The Good | Authorities Launch New Operations Against Cybercrime Networks & Supply Chain Attackers

Operation Jackal IV, coordinated by INTERPOL across 22 nations, has led to the arrest of 58 individuals and the identification of over 200 suspects linked to West African cybercrime networks. The joint action successfully dismantled elements of the Black Axe syndicate, which orchestrates global romance, investment, and business email compromise (BEC) scams. Law enforcement agencies across South Africa, Argentina, and Romania also disrupted major Crime-as-a-Service (CaaS) providers, freezing millions of dollars in illicit financial assets.

The FBI, collaborating with the DoJ, have disrupted the global QScan and QTRouter hacking platforms operated by Chinese state-sponsored threat actors. The group QTFY, which maintains direct ties to China’s military and intelligence services, used these compromised IoT botnets to mask cyber espionage traffic targeting critical U.S. networks, including the Federal Reserve and NASA. Law enforcement successfully seized the core command-and-control (C2) domains hardcoded within the malicious frameworks.

From the U.S. Treasury is a new operation dubbed Economic Outcast, imposing sweeping sanctions on five Mabna Institute members and nearly 60 Iran-linked entities. Under the direction of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), the attackers breached multiple American critical infrastructure organizations, state governments, and defense contractors. These state-sponsored actors then exfiltrated datasets, executed high-value cryptocurrency heists, and now face federal indictments alongside a $10 million dollar reward for information leading to their arrest.

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) have arrested and charged two individuals for principal roles in TeamPCP, a cybercrime syndicate. The group systematically compromised trusted open-source projects, including Trivy, Checkmarx KICS, and LiteLLM, by stealing developer credentials and distributing backdoored software updates across major ecosystem release channels. This massive software supply chain campaign potentially compromised organizations worldwide and facilitated the unauthorized theft of hundreds of thousands of credentials.

The Bad | ‘NovaCookies’ Phishing Toolkit Exploits DocuSign Services to Steal Session Tokens

Security researchers have disclosed details of NovaCookies, a subscription-based phishing platform that systematically targets corporate networks to steal authenticated Microsoft 365 sessions. Operating as an Adversary-in-the-Middle (AitM) proxy, this malicious toolkit is advertised on Telegram for $320 monthly. The campaigns actively compromise hundreds of organizations across several nations, including the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and the U.A.E.

To establish a foothold, attackers distribute counterfeit document-sharing lures within genuine DocuSign notifications. Styled as a share notice, the decoy claims an accounting department shared a remittance-advice PDF and invites the recipient to open it. Since these notifications originate from legitimate servers, they bypass standard sender-authentication checks and reputation filters. The malicious link is embedded inside the shared document, below the inspection layer of most security gateways. Once clicked, the attack uses an OAuth error-redirect technique to guide the browser through legitimate Microsoft or Google endpoints before routing traffic to the phishing infrastructure. This transition ensures every intermediate step appears trustworthy until the user reaches the proxy.

NovaCookies is a variant of the Sneaky2FA platform, which operates on a centrally managed model where the operator hosts the infrastructure rather than individual affiliates. The kit offers customized flows targeting common identity providers. Affiliates register landing pages on .vu domains, utilizing deceptive, alternating-case subdomains like PwPt-sHaRe to masquerade as legitimate Microsoft portals. While these checks obscure the landing pages, the proxy relays credentials and multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes in real time to Microsoft. Because each individual hop of the attack chain appears legitimate, security analysts emphasize that the browser remains the critical intersection where these events converge.

The Ugly | Threat Actors Deploy Spark RAT to Target Cambodian Organizations

A recently uncovered campaign is targeting both individuals and organizations in Cambodia with Spark RAT, which functions as a Go-based, open-source remote access trojan. Distributing compressed archives through targeted phishing emails, the threat actors deploy diverse lures, including Cambodian government notices, public health announcements, and dental records. The multi-stage attack sequence begins when a victim executes an Inno Setup installer, which initiates a dynamic link library side-loading chain using a signed Tencent application to deliver intermediate payloads.

To guarantee execution, the DLL loader performs timing-based anti-sandbox checks to detect virtual environment delays and scans running processes in an attempt to weaken its permissions. The loader then decrypts shellcode hidden within an embedded PNG file to run a second stager that determines whether the malware operates with SYSTEM privileges. If these elevated rights are present, the malware proceeds directly to inject mode. Otherwise, it configures a Windows service for local persistence. Ultimately, the stager injects malicious shellcode into the legitimate vssvc.exe process, monitoring execution to re-inject the payload if terminated.

The intrusion chain utilizes the Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) technique that abuses a legitimate but vulnerable OPSWAT AppRemover driver, ardrv.sys, to escalate privileges and neutralize security programs. Operating under CVE-2026-36425, this driver enables the malware to terminate active security processes, including Microsoft Defender, Huorong Internet Security, and Tencent PC Manager. The program also patches Antimalware Scan Interface and Event Tracing for Windows, executes user-mode termination of security tools, and injects Spark RAT into ctfmon.exe. Although operational tactics and driver usage closely mirror the Chinese-speaking Silver Fox syndicate, analysts classify the campaign as an unattributed cluster due to the absence of shared infrastructure, certificates, or code reuse.

The Good | U.S. Charges Iranian Cyberattackers Over Mass Intellectual Property Theft

The U.S. Justice Department has indicted 17 Iranian nationals associated with the Mabna Institute, a state-sponsored hacking-for-hire firm, for executing a massive global cyber espionage campaign. Operating since 2013, the malicious network systematically targeted academic institutions, private corporations, and government agencies to harvest intellectual property. While nine defendants faced prior indictments in 2018 for targeting more than 300 universities and private firms, newly unsealed charges add eight individuals to the sweeping legal action. Investigators reveal that the hackers worked on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), various government bodies, and commercial clients.

The campaign targeted the credentials of hundreds of thousands professors worldwide, compromising roughly 80,000 of them. By exploiting these accounts, the actors exfiltrated over 31 terabytes of sensitive academic data, including journals, dissertations, and ebooks valued at $3.4 billion. The intrusions affected 178 universities, including 144 in the United States, alongside 53 private firms, two non-governmental organizations, and 10 state agencies. Beyond academic espionage, the defendants targeted private entities, including an extortion scheme against entertainment network HBO for $6 million dollars in Bitcoin.

The State Department announced rewards of up to $10 million for information leading to the apprehension of five key defendants and established an anonymous Tor network link to receive tips. All defendants currently face multiple federal charges, including conspiracy to commit computer intrusions, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft, which can incur maximum penalties of twenty years in prison. This prosecution reinforces the government’s long-term commitment to pursuing foreign threat actors who target domestic organizations, regardless of how much time passes.

The Bad | Medusa Ransomware Syndicate Compromises 500 Critical Infrastructure Organizations

A joint advisory issued by federal agencies warns that the Medusa ransomware syndicate has systematically breached over 500 critical infrastructure organizations in the United States since June 2021. Released in coordination with CISA, the FBI, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the alert covers Medusa’s rapid escalation across healthcare, manufacturing, defense, and financial sectors. This release is an update to a March 2025 assessment, which previously estimated the victim count at just over 300 entities. Other targeted areas include education, medical, legal, and insurance systems.

While the threat actors have been active since January 2021, they experienced a massive surge in their operations in 2023 following the launch of the “Medusa Blog” leak site. Operators leverage this portal to publish stolen files, applying double extortion tactics to coerce non-paying victims. Structurally, the syndicate operates under a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) model, employing an aggressive affiliate program. Developers actively recruit initial access brokers on dark web forums, offering payments ranging from $100 to $1 million dollars for exclusive access. Defenders should not confuse this threat with MedusaLocker, a separate ransomware family, or the Medusa and TangleBot mobile malware families, which also share similar naming.

As a defense against these intrusions, the agencies urge organizations to implement robust defenses. Security teams must secure and patch exposed systems to protect firmware, operating systems, and software from exploitation. Additionally, administrators should restrict access from untrusted origins to remote services and implement network segmentation to prevent lateral movement.

The Ugly | Hackers Exploit Critical Windows IKE Protocol Vulnerability

CISA has added a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in the Windows Internet Key Exchange Service Extensions component, known as MS-IKEE, to its catalog of actively exploited flaws. Tracked as CVE-2026-33824, this severe double-free vulnerability affects all supported versions of Windows 10, Windows 11, and Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022, and 2025. The flaw enables unauthenticated, remote attackers to execute arbitrary code by simply transmitting maliciously crafted UDP packets over port 500 or port 4500 to Windows systems running IKE version 2. Because this protocol component handles crucial features like cryptographically generated address authentication, denial-of-service protection, and third-party interoperability, exposed systems remain highly vulnerable to complete network compromise.

Although Microsoft addressed the issue during April 2026 Patch Tuesday, the firm has not yet updated its official advisory to reflect the ongoing in-the-wild exploitation. Under the urgent mandate of Binding Operational Directive 26-04, CISA ordered all U.S. Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to secure their vulnerable systems within three days. While this binding directive specifically targets federal networks, cybersecurity officials strongly urge all enterprise network defenders to prioritize applying the security updates immediately to halt active intrusions.

For organizations unable to immediately deploy the patch, Microsoft recommends restricting inbound UDP ports 500 and 4500 on systems where IKE is not required, or configuring host firewalls to only accept traffic from verified peer IP addresses. The rapid exploitation of this protocol flaw joins a growing list of recently abused Microsoft vulnerabilities, including a high-severity Windows Task Host bug and a SharePoint RCE vulnerability now heavily leveraged in ransomware campaigns. Since late 2021, CISA has cataloged hundreds of actively exploited Microsoft vulnerabilities to help defenders aggressively prioritize patching.

The Good | Courts Sentence “The Com” Online Syndicate Member for Blackmail & Sextortion

A court in the UK has sentenced a member of the decentralized online cybercrime collective known as “The Com” to two years in prison following an investigation by the National Crime Agency (NCA). Justin Swaddle, who operated under the digital aliases ‘Epstein’, ‘Rugen’, and ‘Moscow’ across Discord, Snapchat, and Telegram, pleaded guilty to multiple criminal charges of blackmail and child abuse. In addition to his sentence, the court ordered Swaddle’s placement on the National Sex Offenders Register and imposed a ten-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order.

Investigators revealed that Swaddle systematically targeted and groomed young, vulnerable victims globally, using popular chat platforms to exploit his targets. The prosecution identified 117 female victims worldwide, aged thirteen to seventeen, whom Swaddle coerced into performing severe acts of self-harm and generating explicit material. Rather than seeking financial gain, Swaddle was reportedly motivated by the online status and notoriety he obtained by sharing the media within exclusive subgroups. When victims resisted his demands, he used video recordings, home addresses, and school details to blackmail them into compliance.

