Executive Summary Following disclosure of the TraderTraitor attack against LayerZero in April 2026, SentinelOne identified an additional victim with the same macOS backdoors. Our analysis explores the mechanics of these backdoors and the expanded targeting against a victim in the IT services sector with no relationship to cryptocurrency trading. We also identified more weaponized GitHub repositories from the social engineering schemes used to target job seekers in these campaigns. This report…
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…
Analysis of how default configurations in AWS AgentCore Harness allow prompt injection to exfiltrate credentials, and key steps to secure your agents. The post A Vault with a Heap-View: The Uncomfortable Space Between AgentCore Harness and Identity appeared first on Unit 42.
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…
In June 2026 the IETF published RFC 10008[1], defining a new HTTP method: "QUERY". The HTTP protocol faced already by changes (HTTP/2, HTTP/2) but it’s the first new standard HTTP verb since "PATCH" in 2010! This new method sits between “GET” and “POST” and can be resumed like this: “QUERY is a GET with a body”. It's safe and idempotent: the request is processed without state change and can be automatically repeated or restarted without concern for partial state changes. The query itself lives…
This TSUBAME Report Overflow series discusses observation trends from TSUBAME sensors both in Japan and overseas, as well as other topics not covered in the JPCERT/CC Quarterly Report. This article covers monitoring results from April to June 2026. Note: Starting in FY2026, the JPCERT/CC Internet Threat Monitoring Report has been integrated into the JPCERT/CC Quarterly Report. Sharp Increase in Mirai-like Packets Targeting 23/TCP Observed in Early May 2026 In early May 2026, TSUBAME observed a…
Run security operations for more than one team, region, or customer, and you inherit a familiar tradeoff. One giant deployment gives you a single view but costs you tenant isolation, while separate environments preserve isolation and scatter your analysts across contexts, with detection rules drifting into 12 slightly different copies along the way. Cross-project search (CPS) on Elastic Cloud Serverless is built to end that tradeoff. One Elastic Security project runs detection and triage, along…
Key Takeaways Periodic audits provide a point-in-time assessment, but they cannot demonstrate whether controls remain effective between audit cycles. Qualys platform data shows 10.5 billion configuration findings across customer environments but only 1.6% represent meaningful exposure and under 1% are prioritized, business-critical findings. Verizon’s 2026 DBIR found the median time to resolve weak passwords and misconfigured permissions is about 8 months. Across 1 billion misconfiguration…
A new Android malware called RatHat has been discovered, targeting users with an AI-powered subsystem that helps operators remotely navigate compromised devices. [...]
OpenAI has presented new examples of what they call "AI model misalignment" from the past six months, including unauthorized file uploads, following self-generated instructions, hiding mistakes, and leveraging exposed API keys. [...]
Flock Safety’s cameras are automated license plate readers (ALPRs) designed to help police find stolen cars or wanted suspects. A joint investigation by 404 Media and WIRED, based on data recovered from a physically removed Flock camera, found that its on-device software explicitly detects people as well as vehicles, bicycles, and license plates. Separately, Washington DC’s police union says the Metropolitan Police Department used Flock data to track officers under Internal Affairs…
AI has already made fundamental changes to the operating environment for cybersecurity. Cyberattackers are testing more paths, adapting their techniques, and moving across digital environments with greater speed and persistence. The weaknesses they exploit remain familiar: excessive permissions, unprotected authentication flows, unpatched systems, exposed execution paths, and gaps between controls. What has changed is how quickly these weaknesses can combine into attack paths that cross…
Every benchmark tells a story. The most valuable ones tell us where to improve next. For five consecutive quarters Microsoft has published email security benchmarking reports to provide greater transparency into real-world protection outcomes. The results have shown strong Microsoft Defender performance across pre-delivery and post-delivery scenarios, while revealing where threats and defenses continue to evolve. This quarter’s benchmark examines how continuous measurement informs protection…
At the end of August, a malspam message was caught in the quarantine of a mail gateway operated by one of my customers. The message was not especially remarkable – it asked the recipient to review some attached requirements and provide a price quotation for a fiber optic system and appeared to impersonate an employee of a legitimate company. The receiving gateway quarantined the message because it detected malicious content in the attachment, though even if it didn’t, the e-mail would not have…
The defining development of the period came not from attackers but from the AI labs themselves, whose models broke out of controlled evaluations and reached real systems. In the wild, the criminal and state use of AI continued to mature along the lines tracked in earlier editions: models now act as attack operators, an underground market supplies the access, and AI systems have themselves become a target. The substantial distance between what the strongest models demonstrated under evaluation…
