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A fake refund scam has targeted Shopify Shop app users for several months, with fraudsters impersonating refunds directly inside the app.
Huntress reports an ongoing fake refund scam aimed at users of Shopify's Shop app. The fraudsters operate directly within the app rather than via email, making the scam harder to spot. The activity has been observed over the past few months, and users should verify refund requests before acting.
Meta announces expanded anti-scam protections in Poland, citing rising fraud across dating apps, crypto platforms, online games and SMS messaging.
Meta says it is investing in new technologies and partnerships to better detect and fight scam content across its platforms in Poland. The company notes scam activity spans social platforms, dating apps, online games, cryptocurrency services and SMS messages. It also claims a recent campaign is distorting the picture of Meta's actions and motivations.
US DOJ and Treasury disrupt Xinbi Guarantee Telegram scam marketplace, sanctioning it and freezing $52.8M in USDT across 52 wallets.
The DOJ seized Xinbi Guarantee's Telegram channels and cryptocurrency wallets while OFAC sanctioned the marketplace, freezing $52.8 million in USDT from 52 wallets and bringing the Scam Center Strike Force's total restrained funds to roughly $938 million. Elliptic, which worked with the Secret Service, estimates Xinbi has processed $30 billion in transactions since around 2022, serving pig-butchering scam operators and links to North Korean hackers, Jin Bei Group, and Prince Group TCO. The strike force dismantled 13 scam compounds in Madagascar, seizing over 3,200 devices and interviewing roughly 400 arrestees, with about 30 Chinese compound leaders repatriated to China. After Tether froze funds, Xinbi began converting remaining USDT into the USDD stablecoin.
Malwarebytes threat data shows scammers tailor platforms per scam, with the web as top channel, Friday midday peaks, and MrBeast the most impersonated person.
Malwarebytes analyzed its threat data from April 15 to July 14, 2026 across more than 20 scam categories, finding scammers match platforms to scam types: job scams via email, romance scams via social media, and tech support scams via phone. The web is the top delivery channel ahead of email and SMS, and Malwarebytes says it blocks about 500,000 phishing sites a day. Scam texts peak at 12:00 pm ET, roughly 874% above the quietest hour, with volume peaking on Fridays about 50% higher than the start of the week. MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) appears in about 30% of impersonation scams, and the most impersonated brands are Google, Microsoft, Apple, Roblox and Amazon.
US Treasury's OFAC sanctioned Chinese scam-platform Xinbi Guarantee, which processed $24bn+, and froze $52.8m in linked cryptoassets.
OFAC sanctioned Xinbi Guarantee, a Chinese-language marketplace connecting Southeast Asian scam centers and transnational crime syndicates to merchants offering financial services, technology and crypto exchange. Treasury estimates over $24bn processed since 2022, while TRM Labs estimates over $36bn, with daily inflows nearly doubling between May and December 2025. Two supporting entities were also sanctioned: SafeW Technology (Singapore) and Anwen Technology (Cambodia, maker of XinbiPay). The US Secret Service and Elliptic froze $52.8m in linked cryptoassets, and the marketplace now appears offline with its Telegram channels deleted.
Malwarebytes data shows scammers tailor fraud by platform: 90% of toll scams arrive via email/SMS and MrBeast is now the most impersonated person.
Malwarebytes threat research analyzed global scam data from April 15 to July 14, 2026, across more than 20 scam types, finding each type favors a specific channel such as email, SMS, phone, or social media. Roughly nine in ten toll scams arrive by email or text, about half of IRS scams come by phone, and MrBeast is impersonated in about 30% of impersonation scams. The most impersonated brands are Google, Microsoft, Apple, Roblox, and Amazon, and Malwarebytes blocks around 500,000 phishing websites daily. Gaming scams on Roblox, Steam, Discord, and Minecraft increasingly carry losses of $1,000 or more, with 15-19% activity spikes in mid-2026.
Interisle data cited by Terence Eden shows 8.5 million of 85 million new 2025 gTLD registrations blocklisted, implying a 10-20% scam domain abuse rate.
