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The CISA and FBI, along with cybersecurity agencies from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.K., have released new guidance on outage communications for service providers dealing with major IT and OT outages. The guide calls for prompt, factual and audience-specific communication during disruptions caused by malicious cyber activity or non-malicious events.

Titled “Communicating Under Pressure: Best Practices for Service Providers,” the guidance says effective communication is critical to limiting operational impact when IT and OT outages affect customers, network defenders, critical infrastructure owners and operators, and the public. It recommends that organizations clearly communicate what is known, what remains unknown and what is still under investigation, while providing frequent updates as circumstances change.

Outage Communications Should Start With Facts

The agencies recommend that service providers establish an outage communications plan before an incident occurs. The plan should define incident thresholds, escalation paths, target audiences and procedures for status pages, customer and partner notices, and regulatory communications. Organizations are also advised to establish cross-functional incident teams involving engineering and operations, communications, legal, risk and compliance, and customer support.

The guidance calls for clearly defined roles, including an incident lead, communications lead and spokesperson. It also recommends parallel workstreams so technical teams can focus on diagnosing and remediating the root cause while communications teams manage external messaging and leadership handles strategy and regulatory requirements.

For organizations responding to cyber incidents, the guidance places particular emphasis on balancing transparency with operational security. If malicious activity is suspected or confirmed, external communications should not compromise investigations, containment efforts or other response activities. Organizations are also advised against making premature conclusions when the root cause remains under investigation.

Service Providers Urged to Tailor Messages

The guidance recommends segmenting communications for technical teams, executives and the public. Audiences can include enterprise IT teams and security operations centers, employees and customers, government partners and regulators, critical infrastructure owners and operators, as well as the media and general public.

During an outage, organizations should lead with a concise summary covering affected systems, user impact, scope and the known cause without speculation. The agencies also advise against vague descriptions such as “service degradation” and recommend messaging that can be understood quickly during high-pressure situations.

Transparency is another central principle. Service providers are advised to state what they know and do not know, use a single source of truth such as a status page, and focus communications on actionable guidance rather than reputation management. Customers should be told what actions they need to take or clearly informed when no action is required.

The guidance also calls for continuous, time-stamped updates that show the incident timeline, actions taken, and recovery milestones. Organizations should maintain a single status page and align external messaging with legal, contractual and sector-specific reporting obligations.

Agencies ultimately frame effective outage communications around five principles: immediate acknowledgement, technical and actionable information, transparency, accountability, and continuous updates. For service providers, the guidance positions communication as an important part of incident response, alongside technical remediation and recovery.

FBI seizes QScan and QTRouter, China-linked platforms used to hide intrusions and target U.S. critical infrastructure.

The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI have seized two platforms, QScan and QTRouter, used by a China-linked group to hide cyberattacks and target critical infrastructure. The operation matters because it shows how state-backed actors no longer need to build every part of an attack from scratch: they can rely on shared scanning tools, compromised devices, commercial proxy services, and rented servers.

U.S. authorities attribute the activity to a group known as QTFY, which they say operated through the China-based company Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Company. According to the Justice Department, the group offered hacking services to paying clients that included China’s Ministry of State Security and the People’s Liberation Army.

“The Justice Department and FBI announced court-authorized domain seizures today to deny malicious cyber actors access to two complementary hacking platforms known as “QScan” and “QTRouter,” used to target U.S. critical infrastructure and other sensitive networks. As described in court documents unsealed in the Southern District of California, a People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored group known as “QTFY,” employed by China-based Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Company (南京鑫玖维网络科技有限公司), created and operated QScan and QTRouter.” reads the press release published by DoJ.

According to the Justice Department, QTFY targeted NASA, the Federal Reserve, the Departments of Energy, Justice, and Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Senate. Those are not random targets caught in a broad scan.

QScan and QTRouter had different jobs. QScan searched the internet for vulnerable devices and automatically infected thousands of exposed Internet of Things devices. Those compromised routers, cameras, appliances, and other connected systems were then added to QTRouter, a proxy network used to route malicious traffic through systems located outside China.

