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IT threat evolution Q1 2021
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Leaks, data breaches, and ransom notes: The worst hacks of 2026 so far
TechCrunch's 2026 roundup covers SSA data exposure, Iranian water-utility attacks, Klue breach hitting ~200 firms, and Meta AI chatbot account hijacks.
TechCrunch's mid-year roundup highlights a whistleblower claim that DOGE uploaded a live Social Security database copy to an unsecured third-party server, which House Democrats called potentially the largest US breach in history. CISA reported Iranian hackers targeted over 100 US water providers over the summer, while Russian-linked attacks hit Polish, Swedish, and Norwegian energy and water infrastructure. Market research firm Klue was breached via a stale 2022 pilot credential, exposing cloud keys of ~200 customers including Jamf, HackerOne, and LastPass to extortion gang Icarus. Separately, tens of thousands of Instagram accounts were hijacked by abusing Meta's AI chatbot to trigger password resets to attacker-controlled emails.
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Large group of Serbian opposition, activist figures targeted with spyware
Researchers found at least 14 Serbian opposition figures and student protesters targeted with Pegasus and NoviSpy spyware around elections; 11 more phones under investigation.
The SHARE Foundation, with Citizen Lab confirmation and Amnesty International peer review, found at least 14 Serbian opposition and civil society figures targeted with advanced spyware since December, including a member of Parliament, a local politician and student protesters. Citizen Lab confirmed zero-click Pegasus on a student protester's iPhone between December 2025 and January 2026, while Amnesty confirmed a new detection-evading NoviSpy Android variant in at least two cases. Targeting coincided with March 2026 local elections; Serbia's BIA intelligence agency denied the claims, and 11 additional alerted phones remain under forensic investigation.
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RANCOR: Targeted Attacks in South East Asia Using PLAINTEE and DDKONG Malware Families
Unit 42 names RANCOR, a previously unidentified espionage group targeting Southeast Asian political entities with newly discovered PLAINTEE and DDKONG malware families.
Unit 42 tracks a previously unidentified group it dubs RANCOR conducting highly targeted espionage attacks in Singapore and Cambodia using two custom malware families, DDKONG and PLAINTEE. Attacks appear to have begun with spear phishing, with decoy political news documents hosted on legitimate sites including a Cambodian government website and Facebook. Infrastructure links to IP 89.46.222[.]97 and KHRAT-associated domains such as facebook-apps[.]com, and the activity is grouped into two clusters tied together by PLAINTEE usage and similar targeting.
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KRBanker Targets South Korea Through Adware and Exploit Kits
Unit 42 details KRBanker banking trojan targeting South Korean bank users via KaiXin exploit kit and NEWSPOT adware, using pharming and process hollowing.
KRBanker (aka Blackmoon) is a banking trojan targeting online banking users in the Republic of Korea, with roughly 2,000 unique samples and 200+ pharming servers observed by Unit 42 over six months. It is distributed through the KaiXin exploit kit exploiting Adobe Flash CVE-2014-0569 and CVE-2015-3133, and through the NEWSPOT adware update channel that also delivers the Venik trojan. The trojan uses process hollowing, retrieves pharming server IPs from Qzone profile nickname fields, and abuses Proxy Auto-Config with a local proxy to redirect banking traffic to forged sites.
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Cardinal RAT Sins Again, Targets Israeli Fin
Unit 42 documents updated Cardinal RAT attacks against Israeli FinTech firms, using BMP steganography, MD5-hash obfuscation, and process injection to hinder analysis and detection.
Unit 42 tracked a series of attacks using an updated Cardinal RAT (version 1.7.2) targeting the Israeli financial technology sector. The .NET loader hides a second-stage DLL inside an embedded BMP image decrypted with a single-byte XOR key, and the payload renames functions, methods, and variables to MD5 hashes for obfuscation. The malware installs a startup-folder LNK file and injects its final payload into RegSvcs.exe or RegAsm.exe, communicating with affiliatecollective[.]club over port 443. A possible relationship with the EVILNUM JavaScript malware used against similar organizations was also noted.
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