Cifas reports UK fraud cases reached a record high in 2026, driven by account takeover and identity fraud.
Cifas data shows UK fraud cases hit a record high in 2026. Account takeover and identity fraud are the main drivers of the surge. The figures indicate rising fraud pressure on UK consumers and financial institutions.
PAPERMILL phishing campaign abuses a signed Notepad++ copy and tax-audit lures to deploy VenomRAT against targets in India.
JUMPSEC tracks PAPERMILL as an emerging cluster whose emails pass SPF, DKIM, and DMARC and deliver tax-audit themed disk images. The mounted image pairs a legitimately signed, renamed executable with a rogue libcurl.dll for DLL sideloading, then uses a Donut shellcode loader to run VenomRAT 6.0.3 in memory with hidden VNC, data-stealing, and file-grabbing capabilities. The loader includes anti-analysis checks and RunOnce persistence, and lures plus China-connected infrastructure overlap with the Silver Fox ecosystem, though attribution remains unconfirmed.
Microsoft tracked a million-message AI-assisted BEC campaign impersonating executives with fake ServiceNow invoices to steal ~$50,000 ACH payments.
Microsoft detected over one million messages in a BEC campaign running August 3-5, using AI-assisted phishing templates, executive impersonation, and fabricated ServiceNow subscription invoices to trick finance teams into authorizing fraudulent ACH payments of roughly $50,000. The US received 87.7% of volume. Attackers used lookalike domains like service-nowinc[.]com registered just days before delivery, with no compromise of ServiceNow itself. Telltale signs included verbose HTML comments, uniform formatting, and inconsistent forwarded-message headers.
Microsoft tracked a campaign of over one million AI-crafted CEO-impersonation emails seeking ~$50,000 ACH payments with fabricated ServiceNow invoices.
Between August 3 and 5, Microsoft detected a campaign of more than one million fraud emails, 87.7% of them targeting US enterprise users, sent through multiple third-party email delivery service accounts. The actor impersonated CEOs, CFOs, and presidents of targeted companies, urging accounts payable staff to process an ACH payment of nearly $50,000. Lures layered executive impersonation, lookalike domains, a fabricated ServiceNow 'Annual Subscription' invoice personalized to the recipient, and forged forwarded email threads; Microsoft found no evidence ServiceNow or the referenced executives were compromised. Microsoft observed indicators consistent with generative AI-assisted template creation, while leftover inconsistencies such as missing forwarding headers and mismatched display names gave defenders detection cues.
CYBERA's money mule intelligence, now in Recorded Future's Payment Fraud Intelligence, targets the shared exit point of $450B-$1T annual scam losses.
Scams, especially authorized push payment fraud, do not require a breach; Global Anti-Scam Alliance estimated ~$450B in 2025 losses while CYBERA co-founder Claudio Staub puts the real figure near $1 trillion when underreporting is counted. Every scam needs a mule account to receive funds, so CYBERA uses agentic personas to engage active scammers and extract verified mule account details before payments occur, now available as an add-on to Recorded Future's Payment Fraud Intelligence. CYBERA collected over 16,000 confirmed mule accounts across 72 countries in H2 2025, finding 28% remained active 30 days or more after identification, including one account in 25 engagements. In Europe 51% of mule accounts sat at neobanks and fintechs, while outside Europe 69% were at major banks; regulatory pressure like the UK's APP reimbursement mandate is raising the stakes for institutions.
eSentire exposes GhostCode, a device-code phishing kit that abuses Microsoft Entra device enrollment to persist even after stolen tokens are revoked.
eSentire's Threat Response Unit observed GhostCode campaigns in late August 2026, using BEC-style social engineering that impersonated procurement staff, including BJ's Wholesale Club, via Salesforce contact forms. Victims received password-protected HTML lures disguised as a FlipBook document portal, with junk-data padding, HTML comment injection, and AES-256-GCM encrypted redirects gated by anti-bot checks. The kit exploits the OAuth 2.0 device authorization grant, prompting victims to approve real Microsoft device-code sign-ins with MFA. Within 78 seconds of approval, attackers registered three Entra devices and obtained a Primary Refresh Token, so rogue device registrations persist even after session token revocation.
Scammers file fake Instagram copyright complaints to suspend accounts, then demand ransom via Telegram; Meta restored some affected accounts.
Criminals impersonate rights holders to file fraudulent copyright complaints on Instagram, and repeated claims can trigger temporary account suspensions. They then move victims to Telegram and demand payment, often in cryptocurrency, to withdraw the complaint; one history account owner paid $50 and was targeted again immediately. Meta's automated system does not verify complainants before acting, and the Delhi High Court is examining whether platforms can legally suspend accounts over copyright claims. Meta acknowledged in court that 13 strike notices against one user were fraudulent, and after BBC review it restored affected content and added unspecified protections.
CloudSEK uncovered BigBear 2.0, a PhaaS operation that captured 4,148 Microsoft 365 session cookies, hijacking authenticated sessions after MFA via AiTM proxy.
CloudSEK infiltrated the BigBear 2.0 phishing-as-a-service panel in June, finding 5,137 credential records tied to 461 organizations in over 40 countries, including 4,148 captured session cookies and 474 completed post-MFA logins. The operation, built on Evilginx2, uses an attacker-controlled reverse proxy to steal authenticated session cookies and residential proxies to defeat location-based Conditional Access checks, while custom code disables FIDO2/WebAuthn on phishing pages. At least five affiliates operated 42 VPS nodes, with IT services and managed service providers the most targeted sector.
Agentic AI transforms phishing economics, enabling personalized multi-channel attacks with deepfakes like the $25M Arup deepfake heist.
The article argues phishing has evolved through three stages: from malicious content, to intent-based BEC, to AI-powered multi-channel campaigns where attacker agents autonomously conduct reconnaissance and generate tailored lures. The widely reported Arup case saw a deepfake video call impersonating colleagues convince an employee to approve transfers worth roughly $25 million. An Osterman Research study of 128 security leaders found 88% experienced trust-undermining incidents, while Microsoft 365 EOP and Google Workspace were measured missing hundreds of phishing messages per 100 mailboxes monthly. The author argues defenders must adopt their own agents to match attacker speed.