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Phishing Powers 80% of Attacks on US Companies: How SOCs Can Detect It Early

Phishing drives 80% of attacks on US companies; FBI recorded 158,436 BEC victims and over $20B in losses from 2013-2023.

A vendor-authored analysis claims phishing powers roughly 80% of attacks on US companies, citing FBI statistics of 158,436 business email compromise victims and more than $20 billion in reported losses between 2013 and 2023. It describes modern phishing using compromised infrastructure, redirect chains, dynamic pages, and adversary-in-the-middle techniques, including a recent campaign targeting tens of thousands of primarily US users. The piece promotes ANY.RUN Threat Intelligence Feeds and TI Reports, claiming 99% unique high-confidence IOCs, 21-minute faster MTTR, and 30% fewer Tier 2 escalations.

Cyber Security News · 8d agoPhishing & fraud

Ready-made $500 kit puts a crypto scam within anyone's reach

A $500 ready-made scam kit sold on a cybercrime forum builds fake Tesla $TSLA presale pages that harvest wallet recovery phrases and cryptocurrency deposits.

Malwarebytes found a $500 scam-in-a-box kit by seller xrep on a cybercrime forum, bundling a fake Tesla-style $TSLA presale site, a victim-tracking admin panel, and controls to inflate fake balances. The kit harvests 12-word wallet recovery phrases via wallet-connection prompts or accepts direct transfers in Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, or Dogecoin. The admin panel lets operators check stolen wallets' value before draining them, raise displayed balances to encourage further deposits, and send follow-up messages demanding fake network fees.

Help Net Security · Aug 12, 2026Phishing & fraud

Automatically Detecting DNS Hijacking in Passive DNS

Unit 42's machine learning pipeline detected 6,729 DNS hijacking events between March and September 2024, hitting political parties, ISPs, and universities.

Unit 42 processes roughly 167 million new DNS records daily and applies a machine learning model using 74 features over 169 TB of passive DNS and geolocation data to flag hijacked domains. From March to September 2024 the pipeline screened over 29 billion records and classified 6,729 as DNS hijacking, averaging 38 detections per day; a new model detects hijacks in customer traffic within about 10 minutes. Notable cases include a Hungarian political party's hijacked domain, defacement of a large utility company and ISP, and university and research center domains repurposed for illicit gambling. DNS hijacking typically relies on stolen registrar or DNS provider credentials or cache poisoning, enabling MitM attacks, phishing, drive-by downloads, and scams.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Research in the wild

Tech contractor for Brightly Software sentenced to 2 years in prison for insider attack

Cameron Curry sentenced to two years for stealing Brightly Software employee data and extorting the Siemens-owned firm for $7,540.92.

Cameron Nicholas Curry, a 27-year-old data analyst contractor at Siemens-owned Brightly Software, stole corporate and sensitive payroll data between August and December 2023 and sent more than 60 threatening emails to employees after his contract ended. He demanded roughly $2.5 million but received $7,540.92 in late January 2024, and was convicted of six counts of extortion in March. He was sentenced to two years in prison plus one year of supervised release, less than the 12-year maximum, after investigators traced him via operational security mistakes including a Coinbase account linked to family debit cards.

CyberScoop · Aug 13, 2026Policy & legal

Google’s New Search Redirects Make It Harder to Check Where Links Lead Before Clicking

Malwarebytes reports Google's new encoded google.com/goto?url= redirects break hover-preview link checking, weakening a common phishing defense.

Google now routes some search results through opaque google.com/goto?url= redirects using custom encoding, so browser link previews no longer reveal the true destination, only the claimed label above the result. Malwarebytes found the final destination is visible only in the redirect response's Location header, complicating hover-based safety checks as well as scraping, archiving, and audit tools. The change arrives amid malvertising, search-result poisoning, and fake installer campaigns like the recent Node.js infostealer lure. Google says it deploys measures against evolving abuse but did not explain the change.

Cyber Security News · 1d agoResearch

Scammers are getting smarter about where they target you

Malwarebytes data shows scammers tailor fraud by platform: 90% of toll scams arrive via email/SMS and MrBeast is now the most impersonated person.

