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The sexy AI-powered dating app scams are here
Anthropic exposed a network of roughly 28 AI-driven dating apps using autonomous personas and gig workers to defraud paying users.
Anthropic threat intelligence uncovered a fraud network of around 28 dating apps after a prepaid account sent over 100,000 Claude API requests daily, with most chats run by autonomous AI personas and no human agent. Researchers Matthew Gore-Kormanik and Anthropic's Chris Cronbaugh documented apps including Dora, Romi, and Doni, which monetize conversations via coins; gig workers were hired only to pass liveness checks and select pregenerated replies. An operations manual written in Chinese was found inside the Doni app, and Anthropic published findings in its September 2026 AI misuse report.
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ThreatsDay Bulletin: Claude Security Plugin, Azure Priv-Esc, Kali365 MFA Bypass, FIFA Scams +15 More
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Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple vulnerabilities in Sealevel SeaConnect
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New Mirai variant adds stealth capabilities to notorious botnet code
FortiGuard Labs reports new Mirai-derived botnet Evooo1Bot actively exploits unpatched routers and edge devices, adding encrypted C2, stealthy SSH scanning, and proxying.
FortiGuard Labs has identified Evooo1Bot, a previously undocumented Linux malware based on the Mirai botnet code, which has been actively exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities in internet-facing hardware for at least a month. Targeted devices include routers and edge hardware from Alcatel, D-Link, Mitsubishi Electric, Netgear, Tenda and Telesquare, with telemetry showing activity in North and South America, Europe, India, China and Japan. Beyond Mirai's usual DDoS functions, the variant adds encrypted C2 communications, a honeypot-aware SSH scanner, a sniffer for unchanged default credentials, and abuse of the SOCKS protocol to turn compromised devices into persistent proxies for concealing origin and pivoting into internal networks.
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Old Wine in the New Bottle: Mirai Variant Targets Multiple IoT Devices
Unit 42 analyzed the Mirai IZ1H9 botnet variant exploiting Tenda, LB-Link, DCN and Zyxel flaws to build DDoS-capable IoT botnets.
Unit 42 observed the Mirai IZ1H9 variant on April 10, 2023, using a shell script downloader lb.sh from 163.123.143.126 to infect exposed Linux servers and networking devices. Campaigns running since November 2021 share infrastructure, near-identical bot functions and the XOR key 0xBAADF00D. The malware exploits CVE-2023-27076 (Tenda G103), CVE-2023-26801 (LB-Link), CVE-2023-26802 (DCN DCBI-Netlog-LAB) and a Zyxel RCE flaw. Compromised devices join a botnet used for DDoS attacks, and the downloader deletes logs and modifies iptables to block SSH, Telnet and HTTP recovery.
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Counterfeit installers to system compromise: Tracking a deceptive software download campaign
Microsoft tracks a counterfeit software-installer campaign compromising multinationals' China operations, moderately linked to the Silver Fox (Yinhu) actor.
Microsoft Defender Experts is tracking an active campaign using spoofed software download sites for brands such as Razer, Kaspersky, Microsoft Edge, Calibre, and Baidu Netdisk on .com.cn and .hl.cn domains, delivering installer archives whose hashes change per download, indicating server-side payload generation. The implants establish persistence, weaken security protections, and communicate with attacker-controlled infrastructure, with confirmed compromises across healthcare, manufacturing, gaming, technology, logistics, government, and education. Microsoft assesses with moderate confidence that the activity matches the publicly reported Silver Fox (Yinhu) fake software campaign; it has not attributed it to a nation-state actor.
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Mirai Variant MooBot Targeting D
Unit 42 observed the MooBot Mirai variant exploiting four D-Link vulnerabilities to compromise unpatched routers for use in DDoS attacks.
