Data Exfiltration | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Microsoft Teams' cross-tenant collaboration feature, which allows external accounts to message employees directly, is enabled by default in most enterprise deployments . Most organizations have never audited or restricted it. That default setting has become one of the more reliable social engineering entry points security teams are managing today. The base attack is straightforward. An attacker creates an external Teams account, identifies a target through LinkedIn or a company directory, and sends a message posing as IT helpdesk staff. The message cites an urgent account issue (an MFA problem, a security alert, a failed login) and asks the employee to open Quick Assist, a built-in Microsoft remote assistance tool, and approve a session. What has changed recently is the layer added on top of that initial contact: an AI-generated voice that sounds like someone the target already knows. How the Base Attack Chain Unfolds Once Quick Assist access is established, the attack fol...

Government impersonation scams have evolved into a large, highly coordinated fraud ecosystem targeting citizens across the globe. CTM360 's latest threat intelligence research analyzes a widespread campaign, referred to as GovTrap, that demonstrates how attackers systematically exploit public trust in government institutions through thousands of fraudulent digital platforms. Unlike traditional phishing attacks that rely on simple deceptions, GovTrap campaigns replicate entire government service environments. These fraudulent platforms mimic official portals with high accuracy, including branding, language, workflows, and service structures. From tax portals and licensing systems to fine payment services, each fake site is designed to appear legitimate while functioning as part of a broader, scalable fraud operation. Read the full report here:  https://www.ctm360.com/reports/government-impersonation-phishing-govtrap-scams Scale and Targeting Patterns CTM360 identified mo...

In November 2025, Anthropic revealed a cyber espionage campaign dubbed GTG-1002, the first documented case of an AI agent orchestrating real-world intrusions with minimal human input. A Chinese state-sponsored group manipulated Anthropic's Claude Code assistant into executing about 80% of a multi-target hacking campaign autonomously. Instead of merely advising cybercriminals, the AI took control of key steps: reconnaissance, vulnerability discovery, exploitation, credential theft, and data exfiltration across dozens of organizations. The result was an operation running at machine tempo. Claude performed tasks in a fraction of the time a human team would need, even identifying sensitive databases and writing exploits in seconds. Figure 1: The distinct phases of the Claude cyberattack At the peak of the attack, the AI made thousands of requests (often several per second), an onslaught of activity impossible for humans to match. This speed and scale of automation is a game changer: a...