ThreatsDay: CEO Phishing Kits, 5K Dropbox Account Hacks, OAuth Traps + 17 More Stories
Microsoft warns of Teams IT-impersonation intrusions deploying Node.js implants; Spring Ring vishing hit 150+ employees across 10 companies; The Gentlemen ransomware claims 683 victims.
Microsoft warned of a human-operated campaign abusing Teams external collaboration to impersonate IT help desk staff, deploy malicious MSI packages staging Node.js runtimes and obfuscated JavaScript implants, then pivot to domain controllers over WinRM. Unit 42 documented the Spring Ring vishing operation targeting over 150 employees across at least 10 companies using 26 attacker identities, including an NTLM relay variant against domain controllers. Sophos reported The Gentlemen ransomware (Gold Sherwood) reached 683 total victims by end of July 2026, adding 169 in July, with a playbook using BYOVD-based EDR killers and backup tampering. Group-IB found the Outsider phishing-as-a-service platform created 700+ new phishing pages within a month despite law enforcement takedowns.
CISA Adds Three Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog
CISA added three actively exploited vulnerabilities — two JFrog Artifactory and one ConnectWise ScreenConnect — to its KEV Catalog.
CISA added CVE-2026-42016 (JFrog Artifactory incorrect authorization), CVE-2026-42018 (JFrog Artifactory improper authentication), and CVE-2026-84869 (ConnectWise ScreenConnect improper privilege management and missing authorization) to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog based on evidence of active exploitation. BOD 26-04 requires Federal Civilian Executive Branch agencies to prioritize rapid remediation of such high-risk vulnerabilities on publicly exposed assets and to check for prior compromise. CISA urges all organizations to adopt risk-based vulnerability management and prioritize KEV remediation.
Attackers Use Multi-Hop Google Redirects for Phishing Campaign
Threat actors chain multiple legitimate Google service redirects to evade detection and deliver credential harvesting or ScreenConnect remote access tooling.
Threat actors are abusing multiple legitimate Google services to build multi-hop redirect chains that obscure the final destination and bypass reputation-based filtering. The campaign culminates in credential harvesting pages or silent installation of the ScreenConnect remote access tool. Defenders should watch for links that traverse trusted Google domains before landing on malicious endpoints.
Risky Bulletin: Russia tells data centers to deploy drone defenses
Russia ordered data center operators to deploy drone strike defenses under a Putin decree allowing temporary state takeover of unprotected critical infrastructure.
The Russian government instructed data center operators to deploy protections against drone strikes under a presidential decree signed by Putin that allows temporary state administration of critical infrastructure operators failing to defend against Ukrainian hacks and drone strikes. Although data centers are not formally critical infrastructure in Russia, the decree applies to them because other sectors depend heavily on cloud services; Russia has more than 180 data centers, over 80% in the European region within range of Ukrainian strikes. The digest also reports a Dropbox breach affecting nearly 5,000 accounts via the Lenovo ID integration, spyware attacks on at least 14 Serbians using NoviSpy or Pegasus, and a password recovery attack targeting hundreds of thousands of X accounts tied to the new X Money service. Other items include a 14-hour compromise of Coder's Cloudflare infrastructure delivering malicious Terraform modules, donor data breaches at Davayte and You Are Not Alone via the Stripe/WooCommerce integration, a $2.5M Aquifer crypto heist, and a TVING breach exposing data of almost 40 million accounts.
Daisy-Chaining Trust: Investigating Faronics Deploy Abuse
Actors abuse Faronics Deploy in phishing campaigns to run PowerShell and deploy ScreenConnect while evading detection with trusted tools.
Huntress investigated attacks in which threat actors abuse Faronics Deploy, a legitimate remote management tool, as part of phishing-driven intrusions. The chain uses the trusted deployment tool to launch PowerShell commands and deploy ScreenConnect for remote access. Leveraging signed, legitimate software helps the actors blend in and evade detection.
⚡ Weekly Recap: AI-Powered PLC Attacks, GitLab Attacks, Stripe Key Leaks and More
US agencies warn of AI-assisted attacks on exposed Siemens PLCs; the week also saw GitLab CVE-2026-19478 exploited and trojanized npm packages found.
The weekly recap leads with a US government warning that threat actors use AI-generated scripts and Censys/ZoomEye scanning to attack internet-exposed Siemens S7 PLCs in water, energy and manufacturing, calling it an active threat. Other stories include active exploitation of GitLab CVE-2026-19478 (CVSS 9.4, unauthenticated project rewriting), 14 trojanized npm packages delivering the RedC2 4.0 Linux backdoor, and the Zombie Card attack that revives expired Visa cards for contactless payment fraud. It also covers suspected Russian clusters UNC6293, UNC7005 and UNC5976 phishing campaigns, a faster Cloudflare Workers Spectre JWT leak, and a bespoke Cl0p JSP web shell deployed after exploiting PTC Windchill flaws.