Recently, our team exposed sophisticated scam kits designed to steal sensitive data and trick consumers. But underground marketplaces are not just for malware and stolen passwords. They also offer services designed to manipulate your opinion of the products and services you buy every day. In our latest research, we examined cybercrime forums where sellers advertise illicit “reputation management” services. For the right price, these underground operators offer to flood a product with glowing,…
Written by: Christopher Romano, Codi Starks, Garrett Mahoney, John Wolfram, Josh Murchie, K Singh, Mathew Potaczek, Mike Lombardi, Rik Dolfing Introduction Mandiant responded to multiple incidents in 2026 in which threat actors hijacked enterprise access to Large Language Models (LLMs), a tactic known as "LLMJacking." Spanning a variety of cloud and LLM providers, these intrusions impacted organizations in North America, South America, and Asia Pacific across the financial services, retail,…
Introduction Last week, Google and industry partners dismantled the XCPE backdoor which enrolled more than 1.3 million set-top boxes into a botnet. We assess with high confidence that the backdoor and botnet were intentionally developed, deployed, and operated for financial gain by Videostrong Technology Co., an Android Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and Original Device Manufacturer (ODM). Videostrong monetized the backdoor by selling access to criminal affiliates and loading those…
The Binance hack may have started with a compromised developer laptop, Binance says. See how that can lead to stolen funds and how to protect against it. Category: News
In this article Stages of AI adoption by North Korean threat actors AI use across North Korean threat operations AI-assisted targeting and reconnaissance AI-assisted social engineering and identity deception AI-assisted software and tooling development AI-assisted operational scaling and analysis Mitigation and protection guidance Microsoft Defender detections As Microsoft Threat Intelligence continues to track how threat actors operationalize AI to increase the speed, efficiency, and…
Socket’s threat researchers found three malicious Firefox extensions that impersonated the Phantom, Jupiter, and Bitget crypto wallets. Once installed, the malicious extensions stole recovery phrases and private keys, which would provide the attacker with full control of a wallet. A crypto wallet is an app, browser extension, or physical device that lets you manage cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin. Despite its name, it doesn’t actually hold your coins. Those are recorded on a blockchain, a shared…
This technical analysis details a sophisticated Android malware campaign targeting the Indian banking sector. The report examines seven distinct trojan families that facilitate banking fraud through coordinated phishing, credential theft, and unauthorized cryptojacking. Group-IB provides an in-depth breakdown of the attack chain, malware capabilities, and the infrastructure used to compromise mobile devices.
AI is becoming a third wheel in relationships, increasingly playing a role in the most intimate parts of our lives. It shows up in the flirty first text, the polished dating profile, the therapized language we use with a partner after a fight, the strength we gather after heartbreak, and everywhere in between. For some, AI is a source of companionship itself. And even if you’re not personally an AI user, you may still be dating, loving, arguing with, or trusting someone who is. As AI moves…
An investigation into a threat actor bypassing AI safety controls to coordinate credential theft, VoIP fraud planning, and database exfiltration. The post “Next Exploit Opportunities”: How a Threat Actor Used AI to Help Plan and Execute Multiple Types of Cybercrime Activities appeared first on Unit 42.
Legitimate infrastructure has become a powerful delivery mechanism for attackers, carrying the inherent trust they once had to build. As Cisco Talos explored in our previous research on weaponizing software-as-a-service (SaaS) notification pipelines, these platforms are increasingly repurposed as proxies for malicious intent. Talos has since tracked a significant acceleration in this trend, observing abuse across more than 25 distinct legitimate platforms in the past year. The abused…
Key Findings Antidetect browsers obscure the digital identity of their users, enabling a single operator to silently manage thousands of isolated accounts across multiple platforms (including Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube), while evading detection systems that look for scams and coordinated inauthentic behavior. Threat actors abuse these platforms, taking over accounts and using them for financial fraud, phishing and malware distribution. These accounts can also be used to coordinate…
A 49-year-old bricklayer sold his belongings before traveling 2,000 km by bus from his home in Brazil to meet “Jéssica,” an online influencer he had fallen for. Yet despite having a social media account with more than 300,000 followers, she never existed. Edimar Rocha Martins lives in Imperatriz, a city in northeastern Brazil. He says he struck up an online conversation with Jéssica Fazendeira, who supposedly lived near the southeastern city of Belo Horizonte. The AI persona promising love The…
Wiz identified threat actors hijacking Google Cloud Platform (GCP) billing accounts via search-ad phishing to fund unauthorized Gemini API usage. By stealing corporate credentials and MFA tokens, attackers gain access, dismantle IAM domain restrictions, and link external GCP p...
Cybercriminals are selling forged identity documents, deepfake videos, and live verification services to help buyers bypass Know Your Client (KYC) checks. Flare examines how these underground services operate and the techniques used to create and maintain fraudulent verified accounts. [...]
