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29 stories in the last 30d

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CategoryAllMalware 38Policy & legal 37Phishing & fraud 32Data breach 28Industry 27Threat actor 26AI industry 24AI safety & security 19AI research 14Model release 14Research 7Ransomware 7AI policy 6Tools 5
SeverityAllcritical 6high 55medium 89low 9info 139

A $25 template helped scammers build hundreds of phantom bank domains

Allure Security researchers found 838 live phantom bank sites sharing a $25 template, built to lend credibility to investment and romance scams.

Allure Security researchers discovered roughly 2,200 domains presenting invented banks, of which 1,095 returned working pages and 838 contained a shared phrase. 97% of those retained parts of the $25 Cuex front-end template and 94% ran Laravel, with a misspelled 'Curreny Charts' heading on 90% of sites. The sites presented login pages, session cookies, and anti-forgery tokens consistent with a fraud model where scam contacts direct victims to fake financial portals. A leftover 'Remedy bank' title and form submission to remedycodes[.]site linked some sites to already-flagged fraud infrastructure.

Help Net Security · 27d agoPhishing & fraud1

Banks look for fraud signals in customer behavior

ThreatMark's 2026 benchmark finds 55% of banks see social engineering in most fraud, pushing behavioral intelligence and earlier detection during customer sessions.

ThreatMark's Fraud Readiness Benchmark 2026 reports social engineering is involved in most fraud at 55% of surveyed banks, with criminals impersonating trusted people to make customers authorize payments using legitimate credentials. The report highlights behavioral intelligence as underused (18% adoption, 83% rating it effective), expects authorized push payment reimbursement regulation in North America within two years, and notes 91% agreement that AI can shorten fraud investigations. It also finds 81% of fraud professionals now carry cybersecurity responsibilities.

Help Net Security · 29d agoPhishing & fraud

Fake bank websites play dead to evade security scanners

Fortra uncovered Chameleon SEO Poisoning: cloaked typosquat bank sites rank on Google and Bing to steal credentials while evading scanners, with cases up 40% in Q2 2026.

Fortra's threat intelligence unit FIRE spent three months tracking Chameleon SEO Poisoning, a phishing method that ranks recently registered typosquat domains on second-level domains like .ph.com and .gr.com above legitimate bank sites on Google and Bing. The technique uses presentation control (cloaking by referrer): direct visits get a dead, offline-looking page, while search-referred clicks receive a convincing fake bank login page, letting poisoned results persist for days or weeks. Fortra recorded a 40% jump in cases during the second quarter of 2026 and recommends referrer-spoofed URL testing, faster SLD takedowns, and bookmarking bank logins.

Help Net Security · 24d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

Smishing Triad Hackers Use JWR Phishing Kit to Steal Cards, OTPs and Bank Credentials

Group-IB attributes large-scale smishing using the JWR real-time phishing kit to the Smishing Triad's Outsider cluster, harvesting card data, OTPs, and bank credentials.

Group-IB attributes a large-scale SMS phishing campaign to Outsider, an operator sub-cluster within the Smishing Triad phishing-as-a-service ecosystem, using a kit dubbed JWR. The Vue 2-based platform maintains real-time WebSocket communication with operators, enabling them to adapt pages live and harvest roughly 70 PII fields, card data, PINs, OTPs, identity document images, and digital wallet credentials via a dedicated PayPal sub-funnel. Unit 42 previously tied 194,345 malicious domains across 136,933 root domains to the broader operation since January 2024. Defenders can hunt for /api/open/ endpoints, /webSocket/QT/ paths, JWR-prefixed storage artifacts, and a hard-coded WebSocket token.

GBHackersupdated · 1d agofirst · 1d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild 2 sources

Treasury urges banks to file cyber scam reports, noting nearly $13 billion in losses since 2023

FinCEN urged banks to report cyber scams after a study found $12.7 billion stolen from US victims of crypto investment scams since 2023.

FinCEN analyzed more than 33,000 cyber fraud incident reports filed by roughly 1,300 financial institutions between September 2023 and December 2025, finding about $12.7 billion in losses to cryptocurrency investment scams across all 50 states. Traditional banks reported about $6.4 billion in suspected scam activity and crypto firms about $5.5 billion. Scam activity is growing, with monthly reports rising nearly 11% as centers expand beyond Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos. The US later sanctioned Xinbi Guarantee, a Telegram-based marketplace used to launder over $36 billion.

