Phishing remained the leading initial access technique, appearing in slightly over one-third of all Cisco Talos Incident Response (Talos IR) engagements — a decrease from over 50 percent last quarter. In addition to traditional phishing links and attachments, we observed numerous threat actors conducting voice phishing (vishing) in tandem with IT desk impersonation to socially engineer the victim into allowing remote access via a legitimate remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool.…
In this article Attack overviewTechnical analysisMitigation and protection guidanceReferencesLearn More Microsoft Security Research has identified malicious cloud activity associated with JADEPUFFER, a threat actor discovered by Sysdig in July 2026 and reported to be the first documented agentic ransomware operation. Our investigation found an extensive Azure-focused resource destruction activity using compromised service principals and cloud credential collection that could be used to…
Executive summary In April 2026, we at Kaspersky’s Global Emergency Response Team (GERT) responded to a security incident at a manufacturing organization in the Middle East. The threat actor obtained domain admin-equivalent control of the organization’s Active Directory environment and authored a malicious Group Policy Object (GPO) named PAYLOAD, linking it at the domain root. Through that single object, the actor delivered ransom notes, hijacked the desktop wallpaper and lock screen, enforced…
Introduction We continue tracking the activity of Toy Ghouls (also known as Bearlyfy, Laboo.boo, and Feral Wolf), a financially motivated group that has been targeting Russian organizations since 2025. The attackers initially relied exclusively on tools pulled from public GitHub repositories along with leaked Babuk and LockBit ransomware builders, later shifting to their own custom ransomware, GenieLocker. In early July 2026, we observed the group using a custom backdoor for the first time. We…
You can’t patch everything. So what do you fix first? Findings in Q2 2026 have changed traditional answers.The latest Quarterly Threat Landscape Report from Rapid7 Labs shows vulnerability disclosures still surging while attackers use automation and AI-assisted tooling to compress the time between disclosure and exploitation. The gap that patch cycles were built to fill is closing. Speed and volume are overwhelming security teams that have relied on traditional patch cycles and reactive…
Learn how Tenable One Cloud Exposure helps you unmask the sophisticated tactics of cybercrime group Storm-0501, which carries out Azure-based cloud ransomware campaigns. Tenable One Cloud Exposure uses AI-powered threat stories to expose Storm-0501 TTPs, backed by precision-engineered threat detection alerts.Key takeawaysStorm-0501 demonstrates that cloud-first ransomware groups have shifted from simple endpoint encryption to the total hijacking of cloud tenants.Storm-0501 systematically…
In this article What is device isolation?Case study: QNETAttack chain overviewMITRE ATT&CK techniques observedReferencesLearn more Microsoft Defender’s attack disruption now includes device isolation, a new response action that extends autonomous protection directly to compromised endpoints. At QNET, an attacker initiated a multi-stage attack using a legitimate Windows tool on a compromised endpoint to retrieve a malicious remote payload–a classic living-off-the-land (LOL) technique that often…
For the latest discoveries in cyber research for the week of 27th July, please download our Threat Intelligence Bulletin. TOP ATTACKS AND BREACHES Nichirei, a Japan-based frozen-food supplier and logistics company, has experienced a ransomware attack that disrupted shipping operations and affected approximately 5,000 customers. KFC Japan warned of possible shortages. Nichirei confirmed personal data theft, while the RansomHouse group claimed responsibility and published a subset of the stolen…