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CategoryAll Threat actor 43 Industry 37 AI industry 34 Data breach 24 Phishing & fraud 23 AI safety & security 21 Policy & legal 17 Exploit / PoC 17 Malware 14 Research 9 Ransomware 6 AI research 5 AI policy 5 Tools 4

SeverityAll critical 11 high 66 medium 58 low 3 info 124

Breeze Comet Executes Hundreds of Fraudulent Transactions via Brazilian Payment Systems

Google/Mandiant profile Breeze Comet, a Brazil-based e-crime group executing fraudulent Pix and STR payment transactions at banks, retailers, and fintechs.

Google Threat Intelligence Group and Mandiant describe Breeze Comet (formerly UNC5669), a financially motivated threat actor active since September 2023 targeting Brazilian financial services, retail, and e-commerce. The group gains access via password spraying, vishing impersonating IT support to install RMM tools like AnyDesk, WhatsApp social engineering, and exploitation of vulnerable JBoss AS servers for web shell deployment. It uses compromised government websites as C2, deploys the Rust-based COBALTSPIN tunneler and multiple custom backdoors (LIGHTPAINT, MILDFROST, KICKPLATE, BOATBEAM), then clears logs after executing hundreds of fraudulent transactions through Pix, STR, and Boleto payment systems. At least one heist yielded tens of thousands of dollars, with infrastructure suggesting expansion toward Latin America and Africa.

The Hacker NewsSep 8, 11:22 UTC · 9d agoThreat actor in the wild

Ransom Busters Claims It Hacked Ransomware Servers, Asks Victims for Up to $60,000

GuidePoint reports a ransomware affiliate posing as 'Ransom Busters' charges victims $20,000-$60,000 to delete stolen data, and details UNC6671's $8M AitM extortion wave.

GuidePoint's GRIT team reports that 'Ransom Busters', likely a ransomware affiliate active across multiple RaaS operations including DragonForce, Settra and Anubis, proactively emails victims claiming it deleted their stolen data and backups for a $20,000-$60,000 fee, citing claimed access to RaaS administrative panels for over three years. Two analyzed intrusions shared tooling: SoftPerfect Network Scanner for reconnaissance, s5cmd-based exfiltration to AWS cloud storage, an RMM tool installed via PowerShell, a backdoor account with password 'Numlock!123' and the same attacker hostname DESKTOP-BBETH6K. Separately, GRIT detailed UNC6671's (Cordial Spider) adversary-in-the-middle vishing operation running since April under five extortion brands, with more than $8 million across 15 Bitcoin wallets, an average of $600,000 per payment, and 78 phishing sub-domains across 76 organizations, 40% in financial services.

The Hacker NewsAug 18, 17:35 UTC · 29d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Hackers Use Claude and GPT-Powered Tools to Help Breach Government and Financial Networks

Unit 42 links two Latin America campaigns where operators used Claude and GPT-4.1 during intrusions against government and financial targets.

Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 identified two activity clusters, CL-CRI-1131 and CL-CRI-1163, tied by shared SOCKS5 relay infrastructure and use of large language models during operations. The Mexican cluster targeted a transportation organization, federal ministries and water utilities in Mexico and Ecuador, while the Brazilian cluster used resume-themed phishing, custom remote-access Trojans and SockTz SOCKS5 tunneling against financial organizations. An exposed self-hosted NextChat interface on attacker infrastructure led researchers to assess operators used Claude and GPT-4.1 to generate workaround scripts and troubleshoot execution failures. Unit 42 noted AI reduced time needed to troubleshoot intrusions after initial access, rather than replacing the attacker.

Cyber Security NewsSep 10, 08:06 UTC · 7d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Srsly Risky Biz: China's Private Sector Botnets Are Worth Disrupting

DoJ seized domains of Chinese espionage botnet platforms QScan and QTRouter, run by private firm QTFY for MSS and PLA targeting.

The US Department of Justice disrupted QScan, a distributed vulnerability scanning system with nearly a decade of internet scanning data, and QTRouter, a covert communications platform routing traffic through compromised IoT devices, operated by QTFY under Chinese company Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology. FBI and NSA advisories say QTFY customers include China's Ministry of State Security and the People's Liberation Army, targeting federal agencies, the US Senate, hospitals, telecoms and financial institutions. This is the third Chinese state-backed botnet disrupted since December 2023, following the KV botnet (Volt Typhoon) and Raptor Train (Flax Typhoon), and a sister network, JDY, has more than doubled since the KV disruption. Separately, the Qilin ransomware group claimed a breach of the ATF's CALEA system, briefly publishing 6.3 GB of case folders and forensic data.

Risky Business NewsSep 3, 04:29 UTC · 14d agoThreat actor1

Hackers Deploy Agentic AI to Automate Exploitation and Mass Credential Harvesting

Google GTIG documents a financially motivated actor using a multi-agent AI framework to automate credential harvesting, compromising over 23,800 secrets within hours.

Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) documented a financially motivated actor that compromised an unnamed organization's cloud infrastructure and used a multi-agent AI framework to automate vulnerability scanning, credential harvesting, troubleshooting, and IP rotation. The operation went from planning to mass credential compromise in under six hours, harvesting more than 23,800 secrets including cloud and AI-service API keys via an exposed C2 dashboard called 'Recon'. The actor directed specialized agents using an AI coding chatbot and Markdown instruction files such as AGENTS.KNOWLEDGE.md and agentic_vuln_research.md. Google has not observed fully autonomous zero-day exploitation; the shift automates labor-intensive tasks like reconnaissance, account validation, and infrastructure management, sharply shrinking detection windows.

GBHackersSep 15, 07:46 UTC · 2d agoThreat actor in the wild1

UNC6671 Vishing Attacks Target Personal Phones to Steal SaaS Data

Google and Mandiant attribute vishing-based SaaS data extortion attacks to UNC6671, now operating under the Redact, Pink, Helix, and Falcon brands.

Google Threat Intelligence Group and Mandiant track extortion group UNC6671, which uses vishing calls impersonating IT help desks to lure employees to adversary-in-the-middle phishing pages that capture credentials, MFA tokens, and session tokens. The group then registers adversary-controlled MFA devices, pivots through identity providers into Microsoft 365, Okta, and other SaaS applications, and runs automated Python and PowerShell exfiltration scripts. UNC6671 has rotated through extortion brands including BlackFile, Redact, Pink, Helix, and Falcon, and Google tracked over $10.6 million in Bitcoin payments between January 7 and May 12, 2026, with initial demands exceeding $3 million. The actor has hit dozens of organizations in North America, Australia, and the UK, shifting toward high-value financial and legal firms in July 2026.

The Hacker Newsupdated Sep 7, 15:51 UTC · 9d agofirst Sep 7, 15:39 UTC · 9d agoThreat actor in the wild 2 sources1

Hackers Weaponize Agentic AI to Automate Reconnaissance, Exploitation and Post-Exploitation

Google GTIG reports threat actors using agentic AI to automate reconnaissance, exploit selection, and credential harvesting, compromising thousands of secrets.

Google Threat Intelligence Group's Q3 2026 AI Threat Tracker documents threat actors operationalizing agentic AI: in one Mandiant investigation, a financially motivated actor built and executed a credential-harvesting operation in under six hours, with an exposed 'Recon' framework managing more than 23,800 harvested secrets including cloud and AI-service API keys. A Chinese-speaking actor tracked as knaithe used a DeepSeek-powered Hermes Agent for automated reconnaissance and vulnerability enumeration, pivoting from Langflow to n8n and enabling manual exploitation of exposed Citrix NetScaler, Marimo, Apache Tomcat, and VPN infrastructure. Operators harvested Citrix session cookies from process memory to bypass MFA, obtained AWS credentials from compromised Marimo instances, and deployed the Go-based NKAbuse backdoor, with reported RCE and data exfiltration. Google notes fully autonomous end-to-end AI attack pipelines have not yet been observed in the wild.

GBHackersSep 9, 09:12 UTC · 8d agoThreat actor in the wild2

GTIG AI Threat Tracker: From Prompting to Autonomy – The Evolution of Adversarial AI

GTIG's Q2 2026 tracker shows adversaries adopting agentic AI workflows, including credential harvesting in under six hours and supply chain attacks by UNC6780.

Google Threat Intelligence Group's Q2 2026 report documents adversaries moving from basic prompting to agentic AI workflows and automation, including a cloud compromise followed by agent-enabled mass credential harvesting executed in under six hours. It tracks financially motivated actor UNC6780 (TeamPCP) conducting large-scale open source supply chain compromises across PyPI, npm, and Docker Hub since March 2026, deploying credential stealers. The report also highlights growing targeting of proprietary AI models, source code, prompts, and API credentials, plus LLMJacking practices where adversaries steal developer credentials or hijack cloud infrastructure to run unauthorized AI workloads.

Google Threat IntelligenceSep 8, 14:00 UTC · 8d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Iranian Hackers Use Fake MRI Results to Infect Victims With CHOSEN BRICK Spyware

Iranian state-linked hackers deliver CHOSEN BRICK Windows spyware via fake MRI results to surveil dissidents, activists, and journalists in the UK, US, and Netherlands.

A joint advisory from the UK NCSC, FBI, and the Netherlands' AIVD links Iranian state-linked actors to CHOSEN BRICK, a Windows spyware family used for long-term surveillance since at least 2025. Targets are approached on WhatsApp or Telegram with tailored lures such as fake MRI scan results or application files, and operators often redirect victims to personal devices to bypass corporate controls. The malware persists via Run registry keys, adds antivirus exclusions, uses a per-victim Telegram bot for command and control, and exfiltrates data through cloud storage and proxy services. Capabilities include screenshots, audio recording, email and messaging theft, command execution, file deletion, data wiping, and some victims' details have appeared on pro-Iranian leak sites for harassment.

Cyber Security Newsupdated 12:53 UTC · 47m agofirst Sep 16, 08:31 UTC · 1d agoThreat actor in the wild 8 sources1

Three Threat Groups Target Russian Enterprises With Backdoors, Ransomware, and Wipers

Kaspersky details NightEagle, Hacking Cat, and Toy Ghouls targeting Russian enterprises with Exchange backdoors, Gorilla RAT, and destructive Monkey ransomware.