The Record · 6d agoPhishing & fraud

Phishing Attacks Abuse Trusted Email Infrastructure and URL Cloaking to Evade Security Filters

VBSpam Q3 2026 test shows phishers abusing DKIM-aligned domains, Amazon SES, and multi-stage URL cloaking to defeat email filters.

Virus Bulletin's Q3 2026 VBSpam test (AMTSO-LS1-TP207) found phishing campaigns moving payloads past the email itself via browser-fingerprinting gates, redirect chains, and hidden POST requests. Examples include a Dutch McAfee/TotalAV scareware renewal scam, a German overdue-payment Web3 fraud delivered via Amazon SES from DKIM-aligned moolaah.com, and Romanian BCR PSD2 credential phishing embedding IPv6-mapped URLs resolving to 103.193.179.223. Net at Work NoSpamProxy ranked first with a 99.995 score while open-source Rspamd caught only 62.55% of phishing mail.

GBHackers · 2d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild 2 sources

Five Venezuelan Nationals Plead Guilty in Kansas ATM Jackpotting Attempt

Five Venezuelan nationals pleaded guilty to failed ATM jackpotting attempts in Kansas as the FBI reports 700+ US incidents in 2025.

The five defendants traveled from Indiana to Kansas in December 2025 and tried to install malware on ATMs in Wamego and Manhattan, planning to remotely trigger the machines to dispense cash. Both attempts failed — one triggered an alarm — and the men were arrested days later after surveillance captured the thefts. All five pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank larceny; one has received a nine-month prison sentence. The FBI counted more than 700 jackpotting incidents in 2025 with over $20 million in losses, part of 1,900 incidents since 2020.

Security Affairs · 16d agoPhishing & fraud

More than 100,000 fake stores are out to steal your card details

Researchers uncovered DoppelCart, a network of roughly 119,000 cloned fake shops that harvest card details and one-time bank codes during checkout.

Researchers at German firm Nebty identified 118,787 .shop domains tied to cloned online stores, representing 2.72% of the TLD population examined and described as the largest publicly documented fake-shop network by domain count. The shops mimic more than 44,000 brands, advertise discounts up to 65%, and 96% of confirmed shops reportedly share identical build files using just 27 ecommerce backends. Fraudulent checkout pages send card numbers, CVVs, billing data and bank one-time confirmation codes to attacker-controlled servers in real time over WebSockets, allowing criminals to complete payments while victims are still checking out.

Malwarebytes Labs · 7d agoPhishing & fraud

The Money Mule Solution: What Every Scam Has in Common

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.

Recorded Future · 18d agoPhishing & fraud

X says attackers are targeting user accounts after the launch of X Money

X is investigating a wave of unsolicited password reset emails targeting users after the X Money payments launch, with no confirmed breaches yet.

Numerous X users reported unsolicited password reset emails following the launch of X Money, the platform's new payments service with accounts held at FDIC-insured Cross River Bank. Product engineer Mridul Singhai said the company found no evidence of successful breaches or mass account takeovers, while the Grok chatbot confirmed attackers are mass-triggering resets using public usernames. Users are being advised to enable two-factor authentication and Password Reset Protect while the investigation continues.

TechCrunch · Security · 15d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

The Fraud Ecosystem: A Transition From Known Marketplaces to a Fragmented Environment

Rapid7 analyzes how fraud marketplaces are fragmenting into specialized shops after larger marketplaces were dismantled, aided by new MITRE F3 framework

Rapid7 reports a shift from large known fraud marketplaces to a fragmented environment of smaller specialized storefronts such as Xleet, Blackpass, Infodig, and Styx, operating across dark web channels, Telegram, and P2P options. These Fraud-as-a-Service shops sell stolen accounts, PII, synthetic identity generation, infrastructure, and money laundering support, supporting schemes like business email compromise. MITRE's Fraud Fighting Framework (F3), introduced in early 2026, aims to help security teams prioritize monitoring of fraud TTPs, particularly account takeover techniques. Fraud damages are anticipated to approach hundreds of billions of USD.

