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Gigabud Creates Android Work Profiles to Hide From Banking App Malware Checks

Group-IB reports the Gigabud Android banking trojan uses a cloned work profile to hide from banking app malware checks, with infections confirmed in Indonesia.

Group-IB says Gigabud installs a helper app called Vwork, derived from the open-source Shelter tool, which creates an Android work profile and drops a tampered banking app inside it, hiding the trojan from banking apps' malware scans. Gigabud, active since 2022 and linked by Group-IB to the GoldFactory group, abuses Accessibility access and overlay screens to steal credentials and run fraudulent payments while a black screen conceals the operator's actions. Group-IB confirmed the full attack chain on infected devices in Indonesia, counting about 1,469 compromised devices and estimated losses of roughly $960,000 between February and July 2026. Vwork-compatible Gigabud samples have been found targeting 11 countries including Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Thailand, and Türkiye, though only the Indonesian chain is confirmed.

The Hacker Newsupdated Sep 11, 12:14 UTC · 5d agofirst Sep 10, 11:33 UTC · 6d agoMalware in the wild 3 sources1

North Korean IT Workers Scheme: Detection IOCs and Tactics for Government and Corporate SOCs

ANY.RUN details the expanding North Korean IT worker infiltration scheme using forged identities and AI-assisted workflows, sharing detection IOCs for SOCs.

ANY.RUN describes how North Korean IT workers infiltrate American and European organizations using forged identities and AI-assisted workflows to become trusted insiders. The operation bypasses traditional security perimeters and has expanded beyond the private sector to government targets. The post provides detection IOCs and tactics for government and corporate SOCs.

ANY.RUNAug 20, 07:58 UTC · 27d agoThreat actor

Researching Employment Scams

Schneier highlights research into North Korean fake-employment IT-worker scams that embed operatives in remote roles for long-term insider access.

The post discusses research into employment scams in which fabricated remote workers, associated with North Korean IT-worker schemes, embed in organizations for months or years to exfiltrate data or position for financial theft. Researchers used controlled sandbox environments to observe operatives syncing personal accounts and working under false identities. Commenters also note reverse scams targeting desperate job seekers through high-pressure MLM and door-to-door sales schemes.

Schneier on SecuritySep 3, 11:18 UTC · 13d agoPhishing & fraud

GoldFactory Weaponizes Open-Source Vwork App Cloner in Gigabud Banking Malware Attacks

Group-IB says GoldFactory's Gigabud Android trojan uses Vwork, a weaponized Shelter fork, to clone banking apps into isolated Work Profiles and evade bank-side detection.

Group-IB's 'Hook for Gold' investigation found GoldFactory ships Vwork, a modified fork of the open-source Shelter app, alongside its Gigabud Android banking trojan, active since 2022. Vwork abuses Android Work Profile provisioning to clone banking apps into an isolated environment, weakening the link between detected malware signals and fraudulent transactions. Gigabud has targeted victims in Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and beyond via fake airline, tax, and government apps requesting Accessibility and overlay permissions. In Indonesia, telemetry recorded about 1,469 compromised devices and roughly $960,939 in estimated losses between February and July 2026.

GBHackersSep 9, 10:49 UTC · 7d agoMalware in the wild

Secure all your internal vibe-coded applications — in one click

Cloudflare launched Access for Workers, letting admins attach one zero-trust policy to a Worker across all routes, domains, and previews automatically.

Cloudflare announced Access for Workers, a feature that binds an Access (zero-trust) policy directly to a Worker rather than to individual routes. The policy then applies automatically everywhere the Worker runs, including custom domains, workers.dev subdomains, routes, and preview URLs. Cloudflare positions it as one-click protection for internal, quickly built (vibe-coded) applications.

Cloudflare BlogAug 14, 13:00 UTC · Aug 14, 2026Tools1

North Korean remote workers are broadening their job hunt beyond IT

Huntress links suspected North Korean remote workers to sales, marketing, and healthcare jobs using stolen identities, VPNs, proxies, and KVM hardware.