Malwarebytes threat research analyzed global scam data from April 15 to July 14, 2026, across more than 20 scam types, finding each type favors a specific channel such as email, SMS, phone, or social media. Roughly nine in ten toll scams arrive by email or text, about half of IRS scams come by phone, and MrBeast is impersonated in about 30% of impersonation scams. The most impersonated brands are Google, Microsoft, Apple, Roblox, and Amazon, and Malwarebytes blocks around 500,000 phishing websites daily. Gaming scams on Roblox, Steam, Discord, and Minecraft increasingly carry losses of $1,000 or more, with 15-19% activity spikes in mid-2026.

Malwarebytes Labs · 14d agoPhishing & fraud

Network Abuses Leveraging High-Profile Events: Suspicious Domain Registrations and Other Scams

Unit 42 found scammers surge deceptive domain registrations around major events like the 2024 Paris Olympics to run phishing and counterfeit merchandise scams.

Unit 42 analyzed newly registered domains (over 200,000 detected daily from zone files, WHOIS, and passive DNS) containing event-specific keywords, using the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics as a case study. Threat actors register lookalike domains to sell counterfeit merchandise, push fraudulent services, and run phishing, as previously seen with COVID-19-themed and fake ChatGPT tool scams. The article recommends monitoring domain registrations, DNS and URL traffic trends, textual patterns, and verdict change requests to catch event-themed abuse early.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Phishing & fraud in the wild

OPCFoundation OPC UA LocalDiscoveryServer (LDS)

CISA warns CVE-2026-77477 (CVSS 4.6) lets local attackers hijack a privileged console during OPC UA LDS installation below version 1.04.420.

CISA published ICSA-26-246-01 for CVE-2026-77477, CWE-250 execution with unnecessary privileges in OPC Foundation UA-LDS-Installers below 1.04.420. An attacker able to launch the installer with elevated privileges and access the keyboard and display can intercept a high-privilege console window during installation and run arbitrary commands. CVSS 3.1 score is 4.6, the issue is not remotely exploitable, and no public exploitation has been reported. Lukas Schumaker of Rockwell Automation reported the flaw to OPC Foundation.

CISA Advisories · 13d agoAdvisoryCVE-2026-77477

CareCam Pro IP Cameras

CISA advisory details hard-coded bootloader credential CVE-2026-85083 in ANJIA AJL33PC0801 CareCam Pro cameras, allowing physical-access firmware compromise.

CISA ICS advisory ICSA-26-251-01 describes CVE-2026-85083, a hard-coded credential (CWE-798) used for bootloader authentication in the ANJIA AJL33PC0801 CareCam Pro IP camera. An attacker with physical access could gain privileged bootloader access and modify firmware and configuration, potentially fully compromising the device. The flaw scores 6.8 on CVSS 3.1 (7.0 on CVSS 4.0), is not remotely exploitable, and no public exploitation has been reported. Affected firmware is linux_linux_202008261138_svn13796 with U-Boot 2010.06; the vendor is headquartered in China with worldwide deployments.

CISA Advisories · 8d agoAdvisoryCVE-2026-85083

Upatre Continued to Evolve with new Anti

Unit 42 analyzes an undocumented Upatre downloader variant with VM detection via process hashing, packed code, disabled Windows defenses and Namecoin .bit C2 domains.

Unit 42 analyzed an Upatre downloader variant compiled in December 2016 that went largely undetected by automated systems, featuring heavy code flow obscuration, on-demand decryption of network communications, and novel virtual machine detection. The sample enumerates running processes, computes CRC32 hashes XORed with a hard-coded key, and sleeps if analysis-related processes such as vmtoolsd.exe or python.exe are found. It masquerades with Google Chrome icons, disables Windows Defender, Firewall and other security services, injects code into msiexec.exe, and resolves .bit Namecoin domains like bookreader[.]bit via hardcoded OpenNIC DNS servers over TCP.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Malware1