Search: “lures”

Hackers Deploy New SloppyRAT via ClickFix to Enable Ransomware Lateral Movement

Zscaler discovered SloppyRAT, a ClickFix-delivered RAT that gives ransomware operators reconnaissance, remote execution, and SOCKS proxy pivoting for lateral movement.

Zscaler identified SloppyRAT in June 2026, linked to a ransomware-related threat actor. The infection chain starts with a ClickFix lure abusing finger.exe over TCP port 79, then uses curl.exe, IronPython, CastleLoader, and CastleRAT before reflectively loading SloppyRAT as a DLL in memory. The RAT supports HTTPS command-and-control, system inventory, file operations, Defender tampering, and a reverse SOCKS proxy, with evasion features including runtime code encryption, indirect syscalls, certificate pinning, and a possible EtherHiding blockchain fallback. Its persistence code is buggy and the malware appears under development, but the pre-encryption foothold gives defenders a window to stop intrusions.

Cyber Security News·Sep 11, 09:12 UTC · 5d agoMalware in the wild 3 sources

Pick Your Poison: Learning to Select Poison Sets for Stronger LLM Backdoor Attacks

SAILS learns to select poison sets for LLM backdoor attacks, showing attack success ranges 3% to 80% at fixed poison counts across LLaMA-3-8B settings.

The paper shows existing backdoor evaluations that randomly sample a fixed number of poisoned examples severely underestimate worst-case vulnerability: across three LLaMA-3-8B settings, attack success ranges from 3% to 80% depending only on which poison set is chosen. SAILS formalizes poison selection as oracle-budgeted set optimization, learning a set scorer from a few hundred finetune-and-evaluate runs to rank millions of candidate sets and audit a small shortlist. It improves held-out attack success by 30 percentage points over the strongest influence baselines and transfers from small-scale to full-scale finetuning, extending to code-generation, agentic, and API-only backdoors.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 14, 04:44 UTC · 2d agoAI safety & security 2 sources1

Tracking Elirks Variants in Japan: Similarities to Previous Attacks

Unit 42 links new Elirks backdoor variants attacking Japanese organizations to 2012 Taiwan attacks, delivered via spear-phishing PDFs exploiting Adobe Flash CVE-2011-0611.

Unit 42 analyzed new Elirks backdoor variants found in an attack on a Japanese business, noting strong similarities to 2012 attacks on Taiwanese ministries. The backdoor retrieves its C2 address from attacker-created accounts on Japanese blog and SNS services. Recent deliveries used an airline e-ticket lure named "E-TKT" with a PDF exploiting Adobe Flash CVE-2011-0611. Shared infrastructure and tactics with the Scarlet Mimic campaign suggest possible ongoing cyber espionage across East Asia.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 12:56 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Threat actor in the wildCVE-2011-0611

HVNC Backdoor Targets LATAM Organizations with Fake Tax and DocuSign Lures

A custom HVNC backdoor is targeting Latin American financial organizations via fake DocuSign and NFe tax-document lures, giving attackers hidden persistent remote access.

ANY.RUN researchers analyzed a multi-stage phishing campaign delivering a custom HVNC backdoor to banking and financial organizations in Latin America. The chain starts with fake DocuSign and NFe tax-document pages that serve per-visitor ZIP archives, followed by an LNK dropper, an NSIS loader, and a 64-bit backdoor masquerading as Windows Update Assistant. The implant provides hidden remote desktop control, keystroke monitoring, Firefox data theft, Startup-folder persistence, and EDR-aware behavior, communicating over TCP/27015.

ANY.RUN·Sep 8, 10:24 UTC · 8d agoMalware in the wild

Hackers Deploy Casbaneiro Banking Trojan That Activates When Victims Open Bank Websites

Fortinet details Casbaneiro banking Trojan campaign hitting Latin American bank customers via invoice-themed PDF phishing, with AutoIt loading, RegSvcs.exe injection, and bank-site-triggered activation.