Unit 42 captured attacks exploiting four D-Link remote code execution vulnerabilities: CVE-2015-2051, CVE-2018-6530, CVE-2022-26258, and CVE-2022-28958, with three rated critical at CVSS 9.8. The exploits download the MooBot malware, a Mirai botnet variant, from infrastructure at 159.203.15.179 via wget. Compromised devices fall under full attacker control and can be used for distributed denial-of-service attacks. D-Link has published bulletins for all four flaws, but unpatched devices remain exposed.
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Passkey-themed social engineering leads to identity and cloud compromise
Microsoft tracks ongoing cloud intrusions where passkey-themed helpdesk lures enable AiTM credential theft, MFA persistence, and SharePoint data theft.
Microsoft Security Research is tracking active cloud-based intrusions, observed since May 2026, that begin with helpdesk impersonation calls and SMS lures urging urgent passkey, MFA, or SSO updates. The lures lead to adversary-in-the-middle phishing or device-code authentication flows that capture credentials and session tokens or grant actor access, after which the actors add authentication methods, conduct Microsoft Graph reconnaissance, and download SharePoint and OneDrive content via REST APIs. Phishing domains embed victim organization names as subdomains (e.g., contoso.add-passkey[.]com), are often registered with Nicenic, and go operational within hours. Microsoft advises revoking sessions and removing unauthorized authentication methods for confirmed compromises.
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xHunt Campaign: New Watering Hole Identified for Credential Harvesting
Unit 42 tied the xHunt campaign to a watering hole on a Kuwait government website used to passively harvest visitors' NTLM credential hashes.
Palo Alto Unit 42 identified a Kuwait government organization's webpage injected with hidden HTML referencing image paths on domains (microsofte-update.com, learn-service.com) tied to xHunt/Hisoka C2 infrastructure. When visitors loaded the page, Windows would attempt SMB/NetBIOS authentication to the remote share, allowing the operators to capture NTLM hashes that could be cracked or relayed. Related DNS redirect activity on xHunt infrastructure in 2019 pointed to additional credential-harvesting interest against Kuwaiti government email servers.
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Mirai Variant V3G4 Targets IoT Devices
Unit 42 tracked the Mirai variant V3G4 exploiting 13 vulnerabilities across IoT devices and servers from July-December 2022 to build a DDoS botnet.
From July to December 2022, Unit 42 observed three campaigns spreading V3G4, a Mirai botnet variant, by exploiting 13 vulnerabilities, including CVE-2022-26134 in Atlassian Confluence and CVE-2019-15107 in Webmin. The campaigns shared the same C2 domains containing the string 8xl9, nearly identical shell script downloaders, and the same XOR keys, suggesting a single threat actor. The malware brute-forces telnet and SSH credentials, terminates rival botnet processes via a stop list, and receives DDoS commands from its C2. Compromised servers and networking devices are absorbed into the botnet for further attacks.
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Microsoft Patches 5 Zero-Day Vulnerabilities Being Exploited in the Wild
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2026-009: Critical Vulnerabilities in Microsoft SharePoint
WatchTowr observed active exploitation of SharePoint RCE CVE-2026-50522 (CVSS 9.8), part of an ongoing wave of exploited on-prem SharePoint flaws patched by Microsoft.
On 14 July 2026 Microsoft released updates for critical SharePoint Server RCE flaws, including CVE-2026-50522 (CVSS 9.8), a deserialisation vulnerability possibly exploitable without authentication. On 20 July 2026 WatchTowr published PoC exploit code and observed active exploitation of CVE-2026-50522, prompting CISA to urge SharePoint hardening. The advisory also covers recently fixed SharePoint flaws: CVE-2026-32201 (6.5, spoofing), CVE-2026-45659 (8.8, authenticated RCE), CVE-2026-56164 (9.8, unauthenticated privilege escalation), and CVE-2026-58644 (9.8, unauthenticated RCE). Affected products include SharePoint Server Subscription Edition, 2019, and Enterprise Server 2016; CERT-EU recommends immediate patching, credential rotation, and compromise assessments.
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