That approach makes attribution and blocking harder. A victim may see an attack coming from what appears to be a local router, a legitimate commercial proxy, or a virtual private server rented in another country. Blocking traffic by country or IP address becomes far less useful when the attacker is borrowing the identity and location of other people’s devices.

“QScan scans and automatically infects thousands of “internet-of-things” (IoT) devices worldwide, which are then added to the QTRouter network of QTFY-controlled devices. QTRouter consists of these compromised IoT devices, as well as commercial proxy service devices and leased virtual private servers.” continues DoJ. “QTRouter then serves as an “obfuscation network” – meaning it allows QTFY and other malicious cyber actors to conceal the PRC-origin of their computer intrusion activities because the malicious communications appear to originate from computers (such as those compromised by QScan) that are outside of the PRC and may even be local to the targeted networks.”

The government did not merely take down a website. The seized domains were hard-coded into QScan and QTRouter and used for core functions such as authentication and command-and-control communication. By taking control of those domains through a court order, the FBI made the malware platforms unable to operate as intended.

This is a useful example of technical disruption rather than simple attribution. Publicly naming a group matters, but it does not stop an operator who already has access to vulnerable devices and a working relay network. Taking away the infrastructure they need to manage that network is more disruptive, at least until they rebuild it.

“Because the seized domains were hard-coded into both the QScan and QTRouter malware and used for essential tasks such as communication and authentication, the court-authorized seizures made QScan and QTRouter inoperable.” DoJ states.

The broader operation looks like an industrial service model. QTFY allegedly used QScan to map targets, identify weaknesses, and compromise devices; it then used QTRouter and other proxy layers to hide where the activity actually came from. Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs described the group as a “digital quartermaster,” meaning it supplied infrastructure and services that could support multiple operations at the same time.

“To support its primary objectives, the quartermaster runs a secondary, completely decoupled target profiling utility called “QScan.” While the core proxy network focuses on managing stateful session paths, the QScan framework operates as the front-end scout.” reads a report published by Lumen. “The operations of this quartermaster demonstrate the high degree of industrialization occurring within China-nexus cyber operations. By shifting away from fragmented, ad hoc setups and toward shared multi-tenant utility networks, state-sponsored actors can execute complex campaigns with a high degree of anonymity and speed, and at a global scale.”

The group reportedly exploited both old and newly disclosed vulnerabilities in widely deployed products, including Fortinet SSL-VPN, Citrix ADC, Microsoft Exchange, F5 BIG-IP, Apache Log4j, Atlassian Confluence, Check Point gateways, CrushFTP, Ivanti appliances, and BeyondTrust Remote Support. This is not a reminder that organisations need magic detection. It is a reminder that old vulnerabilities remain useful because somebody, somewhere, will still leave them unpatched.

The attack chain also included web shells, remote-access trojans, stolen or legitimate credentials, and compromised IoT devices used as nearby relay points. That combination allows an attacker to blend into normal-looking traffic and avoids the obvious infrastructure that defenders have learned to block. A hostile connection that looks like a local consumer router is still hostile; it just has better camouflage.

This seizure follows earlier FBI actions against China-linked botnets. In 2025, the FBI removed PlugX malware from more than 4,000 infected U.S. computers linked to Mustang Panda. In 2024, it disrupted a botnet of hundreds of thousands of IoT devices associated with Flax Typhoon, while in 2023 it acted against a Volt Typhoon botnet used to conceal activity targeting U.S. and foreign critical infrastructure.

“For defenders, the operational lesson is straightforward. Inventory internet-facing assets, patch known vulnerabilities quickly, remove unsupported devices, monitor unusual outbound proxy traffic, and do not assume that an IP address tells you who is behind an attack. The same applies to IoT equipment: a router, camera, network appliance, or smart device left exposed and unmanaged can become part of someone else’s attack platform.

“This disruption announced today is among a series of court-authorized technical operations against indiscriminate hacking activities by the PRC.” concludes DoJ.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, QTRouter)

Cybercriminals used to hacking home routers and security cameras have found another Internet-connected device to add to their botnets: your car, according to research published by Kaspersky Lab.

The post Malware Takes the Wheel: Kaspersky Finds First Car Head Unit-Specific Attack appeared first on The Security Ledger with Paul F. Roberts.