Fortinet identified an August 2026 Casbaneiro banking Trojan campaign targeting users in Argentina, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico through phishing PDFs styled as urgent invoices or legal notices. The staged chain uses IP-based geo-filtering, a Base64-encoded ZIP, an HTA file, and a legitimate AutoIt interpreter before injecting into RegSvcs.exe or mobsync.exe and persisting via a Startup shortcut. The Trojan exfiltrates address book and Outlook data unencrypted, stays dormant until victims visit targeted bank sites, then accepts commands for keyboard control, clipboard pasting, file execution, and command execution. It uses an expected HTTP 403 response from a second server and malformed HTTP requests to complicate network analysis.

Cyber Security News·Sep 14, 08:42 UTC · 2d agoMalware in the wild

Attackers conceal phishing lures using invisible Unicode characters

Threat actors use invisible Unicode characters (ASCII smuggling) to hide phishing lures and evade email security filters.

Threat actors have adopted the ASCII smuggling technique in phishing campaigns, embedding invisible Unicode characters in emails to conceal malicious lures. The approach is designed to evade email security filters that scan for visible phishing indicators. The report gives no victim counts or named campaigns.

BleepingComputer·Sep 6, 14:23 UTC · 10d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

ASCII smuggling crosses over from AI prompt injection to phishing evasion

Microsoft details high-volume phishing campaign using ASCII smuggling (Unicode tag chars) for filter evasion, peaking at 2.3M messages.

Microsoft researchers observed a high-volume finance-themed phishing campaign using invisible Unicode tag characters (U+E0000–U+E007F), a technique known from AI prompt injection research as ASCII smuggling, to split lure words like 'funding' and evade email filters. Telemetry from Microsoft Defender for Office 365 showed signature hits jump from roughly 21,000 messages on February 8, 2026 to more than 1.3 million on February 9, peaking above 2.3 million on February 11, with elevated weekday activity lasting approximately three months. The discovery emerged from prompt injection protection research, showing AI-era evasion techniques crossing into traditional phishing. Most messages were flagged by layered Defender protections rather than a single Unicode-specific signal.

Microsoft Security Blog·Sep 3, 16:00 UTC · 13d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild1

When the Whole Company Adopts AI: What It Does to Your SOC

Analysis of 16.9 million SOC alerts finds AI-related alerts at 0.43%, growing 685% since February, with 94.1% noise and 0.02% real attacks.

A review of roughly 16.9 million SOC alerts found about 73,000 (0.43%) were AI-related, a share that grew 685% between February and June 2026. Of AI-related alerts, 94.1% were noise, 5.8% genuine risks, and 0.02% real attacks; 79.8% received benign verdicts, 81.7% were automatically suppressed, and only 5.4% reached a human analyst. The only confirmed attacks were phishing campaigns that weaponized AI brand names as lures, while developer coding agents spawning shells and reading credential stores routinely tripped detections written before AI agents existed.

The Hacker News·Sep 12, 10:24 UTC · 4d agoResearch1

BdThemes Supply Chain Attack Poisons JSON to Create Rogue WordPress Admins

The Hacker News·Aug 11, 05:48 UTC · Aug 11, 2026VulnerabilityCVE-2026-18072CVE-2026-64638

Hackers Abuse Google Sheets as C2 in ClickFix Attacks to Steal Cryptocurrency

Cisco Talos tracks a ClickFix crypto-theft campaign using Google Sheets as C2 to swap deposit addresses in Chrome.

Cisco Talos uncovered a cryptocurrency theft campaign that abuses Google Sheets and the Google Visualization API as a covert C2 channel, delivering obfuscated JavaScript into victims' Chrome browser sessions via ClickFix-style social engineering. Victims are lured with a fake "API Logic Flaw" report promising 25-38% bonuses on SimpleSwap and SwapZone swaps; the injected payload acts as a browser-based web skimmer that replaces deposit addresses, overrides the fetch API, and hijacks the clipboard. Later variants use the legitimate Tampermonkey extension with a user script for persistence without OS-level compromise. Talos identified 49 Bitcoin wallets, with 24 reused addresses receiving about 0.159 BTC (~$10,000) before mixing through more than 3,000 addresses.

