Statistics on Malware Distributed to the Financial Sector In Attack Stage 1, phishing (a technique that tricks users into opening malicious links or attachments) had the highest rate at 1.7, Down from 2.3 The previous month. In Attack Stage 2, Dropper/Downloader (a type that downloads additional malware) was the most prevalent at 1.7, Up from […]

The AhnLab SEcurity intelligence Center (ASEC) recently identified a phishing email campaign that disguised itself as a request to review a quote. The threat actor impersonated a sales team member at a specific overseas company and, by claiming that a previous quote needed to be revised and product versions verified, tricked recipients into opening the […]

Statistics on Malware Distributed to the Financial Sector In the June threat analysis for the financial sector, phishing was the most prevalent attack method in Attack Stage 1, while droppers/downloaders (distribution tools that download additional malware) were the most prevalent in Attack Stage 2. Infostealers were identified in the third attack stage, indicating that multi-stage […]

Recently, the AhnLab SEcurity intelligence Center (ASEC) identified a case of phishing emails that disguise themselves as payment confirmation notices. These emails impersonate employees of a specific company in Korea and trick recipients into opening a malicious XLS file attached to the email, which is disguised as a payment confirmation notice.   [Figure 1] Body […]

The AhnLab SEcurity intelligence Center (ASEC) recently confirmed that phishing emails disguised as project proposals are being circulated. The body of the email pretends to request that the proposal and confirmed delivery schedule be submitted as soon as possible, and prompts the recipient to download the attached compressed file.   [Figure 1] Phishing email body […]

404 Media reports that a researcher has found a vulnerability in Apple’s Hide My Email feature that could allow someone to discover a person’s real email address.

That’s especially concerning because protecting your real email address is exactly what the feature is designed to do. 404 Media did not publish technical details of the vulnerability to avoid helping attackers exploit it, but said it independently verified that the issue works.

Hide My Email generates:

“Unique, random email addresses that automatically forward to your personal email inbox. Each address is unique to you. You can read and respond directly to emails sent to these addresses and your personal email address is kept private.”

Instead of giving a website or app your real email address when you sign up, you can give it one of these randomly generated addresses. Messages are forwarded to your normal inbox, but the sender shouldn’t be able to see your real email address. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

Tyler Murphy, co-founder of EasyOptOuts, discovered and reported the issue to Apple in June 2025. More than a year later, he says the vulnerability still hasn’t been fixed.

When Murphy reached out to Apple again in May, he received the following response:

“We are still investigating this issue. To avoid placing our customers at risk, we would appreciate you not disclosing this information until our investigation is complete. We appreciate your assistance in helping us to maintain and improve the security of our products.”

Murphy suggested Apple should stop promoting the feature until it could be fixed. Apple reportedly told him it expected to address the issue in a security update in the coming weeks. When that failed to happen, Murphy decided to reach out to 404 Media.

Instead, we learned a few weeks ago that Apple plans to make the Hide My Email less useful for some users. In a note to developers, the company said it will move anonymously generated email addresses to the @private.icloud.com domain. Effectively, this makes it easier for apps and websites to recognize that an email address was created with Hide My Email and potentially refuse to accept it during the sign-up process.

What you can do

Using a different email address for every website or service is still good privacy practice. It makes it easier to identify which company exposed your address in a data breach, and you can simply stop using a compromised alias without changing your main email address.

However, until Apple fixes the issue, you shouldn’t rely on the Hide My Email feature as the only way to keep your real email address private.

Meanwhile, keep an eye open for Apple’s promised security update.

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Statistics on Malware Distributed to the Financial Sector In Attack Stage 1 targeting the financial sector in May 2026, phishing had the highest score at 2.3. This is the highest figure since December 2025, indicating that Initial Breach attempts are increasingly centered on phishing. In Attack Stage 2, Dropper/Downloader had the highest rate at 1.4, […]

Statistics on Attachment Threat Types in April 2026, the most common threat in phishing email attachments was Trojan (47%). this type was distributed by disguising itself with a double extension or a legitimate file name to trick the user into executing it and installing malware on the system. they continued to spread through multiple variants […]

Content. a number of malware samples including phishing, web shell, droppers, backdoor malware, downloaders, Infostealer, and CoinMiner targeting the financial sector have been distributed. we observed a number of cases where Korean disguised attachment names and HTML/JS execution methods were utilized to propagate phishing. account compromise campaigns through the Telegram API were confirmed, with approximately […]