Rapid7 Blog · 6d agoPhishing & fraud

Hackers Use AI-Assisted CEO Emails to Trick Finance Teams Into Sending $50,000 Payments.

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.

GBHackersupdated · 6d agofirst · 6d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild 2 sources

Risky Bulletin: BEC campaign steals €35 million from French notaries

Hackers stole over €35 million from 500+ French notary offices in a four-year BEC campaign; ANSSI spent two years helping evict the attackers.

A business email compromise campaign breached more than 500 French notary offices — about 7% of all French notaries per the Conseil Supérieur du Notariat — over four years, stealing more than €35 million by phishing initial access and silently modifying wire transfer details. France's cybersecurity agency ANSSI worked for two years behind the scenes to help notaries remove the persistent attackers, who had deep access; officials also feared hackers could issue fake notarized acts such as marriage certificates or forged real estate deals. No forged documents have been found so far, but notaries have added two-factor authentication and in-person requirements for banking details, and banks added extra checks in 2024. The newsletter also notes other incidents, including a $320 million Bitcoin extraction from Blockstream's Liquid Network and a JetBrains Cadence breach via TeamCity servers.

Risky Business News · 10d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild1

The New Face of Financial Fraud: AI-Powered Brand Abuse

Akamai reports AI-powered brand abuse is driving financial fraud against banks and promotes its Brand Guardian defense.

Akamai describes AI-powered brand abuse as a growing driver of financial fraud against banks. The post outlines the threats and the business impact for financial institutions. It also promotes Akamai Brand Guardian as a mitigation for financial institutions.

Akamai Blog · 23d agoPhishing & fraud

North Korean IT Workers Pay People to Sit Through Job Interviews While They Control the Computer

Silent Push found North Korean IT workers recruiting on-camera proxies for job interviews while remotely controlling the computer, defeating identity and location checks.

Silent Push researchers engaged the "Tec Guru" persona via Discord and Telegram and assessed with moderate-to-high confidence that the operator is a North Korean IT worker recruiting on-camera proxies in the US, Europe, and Latin America for a 35/65 revenue split. During Google Meet interviews, the proxy stays on camera while the real worker supplies answers via ChatGPT-generated prompts, real-time messaging, or remote-control tools such as AnyDesk and TeamViewer. Successfully placed workers can access source code, cloud tenants, and CI/CD systems, and payments create sanctions exposure; the US, Japan, South Korea, and eight other governments issued a joint identity-verification alert on July 31, 2026.

GBHackers · 1h agoPhishing & fraud in the wild 2 sources

AI helps scammers build convincing antivirus renewal pages

Malwarebytes found scammers using AI to build polished fake antivirus renewal pages impersonating Avast, harvesting names, emails and phone numbers for follow-up fraud calls.

Malwarebytes analyzed a fake Avast renewal site targeting Belgian users in French, claiming a €129.99 Avast Premium Security renewal and collecting name, email address and Belgian mobile number through a cancellation form. Leftover code comments written in polite French and other stylistic clues suggest the page was generated with AI assistance, and the form was never connected to send data anywhere. The scam typically progresses to phone calls pressuring victims to install remote access software, and AI substantially lowers the barrier for producing polished, localized scam pages at scale.

Malwarebytes Labsupdated · 3h agofirst · 1d agoPhishing & fraud 2 sources

Protecting organizations from AI-assisted executive impersonation and invoice fraud

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.

Microsoft Security Blog · 6d agoPhishing & fraud1

Google Play Early Access Abused to Push Thousands of Deceptive Android Apps

Bitdefender found abuse of Google Play's review-free Early Access program to push thousands of deceptive casino and reward apps promoted with AI deepfake ads.

Bitdefender reports threat actors are abusing Google Play's Early Access program, which blocks public reviews and ratings, to distribute thousands of deceptive casino, reward, and utility apps. A GTA imitator, 'Vice Streets: Open World,' surpassed 1 million downloads before disappearing, with apps promoted via AI celebrity deepfake ads on TikTok and Facebook and monetized through endless ad serving and payouts that never arrive. The report coincides with disclosures on Android malware families Hagaseca, Mantax Otax, StreamRat, and GoldFactory's Gigabud banking trojan with its Vwork companion app used for cloned-app financial fraud.