Terence Eden highlights statistics from an Interisle report on Domain Name System abuse. Of 85 million new gTLD registrations in 2025, 8.5 million were added to blocklists by May 2025, suggesting a 10% abuse floor that is likely closer to 20%. Eden calls the roughly one-in-five scam rate for newly registered gTLD domains a crisis and notes ICANN has discussed the problem for years.
Bruce Schneier reports AI-generated fake thank-you replies to his newsletter confirmations from throwaway Gmail accounts; the scam's goal is unclear.
Bruce Schneier describes receiving a burst of AI-generated, one-line praise emails replying to Crypto-Gram newsletter confirmation messages, sent from random-character Gmail addresses. None of the senders actually subscribed, and they did not respond when he replied, weakening a pig-butchering theory. The campaign appears automated, but its objective has not been identified.
Malwarebytes warns tech support scammers now abuse sponsored search results, fake listings, calendar invites, and Apple Pay notifications, and shares red flags for impersonation scams.
Malwarebytes describes how tech support scams have expanded beyond browser locks and fake virus warnings to sponsored search results, hijacked on-site searches, fake platform listings, renewal scams, fake calendar invites, and Apple Pay notifications. Scammers impersonate trusted security companies including Malwarebytes, seeking payment, personal information, or remote access to victims' computers. Malwarebytes notes it does not outsource support, never makes unsolicited calls, and works with the FTC and the Global Anti-Scam Alliance to combat these scams.
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.
Fraudsters posed as fake law firms to scam victims into paying fees in cryptocurrency.
Scammers impersonated law firms to persuade victims to pay bogus legal fees, likely in cryptocurrency. Crypto-based legal-fee scams typically pressure targets with urgent payment demands, and cryptocurrency transfers are hard to reverse once sent. Victim counts and loss amounts are not stated in the headline.
Rig exploit kit activity dropped roughly 75% after the pseudo-Darkleech and EITest campaigns stopped using EKs, reflecting an overall decline in exploit kit activity.
Rig EK activity fell sharply in 2017: the pseudo-Darkleech campaign disappeared at the end of March, cutting Rig traffic about 50%, and the EITest campaign switched to tech support scams in late April, cutting another 50% in May. Broader causes include a shrinking browser target base, no major EK zero-day in over a year, and community takedowns of domain shadowing infrastructure. Criminals are shifting to malspam, social engineering schemes like fake HoeflerText notifications, and tech support 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.
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.
A $500 ready-made scam kit sold on a cybercrime forum builds fake Tesla $TSLA presale pages that harvest wallet recovery phrases and cryptocurrency deposits.
Malwarebytes found a $500 scam-in-a-box kit by seller xrep on a cybercrime forum, bundling a fake Tesla-style $TSLA presale site, a victim-tracking admin panel, and controls to inflate fake balances. The kit harvests 12-word wallet recovery phrases via wallet-connection prompts or accepts direct transfers in Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, or Dogecoin. The admin panel lets operators check stolen wallets' value before draining them, raise displayed balances to encourage further deposits, and send follow-up messages demanding fake network fees.
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.
OpenAI disrupted a Cambodia-based ChatGPT-powered scam network running romance, crypto-investment, gambling, and fake law-enforcement fraud campaigns.
OpenAI disrupted a social engineering network operating from Cambodia that used ChatGPT to run multiple scam types simultaneously. Operators built trust with fake dating personas before pitching fraudulent cryptocurrency and spot gold investments, posed as gambling platforms offering fake bonuses, or impersonated law enforcement agencies demanding fine payments. The network also generated images of forged documents including passports, legal notices, stock-purchase confirmations, and gambling platform interfaces.
Recorded Future details Tajin Group, a Chinese-speaking vendor on Telegram guarantee marketplaces running phishing, carding, and money laundering operations targeting Chinese banks.
