Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Our goal is to get accurate threat intelligence to our audience as quickly as possible, with all the context you need to ask the right questions of your own environment: How at risk are we from this threat? Are we prepared for it? And what can we do about it? What you don’t often see is all the... well, frankly, “mess” involved in producing it. All the dead ends we followed until we could confirm those ends were as dead as a…
Infostealers can expose far more than passwords, including authenticated sessions that may let attackers bypass MFA. Flare explains how defenders can prioritize compromised identities, determine whether stolen access is still usable, and respond before it leads to account takeover. [...]
Explore how attackers targeting Latin American entities use AI for data exfiltration and how basic OpSec errors allow defenders to disrupt operations. The post Attackers Expose Ongoing AI Tool Use Targeting Organizations in Latin America appeared first on Unit 42.
This blog provides a deep-dive into the phishing kit created by Chenlun known as the Outsider Phishing Kit. It is a well established kit in the Chinese community with over 267 ready-made phishing templates targeting over 54 countries worldwide.
[This is a Guest Diary by Frank Igbokwe, an ISC intern as part of the SANS.edu BACS program] Honeypot-Omaha is a DShied Sensor located at the Internet Storm Center (ISC) that is set up as a decoy for the original target and deployed over the internet. It is a flawed and very vulnerable system that was intentionally designed to attract threat actors with malicious intents. I view it as a massive log aggregator that collects data that an analyst like myself can then analyse, hypothesize,…
In this article Risk to enterprise environmentsAttack chain overviewMitigation and response recommendationsLearn more Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed a human-operated intrusion campaign that abuses Microsoft Teams external collaboration to impersonate IT or helpdesk personnel and socially engineer users into granting an interactive remote session. Once remote control is established via RMM tools, the threat actor uses PowerShell to download and silently install a malicious MSI…
Key Takeaways Modern AD attacks use legitimate protocols end-to-end, no malware, no exploit, nothing for signature tools to fingerprint. The evidence is already in the logs; what is missing is the narrative linking five benign-looking Windows events into a single attack. A full domain takeover can be completed in 54 minutes, from the first password spray to the forged Golden Ticket, with each individual event appearing normal. Detection catches the move; posture management explains why it was…
Scammers are becoming more strategic about where they target people. Nine in ten toll scams—the fake unpaid-toll messages that threaten fines or license suspension—arrive by email or text, while roughly six in ten romance scams show up first on social media. That’s no coincidence. Rather than blasting the same message everywhere, criminals are tailoring different scams to the platforms where they’re most likely to succeed. This finding comes from Malwarebytes’ own threat research systems and…
Research by: Amit Yardeni Key Points A Chinese-speaking actor is now targeting Brazil. Check Point Research has uncovered a sustained campaign against Brazilian organizations, primarily government and educational institutions since mid-2025. We dubbed this group Gambling Goblin: a Chinese-speaking cybercrime cluster connected to a previously documented group, Earth Berberoka, that targeted gambling sites across Asia. It marks a shift from Brazil’s usual home-grown banking-trojan threats to a…
A new dark web platform called Nexus claimed to be selling 153 million driver’s license scans and millions of other identity and medical cards. According to reports, the collection included more than 153 million driver’s licenses, 10 million ID cards, 3 million travel documents, and 579,000 medical cards, including marijuana dispensary cards. The trove of driver’s license scans reported by KrebsOnSecurity is a sharp reminder that identity verification is not a harmless box-ticking exercise. The…
Using autonomous AI agents, an attacker breached an enterprise network in a matter of hours. Understand how to address and defend against agentic attacks. The post An AI-Assisted Cyber Attack: Inside a Unit 42 Investigation appeared first on Unit 42.