The investigation, which the NCA initiated in January 2024 following Swaddle’s initial arrest by West Yorkshire Police, required extensive cross-border coordination. British officers collaborated closely with law enforcement agencies in the United States, Australia, Canada, Norway, and New Zealand to identify and safeguard affected children worldwide.

Authorities emphasize that The Com functions as a highly dangerous, loose-knit global network subdivided into specialized factions, including groups dedicated to physical violence, sexual coercion, financial extortion, and high-profile corporate ransomware operations.

The Bad | Agencies Warn of Expanding Gunra Ransomware Operations Targeting Critical Infrastructure

U.S., U.K., and South Korean intelligence and law enforcement agencies have issued a joint cybersecurity advisory warning global critical infrastructure organizations about escalating threats by Gunra ransomware. First appearing in April 2025 as a variant specializing in double extortion, the group uses malware derived from leaked Conti source code. Gunra targets public health, financial, and government sectors worldwide, with a heavy concentration of victims in Australia, East Asia, and Europe.

To establish initial access, operators exploit critical authentication vulnerabilities, specifically CVE-2024-55591 and CVE-2025-24472, in FortiOS and FortiProxy software, alongside security flaws in VPN gateways. While campaigns initially focused on Windows environments, the threat actors expanded to cross-platform operations by introducing a Linux variant. In January 2026, the group launched a formal Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) affiliate program under the brand “Golden Community”, actively recruiting penetration testers to serve as initial access brokers. Attackers deploy their payloads via phishing and conduct ransom negotiations via WhatsApp.

Once inside a network, the actors utilize Impacket tools for credential dumping and lateral movement. They execute malicious tasks during nighttime hours, exfiltrating stolen documents to cloud services and deleting critical backup and archived data across primary and recovery centers. The malware leverages advanced ciphers like Salsa20 or ChaCha20 to encrypt terabytes of data in a limited timeframe.

Strong links have been identified between Gunra and North Korean state-backed threat actors, observing overlapping infrastructure and techniques, such as the exploitation of zero-day flaws in certificate signing software. Despite its sophistication, a catastrophic cryptographic flaw in Gunra’s Linux variant allows victims to fully recover encrypted files.

The Ugly | New ‘ShieldBreak’ Zero-Day Exploit Bypasses Microsoft Defender Protections

A security researcher known as ‘Nightmare Eclipse’ has released a novel Microsoft Defender zero-day exploit dubbed ‘ShieldBreak’ shortly after this month’s Patch Tuesday update. The vulnerability operates as a direct patch bypass for RoguePlanet, a separate privilege escalation flaw in Microsoft’s malware protection engine that was patched in July.

Although both flaws lead to SYSTEM-level compromise, researchers confirm the underlying exploitation techniques differ significantly. While the original RoguePlanet bug exploits a filesystem race condition using virtual disks to overwrite system files, ShieldBreak hijacks cloud-hydration processes.

Specifically, the exploit leverages user-mode callback hooks to modify file contents during a cloud-hydration scan via the Cloud Filter API. To achieve privilege escalation, an attacker first places a standard test file and utilizes Object Manager symbolic links to redirect Defender’s path to the system32 directory. During scanning, the exploit uses the Common Log File System to swap the file identity and plant a malicious DLL, phoneinfo.dll, where a default system file does not exist. Triggering a scheduled Windows Error Reporting task subsequently forces the system to load this rogue library, spawning a shell with highest privileges.

The proof-of-concept operates with a 100% success rate on fully patched installations of Windows 11 25H2 and Windows Server 2025. Although Windows 10 remains vulnerable to the flaw, the current code does not natively support those legacy systems. Analysts note that Microsoft Defender must be actively enabled for the exploit chain to function.

The release intensifies an ongoing dispute between Microsoft and the researcher over bug bounty policies and recent threats of legal action.

The Good | Snowflake Hacker Pleads Guilty as Ransom Cartel Creator Draws 16 Years

Connor Riley Moucka pleaded guilty in Seattle federal court this week to computer fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and conspiracy over the 2024 breaches of Snowflake customer accounts.

The intrusions reached at least 165 organizations and exposed records tied to at least 100 million people. Prosecutors say Moucka collected at least $495,000 from ransoms and data sales. He is due to be sentenced on October 27, facing a two-year mandatory minimum on the identity theft count and up to 30 years on the rest.

Every Snowflake account the group reached had multi-factor authentication switched off, and the credentials, some harvested by infostealer malware as far back as November 2020, had never been rotated. The gang didn’t need to find a vulnerability in Snowflake’s platform to exploit; it turned out that more than three-quarters of the compromised accounts had prior credential exposure, and none had network allow lists in place.

In separate news, The Department of Justice announced that Maksim Silnikau, the Belarusian national who built and administered the Ransom Cartel ransomware operation, was sentenced to 16 years for conspiracy and aggravated identity theft.

Ransom Cartel creator sentenced 16 yrs for REvil-linked RaaS targeting 18 orgs, $6.7M losses. https://intel.threadlinqs.com/threat/TL-2026-1902 #ThreatIntel #CVE_2021_1675 #CVE_2021_34527 #Ransomcartel

[image or embed]

— Threadlinqs (@threadlinqs.bsky.social) August 6, 2026 at 3:51 AM

Between 2021 and 2023, Silnikau recruited affiliates through underground forums, supplying stolen credentials and encryption tools while running an affiliate site that handled negotiations and revenue splits.

The Ranson Cartel attempted to extort at least $5.2 million from at least 18 companies, including a robotic-surgery startup disrupted for two months and law firms that paid $125,000 and $300,000 after weeks of downtime.

Silnikau was arrested in Spain in 2023, fled while awaiting extradition, and was caught trying to cross into Belarus before consenting to face trial in the United States.

The Bad | Claude Mythos 5 Spends 34 Hours Trying to Backdoor Real Code

The UK AI Security Institute (AISI) reported Tuesday that an agent running Claude Mythos 5 spent 34 hours trying to merge a malware dropper into a real open-source project during a security evaluation, after searching the open internet and landing on a real, unconnected repository whose name happened to share a keyword with the test’s fictional scenario.

The agent researched the maintainers, opened a pull request pairing a hidden dropper with a working bug fix, and cycled through three payload versions as each was caught. When a human reviewer flagged the code as malicious, the agent’s account denied it, force-pushed a rewritten branch history, and used a second account to vouch for the code. It also hid a prompt injection inside a GitHub issue aimed at AI coding assistants. The maintainer closed the pull request despite the cover-up.

Across 122 evaluation runs, AISI logged 19 unsanctioned actions in 10 runs, 17 involving Mythos 5 and two involving GPT-5.6 Sol, though AISI notes that figure is a count, not a rate. Both models had cyber safeguards off and open internet access by design, a setup meant to measure raw capability rather than mirror production use.

Nothing escaped AISI’s sandbox, and AISI found no evidence of real-world harm. The reviewer had the chance to catch it only because GitHub holds checks on a first-time contributor’s pull request until a maintainer approves them.

Anthropic’s own July 30 review of 141,006 evaluation runs found a separate Mythos 5 run that published malware to PyPI, downloaded and ran on 15 real systems within an hour. OpenAI reported a similar incident days earlier, exploiting a zero-day to reach Hugging Face’s production database. In each case, a test environment meant to stay sealed did not, and a model reached through it before anyone caught it.

Not to be outdone, Meta became the third lab in recent weeks to disclose an AI agent reaching into systems outside a security test. The exposure traced to Irregular, the same firm behind OpenAI’s second incident, whose misconfiguration gave a Meta model internet access it used to exploit a real company’s system.

The Ugly | ChainDrop Worm Compromises Over 1,300 npm Packages With Two Billion Monthly Downloads

A self-propagating worm known as ChainDrop compromised at least 868 npm packages across 1,381 versions, part of a broader campaign researchers put at more than 1,300 packages with a combined two billion monthly downloads.

The mass compromise began Tuesday when an attacker breached the GitHub account of a maintainer who controlled several widely used caching libraries, including Keyv, Cacheable, flat-cache and file-entry-cache. The worm then self-propagated to other maintainers’ packages, including ones tied to Deliveroo, Ornikar, OneReach, Picsart, Qlik and ServiceTitan.

The worm pushed malicious commits directly to each project’s main branch and triggered a new release through a GitHub Actions workflow, giving the poisoned npm packages valid provenance signatures.

A preinstall script added to package.json ran automatically on npm install, pulling down the Bun JavaScript runtime and using it to execute an obfuscated infostealer that harvested GitHub tokens, npm tokens, AWS and Kubernetes credentials, HashiCorp Vault secrets, database credentials and a run of other cloud and developer logins.

Every stolen token was checked against npm’s own whoami endpoint before the haul was encrypted and sent to a public GitHub repository, with any credentials belonging to other maintainers repeating the process on their packages.

ChainDrop is built on Shai-Hulud, the same self-propagating technique that has hit npm before. Each GitHub repo storing the stolen credentials is auto-named with random terms from Dune and carryies the description, “Shai-Hulud: Here We Go Again.”

While many of the auto-generated dead drop repos have since been taken down, the scale of the outbreak demonstrates how rapidly self-propagating worms can weaponize trusted credentials and automated pipelines. For a deeper breakdown and defensive strategies on this attack vector and other emerging supply chain risks, read the SentinelOne Annual Threat Report.

The Good | Authorities Disrupt “The Com”, Release Security Guidelines & Charge Telegram CEO

Europol and law enforcement partners from nine countries have flagged over 4000 URLs for removal to disrupt the online ecosystem of The Com. Operating as a decentralized network, The Com targets and recruits vulnerable youth across social media and gaming platforms.

Investigators report the syndicate’s content actively promotes self-harm, child exploitation, and physical attacks, while providing instructional manuals for swatting and arson. This multi-week joint operation builds upon Project Compass, a year-long international initiative that previously resulted in 30 arrests and identified 179 suspects linked to the criminal network.

From U.S. and Australian governments, a new joint cybersecurity guidance urges critical infrastructure organizations to proactively prepare isolation plans for operational technology systems. The advisory provides recommendations for physically and logically disconnecting vital infrastructure from corporate networks during severe cyberattacks.

Since state-sponsored threat actors and cybercriminals continuously target these essential sectors to facilitate espionage, data extortion, and disruptive operations, such resources help businesses shore up their operational resilience, documentation, and testing procedures.