Insikt Group analyzed Tajin Group, a Chinese-speaking threat actor operating on Telegram-based guarantee marketplaces Dabai Guarantee and, since May 2026, Xinbi Guarantee. The group conducts phishing, payment card theft, and money laundering targeting mainland Chinese citizens and banks, testing stolen cards from twelve countries on platforms like CCAvenue and Geidea. Operators bought and sold at least 100 Telegram usernames and anonymous virtual numbers via Fragment Market to strengthen OPSEC, linking multiple usernames to single Telegram accounts. Recorded Future warns Tajin Group's TTPs are likely to be replicated by other vendors on Chinese-language guarantee marketplaces at global scale.
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.
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.
Scam sites impersonating Bitrefill's crypto checkout appear in search results, tricking victims into sending up to $1,990 in crypto directly to scammers.
Malwarebytes documents a cluster of lookalike domains copying Bitrefill's gift card checkout, surfaced via search engine results rather than email. Victims choose an amount up to $1,990 and pay in Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDC, USDT, Solana, or Litecoin to scammer-controlled addresses, with no recourse since crypto payments are irreversible. Domains use typosquatting and Punycode/IDN homoglyph tricks, and the fake sites run commercial analytics software to measure and optimize victim conversion. Bitrefill's security team is working with takedown specialists to remove the sites.
Opinion piece argues multi-domain login redirects make legitimate flows indistinguishable from phishing, urging organizations to standardize on one recognizable root domain.
The author shows a real-world login flow that chains through numerous third-party domains (identity providers, cloud auth endpoints, OAuth APIs, 2FA pages), none on the company's own domain, so credentials and 2FA prompts are trivially impersonable. The piece argues URLs are inherently confusing because the security-relevant second-level domain sits mid-string, and that users trained to ignore URLs cannot distinguish legitimate pages from scams. It proposes RFC 2119-style requirements: single recognizable root domain, internal services on its subdomains, emailed or SMS links on that domain, and local redirects instead of third-party hosted pages.
FinCEN urged banks to report cyber scams after a study found $12.7 billion stolen from US victims of crypto investment scams since 2023.
FinCEN analyzed more than 33,000 cyber fraud incident reports filed by roughly 1,300 financial institutions between September 2023 and December 2025, finding about $12.7 billion in losses to cryptocurrency investment scams across all 50 states. Traditional banks reported about $6.4 billion in suspected scam activity and crypto firms about $5.5 billion. Scam activity is growing, with monthly reports rising nearly 11% as centers expand beyond Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos. The US later sanctioned Xinbi Guarantee, a Telegram-based marketplace used to launder over $36 billion.
Malwarebytes reports StreamRat Android banking trojan spread via Meta and TikTok ads reaching roughly 570,000 users, mostly in Spain.
Malwarebytes researchers uncovered a malicious advertising campaign on Meta and TikTok promoting a fake free TV-streaming service that delivered the StreamRat Android banking trojan and infostealer. The ads, aimed at Spanish-speaking users with most victims in Spain, reached approximately 570,000 Meta users in a campaign running June 11 through July 3, 2026. The download site detected Android devices and the referral source, then coached users through sideloading steps including enabling installs from unknown sources. StreamRat can monitor the screen, capture typed credentials, display fake login screens, and give attackers remote control, including black-screen and fake Android update overlays.
Scammers in China are exploiting Microsoft Teams and Webex to trick Chinese victims into transferring large sums of money.
WIRED reports that fraudsters are abusing enterprise chat platforms including Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex to run scams against victims in China. Victims are socially engineered into transferring large sums of money. The campaign has generated a wave of complaints, highlighting how scam groups abuse legitimate business communication tools.
Unit 42 analyzed 67 million malicious URLs and domains in H2 2022, a 52% increase, highlighting phishing impersonation and web skimmer trends.
Unit 42 observed more than 67 million unique malicious URLs, domains and IPs between July and December 2022, a 52% increase over the first half of the year. Malicious JavaScript detections grew 99.3%, with over 4 million malicious JS samples hosted on 4.8 million URLs. Over 85% of hosting infrastructure was concentrated in eight countries, led by the United States, Brazil and China. The report also analyzes industries spoofed in phishing pages and includes a web skimmer case study on a Tranco top 1 million website.