You might tell an AI chatbot secrets that you wouldn’t divulge to your closest friends. If you do, though, beware: They could end up as evidence in court. An article in the Washington Post this week highlighted several cases in which people had discussed sensitive information with AI systems like Claude and ChatGPT, only to have their conversations obtained by prosecutors or opposing lawyers. Lawyers can get access to your chatbot conversations from AI services like ChatGPT because they aren’t…
In this article Attack chain overviewCampaign scope and targetingMitigation and protection guidanceReferencesLearn more Microsoft Defender Experts is tracking an active malware campaign that uses counterfeit software-download websites to impersonate trusted vendors and distribute malicious installers. The campaign has targeted users looking to download popular software and has resulted in compromises across multiple organizations and industries, primarily affecting China-based operations of…
We’ve seen scam sites built around Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6) targeting visitors in three different ways this year. In June, we looked at sites selling GTA 6 “early access” for hundreds of dollars in cryptocurrency. You paid, got nothing, and could not reverse the payment. In August, we found fake Extended Look and demo sites delivering an infostealer instead of a game. The site we examined this week looks like a GTA 6 fan countdown site but offers to sell a leaked copy of the game. It loads a…
In a report published Tuesday, Kaspersky said it first discovered NodeRabbit on a system in Afghanistan and later identified variants on systems in Egypt and Ethiopia.
Microsoft has published details about a Windows malware campaign it calls TerminalFix. The social engineering used to infect people is very similar to what we’ve seen in ClickFix campaigns. A website visitor is presented with a fake Cloudflare CAPTCHA which, when clicked, secretly copies a malicious command to their clipboard. Then they receive instructions on what they need to do to “prove they are human,” when in reality they are being instructed to execute the malicious command. After…
While monitoring Mirage Kitten activity, we uncovered a previously undocumented malware family that we dubbed NodeRabbit. We identified the first sample on a system in Afghanistan. Further threat hunting revealed two additional, more advanced, variants: one on a system in Egypt and another on a system in Ethiopia. NodeRabbit is a cross-platform remote access trojan (RAT) built with Node.js. It targets Windows, Linux, and macOS. Its operators deliver it through spear-phishing messages on…
Introduction Beginning in 2024 Mandiant investigated a string of compromises affecting Brazilian financial services, retail, and eCommerce organizations. Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) tracks this activity as BREEZE COMET (formerly UNC5669), a financially motivated threat actor specializing in manipulating payment systems and banking software in Brazil to conduct fraudulent transfers. This activity overlaps with operations publicly reported as Plump Spider and SHADOW-AETHER-064. In…
Introduction On Monday 2026-08-31, I used a link from a malicious Brazilian Portuguese email to infect a Windows host in my lab. This was a Guildma (Astaroth) malware infection. The link from the email is geofenced for Brazil, meaning that it would only deliver the malware if I checked it from a Brazil-based IP address. Otherwise, it would send a legitimate installer (in this case for Android Studio) and not the malware. Furthermore, my web browser and operating system needed to use Brazilian…
Analysis of 15 intrusions revealed tradecraft used by GOLD SHERWOOD affiliatesCategories: Threat ResearchTags: ransomware as a service, The Gentlemen, GOLD SHERWOOD, Ransomware
One of my internet-exposed inference honeypots was discovered, relabeled with sought-after model names, and incorporated into infrastructure apparently used to provide "free" LLM backends. It then received a real coding-agent session — history, filesystem output, working paths, and the agent's local tool manifest. The honeypot did not request or cause any tool execution; what the request exposed is what a malicious operator in that position could do. Chasing the "free API key" is not new. What…
Research by: hasherezade Key Points Since early 2025, Check Point Research has been tracking JSCeal, a sophisticated cryptocurrency-focused stealer with broader credential-theft, surveillance, and traffic-interception capabilities, delivered as compiled V8 bytecode (JSC files). The payloads are protected with javascript-obfuscator, using multiple techniques including RC4-protected strings, control-flow flattening, proxy functions, and operation wrappers. Our goal was to recover the code to a…
Learn how the Spring Ring campaign abuses Microsoft Teams and voice phishing to deploy malware and target enterprise domain controllers. The post Spring Ring: An Inside Look at Voice Phishing Campaigns in Microsoft Teams appeared first on Unit 42.
