASE_READ_ME ransomware campaign targeting MySQL servers, using double extortion and publishing stolen victim data.

Guardicore Labs at Akamai uncovered an opportunistic ransomware campaign dubbed PLEASE_READ_ME that targets MySQL servers. The attackers employ double extortion, publishing stolen data to pressure victims into paying. The campaign is devastating internet-facing MySQL deployments, making exposed database servers the primary at-risk population.

Akamai Blog·Sep 8, 15:13 UTC · 8d agoRansomware in the wild

HuggingFace: Security.txt

Hugging Face published a security.txt file, prompting limited Hacker News discussion of the RFC 9116 disclosure standard.

Hugging Face's security.txt file, which lists its security contact and disclosure channels per the RFC 9116 standard, drew attention on Hacker News. The RFC 9116 standard lets organizations publish where and how security researchers should report issues, but the submission received only one comment.

Hacker News · security·updated Sep 11, 16:04 UTC · 5d ago·first Sep 11, 14:38 UTC · 5d agoIndustry 2 sourcesHN 22↑ · 1 comments

Scammers have figured out the best time to text you

Malwarebytes threat data shows scammers tailor platforms per scam, with the web as top channel, Friday midday peaks, and MrBeast the most impersonated person.

Malwarebytes analyzed its threat data from April 15 to July 14, 2026 across more than 20 scam categories, finding scammers match platforms to scam types: job scams via email, romance scams via social media, and tech support scams via phone. The web is the top delivery channel ahead of email and SMS, and Malwarebytes says it blocks about 500,000 phishing sites a day. Scam texts peak at 12:00 pm ET, roughly 874% above the quietest hour, with volume peaking on Fridays about 50% higher than the start of the week. MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) appears in about 30% of impersonation scams, and the most impersonated brands are Google, Microsoft, Apple, Roblox and Amazon.

Help Net Security·Sep 4, 00:00 UTC · 13d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

Advanced URL Filtering Archives

Palo Alto Networks markets Advanced URL Filtering as combining a malicious URL database with real-time ML and DL web protection.

The Unit 42 blog page is a product category archive for Advanced URL Filtering. The product description states it combines a malicious URL database with a real-time web protection engine powered by machine learning and deep learning models. No research findings, incidents, or vulnerabilities are discussed.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Sep 8, 14:27 UTC · 8d agoIndustry 6 sources

MacSync Stealer: How a Google Search for Claude Led to a macOS Infostealer

Huntress dissects MacSync Stealer, a macOS infostealer delivered through fake Claude Code download pages in Google search results.

Huntress SOC analysts published a reverse-engineering analysis of MacSync Stealer, a macOS infostealer distributed through fraudulent Claude Code download pages surfaced via web searches. Users searching for Anthropic's Claude coding tool are redirected to fake download pages that install the stealer, abusing developer trust in popular AI tooling. The writeup covers the analysis of the sample and its delivery chain.

Huntress·Aug 17, 04:00 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Malware in the wild

Post-DEF CON Phishing Uses Malicious Google Doc to Deliver Malware

Huntress uncovered post-DEF CON phishing via X direct messages using a malicious Google Doc to deliver AMOS and NetSupport RAT malware.

Huntress uncovered a phishing campaign targeting attendees after Black Hat and DEF CON. Attackers used X direct messages pointing to a malicious Google Doc as the delivery vehicle. Payloads include AMOS, a macOS infostealer, and the NetSupport RAT, among other malware.

Huntress·Aug 19, 13:00 UTC · 28d agoPhishing & fraud

Thousands of Hacked WordPress Sites, One Operation: Unmasking StopAndProtect

Check Point uncovers the StopAndProtect ransomware operation infecting thousands of WordPress sites via ClickFix social engineering and PowerShell downloaders.

Check Point Research first observed the StopAndProtect ransomware family in mid-May 2026 and linked its infrastructure to thousands of hacked WordPress sites. The infection chain begins with ClickFix social engineering that prompts victims to run a PowerShell command, followed by two stages of additional downloaders. The research maps the shared infrastructure unifying the operation.

Check Point Research·Aug 18, 13:05 UTC · 29d agoRansomware in the wild

Tracking Elirks Variants in Japan: Similarities to Previous Attacks

Unit 42 links new Elirks backdoor variants attacking Japanese organizations to 2012 Taiwan attacks, delivered via spear-phishing PDFs exploiting Adobe Flash CVE-2011-0611.

Unit 42 analyzed new Elirks backdoor variants found in an attack on a Japanese business, noting strong similarities to 2012 attacks on Taiwanese ministries. The backdoor retrieves its C2 address from attacker-created accounts on Japanese blog and SNS services. Recent deliveries used an airline e-ticket lure named "E-TKT" with a PDF exploiting Adobe Flash CVE-2011-0611. Shared infrastructure and tactics with the Scarlet Mimic campaign suggest possible ongoing cyber espionage across East Asia.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 12:56 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Threat actor in the wildCVE-2011-0611

New Phishing Attacks Use Trusted Email Infrastructure and URL Cloaking to Bypass Security Tools

Virus Bulletin Q3 2026 report details phishing using DKIM-aligned senders, Amazon SES delivery, and real-time URL cloaking to evade email security and scanners.

Virus Bulletin's Q3 2026 testing found phishing campaigns delivered through trusted infrastructure like Amazon SES with DKIM-aligned sender domains. Samples included a German overdue-invoice lure redirecting to OpenSea crypto fraud and a Romanian BCR-branded PSD2 banking credential-theft campaign. Cloaking pages used hidden iframes, browser fingerprinting, and time-zone checks to show different content to scanners versus victims. Defenders are urged to inspect full redirect chains rather than attachments or initial URLs alone.

Cyber Security News·updated Sep 15, 13:04 UTC · 1d ago·first Sep 15, 12:02 UTC · 1d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild 2 sources

Recent Trends in Internet Threats: Common Industries Impersonated in Phishing Attacks, Web Skimmer Analysis and More

Unit 42 analyzed 67 million malicious URLs and domains in H2 2022, a 52% increase, highlighting phishing impersonation and web skimmer trends.

Unit 42 observed more than 67 million unique malicious URLs, domains and IPs between July and December 2022, a 52% increase over the first half of the year. Malicious JavaScript detections grew 99.3%, with over 4 million malicious JS samples hosted on 4.8 million URLs. Over 85% of hosting infrastructure was concentrated in eight countries, led by the United States, Brazil and China. The report also analyzes industries spoofed in phishing pages and includes a web skimmer case study on a Tranco top 1 million website.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 13:04 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Research

Google Search Makes It Harder to See Where a Link Really Goes Before You Click

Google now routes some Search results through opaque google.com/goto redirects, weakening hover-to-verify anti-phishing checks.

Google has begun serving some organic search results as opaque google.com/goto?url= redirects whose destinations can only be resolved server-side by Google, likely to raise scraping costs for rank trackers and archival services. The change removes the pre-click hover preview of the true destination URL, undermining a long-standing anti-phishing habit for spotting lookalike, typosquatted, or search-optimized phishing domains. Security teams are advised to rely on layered defenses such as domain reputation, DNS and web filtering, browser isolation, and user training rather than hover text.

GBHackers·Sep 15, 13:42 UTC · 1d agoIndustry