Search: “DropCatch.com”

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 News·Sep 8, 06:20 UTC · 8d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Trends in Web Threats: Old Web Skimmer Still Active Today

Unit 42 detected 577,000 landing URL incidents in Q1 2022, with an old web skimmer family still actively stealing payment card data.

Palo Alto Unit 42 detected 577,275 landing URL incidents (116,643 unique) and 2,043,862 malicious host URL incidents (180,370 unique) between January and March 2022. Web threat volumes declined after the November 2021 holiday peak, but an old web skimmer family remained active. Business and economy sites overtook personal sites as the most common apparently benign entry points. Most malicious domains geolocated to the United States, Germany, and Russia, though proxy servers and VPNs obscure true locations.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 13:05 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Research

Trends in Web Threats in CY Q2 2022: Malicious JavaScript Downloaders Are Evolving

Unit 42 detected 751,000 landing URL incidents in Q2 2022 and documented malicious JavaScript downloaders evolving to evade detection.

Unit 42 detected 751,331 landing URL incidents (253,644 unique) and 1,744,629 malicious host URL incidents (256,844 unique) from April through June 2022. Total landing URL incidents rose compared with Q1 2022, and unique host URL incidents grew 42%, indicating attackers deploying more variants. The report includes a case study of a JavaScript downloader campaign demonstrating new evasion techniques. Personal sites, blogs, and business sites were the top apparently benign entry points.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 13:05 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Research

Google Search Makes It Harder to See Where a Link Really Goes Before You Click

Google now routes some Search results through opaque google.com/goto redirects, weakening hover-to-verify anti-phishing checks.

Google has begun serving some organic search results as opaque google.com/goto?url= redirects whose destinations can only be resolved server-side by Google, likely to raise scraping costs for rank trackers and archival services. The change removes the pre-click hover preview of the true destination URL, undermining a long-standing anti-phishing habit for spotting lookalike, typosquatted, or search-optimized phishing domains. Security teams are advised to rely on layered defenses such as domain reputation, DNS and web filtering, browser isolation, and user training rather than hover text.

GBHackers·Sep 15, 13:42 UTC · 1d agoIndustry

ApateWeb: An Evasive Large-Scale Scareware and PUP Delivery Campaign

Unit 42 uncovers ApateWeb, a campaign using over 130,000 domains and multilayered redirects to deliver scareware, adware and PUPs to millions of users.

Unit 42 discovered ApateWeb, a large-scale campaign using a network of more than 130,000 domains to deliver scareware, potentially unwanted programs, adware including a rogue browser and browser extensions, and scam pages. The campaign uses a three-layer structure with deceptive emails as the entry point, centralized victim tracking via UUIDs, intermediate adware or anti-bot redirections, and evasion tactics such as cloaking, bot detection error pages, and wildcard DNS abuse. Activity spiked since August 2022, with several hundred attacker-controlled sites remaining in Tranco's top 1 million rankings and millions of monthly hits; Unit 42 blocked an estimated 3.5 million sessions across 74,711 devices in November 2023.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 12:48 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Phishing & fraud in the wild

Google’s new search redirects make links harder to check before you click

Google routes some search result links through encoded google.com/goto?url= redirects, breaking hover-to-verify link checks and raising scraping costs.

Google has started routing some search result links through opaque google.com/goto?url=... redirects using a custom Google-specific encoding, with the destination visible only via the redirect response's Location header. Google confirmed the rollout as an anti-abuse measure, most likely to make bulk extraction of destination URLs from search results more difficult and costly. Malwarebytes warns the change undermines the standard hover-before-clicking safety advice, while legitimate rank-tracking, SEO auditing, archival, and accessibility tools now face the same rate limits and costs as abusive scrapers.

Malwarebytes Labs·Sep 14, 14:17 UTC · 2d agoIndustry

The Frontier AEO Tracker: What Astra Chooses (and every other frontier model, and what you can do about it)

Latent Space launches an AEO tracker scoring 7 frontier models' product recommendations across 161 categories, revealing generational bias flips.

Latent Space built a tracker measuring Answer Engine Optimization by running 6 prompt variations across 7 frontier models with search enabled over 161 product categories, scoring first choices, alternatives, mentions, and anti-recommendations. It found 28 categories with a universally dominant primary choice and observed soft biases, such as models favoring their own lab's coding agents. Analysis of Anthropic's Sol→Astra and Opus→Fable generations showed newer models consulting fewer sources and being less likely to change answers when questions are paraphrased.

Latent Space·Sep 7, 21:32 UTC · 8d agoAI research

Google’s New Search Redirects Make It Harder to Check Where Links Lead Before Clicking

Malwarebytes reports Google's new encoded google.com/goto?url= redirects break hover-preview link checking, weakening a common phishing defense.

Google now routes some search results through opaque google.com/goto?url= redirects using custom encoding, so browser link previews no longer reveal the true destination, only the claimed label above the result. Malwarebytes found the final destination is visible only in the redirect response's Location header, complicating hover-based safety checks as well as scraping, archiving, and audit tools. The change arrives amid malvertising, search-result poisoning, and fake installer campaigns like the recent Node.js infostealer lure. Google says it deploys measures against evolving abuse but did not explain the change.

