6 Months on Alert: Get H1 2026 Cyber Risk Report for SOCs and MSSPs
ANY.RUN's H1 2026 report details 15 threat trends including 437% growth in fake CAPTCHA phishing and 90.7% rise in Adobe infrastructure abuse.
The report draws on interactive sandbox submissions from over 700,000 analysts and 16,000 SOC teams between January and June 2026. Attacks abusing Adobe infrastructure grew 90.7% versus H2 2025 while RMM-related attacks rose 26.5%, and custom fake CAPTCHA phishing grew 437% from Q1 to Q2 2026. ANY.RUN argues static IOCs are losing effectiveness as dead drop resolvers hide the final C2 until execution.
ClickFix attacks are tricking Mac and Windows users into hacking themselves
ClickFix campaigns trick users into pasting terminal commands via fake CAPTCHAs; latest wave abused HBO Max's hacked Reddit account to push infostealer ads.
ClickFix attacks use fake CAPTCHA or anti-bot prompts on hacked or counterfeit websites to convince victims to copy a command into Windows Command Prompt or macOS Terminal, instantly installing infostealers that steal passwords, logged-in sessions, and crypto wallets. The latest campaign compromised HBO Max's official Reddit account to post hundreds of fake ads linking to a spoofed HBO Max page carrying the lure, per researchers at Hudson Rock. It is unclear how many users were compromised. Because execution happens in the terminal, many attacks evade antivirus tools; enterprises can block terminals domain-wide and Mac users can deploy BlockBlock.
Phishing Attacks Serve Browser-in-the-Browser Pages, Rogue RMM Persistence
Phishing emails with browser-in-the-browser fake Adobe pages trick users into installing rogue ScreenConnect clients granting persistent remote access.
Huntress SOC investigated two August incidents where phishing links led to fake CAPTCHA checks and Adobe PDF Reader lures rendered as browser-in-the-browser (BiTB) pages spoofing legitimate domains like get.adobe.com. Victims downloaded what they believed was Acrobat Reader but actually installed ScreenConnect.ClientSetup.exe from attacker infrastructure, yielding two rogue ScreenConnect clients with service-based persistence. The attacker used cmd.exe and curl to stage a second client connecting to 144.172.115.59, leveraged a ScreenConnect Trial Relay domain for stealth, and ran HideCursor.exe as a defense-evasion binary. Incident 2 arrived via AT&T Office@Hand (RingCentral), with both chains stopped before broader impact.
TerminalFix looks like ClickFix, but delivers a very different payload
Malwarebytes warns TerminalFix mimics the ClickFix fake CAPTCHA social engineering trick but delivers a payload granting attackers access to victims' wider network.
Malwarebytes identified TerminalFix, a variant of the familiar ClickFix fake CAPTCHA social engineering trick. The adapted chain delivers a very different payload, one that can give attackers access to the victim's wider network beyond the initially infected host.
TerminalFix campaign deploys a reverse tunnel through multistage intrusion
Microsoft Threat Intelligence details the TerminalFix campaign, which uses fake CAPTCHA prompts, DLL sideloading, and reverse tunnels in multistage intrusions.
Microsoft Threat Intelligence published analysis of a ClickFix-style campaign dubbed TerminalFix. The intrusion chain relies on fake CAPTCHA social engineering and DLL sideloading, and the attackers deploy a reverse tunnel to maintain access through a multistage intrusion. Microsoft released detections and threat hunting guidance for defenders.
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.