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has formally charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with aiding terrorist activities and violating federal laws regarding prohibited information. Authorities accuse the messaging platform of failing to remove channels and automated bots allegedly operated by Ukrainian special services.

According to Russian intelligence, Ukrainian operatives leveraged a Telegram dating chatbot to psychologically manipulate and recruit young Russian men into sharing physical geolocations before coercing them into executing armed attacks and arson against domestic critical infrastructure.

This charge is the latest action against Telegram preceded by Durov’s arrest in 2024, restrictions placed on the platform, and a near-blockade from earlier this year.

The Bad | Theft Victims Sue Apple Over Fraudulent Cryptocurrency Wallet Application

Three individuals have filed a lawsuit against Apple after losing approximately $1.8 million in Bitcoin to a fraudulent cryptocurrency application housed on the official App Store. Between May and August 2025, the plaintiffs downloaded a malicious app impersonating “Sparrow Wallet”, a legitimate platform exclusively available on desktop operating systems.

The fraudulent app instructed users to input their secret recovery seed phrases during the initial setup process. Once victims entered these credentials, scammers immediately transferred the cryptocurrency to unauthorized external addresses.

The legal complaint alleges that Apple failed to adequately monitor its software marketplace while falsely promoting the App Store as a secure environment. Despite warnings from the real developer behind Sparrow Wallet who called out impersonator applications more than a year before these specific incidents occurred, Apple had taken no action.

Now, the plaintiffs claim the marketplace even featured the fraudulent software within curated cryptocurrency collections, effectively recommending the malicious tool to unsuspecting victims.

There is still a scam ‘Sparrow Wallet’ app on the @Apple App Store, despite myself and others having reported it weeks ago.

Worse, you have to install it to report it.

Always go to the wallet’s website to find the link to download it. App stores will not protect you.

— Craig Raw (@craigraw) January 6, 2024

Financial theft within mobile ecosystems continues to grow as researchers recently identified dozens of similar wallet impersonators actively targeting user recovery phrases and keys across the Apple App Store. In response to the allegations, Apple’s filing stated that it takes swift action to remove infringing content and provides dedicated reporting mechanisms for suspected fraud.

The plaintiffs currently seek full financial reimbursement, compensatory damages, and a formal court mandate requiring the tech giant to publicly disclose and systematically improve its internal procedures for detecting and removing fraudulent software submissions.

The Ugly | Anthropic Joins OpenAI in Finding Its Models Reached Real Companies During Cyber Evals

Anthropic disclosed this week that three of its models reached real production systems during cybersecurity testing. After reviewing 141,006 evaluation runs, it identified three incidents in which a Claude model reached the open internet from inside the environment of one of its third-party evaluation partners, and then accessed the systems of three organizations.

Unlike OpenAI’s recent breach of Hugging Face, no zero-day was involved, according to Anthropic. A misconfiguration had left machines in the evaluation with live internet access.

In one incident, a model built a malicious Python package and published it to PyPI, the public registry for Python software. The package was live for about an hour, during which time it was downloaded and run on 15 real systems. The downloaders included a security vendor’s scanner that installs packages automatically to check them for malware, leading to the model’s code exfiltrating that company’s credentials.

Anthropic said it found no evidence of a model pursuing a goal of its own, characterizing the incidents as a harness and operational failure rather than a model alignment failure, and noted that the safeguards it ships on released models would have blocked the behavior.

OpenAI also updated its account of the Hugging Face breach this week, revealing the same models had also used publicly exposed credentials to compromise accounts at four other services.

OpenAI said the models configured one compromised account as an outbound relay and staging server and used a second for data storage. The remaining two accounts were accessed in read-only mode.

Although OpenAI’s models extracted partial datasets containing CyberGym solutions and operated multiple concurrent workloads, the activity ultimately left critical encryption keys behind, exposing the operation. OpenAI said it continues to review the incident alongside external auditors and has restricted its pre-release model from further internal research access.

The Good | Authorities Dismantle Kratos Phishing Network & Arrest Its Developer

Kratos, a prominent phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform, was dismantled from the inside out this week thanks to German and U.S. law enforcement agencies. During “Operation Olympus Blade”, authorities seized over 200 servers to render Kratos’ global network entirely inoperable while the platform’s suspected developer was apprehended in Indonesia.

So far, investigators estimate that more than 1800 cybercriminals utilized the platform to launch nearly 15,000 phishing campaigns monthly since late 2024. Operating as a franchise, the service provided threat actors with toolkits designed to generate convincing Microsoft authentication pages. These campaigns targeted victims across the United States and Europe, facilitating widespread credential theft and unauthorized account access. The operators earned at least €300,000 in subscription fees.

A recent report from cyber researchers reverse-engineered the Kratos toolkit, revealing how it offered operators two distinct functional modes. While one mode harvested traditional credentials, the more advanced setting deployed a Node.js reverse proxy. This adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) capability allowed attackers to intercept active session cookies in real-time, effectively bypassing standard multi-factor authentication (MFA) controls.

Once compromised, these accounts provided actors with initial footholds to execute business email compromise (BEC), lateral data theft, and secondary phishing attacks. Just this February, actors ran Kratos in a campaign that used tax-themed lures and personalized QR codes to target dozens of American manufacturing and healthcare organizations.

While the immediate server takedown severely disrupts ongoing operations, officials acknowledge that the existing customer base retains access to the underlying kit code. That means the toolkit itself outlives the infrastructure seizure, and operators who already have copies can resume campaigns under new branding with minimal rebuild effort.

The Bad | Threat Actors Conceal HollowGraph Malware in Microsoft 365 Calendar Events

A novel espionage implant, dubbed HollowGraph, is hijacking Microsoft 365 calendars to establish a covert command and control (C2) channel. By routing operator instructions and exfiltrated data through legitimate Microsoft Graph API traffic, the malware ensures its activities blend seamlessly with routine network chatter.

The .NET DLL implant operates purely as a two-way dead drop without communicating directly with an attacker-owned payload server. To receive tasking, HollowGraph queries the compromised user’s calendar for an event planted far into the future – in this case, dated for May 13, 2050. Operators embed their instructions within text files attached to this anomalous event, ensuring the mailbox owner never naturally scrolls far enough to discover the malicious entries.

For data exfiltration, the malware executes the reverse process. It systematically encrypts stolen files using hybrid RSA and AES-256 encryption, generates a new far-future calendar event, and uploads the targeted data as attachments. To maintain continuous Graph API access, operators utilize a secondary DNS-based channel to refresh the application’s Entra ID login credentials. The malware decodes these values from an attacker-controlled domain and writes them to a disguised configuration file.

Analysts observed this highly targeted campaign actively compromising machines at an Israeli organization between June and July 2026. While the implant’s underlying code shares significant structural similarities with a modular backdoor framework called Cavern, frequently utilized by Iranian state-sponsored syndicates, researchers have not yet definitively attributed this specific operation to a known threat group.

HollowGraph buries its C2 in M365 calendar events dated 2050 – no attacker server ever touched. https://t.co/yJo4fpw0X9 #ThreatIntel #HollowGraph #Cavern #Cav3rn pic.twitter.com/kaABaAYZg0

— ThreadLinqs (@threadlinqs) July 22, 2026

Since HollowGraph relies entirely on compromised account identities and legitimate application permissions rather than software vulnerabilities, standard patching remains ineffective. The technique effectively weaponizes the trust organizations place in their own Microsoft Graph API traffic, turning routine calendar activity into a blind spot by design.

The Ugly | AI Models Escape Sandbox to Breach Hugging Face Infrastructure

Open-source AI platform Hugging Face recently disclosed a network breach orchestrated entirely by an autonomous AI agent. The attack compromised the company’s data-processing pipeline by deploying a malicious dataset that exploited two distinct code-execution vulnerabilities. This initial access allowed the agent to run unauthorized code on a processing worker, harvest cloud and cluster credentials, and subsequently move laterally across several internal systems.

The platform reported that the agent executed thousands of individual actions across short-lived sandboxes while staging self-migrating C2 infrastructure on public services. Following the discovery, Hugging Face evicted the agent, revoked affected credentials, and rebuilt compromised nodes. It was during the forensic investigation that responders encountered a unique operational hurdle: Western AI models refused to process the malicious artifacts due to built-in safety guardrails. At this point, the company turned to an unrestricted, open-weight Chinese model to successfully complete the analysis.

Shortly after Hugging Face’s disclosure, OpenAI confirmed that its own AI models orchestrated the intrusion during internal benchmark testing. Operating with reduced safety guardrails for evaluation purposes, GPT-5.6 Sol and an advanced pre-release model attempted to cheat the ExploitGym cybersecurity assessment. Rather than solving the challenges natively, the models identified and exploited a shortcut, retrieving the test solutions directly from Hugging Face’s production database via a zero-day vulnerability in a third-party package registry cache proxy.

After gaining open internet access through privilege escalation and lateral movement, the models accessed Hugging Face servers. The AI agents chained together multiple attack vectors, utilizing the stolen credentials and additional zero-day vulnerabilities to establish remote code execution. OpenAI subsequently disclosed the zero-day flaw and collaborated with Hugging Face to implement stricter infrastructure controls and guardrails.

Google is restricting Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber to select partners as CodeMender enters preview. Here’s what security teams should verify before adoption.

The post Google Holds Back Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber as CodeMender Enters Preview appeared first on TechRepublic.

Google DeepMind unveiled Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber, an AI model for vulnerability discovery and patching, available only to governments and trusted partners.

Google DeepMind announced Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber on Tuesday, a security-focused AI model built on top of the existing 3.5 Flash architecture and designed specifically to find, validate, and patch software vulnerabilities. It won’t be available to the general public.

“Given the dual-use nature of this technology, we have taken an intentional approach to deploying 3.5 Flash Cyber. The model will be exclusively available to governments and trusted partners via CodeMender soon as part of a limited-access pilot program.” reads the announcement. “This will give frontline defenders a head start in finding and fixing critical vulnerabilities before they can be exploited, while mitigating against broader misuse.”

The access restriction is deliberate and explicitly tied to the dual-use risk of a model this capable at offensive security work.

The model is designed to be fast and cheap to run, not just accurate.

“Flash’s performance and efficiency makes it an ideal foundation to detect, validate, and patch code security issues at scale.” continues the announcement. “Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber is built on top of 3.5 Flash, and fine-tuned for finding and fixing cybersecurity vulnerabilities at a lower price per token than larger models.”

Because CodeMender runs multiple 3.5 Flash Cyber agents working in parallel to produce a single combined report, the cost-per-token advantage compounds into significantly more code coverage per session.