Cyber Security News·Sep 15, 12:21 UTC · 1d agoResearch

Product showcase: AI Paper Trail shows the privacy cost of talking to AI

Proton launched AI Paper Trail, a free tool that analyzes ChatGPT or Claude exports and reports what personal data can be inferred from AI conversations.

Proton released AI Paper Trail, a free web tool that analyzes the 200 most recent prompts from exported ChatGPT or Claude conversation histories and generates a privacy report with an AI Exposure Score, inferred personal data categories, and an estimated advertising value. In a hands-on test it identified 47 data points, returned a 58/100 exposure score, estimated $185 in advertising value, and flagged five red flags spanning location, interests, finances, and relationships. Proton states that uploaded data is deleted after analysis and is not stored on its Lumo servers.

Help Net Security·Aug 24, 00:00 UTC · 23d agoAI industry

What Is a Website Attack Surface? A Beginner’s Guide to Reducing Risk

Sucuri's beginner guide explains how logins, plugins, APIs, and forgotten backups expand a website's attack surface and how to reduce that risk.

Sucuri published educational guidance explaining that login pages, contact forms, plugins, APIs, staging sites, and forgotten backups each add exposed components that constitute a website's attack surface. The article frames continuous attack surface reduction as a risk management practice for website owners. It is evergreen educational content rather than breaking incident news.

Sucuri Blog·Aug 19, 20:06 UTC · 27d agoIndustry

Safety for Whom? Refusing the Right Subset of a Topic, Not the Whole Topic

Multiverse Computing's Hugging Face post argues language models should refuse only the relevant subset of a topic instead of over-refusing whole subjects.

A Hugging Face blog post by Multiverse Computing examines refusal granularity in language models, arguing models should refuse the relevant subset of a topic rather than the entire topic. No full article text was available for additional technical detail.

Hugging Face Blog·Sep 8, 14:23 UTC · 8d agoAI safety & security

Some Claude Chats Are Searchable on Google

Schneier on Security·Aug 4, 10:13 UTC · Aug 4, 2026Data breach2

Can We Stop The Ads? Taxonomy and Characterization of Smartphone Splash Ads and Existing Countermeasures

Study of 108 ad-defense implementations finds only one tool blocked splash-ad navigation across ten popular apps, and it required Accessibility permission.

The paper taxonomizes smartphone splash ads — full-screen ads at app launch that trick users into trigger mechanisms such as moving the phone — and analyzes 108 documented advertising defenses for deployment barriers. Many defenses require device rooting, jailbreaking, runtime code injection, or application modification; others need extra permissions, rule maintenance, compilation, or payment. In evaluating 13 configurations of 11 tools across 10 popular apps, only one prevented ad-triggered navigation across all ten apps, requiring Accessibility permission and leaving ads visible roughly one second before dismissal. Documented harms include delayed emergency response, driver distraction, and degraded accessibility for vision-impaired users.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 15, 15:24 UTC · 1d agoResearch

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 News·11:44 UTC · 5h agoThreat actor 2 sources

Crooks Are Buying Your Expired Domains and Using Them to Deliver Malware

Infoblox finds dropcatch expired domains fuel malware delivery and C2, with actor Sable Squirrel spending ~$7M on 10,000+ domains.

Infoblox Threat Intel reports that in H1 2026 dropcatch (re-registered expired) domains made up nearly 20% of all new registrations, about 65,000 per day, inheriting reputation and traffic that attackers exploit. Threat actor Sable Squirrel spent nearly $7 million on 10,000+ expired domains, running Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese and Australian streaming platforms (Xoilac, Cakhia, 90phut) that double as C2 servers for Quasar RAT, AsyncRAT, DCRat and Remcos RAT. Scavenger actors like Shady Squirrel acquire previously compromised domains and feed inherited traffic to SocGholish and tech support scam networks.

Security Affairs·Aug 16, 17:17 UTC · Aug 16, 2026Threat actor

Post-DEF CON Phishing Uses Malicious Google Doc to Deliver Malware

Huntress uncovered post-DEF CON phishing via X direct messages using a malicious Google Doc to deliver AMOS and NetSupport RAT malware.

Huntress uncovered a phishing campaign targeting attendees after Black Hat and DEF CON. Attackers used X direct messages pointing to a malicious Google Doc as the delivery vehicle. Payloads include AMOS, a macOS infostealer, and the NetSupport RAT, among other malware.

Huntress·Aug 19, 13:00 UTC · 28d agoPhishing & fraud

Notes on gotchas while migrating 35kb preprompts from Opus to self-hosted Ollama

Opinion piece urges migrating 35KB preprompts from Anthropic/OpenAI to self-hosted Ollama, citing session privacy risks and safety filters blocking security research.