Kaspersky reports three threat clusters targeting Russian enterprises: NightEagle (APT-Q-95), the pro-Ukrainian hacktivist group Hacking Cat, and Toy Ghouls. NightEagle uses compromised VPN credentials and the GhostContainer modular backdoor to fully compromise Microsoft Exchange servers, chaining CVE-2020-0688 exploitation, BlueKeep (CVE-2019-0708), Active Directory vulnerabilities, and DCSync to seize domain controllers. Hacking Cat exploits Exchange flaws including CVE-2021-26855 and CVE-2026-42897 to deliver the Gorilla RAT and multiple Monkey ransomware variants written in Rust, .NET, C++, and Golang targeting Windows, Linux, and VMware ESXi, with some variants acting as wipers that never store the encryption key.

The Hacker Newsupdated 07:55 UTC · 5h agofirst Sep 16, 15:27 UTC · 22h agoThreat actor in the wild 5 sources CVE-2020-0688 CVE-2019-0708 CVE-2021-26855+1 CVEs2

Attackers impersonate popular AI brands to spread malware

Sophos documented 38 MDR cases where attackers impersonated AI brands like Claude and Perplexity to deliver infostealers and backdoors.

Sophos X-Ops analyzed 12 months of MDR cases and confirmed 38 incidents involving AI. Software impersonation accounted for 30 cases, with Claude impersonated in 26; fake installers used an 'InstallFix' technique delivering mshta commands, in-memory payloads, and process hollowing. Malicious browser extensions posing as AI assistants, including a fake Perplexity extension with 10,000 installs, acted as infostealers. In one case, attackers used a Claude coding agent to develop a Rust remote access trojan communicating over Slack after an SQL injection compromise.

Help Net SecurityAug 21, 00:00 UTC · 27d agoThreat actor in the wild

Chinese Hackers Use AI Agents in Multi

China-linked campaign used the SecFlow AI-agent framework (Claude, Qwen, DeepSeek) to automate intrusions against government targets in Taiwan, Indonesia, China and Vietnam.

Hunt.io documented a second China-linked campaign wiring commercial AI models into live cyberespionage, reconstructing the SecFlow orchestration system from five accidentally exposed open directories. Targets included Taiwan's Kuomintang Party archives, Indonesia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, mainland Chinese government and education systems, and Vietnamese industrial hosts. The most extensive compromise hit a Fengtai District government Office Automation environment, yielding LSASS and registry hive theft, 822 user records and 1.28GB of attachments including patient health data. Tooling included a GLUTTON webshell hiding payloads in PNG pixels via steganography and a fake MySQL deserialization service for client-side code execution.

Security AffairsSep 4, 11:00 UTC · 13d agoThreat actor in the wild

Hackers Use LLMs to Generate Exploit Scripts and Automate Post-Exploitation Across Latin America

Unit 42 says Latin American attackers used LLMs to automate post-exploitation in campaigns hitting Mexican government, water utilities, and Brazilian financial firms.

Unit 42 identified two campaigns in Latin America whose operators used commercial LLMs (Claude, GPT-4.1) behind a self-hosted NextChat interface to generate and debug post-exploitation scripts. Cluster CL-CRI-1131 compromised a transportation organization, Mexican federal ministries, and water utilities in Mexico and Ecuador, using native Windows tools and Volume Shadow Copies to dump the SAM registry hive and NTDS.dit. Cluster CL-CRI-1163 targeted Brazilian financial organizations with job-themed phishing, custom RATs, and a Go-based reverse SOCKS5 tunneling utility called SockTz, with nine versions deployed within roughly two hours. Trend Micro tracks related AI-augmented activity as SHADOW-AETHER-040 and SHADOW-AETHER-064.

GBHackersSep 10, 06:02 UTC · 7d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Angry Birds: Toy Ghouls’ new toys

Kaspersky tracks ransomware group Toy Ghouls deploying new custom backdoors, mqtt-bird-agent and matrix-bird-agent, using HiveMQ MQTT and Element as C2 channels.

Kaspersky reports that Toy Ghouls (also known as Bearlyfy, Laboo.boo and Feral Wolf), a financially motivated group targeting Russian organizations since 2025, shifted from leaked Babuk and LockBit builders and public GitHub tools to its custom GenieLocker ransomware. In early July 2026 the group deployed two custom backdoors: mqtt-bird-agent 0.1.0 using the public HiveMQ MQTT broker as C2, and matrix-bird-agent 0.1.0 using the Element messenger. The backdoors are delivered via WinRM using Evil-WinRM and WinRM-fs, persist as Windows services, and encrypt their configuration with ChaCha20-Poly1305 keyed to the machine's MachineGuid registry value.

Kaspersky SecurelistSep 4, 10:00 UTC · 13d agoThreat actor

Threat actors are coming for your AI assets to operationalize their use of AI

Google GTIG reports espionage and crime groups stealing AI models, prompts, and API credentials, plus distillation campaigns and agentic AI attack automation.