Huntress investigations identified suspected DPRK remote workers hired beyond IT in sales, marketing, and healthcare/financial organizations, sometimes actually performing the work they were hired for. Fraudulent documents included passports from the same city issued one day apart, ID cards with identical validity dates, and electricity bills built from the same online template with matching typos. A financial-services case found a PiKVM and Guermok USB capture card on a new hire's laptop within hours of delivery, suggesting a laptop farm, and another hire used a police mugshot with the photo digitally swapped. Researchers urge rigorous background checks and identity verification at the interview stage.

Help Net SecurityAug 28, 00:00 UTC · 19d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

Hackers Clone Banking Apps Into Hidden Android Work Profiles to Evade Fraud Detection

GoldFactory-linked Gigabud and Vwork malware clone banking apps into hidden Android work profiles to evade fraud detection across 11+ countries.

Group-IB links Vwork, a modified version of the open-source Shelter app cloner, to the GoldFactory group and its Gigabud Android RAT, which clones victim banking apps into an isolated work profile so fraud sessions look clean to banks. From February through July 2026, researchers observed about 1,469 compromised devices and 1,281 potentially compromised logins in Indonesia, with estimated losses near $960,939. Targets span Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, Morocco, the Philippines, Thailand, Türkiye, Laos, and a GCC state; delivery uses fake airline, tax, government, and banking apps pushed via phishing sites, messaging apps, and social media.

Cyber Security NewsSep 9, 13:11 UTC · 7d agoMalware in the wild

Red Flags That Expose Fake North Korean IT Workers

Researchers outline red flags for spotting North Korean operatives posing as remote IT workers as their tactics improve.

Dark Reading describes indicators that help organizations identify North Korean operatives working undercover as IT workers. Researchers say these operatives are improving their tactics, but detection methods still exist. Catching them early helps employers avoid infiltration, data theft, and damage.

Dark ReadingAug 26, 19:21 UTC · 21d agoPhishing & fraud

Hackers Impersonate IT Support on Microsoft Teams to Take Control of Employee PCs

Microsoft warns of a human-operated campaign where attackers pose as IT support in Teams to gain remote PC control and reach domain controllers.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence observed attackers abusing Microsoft Teams external collaboration to impersonate IT/helpdesk staff, persuading employees to grant screen control via Quick Assist or RMM tools. Operators deploy malicious MSI packages via silent msiexec, run encrypted JavaScript implants through portable Node.js, and persist via EdgeUpdate Run keys or Startup folder entries. The Node.js backdoor uses HTTPS long-polling C2, captures screenshots, enumerates Active Directory, and moves laterally over WinRM (TCP 5985) to domain controllers and certificate authorities. Initial access maps to MITRE ATT&CK T1566.003 (Spearphishing via Service); no Teams vulnerability is exploited.

GBHackersSep 8, 13:28 UTC · 8d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

North Korea-linked IT Workers Are Getting Hired Inside Western Companies

Huntress documented five DPRK-linked FAMOUS CHOLLIMA workers hired by Western companies in 2026 using fake identities, proxies and laptop farms.

Huntress published an investigation of five confirmed 2026 cases of North Korea-linked IT workers, tracked as FAMOUS CHOLLIMA, obtaining remote jobs at legitimate companies in IT, sales, marketing and healthcare. The workers use stolen or fabricated identity documents, VPNs and proxy services, and some were caught using PiKVM hardware-level control, travel routers and laptop farms to mask their true location. Detection relied on document forensics, behavioral anomalies and indicators like identical typo artifacts in electricity bills rather than network intrusions.

Security AffairsSep 1, 11:08 UTC · 15d agoThreat actor in the wild

Impersonating IT support: how threat actors turn a remote session into enterprise-wide access

Microsoft details Teams IT-support impersonation campaigns deploying Node.js implants, AD reconnaissance, and WinRM lateral movement toward domain controllers.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence describes a human-operated campaign where attackers impersonate IT/helpdesk staff via Microsoft Teams external collaboration, talk users into granting remote sessions, and use RMM tools for interactive access. During the session they run PowerShell to silently install a malicious MSI that stages a portable Node.js runtime and obfuscated JavaScript implant for C2, executing follow-on payloads via rundll32. Operators then perform host and Active Directory reconnaissance, capture desktop screenshots, and pivot via WinRM on port 5985 to domain controllers and certificate authorities. The hands-on-keyboard chain, which can precede data theft and ransomware, blends into normal operations by relying on Teams, Quick Assist, msiexec, and Node.js; Microsoft shares hunting and mitigation guidance.