The author documents gotchas migrating 35KB preprompts from Claude Opus to self-hosted Ollama, motivated by fears that frontier providers train on user sessions, citing the OpenAI Navier-Stokes controversy. The piece argues inference providers cannot audit their own retention or training pipelines and that only self-hosted hardware offers verifiable privacy. It also criticizes frontier safety filters for refusing vulnerability research tasks and calls for models that support exploitability testing in CI/CD pipelines.

Hacker News · AI·Sep 14, 13:59 UTC · 2d agoAI industryHN 41↑ · 13 comments1

You Get What You Sample: Evaluating Sampling Strategies for Web Security Measurements

Evaluation of 500k Tranco and 24.8M Common Crawl hosts shows Top-N domain sampling biases web security measurements; probability sampling yields unbiased estimates.

The study is the first comprehensive investigation of how sampling strategies affect web security measurement conclusions, comparing datasets and strategies across 500k Tranco domains and 24.8M Common Crawl hosts. It shows Top-N selection does not reflect the overall web distribution and may bias observed vulnerability rates, while probability-based strategies yield stable, unbiased prevalence and impact estimates. Hybrid sampling offers no advantage because its deterministic prefix consistently hurts accuracy, and the authors propose an adaptive probability-based strategy effective even when target prevalence is unknown.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 10, 08:21 UTC · 6d agoResearch1

Trends in Web Threats: Attackers Were More Active During Holiday Season

Unit 42 tracked 533,000 malicious landing URL incidents from October-December 2021, showing web threats peaked during the holiday shopping season.

Unit 42 detected 533,452 malicious landing URL incidents (120,753 unique) and 2,906,875 malicious host URL incidents (165,255 unique) from October through December 2021. Threat activity peaked in November, likely tied to Black Friday in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany. Most malicious domains appeared to originate in the United States, followed by Russia and Germany. Personal sites, blogs, business sites, and shopping sites were the most common apparently benign entry points for attacks.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 13:06 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Research

Safety for Whom? Boundary-Aware Self-Distillation for Controlled LLM Safety Refusal

A self-distillation safety framework tunes narrow-boundary refusals in Qwen3-8B, raising target-domain refusal to 84.75% while cutting over-refusal from 15.20% to 5.20%.

The paper formulates narrow-boundary safety, where deployments need refusals within specific topics rather than whole subjects, and proposes an offline self-generated framework with controlled topic generation, escalating retries, and harmful-benign boundary pairs. On political persuasion with Qwen3-8B, the method raised target-domain refusal from 9.47% to 84.75% and cut the mean unsafe-response rate across three broader benchmarks from 26.26% to 0.14%. Verified target-model responses reduced over-refusal from 15.20% to 5.20%, and boundary-pair data cut comply-side over-refusal on held-out pairs from 32.94% to 4.16%. Results show data composition controls the safety-usability trade-off and alignment should be evaluated on both sides of the refusal boundary.

Hugging Face daily papers·Sep 2, 20:00 UTC · 13d agoAI safety & security1

The Pelican comparison grid for Astra is pretty interesting

Simon Willison's pelican SVG comparison shows GPT-6 Astra producing markedly better images than GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna across reasoning levels.

Willison generated pelicans-riding-bicycles SVGs with newly accessed GPT-6 Astra at low through max reasoning levels and rendered them in a comparison grid against GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna. Astra's outputs were markedly more coherent, while even the best GPT-5.6-Sol images remained largely abstract shapes. Astra does not support a reasoning=none setting, so all comparisons involved reasoning-enabled runs.

Simon Willison·Sep 4, 23:59 UTC · 11d agoAI research

Google Doc Sidebar Sends Mac and Windows Users Down Different Paths to Malware

Huntress analysts trace one X direct message into separate Mac and Windows malware chains delivering AMOS infostealer and NetSupport Manager RAT.

Huntress SOC analysts dissected a malware campaign distributed via an X direct message styled as a Google Docs sidebar. macOS users were routed to the AMOS infostealer, while Windows users received NetSupport Manager remote access malware. The write-up details how a single message branched into two distinct delivery paths per operating system.

Huntress·Sep 11, 16:36 UTC · 5d agoMalware in the wild

Hackers Use Fake LinkedIn Job Offers to Infect Developers With New Cross-Platform RATs

Iran-linked Mirage Kitten uses fake LinkedIn job challenges to deliver new cross-platform RATs NodeRabbit and PollCat to developers in fintech, aviation, and aerospace.

PolySwarm documented a campaign by Iran-linked Mirage Kitten (UNC1549) that uses fake recruiter personas and technical hiring challenges on LinkedIn to deliver the newly documented RATs NodeRabbit and PollCat, which run on Windows, Linux, and macOS. A challenge archive bundles a fake npm package (colorized_terminal 2.1.0) in node_modules that loads NodeRabbit, while a React-based challenge delivers PollCat with an attacker-controlled OTP screen. NodeRabbit persists through a malicious Visual Studio Code extension and Git post-merge/post-checkout hooks; PollCat persists via scheduled tasks, cron, and LaunchAgents. Victims were observed in fintech, aviation, and aerospace, with confirmed targets in Egypt, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan.

Cyber Security News·Sep 9, 14:07 UTC · 7d agoMalware in the wild