404 Media's behind-the-blog discusses Spotify tagging AI-generated artists as a tipping point in platforms algorithmically rejecting AI slop.
404 Media's weekly behind-the-blog post discusses Spotify's decision to tag artists as AI-generated and stop promoting them, arguing it signals a tipping point where platforms and users begin algorithmically rejecting AI slop. It also mentions the mainstreaming of Flock and media appearances. The post is partially paywalled for paid members.
BlackFile (UNC6671), a The Com-linked extortion crew, keeps hitting financial and med tech firms with voice-phishing IT-support scams and ~$3 million demands.
Google Threat Intelligence Group (tracking BlackFile as UNC6671, linked to The Com) reports the extortion group remains active, shifting focus to the financial sector and med tech organizations, with new Redact-brand extortion demands issued last week. The group impersonates IT support in voice-phishing attacks using hundreds of recruited callers, targets large firms in what researchers call big-game hunting, and processes an average of 1.5 new victims daily. Extortion demands start around $3 million and are typically negotiated below $1 million; Flashpoint observed infrastructure targeting Blackstone, Bain Capital, Moody's, CME, and Apollo, though compromise is unconfirmed. Mandiant has responded to more than two dozen BlackFile compromises since January, and victims face escalation tactics including swatting.
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.
CISA warns NextGen Healthcare Mirth Connect <=4.7.1 has SQL injection and XXE flaws enabling credential theft, file writes, and DoS.
CISA released advisory ICSMA-26-253-01 covering three vulnerabilities in NextGen Healthcare Mirth Connect versions 4.7.1 and earlier: SQL injection CVE-2026-82583 (CVSS 8.3), XXE CVE-2026-78224 (CVSS 8.2), and XXE CVE-2026-82578 (CVSS 7.5). Exploitation could expose stored credentials for connected systems, enable arbitrary file writes, and cause denial-of-service conditions. No public exploitation has been reported; the product is deployed worldwide in the Healthcare and Public Health sector.
AP report on scammers' spending spree after a $240 million bitcoin social engineering theft, as ringleader Malone Lam nears a plea agreement.
DataBreaches.net syndicates AP reporting on the $240 million bitcoin theft from a Washington, D.C. resident via social engineering calls impersonating Google and Gemini. Alleged ringleader Malone Lam, 22, faces a plea hearing; the scam network spent stolen funds on cars, jets, and mansions before FBI arrests. Crypto investment fraud complaints to the FBI rose nearly 50% in 2025.
Trezor disclosed the ShipMonk breach exposed data of 67,000 additional US customers, reportedly by ShinyHunters exploiting a Metabase zero-day SQL injection, CVE-2026-72898.
Trezor disclosed that a breach at shipping provider ShipMonk exposed names, email addresses, phone numbers, shipping addresses, and order numbers of 67,000 additional US customers, with orders dating November 2019 to August 2021 despite written assurances the data had been deleted. This adds to the 13,689 customers previously disclosed after ShipMonk informed Trezor of unauthorized access on August 10, 2026. According to Holborn, the ShinyHunters extortion gang is behind the breach, which began with zero-day exploitation of CVE-2026-72898 (CVSS 10.0), a critical SQL injection flaw in Metaboobase analytics software Metabase. Trezor says hardware wallet security is unaffected but warns customers to watch for phishing and social engineering; ShipMonk has not publicly acknowledged the incident.
Attackers exploited a Brevo SAML SSO flaw to access 138 accounts and phish crypto customers of Trezor, CoinTracking, and BitBox.
An attacker exploited a flaw in Brevo's SAML SSO handling to access 138 customer accounts on September 10; six accounts were used to send phishing emails and contacts were exported from 43 accounts. Crypto firms Trezor, CoinTracking, and BitBox confirmed customers received phishing emails, with Trezor warning roughly 347,000 newsletter subscribers. The Trezor-themed email cited a fabricated STM32 microcontroller entropy bug and urged recipients to enter wallet backups through a malicious link. Exported contact lists could fuel future targeted phishing attacks.