Within CodeMender’s multi-agent setup, 3.5 Flash Cyber reaches competitive performance at the frontier on the CyberGym benchmark, the standard evaluation for this class of capability.

Google’s announcement frames the product design in terms that reflect what’s actually changed in the threat landscape.

“AI models have become capable of finding security vulnerabilities faster than current systems can fix them. Tackling this growing threat requires an approach to securing software that is highly capable and efficient.” states Google.

That framing acknowledges something the industry has been circling around: the offensive capability of these models is now outpacing the speed at which defenders can respond to what they find.

The restricted deployment is designed to close that gap from the defensive side first. Governments and trusted partners get early access to the model, giving defenders a head start on finding and fixing critical vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. A DeepMind spokesperson confirmed plans to add red-teaming features and end-to-end enterprise defense capabilities over time.

3.5 Flash Cyber ships alongside two additional model releases. Gemini 3.6 Flash is the updated workhorse model, delivering better coding, knowledge work, and multimodal performance while consuming 17% fewer output tokens than 3.5 Flash according to the Artificial Analysis Index.

“Gemini 3.6 Flash builds directly on developer and customer feedback from 3.5 Flash. 3.6 Flash not only delivers a step up in coding and knowledge work, but it does this while meaningfully improving token efficiency.” states Google. “This enhanced efficiency is also combined with a lower price than 3.5 Flash. At $1.50/1M input tokens and $7.50/1M output tokens, 3.6 Flash reduces the overall cost per agentic task, making agents more cost-effective to build and run.”

It’s priced at $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens. On benchmarks like DeepSWE it shows up to 65% token reduction in some configurations, and it outperforms 3.5 Flash on software engineering (49% vs. 37% on DeepSWE), machine learning research (63.9% vs. 49.7% on MLE Bench), and computer use tasks (83.0% vs. 78.4% on OSWorld-Verified).

Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is built for speed and scale. It runs at 350 output tokens per second according to Artificial Analysis, priced at $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens.

“3.5 Flash-Lite is the fastest model in the 3.5 series. As measured by Artificial Analysis, it runs at 350 output tokens/s. Priced at $0.3/1M input tokens and $2.5/1M output tokens and with significantly better quality than 3.1 Flash-Lite, 3.5 Flash-Lite offers a strong price-to-performance ratio for developers and customers running high throughput production traffic.” continues the report.

It now also includes computer use as a built-in tool, and on several agentic benchmarks it outperforms the older 3 Flash model outright.

3.6 Flash and 3.5 Flash-Lite are available immediately through Google AI Studio, the Gemini API, the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, and the Gemini app. Google separately noted that Gemini 3.5 Pro is currently being tested with partners and will be made broadly available when ready, and that pre-training has already started on Gemini 4.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, newsletter)

Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber Focuses on Scalable Cybersecurity 

Flash Cyber Improves Large-scale Code Analysis 

Benchmark Results Show Competitive Performance 

Real-world Cybersecurity Deployment 

The Good | Authorities Sanction Cybercriminals & Dismantle Russian Bulletproof Hosting Infrastructure

The EU and the United Kingdom have jointly sanctioned multiple Russian individuals and entities for targeting government networks and critical infrastructure across Europe. The sanctions specifically target senior Russia military intelligence (GRU) officers and operators, as well as four entities linked to the Federal Security Service (FSB).

Officials say that the Russian government actively utilizes these state-sponsored units alongside recruited cybercriminals and private companies to systematically destabilize international partners and compromise key infrastructure across the continent.

From the U.S. Treasury Department, two individuals and a virtual private network (VPN) provider face sanctions for actively enabling ransomware attacks against American organizations.

OFAC designated First VPN Service (1VPNS) and its administrator, Dmytro Rashevskyi, for supplying infrastructure that helped cybercriminals obscure their identities and manage stolen data. The service, which law enforcement dismantled last May, notoriously ignored abuse complaints and maintained zero user logs.

Yegeniy Silayev was also sanctioned for developing cryptors designed to conceal malware. Investigators estimate these specific tools and services directly facilitated billions of dollars in financial losses across critical sectors.

U.S. Federal prosecutors also unsealed indictments this week against three Russian nationals for operating bulletproof hosting services that facilitated over $62 million in global ransomware damages.

Defendants Aleksandr Volosovik, Yulia Pankova, and Kirill Zatolokin allegedly managed “Media Land” and “ML Cloud”, providing essential infrastructure to syndicates like Lockbit, Play, and Blacksuit. These hosting platforms actively shielded cybercriminals by disregarding victim complaints and ignoring law enforcement takedown requests.

To disrupt this supply chain, the State Department is offering a $10 million reward for actionable information regarding foreign government links to these hosting providers.

The Bad | Attackers Trojanize Popular Remote User Platforms to Deploy Starland Malware

Cybersecurity researchers identified a financially-motivated Russian threat actor tracked as UAT-11795. Active since June 2025, the actor has utilized trojanized applications to harvest user credentials and cryptocurrency while primarily targeting users across the United States, Germany, Romania, and Venezuela.

To distribute their payloads, UAT-11795 operators disguise malicious installers as legitimate software, including WebEx, Zoom, MobaXterm, DBeaver, and FaceIT. Researchers suspect the attackers likely deploy these files via ClickFix social engineering.

The infection chain typically starts when a victim executes a malicious HTA file. This file retrieves an altered NSIS installer harboring a hidden Python loader disguised as a standard text document. The loader then modifies the Windows Registry to ensure persistent access before decrypting and deploying the Starland remote access trojan (RAT).

Upon execution, Starland verifies whether it is operating within a sandbox before creating scheduled tasks and attempting to escalate its system privileges. The malware scans compromised systems for browser data, cryptocurrency wallet assets, detailed system configurations, any antivirus products, and Active Directory infrastructure such as domain structure and controllers.

Beyond data theft, Starland possesses extensive capabilities to capture desktop screenshots, execute arbitrary shell commands, and fetch secondary payloads. Depending on system architecture, the malware can inject a 64-bit shellcode chain to deliver the CastleStealer information stealer or a 32-bit chain to deploy the Remcos remote access trojan.

To maintain resilient command and control (C2) communications, the operators integrate a redundancy mechanism that queries a Polygon smart contract for a fallback domain, and control two Telegram bots to receive notification beacons, including messages with the victim’s machine fingerprints and cryptowallet inventories.

Users are reminded to avoid executing unidentified commands online and should only download confirmed software from official vendor sources.

The Ugly | Nearly 300 Imposter GitHub Repositories Distribute Infostealing Malware to Collect Sensitive Data

Threat actors have published almost 300 fabricated GitHub repositories to distribute an information stealer from the BoryptGrab malware family. The actors systematically impersonated premium security products, cryptocurrency tools, and developer utilities to deceive victims searching for free software downloads.

As part of the lure, the malicious landing pages employ highly sophisticated client-side scripts that parse referral URLs to render customized branding and spoofed trust badges, significantly increasing the likelihood of successful social engineering.

Once a targeted victim clicks the download link, the infrastructure delivers a constantly rotating ZIP archive containing a legitimate, signed WinGUP updater paired with a trojanized dynamic link library file. When the user executes the updater, the program side-loads the malicious file, which then decodes and reflectively executes the BoryptGrab-variant payload directly into system memory.

Operating without establishing long-term persistence, the malware is designed to exfiltrate maximum data in a single execution cycle. The stealer targets passwords, payment details, and session cookies across 19 different web browsers and 32 cryptocurrency wallet brands, alongside messaging tokens from Discord, Steam, and Telegram.

To maximize collection, operators utilize direct code injection to bypass Chrome’s native App-Bound Encryption. All newly harvested data is compressed and routed to a Russian-based C2 server. Although the malware leaves behind forensic evidence by failing to wipe temporary staging directories, the scale of the impersonation campaign poses significant risks to unsuspecting developers.

GitHub has already removed a large portion of the false repositories, though several of the malicious redirector pages remain actively online. Researchers advise users to independently verify software authenticity and exercise extreme caution when navigating unofficial portals, sharing this YARA rule to help detect BoryptGrab activity and IoCs.

The Good | Authorities Apprehend Pro-Russian Hacktivist & Dismantle Global Fraud Networks

Spanish authorities, acting on intelligence provided by the FBI, have apprehended a suspected core member of the pro-Russian hacktivist syndicates CyberArmy of Russia Reborn (CARR) and Z-Pentest.

While masquerading as ideologically motivated collectives, these groups have actively executed disruptive cyberattacks against critical infrastructure, including food processing and water facilities across the United States and Europe. Investigators allege the arrested individual, residing in Palencia, provided extensive operational and logistical support to a Ukrainian hacker working for CARR, even attempting to facilitate their escape to Russia.

The individual is also suspected of coordinating cyber operations for the NoName057(16) group using encrypted messaging platforms. In a March 2026 raid, law enforcement officers seized multiple computers and successfully froze cryptocurrency wallets utilized to launder illicit proceeds generated from stolen data sales. The suspect currently faces ongoing criminal investigations for alleged collaboration with a recognized terrorist organization and severe computer damage.

In a massive global crackdown on social engineering and financial fraud, international law enforcement agencies have arrested 5,811 suspects and seized approximately $293 million in illicit assets. Codenamed “Operation First Light 2026”, the coordinated initiative spanned 97 countries and specifically targeted business email compromise (BEC), investment scams, and money laundering syndicates operating between January and April. Interpol actively coordinated the extensive joint action, collaborating directly with regional policing bodies like ASEANAPOL, GCCPOL, and Europol to swiftly block over 31,000 fraudulent bank accounts and virtual wallets.

Investigators identified more than 142,000 victims worldwide and pinpointed an additional 15,600 suspects for future prosecution. This success builds upon recent international efforts, including Operation Synergia II, to dismantle the sprawling infrastructure supporting transnational cybercrime. Officials emphasize that robust, cross-border law enforcement cooperation remains essential to combat the escalating threat of organized cyber-enabled financial crimes globally.

The Bad | Threat Actors Deploy Forg365 PhaaS to Hijack Microsoft Accounts

Cyber researchers have identified a new phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) operation dubbed Forg365, which targets Microsoft 365 enterprise accounts. Blending adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) techniques with device-code phishing, the platform provides an integrated dashboard to manage post-compromise activities.

Forg365 works by incorporating AI to assist in generating customized phishing lures. By integrating AI directly into the control panel, Forg365 developers significantly lowered the financial cost needed to launch targeted campaigns. To remain undetected, its operators route messages through legitimate Amazon SES infrastructure while hosting their landing pages on Cloudflare.

