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Ransomware incidents in Japan in the first half of 2026: Investigation of The Gentlemen’s infrastructure and evidence of Qilin's AI use

Cisco Talos reports 90 ransomware incidents hit Japanese organizations in H1 2026, led by The Gentlemen, with Qilin using AI for efficiency.

Cisco Talos observed 90 ransomware incidents against Japanese organizations from January to July 2026, up about 4.7% year over year, with manufacturing accounting for 34% of victims. The Gentlemen was the most active group with 14 incidents; its leak-site listings grew from 48 in January to 105 in July. Qilin and SafePay followed with seven incidents each, and Talos notes Qilin is leveraging AI to improve operational efficiency.

Cisco Talos · 1h agoRansomware in the wild

CISA Urges Organizations to Deploy Cyber Decoys to Detect Hackers Inside Networksnew

CISA's new guidance urges organizations to deploy cyber decoys like honeytokens and tripwires to detect attackers using valid credentials and living-off-the-land techniques.

CISA published 'Using Cyber Decoys to Strengthen Detection and Response' on September 16, 2026, advising decoy assets that appear legitimate but generate high-confidence alerts when accessed. It describes tripwires, breadcrumbs, and honeytokens such as fake usernames, passwords, API keys, and cloud access tokens, and recommends starting with low-complexity deployments like nonfunctional Active Directory accounts, decoy file shares, and isolated mimic hosts. The agency warns decoys must be segmented and nonfunctional to prevent attackers pivoting to real systems, and aligns decoy planning with MITRE Engage and ATT&CK.

GBHackers · 27m agoAdvisory

NightEagle Hackers Abuse Microsoft Dev Tunnels and GhostContainer to Breach Russian Companies

NightEagle (APT-Q-95) breached Russian firms using stolen VPN credentials, a GhostContainer Exchange backdoor, Dev Tunnels abuse, and DCSync.

Kaspersky's Securelink analysts, via Securelist, documented NightEagle (APT-Q-95) attacks on Russian companies that begin with VPN logins using stolen valid credentials from Cloudflare WARP and European infrastructure. On Exchange servers the group deployed GhostContainer, a .NET backdoor built from public components including Neo-reGeorg tunneling, CVE-2020-0688 logic, and the GhostWebShell class, controlled through Exchange web headers. The operators exposed RDP through Microsoft Dev Tunnels paired with rdp2tcp, staged tools in GitHub repositories, and exploited BlueKeep (CVE-2019-0708) to create admin accounts before running DCSync against Active Directory.