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Leaks, data breaches, and ransom notes: The worst hacks of 2026 so far
TechCrunch's 2026 roundup covers SSA data exposure, Iranian water-utility attacks, Klue breach hitting ~200 firms, and Meta AI chatbot account hijacks.
TechCrunch's mid-year roundup highlights a whistleblower claim that DOGE uploaded a live Social Security database copy to an unsecured third-party server, which House Democrats called potentially the largest US breach in history. CISA reported Iranian hackers targeted over 100 US water providers over the summer, while Russian-linked attacks hit Polish, Swedish, and Norwegian energy and water infrastructure. Market research firm Klue was breached via a stale 2022 pilot credential, exposing cloud keys of ~200 customers including Jamf, HackerOne, and LastPass to extortion gang Icarus. Separately, tens of thousands of Instagram accounts were hijacked by abusing Meta's AI chatbot to trigger password resets to attacker-controlled emails.
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‘White hat’ hackers take $47 million bounty after $320 million crypto theft
Hackers withdrew $320 million in bitcoin from Liquid Network, negotiated on-chain, returned $266.5 million and kept a $47 million reward.
Purported white-hat hackers withdrew 4,000 BTC (about $320 million) from Liquid Network's own wallet, one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts of 2026. Over roughly 12 hours of public on-chain negotiation with operator Blockstream, the hackers returned $266.5 million in bitcoin and kept 598.5 BTC (about $47 million), claiming it as a reward for uncovering a bug. Blockstream deployed updated software and paused deposits and withdrawals while experts traced the flaw to the Elements sidechain framework. April thefts of $290 million from Kelp and $280 million from Drift, attributed to North Korean hackers, were previously 2026's largest.
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Qatar’s Digital Boom Has a Blind Spot: What the 2025-26 Threat Data Is Telling Us
Cyble's Qatar Threat Landscape Report 2025-26 finds Qilin dominated local ransomware while access brokers concentrated on Qatari BFSI and retail access sales.
Cyble's Qatar Threat Landscape Report 2025-26 describes a concentrated threat environment where Qilin accounted for essentially all observed ransomware activity in the country in 2025, including an October campaign, with The Gentleman, Everest, Crypto24, and Payload sharing the space in 2026. Access brokers are selling compromised access, with BFSI and retail accounting for more than half of underground listings, while the education sector sees the most breach and leak incidents. Exploitation activity surged for enterprise remote-access products from Microsoft, Fortinet, Ivanti, and Citrix. The report was published ahead of the CYSEC Qatar summit and cites Qatar's data privacy law and National Cyber Security Agency initiatives.
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Risky Bulletin: Two TeamPCP members arrested in Australia
Australian Federal Police arrested two alleged TeamPCP members behind supply-chain worm attacks that stole over 500,000 credentials from compromised open-source libraries.
The AFP arrested alleged TeamPCP leader Ruben Thomson, 21, and Louis Gaebler, 23, near Perth; both were charged and remain in custody. The group inserted a self-spreading credential-stealing worm into open-source projects including Trivy, KICS, LiteLLM, and Telnyx, harvesting more than 500,000 credentials used for network access, ransomware, extortion, and sales. About 78,000 tokens and secrets from nearly 2,200 organizations leaked online last month, and the FBI supported the investigation that began in April.
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New Mirai Variant Targeting Network Security Devices
New Mirai botnet variant exploits nine vulnerabilities in SonicWall, D-Link, Netgear, and other devices, with attacks ongoing at publication.
Unit 42 observed attacks exploiting VisualDoor (SonicWall SSL-VPN), CVE-2020-25506 (D-Link DNS-320), CVE-2020-26919 (Netgear ProSAFE Plus), and other flaws, with infrastructure rotating across at least three IP addresses between February 16 and March 13, 2021. Payloads were updated hours after CVE-2021-27561 and CVE-2021-27562 (Yealink Device Management, unauthenticated root RCE) and later added CVE-2021-22502 (Micro Focus Operation Bridge Reporter) and CVE-2019-19356 (Netis WF2419). Successful exploitation invokes wget to fetch shell scripts that download Mirai binaries compiled for multiple architectures and brute-forcers, and attacks were still ongoing when reported.
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FrostyGoop’s Zoom-In: A Closer Look into the Malware Artifacts, Behaviors and Network Communications
Unit 42 dissects FrostyGoop OT malware, which sent Modbus TCP commands to disrupt heating for 600+ apartment buildings in Ukraine.
Palo Alto Unit 42 analyzed new FrostyGoop/BUSTLEBERM samples, the ninth known ICS-centric malware, first used against a Ukrainian municipal energy company by sending Modbus TCP commands to ENCO control devices. The attack caused a two-day heating outage affecting over 600 apartment buildings during sub-zero temperatures. The Go-compiled malware accepts Modbus register operations and timing parameters via command-line arguments or a JSON configuration file, uses an obscure open-source Modbus library, and checks the Windows BeingDebugged flag to evade debuggers. Unit 42 telemetry recorded over 1 million Modbus TCP devices exposed to the internet between September and October 2024.
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Home & Small Office Wireless Routers Exploited to Attack Gaming Servers
Unit 42 details an updated Gafgyt botnet variant exploiting Zyxel, Huawei, and Realtek router vulnerabilities to recruit devices for DoS attacks on gaming servers.
Unit 42 researchers identified an updated Gafgyt variant derived from the JenX botnet that combines three remote code execution exploits: CVE-2017-18368 (Zyxel P660HN-T1A), CVE-2017-17215 (Huawei HG532), and CVE-2014-8361 (Realtek RTL81XX chipset). Shodan scans show more than 32,000 wireless routers worldwide potentially vulnerable to these exploits. The exploits act as droppers, pulling architecture-specific binaries from a malicious server (185.172.110.224), and the botnet performs denial-of-service attacks against gaming servers, most notably Valve Source engine servers.
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Who needs VC funding? How cybercriminals spread their ill-gotten gains to everyday business ventures
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Cyber insecurity now impacts the health and wellness of Americans. We need a clearer treatment plan.
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Unpatchable 0-day in surveillance cam is being exploited to install Mirai
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Week in review: Attackers use phishing emails to steal NTLM hashes, Patch Tuesday forecast
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Vulnerable Arm GPU drivers under active exploitation. Patches may not be available
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