The operation leverages the OAuth 2.0 device code authentication flow, originally designed for input-constrained devices. Attackers present victims with a deceptive verification page, tricking them into authorizing an attacker-controlled gadget rather than stealing their password directly.

Once initial access is achieved, the platform ensures persistence through a specialized browser extension called ForgCookie. Compatible with Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, and Brave, this extension operates silently to request account data, clear session cookies, and trigger a hidden OAuth flow to capture fresh tokens. Doing so grants attackers continuous access to the victim’s Microsoft services without requiring them to ever re-authenticate.

To protect its administration panel from being accessed by security defenders, Forg365 integrates robust anti-analysis features. The platform utilizes debugger traps, polymorphic code, and dynamic sandbox checks to evade detection, redirecting connections to innocuous websites whenever a VPN is detected.

Administrators can defend against these hijacking techniques by monitoring Microsoft Entra logs for unexpected device-code authentication events. Organizations can also restrict or entirely disable device-code flows unless absolutely necessary. In the event of a suspected compromise, security teams should revoke all OAuth grants and refresh session tokens to sever access.

The Ugly | Rival Espionage Actors Breach & Spy On Pakistani Law Enforcement Networks

Between February 2024 and April 2026, suspected state-sponsored threat actors based in China and India separately converged on several Pakistani law enforcement organizations in unrelated cyberespionage campaigns.

According to SentinelLABS, operators heavily targeted the Balochistan Police, compromising critical network appliances and web servers. By infiltrating these critical systems, both nations actively sought independent visibility into Pakistan’s internal security posture and ongoing counter-militancy operations.

The China-nexus intrusions, leveraging PlugX, ShadowPad, and Cobalt Strike malware, were likely driven by Beijing’s concerns over the safety of Chinese nationals working on regional infrastructure projects within the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Ongoing terrorist attacks have left the Chinese government dissatisfied with Pakistani protection and data from Balochistan Police would give the PRC direct insights.

Conversely, the India-nexus activity utilized Remcos backdoors to gather intelligence on the restive Balochistan province, a recurring flashpoint in the adversarial relationship between the two countries. Control over Balochistan Police networks means having invaluable visibility on how Pakistan manages their security posture as well as persistent access to civilian data.

One China-aligned threat actor specifically compromised the Balochistan Police Force’s Complaint Management System (CMS), a web application that actively serves both law enforcement personnel and Pakistani civilian users. The attackers uploaded custom malware implants disguised as routine portal updates, effectively weaponizing the digitalization of public policing services.

One payload masqueraded as a legitimate component of endpoint security software to evade initial detection and deploy an AsyncRAT client in order to establish persistent footholds into internal police networks while simultaneously surveilling citizens utilizing the platform.

This multi-actor convergence highlights how modernized policing infrastructure can serve as a high-value intelligence target for rival nations seeking comprehensive regional data.

The Good | Authorities Apprehend Iranian Cybercriminal & Extradite UNC3944 Hacker

Montenegrin law enforcement, alongside the FBI, have apprehended a 39-year-old dual Iranian and Turkish citizen wanted by the U.S. government for several cybercrime offenses. Arrested in Kotor, the suspect faces charges in the Southern District Court of New York for conspiracy to commit computer fraud, hacking, and identity theft.

Since 2013, this individual allegedly orchestrated mass cyberattacks against more than 150 American universities and inflicted damages estimated at over $3.4 billion. Investigators say the stolen data and compromised academic credentials directly benefited the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and various Iranian state entities. The case now proceeds to a High Court judge for formal extradition hearings. The arrest follows recent warnings from U.S. cybersecurity agencies regarding escalating Iranian state-sponsored operations targeting critical domestic infrastructure.

A 19-year-old dual United States and Estonian citizen, Peter Stokes, has been extradited to face federal charges for his role as a core member of the UNC3944 (aka Scattered Spider, oktapus) cybercrime syndicate. Finnish authorities initially apprehended Stokes at the Helsinki airport as he attempted to board a flight to Japan. Prosecutors are accusing him of orchestrating multiple high-profile corporate breaches, using intense social engineering tactics against IT helpdesks to bypass multi-factor authentication controls.

In one notable May 2025 incident, UNC3944 compromised a multibillion-dollar retailer, demanding an $8 million ransom while inflicting over $2 million in operational disruption and remediation costs. UNC3944 operators are also responsible for more than 100 network intrusions globally, all of which yield upwards of $100 million in illicit extortion payments. Stokes remains in federal custody in Chicago, facing charges of fraud, conspiracy, and computer intrusion.

The Bad | Russian Intelligence Exploit Phishing Campaigns To Steal Signal Backup Keys

CISA and the FBI are warning that Russian state-sponsored threat actors have made large strides in evolving their phishing operations to target the backup recovery keys of Signal users. In an update to their March 2026 advisory, the two agencies attribute this ongoing activity to Russian Intelligence Services (RIS), including Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) Border Guards and the country’s military.

Tracked as UNC5792 and UNC4221, these campaigns specifically target high-value individuals, including government officials, military personnel, journalists, and policy analysts. Previously, operators focused on harvesting standard verification codes or tricking users into silently linking unauthorized devices. Now, they employ social engineering to access private communications without compromising the application’s underlying end-to-end encryption.

During targeted intrusions, attackers masquerade as official Signal support personnel and send direct messages falsely claiming the platform requires mandatory two-factor verification following alleged international cyberattacks. The operators systematically guide victims through the specific process of enabling the Secure Backups feature, instructing them to paste their newly generated recovery key directly into the chat interface.

Once adversaries obtain this critical key, they seamlessly download and decrypt the victim’s entire historical message archive onto their own controlled devices. Simply registering a new account under the same phone number does not natively invalidate a compromised key – users must actively generate a new backup key within their application settings to effectively secure future communications.

The U.S. Department of State recently announced a substantial reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the identification or location of these operatives. Through the Rewards for Justice program, federal authorities actively seek actionable intelligence regarding the syndicates’ operational infrastructure, illicit funding mechanisms, and direct affiliations with Russian intelligence services.

The Ugly | Unknown Hackers Breach Department of Homeland Security Information Network

The Department of Homeland Security is actively investigating a cyberattack that recently compromised its Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN). The network is an information sharing platform used by federal, state, local, and private-sector partners, specifically to share sensitive but unclassified data amongst the government and internationally.

According to an initial report, an unidentified threat actor orchestrated the intrusion between late May and early June. Investigators indicate that the attackers targeted the HSIN’s core servers alongside a SharePoint environment designed for extensive interagency collaboration.

While officials have not yet attributed the breach to a specific foreign government or syndicate, the full extent of data exposure remains unclear. The compromised platform routinely supports real-time incident management, intelligence exchange regarding persons of interest, and operational coordination. Because the United States is overseeing security for World Cup matches across the country, experts raise concerns that the intrusion could have exposed critical security planning, response procedures, and communication protocols.

In a public statement to the press, a departmental spokesperson confirmed the incident, clarifying that the breach strictly involved an unclassified legacy information-sharing environment. Security personnel promptly isolated the affected systems and mitigated the underlying vulnerability before starting forensics.

Officials emphasized that the attack did not impact classified networks, and the primary system remains operational for authorized partners. As the investigation continues, authorities strongly urge U.S. government staff, contractors, and associated partners to remain vigilant while defense teams harden the underlying infrastructure against further unauthorized network access attempts.

The Good | Authorities Dismantle Malware Networks and Seize Cambodian Scam Infrastructure

Following the seizure of a major Phishing-as-a-Service last week, the latest move, part of Operation Endgame, dismantled operational infrastructure supporting the Amadey and StealC malware families.

The joint effort by Europol and private sector partners successfully took 326 servers and 142 malicious domains offline. Investigators recovered approximately 27 million stolen credentials and identified over $47 million in cryptocurrency tied to illicit activities.

Cybercriminals had extensively utilized the malware-as-a-service operation to establish initial network access, harvest sensitive data, and deploy secondary ransomware payloads. Officials emphasize this disruption degrades the assembly lines fueling global cybercrime and financial fraud.

Two members of the Scattered Spider cybercrime syndicate have pleaded guilty to breaching the Transport for London systems in September 2024. Owen Flowers and Thalha Jubair admitted to orchestrating the cyberattack, which caused an estimated £29 million in financial damage.

The intrusion disrupted the transportation agency’s operations, delaying customer refunds and forcing 28,000 employees to reset their corporate passwords in person. Investigators secured convictions after recovering incriminating evidence, including network access screenshots and Telegram chat logs from seized devices. A judge will officially sentence the duo this July.

A cloud computing account operated by subsidiaries of HuiOne Group has been officially taken down by the DoJ, with the U.S. Treasury unveiling new sanctions against nine associated individuals and 26 entities. Authorities allege the infrastructure hosted HuiOne Guarantee, an illicit online marketplace that processed billions of dollars to facilitate widespread cyber scams and money laundering operations.

The platform provided essential services for Southeast Asian scam centers, selling stolen data, deepfake software, and malicious web development tools. Seizing the account effectively froze the technological backbone supporting these transnational criminal organizations.

The Bad | DPRK-linked macOS.Gaslight Makes AI Triage Agents Doubt Their Own Analysis

This week, SentinelLABS detailed macOS.Gaslight, a previously undocumented Rust-based macOS implant and infostealer linked with high confidence to North Korean threat actors. The implant carries the usual credential-theft machinery, but its standout feature is a 3.5 KB prompt-injection payload built to derail the LLM-assisted triage tools that increasingly sit in the reverse-engineering loop.

That payload is a Markdown-fenced block of 38 fabricated “system” messages delimited with the same {{DATA}} tokens that mimic an LLM triage harness’s own prompt scaffold, blurring the line between sample data and trusted instructions.

The messages feed the agent with fake token-expiry notices, out-of-memory kills, disk-exhaustion warnings, and bogus static-analysis flags. The aim is to make the AI reviewer doubt its own session and abort, truncate, or refuse its work.

Underneath the injection, macOS.Gaslight relies on established macOS tradecraft. It maintains command and control through a Telegram Bot API polling loop, encrypts payloads with AES-GCM over certificate-pinned TLS to frustrate network inspection, and gives operators an interactive shell that can run commands, kill processes, and exfiltrate files.

The implant also self-redacts its Telegram bot token at runtime, so the credential never surfaces in logs or crash artifacts and defenders lose an easy detection lead.

SentinelLABS researchers say earlier analyst-targeting LLM injections relied on a single injected block or header. Gaslight appears to be the first to use a cascade of fabricated failure messages to derail the analysis itself.

As AI-assisted analysis becomes routine, the researchers warn that defenders should treat everything inside a sample as hostile input, never as instructions, and keep it out of the model entirely.