Microsoft Security BlogSep 2, 22:51 UTC · 13d agoThreat actor in the wild

PurpleDelta's Fraudulent Employment Operations

Recorded Future details North Korean cluster PurpleDelta using AI-generated personas and ChatGPT assistants to infiltrate companies via fraudulent employment.

Recorded Future profiles PurpleDelta, a North Korean IT worker threat cluster, in a new research report. The group uses AI-generated personas, sophisticated tradecraft, and custom ChatGPT assistants to obtain employment at target organizations and operate covertly. The report includes key indicators of compromise and recommended mitigation strategies for defenders.

Recorded FutureAug 18, 00:00 UTC · 29d agoThreat actor

Hacker claims millions of records stolen from corporate Azure tenants

Threat actor TheHatman claims millions of employee records stolen from Azure tenants of nine Fortune 500 firms, including McDonald's, Vodafone, Kyndryl, and TCS.

A threat actor known as TheHatman posted large internal employee directories on cybercrime forums over the past week, claiming each was pulled directly from the victim organization's Azure tenant. McDonald's tops the list at roughly 1.7 million records, followed by TCS (~800,000), Vodafone (~425,000), and HCL (~250,000), with IHG, Kyndryl, Gap, Hexaware, and Wyndham also named. Hudson Rock found samples consistent with standard Azure directory exports and suspects infostealer-derived credentials rather than a systemic Azure zero-day. TCS filed a statement with the Bombay Stock Exchange saying it found no credible evidence of a breach and the data appears over four years old.

Help Net SecurityAug 18, 00:00 UTC · 29d agoData breach

How workers are unlocking new ways of working

OpenAI's analysis of 1.5 million ChatGPT work messages finds cross-occupation AI tasks becoming recurring parts of workers' routines.

OpenAI's latest Work at the Frontier research analyzed more than 1.5 million work-related ChatGPT messages from April through July 2026. Among roughly 6,200 consistently observed workers, previously used cross-occupation tasks grew from 13.1% of occupation-specific AI activity in April to 25.9% in July. Workers returned to a cross-occupation task used the prior month 23.6% of the time versus an 8.4% baseline, with an average next-month return rate of 18.5%. Recurrence was highest for customer discussions (54%), advertising copy (44%), and marketing materials (37%), suggesting AI may broaden jobs before titles change.

OpenAI News09:00 UTC · 12h agoAI industry

Gigabud Uses Android App Cloning to Evade Fraud Detection

Group-IB reports the Gigabud Android banking trojan clones bank apps into isolated work profiles via the Vwork tool to evade fraud detection, with roughly $960,000 in losses in Indonesia.

Group-IB found Gigabud now ships dedicated code to work with Vwork, a weaponized fork of the open-source Android cloning app Shelter it attributes to GoldFactory, exposing cloning functions so any installed app can call them. After installing via phishing sites and messengers posing as airline, tax and government apps, operators request accessibility and overlay permissions, then clone the victim's banking app into a new work profile where it is invisible to signature-based detection in the personal profile. Fake login screens and overlays capture credentials while cloned-app transactions appear to banks as coming from an unrecognized, malware-free device. Between February and July 2026 in Indonesia, Group-IB observed about 1,469 compromised devices, 1,281 potentially compromised logins and estimated losses of roughly $960,939, with Vwork-enabled samples targeting 11 countries including Brazil, Mexico, Egypt and Thailand.

Infosecurity MagazineSep 9, 14:30 UTC · 7d agoMalware in the wild

Give every teammate and agent the right level of access to your Workers

Cloudflare launches per-Worker granular access controls with four roles, enabling least-privilege access for teammates, AI agents, and CI/CD pipelines.

Cloudflare announced granular authorization for Workers, letting admins scope access to a single Worker instead of the whole account. Four new roles are available: Metadata Read-Only (observability without source code), Content Read-Only (read code without changes), Editor (deploy without delete), and Admin (full control of one Worker). Roles apply at Developer Platform, product, or resource level, can be attached to dashboard users or API tokens, and are available to all customers now, with plans to extend to D1, R2, and KV.

Cloudflare BlogSep 15, 13:00 UTC · 1d agoTools

New Huntress Managed ITDR Dashboard: Faster Identity Investigations

Huntress redesigned its Managed ITDR dashboard, adding Rapid Identity Triage, Failed Login Characterization, and Quick SIEM search to speed identity investigations.