ICE collected nearly a million DNA samples last year.

Federal court records show how far the FBI’s Pegasus review progressed — and why new US spyware reporting will still leave major gaps in government hacking transparency.

The post FBI Pegasus Records Expose a Blind Spot in US Spyware Oversight appeared first on TechRepublic.

The FBI is warning the public about sexual exploitation actors illegally accessing social media and personal accounts to steal explicit images and videos from adult and underage victims. The stolen material, also known as non-consensual intimate images (NCII), is being posted or sold on criminal marketplaces, often without the victim's knowledge.

According to the FBI, these actors use social engineering and cyber intrusion tactics to target specific individuals or general targets of opportunity. After gaining access to accounts, they steal explicit content and share it through community forums or illicit marketplaces.

The FBI said personally identifiable information, including a victim's name, date of birth, email address, phone number and social media username, is often posted alongside the stolen material. This can expose victims to continued harassment and re-victimization.

How Sexual Exploitation Actors Access Accounts

The FBI has identified several methods used by sexual exploitation actors to gain access to victims' accounts.

Password and PIN Targeting

In password/PIN targeting, actors use high-volume password and PIN attempts against social media and personal accounts. The information used in these attempts can come from data leak sites, social media and open-source information.

When victims are known to the actors, curated lists may include personal details such as names, date of birth or variations of those details.

Social Media Customer Service Impersonation

Another tactic involves social media customer service impersonation through text messages. Victims may receive messages claiming their account is being disabled or locked unless they provide a verification code.

The actor then requests a password reset, causing a code to be sent to the victim. If the victim shares the code, the actor can reset the password and access the account.

Phishing Emails

The FBI also warns about phishing campaigns using look-alike domains and email accounts designed to appear as social media customer support.

These messages may claim there has been a new login and contain an embedded link asking the victim to change their password. Clicking the malicious link can give the actor access to the account.

Stolen Content Can Lead to Further Attacks

Once explicit content is stolen, sexual exploitation actors may post or sell it while including personal information about the victim. The FBI said victims can subsequently face harassment, sextortion, stalking or other targeted attacks.

The actors may also advertise stolen content through a victim's own social media page, increasing the potential for further exposure.

FBI Shares Steps to Protect Accounts

The FBI advises people to avoid storing sensitive images or videos on social media platforms or other internet-accessible sites.

It recommends using unique, complex passphrases and PINs along with multi-factor authentication (MFA). Password information directly associated with a person's identity, including names or birthdays, should be avoided.

Users should also be cautious with links received through emails and text messages. The FBI recommends going directly to the relevant website to address account concerns and checking URLs before clicking.

Unrequested temporary passwords, PIN resets or access codes should also be treated with caution. The FBI advises users not to share login information, even when someone claims to represent a platform or service.

Hackers are targeting college athletes’ accounts to steal intimate photos, prompting a new FBI and NCAA initiative focused on prevention and support.

The post FBI, NCAA Warn Hackers Are Targeting College Athletes’ Private Photos appeared first on TechRepublic.

The FBI has issued a Public Service Announcement (PSA) warning that criminals are breaking into social media and personal accounts to steal and distribute intimate images and videos without consent. The FBI refers to this type of content as non-consensual intimate images (NCII).

The stolen material may be posted or sold on criminal marketplaces alongside victims’ names, phone numbers, email addresses, and social media handles, creating opportunities for harassment, stalking, and sextortion.

According to the FBI, criminals use a mix of account takeover and social engineering tactics:

• Password and PIN guessing: Criminals make high-volume login attempts using data from breaches, public social media profiles, leak sites, and other publicly available sources. Known victims may be targeted using name variations, birth dates, and other predictable personal details.
• Fake customer service texts: Victims receive a message claiming their social media account will be locked or disabled. The criminal triggers a legitimate password reset request, then persuades the victim to hand over the resulting verification code.
• Phishing emails: Lookalike support domains and email addresses warn of a “new login” and direct victims to a fake password change page designed to steal credentials.

This is different from the familiar “I recorded you” sextortion email, which typically relies on intimidation rather than a real account compromise. Still, if such an email includes a password you still use, change it immediately wherever it remains in use.