GBHackers·Sep 9, 06:22 UTC · 7d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

Fake Apple Support AI Calls Target Stolen-Device Owners for Passcodes and 2FA Codes

SOCRadar details AnonyMousKIT, a phishing-as-a-service platform using AI voice agents posing as Apple Support to steal passcodes and 2FA codes.

SOCRadar's Threat Research Unit documented AnonyMousKIT, a credit-metered phishing-as-a-service platform that strips Activation Lock from stolen Apple devices across email, SMS, WhatsApp, recorded calls and AI voice agents. The 'Alice from Apple Support' personas request the device passcode, Apple ID credentials and a live 2FA code, with lures citing the handset's model identifier and live Find My status. Of 200 recovered AI calls made between August 31, 2025 and May 30, 2026, 179 targeted Brazil, and the calls cost $19.24 total via voice platform Vapi. Exposed log paths revealed 30 kit installations on 42 domains and 6,092 send attempts family-wide between March and July 2026.

The Hacker News·Aug 26, 05:49 UTC · 21d agoPhishing & fraud

Fake Adobe and Zoom Updates Install ScreenConnect for Persistent Remote Access

The Hacker News·Aug 4, 13:18 UTC · Aug 4, 2026Malware1

ClickFix Attacks Deliver macOS Stealer That Can Drain Crypto Wallets

The Hacker News·Aug 8, 05:44 UTC · Aug 8, 2026Malware

ClickFix moves into the browser: Cryptocurrency theft with Google-hosted C2

Talos tracks a crypto-theft campaign abusing the Google Visualization API for C2, using browser-based ClickFix lures to inject web-skimmer JavaScript.

Criminal actors convinced targets to paste JavaScript into Chrome's address bar or install it in the Tampermonkey extension, injecting a web skimmer into sessions on two cryptocurrency trading websites; Tampermonkey also provides persistence. Since March 2026 the campaign retrieved obfuscated scripts via the Google Visualization API from public Google Sheets documents, hooking the fetch API and replacing cryptocurrency deposit addresses in responses and the clipboard. Lures pose as leaked reports of a nonexistent API flaw at cryptocurrency swap services and spread via Telegram, DarkForums, and paste sites since early October 2025. Talos warns the legitimate-service-abuse techniques could enable wider supply-chain attacks on e-commerce and customer-facing systems.

Cisco Talos·Sep 8, 10:00 UTC · 8d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

The Top 4 Threats We Found by Investigating Every Alert for a Quarter

Prophet Security's quarterly threat report finds identity attacks made up roughly half of confirmed malicious activity, with stolen authenticated sessions bypassing conditional access controls.

Between May 1 and July 31, 2026, Prophet Security investigated every alert in customer environments immediately on arrival; about 7% of completed investigations were confirmed malicious. Direct account/session attacks made up roughly 18% of confirmed activity, with replayed authenticated sessions bypassing conditional access since no re-authentication occurs. Infostealer activity affected about a quarter of investigated organizations, mostly delivered via browsers through compromised websites, malicious ads, sponsored search results and ClickFix fake CAPTCHA gates, with payloads including Lumma Stealer, Vidar, HijackLoader and AsyncRAT. Credential phishing was the largest category at about 28%, with adversary-in-the-middle relays revealed by seconds-long MFA approvals from distant countries and MFA fatigue attacks exploiting automatic unlock policies.

BleepingComputer·Sep 10, 14:00 UTC · 6d agoThreat actor in the wild

SilkParasite Espionage Campaign Targets Central Asian Governments with Five New RATs

Bitdefender reports SilkParasite, a China-nexus espionage cluster targeting Central Asian governments with seven RATs, five newly documented, delivered via spearphished RAR archives.