[This is a Guest Diary by Zachary Norwood, an ISC intern as part of the SANS.edu BACS program] Crypto mining malware has been active and spreading across the internet for quite some time now. Moreover, the DShield honeypot picked up a worm that self-propagates through a plethora of means. One of them is stealing SSH keys after it gains access to a system. Furthermore, it also leverages a rootkit to maintain access to infected systems. One would hope that threat actors would have moved on past…
In this article Uncovering the shadow world of a phishing kit ecosystem Storm-3119: YAM Store, the power broker Storm-2990: The Iron Man System phishing kit Downstream activity from Storm-2990 phishing kits Mitigation and protection guidance Microsoft Defender detections Over the past year, Microsoft uncovered a Chinese-language cybercriminal ecosystem, an interconnected network of phishing kit operators, developers, and an illicit marketplace selling tools and infrastructure for large-scale…
The Joint Economic Committee on Tuesday released the results of a year-long investigation into Tinder, Hinge, Match, Plenty of Fish and several other dating sites owned by Match Group.
A new Android malware called Hirudo steals bank account credentials by replacing legitimate banking apps with modified versions that disable security checks. [...]
Doris searched for ChatGPT and ended up in a BEC scam. See how ClickFix, a stolen session cookie, and a hidden inbox rule chain into an OH $#!T moment.
You ignored the suspicious email. You didn’t open the attachment, click the link, or reply to the sender. Then you asked your AI assistant to summarize your inbox. Could the message you wisely avoided find its way back onto your to-do list—only this time presented as an urgent recommendation from a tool you trust? That’s the risk behind phishing emails containing hidden instructions aimed at AI assistants. Instead of relying only on persuading you, attackers are also trying to influence the…
Elastic Security Labs identified a malicious npm package, @apexacc/cli, which led us to an operation posing as a Web3 accelerator. That operation had spent months building a public presence, targeting cryptocurrency start-ups and founders with offers of free AI credits and coding tools, along with security audits. The group also advertised an in-person event through a dedicated invitation page, adding to its efforts to appear legitimate. The tools delivered information-stealing malware and…
In leaked chats, members track dozens of victims, haggle over multimillion-dollar payments and direct operatives based in the United States whom they call “agents.”
Najviše je zabilježeno phishing napada, neželjenih poruka i financijski motiviranih prijevara, a listopad donosi kampanju za građane te nacionalna i europska natjecanja iz kibernetičke sigurnosti Tijekom Europskog mjeseca kibernetičke sigurnosti, koji se svake godine obilježava u listopadu, CARNET-ov Nacionalni CERT provodi niz aktivnosti usmjerenih na podizanje razine svijesti javnosti o važnosti kibernetičke sigurnosti. Riječ je o dijelu aktivnosti koje Nacionalni CERT kontinuirano provodi…
Facebook users are reporting receiving a message with a fake Facebook Marketplace listing that has their name as the seller. It works like this. You receive a message (in this case iMessage) asking “Is this still available for purchase?” Attached to the message is a fabricated Facebook Marketplace listing. Tapping on the picture, you might notice that the seller’s name is the same as your name. This is known as a conversation lure, adding legitimacy to a message and giving you an additional…
We found 70 websites that impersonate legitimate crypto projects that invite visitors to vote on the date of an upcoming rewards distribution. The pages copy the look of the real sites closely, and on most of them the offer is small and believable: Cast a vote, and as an active voter you get a 1.25x boost when the rewards are paid out. However, the vote is fake and clicking the Vote now button opens a wallet connection prompt. It’s the first step toward requests that could trick visitors into…
Milk Dragon, also known as NaiLong is an Adversary-in-the-Middle (AiTM) phishing kit active since October 2025. Unlike conventional phishing tactics that rely on fear and urgency, Milk Dragon lures victims with big discounts on consumer goods distributed via Facebook and TikTok marketplace advertisements.
Milk Dragon, also known as NaiLong is an Adversary-in-the-Middle (AiTM) phishing kit active since October 2025. Unlike conventional phishing tactics that rely on fear and urgency, Milk Dragon lures victims with big discounts on consumer goods distributed via Facebook and TikTok marketplace advertisements.