How to stay safe

There are several ways to reduce the risk of becoming a victim:

• Avoid storing sensitive images on social media platforms or other internet-connected services when possible. Breaches and leaks happen, and those images can end up in the wrong hands.
• Use a password manager to create a unique, long password for every account. Don’t base passwords or PINs on names, birthdays, or other public information.
• Turn on multi-factor authentication (MFA), preferably with passkeys or hardware security keys where available. MFA is valuable, but criminals can still phish one-time codes and session cookies, so never approve an unexpected prompt or share a verification code.
• Treat unexpected “account warning” links in texts and emails as suspicious. Open the service’s official app or type the known web address yourself instead. Don’t trust sponsored search results to take you to the correct website.

If you discover that intimate content has been stolen or shared, preserve any relevant links and evidence, secure the affected accounts, and report it through the FBI’s NCII reporting portal at ncii.ic3.gov.

Scammers don’t need to hack you. They just need you to click once. 

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is warning that scammers are impersonating the bureau on social media and on messaging apps, targeting people who’ve already been victims of cybercrime.

The FBI has issued warnings like this before, but scammers posing as IC3 employees and FBI agents continue to evolve their schemes and claim new victims.

The best-known of these scams are recovery scams, complete with FBI logos and branding that make them look far more convincing.

Facebook accounts like the one below—and yes, I reported it—with equally fake reviews prey on people who have already fallen victim to a scammer.

“Have You Been Scammed or Defrauded? We’re Here to Help.

If you’ve fallen victim to online fraud, investment scams, crypto scams, romance scams, or unauthorized transactions, Reliable Scam Recovery Inc is ready to assist you in pursuing the recovery of your lost funds.

Our experienced recovery team works with victims to investigate scam activities, trace transactions, and provide guidance throughout the recovery process with confidentiality and professionalism.

Professional case assessment

Secure and confidential support

Dedicated recovery assistance

Fast response team

Don’t let scammers win. Take the first step toward reclaiming your losses today.

Contact Ic3 Scam Recovery Inc now for support and recovery assistance.”

The scammers count on victims feeling desperate and embarrassed. They have no scruples about victimizing them all over again.

The post contains a lot of the tell-tale signs IC3 warns about. Very vague but reassuring claims: “experienced recovery team,” “professional case assessment,” “secure and confidential support” all sound impressive but provide no verifiable detail. High‑level promises like “investigate scam activities” and “trace transactions” imply special legal or technical powers, but the FBI warns that scammers make similar promises to convince victims they’re dealing with authorized investigators.

Besides setting up fake IC3 accounts, they also monitor social media for posts from victims saying they’ve reported a scam to the FBI, then swoop in posing as FBI follow‑up contacts.

If victims remain unconvinced, the scammers may create videos depicting senior FBI officials or other recognizable public figures urging them to submit their case through a specific link “to speed up recovery.” The FBI says criminals are increasingly using AI-generated deepfake audio and video to make these messages appear genuine.

How to stay safe

First and foremost, remember that IC3 has no official social media presence, does not investigate crimes via social media, and will never contact victims directly to recover funds.

As the IC3 homepage states:

“The IC3 does not work with any non-law enforcement entity, such as law firms or crypto services, to recuperate lost funds or investigate cases. The IC3 will never directly contact you for information or money.”

So, if an “agent” appears in your direct messages (DMs) right after you post publicly about being a crime victim or planning to report to the FBI, assume they are a scammer until independently verified. A few other tips:

• Never pay upfront: Legitimate government agencies never ask you for advance payment to recover stolen money.
• Ignore unsolicited claims: Be highly suspicious of anyone who reaches out to you out of the blue claiming they can reverse a previous scam.
• Never share your credentials: Do not give remote access to your device or hand over your passwords and recovery phrases to unknown third parties.
• Don’t provide IDs or financial information. Scammers can use them for identity theft or further fraud.
• Use verification tools: If you receive a suspicious email, message, or phone call, you can verify its legitimacy using tools like Malwarebytes Scam Guard.
• Report scammers: If you or someone you know has fallen victim to this scam, file a complaint with the IC3 at ic3.gov. 