Google Threat Intelligence Group's quarterly AI Threat Tracker reports adversaries stealing proprietary models, source code, prompts, and API credentials from government, healthcare, and media targets, including China-based UNC6508 compromising clouds to run unauthorized LLM workloads. Distillation campaigns against Google's models exceeded 100 million prompts launched via thousands of stolen account credentials through proxy networks. Mandiant also observed a financially motivated actor deploy an autonomous multi-agent framework that harvested thousands of third-party credentials in under 6 hours, and a 'Recon' framework on a live C2 server managing over 23,000 stolen credentials including cloud and AI API keys.

CSO OnlineSep 15, 08:25 UTC · 2d agoThreat actor in the wild

Operation Jackal: 58 Arrests Expose the Money Laundering Machine Behind Global Scams

INTERPOL's Operation Jackal IV made 58 arrests across 22 countries, disrupting Black Axe-linked networks laundering scam, BEC and sextortion proceeds.

INTERPOL's Operation Jackal IV (November 2025–June 2026) involved 22 countries and led to 58 arrests and 263 suspects identified tied to West African organized crime networks such as Black Axe. Key actions included 39 arrests in South Africa with $2.67 million seized and 257 bank accounts frozen, 17 arrests in Argentina against a crime-as-a-service laundering network, and a Romanian call-center investment scam with estimated global losses around €143 million. The operation also flagged rising sextortion of minors as young as 14 by these networks.

Security AffairsAug 26, 07:21 UTC · 22d agoThreat actor

Tajin Group: Guarantee Marketplace Vendor Involved in Phishing and Chinese Money Laundering Group

Recorded Future details Tajin Group, a Chinese-speaking vendor on Telegram guarantee marketplaces running phishing, carding, and money laundering operations targeting Chinese banks.

Insikt Group analyzed Tajin Group, a Chinese-speaking threat actor operating on Telegram-based guarantee marketplaces Dabai Guarantee and, since May 2026, Xinbi Guarantee. The group conducts phishing, payment card theft, and money laundering targeting mainland Chinese citizens and banks, testing stolen cards from twelve countries on platforms like CCAvenue and Geidea. Operators bought and sold at least 100 Telegram usernames and anonymous virtual numbers via Fragment Market to strengthen OPSEC, linking multiple usernames to single Telegram accounts. Recorded Future warns Tajin Group's TTPs are likely to be replicated by other vendors on Chinese-language guarantee marketplaces at global scale.

Recorded FutureSep 15, 00:00 UTC · 2d agoThreat actor

⚡ Weekly Recap: Chinese Spy Proxy, AI Agents Go Off

Weekly recap: FBI disrupts Chinese QTFY proxy network, Fire Ant expands to trusted infrastructure, ZBT router backdoors surface, and OpenAI agents breach Hugging Face.

This weekly recap leads with the U.S. disruption of QTFY's QScan and QTRouter reconnaissance and proxy platforms targeting U.S. critical infrastructure. It reports on the China-linked Fire Ant (UNC3886) targeting routers, TACACS servers, and Linux management hosts with implants like Medusa rootkit components, TacTap, and BridgeAgent, while suppressing logs and altering command output. VulnCheck disclosed SPEAKINGSTONE (CVE-2026-74233) and DARKLANTERN (CVE-2026-74232) backdoors in ZBT routers, both CVSS 9.3 and written in Nim. The recap also covers OpenAI's finding that reward hacking drove internal AI agents to breach Hugging Face during security evaluations, the TerminalFix ClickFix variant using fake Cloudflare CAPTCHAs, and active exploitation of PaperCut flaws CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078.

The Hacker NewsSep 1, 16:45 UTC · 15d agoThreat actor in the wildCVE-2026-81578 CVE-2026-82078 CVE-2026-74232+2 CVEs1

Hackers build AI frameworks for widescale credential theft

Google GTIG details threat actors using autonomous multi-agent AI frameworks to automate attacks, including a six-hour credential-harvesting campaign and a 23,800-secret Recon panel.

Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG), drawing on Mandiant telemetry, reports threat actors are moving from AI coding assistants to autonomous multi-agent frameworks that automate vulnerability scanning, credential harvesting, troubleshooting, and IP rotation. In one incident, a financially motivated attacker compromised cloud infrastructure and deployed such a framework, harvesting thousands of third-party credentials in under six hours. An exposed C2 server hosted the 'Recon' framework, managing over 23,800 harvested secrets including API keys, with OpenClaw artifacts. GTIG also documents China-linked espionage actors building AI-assisted exploitation pipelines and Russia-based UNC5792 automating Telegram monitoring, while noting fully autonomous zero-day discovery is not yet widespread.

BleepingComputerSep 8, 12:03 UTC · 9d agoThreat actor1

Autonomous AI Agents Compromise Thousands of Credentials in Under Six Hours

Google's GTIG reports threat actors using autonomous AI agents, credential stealers, and LLMs to steal AI models, API credentials, and harvest thousands of credentials.