Introduction Torrent trackers have long been abused for distributing malicious software, disguised as popular films, games, and other content. Our previous research has shown that cybercriminals repeatedly turn torrents as an initial infection vector, using trojanized cracks and installers to reach a large number of users. Installation guides for pirated software routinely instruct users to disable their antivirus, conditioning them to ignore potential threats they are inviting onto their…
View CSAF Summary ABB is aware of public reports of a vulnerability CVE‑2026‑31431 (Copy Fail) in the product versions listed as affected in the advisory. An update is available that resolves a publicly reported vulnerability. CVE‑2026‑31431 (Copy Fail) is a Linux kernel vulnerability that may allow a locally authenticated user or compromised container workload to gain elevated (root) privileges on affected systems. Once root access is obtained, the attacker can effectively gain complete…
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…
Compared with the same period last year, ransomware incidents in Japan increased slightly by approximately 4.7%, indicating that ransomware continues to pose a significant threat.In Japan, The Gentlemen was the most active ransomware group in the first half of 2026.Attackers continue to primarily target small- and medium-sized enterprises, with organizations capitalized at less than JPY 1 billion accounting for approximately 80% of the total — an increase of around 13% from the previous year…
Group-IB Threat Intelligence analyzes HEAVYGRAM, a Telegram-based Windows backdoor attributed with moderate confidence to the Iran-linked threat actor Handala Hack. Active since Fall 2023, it has been used to surveil Iranian dissidents, journalists and government opponents, enabling remote command execution, data exfiltration, and persistence over Telegram command-and-control.
Welcome back to our monthly look at Apple security patches. This release shows Apple is not immune to the new normal of AI-assisted vulnerability discovery as they release patches for 273 total CVEs.For the September 2026 release, Apple released 273 unique CVEs across macOS 27 (Golden Gate), macOS Sequoia 15.8, macOS Tahoe 26.7, iOS / iPadOS 27, visionOS 27, watchOS 27, tvOS 27, iOS / iPadOS 26.7, Safari 27, and Xcode 27. This patch release actually happened a couple of days ago, but since…
Earlier today, I noted an odd request showing up in our "First Seen" report: GET /PIAF-HMS/ HTTP/1.1 Host: [redacted] User-Agent: Farez-Sorter/1.0 Accept-Encoding: gzip This request is linked to a rather old application, a "PBX in a Flash Hospitality Management System" [1]. The last update, the addition of a license file, happened 10 years ago, and I would consider the project abandoned. However, I also noted a new vulnerability reported a couple of months ago: An SQL injection issue. A quick…
AI is accelerating vulnerability discovery, leaving unpatchable operational technology (OT) systems at risk. Hoping for the best is not a viable anti-exploitation strategy. Deploying next-generation firewalls directly upstream allows for virtual patching through deep packet inspection. These systems scan incoming traffic to detect and block exploit attempts before they can impact the vulnerable device.The predictability of legitimate network connections to OT systems can be used to protect…
Executive Summary OpenAI disclosed that agents used exposed Hugging Face credentials to write a file and deploy proxy Spaces during an unrelated May 2026 research workload, but it did not identify the accounts. SentinelLABS identified two accounts likely used in associated activity, 0Time and Nyx9. Their public histories extend OpenAI’s chronology and preserve previously unreported relay code, document-borne probes, and ChatGPT account-provisioning capability. The public records provide precise…
Over the past year, our Global Emergency Response Team (GERT) has investigated several incidents involving the NightEagle group (APT-Q-95). This group has been active since at least 2023 and originally focused on organizations in Asia, as we reported previously. We have now identified attacks by the group targeting businesses in Russia. This post examines both known and new tools NightEagle used in its latest campaign. Initial access In most incidents, the attackers used compromised valid…
Modern macOS malware uses deceptive setup guides to steal credentials and sensitive user data. Learn how to identify and block these threats. The post Atomic macOS (AMOS) Stealer Activity appeared first on Unit 42.
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…
Oracle addresses 672 CVEs in its September 2026 Critical Security Patch Update with 673 patches, including 104 critical updates.Key TakeawaysThe September 2026 Critical Security Patch Update (CSPU) contains fixes for 672 unique CVEs in 673 security updates104 issues (15.5% of all patches) were assigned a critical severity ratingOracle E-Business Suite received the highest number of patches at 159, accounting for 23.6% of all patchesBackgroundOn September 15, Oracle released its Critical…
Malicious versions of the Admin Menu Editor Pro plugin for WordPress have been distributed to more than 200 customers after a threat actor compromised the maintainer's website and pushed updates that created a hidden user account. [...]