Something feel off? Check it before you click.  

Malwarebytes Scam Guard helps you analyze suspicious links, texts, and screenshots instantly.  

Available with Malwarebytes Premium Security for all your devices, and in the Malwarebytes app for iOS and Android.  

Try it free → 

Google announced that it helped take down NetNut, a 2 million strong malicious residential proxy network. The incident highlights the growing risks posed by residential proxy networks that quietly conscript consumer devices into services used by cybercriminals and nation-state actors alike.

The post Residential Proxy Risks: Understanding Google’s Latest Action Against 2 Million Strong NetNut appeared first on The Security Ledger with Paul F. Roberts.

FBI says TeamPCP poisoned trusted developer tools to steal cloud credentials, spread malware through software updates, and extort victims.

On July 2, 2026, the FBI published a FLASH alert identifying the criminal group called TeamPCP and detailing how it compromised widely used developer and security tools to steal credentials from victim environments at scale. The targets weren’t end users. They were the tools developers trust every day inside their build pipelines.

TeamPCP is behind multiple supply chain attacks, in the past, they targeted PyPI packages and NPM repositories, and most recently the “Mini Shai-Hulud” campaign also caught two OpenAI employees. The pattern is consistent: go after the tools developers trust, poison the supply chain, and let the downstream damage multiply.

TeamPCP’s method was straightforward and effective: inject malicious code into legitimate software packages, push the trojanized versions through normal distribution channels, and wait for CI/CD pipelines to pull them in automatically. The modified tools installed credential-stealing malware and persistent backdoors without any visible sign that anything had changed.

“TeamPCP actors have conducted large-scale software supply chain compromises by targeting widely used developers and security tools, gaining access to victim environments and extracting sensitive data, including but not limited to cloud access tokens, SSH keys, and Kubernetes secrets.” FBI’s FLASH states.

The confirmed list of modified tools includes Trivy, a widely used container vulnerability scanner; KICS, a static analysis tool for infrastructure-as-code; LiteLLM, a popular library for routing requests across AI model APIs; and the Telnyx Python SDK.

These aren’t niche utilities. They’re commonly integrated into enterprise CI/CD pipelines, cloud infrastructure workflows, and security scanning processes. Hitting them means hitting a large number of organizations simultaneously through a single poisoned update.

The group also deployed four distinct malware families. CanisterWorm harvested cloud access tokens, credentials, and API keys for AWS, GCP, and Azure. SANDCLOCK extracted AWS credentials, Kubernetes ServiceAccount tokens, local environment variables, and cryptocurrency wallet data. Mini Shai-Hulud was a self-replicating worm designed to spread across both npm and PyPI registries. Miasma was a variant of Mini Shai-Hulud that propagated across those same open-source registries while harvesting credentials and poisoning configuration files.

The worm component is the part that deserves particular attention. Mini Shai-Hulud and its Miasma variant didn’t just infect the initial target and stop. They spread across open-source package registries autonomously, harvesting credentials and poisoning configuration files as they went. The FBI confirmed two GitHub repository names used for exfiltration: tpcp-docs and docs-tpcp. If either of those repository names appears in your GitHub organization, the worm created it using stolen credentials.

“By weaponizing these supply chain entry points, the threat actors were able to introduce malicious code into victim environments at scale. TeamPCP has also engaged in extortion and collaboration with cyber actors from other threat actor groups, including publishing victim names on a public leak site and threatening disclosure of stolen data.” states the alert.

The FBI warns that credentials and data stolen in this campaign should be considered permanently compromised, as they could be reused by TeamPCP or affiliated threat actors in future attacks, even months or years after the initial breach.

“Organizations impacted by this campaign should treat exfiltrated data and credentials as a persistent risk, as affiliated threat actors are likely to weaponize them long after the initial compromise.” concludes the alert.

That’s not a hypothetical. It means credentials stolen in this campaign may surface in attacks months or years from now, even after the immediate incident is closed.

How they got into npm accounts?