Huntress announced a redesigned Managed ITDR dashboard aimed at accelerating identity threat investigations. New capabilities include Rapid Identity Triage, Failed Login Characterization, and Quick SIEM search. The update is a vendor product change with no incident or vulnerability details attached.

HuntressAug 27, 14:00 UTC · 20d agoTools

Operational Resilience: IT Security Risks with Reduced Staffing | Huntress

Huntress blog advises security teams on managing change, risk, and incident response during reduced-staffing holiday periods.

The article discusses how holiday-period staffing reductions change organizational risk profiles around change management, monitoring, and incident response capability. It argues against blanket change freezes when critical vulnerabilities with high exploitation probability demand patching, and stresses retaining decision-making authority, escalation paths, and recovery knowledge. It concludes by promoting Huntress Managed Response, which lets the Huntress SOC take predefined containment actions on confirmed threats without customer intervention.

HuntressSep 15, 14:00 UTC · 1d agoIndustry

Inside Knight Office, a New M365 AiTM Phishing Kit

Huntress details Knight Office, a new AiTM phishing kit stealing Microsoft 365 session tokens and registering attacker-controlled devices.

Huntress investigated an August 18, 2026 adversary-in-the-middle attack using the Knight Office phishing kit, which captured Microsoft 365 session tokens via a DocuSign-style lure routed through a Monday.com tracking link and a compromised Joomla site. After token capture, the actor enrolled an unauthorized host in Microsoft Entra ID and bound a Windows Hello for Business key credential to the account. The kit's operator console, found at IP 104.37.188.94, is built on Python Flask and hosts at least 25 .vu phishing domains. Telemetry links the kit to at least nine token-replay logins in two weeks and roughly 700 reported lure emails since April.

HuntressSep 2, 13:00 UTC · 14d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild1

A revisit of remote Spectre attacks on Cloudflare Workers

Cloudflare details its 2024-2025 reassessment of remote Spectre attacks on Workers, covering new attack primitives and hardened defenses.

Cloudflare reassessed the feasibility of remote Spectre attacks against its Workers serverless infrastructure across 2024 and 2025. The write-up describes new attack primitives including Spectre gadgets, remote timers, and techniques for achieving co-location with victim workloads. It also explains new defenses that further harden Cloudflare Workers against speculative-execution side channels.

Cloudflare BlogAug 19, 16:00 UTC · 28d agoResearch

A Detection Engineer's Guide for Delegating Work to AI

Huntress argues detection engineers should only delegate security work to AI when outputs can be independently verified.

A Huntress detection engineer argues that the deciding factor for handing tasks to AI is whether the output can be checked, not whether the model is trusted. The piece frames human verification as the gate for delegating security engineering work to AI assistants. It is guidance/opinion aimed at defenders building detections with AI help.

HuntressAug 19, 04:00 UTC · 28d agoAI safety & security

terms.txt: A Consent and Compensation Protocol for Agentic Web Access

terms.txt specifies a robots.txt-style protocol for per-path, per-purpose AI crawler consent and compensation, with enforcement adding 0.20-0.65 ms per request.

The paper documents that automated clients now make up most web requests, that training dominates Cloudflare-classified crawling, and that the largest AI platforms fetch thousands of pages per returned visitor while robots.txt cannot express identity, purpose, terms, or price. It specifies terms.txt plus an origin-enforced exchange using Web Bot Auth signatures, signed intent, delegation tokens, HTTP 402 negotiation, and signed receipts. A dependency-free implementation adds 0.20 to 0.65 ms per request on one vCPU.

arXiv cs.CRSep 10, 07:01 UTC · 6d agoResearch

Wire It, Run It, Deploy It: AI Workflows in Gradio

Hugging Face published a guide on wiring, running, and deploying AI workflows in the Gradio framework.

Hugging Face's blog post 'Wire It, Run It, Deploy It: AI Workflows in Gradio' is a tutorial on building AI workflows with Gradio. It covers wiring components, running applications, and deploying AI-powered apps. No security incident or vulnerability content is included.