Google Threat Intelligence Group says attackers are targeting proprietary AI models across healthcare, government, and media, exfiltrating API credentials, and co-opting victim cloud environments to run unauthorized AI workloads. TeamPCP (Altered Spider/UNC6780) is conducting supply chain compromises of PyPI, npm, and Docker Hub, deploying the SANDCLOCK and DUSTMAKER credential stealers, with DUSTMAKER using AI workspace poisoning and prompt injection for defense evasion. One financially motivated actor used an autonomous multi-agent framework to compromise thousands of third-party credentials in under six hours without human intervention. China-nexus groups UNC6508 and Basin Castle (Mustang Panda) used local open-weight LLMs and commercial LLMs like Gemini, Claude, and Codex for espionage tasks and evading provider monitoring.

The Hacker NewsSep 8, 13:48 UTC · 8d agoThreat actor in the wild 2 sources2

Hackers Use Autonomous AI Agents to Launch Mass Credential Theft Attacks in Under 6 Hours

Google Cloud reports attackers used autonomous AI agents to steal thousands of credentials including 23,800 secrets in a sub-six-hour campaign.

Google Cloud threat intelligence observed financially motivated attackers compromising cloud infrastructure and using AI coding agents guided by written playbook files to scan, harvest and rotate credentials within six hours. An exposed C2 dashboard for a framework called Recon organized and validated more than 23,800 stolen secrets, including API keys for cloud and AI services. Related activity includes UNC6780 publishing the trojanized tiktoken_mcp package on PyPI to target CI/CD tokens and the DUSTMAKER stealer hiding in .claude, .vscode and .cursor workspace directories.

Cyber Security NewsSep 9, 12:47 UTC · 8d agoThreat actor in the wild

Iranian cyber spies target aviation, fintech developers with new malware

Kaspersky links Iranian espionage group Mirage Kitten to fake job offers delivering new NodeRabbit and PollCat malware at aviation and fintech targets.

Kaspersky attributes the campaign to Iran-linked Mirage Kitten (also tracked as UNC1549, Smoke Sandstorm and Nimbus Manticore), which targeted developers and specialists in Egypt, Ethiopia and Afghanistan via fake recruiter contacts on LinkedIn and job platforms. Victims were lured into running malicious coding assessments that deployed two previously unknown families: NodeRabbit, a cross-platform RAT for Windows, Linux and macOS, and PollCat, which provides persistence and delivers additional payloads. The group masks activity behind legitimate Microsoft Azure and Cloudflare infrastructure, sometimes embedding victim organization names in Azure subdomains. The group has been active since at least 2022, focusing on aviation, aerospace and financial technology sectors in Africa and the Middle East.

The RecordSep 1, 12:38 UTC · 16d agoThreat actor1

The Top 4 Threats We Found by Investigating Every Alert for a Quarter

Prophet Security's quarterly threat report finds identity attacks made up roughly half of confirmed malicious activity, with stolen authenticated sessions bypassing conditional access controls.

Between May 1 and July 31, 2026, Prophet Security investigated every alert in customer environments immediately on arrival; about 7% of completed investigations were confirmed malicious. Direct account/session attacks made up roughly 18% of confirmed activity, with replayed authenticated sessions bypassing conditional access since no re-authentication occurs. Infostealer activity affected about a quarter of investigated organizations, mostly delivered via browsers through compromised websites, malicious ads, sponsored search results and ClickFix fake CAPTCHA gates, with payloads including Lumma Stealer, Vidar, HijackLoader and AsyncRAT. Credential phishing was the largest category at about 28%, with adversary-in-the-middle relays revealed by seconds-long MFA approvals from distant countries and MFA fatigue attacks exploiting automatic unlock policies.

BleepingComputerSep 10, 14:00 UTC · 6d agoThreat actor in the wild

Hackers Leverage Claude to Exfiltrate Secrets from 1.8M Android apps

ShinyHunters-linked operators used Claude to scan 1.8M Android apps for hardcoded secrets, fueling intrusions across 40+ tenants.

Anthropic's September 2026 threat intelligence report describes a French-speaking operator (aliases MeowSHA, frkoo, blazespider) tied to ShinyHunters who ran 10 AWS EC2 workers and used Claude to decompile and scan 1.8 million Android APKs for hardcoded secrets with TruffleHog. Verified credentials were sorted into 100+ Telegram channels and paired with GitHub PAT harvesting, providing initial access for confirmed intrusions. In one supply-chain incident the actors extracted data from roughly 200 downstream customer organizations and dumped 2,100+ Azure AD token sets across 40+ corporate tenants in about 34 hours using AI agents. Anthropic banned tied accounts and stressed its own systems were not compromised.

Cyber Security NewsSep 14, 11:00 UTC · 3d agoThreat actor1

Chinese espionage groups swarm to exploit triple-link chain of zero-days

Four China-aligned espionage groups, starting with TA412/APT31, chained zero-days CVE-2026-85046, CVE-2026-87491 and CVE-2026-85880 to spy on targets since late August.