One technique the FBI specifically flags is worth calling out: TeamPCP exploited npm package maintainer accounts by targeting stale or expired recovery email domains. If a developer registered an npm account years ago with a work email that’s since been decommissioned, the domain may be available for registration. Whoever registers it can use the password reset flow to take over the npm account and publish malicious versions of whatever packages that maintainer owns. It’s an old technique, and it still works because nobody audits their old recovery emails.

The four CVEs associated with this campaign are CVE-2026-33634, CVE-2026-48027, CVE-2026-45321, and CVE-2025-55182. Six IP addresses appear in the indicators: 83.142.209.11, 45.148.10.212, 83.142.209.194, 83.142.209.203, 94.154.172.43, and 67.217.57.240. The indicator set also includes 27 file hashes and a set of domains including checkmarx[.]zone, models.litellm[.]cloud, git-tanstack[.]com, and recv.hackmoltrepeat[.]com, among others. The indicators in this alert are derived from Palo Alto Unit 42’s technical research into the campaign.

The FBI’s recommendations focus on the specific mechanisms TeamPCP exploited. Pin GitHub Actions workflows to verified commit SHA hashes rather than floating version tags, since floating tags can be redirected to point at malicious commits without changing the reference in your workflow file. Rotate all CI/CD secrets, publishing tokens, and cloud credentials that were accessible during the campaign’s active window. Enforce least-privilege permissions on CI/CD service accounts and scope registry publishing tokens to prevent them from being used across repositories.

Require phishing-resistant MFA on all accounts with code repository or package registry publishing access. Enforce a minimum package age threshold of at least seven days across package installation environments, which gives the community time to detect and report malicious versions before they propagate widely. Audit npm maintainer accounts for stale or expired recovery email domains. Implement runtime behavioral monitoring on CI/CD pipeline runners to catch unexpected outbound network connections.

On credential hygiene specifically: store secrets in dedicated encrypted secret managers, not in code or configuration files; prefer temporary credentials over static ones; rotate everything immediately after any suspected compromise; and scan repositories and logs for exposed secrets with automated tooling.

“TeamPCP has also engaged in extortion and collaboration with cyber actors from other threat actor groups, including publishing victim names on a public leak site and threatening disclosure of stolen data.” The FLASH concludes.

That collaboration angle means the stolen data has already been shared beyond the original group.

Organizations that believe they’ve been hit should report to their local FBI field office or to IC3 at ic3.gov, and should retain CI/CD pipeline logs, network logs, affected package names and versions, any exposed credentials, and any extortion communications they’ve received.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, TeamPCP)

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said today it worked with industry partners to seize hundreds of domains associated with NetNut, a sprawling residential proxy service operated by the publicly-traded Israeli company Alarum Technologies [NASDAQ: ALAR]. The action comes roughly two weeks after KrebsOnSecurity published findings from multiple security firms connecting NetNut to the Popa botnet, a collection of at least two million devices that have been compromised by malicious software with little or no consent from victims.

The NetNut homepage today was replaced by this seizure banner from the FBI.

On June 19, three different security firms issued similar findings: That NetNut is a residential proxy network which populates a botnet called Popa, and distributes software for devices commonly found in homes, such as smart TVs and streaming boxes. NetNut’s software turns those systems into always-on residential proxy nodes that are rented to others, who predominantly use them to relay abusive and intrusive Internet traffic, such as mass content scraping, advertising fraud, and account takeover activity.

Earlier today, NetNut’s homepage was replaced with a seizure notice from the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation division. The seizure notice thanked Google, Lumen, Shadowserver and other industry partners for their help in dismantling hundreds of domains tied to the Popa botnet, which experts say has long been synonymous with NetNut’s residential proxy infrastructure.

In a blog post published today, the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said NetNut’s proxy network is widely resold and white-labeled by a number of third-party proxy providers, and that its services are heavily sought out by cybercriminals seeking to obfuscate the source of their malicious traffic. The GTIG said that in a single week during June 2026, they observed 316 distinct clusters of threat actors using suspected NetNut exit nodes, including cybercriminal and espionage groups.

“These bad actors can use NetNut to mask their origin IP address when accessing victim environments, accessing their own infrastructure, and conducting password spray attacks,” Google’s GTIG wrote. “Furthermore, when a consumer device becomes an exit node, unauthorized network traffic passes through it. This means bad actors can access other private devices on the same home network, effectively exposing them to Internet threats.”