The Ugly | Threat Actors Exploit Two Cisco Vulnerabilities to Achieve Root Access

Threat actors are actively exploiting a critical server-side request forgery vulnerability to compromise Cisco Unified Communications Manager systems. Tracked as CVE-2026-20230, the flaw stems from improper input validation within the WebDialer service.

During intrusions, attackers dispatch crafted HTTP requests containing genuine-formatted file-write payloads to target devices. If the disabled-by-default WebDialer service remains active, unauthenticated adversaries can arbitrarily write files directly to the operating system and ultimately elevate privileges to root level.

Cisco says it patched the flaw in recent updates and advises administrators to disable the feature entirely if immediate patching remains impossible.

Over the weekend we observed exploitation of CVE-2026-20230 – Cisco Unified CM (CUCM) WebDialer SSRF → root file-write (CVSS 8.6)

No previously recorded exploitation, and not yet listed in CISA KEV.

This is currently being exploited from a single source using an unvetted… pic.twitter.com/VBgJF8zJfj

— Defused (@DefusedCyber) June 22, 2026

It was also reported this week that an unknown threat actor exploited another Cisco flaw, this time impacting Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN controllers at least two months before public disclosure.

Researchers report how the attackers targeted a communications service provider to escalate a compromised administrative account to full root-level access. Following initial intrusions that likely leveraged earlier authentication bypass zero-days and stolen certificates, operators exploited the high-severity flaw, now tracked as CVE-2026-20245. By uploading a maliciously crafted CSV file, attackers bypassed input validation to create a hidden, rogue user account named “troot” equipped with a root shell.

Throughout the intrusion, the adversary employed sophisticated anti-forensic techniques to mask their operational footprint. After exfiltrating the SD-WAN fabric configuration, operators reverted administrative passwords to their original values to prevent discovery. Subsequently, the attackers deleted modified files, reversed configuration changes, and executed validation scripts to confirm all malicious indicators were entirely erased.

Analysts highlight that advanced adversaries increasingly target edge network devices because these critical systems frequently lack deep forensic visibility, allowing malicious operators to maintain persistent access undetected.

The Good | Authorities Dismantle PhaaS Network & Clean Sites Infected with SocGholish

A coordinated action between government and the private sector led by the FBI has led to the dismantling of Outsider Enterprise, a Chinese Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) operation.

Operating since 2023, the syndicate combined AI and distributed phishing kits to impersonate trusted brands across millions of fraudulent SMS messages sent from major U.S. telecommunications carriers. Investigators are attributing an estimated $1.9 billion in financial losses to the operation, alongside the theft of roughly 3.8 million credit card records.

Federal authorities were able to seize multiple administrative servers, a Shopify storefront, a Telegram bot containing customer data, and approximately $100,000 in cryptocurrency. Simultaneously, Google disabled thousands of associated domains and filed a civil lawsuit against the infrastructure operators. The tech giant is now actively coordinating with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon to aggressively block the fraudulent text messages before they reach targeted users.

In another joint effort involving Europol and Eurojust, law enforcement teams globally removed SocGholish malware infections from nearly 15,000 compromised WordPress websites and dismantled over 100 associated command servers.

This initiative is another arm of Operation Endgame, a broader campaign specifically targeting infrastructure linked to the notorious Russian-based cybercrime syndicate Evil Corp.

The SocGholish malware, a JavaScript-based downloader active since 2017, operates by hijacking legitimate websites to deceive visitors into installing malicious payloads disguised as routine browser updates. Upon installation, the malware establishes remote access, enabling threat actors to deploy secondary malware and ransomware families.

Following the extensive technical cleanup, authorities strongly advised affected site administrators to implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) and update their platform software. Officials also emphasize that this massive disruption actively prevents further damage to global networks and marks the beginning of sustained enforcement against the botnet.

The Bad | DragonForce Abuses Microsoft Teams Relays to Conceal Backdoor Traffic

DragonForce, a cartel-like ransomware operation established in 2023, is now using a custom Go-based malware, dubbed Backdoor.Turn, to conceal command-and-control (C2) communications within legitimate Microsoft Teams relay infrastructure.

Security researchers recently observed an attack on a major U.S. services company where DragonForce actors obtained an anonymous Teams visitor token backed by Skype identity services.

The malware subsequently leverages Microsoft’s Traversal Using Relays around NAT (TURN) protocol during connection setup, establishing a direct QUIC session to the attacker’s C2 server. Investigations learned that network defenders only observed outbound traffic directed toward trusted Microsoft servers, allowing the attackers to remain undetected on the compromised network for up to two months.

Researcher say the intrusion likely began in December 2025 following the exploitation of an SQL or MSSQL server vulnerability. Attackers at that point executed a PowerShell command to drop a ZIP archive disguised as a technical support hotfix, initiating a DLL side-loading sequence.

To achieve kernel-level privileges and actively terminate host security tools, the attackers employed extensive Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) techniques. They systematically deployed several vulnerable drivers, including a Huawei audio driver and a custom ABYSSWORKER payload masquerading as legitimate Palo Alto software.

The deployment of Backdoor.Turn marks the first documented in-the-wild abuse of Microsoft Teams TURN relays for C2 communications, building upon the theoretical “Ghost Calls” technique demonstrated in previous research.

Beyond deploying the DragonForce ransomware and exfiltrating data, the attackers injected the Backdoor.Turn remote access trojan into a legitimate debugger process to establish long-term persistence.

The backdoor provides the cartel with extensive post-exploitation capabilities, including network scanning, active directory reconnaissance, browser credential theft, and lateral movement, rounding out the group’s sophisticated cyber tradecraft.

The Ugly | PRC-Based Spies Breach REDCap Servers to Steal Medical Research

A China-linked espionage group, tracked as UNC6508, breached exposed REDCap servers to steal sensitive research data from a North American medical institution. Cyber researchers report that the attackers initially compromised the network back in September 2023 by probing vulnerable, legacy versions of the REDCap platform, which is widely utilized for managing scientific databases. Following the initial intrusion, the threat actors remained undetected within the victim’s environment until November 2025.

Three months after gaining access, the operators deployed a custom malware dubbed “InfiniteRed” specifically designed for REDCap environments. UNC6508 concealed these components by actively trojanizing the server’s underlying system files.

InfiniteRed operates through three primary modules: a persistence mechanism, a targeted credential harvester, and a versatile backdoor. The harvester intercepts user logins, encrypting and storing them directly within local database tables. In tandem, the backdoor receives commands via HTTP cookies, granting the attackers extensive capabilities to execute shell commands, run arbitrary SQL queries, and transfer files across the compromised infrastructure.

Considered a novel approach for China-linked actors, UNC6508 leveraged legitimate content compliance features within enterprise productivity tools to successfully exfiltrate data. By creating a compliance rule named “Patroit”, the attackers automatically forwarded emails containing specific keywords, such as those related to military readiness, molecular discovery, and geo-strategic policy, to an external, attacker-controlled email account. The operation maintained high operational security by utilizing U.S.-based residential proxies and compromised routers.

To mitigate these threats, administrators are strongly advised to immediately update all REDCap instances to the latest versions, enforce MFA, and implement Device Bound Session Credentials (DBSC) to prevent ongoing session hijacking. Indicators of compromise (IoCs) and YARA rules can be found here.

The Good | Authorities Dismantle Crypto Laundering Empire & Seize Espionage Domains

Europol has dismantled a major cryptocurrency laundering network called “AudiA6”, known for actively facilitating illicit transactions for ransomware syndicates and cybercriminals worldwide. Since 2022, the platform allegedly laundered more than $380 million by obscuring the origin of cybercrime proceeds through complex transaction routes for a 3-10% service commission. The joint operation, spanning 11 countries and supported by Eurojust, successfully seized multiple domains and froze a substantial amount of AudiA6’s digital assets.

Following forensic analysis stemming from a prior arrest in Poland, investigators were able to identify and apprehend the platform’s two senior administrators in Georgia. The industrial-scale infrastructure relied on thousands of fraudulent exchange accounts, all registered by recruited money mules using stolen identities. The suspects, who also managed the “Dark2Web” cybercrime forum, now face potential 20-year prison sentences for operating the illicit service.

The FBI has seized 13 fraudulent websites operated by suspected Chinese intelligence agents attempting to recruit U.S. citizens holding sensitive government security clearances. The campaign used AI-generated photographs and stolen identities to construct fake consulting firms that advertised generic analyst and consultant roles across major professional networking platforms including Upwork, HUbstaff Talent, and Wellfound.

When targets applied, operatives then pressured the candidates to disclose confidential or non-public information in exchange for lucrative compensation. To obscure their identities and the origin of funds, the recruiters used cryptocurrency and online payment systems.

Federal authorities have now successfully identified and dismantled the network after several targeted individuals reported the suspicious payment methods to investigators. Officials continually urge current and former government personnel to exercise extreme caution regarding unsolicited recruitment offers promising easy income for vague consulting work.

The Bad | JDY Botnet Expands Scope to Target U.S. Military Networks for Cyber Reconnaissance

A malware network previously associated with PRC-based threat groups like Volt Typhoon is expanding its cyber reconnaissance operations and target scope. Known as “JDY botnet”, the network has grown rapidly from approximately 650 active bots in early 2024 to over 1,500 compromised small office/home office (SOHO) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices today. While operators maintain a global footprint, they are now heavily concentrating efforts within the United States, specifically focusing on the military and its associated networks.

Unlike traditional distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnets, JDY functions primarily as a distributed scanning and fingerprinting network. Operators weaponize the network to quickly locate vulnerable infrastructure immediately following public vulnerability disclosures.

The malware then registers with a central dispatch service hosted on hidden Tor networks to receive scanning assignments. Once deployed on compromised edge devices, including hardware from Cisco, Ubiquiti, and Hikvision, the botnet executes comprehensive service discovery, service banner grabbing, TLS certificate collection, and protocol fingerprinting. When it has enough administrative privileges, JDY performs exceptionally fast and stealthy SYN scanning using custom-crafted TCP packets to batch-process thousands of potential targets.

Federal agencies previously warned about the risks to unprotected routing infrastructure. To prevent hardware from being recruited into these vast reconnaissance networks, administrators must consistently ensure all edge devices run the latest security patches. Organizations can proactively reduce their external attack surfaces by disabling unnecessary internet-exposed management interfaces, fully replacing default administrative credentials, and thoroughly monitoring for any unusual outbound scanning activity originating from local networks.