Free Mobile, one of France’s main cellular providers, was fined €27 million by France’s data protection regulator, the CNIL, in January over failures to protect customer data. The October 2024 breach allowed an unauthorized party to access sensitive customer records, including bank account details and login information. Since the breach, we’ve seen many poorly written scam campaigns targeting Free Mobile customers. However, over the past few weeks, a well-written scam has appeared, closely…
Free Mobile, one of France’s main cellular providers, was fined €27 million by France’s data protection regulator, the CNIL, in January over failures to protect customer data. The October 2024 breach allowed an unauthorized party to access sensitive customer records, including bank account details and login information. Since the breach, we’ve seen many poorly written scam campaigns targeting Free Mobile customers. However, over the past few weeks, a well-written scam has appeared, closely…
Apple announced its first foldable iPhone on September 9, and scammers were ready to ‘deliver’ one before anyone could buy it. Most of what we found around the launch of the iPhone Duo and iPhone 18 Pro was familiar fraud. But one fake preorder page was different. The fake Apple-style page offers a $500 voucher and a ticking preorder deadline. Behind its Apple-style design and $500 voucher, the page uses the leaked DarkSword exploit chain to try to break into vulnerable iPhones. If it succeeds,…
Thanks to Malwarebytes research engineer Stefan Dasic for his help with this article. A name like ShipmentsFree suggests a way to save on shipping. The service does offer shipping rebates, but its Better Business Bureau (BBB) complaint record shows that some customers did not realize they had also signed up for recurring charges. We found a number of very similar websites (which triggered our spidey senses), so we investigated. Related shipping-themed domains use ShipmentsFree or ShipmentFree…
Threat actors exploited Samsung MagicINFO to install AnyDesk, disable Defender, and compile a Monero miner directly on a victim endpoint. Learn the detection signals.
Business Email Compromise (BEC) operates on a familiar playbook. Threat actors breach a mailbox, silently monitor operations, map approval chains, and ultimately exploit that access to divert funds or exfiltrate sensitive assets.This dynamic is central to our analysis as we kick off a series around Rapid7's collaborative research with Zimbra; upcoming installments will explore technical details and broader findings based within the Zimbra Collaboration Suite. Our investigation disrupted the…
MacSync is a relatively young, rapidly evolving family of crypto/info stealers. First advertised on the dark web in 2025 as Mac.c, the stealer was later renamed to MacSync by its creators. The initial versions were implemented as AppleScripts and closely resembled the AMOS stealer family, but over time, MacSync developed distinctive features of its own, including a backdoor module. In this report, we discuss a new infection chain that differs significantly from previous variants. We first…
CERT Polska uncovered a toll fraud operation targeting Polish users through deceptive Meta advertisements and malicious applications distributed via Google Play. We preserved 1235 ads, linked 852 to 17 applications through code or infrastructure, reconstructed the complete execution chain, and observed live premium SMS and carrier billing tasking.
Group-IB uncovers RemControl, a new Android banking trojan targeting European, Middle Eastern and Canadian banks, whose criminal infrastructure was unknowingly built by AI.
We found more than 100 subscription websites linked through the same toolkit and closely related developer details. Some impersonate existing products, including GPT-6 Astra, DaVinci Resolve, PixAI, and OpenCut. Another uses the name of Omegle, the chat service that shut down in 2023. Others promote unfamiliar brands with little verifiable information about who operates them. The sites we examined did not use fake password forms or push malware downloads. Instead, they used polished product…
Researchers at Zimperium’s zLabs have analyzed an Android Trojan that uses an automated, multi-stage infection process. What’s new is that RatHat gives a live AI assistant the keys to the accessibility tree of the infected device and uses it to determine where to tap or scroll, rather than following a hardcoded script. The variable attack path makes it harder for signature- and rule-based mobile security tools to detect this Trojan. It also abuses Android Debug Bridge (ADB), a legitimate tool…
Parcel delivery phishing campaigns appear around the world under different courier names. In the United States, the messages commonly impersonate USPS and claim that a package has an invalid address or could not be delivered. Similar messages impersonate Colissimo and Chronopost in France, Correos in Spain, Poste Italiane in Italy, and PostNL in the Netherlands. The details vary, but the aim is usually the same: to persuade you to visit a fake courier website and provide personal and financial…
Since early May 2026, we’ve been monitoring a large phishing campaign based on T-Mobile rewards points. The messages falsely warn that a customer’s rewards points are about to expire. They aren’t legitimate account notices: They use urgency, invented point balances, and phishing links to push recipients into acting before they can verify the claim. A typical message says that a T-Mobile Rewards account holds 18,400 points, gives an imminent expiry date, and states that unused points will be…
Antivirus renewal scams often begin with a message claiming that your subscription has automatically renewed. When you follow the instructions to cancel it, you are taken to a fake page designed to collect your contact details. The renewal charge never existed. Receiving a message that names the antivirus software you use does not necessarily mean the sender has access to your device or account. Scammers impersonate popular brands and send the same message to large numbers of people, knowing…
Bitrefill is a legitimate company that sells gift cards for popular stores like Amazon, Deliveroo, Apple, Nintendo, and thousands of others. They also sell eSIMs, and mobile top-ups. You can pay on their website for all of these with cryptocurrency. The scam is designed to catch people searching for Bitrefill or something it sells, like a gift card. Victims see a search result that appears to lead to Bitrefill but actually points to a lookalike domain. The fake site then takes them through what…
A deep technical analysis of the Smishing Triad’s JWR phishing kit and Outsider operator cluster, revealing its real-time victim control, encrypted WebSocket communications, multi-stage credential theft, AES-256-CTR implementation, infrastructure, and actionable indicators for defenders.