Google said it disabled Google accounts and services used by NetNut for malware command and control, and that it shared technical intelligence on NetNut’s software development kits (SDKs) and backend infrastructure with platform providers, law enforcement and research firms. The company also disabled apps known to bundle NetNut’s various SDKs.

Omer Weiss, legal counsel for NetNut parent Alarum Technologies, said the company was aware of the FBI seizure and cooperating with investigators.

“Alarum takes this matter seriously and will fully cooperate with law enforcement to ensure any misuse of its infrastructure is thoroughly investigated and those responsible are held to account,” Weiss said in a written statement.

Benjamin Brundage is founder of the proxy tracking service Synthient, one of the companies that published evidence last month linking the Popa botnet to NetNut and Alarum Technologies. Brundage said the domain seizures appear to have disrupted both the Popa botnet and the NetNut proxy network that rides on top of it.

Brundage said NetNut’s apparent demise is likely to be a great disadvantage for the cybercrime community, which was already reeling from legal actions by Google earlier this year that seized infrastructure for NetNut’s biggest competitor — IPIDEA.

“I think this takedown is going to have a big impact, because NetNut gained significant popularity after the IPIDEA takedown,” he said. “Also NetNut has been incredibly common among resellers, and they were on par with IPIDEA in terms of their daily traffic, quality, size, price per gigabyte, all of it.”

NetNut’s infrastructure, in a nutshell. Image: Black Lotus Labs, Lumen.

The NetNut and Popa botnet takedown may have another added benefit, Brundage said: Lessening the impact of large distributed denial-of-service botnets that have been built on the backs of poorly configured residential proxy services. In January, Synthient revealed how cybercriminals had built the world’s largest DDoS botnet (Kimwolf) by tunneling through IPIDEA proxy connections into the local networks of TV box owners, and infecting other Android-based devices behind the victim’s firewall.

While many of the bigger proxy providers took steps to block this activity, resellers of the major proxy networks have been far slower to respond to the threat, Brundage said.

“In terms of all these TV box devices getting compromised from the proxy network, it will have an impact on the DDoS botnets out there,” he said.

For its part, Google reckons today’s actions have caused “significant degradation to NetNut’s proxy network and its business operations, reducing the available pool of devices for the proxy operator by millions.” But the company warns that proxy networks can rebuild themselves by effectively reselling other proxy services, as IPIDEA has done over the past few months.

“Google has high confidence that many popular residential proxy brands are in fact whitelabeling the NetNut botnet,” the GTIG report concludes. “While we expect this disruption to have a larger ripple effect across the residential proxy ecosystem, observations after the disruption of IPIDEA proved that individual networks can appear resilient. What we have observed is that when faced with the degradation of their own botnet, proxy operators begin buying capacity from their competitors, effectively becoming a reseller. We recognize that creating a lasting disruption in this fluid ecosystem means we must scale our efforts to target the infrastructure of several interconnected providers.”

As KrebsOnSecurity has warned repeatedly, most of the no-name TV streaming boxes for sale on the major e-commerce websites either come pre-installed with residential proxy software, or require the installation of proxy SDKs in order to use the device for its stated purpose (streaming pirated movies, sporting events and TV shows). Google’s advice here is sound: When it comes to TV boxes, stick to name brands from reputable manufacturers, and then be sparing and judicious with any apps you choose to install.

The sketchy TV boxes that are being commandeered by the Popa botnet and other threats all come with or require the user to install unofficial Android operating systems that do not operate within the confines of Google’s Official Play Protect store. Google says consumers can confirm whether or not a device is built with the official Android TV OS and Play Protect certification by following these instructions.

Even people without TV streaming boxes can find their smart TVs enrolled in residential proxy networks, just by installing one of thousands of apps available for download on Samsung and LG smart TVs. In a report released last month, the proxy tracking company Spur found 42 percent of apps available for download via the webOS operating system on LG smart TVs include SDKs that turn one’s television into an always-on residential proxy node. More than a quarter of the apps made for Samsung’s Tizen operating system had similar residential proxy components, Spur found.

Image: Spur.us.