Bitdefender Labs assesses with medium confidence that SilkParasite, first discovered in late 2025, is a China-nexus cluster targeting government bodies in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Georgia. Attacks use password-protected RAR archives with malicious Office documents, macro-triggered DLL sideloading, and checks for running Kaspersky AV before execution. The arsenal spans seven RAT families in .NET, C++, Go, and JavaScript with plugin architectures and diverse C2 channels including Google Drive and HTTP cookie/ETag headers; roughly 65 DriveSilkRAT infections were observed, mostly in Asia. Ties to China include BLOODALCHEMY (a Deed RAT/ShadowPad descendant) and an improved SpiceRAT used by SneakyChef, with traces of AI-assisted development in the tooling and lures.

The Hacker News·Aug 20, 05:47 UTC · 27d agoThreat actor in the wild

Iranian cyber spies used fake MRI scan results to hack ‘enemy of regime’

UK, US, and Dutch agencies expose CHOSEN BRICK spyware used by Iranian MOIS hackers to surveil dissidents, journalists, and activists via fake MRI lures.

The UK NCSC, FBI, and Dutch AIVD jointly warned that Iranian state-sponsored hackers deploy CHOSEN BRICK Windows spyware against dissidents, activists, and journalists since at least 2025. Operators build rapport over WhatsApp and Telegram, often posing as known contacts or tech support, then deliver malicious files disguised as an MRI scan or installers for Pictory, RunwayML, Norton, Telegram, Adobe Flash Player, and KeePass. The malware steals contacts, emails, and social media messages, captures screen content and microphone audio, adds Microsoft Defender exclusions, and uses per-victim Telegram bots for command and control. The FBI attributes the tradecraft to Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, including the 'Handala Hack' persona, and stolen data has surfaced on pro-Iranian leak sites.

The Record·Sep 15, 16:28 UTC · 1d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Understanding Angler Exploit Kit

Unit 42 examines Angler EK operations, including rapid zero-day adoption, fileless Bedep infections, and ransomware payloads like TeslaCrypt and CryptXXX.

Unit 42 published the second part of its Angler EK analysis, covering the kit's history since 2013, its SaaS rental model, and its focus on Flash, Internet Explorer, and Silverlight exploits. Angler integrated the CVE-2015-5119 Flash zero-day from the Hacking Team leak within hours and later added exploits for CVE-2015-2419 and CVE-2016-0034 roughly a month after Microsoft patched them. Campaigns use Angler to deliver ransomware such as CryptoWall, TeslaCrypt, and CryptXXX, plus banking trojans and stealers via EITest. Since August 2014, Angler has used fileless, in-memory execution, most often for Bedep, which later downloads CryptXXX and click-fraud malware.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 09:50 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Research in the wildCVE-2015-5119CVE-2015-2419CVE-2016-0034

Phishing Campaign Sends Millions of Emails Using Invisible Unicode to Evade Filters

Microsoft warns of a high-volume phishing campaign using invisible Unicode characters to split keywords like 'funding' and evade filters, peaking at 2.37 million daily messages.

Microsoft's Security Research team documented a high-volume phishing operation inserting deprecated Unicode Tags characters (U+E0000-U+E007F) inside financial keywords such as 'funding' so literal-string and regex email filters stop matching them. The campaign ran on a weekly cadence with 1-2.37 million weekday messages between February and May 15, 2026, peaking on February 26, 2026. It used hundreds of disposable finance-themed sender domains and relayed mail through ActiveCampaign's click-tracking infrastructure (acemlnd[.]com, activehosted[.]com), lending legitimate platform reputation. Microsoft ties the activity to an AI-assisted SBA loan phishing campaign that Fortra's FIRE team disclosed in September 2025.

The Hacker News·Sep 4, 15:57 UTC · 12d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

McKesson copes with fallout from data theft extortion attack

McKesson discloses a data theft extortion attack by ShinyHunters affecting oncology and medical-surgical customers, with a reported $55 million demand.

McKesson disclosed that attackers gained access to some of its third-party applications and stole data associated with a subset of customers in its oncology, multispecialty, and medical-surgical business units; the intrusion ran for four days from August 21 and was discovered August 25. ShinyHunters claimed responsibility and listed McKesson on its data-leak site, reportedly demanding more than $55 million with a September 1 deadline. Flashpoint analysts say the group typically uses social engineering and identity weaknesses with valid credentials to access cloud-hosted environments, making the intrusion hard to detect. McKesson, which distributes about one-third of pharmaceuticals used in North America with $403.4 billion in annual revenue, says operations continue and it has reasonable assurance of no ongoing unauthorized activity.