I have not done this type of diary in a while: What traffic will you see from a system on boot, before a user logs in? I just took a quick look at macOS 27 "Golden Gate" to see what traffic you should expect. Here are some of the highlights: I captured about 300 packets. This was likely inflated for this particular system as it connected via Wi-Fi and wired network interfaces. Each network interface will do its own DHCP/IP discovery during boot. I only used router advertisements for IPv6, not…
A previously unknown malware framework called BambooToken, active since at least 2023, is now using the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol to communicate with Windows and Linux systems. [...]
If you’re still OK with posting pictures of your kids on social media, take a minute to hear from mother of two Kalie Robins. At the start of September, she did something that hundreds of thousands of parents do every day. She posted a video of her young daughter on Facebook. Under the video of Robins and her daughter singing in a car, Facebook’s Meta AI system displayed a suggested question: “Who is the child passenger?” Robins was shocked that Facebook would ask this question about a minor,…
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…
The pro-Ukraine hacktivist group Hacking Cat has evolved from carrying out website defacements and data leaks to more sophisticated and destructive attacks on Russian targets, researchers said.
Attackers exploit Volume Shadow Copy for credential theft and ransomware defense evasion. See how Huntress spots the difference from routine IT activity.
We designed a behavioral clustering model to map cloud identity roles from audit logs, enabling continuous threat detection using standard SQL queries. The post Unmasking Cloud Identities: From Behavioral Clustering to Automated Detection appeared first on Unit 42.
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…
Uncensored refers to a lack of typical guardrails or ethical restrictions, lowering the technical barrier of entry into cybercrimeCategories: Threat ResearchTags: AI, Luciferus, underground
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.
I identified an attacker using a semi-autonomous coding agent to run an offensive operation: finding poorly secured LLM resale gateways, acquiring API access through ordinary web flaws and account farming, validating the resulting inference capacity, and aggregating it behind a single gateway of their own. What I captured was not simply credential theft, but an inference supply chain — an agent harvesting, validating, and consolidating LLM access into infrastructure that serves it again through…
Threat actors are abusing trusted AI platforms to host malicious content, poison search results, and trick users into installing malware. Huntress examines campaigns targeting AI users through weaponized Claude Artifacts, shared AI conversations, sponsored search results, and ClickFix-style lures. [...]
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…
Upgraded modular malware observed in attacks on Cisco Firewall Management Center (FMC) devicesCategories: Threat ResearchTags: Cyclops Blink, Cisco, Linux
Local privilege escalation (LPE) is the step that turns a foothold into full control of a host. An attacker who lands as an unprivileged user rarely stops there. They want root, and Linux keeps offering new ways to get it.In this edition of our "Linux Detection Engineering" series, we’ll cover:The default flow that a Linux LPE produces on the host and the general rules that detect it.The recurring LPE patterns behind the most recent LPEs and how each works, along with how each looks through the…
A new Android malware strain called Mantax Otax combines ransomware and spyware capabilities to encrypt files, steal sensitive data, and spam and harass victims. [...]
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Ask anybody in this industry what the work does to the health of the people who do it and you get one word back: burnout. It's a fine word, in and of itself. It’s easy to reach for, understandable to everyone… and it's the wrong one, most of the time. So, story time. Last year I gave an interview with the amazing Hazel Burton about VPNFilter, and my run-in with burnout. I was a manager during that time, and it took a toll on me and…
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…
BlueMoon, a shared Chrome and Windows exploit kit, shows why “patch later” is becoming a dangerous gamble. Security updates are easy to put off. The browser still opens, Windows still works, and choosing to relaunch your browser or restart your computer later can feel harmless. But a newly documented exploit kit called “BlueMoon” shows how quickly patching delays can become dangerous. Proofpoint Researchers found four espionage groups using the same exploit chain against Chrome browsers running…
Executive Summary In this research we introduce a prompt-crafting technique for bypassing quick LLM-based policy checks — using plain English (no emojis, base64, invisible formatting, etc.) A policy-violating payload (e.g. ”encrypt files in ~/Documents”, “give me a biohazard recipe”, “ignore all previous instructions and…”) is embedded in a specially crafted prose wrapper. An LLM with limited resources and attention fails to realize the payload is there, classifies the prompt as benign and…