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Hackers Turn Windows Shadow Copies Into a Tool for Credential Theft and Ransomware
Attackers abuse Windows VSS shadow copies to delete recovery points before ransomware and to extract NTDS.dit/SAM credentials, demanding context-aware detection.
Threat actors are weaponizing the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for two purposes: destroying local recovery points via vssadmin.exe, wmic.exe, diskshadow.exe, wbadmin.exe, and bcdedit.exe before encryption, and accessing static copies of locked files such as NTDS.dit and SAM for credential theft. Ransomware families tied to shadow-copy removal include Akira, Black Basta, BlackCat, Conti, LockBit, Qilin, RansomHub, REvil, Ryuk, and WannaCry. Huntress's analysis of the Nightmare-Eclipse tool showed the BlueHammer technique chaining a Windows Defender timing issue with a VSS snapshot to dump the SAM database and decrypt NT hashes. Defenders should correlate VSS operations with parent process, hive access, and subsequent encryption activity, and maintain immutable off-host backups.
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Inside Operation CameraSwarm: How One Actor Took Over 14,000 Dahua Cameras
One actor compromised over 14,000 Dahua cameras in Ukraine and Russia using brute-force, authentication bypass, and cloud relay serial-number abuse.
Hunt.io reconstructed Operation CameraSwarm from an exposed operator directory, revealing one actor compromised 14,000+ Dahua cameras between June 17 and July 22, 2026, mainly in Ukraine and Russia. The toolkit included a brute-force engine, a two-flaw 2021 authentication-bypass chain planting a persistent backdoor account on 1,923 cameras, and abuse of Dahua's cloud relay where 89.4% of probed serials returned open, unauthenticated channels. A SalatStealer Windows binary and Defender-disabling PowerShell script were staged on the same server but appear unrelated to the camera campaign.
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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.
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Fake Claude Opus 5 app delivers malware and wipes its own tracks
A fake 'Claude Opus 5' GitHub repository impersonating Anthropic distributes RevStealer, a Windows infostealer stealing passwords, crypto wallets and VPN credentials.
Morphisec identified a malicious GitHub repository, Claude-Opus-5-Free-Desktop, impersonating Anthropic to distribute a roughly 101 MB download that launches RevStealer, a Windows information-stealing malware. The malware targets browser credentials, Windows Credential Manager, a dozen password managers, more than fifty cryptocurrency wallets, VPN, messaging, game launcher and streaming accounts, streaming stolen data to its server before deleting itself. It evades analysis with ten sandbox and VM checks, indirect system calls, Windows Defender exclusions, a fake verification window, and a Polygon blockchain smart contract fallback for C2. Only 1 of 66 antivirus engines flagged the sample at check time.
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ThreatsDay: Gogs 10.0 RCE, n8n Workflow-to-RCE, $10M Reward, GLM
Hacker News ThreatsDay roundup: Defender BTR.sys driver abuse, DoJ charges 17 Mabna Institute members over IRGC-linked intrusions, Grandoreiro sideloading, OpenAI monitoring.
Check Point researchers showed Microsoft's signed Defender Boot-Time Removal driver (BTR.sys) can be repurposed as a universal kernel operation engine to bypass endpoint security without BYOVD. The DoJ charged 17 members of Iran's Mabna Institute, which on behalf of the IRGC stole over 31 TB of academic data from 144 US universities and compromised roughly 8,000 of 100,000 targeted professor accounts; the State Department offered a $10 million reward for five defendants. Separately, Acronis tracked a Grandoreiro campaign abusing DLL sideloading in the Duplicate Files Finder app across Latin America and Spain, while ErrTraffic ClickFix campaigns deliver Cruciferra (BYOVD) and Remus Stealer. OpenAI also previewed Private Safety Processing, a privacy-centric approach to monitoring model misuse without retaining customer content.
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Grand Theft Auto VI hype leads to malware
Fake GTA6 ISO downloads spread via SEO poisoning, torrents, and forums deliver NJRAT, DCRAT, an infostealer, and wiper ransomware.
Huntress analyzed a malicious ISO masquerading as a leaked Grand Theft Auto VI build; there is no official GTA6 demo or leaked playable copy. The fake gta6installer.exe shows a Russian 'license' message asking victims to email the attacker if the crack fails, then drops GTA6-branded files into %TEMP%. It installs multiple repurposed NJRAT copies (2023-era files) connecting to AWS-hosted IPs 35.157.111.131, 3.68.56.232, 3.67.15.169 and an ngrok tunnel, plus DCRAT communicating with a0700877.xsph.ru (141.8.197.42). The bundle also includes an infostealer and ransomware used as a wiper, in what appears to be an opportunistic, everything-at-once campaign.
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ValleyRAT Backdoor Hides in Signed Adware That Users Add to Antivirus Exclusions
Silver Fox distributes ValleyRAT via signed QN Wallpaper adware, sideloading a malicious libcef.dll into a trusted process to evade defenses.
Kaspersky reports the Silver Fox threat actor disguising the ValleyRAT backdoor (Winos 4.0) inside a modified, signed copy of the QN Wallpaper adware tool, using DLL sideloading to run within a trusted process. The installer disables Windows Defender via the DisableAntiSpyware registry key, adds autorun entries, and elevates via runas when needed; ValleyRAT steals keystrokes, clipboard data, and screenshots and can mark its process critical to trigger BSOD if killed. Kaspersky recorded more than 100,000 ValleyRAT detections affecting over 1,500 unique users in 2026, mostly in China and India, with prior campaigns against Japan, India, and Russia.
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Unit 42 warns AI has shifted balance of power from defenders to attackers
Unit 42 says agentic AI has shifted attacker advantage, investigating an incident where one attacker exploited 50 enterprise applications in under 10 hours.
Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 leaders said early waves of agentic AI-enabled attacks are breaking in the wild and that frontier model capabilities have shifted the balance of power from defenders to attackers. The team is actively investigating an attack on a customer where an attacker used an agentic framework to exploit 50 applications and other weaknesses across the enterprise in less than 10 hours, work they estimate would have taken at least 10 days pre-AI. Unit 42 says AI already touches the entire attack chain, including malware development, social engineering, and ransomware negotiations. The warning follows April's Project Glasswing initiative formed with Anthropic around its Mythos model.
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Time Exploit Plummets Nday Flaws
Analysis shows time-to-exploit for n-day vulnerabilities has plummeted, shrinking defender patch windows as known flaws are exploited faster.
Infosecurity Magazine reports on analysis finding that the time between a vulnerability's disclosure and its exploitation in the wild has dropped sharply for n-day flaws. Faster exploitation compresses defenders' patching windows and raises the urgency of rapid patch deployment. The specific flaw families and metrics were not detailed in the available information.
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