Search: “scam”

10 stories in the last 24h

Anthropic exposed a network of roughly 28 AI-driven dating apps using autonomous personas and gig workers to defraud paying users.

Anthropic threat intelligence uncovered a fraud network of around 28 dating apps after a prepaid account sent over 100,000 Claude API requests daily, with most chats run by autonomous AI personas and no human agent. Researchers Matthew Gore-Kormanik and Anthropic's Chris Cronbaugh documented apps including Dora, Romi, and Doni, which monetize conversations via coins; gig workers were hired only to pass liveness checks and select pregenerated replies. An operations manual written in Chinese was found inside the Doni app, and Anthropic published findings in its September 2026 AI misuse report.

The Verge · AI14:45 UTC · 8h agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

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 Labs08:41 UTC · 14h agoPhishing & fraud

House passes bill to equip local law enforcement with scam-fighting tools

The U.S. House passed the GUARD Act, letting local law enforcement use federal grants to investigate financial scams and trace stolen cryptocurrency.

The bipartisan GUARD Act (Reps. Zachary Nunn, Scott Fitzgerald, Josh Gottheimer) passed the House, allowing existing DOJ grant funds to be used for fraud analysts, victim-support training, blockchain tracing software, and financial-information sharing with law enforcement. It addresses scams like pig butchering, often run by transnational criminal groups overseas; Americans lost a record $11.4 billion to crypto-related fraud in 2025, including $8.6 billion in investment fraud. Senators Katie Britt and Kirsten Gillibrand introduced a Senate companion in July 2025, and the House also passed a bill retroactively eliminating the 'scam tax' on stolen funds for 2021-2025 victims.

The Record18:28 UTC · 4h agoPolicy & legal

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 News11:44 UTC · 11h agoThreat actor 2 sources

Fake CAPTCHA Scams

Bruce Schneier examines fake CAPTCHA scams that abuse human-verification prompts as social engineering lures against users.

Bruce Schneier's blog post covers fake CAPTCHA scams, a social engineering technique in which attackers pose as CAPTCHA verification checks to manipulate users. The available page text is largely site navigation, and no specific campaign, victim, or malware family is named in the source.

Schneier on Security11:25 UTC · 11h agoPhishing & fraud

Ukraine moves to crack down on scam call centers after corruption scandal

Ukraine's parliament passed legislation criminalizing fraudulent call centers with 7-12 year prison terms after a bribery scandal implicating prosecutors.

Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada passed legislation making electronic-communications fraud and organizing or working for fraudulent call centers separate crimes punishable by 7-12 years, awaiting President Zelensky's signature. The bill advanced after NABU alleged prosecutors took bribes since mid-2025 to shield scam call centers; five suspects were named and Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, who denies wrongdoing, was dismissed by parliament and presidential decree. Ukrainian authorities previously reported 411 searches and 94 suspected call centers shut down in one week, including a Kyiv operation that stole over $500,000 from dozens of Americans.

The Record12:45 UTC · 10h agoPolicy & legal

Helping older adults use AI in everyday life

OpenAI and AARP's OATS launch the Older Adults AI Skills Jam, a free program teaching seniors to use ChatGPT and spot scams.

OpenAI Academy, with Older Adults Technology Services (OATS) from AARP, is hosting in-person AI Skills Jam events in 10 US communities as part of a multi-year Senior Planet program. OpenAI says the share of US ChatGPT messages from people 55+ grew from 6% to nearly 10% in a year. The workshops include scam-awareness training, teaching warning signs like urgent language and suspicious links, and note that users ask ChatGPT tens of millions of times weekly to evaluate suspicious messages.

OpenAI News15:49 UTC · 7h agoAI industry

Google Pixel owners urged to patch actively exploited modem flaw

Google's September 2026 Pixel bulletin fixes 110 vulnerabilities, including CVE-2026-58704, a modem permission bypass under limited targeted exploitation enabling remote privilege escalation.

Google released the September 2026 Pixel Update Bulletin addressing 110 vulnerabilities, including CVE-2026-58704, a high-severity logic error in the cellular modem that allows remote escalation of privilege with no additional execution privileges or user interaction required. Google says there are indications the flaw may be under limited, targeted exploitation; attackers need adjacent network access and some existing foothold on the device, which the bulletin does not explain how to obtain. The fix ships at the 2026-09-05 patch level and appears only in the Pixel-specific bulletin, so other Android vendors do not receive this specific fix.

Malwarebytes Labsupdated 17:56 UTC · 5h agofirst 10:39 UTC · 12h agoExploit / PoC in the wild 8 sources CVE-2026-58704

When scanners miss the attack: how Cloudflare Client-Side Security protects storefronts

Cloudflare's Page Shield ML uncovered four malicious JavaScript campaigns on storefronts, including affiliate fraud and a remote-backdoor script, that VirusTotal and URLScan missed.

Cloudflare's Page Shield ML detected four client-side JavaScript operations (eight payloads) in live traffic on online storefronts, enabling affiliate commission hijacking, clickless affiliate theft via hidden iframes, user tracking with a remote-code backdoor, and cloaking of paid mobile visitors. Seven of the eight payloads were absent from VirusTotal and URLScan returned no malicious verdict for any, including a Lnkr-family payload indexed unclassified for roughly 2.5 years. Detection relies on a graph neural network over JavaScript syntax trees, an LLM second opinion on Workers AI, and a frontier-model ensemble voting across benign, magecart, other malware, and cryptomining labels.

Cloudflare Blog20:06 UTC · 3h agoMalware in the wild

Smishing Hackers Can Watch Every Keystroke as Victims Enter Card Details and OTPs

Group-IB details the JWR smishing kit, used by the Outsider cluster, that streams keystrokes and OTPs to fraudsters in real time via WebSocket.

Group-IB linked the JWR phishing kit to an operator cluster it tracks as Outsider within the broader Smishing Triad ecosystem. Fake toll, parcel, and delivery messages lead to live phishing pages that capture card numbers, passwords, and one-time passcodes before victims submit forms. The kit supports up to 32 guided pages, AES-256-CTR wrapped traffic with keys embedded per message, rotating short links and domains, and WordPress or Shopify integration markers, enabling account takeover and unauthorized payments.

Cyber Security News13:39 UTC · 9h agoPhishing & fraud in the wild 2 sources