CyberScoop·Aug 31, 21:39 UTC · 15d agoData breach in the wild

Major Cyber Attacks in August 2026: US and EU Businesses Hit by Session Hijacking, Remote Access, and Insider Risk

ANY.RUN's August 2026 roundup shows US and EU firms hit via Microsoft 365 session hijacking, remote-tool abuse, and hiring lures.

ANY.RUN's August 2026 review catalogs attacks on US and European businesses abusing Microsoft 365 sessions, legitimate remote-management tools, and business-themed files. Observed techniques included account takeover, session hijacking, persistence via remote access, credential exposure, and exploitation of hiring processes. The report stresses that attacker activity frequently resembled legitimate business behavior.

ANY.RUN·Sep 1, 06:53 UTC · 15d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Russian APT BlueDelta Uses HOOKEDGE to Target Defense and Diplomatic Organizations

Russian GRU-linked BlueDelta (APT28) deployed HOOKEDGE backdoor via macro Word lures against European governments using webhook.site and Microsoft Edge for stealthy C2.

Recorded Future's Insikt Group documented a BlueDelta (APT28/Fancy Bear/Forest Blizzard) espionage campaign from late September 2025 through early April 2026 targeting government and diplomatic organizations in Romania, Spain and Türkiye. The group delivered HOOKEDGE, a lightweight Windows batch-script backdoor, via macro-enabled Word documents with diplomatic lures, including one impersonating Spain's Ministry of the Presidency after a Spanish-Moldovan meeting. HOOKEDGE uses webhook.site as C2, a scheduled task every 30 minutes that downloads commands through Microsoft Edge, and canary pixels like docopened.jpg to track phishing funnel progress. A second tier with 5-minute check-ins served high-value victims, and beaconing intervals were stretched to 61 minutes to evade sandboxes; code overlap ties HOOKEDGE to BlueDelta's earlier HEADLACE backdoor.

Security Affairs·Aug 28, 11:26 UTC · 19d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Risky Bulletin: Academics find source code overlaps between Geedge and China's Great Firewall

Academics linked Chinese vendor Geedge Networks' Tiangou Secure Gateway source code to one of the Great Firewall's three traffic filtering capabilities.

US researchers presenting at USENIX Security reconstructed Geedge Networks' Tiangou Secure Gateway firmware from over 100,000 leaked files, including Git repositories with commit history, and matched its filtering behavior to sections of China's Great Firewall. They found only 1 of 3 characterized DNS injectors matched Geedge code, noted the system relies on memory-unsafe C components and copied third-party code, and said its bugs could aid future circumvention tools. Geedge also exports censorship tools to Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Myanmar. The newsletter additionally rounds up multiple breaches.

Risky Business News·Aug 21, 02:55 UTC · 26d agoResearch2

Understanding Angler Exploit Kit

Unit 42 explains exploit kit fundamentals, describing how landing pages profile victims, deliver exploits, and install malware payloads on Windows hosts.

Unit 42 published a primer on exploit kit fundamentals, defining vulnerabilities, exploits, malware payloads, actors, and campaigns in EK-based attacks. It explains the infection chain: a landing page profiles the victim's Windows system for vulnerable applications such as Flash Player, Java, Silverlight, and Internet Explorer, then a matching exploit executes a downloader or final payload, often delivered encrypted with XOR or RC4. The post also describes the EK-as-a-Service business model, in which leading EKs are rented for a few thousand dollars per month while buyers supply campaign infrastructure.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 09:50 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Research1

Cardinal RAT Sins Again, Targets Israeli Fin

Unit 42 documents updated Cardinal RAT attacks against Israeli FinTech firms, using BMP steganography, MD5-hash obfuscation, and process injection to hinder analysis and detection.