Update, 4:24 p.m. ET: Included a statement shared post-publication from an attorney representing NetNut parent Alarum Technologies.

Update, July 8, 2:34 p.m. ET: The website for Alarum Technologies — alarum[.]io — now also features a seizure notice from the FBI. The company’s stock has taken a beating since the FBI action, and is currently trading at $2.62 a share, a roughly 67 percent decline over the past week.

An alleged member of the Scattered Spider cybercrime group has been extradited from Finland to the United States to face federal charges related to conspiracy, cyber intrusion, and fraud. U.S. authorities said the case marks another step in their ongoing efforts to prosecute individuals accused of participating in high-profile cybercrime operations linked to the notorious hacking group.

Peter Stokes, 19, a dual U.S. and Estonian citizen, made his initial appearance in federal court in Chicago after being extradited from Finland.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Stokes was arrested by Finnish authorities in April following an Interpol Red Notice and was transferred to the United States last week. A criminal complaint filed in the Northern District of Illinois accuses him of participating in cyberattacks carried out as part of the Scattered Spider group.

Scattered Spider Linked to More Than 100 Network Intrusions

According to the complaint, Scattered Spider, also known as Octo Tempest, UNC3944, and 0ktapus, has been associated with more than 100 network intrusions. Authorities allege the group's activities have resulted in over $100 million in ransom payments and millions of dollars in additional damages suffered by victims.

Investigators said the group targeted companies across the United States by obtaining access to employee accounts through fraudulent methods.

Once inside corporate networks, the attackers allegedly encrypted data or exfiltrated sensitive information to remote servers before demanding cryptocurrency payments to restore access or prevent the public release of stolen data.

Complaint Details Alleged Luxury Retailer Cyberattack

The criminal complaint describes an alleged cyber intrusion that occurred in May 2025 involving a luxury jewelry retailer.

Federal prosecutors allege that Stokes and other co-conspirators breached the retailer's computer systems, exfiltrated company data, and demanded approximately $8 million in cryptocurrency as ransom. According to court documents, the retailer's security team successfully removed the threat actors from its network before any ransom payment was made.

Although the company did not pay the ransom, authorities said it still incurred losses of at least $2 million due to business disruption, investigation costs, and mitigation efforts following the incident.

Operation Riptide Targets Cybercrime Networks

The extradition and criminal charges were announced by the Department of Justice, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois, and the FBI. The investigation also involved the FBI's Copenhagen Law Enforcement Attaché Office, the FBI Las Vegas Field Office, the Justice Department's Office of International Affairs, and Finland's National Bureau of Investigation.

Officials said the case forms part of Operation Riptide, an ongoing FBI campaign focused on disrupting cybercriminal actors, infrastructure, financial networks, and fraud schemes targeting Americans.

According to the FBI, Americans reported more than $20 billion in cybercrime losses last year, representing a 26% increase compared with the previous year.

Authorities Cite International Cooperation

Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva said the charges stem from years of investigative work by the Justice Department, the U.S. Attorney's Office, and the FBI, adding that authorities would continue working together to pursue cybercriminals operating across international borders.

U.S. Attorney Andrew S. Boutros said the alleged attacks caused significant disruption to businesses across the United States and emphasized the government's commitment to prosecuting individuals involved in cyber intrusions.

FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Douglas S. DePodesta also highlighted the role of international law enforcement partnerships in identifying alleged members of the hacking group and pursuing cross-border cybercrime investigations.

Recent Guidance on Scattered Spider Threat

The arrest follows recent law enforcement efforts targeting the Scattered Spider threat group. In July 2025, the FBI and CISA released updated guidance describing the group's latest attack techniques, including the use of DragonForce ransomware to encrypt VMware ESXi servers.

The advisory urged organizations to maintain isolated offline backups, implement phishing-resistant multifactor authentication (MFA), and apply application controls to manage software execution.

Separately, in November 2025, two alleged Scattered Spider members appeared before Southwark Crown Court in the United Kingdom and pleaded not guilty to charges related to the August 2024 cyberattack on Transport for London (TfL).

The Department of Justice emphasized that the complaint against Stokes contains allegations only. As with all criminal cases, he is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court.