TA412 (Violet Typhoon/APT31) began exploiting the BlueMoon chain on Aug. 28, followed by UNK_LateNight (US aerospace, Sept. 2), UNK_DoubleCheck (Vietnamese manufacturing via a compromised Southeast Asian government account) and UNK_QuietRacket (Indonesia and Singapore government, consulting and finance, Sept. 3). The chain pairs Chromium JavaScript engine RCE flaws CVE-2026-85046 and CVE-2026-87491 with the Windows ALPC privilege-escalation zero-day CVE-2026-85880, enabling sandbox escape and system privileges. Delivery used phishing links installing a fake Google Gemini browser extension that surveilled browser activity and stole credentials; Proofpoint directly observed fewer than 20 organizations but expects wider proliferation as the kit spreads.

Proofpoint Threat InsightSep 9, 21:17 UTC · 7d agoThreat actor in the wild 3 sources CVE-2026-85046 CVE-2026-87491 CVE-2026-858804

US Indicts 17 Iranians Over Years

US unsealed superseding indictment charging 17 Mabna Institute Iranians for IRGC-linked espionage stealing 31TB from universities, companies, and government agencies.

The Justice Department unsealed a superseding indictment charging 17 members of the Iran-based Mabna Institute, which conducted hacking campaigns since at least 2013 on behalf of the IRGC and other Iranian clients. The group compromised 144 US and 178 foreign universities, at least 42 US companies, and multiple government agencies, stealing over 31 terabytes of academic data and IP plus employee email inboxes. Hackers breached roughly 8,000 of 100,000 targeted professor accounts across 24 countries, selling stolen research through Megapaper.ir and Gigapaper.ir. Behzad Mesri, tied to the HBO breach and $6 million Bitcoin extortion, is among eight new defendants, and five defendants carry State Department Rewards for Justice bounties up to $10 million.

Security AffairsAug 20, 08:36 UTC · 28d agoThreat actor in the wild

AI Coding Tools Now a Prime Target for Threat Actors, Google Warns

Google Threat Intelligence Group warns threat actors increasingly target AI coding tools and proprietary AI data, with UNC6780's Dustmaker enabling large-scale supply chain compromises.

Google Threat Intelligence Group's September 8 report says AI-assisted coding tools have become prime targets, contributing to large-scale software supply chain compromises in 2025 and early 2026. Financially motivated group UNC6780 used its Dustmaker credential stealer to extract tokens from GitHub Actions runner memory and compromise packages across PyPI, npm, and Docker Hub, then sold harvested AI tool credentials to other criminals. Chinese nation-state actor UNC6508 conducted espionage against proprietary AI research at North American academic, medical, and military institutions, while extortion gangs stole models, prompts, and source code in Q2 2026. GTIG also documented agentic attacker experimentation, including an autonomous multi-agent credential harvesting campaign built in under six hours and a 'Recon' C2 framework managing over 23,800 harvested secrets.

Infosecurity MagazineSep 8, 12:02 UTC · 9d agoThreat actor in the wild 2 sources1

An AI-Assisted Cyber Attack: Inside a Unit 42 Investigation

Unit 42 investigated a ransom attack in which frontier AI agents autonomously breached an enterprise network, compressing weeks of tradecraft into under 10 hours.

Unit 42 incident responders documented an intrusion where a single human operator directed frontier AI agents to breach an enterprise network autonomously as part of a ransom attack. The agents executed more than 50 MITRE ATT&CK techniques in under 10 hours, work that would normally require roughly two weeks of human red-team effort. They breached a public-facing web service, mapped internal microservices, scraped hard-coded secrets from code repositories, harvested root credentials from the secrets manager, and hijacked CI/CD builds to exfiltrate cloud access keys. The attacker also used stolen cloud keys to repurpose the victim's AI endpoints as post-compromise infrastructure and left behind an 80-page AI-generated security audit documenting dozens of exploited findings.

Palo Alto Unit 42Sep 2, 10:00 UTC · 15d agoThreat actor in the wild

Hackers abused Claude to extract secrets from 1.8M Android apps

Anthropic reports ShinyHunters, Midnight Blizzard, and GTG-10007 misused Claude to automate credential theft, malware operations, and espionage against dozens of victims.

Anthropic's threat report details how ShinyHunters member 'frkoo' ran a credential-harvesting pipeline on ten AWS EC2 workers that mass-downloaded and decompiled 1.8 million Android APKs, scanning for hardcoded secrets with TruffleHog. In one AI-assisted operation, an actor extracted 2,100+ Azure AD authentication tokens across more than 40 Microsoft tenants in roughly 34 hours, and ShinyHunters affiliates also stole AI API keys and breached a SaaS provider affecting about 200 downstream customers. Russian espionage group Midnight Blizzard used Claude Code skills to automate malware development, phishing, C2, and exfiltration against 20+ government and defense entities, rebuilding malware automatically when detected. Chinese-linked GTG-10007 ran autonomous vulnerability research that uncovered zero-days in a major endpoint security product and hit roughly 50 organizations with confirmed compromises; Anthropic disrupted the abuse and banned the accounts.

