Initial Access Broker | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A Russian-speaking initial access broker (IAB) driven by financial gain is assessed to be behind a large-scale credential-harvesting operation known as FortiBleed that has targeted over 430,000 FortiGate firewalls globally. The campaign , active since February 2026, involves collecting credential lists, searching for exposed services, brute-forcing accessible systems, and deploying bespoke sniffers on compromised firewalls. "Once deployed, these sniffers capture cleartext and hashed credentials from traffic passing through compromised devices," SOCRadar said [PDF] in a fresh report. "The actors then crack, validate, and reuse the credentials against Active Directory domains and other exposed services." Central to the operation is a Golang-based tool called FortigateSniffer that takes advantage of the FortiOS built-in diagnostic command -diagnose sniffer packet to passively capture authentication traffic from the infected appliances. Appearing in both Window...

The threat actor known as Storm-0249 is likely shifting from its role as an initial access broker to adopt a combination of more advanced tactics like domain spoofing, DLL side-loading, and fileless PowerShell execution to facilitate ransomware attacks. "These methods allow them to bypass defenses, infiltrate networks, maintain persistence, and operate undetected, raising serious concerns for security teams," ReliaQuest said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Storm-0249 is the moniker assigned by Microsoft to an initial access broker that has sold footholds into organizations to other cybercrime groups, including ransomware and extortion actors like Storm-0501 . It was first highlighted by the tech giant in September 2024. Then, earlier this year, Microsoft also revealed details of a phishing campaign mounted by the threat actor that used tax-related themes to target users in the U.S. ahead of the tax filing season and infect them with Latrodectus and the BruteR...

The Initial Access Broker (IAB) known as Gold Melody has been attributed to a campaign that exploits leaked ASP.NET machine keys to obtain unauthorized access to organizations and peddle that access to other threat actors. The activity is being tracked by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 under the moniker TGR-CRI-0045 , where "TGR" stands for "temporary group" and "CRI" refers to "criminal motivation." The hacking group is also known as Prophet Spider and UNC961 , with one of its tools also used by an initial access broker called ToyMaker . "The group seems to follow an opportunistic approach but has attacked organizations in Europe and the U.S. in the following industries: financial services, manufacturing, wholesale and retail, high technology, and transportation and logistics," researchers Tom Marsden and Chema Garcia said . The abuse of ASP.NET machine keys in the wild was first documented by Microsoft in February 2025, with the c...

Cybersecurity researchers have detailed the activities of an initial access broker (IAB) dubbed ToyMaker that has been observed handing over access to double extortion ransomware gangs like CACTUS . The IAB has been assessed with medium confidence to be a financially motivated threat actor, scanning for vulnerable systems and deploying a custom malware called LAGTOY (aka HOLERUN). "LAGTOY can be used to create reverse shells and execute commands on infected endpoints," Cisco Talos researchers Joey Chen, Asheer Malhotra, Ashley Shen, Vitor Ventura, and Brandon White said . The malware was first documented by Google-owned Mandiant in late March 2023, attributing its use to a threat actor it tracks as UNC961 . The activity cluster is also known by other names such as Gold Melody and Prophet Spider. The threat actor has been observed leveraging a huge arsenal of known security flaws in internet-facing applications to obtain initial access, followed by conducting reconnai...

What are IABs? Initial Access Brokers (IABs) specialize in gaining unauthorized entry into computer systems and networks, then selling that access to other cybercriminals. This division of labor allows IABs to concentrate on their core expertise: exploiting vulnerabilities through methods like social engineering and brute-force attacks.  By selling access, they significantly mitigate the risks associated with directly executing ransomware attacks or other complex operations. Instead, they capitalize on their skill in breaching networks, effectively streamlining the attack process for their clients. This business model enables IABs to operate with a lower profile and reduced risk, while still profiting from their technical skills. Operating primarily on dark web forums and underground markets, IABs can function independently or as part of larger organizations like Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) gangs.  They act as a crucial link in the cybercrime ecosystem, providing the i...

A financially motivated threat actor has been outed as an initial access broker (IAB) that sells access to compromised organizations for other adversaries to conduct follow-on attacks such as ransomware. SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) has dubbed the e-crime group  Gold Melody , which is also known by the names Prophet Spider (CrowdStrike) and UNC961 (Mandiant). "This financially motivated group has been active since at least 2017, compromising organizations by exploiting vulnerabilities in unpatched internet-facing servers," the cybersecurity company  said . "The victimology suggests opportunistic attacks for financial gain rather than a targeted campaign conducted by a state-sponsored threat group for espionage, destruction, or disruption." Gold Melody has been  previously   linked  to  attacks  exploiting security flaws in JBoss Messaging (CVE-2017-7504), Citrix ADC (CVE-2019-19781), Oracle WebLogic (CVE-2020-14750 and CVE-2020-14882), ...

Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) took the wraps off a new  initial access broker  that it said is closely affiliated to a Russian cyber crime gang notorious for its Conti and Diavol ransomware operations. Dubbed Exotic Lily, the financially motivated threat actor has been observed exploiting a now-patched critical flaw in the Microsoft Windows MSHTML platform ( CVE-2021-40444 ) as part of widespread phishing campaigns that involved sending no fewer than 5,000 business proposal-themed emails a day to 650 targeted organizations globally. "Initial access brokers are the opportunistic locksmiths of the security world, and it's a full-time job," TAG researchers Vlad Stolyarov and Benoit Sevens  said . "These groups specialize in breaching a target in order to open the doors — or the Windows — to the malicious actor with the highest bid." Exotic Lily, first spotted in September 2021, is said to have been involved in data exfiltration and deployment of the...