Attackers typically try to pass off malware as legitimate applications or as potentially unwanted programs that users deliberately search for and download, such as cheats or cracks. They often rely on ad and affiliate networks to deliver their creations to victims’ devices. This post examines a less conventional case: a well-known backdoor distributed under the guise of adware. The attackers may have chosen this distribution method because the adware was signed by the developer. On top of that,…
Group-IB uncovers BraZetsu, a new Python-based Windows malware that serves as a master toolkit for Initial Access Brokers and powers a unique, AI-enhanced underground marketplace for commercializing compromised Iberian and Latin American targets.
Multiple extensions for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge delivered a malware framework that deployed modules to steal cryptocurrency, sensitive data, and browser history, as well as inject ClickFix lures. [...]
New research reveals that AI safety refusal lives in a thin neural layer, highlighting the critical need for external, multi-layered security. The post Perturbation Probing: A New Diagnostic for the Fragility of LLM Safety appeared first on Unit 42.
When quantum computers become generally available, they’ll be able to crack current public-key cryptographic algorithms, putting digitally stored and transmitted data at risk. But the threat already exists, as attackers use the "harvest now, decrypt later" tactic. Discover why building a comprehensive cryptographic inventory and executing a phased operational strategy are critical for protecting your data against quantum computing attacks.Key takeawaysQuantum computing risks are an operational…
AI is accelerating vulnerability discovery, putting pressure on systems built to enrich, prioritize, and remediate flaws at a slower pace. Action1 explains why defenders increasingly need to correlate multiple intelligence sources and turn vulnerability data into faster remediation. [...]
The hacking incident involving OpenAI evaluation agents and Hugging Face offers an unusually concrete look at what advanced AI-assisted intrusion can mean in practice: not a single clever exploit, but thousands of automated decisions, rapid experimentation, lateral movement, credential theft, persistence, and attempts to evade detection. The OpenAI–Hugging Face incident began during internal cybersecurity evaluations using ExploitGym, a benchmark designed to test whether AI agents can identify…
During my last FOR610 session, a student asked me if I had some statistics in mind about the compilers used to generate malicious PE files? A couple of months ago, I shared some stats about the trend in 64bits VS. 32bits malware[1]. Can we go a bit further? I (vibe-)coded a Python script based on the pefile library[2] to extract some info from the PE headers. Indeed, the PE file format contains a lot of metadata! They can be accessed using a lot of tools, like Detect It Easy: Note: When you…
Huntress analyzed several incidents involving DPRK remote workers (Famous Chollima) in partner environments. Learn key indicators to detect and prevent North Korean threats.
GreyNoise is observing automated scanners posing as the web crawlers of OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek, and Fortune 500 companies, using forged user agents while requesting the files where misconfigured web servers frequently leak secrets and credentials.
Key Takeaways The DFIR Report Offerings Check out our Products here and our Services here. Want a demo, more information on our services, pricing or just want to chat? Get in Touch Contact us today for pricing or a demo! Case Summary In March 2026, our team identified an SEO poisoning campaign leading to malware deployment […] The post BengalSEO Part 1: Anatomy of the Operation appeared first on The DFIR Report.
Key Takeaways This case was first reported to customers in a threat brief released in July 2025 and in a public flash alert in August 2025 in partnership with Swisscom B2B CSIRT, which observed another intrusion tied to the same campaign. This report contains data from both intrusions. We plan to release a DFIR Labs […] The post From Bing Search to Ransomware: Bumblebee and AdaptixC2 Deliver Akira appeared first on The DFIR Report.
Key Takeaways We identified an exposed server that provided unusual visibility into a large-scale, multi-victim exploitation and collection operation. Artifacts on the host showed that Claude Code and OpenClaw were embedded in the operator’s day-to-day workflow, supporting troubleshooting, orchestration, and refinement of the collection pipeline. This AI-assisted workflow resulted in the modular platform Bissa scanner […] The post Bissa Scanner Exposed: AI-Assisted Mass Exploitation and…