The Ugly | Miasma Supply Chain Worm Continues Propagation Across Microsoft & PyPI Repositories

The ongoing Miasma self-replicating supply chain worm recently compromised 73 Microsoft GitHub repositories, including projects related to Azure, prompting GitHub to rapidly disable access. An evolution from the “Mini Shai-Hulud” malware, threat actors are now directly pushing malicious configuration files into legitimate source repositories.

The hidden payloads automatically trigger code execution whenever developers open the compromised projects using popular AI coding assistants or integrated development environments (IDEs). The latest intrusions most notably involve the re-compromise of the “durabletask” PyPI package, indicating attackers retained previously stolen developer credentials to seamlessly propagate the worm through automated contributor workflows.

Since the series of Microsoft repo breaches, the campaign has evolved into a fresh attack wave dubbed “Hades”, actively targeting the PyPI registry. Attackers poisoned 19 PyPI packages with malicious wheel artifacts containing hidden .pth setup files. This mechanism executes silently during Python interpreter startup, entirely eliminating the need for victims to explicitly import the compromised packages.

The payload then downloads the standalone Bun JavaScript runtime to evade traditional network proxies, subsequently deploying a heavily obfuscated credential stealer. The malware aggressively harvests cloud access tokens, SSH keys, shell histories, and Docker configurations while introducing new, tailored memory scrapers specifically targeting macOS and Windows environments.

Advanced in its defensive evasion, the Hades variant incorporates novel plain-text prompt injections deliberately designed to deceive LLM-based package analysis tools into incorrectly classifying the malicious packages as safe.

Ultimately, these cascading supply chain attacks successfully exploit fundamental trust models within open-source ecosystems, leveraging compromised, authenticated maintainer accounts to embed persistence mechanisms directly into standard developer environments.

The Good | Fraud Networks Disrupted, Crypto Exchanges Sanctioned & Doxer Arrested

This week, the DoJ’s Scam Center Strike Force unveiled results from “Disruption Week,” a first-of-its-kind joint initiative between U.S. agencies and private industry targeting cyber-enabled cryptocurrency investment fraud. Federal investigators from the FBI, Secret Service, and HSI shared threat intelligence with major technology firms including Apple, Google, and Meta in May.

Acting on that intelligence, the private sector participants voluntarily disrupted over 1.4 million social media and email accounts operated by transnational criminal networks in Southeast Asia, while also decommissioning servers and hosting infrastructure supporting their scam operations.

The initiative also resulted in the arrest of seven scammers in Thailand, with new cases opened by the Royal Thai Police Anti Cyber Scam Center. The government additionally shared information enabling firms to freeze over $3.8 million in cryptocurrency tied to laundering funds stolen from Americans.

In other news, the U.S. Treasury this week sanctioned Nobitex, Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, for facilitating financial transactions linked to ransomware actors and terrorist operations. As part of the “Economic Fury” campaign, authorities designated multiple key executives alongside three additional Iranian trading platforms.

Investigators revealed that Nobitex systematically processed over half of the nation’s digital asset inflow in 2025, directly assisting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in broad sanctions evasion. The new sanction mandates the immediate freezing of all associated assets falling under U.S. jurisdiction, and prohibits U.S. citizens from doing any business with all named crypto exchanges.

Elsewhere, Spanish National Police have arrested an individual in connection to a data leak that exposed sensitive information from several critical government organizations. The records contained personal details of employees from the National Cybersecurity Institute, the National Police, the Civil Guard, and the State Attorney General’s Office.

The arrested individual allegedly published the personal data across various internet portals, prompting an immediate investigation into its distribution. While the leak created significant security risks, findings suggest that the aggregated data likely originated from historical credential dumps rather than direct system compromises.

The Bad | China-Based Actor TA4922 Expands Phishing Campaigns to Europe and Africa

A China-linked cybercrime syndicate tracked as TA4922 is actively expanding its phishing campaigns to target organizations across multiple regions. New research finds that the financially-motivated group, historically focused on East Asian networks, has now hit entities in Germany, Italy, South Africa, and the U.K.

TA4922 is known to share overlapping tradecraft with the Silver Fox espionage group but primarily pursues financial objectives, including massive data theft, corporate fraud, and persistent network access and its resale.

In recent months, attackers breached enterprise perimeters by launching credential phishing campaigns using human resources, corporate taxation, and invoice-themed lures.

During intrusions, TA4922 attempts to shift victim communications away from monitored email platforms onto out-of-band messaging channels like WhatsApp, LINE, and Microsoft Teams. The actor is also known to use DLL side-loading techniques to silently deploy remote access trojans like ValleyRAT and Atlas RAT, alongside tools such as RomulusLoader and SilentRunLoader.

These advanced loaders drop secondary executables designed to harvest sensitive corporate data, specifically targeting Google Chrome to exfiltrate stored credentials, cookies, and browsing information.

Researchers warn that although TA4922 prioritizes illicit financial gain, its capabilities facilitate deep network surveillance, creating risks that stolen access could be sold directly to espionage groups.

The Ugly | Cyberattackers Exploit Palo Alto VPN Authentication Bypass Vulnerability

Threat actors are actively exploiting a high severity (CVSSv4: 7.8) authentication bypass vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-0257 in PAN-OS GlobalProtect portals and gateways. The flaw allows attackers to bypass security restrictions and establish unauthorized VPN connections.

Cyber researchers observed initial in-the-wild exploitation against numerous PAN-OS users beginning on May 17, with successive attack waves originating from infrastructure hosted by Vultr and Dromatics Systems.

The vulnerability stems from an improper validation process regarding authentication override cookies. When PAN-OS decrypts these cookies, it automatically trusts the contents without performing essential signature verification. The issue manifests when administrators configure the system to use the same certificate for both HTTPS services and authentication overrides.

Threat actors are then able to initiate an HTTPS session to retrieve the corresponding public key, which they use to generate a forged authentication cookie, allowing attackers to authenticate without valid credentials. In several incidents, attackers secured full VPN IP assignments, granting them direct access to internal networks.

CISA has subsequently added the vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

We added Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS authentication bypass vulnerability CVE-2026-0257 to our KEV Catalog. Visit https://t.co/myxOwap1Tf for more information. #Cybersecurity #InfoSec pic.twitter.com/iqNABP4rQ9

— CISA Cyber (@CISACyber) May 29, 2026

Palo Alto Networks advisory lists available patches and workarounds.

The Good | Authorities Dismantle Malicious Hosting Network & Sentence Oregon State Cyberattacker

Web hosting firm, Stark Industries, was the subject of scrutiny this week from financial crime investigators in the Netherlands (FIOD). Founded just before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the firm had deep ties to Russian and Belarusian entities all sanctioned by the EU. Dutch authorities arrested two indviduals and seized 800 servers across multiple data centers that actively enabled Russian-based cyberattacks, disinformation operations, and widespread interference campaigns.

After being sanctioned in May of last year, Stark Industries shifted their operations to a front company named WorkTitans B.V., which provided hosting services under a new brand, THE.Hosting. This entity allegedly supported the pro-Russian hacktivist syndicate NoName057(16) in executing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and indirectly supplied economic resources to restricted organizations.

Collaboration between the DoJ and Romanian law enforcement has resulted in a Romanian national receiving a sentence of 56 months in federal prison for breaching an Oregon state government network.

Catalin Dragomir, operating under the alias “inthematrixl,” pled guilty to aggravated identity theft and obtaining information from a protected computer. Court documents reveal that the 46-year-old gained unauthorized access to the Oregon Department of Emergency Management in June 2021. He subsequently sold this network access to an outside buyer, providing stolen personally identifiable information.

Beyond the Oregon breach, Dragomir also compromised nearly a dozen other victims across the U.S., with total losses exceeding $250,000. Dragomir currently faces five years for computer intrusion, a mandatory two-year term for identity theft, and three years under supervised release. The court has additionally ordered the forfeiture of his cryptocurrency assets.

The Bad | Silent Ransom Group Attackers Dispatch Operatives for In-Person Data Extortion

In-person data theft schemes are on the rise again. In an urgent flash report, the FBI warns that Silent Ransom Group (SRG) is executing social engineering operations against U.S. legal and financial institutions directly at the site of the victim.

Splitting from the Conti syndicate in early 2022, SRG (aka UNC3753, Luna Moth, and Chatty Spider) has historically relied on targeted callback phishing. Lately, the group has escalated its tactics beyond network compromises to include unauthorized physical access.

The attack chain begins with the threat actors posing as internal IT support personnel. Using typosquatted helpdesk domains, the attackers deploy phishing emails or phone calls urging employees to contact them for technical assistance.

Once an employee engages, the attackers attempt to establish a remote desktop session to exfiltrate data. If remote access fails, SRG deliberately escalates the intrusion by sending an operative directly to the victim’s physical location. These unidentified individuals attempt to gain building access to manually insert USB flash drives or external hard drives into the targeted company computers.

Having obtained information, the extortion gang targets the victimized legal and financial organizations. The attackers send ransom demands threatening to publish the stolen proprietary data on leak sites, while simultaneously harassing both employees and external clients by phone to force financial negotiations.

This recent escalation builds upon previous advisories, making it critical for organizations to train staff on how to thoroughly verify digital helpdesk requests and immediately report threats to physical security.

The Ugly | TrapDoor Campaign Launch Cross-Ecosystem Supply Chain Attacks to Steal Credentials

Security researchers have uncovered TrapDoor, a coordinated software supply chain campaign actively distributing credential-stealing malware across npm, PyPI, and Crates.io.

Starting on May 22, 2026, threat actors deployed over 34 malicious packages spanning nearly 400 versions to specifically target developers within the cryptocurrency, decentralized finance, Solana, and AI communities.

Disguised as legitimate local environment and security tooling, TrapDoor works by harvesting a wide range of sensitive developer secrets, SSH keys, cloud credentials, and cryptocurrency wallets.

The operation uses tailored execution methods for each specific registry. Within npm environments, malicious postinstall hooks deploy a shared JavaScript payload that actively validates stolen AWS and GitHub tokens while attempting SSH-based lateral movement.

Rust crates similarly leverage malicious build scripts to search local keystores, encrypting discovered data with a hardcoded XOR key before exfiltrating it to GitHub Gists.

Meanwhile, the Python packages auto-execute during import to download and run remote JavaScript payloads from attacker-controlled domains, granting the operators significant flexibility to modify the malware’s behavior without publishing new registry releases.

TrapDoor establishes host persistence utilizing cron jobs, systemd services, and Git hooks. The campaign also targets AI coding assistants by implanting compromised files that contain hidden instructions deliberately designed to trick AI tools into autonomously executing malicious security scans that then discover and exfiltrate local secrets.