Unit 42 tracked a series of attacks using an updated Cardinal RAT (version 1.7.2) targeting the Israeli financial technology sector. The .NET loader hides a second-stage DLL inside an embedded BMP image decrypted with a single-byte XOR key, and the payload renames functions, methods, and variables to MD5 hashes for obfuscation. The malware installs a startup-folder LNK file and injects its final payload into RegSvcs.exe or RegAsm.exe, communicating with affiliatecollective[.]club over port 443. A possible relationship with the EVILNUM JavaScript malware used against similar organizations was also noted.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 12:21 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Malware1

New Chaos Variant Targets Misconfigured Cloud Deployments, Adds SOCKS Proxy

Darktrace says the Chaos botnet now targets misconfigured cloud deployments like Hadoop and added a SOCKS proxy for traffic relaying.

Darktrace identified a new 64-bit ELF variant of the Chaos botnet targeting misconfigured cloud deployments, expanding beyond the malware's traditional focus on routers and edge devices. Captured in a deliberately misconfigured Hadoop honeypot instance, the intrusion began with an HTTP request creating an application that ran embedded shell commands to fetch the Chaos agent binary from pan.tenire[.]com, set chmod 777 permissions, execute it, and delete the artifact to reduce forensic traces. The restructured variant adds a SOCKS proxy feature letting compromised systems ferry attacker traffic, while removing SSH-based spread and router-exploit functions, suggesting monetization beyond crypto mining and DDoS-for-hire. Possible Chinese origin is suggested by language artifacts and infrastructure; the delivery domain was previously used in Silver Fox's Operation Silk Lure phishing campaign delivering ValleyRAT.

The Hacker News·Aug 18, 12:13 UTC · 29d agoMalware1

AI developers targeted via trojanized GitHub repositories

Help Net Security·Aug 4, 00:00 UTC · Aug 4, 2026Malware1

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

Fake Codex Download Uses Google Sites to Deliver macOS Malware

Fake OpenAI Codex download pages on Google Sites, pushed via sponsored search and ClickFix lures, deliver malware to macOS users.

Threat actors are hosting fake Codex download pages on Google Sites and promoting them through sponsored search results. Victims are walked through ClickFix social engineering that leads to malware installation on macOS systems. The campaign abuses trusted Google infrastructure and search ads to reach Mac users.

Infosecurity Magazine·Aug 24, 15:00 UTC · 23d agoMalware

The extension you never installed: KREMLIN forges Chrome's own integrity checks to steal banking sessions

Elastic details KREMLIN, a Brazilian banking malware whose malicious Chrome/Edge extension forges Chromium integrity checks to steal sessions.

Elastic Security Labs tracked operation REF9334 and its KREMLIN toolkit, a Brazilian banking malware campaign impersonating twelve banks across seven campaigns since May 2025. The infection chain uses multi-stage obfuscated JavaScript loaders with sandbox checks (file and process counting), scheduled-task persistence, and an Ethereum smart contract acting as a dead-drop resolver for C2 and payload URLs, abusing Archive.org for hosting. The malicious browser extension bypasses Chromium integrity mechanisms by manipulating Secure Preferences and regenerating required HMACs and App-Bound encrypted hashes. Threat Command disrupted over 1,500 infections by registering the kill-switch canary domain.

Elastic Security Labs·Sep 14, 00:00 UTC · 2d agoMalware in the wild

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

The Coding-Agent Trap: When a "Free" LLM Endpoint Is the Adversary, (Mon, Aug 31st)

A SANS honeypot caught a real coding-agent session routed to a rogue "free" LLM endpoint, exposing a Windows user's transcript and tool outputs.

A SANS analyst describes how an internet-exposed inference honeypot was discovered, relabeled with sought-after model names like DeepSeek, and enrolled in infrastructure serving "free" LLM backends. On 2026-08-30 an opencode terminal coding agent sent an 88-message, 224 KB transcript 210 times in 91 seconds via a China Unicom relay, exposing directory listings, tool outputs and read file portions. The analyst frames tool-enabled agents treating model endpoints as trusted control planes as a novel risk — a "rogue model endpoint" that could request tool executions on the user's machine.