Elastic Security Labs has tracked REF9334, a Brazilian banking malware operation, since May 2025. Its toolkit is called KREMLIN (as named by the malware author, Kr3mlin4rt1st), though nothing about the operation is Russian. Lures impersonate twelve Brazilian banks; error messages and code comments are written in Portuguese, and the operators' Ethereum transactions cluster during São Paulo working hours. Over 15 months and seven campaigns, they built a malicious browser extension that installs…
Anthropic says multiple threat groups, including the financially motivated and state-sponsored espionage groups linked to Russia and China, tried to abuse its Claude AI model for malicious purposes. [...]
Researchers analyzed a flood of fraudulent business emails and found that the threat actors had doubled-up on tactics to make them appear legitimate, including help from AI.
IntroductionThe surge in emerging threat actors directly correlates with the rapid escalation of victim counts and stolen financial resources. Simultaneously, this growth has spurred the proliferation of specialized supply storefronts across social media platforms, dark web channels, and various smaller niche marketplaces. Security teams today face evolving challenges, requiring them to continuously refine monitoring channels, adjust operational strategies, and foster cross-functional internal…
Researchers at Group-IB found that the Android banking Trojan Gigabud can create a separate work profile on an infected phone and run a cloned banking app inside it. The attacker can then carry out fraudulent transactions in the new profile, potentially separating them from signs of malware detected elsewhere on the device. To do this, Gigabud installs Vwork, a malicious version of the legitimate open-source tool Shelter. Shelter normally lets Android users isolate apps or run second copies of…
In this article Attack chain overviewEmail DeliveryDomain registrationGenerative AI usageMitigation and protection guidanceMicrosoft Defender detectionsMicrosoft Security CopilotThreat intelligence reportsMITRE ATT&CK Techniques observedIndicators of compromise (IOC)Learn More Threat actors are increasingly improving their tactics to make suspicious emails look like legitimate email notifications to potential victims, deploying techniques that impersonate internally sent emails from executive…
Every wave of technology excitement creates a new opportunity for cyberattackers, and AI is no exception. Microsoft Threat Intelligence has published research showing a growing set of campaigns that impersonate popular AI platforms and tools, including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, and Claude.1 The goal is to make phishing, search-driven malware campaigns, and malvertising—which is malicious advertising that uses online ads to lure users to harmful sites, downloads, or redirect…
Researchers at German cybersecurity company Nebty have identified “DoppelCart,” a cluster of almost 119,000 domains linked to copied online stores. The researchers describe it as the largest publicly documented fake-shop network by associated domain count. They found 118,787 .shop domains in the cluster, representing 2.72% of the .shop top-level domain (TLD) population they examined. The operation copies legitimate retailers’ product catalogs, descriptions, branding, and images, sometimes even…
Cisco Talos began an investigation after observing a DLL named "verification.google" executing from WebDAV at a Ukrainian government organization. We assess with moderate confidence that the attacks are not targeted at a particular organization, but are a part of a cryptocurrency and credentials-stealing operation using the Amatera stealer as the primary payload. Pivoting around the similar WebDAV behavior led to a second loader named "pf.ch" and allowed us to reconstruct its earlier delivery…
Cisco Talos is tracking a cryptocurrency-stealing campaign that abuses the Google Visualization API for command and control (C2), retrieving obfuscated JavaScript from a publicly published Google Sheets document and injecting it into the victim's browser session. The actors use a variation on ClickFix social engineering. Instead of convincing targets to run commands against the operating system, they convince targets to paste JavaScript into the Chrome address bar or install it into the…
This week on the Lock and Code podcast… Crooks are taking a holiday. They’re counting on you to fund it. For decades, cybercriminals have stolen roughly the same types of data. Biographical and personal details—like Social Security numbers, birthdates, addresses, and phone numbers—can be stolen to commit identity fraud. Credit card numbers, expiration dates, and CVC codes can be stolen to make fraudulent purchases. Usernames and passwords can, in the wrong hands, let a cybercriminal impersonate…
In a recent post, we looked at reports of League of Legends players receiving suspicious friend requests shortly after matches. The accounts quickly steered the conversation toward Discord, where they promoted paid adult-content pages. At the time, one unanswered question was how much of those conversations was automated. Were people working from scripts behind the accounts? Were they conventional, rules-based chatbots following a limited decision tree? Or were they using generative AI to…