The Hacker Newsupdated · 6d agofirst · 6d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild 7 sources

Safe word: What is it and why do you need one?

ESET recommends pre-agreed family safe words to counter AI voice-clone scams such as virtual kidnapping, as one-in-four Americans report receiving deepfake calls.

ESET outlines how scammers use just seconds of audio scraped from social media or work content to create convincing voice clones, with a Hiya report finding one-in-four Americans received a deepfake voice call in the past 12 months. Common schemes include virtual kidnapping calls mixing cloned voices with sobbing and background noise. A pre-agreed, non-OSINT-discoverable safe word, plus callback verification via known numbers and 2FA, reduces success rates of these frauds.

ESET WeLiveSecurity · 8d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

Risky Bulletin: Ukraine's top prosecutor resigns amid scam call center scandal

Ukraine's top prosecutor Ruslan Kravchenko resigned after NABU arrested a deputy for taking bribes protecting scam call centers running fake investment platforms.

Ukraine's anti-corruption bureau NABU arrested Serhiy Kropyva, Deputy Head of International Cooperation at the Prosecutor General's Office, alleging officials took monthly protection fees from a network of 100-500 scam call centers luring victims into fake investment platforms, with bribes reportedly growing from $700,000 to $3.5 million per month. Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko resigned on Monday, calling it a political decision, while Kropyva was fired with bail set at 120 million hryvnias ($2.7 million) and over 100 call centers shut down in the past month. The newsletter also briefly covers a cyberattack crippling more than 80 Luxembourg medical practices via payment vendor BMS Engineering, ShinyHunters' claimed theft of 200,000 Florida DMV driver records, a cyberattack on the American Meteor Society, and school closures in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Risky Business News · 8d agoPhishing & fraud

X Money rollout linked to password-reset attacks

X is investigating bulk unsolicited password-reset emails as its X Money payments service expands, with no confirmed breaches or account takeovers yet.

X users began reporting unexpected password-reset emails and codes on September 1, and product engineer Mridul Singhai said attackers appear to believe newly widespread X Money access makes accounts worth targeting. X says it has found no evidence of any breach or successful account takeover, and completing a reset still requires access to the account's email or phone number. X Money offers eligible US users interest-bearing accounts, a Visa debit card, and P2P payments, with Cross River Bank providing banking infrastructure. Malwarebytes warns the reset flood can serve as cover for phishing and urges reset protection, 2FA, and unique passwords.

Malwarebytes Labs · 13d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

Tech support scams look different now. Here’s what to watch for

Malwarebytes warns tech support scammers now abuse sponsored search results, fake listings, calendar invites, and Apple Pay notifications, and shares red flags for impersonation scams.

Malwarebytes describes how tech support scams have expanded beyond browser locks and fake virus warnings to sponsored search results, hijacked on-site searches, fake platform listings, renewal scams, fake calendar invites, and Apple Pay notifications. Scammers impersonate trusted security companies including Malwarebytes, seeking payment, personal information, or remote access to victims' computers. Malwarebytes notes it does not outsource support, never makes unsolicited calls, and works with the FTC and the Global Anti-Scam Alliance to combat these scams.

Malwarebytes Labs · 14d agoPhishing & fraud1

AI is making fraud harder to spot and identity harder to prove

Experian's 2026 report finds AI-generated scams, deepfakes and synthetic identities spreading across digital channels, pushing businesses toward adaptive identity verification and 'Know Your Agent' checks.

Experian's 2026 US Identity & Fraud Report, based on consumer and business surveys, found 60% of consumers aware of AI-generated image/video scams, 53% of AI phishing, and 47% of deepfake voice impersonation. 80% of US businesses already use machine learning or generative AI in fraud management, while AI chatbot account openings rose from 16% in 2025 to 27%. The report highlights adaptive authentication, behavioral biometrics, and emerging 'Know Your Agent' controls as AI agents begin acting on behalf of customers.

Help Net Security · 28d agoPhishing & fraud

The 20 Most Common Passwords Hackers Target in 2026

Huntress details the 20 most common passwords of 2026 and how attackers use brute force, spraying, and credential stuffing against weak credentials.