SANS Internet Storm Center·Aug 31, 20:00 UTC · 15d agoAI safety & security1

Brevo supply chain attack hits 100k+ sites with Wordpress backdoors and Clickfix malwarenew

Attackers with Brevo DNS access injected malicious scripts serving ClickFix malware and WordPress backdoors to over 100,000 customer sites on 14 September 2026.

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue), an email marketing platform whose clients include eBay, Louis Vuitton, Michelin and Amnesty International, served injected JavaScript from sendibt1.com domains between 16:05 and 20:12 UTC on 14 September 2026, reaching over 100,000 customer sites and mailing lists. The f.js malware secretly installed a WordPress backdoor plugin from cdn10.sendibt1.com/p/wm.zip using logged-in admins' sessions and showed ClickFix overlays urging visitors to copy-paste and run commands. An SSL certificate for cdn.sendibt1.com created August 25 and attacker-created cdn* DNS records indicate write access to Brevo's Cloudflare DNS, likely via a single Cloudflare account compromise. Sansec recorded 2,549 CSP violation reports across 12 monitored sites; all malicious hosts stopped resolving on 15 September and Brevo's status page lists no incident.

Sansec (Magento / e-commerce security)·00:00 UTC · 18h agoMalware in the wild

DoppelCart fraud network uses 119,000 fake shops to steal credit cards

DoppelCart, the largest documented fake-shop network, runs 119,000 domains impersonating 44,182 brands to steal payment card details via WebSocket-connected checkout pages.

German cybersecurity startup Nebty discovered DoppelCart, a network of more than 119,000 fake e-commerce domains, mostly in the .SHOP TLD, that harvest payment card details through fraudulent checkout pages. Over 105,000 shops remain active, impersonating 44,182 brands with discounts of up to 65%, and 96% of confirmed shops share identical build files resolving to 27 commerce backends. Checkout code exfiltrates card numbers, expiration dates, CVVs, cardholder names, contact details, and even bank one-time codes to attacker C2 over WebSockets in real time, potentially bypassing bank security controls. The network surpasses BogusBazaar, the previously largest documented fake-shop cluster with 75,000 sites and an estimated 850,000 fraudulent transactions.

BleepingComputer·Sep 8, 20:35 UTC · 7d agoPhishing & fraud

BlueDelta Targets Defense and Diplomacy with HOOKEDGE

Recorded Future reports Russian state-sponsored group BlueDelta deploying the HOOKEDGE backdoor against European defense and diplomatic organizations.

Recorded Future research reports that BlueDelta, a Russian state-sponsored threat group, is using the HOOKEDGE backdoor in campaigns targeting defense and diplomatic organizations across Europe. The disclosure details the group's use of the backdoor in espionage-focused operations against high-value government and military targets.

Recorded Future·Aug 27, 00:00 UTC · 20d agoThreat actor in the wild

In Other News: InjectEave Attack, SIM Swapper Sentenced, Glasswing Findings Review

SecurityWeek weekly roundup covers exploited WordPress Super Forms flaw CVE-2026-14894, a $10M bounty on an Iranian cyber official, InjectEave attacks, and more.

SecurityWeek's weekly roundup aggregates short items across the threat landscape, including Microsoft's report of invisible Unicode tag characters used in financial phishing lures at up to 2.37 million messages per day, and active exploitation of critical WordPress Super Forms plugin flaw CVE-2026-14894 to deploy PHP webshells. Policy items include a $10 million US bounty for IRGC-CEC Cyber Operations Command lead Amir Yaryab, a 16-month prison sentence for ex-AT&T employee Kenneth Carter over SIM swaps with nearly $600,000 in intended losses, and the US arraignment of Russian Sergei Anatolyevich Filimonov over credential harvesting. Technical items include InjectEave electromagnetic side-channel attacks tested on 11 devices, an FBI warning on OAuth consent phishing, and VulnCheck's finding that only 202 of 26,153 Anthropic Project Glasswing findings were fixed.