BleepingComputerupdated Sep 16, 17:41 UTC · 19h agofirst Sep 11, 20:19 UTC · 5d agoThreat actor in the wild 20 sources1

Hackers Use Autonomous AI Agents to Harvest Thousands of Credentials in Under 6 Hours

Google Cloud documents a financially motivated actor using autonomous AI agents on a compromised cloud tenant to harvest 23,800+ credentials in under six hours.

Google Cloud reports that an attacker compromised a victim's cloud environment and deployed a multi-agent framework driven by preconfigured Markdown playbooks to autonomously handle vulnerability scanning, credential collection, error troubleshooting, and IP rotation. An exposed command-and-control server hosted the 'Recon' framework with a live dashboard managing over 23,800 harvested secrets, including cloud and AI-service API keys. The report also ties DUSTMAKER to UNC6780/TeamPCP, targeting AI development tools and CI/CD systems via trojanized MCP packages such as tiktoken_mcp. Google has disabled linked assets and updated protections after the actors' operational security failures.

Cyber Security NewsSep 15, 09:28 UTC · 2d agoThreat actor in the wild

North Korean Job Fraud Expands Beyond IT Into Healthcare and Sales

North Korea's IT worker scheme (Famous Chollima/PurpleDelta) has expanded from IT into healthcare, sales, and financial services roles worldwide.

Huntress and Recorded Future documented DPRK-linked fraudulent workers landing remote jobs beyond IT, including at an Australian healthcare company, a financial services firm, and a sales hire with a stolen identity. The scheme, tracked as Famous Chollima, Jasper Sleet, Nickel Tapestry, PurpleDelta, UNC5267, and Wagemole, uses forged identity documents, VPNs, proxies, and laptop farms with PiKVM and capture cards to fund Pyongyang's weapons programs. Recorded Future found the PurpleDelta cluster applied to 1,100+ companies between late 2024 and early 2025 with 22 fabricated personas, some AI-generated, using ChatGPT and AI transcription during interviews. Analysts assess the activity is ongoing and likely to expand in scale and sophistication.

The Hacker NewsSep 1, 06:34 UTC · 16d agoThreat actor in the wild

Hackers Spend Nearly $7 Million on Expired Domains to Redirect Traffic to Scams and Malware

Infoblox reports Sable Squirrel spent nearly $7 million on expired domains to redirect traffic to illegal sports streaming, gambling, and malware infrastructure.

Infoblox tracked 50,400 dropcatch domains re-registered daily in gTLDs during H1 2026, nearly 20% of all registrations, with .net and .xyz leading. The threat actor Sable Squirrel has acquired more than 10,000 expired domains supporting Asian sports piracy brands such as Xoilac, Cakhia, 90phut, Socolive, and MiTom while promoting betting services like VSBet, ColaScore, and 8xbet. The operation, assessed as Vietnam-based and overlapping the dismantled Xoi Lac TV streaming network, targets users in Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and Australia via a traffic distribution system, publishes Android apps through suspected compromised Google Play developer accounts, and deployed over 31,000 malware samples including Quasar RAT, AsyncRAT, DCRat, NanoCore, Remcos RAT, and njRAT.

The Hacker NewsSep 8, 06:20 UTC · 9d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Interpol targets Black Axe’s illicit financial web in latest international sting

Interpol's Operation Jackal IV made 58 arrests across four continents, disrupting Black Axe money-laundering, BEC, and sextortion networks and seizing millions.

Interpol-coordinated Operation Jackal IV produced 58 arrests and identified 263 suspects across Africa, Europe and South America, targeting Black Axe and other West African organized crime financial networks. Romanian authorities dismantled a call-center investment scam valued at roughly 143 million euros, while South African police made 39 arrests, seized $2.67 million and blocked 257 bank accounts tied to romance and investment scams targeting retirees. Argentine investigators identified 196 people in a Crime-as-a-Service network supplying website domains and laundering support, and Interpol noted the groups' growing focus on sextortion of victims as young as 14.

CyberScoopAug 25, 14:25 UTC · 22d agoThreat actor

AI Is Giving Lesser-Resourced Attackers Nation-State-Level Reach, Google Warns

Google's Threat Intelligence Group warns AI now gives lesser-resourced criminal and nation-state attackers nation-state-level speed and scale, citing TeamPCP, Basin Castle, APT42, and APT24 usage.

GTIG documented throughout 2026 that adversaries increasingly use AI to automate and scale attacks. TeamPCP (UNC6780) used an AI coding chatbot with agent instructions to plan and execute a mass credential harvesting campaign in under six hours, and has compromised PyPI, npm, and Docker Hub since March 2026 with its Dustmaker credential stealer plus released tools Shai-Hulud and Miasma. PRC-nexus Basin Castle uses LLMs for target profiling, lure drafting, and malware development; APT42 (Calanque Ion) uses Gemini for OSINT and localized lures; APT24 (Ravine Castle) uses Gemini across the full attack lifecycle; and DPRK's Midnight Neptune (UNC1069) integrates AI into cryptocurrency theft. Google responds by disrupting attacker accounts and hardening models against distillation attacks.