Huntress says rogue ScreenConnect clients spread a four-stage VBScript chain delivering backdoors, privilege-escalation tools, or an XMRig miner to newly connected hosts.
Huntress identified three unrelated August 2026 incidents using a Quick Assist tech-support scam, a phishing-delivered MSI installer, and a fake Geek Squad refund form to install rogue ScreenConnect clients. Each client repeatedly spawned wscript.exe to run 1.vbs through 4.vbs, which profiled the host, enumerated installed security products, and downloaded stage-specific payloads from Dropbox. Depending on detected state, payloads included a user-level ScreenConnect backdoor, UAC-bypass privilege escalation tooling, or tunneling utilities with an XMRig cryptocurrency miner. Infected clients re-infected newly connected hosts, creating worm-like propagation, and ConnectWise issued an advisory about affected file transfer behavior in ScreenConnect.
CISA advisory for CVE-2026-12663 (CVSS 7.3) in Rockwell Automation ControlFLASH <=V15.07: world-writable install directory enables local code execution.
Rockwell Automation reported CVE-2026-12663 in ControlFLASH V15.07 and earlier, where the installer grants write permissions on the installation directory to the Everyone group. An attacker could plant malicious code there and execute it at the logged-in user's privilege level. The issue is local only and not remotely exploitable; no public exploitation has been reported to CISA.
Synaptrex's ScamNet app filters scam calls, messages and websites on Apple devices using on-device AI and reputation checks.
ScamNet: Anti-Scam Suite from Synaptrex Technologies is a free consumer app (with ScamNet+ subscription) for iPhone, iPad and Mac that blocks robocalls and spam via iOS Call Blocking & Identification, filters unknown senders with an offline detection engine, and provides a Safari extension that analyzes and blocks suspicious websites. A Check/Report tool accepts phone numbers, websites, crypto addresses, text, images and audio, and a Device Shield verifies passcode, OS updates and screen-recording status.
CISA advisory details six flaws, aggregate CVSS 9.6, giving attackers full control of Digital Watchdog VMAX DVR/NVR surveillance devices.
CISA advisory ICSA-26-258-01 discloses six vulnerabilities affecting all versions of Digital Watchdog VMAX A1 G4 DVRs, VMAX IP G4 NVRs, VMAX A1 PLUS, VA1G4, and VG4 recorders, with aggregate CVSS v3 of 9.6. Flaws include an authentication bypass leaking plaintext admin credentials (CVE-2026-68953), hard-coded credentials enabling root FTP access (CVE-2026-66890, CVE-2026-68950), root command execution (CVE-2026-68070), missing authorization on state-changing CGIs (CVE-2026-66887), and predictable session tokens (CVE-2026-66372). Successful exploitation grants full administrative control, live and recorded surveillance access, and a network pivot point. Products are deployed worldwide across commercial facilities, government, healthcare, and transportation sectors.
RecruitTrap phishing campaigns use mobile-optimized fake recruiter pages to steal corporate credentials from enterprise targets.
RecruitTrap campaigns impersonate recruiters and direct victims to phishing pages optimized for mobile devices. The goal is harvesting corporate credentials from enterprise targets. The mobile-focused design suggests deliberate targeting of smartphone users, where phishing cues are harder to scrutinize.
A passenger on Delta flight 591 allegedly spoofed the airline's in-flight Wi-Fi with a rogue access point, prompting an FBI and FAA investigation.
Delta Airlines is investigating an incident on flight 591 from Las Vegas to Atlanta in which a passenger reportedly created a rogue Wi-Fi network named 'Delta WiFi Fast' to steal sensitive passenger data. The cabin crew deactivated the aircraft's Wi-Fi for roughly 30 minutes, and Delta says flight safety and aircraft operating systems were never affected. The FBI's Atlanta office and the FAA acknowledged awareness of the incident, which bears hallmarks of an evil twin attack involving spoofed login portals and credential harvesting. DEF CON organizers said this year's conference in Las Vegas also suffered multiple similar deauthentication Wi-Fi attacks.