SecurityWeek·Sep 11, 14:19 UTC · 5d agoIndustry in the wildCVE-2026-148942

Iran-Linked Hackers Use Fake LinkedIn Job Offers to Deploy NodeRabbit and PollCat RATs

Iran-linked Mirage Kitten targets software engineers with fake LinkedIn recruiter coding tests deploying new NodeRabbit and PollCat RATs.

Kaspersky researchers link the campaign to Mirage Kitten (also tracked as UNC1549, Smoke Sandstorm, Nimbus Manticore), with victims in aviation, aerospace and fintech in Egypt, Ethiopia and Afghanistan. Trojanized npm dependencies (colorized_terminal, pretty-log) bundled in coding-challenge archives launch the Node.js implants across Windows, Linux and macOS. NodeRabbit uses AES-256-GCM-encrypted C2 via Azure, and its third variant persists through a fake GitHub Copilot Helper VS Code extension plus Git post-merge/post-checkout hooks. PollCat is an obfuscated JavaScript RAT that registers with C2 before OTP authentication and inventories tools from 24 security vendors.

GBHackers·Sep 9, 12:52 UTC · 7d agoThreat actor in the wild1

New Phishing Campaign Abuses Windows Mshta.exe to Steal Credentials and Secrets

Fortra researchers track an active phishing campaign targeting Spanish speakers that abuses mshta.exe to run HTA payloads for reconnaissance and credential theft.

Fortra's FIRE team says a phishing campaign active since June 2026 targets Spanish-speaking users with invoice ('Facturación') and judicial ('Aviso Judicial') lures, many sent via libero.it/italiaonline.it infrastructure with SCL:-1 markings to bypass anti-spam. Clicking embedded links delivers an HTA launcher executed via mshta.exe, which hides its window off-screen, builds dynamic C2 URLs, and performs reconnaissance using WMI, PowerShell, and environment-variable inspection. A second-stage JavaScript dropper uses HTML smuggling to reconstruct a Base64-encoded ZIP in the browser, delivering a 7-Zip self-extracting executable disguised as a Firefox installer; staged design allows later delivery of credential stealers or ransomware. Defenders are urged to block archivogratuito[.]online and shortener domains goo[.]su, abrir[.]link, and abre[.]ai, and to restrict mshta.exe execution via AppLocker or ASR rules.

GBHackers·Sep 12, 06:16 UTC · 4d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild1

How the EITest Campaign's Path to Angler EK Evolved Over Time

Unit 42 documents how the EITest campaign's gate URLs and infrastructure evolved since 2014 while still routing victims to Angler EK and diverse malware.

Unit 42 traced network traffic changes in the EITest campaign, which Malwarebytes identified in October 2014 across thousands of compromised websites. The campaign's injected script patterns have remained consistent, but its gate URLs changed repeatedly, and since January 2016 gates used the 85.93.0.0/24 IP block, often with .tk domains. The gate returns a Flash file that redirects victims to Angler EK, which delivered malware including Vawtrak, Tinba, TeslaCrypt, Bedep, Kovter, Ursnif, and Zeus variants from 2014 through 2016.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 09:51 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Threat actor in the wild

Hackers Abuse AutoIt to Inject AsyncRAT Into Microsoft-Signed Windows Process

Attackers use AutoIt and an invoice-themed batch file to inject AsyncRAT into Microsoft-signed charmap.exe for stealthy remote access.

Point Wild Threat Intelligence documented a five-stage campaign starting with 'Right-click to open Invoice Details.bat' that launches hidden PowerShell, drops a renamed AutoIt interpreter and encrypted loader into a random Temp folder, and persists via a Startup-folder batch file. The loader decrypts AsyncRAT only in memory and injects it into the Microsoft-signed charmap.exe (Windows Character Map) process, leaving no payload file on disk. The final payload patches AMSI inside the infected process and includes screen-capture code that prepares images for transfer to a command-and-control server at 158[.]51[.]122[.]136:4944.

Cyber Security News·Sep 14, 07:07 UTC · 2d agoMalware in the wild1