Huntress published an awareness piece based on NordPass's seventh annual list of the 200 most commonly used passwords, compiled from exposed data in cyberattacks across 44 countries. The top passwords remain simple sequences and variants such as "123456", "admin", "password", and "P@ssw0rd", all crackable in under a second. The article explains four password attack types: brute force, password spraying, credential stuffing, and dictionary attacks. Huntress cites its own data showing more than 1 in 4 IT professionals consider employees' password habits their biggest weakness, and recommends avoiding common passwords, not reusing credentials, and combining letters, numbers, and symbols.

Huntress · 7d agoPhishing & fraud

DoppelCart fraud network uses 119,000 fake shops to steal credit cards

DoppelCart, the largest documented fake-shop network, runs 119,000 domains impersonating 44,182 brands to steal payment card details via WebSocket-connected checkout pages.

German cybersecurity startup Nebty discovered DoppelCart, a network of more than 119,000 fake e-commerce domains, mostly in the .SHOP TLD, that harvest payment card details through fraudulent checkout pages. Over 105,000 shops remain active, impersonating 44,182 brands with discounts of up to 65%, and 96% of confirmed shops share identical build files resolving to 27 commerce backends. Checkout code exfiltrates card numbers, expiration dates, CVVs, cardholder names, contact details, and even bank one-time codes to attacker C2 over WebSockets in real time, potentially bypassing bank security controls. The network surpasses BogusBazaar, the previously largest documented fake-shop cluster with 75,000 sites and an estimated 850,000 fraudulent transactions.

BleepingComputer · 8d agoPhishing & fraud

Loyalty points fraud is funding hacker holidays (Lock and Code S07E18)

Malwarebytes' Lock and Code podcast examines loyalty-points theft, with LexisNexis' Kim Sutherland explaining why stolen airline and hotel points are lucrative for fraudsters.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions' Kim Sutherland says loyalty currency is worth roughly one cent per point, making 100,000 airline points worth about $1,000 in the US. Cited incidents include a Chicago teacher who lost 240,000 airline points, discovered only via a confirmation email, and a man whose miles were used to book rental cars in New York and Memphis. The episode discusses how points theft happens and what companies and consumers can do.

Malwarebytes Labs · 9d agoPhishing & fraud

Outsider Phishing Kit Survives Takedown With 700 New Pages

Group-IB found the Outsider phishing kit kept generating 700+ new phishing pages within a month of Operation Ghost Hook's takedown.

Group-IB linked the Outsider Phishing Kit, operated by a threat actor known as ChenLun, to more than 100,000 phishing pages across 54+ countries between December 2025 and May 2026. After the FBI, Google, and Lumen's Black Lotus Labs seized core admin servers, a Shopify storefront, about $100,000, and thousands of domains under Operation Ghost Hook in June, over 700 new phishing domains appeared within a month. The kit offered 267 templates, adversary-in-the-middle MFA interception, WebSocket-based live operator communication, and SMS delivery via a Telegram affiliate ecosystem with more than 5,000 subscribers.

Infosecurity Magazine · 14d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild1

US Becomes Top Target in RMM Phishing Campaign Spanning 46 Countries

ANY.RUN linked 601 RMM-tool phishing cases across 46 countries, with the US the top target at 45% of observed activity.

A phishing campaign that tricks victims into installing legitimate remote monitoring and management (RMM) software spans 46 countries, with around 45% of observed activity targeting the United States, according to ANY.RUN. Lures include Canada Revenue Agency tax forms, UPS shipping notices, Adobe PDF pages, Social Security Administration themes and invoices, delivered through rapidly rotated Vercel, GitHub Pages and Netlify infrastructure. Researchers identified 425 kit URLs across 240 hosts, 94% of which appeared for only a single day, while stable kit indicators such as font1.woff2 and the secure.html to project/*.zip chain tie the infrastructure together.

The Hacker News · 14d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

Researching Employment Scams

Schneier highlights research into North Korean fake-employment IT-worker scams that embed operatives in remote roles for long-term insider access.

The post discusses research into employment scams in which fabricated remote workers, associated with North Korean IT-worker schemes, embed in organizations for months or years to exfiltrate data or position for financial theft. Researchers used controlled sandbox environments to observe operatives syncing personal accounts and working under false identities. Commenters also note reverse scams targeting desperate job seekers through high-pressure MLM and door-to-door sales schemes.

Schneier on Security · 14d agoPhishing & fraud