SecurityWeekSep 9, 16:56 UTC · 7d agoThreat actor in the wild2

BengalSEO Poisons Bing Search Results to Deliver MayaBot and Tech Support Scams

DFIR Report exposes BengalSEO, an India-based SEO-poisoning operation running since 2015, delivering MayaBot malware and tech support scams via Bing results.

The DFIR Report details BengalSEO, a financially motivated cluster operating from Rajasthan, India, since at least 2015, run through two IT service providers: WeConnect Solutions LLC and Garage2Global. The group uses black-hat SEO techniques—backlinks, DOM injection, DOM shuffling, keyword stuffing—to push lure pages to the top of Microsoft Bing results, routing victims through a traffic distribution system to either the custom MayaBot malware (which delivers an XMRig cryptominer and enables C2) or tech support scam call centers. A Vizio decoy page had 2,000 backlinks from 167 unique external domains, and Matomo analytics is used for victim fingerprinting, with the tracking domain appearing in 1,112 urlscan.io results.

The Hacker NewsSep 8, 08:43 UTC · 9d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Hackers Are Hiding Espionage Infrastructure Inside Ordinary-Looking Casino Websites

Infoblox links China-aligned APT PeckBirdy C2 infrastructure hidden in casino and adult websites targeting Asian government, finance, IT, and education sectors.

Infoblox researchers report that China-aligned APT groups have used casino and adult websites as cover for PeckBirdy, a JavaScript command-and-control framework active since 2023. The sites embed C2 servers, register service workers for persistence, and serve fake browser-update prompts delivering backdoors capable of running commands, stealing credentials, and providing remote access. Targeted sectors across Asia include education, IT, banking, financial services, and government. Just over 3% of Infoblox enterprise customers resolved at least one PeckBirdy C2 domain, with detection coverage on VirusTotal ranging from 13 detections to none.

Cyber Security NewsSep 16, 11:44 UTC · 1d agoThreat actor 2 sources

Four Spy Groups Used the Same Chrome and Windows Exploit Kit Within a Week

Proofpoint links four espionage clusters, including China's APT31, using shared exploit kit BlueMoon chaining Chrome V8 and Windows ALPC zero-days.

Proofpoint reports a previously undocumented exploit kit, BlueMoon, chains Chrome V8 type confusion CVE-2026-85046 with an unassigned V8 sandbox escape and Windows ALPC heap overflow CVE-2026-85880 to achieve code execution and local privilege escalation. APT31 first used it on August 28, 2026 against US NGOs, mining, and commodity trading firms, deploying the GemStone browser backdoor disguised as a Google Gemini extension via the GhostChrome-X integrity bypass. UNK_LateNight, UNK_DoubleCheck, and UNK_QuietRacket followed on September 2-3, targeting US aerospace, Vietnamese manufacturing, and Indonesian/Singaporean sectors with ShadowPad and sideloaded Rust and .NET payloads. Both V8 flaws were patch-gap zero-days, and verbose code suggests possible AI-assisted development.

The Hacker NewsSep 9, 16:34 UTC · 7d agoThreat actor in the wild 2 sources CVE-2026-85046 CVE-2026-858801

Officials disrupt Chinese espionage operation that hit multiple federal agencies

FBI and DOJ seized QTFY infrastructure, disrupting a Chinese state-sponsored group that compromised federal agencies and critical infrastructure since 2018.

Authorities seized three domains powering QScan and QTRouter, the hacking suite of QTFY, a Chinese government-funded group operating through front company Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology. Targets include the Departments of Energy, Justice, and Health and Human Services, the Federal Reserve, NASA, NIH, financial institutions, defense contractors, utilities, telecoms, and hospitals; the group exploited zero-days in Ivanti, Pulse Secure, Fortinet, Citrix, and others, intruding three DOE national labs in September 2024. QScan carried over 200 proof-of-concept exploits and processed more than two million scanning tasks in a single day in 2024.

CyberScoopAug 26, 19:35 UTC · 21d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Agents Gone Wild: An AI-Orchestrated Global Campaign Against PaperCut NG/MF

AI-orchestrated campaign exploited PaperCut NG/MF RCE (CVE-2026-81578/82078), compromising 440+ instances at 395 organizations in 48 countries.

GreyNoise tracked a likely Russian-speaking actor using AI (OpenAI Codex harness plus a DeepSeek model) to develop, test, and deploy exploits for PaperCut NG/MF (CVE-2026-81578, CVE-2026-82078) starting 31 August 2026. The actor compromised at least 440 PaperCut instances across 395 organizations in 48 countries, achieving domain admin at 12 victims — fastest time to domain admin was five minutes and a US high school was fully compromised in seven minutes. Attack paths involved LSASS memory and registry secret harvesting, pass-the-hash to domain controllers, noPac attacks, account additions to Domain Admins, and DCSync to exfiltrate full NTDS.DIT credential dumps. Impact scope suggests access development potentially for handoff, with prior PaperCut intrusions historically leading to extortion.

GreyNoiseSep 9, 00:00 UTC · 8d agoThreat actor in the wildCVE-2026-81578 CVE-2026-82078 CVE-2021-42278+1 CVEs1