Hugging Face BlogAug 25, 00:00 UTC · 22d agoAI tools & infra

IT Help Desk Impersonation Lets Hackers Bypass MFA

Arctic Wolf tracks PREY-0058 posing as IT help desk to steal Microsoft 365 sessions via AiTM panels, then extorting executives after SaaS data theft.

Arctic Wolf documented a threat cluster tracked as PREY-0058 that impersonates internal IT help desk staff by phone, luring Directors, VPs, and executives to authentication-themed URLs formatted as victim-organization lure domains. Adversary-in-the-middle panels intercept credentials and MFA approvals, and stolen sessions are replayed through residential proxies such as NodeMaven from IPs matching the victim's geo-location and ASN, defeating impossible-travel alerts. Attackers perform discovery against SharePoint and Entra ID, then harvest data from OneDrive, Exchange, and Box before issuing extortion demands. Defenders are advised to require managed devices, use phishing-resistant MFA like FIDO2, enable Continuous Access Evaluation, and monitor sign-ins, SharePoint SearchQueryPerformed, and MailItemsAccessed events.

Security AffairsSep 8, 07:41 UTC · 8d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild1

FST Pay: Deterministic Safety-Gated Architecture for Youth Digital Payments

FST Pay proposes a deterministic safety-gated architecture for teen digital payments, pairing invariant authorization checks with decoupled post-settlement AI explanations.

Researchers propose FST Pay, a formal architecture for adolescent digital payments on rails like UPI that applies six deterministic invariant checks (spending limits, guardian co-sign policies, amount thresholds, merchant category codes, temporal intervals, hardware integrity) to classify transactions as ALLOW, REVIEW, or BLOCK. High-risk transactions trigger an asynchronous guardian co-sign workflow. Generative AI is restricted to post-settlement natural-language insights and holds no mutation privileges over the ledger, avoiding non-determinism on the real-time authorization path.

arXiv cs.CRSep 10, 08:03 UTC · 6d agoResearch

Do AI Coding Assistants Check Before They Install? A Pre-Registered Demand-Side Audit of Trust Signals in the Research Software Supply Chain

Pre-registered audit finds AI coding assistants verified provenance signals in only 9 of 1,920 trials before installing research software packages.

The study tested whether AI coding assistants check machine-readable trust signals such as SBOMs, signed releases, and provenance attestations before installing six open-source research software projects spanning HPC and quantum computing. Three models under two operating modes produced 1,920 registered trials scored from container logs. Provenance signals were opened in only 9 of 1,920 trials (0.5%) and zero of 384 control trials, with no trial running a verification command. The authors conclude publishing signals is insufficient and verification must be built into the program running the assistant.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CLSep 7, 16:55 UTC · 9d agoAI safety & security

Patch Tuesday to Pentest Wednesday: How an Equipment Rental Company Is Turning Continuous Testing Into Continuous Exposure Management

An equipment rental company uses Horizon3 NodeZero for continuous exposure management, surfacing an SSH key exposure in eight hours versus annual pentesting.

The company moved from periodic penetration testing to continuous exposure management using the NodeZero Proactive Security Platform, feeding telemetry into a Splunk-based CTEM pipeline via Horizon3 APIs. NodeZero exposed SSH RSA key pairs from a PHP web server change about eight hours after introduction and found more findings in 12 hours than a third-party engagement found in roughly 30 days. An Active Directory password audit of 15,000 passwords found about 300 identical or similar compromised passwords, driving a banned-password list, 12-character minimums, service desk changes, and self-service reset rollout; users with similar passwords later dropped from 880 to 209. NodeZero also validated a suspected Cisco vulnerability as exploitable.

Horizon3.aiSep 9, 15:58 UTC · 7d agoIndustry

Payroll system of mosques, madrasahs hit by ransomware; staff details potentially compromised

Ransomware hit Avelogic's SmartHRMS payroll system serving Singapore mosques and madrasahs under MUIS, potentially exposing staff details.

The SmartHRMS human resources and payroll system used by mosques and madrasahs overseen by Singapore's Islamic Religious Council (MUIS) was hacked and held for ransom. The system is supplied by Singapore-based software vendor Avelogic, which posted a cybersecurity incident notice on its website. Staff details are potentially compromised, according to The Straits Times.

DataBreaches.netSep 15, 22:08 UTC · 23h agoRansomware in the wild