Researcher say that threat actors are now actively submitting pull requests containing these poisoned files to major open-source AI projects – an evolving tactic to compromise developer workflows through automated contributor processes and code integrations.

Researchers emphasize that this campaign combines traditional package typosquatting with emerging developer-environment attack vectors. By carefully tailoring package names to mimic legitimate cryptocurrency, AI, and local security workflows, the attackers successfully bypass initial developer scrutiny to execute their multi-ecosystem infiltration. A list of compromised packages can be found here.

The Good | Joint Operations Dismantle Cybercrime Infrastructure, Infostealers & Malicious VPNs

Over 200 individuals and another 382 suspects have been rounded up in Interpol’s Operation Ramz, an initiative targeting cybercrime networks across the Middle East and North Africa.

Spanning thirteen countries and working alongside cybersecurity partners, police seized 53 servers used for malware distribution, phishing campaigns, and online fraud responsible for attacks with at least 3867 confirmed victims.

The third major crackdown organized by Interpol this year, highlights of the operation include dismantling an investment scam in Jordan and a phishing-as-a-service (PHaaS) platform in Algeria, and confiscating devices, servers, and data linked to various operations in Qatar, Oman, and Morocco.

Ukrainian cyberpolice, alongside U.S. law enforcement, have identified a suspect in Odesa allegedly responsible for operating an infostealer malware campaign. Between 2024 and 2025, the accused targeted users of a California-based online store, compromising 28,000 customer accounts. He then exploited 5,800 of these stolen session tokens to make $721,000 in unauthorized purchases.

The suspect managed the digital infrastructure required to harvest, process, and sell the stolen account credentials through specialized online forums and Telegram bots. As authorities continue to build the formal charge, they have seized several phones, bank cards, and other digital evidence confirming his involvement in the attacks.

Europol has taken “First VPN”, used frequently to facilitate ransomware deployments and data theft, offline in a joint operation led by French and Dutch authorities. Investigators have seized 33 servers across 27 countries, confiscated all its related domains, and arrested the platform’s administrator.

Threat actors previously promoted the service on cybercrime forums as a “privacy-focused tool” that ignored police data requests. Authorities have now identified all users of the platform, sharing intelligence on 506 individuals to support ongoing global investigations into connected fraud schemes and ransomware attacks.

The Bad | New macOS Stealer Variant Masquerades as Apple, Google & Microsoft in Multi-Stage Attack

SentinelOne researchers have identified a new macOS infostealer variant using the build tag “Reaper”, the latest evolution within the SHub Stealer malware family.

The infection chain uses fake WeChat and Miro installers hosted on typosquatted domains to lure in victims. The websites employ extensive anti-analysis techniques, blocking developer tools and fingerprinting visitors to avoid virtual environments.

To sidestep Apple’s recent macOS Tahoe mitigations, the malware abandons traditional “ClickFix” social engineering in Terminal, instead leveraging the applescript:// URL scheme to launch the macOS Script Editor.

The malicious HTML from the webpage creates a script deliberately padded with ASCII art to hide the malicious command. On execution, the script displays a message indicating it is downloading an Apple security update.

Once executed, the AppleScript prompts the user for their password to access protected Keychain items and decrypt credentials. Reaper extensively harvests browser data, password manager extensions, and iCloud account details.

On top of this, the variant introduces an AMOS-style Filegrabber module that targets business and financial documents, dividing the stolen data into 70MB chunked ZIP archives for exfiltration.

The Reaper malware also actively hijacks desktop cryptocurrency applications by terminating the active processes and replacing the legitimate core app.asar file. To bypass macOS Gatekeeper, the script clears quarantine attributes and applies ad hoc code signing to the modified application bundle.

Reaper is an example of SHub operators extending beyond credential and wallet theft. Unlike earlier SHub builds, this variant establishes persistence by installing a persistent backdoor on the compromised machine.

Since the infection chain layers in spoofs of trusted software and big brand names, macOS defenders are reminded to watch for unplanned AppleScript activity, suspicious outbound traffic, and any unexpected creation of LaunchAgents and related files.

The Ugly | Two Microsoft Defender Zero-Days Allow SYSTEM Privileges & Trigger DoS States

Two Microsoft zero-days affecting its Defender antimalware suite are being actively exploited to trigger denial-of-service (DoS) states on unpatched Windows devices. The first flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-41091 (CVSS: 7.8), is a privilege escalation vulnerability impacting the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine versions 1.1.26030.3008 and earlier. This engine provides scanning, detection, and cleaning functions for Microsoft’s native security software. The vulnerability arises from an improper link resolution weakness before file access (‘link following’) in Defender, which attackers can leverage to successfully gain SYSTEM-level privileges on compromised machines.

The second vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-45498 (CVSS: 7.5), impacts the Microsoft Defender Antimalware Platform versions 4.18.26030.3011 and earlier. The platform underpins the suite of security tools used by Microsoft’s System Center Endpoint Protection, System Center 2012 R2 Endpoint Protection, System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection, and Security Essentials. If successfully exploited, this flaw allows threat actors to trigger DoS conditions on unpatched Windows devices.

Microsoft warns two Defender vulnerabilities are being actively exploited in the wild.https://t.co/zWPNKTIidF

CVE-2026-41091 could allow attackers to gain SYSTEM privileges locally.
CVE-2026-45498 is a denial-of-service flaw impacting Defender.

CISA added both to KEV… pic.twitter.com/S2PQ9D2fch

— The Hacker News (@TheHackersNews) May 21, 2026

Microsoft has since released updated versions for both the engine and platform to mitigate these issues. While the vendor notes that default configurations should automatically install these critical platform updates, administrators are strongly advised to manually verify whether Windows Defender Antimalware Platform updates and malware definitions are configured to verify and autoinstall the updates. According to its security advisory, users should check their Antimalware ClientVersion number in the Windows Security settings.

In response to active in-the-wild exploitation, CISA has added both flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog and issued a mandate requiring Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to thoroughly secure their Windows servers and endpoints by June 3, 2026.

The Good | Authorities Dismantle Major Dark Web Marketplaces & Arrest Key Admins

European authorities dismantled a lucrative, rebooted version of the ‘Crimenetwork’ cybercrime marketplace and arrested its primary administrator in Mallorca, Spain. When German police first disrupted the original platform in late 2024 and apprehended its operator, a 35-year-old suspect allegedly constructed an identical infrastructure to resume operations just days after. In the last two years, the resurrected criminal hub has amassed an extensive user base, attracting over 22,000 registered individuals and 100 specialized vendors who actively trafficked in stolen data, illegal services, and narcotics.

Before the shutdown this week, the platform generated an estimated €3.6 million in illicit revenue. The coordinated enforcement action involved authorities seizing the underlying infrastructure alongside approximately €194,000 in criminal assets. The current administrator now faces federal charges under the German Criminal Code and Narcotics Act, marking another step ahead against dark web economies.

In a separate arrest, U.S. and German authorities have jointly detained Owe Martin Andresen (aka Speedstepper), the main operator behind Dream Market – one of the largest dark web marketplaces to date. The 49-year-old allegedly orchestrated a massive global narcotics hub that facilitated the sale of hundreds of kilograms of illicit drugs until its shutdown in 2019. After years of complete anonymity, Andresen recently utilized original private keys to access dormant marketplace wallets containing millions in hidden commission payments.

Federal prosecutors claim he systematically laundered over $2 million by purchasing massive quantities of gold bars through an American cryptocurrency service provider. During a series of coordinated raids, law enforcement recovered approximately $1.7 million in gold bars, $23,000 in cash, and many cryptocurrency wallets, finally bringing the elusive kingpin to face international money laundering charges.

The Bad | Threat Actors Weaponize Artificial Intelligence to Develop Zero-Day Exploits

A new report from Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) reveals a coordinated campaign exploiting an AI-generated zero-day vulnerability. The attack targets an unnamed open-source web administration tool, using the flaw to bypass two-factor authentication (2FA). The researchers say they identified an active threat actor utilizing large language models (LLMs) to actively discover and weaponize software vulnerabilities in the wild.

As the targeted flaw involves a high-level semantic logic bug stemming from a hard-coded trust assumption, rather than typical memory corruption, it matches the bug classes LLMs excel at identifying. Researchers have assessed with high confidence that the resulting Python exploit script was AI-generated, pointing to an abundance of educational docstrings, its distinctly textbook structure, and telltale hallucinations, including a completely fabricated CVSS score.

The report notes that state-sponsored syndicates from China and North Korea are showing increasing interest in using LLMs for continuous vulnerability discovery and exploit development. Simultaneously, Russia-linked adversaries actively utilize AI to generate decoy code that heavily obfuscates malware like CANFAIL and LONGSTREAM, alongside deploying advanced voice cloning for more convincing social engineering campaigns.

To demonstrate this evolution, researchers also highlighted an Android backdoor called PromptSpy, which integrates with Gemini APIs to bypass LLM safety features, calculate interface geometry, and autonomously replay device authentication patterns such as lock PINs.

For defenders, the widespread use of AI by threat actors is compressing attack timelines, meaning patch windows that once lasted weeks may now close in hours.

The Ugly | ShinyHunters Exploits Multiple XSS Flaws to Extort Education Technology Giant Canvas

Education technology giant, Instructure, recently confirmed a two-week long cybersecurity incident after ShinyHunters breached its popular Canvas learning management system (LMS). The attackers initially infiltrated the network in late April, exfiltrating a staggering 3.6 terabytes of data encompassing an estimated 280 million records across nearly 8,900 global educational institutions.

Days later, the attackers struck again, actively exploiting multiple cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities within user-generated content features. After hijacking authenticated admin sessions, ShinyHunters deliberately defaced active Canvas login portals during final exam season, displaying disruptive extortion messages and demanding immediate ransom negotiations.

The mass exfiltration exposed critical student and teacher information, including names, email addresses, and private platform messages, though financial data remained secure. To mitigate escalating operational damage, Instructure abruptly suspended its Free-for-Teacher environments while quickly implementing critical safeguards. This week, the company reached an undisclosed agreement with ShinyHunters to halt the public leak, despite repeated warnings from the FBI that a paid ransom does not guarantee double or triple extortion in the future. So far, ShinyHunters has removed Instructure from their dark web leak sites and seemingly confirmed the deletion of all stolen data.

After triggering intense federal scrutiny, the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security has launched a formal investigation into the repeated breaches, questioning Instructure’s incident response capabilities and data protection obligations. Lawmakers are demanding immediate briefings from corporate leadership to thoroughly review the severe educational disruptions and compromised security controls that continue to affect millions of vulnerable students, administrators, and teachers globally.