Phishing | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Thursday released an advisory warning of North Korean state-sponsored threat actors leveraging malicious QR codes in spear-phishing campaigns targeting entities in the country. "As of 2025, Kimsuky actors have targeted think tanks, academic institutions, and both U.S. and foreign government entities with embedded malicious Quick Response (QR) codes in spear-phishing campaigns," the FBI said in the flash alert. "This type of spear-phishing attack is referred to as quishing." The use of QR codes for phishing is a tactic that forces victims to shift from a machine that's secured by enterprise policies to a mobile device that may not offer the same level of protection, effectively allowing threat actors to bypass traditional defenses. Kimsuky, also tracked as APT43, Black Banshee, Emerald Sleet, Springtail, TA427, and Velvet Chollima, is a threat group that's assessed to be affiliated with North Korea's...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new campaign that uses WhatsApp as a distribution vector for a Windows banking trojan called Astaroth in attacks targeting Brazil. The campaign has been codenamed Boto Cor-de-Rosa by Acronis Threat Research Unit. "The malware retrieves the victim's WhatsApp contact list and automatically sends malicious messages to each contact to further spread the infection," the cybersecurity company said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "While the core Astaroth payload remains written in Delphi and its installer relies on Visual Basic script, the newly added WhatsApp-based worm module is implemented entirely in Python, highlighting the threat actors' growing use of multi-language modular components." Astaroth, also called Guildma, is a banking malware that has been detected in the wild since 2015, primarily targeting users in Latin America, notably Brazil, to facilitate data theft. In 2024, two diffe...

A cybercrime gang known as Black Cat has been attributed to a search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning campaign that employs fraudulent sites advertising popular software to trick users into downloading a backdoor capable of stealing sensitive data. According to a report published by the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center of China (CNCERT/CC) and Beijing Weibu Online (aka ThreatBook), the activity is designed to strategically push bogus sites to the top of search results on search engines like Microsoft Bing, specifically targeting users looking for programs like Google Chrome, Notepad++, QQ International, and iTools. "After visiting these high-ranking phishing pages, users are lured by carefully constructed download pages, attempting to download software installation packages bundled with malicious programs," CNCERT/CC and ThreatBook said. "Once installed, the program implants a backdoor Trojan without the user's k...

Threat actors engaging in phishing attacks are exploiting routing scenarios and misconfigured spoof protections to impersonate organizations' domains and distribute emails that appear as if they have been sent internally. "Threat actors have leveraged this vector to deliver a wide variety of phishing messages related to various phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platforms such as Tycoon 2FA ," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said in a Tuesday report. "These include messages with lures themed around voicemails, shared documents, communications from human resources (HR) departments, password resets or expirations, and others, leading to credential phishing." While the attack vector is not necessarily new , the tech giant said it has witnessed a surge in the use of the tactic since May 2025 as part of opportunistic campaigns targeting a wide variety of organizations across multiple industries and verticals. This includes a campaign that has employed spoofed e...

Source: Securonix Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new campaign dubbed PHALT#BLYX that has leveraged ClickFix -style lures to display fixes for fake blue screen of death ( BSoD ) errors in attacks targeting the European hospitality sector. The end goal of the multi-stage campaign is to deliver a remote access trojan known as DCRat , according to cybersecurity company Securonix. The activity was detected in late December 2025. "For initial access, the threat actors utilize a fake Booking.com reservation cancellation lure to trick victims into executing malicious PowerShell commands, which silently fetch and execute remote code," researchers Shikha Sangwan, Akshay Gaikwad, and Aaron Beardslee said . The starting point of the attack chain is a phishing email impersonating Booking.com that contains a link to a fake website (e.g., "low-house[.]com"). The messages warn recipients of unexpected reservation cancellations, urging them to click the ...

The Russia-aligned threat actor known as UAC-0184 has been observed targeting Ukrainian military and government entities by leveraging the Viber messaging platform to deliver malicious ZIP archives. "This organization has continued to conduct high-intensity intelligence gathering activities against Ukrainian military and government departments in 2025," the 360 Threat Intelligence Center said in a technical report. Also tracked as Hive0156, the hacking group is primarily known for leveraging war-themed lures in phishing emails to deliver Hijack Loader in attacks targeting Ukrainian entities. The malware loader subsequently acts as a pathway for Remcos RAT infections. The threat actor was first documented by CERT-UA in early January 2024. Subsequent attack campaigns have been found to leverage messaging apps like Signal and Telegram as a delivery vehicle for malware. The latest findings from the Chinese security vendor points to a further evolution of this tactic. ...

The year opened without a reset. The same pressure carried over, and in some places it tightened. Systems people assume are boring or stable are showing up in the wrong places. Attacks moved quietly, reused familiar paths, and kept working longer than anyone wants to admit. This week's stories share one pattern. Nothing flashy. No single moment. Just steady abuse of trust — updates, extensions, logins, messages — the things people click without thinking. That's where damage starts now. This recap pulls those signals together. Not to overwhelm, but to show where attention slipped and why it matters early in the year. ⚡ Threat of the Week RondoDox Botnet Exploits React2Shell Flaw — A persistent nine-month-long campaign has targeted Internet of Things (IoT) devices and web applications to enroll them into a botnet known as RondoDox. As of December 2025, the activity has been observed leveraging the recently disclosed React2Shell (CVE-2025-55182, CVSS score: 10.0) flaw as an initial...

The threat actor known as Transparent Tribe has been attributed to a fresh set of attacks targeting Indian governmental, academic, and strategic entities with a remote access trojan (RAT) that grants them persistent control over compromised hosts. "The campaign employs deceptive delivery techniques, including a weaponized Windows shortcut (LNK) file masquerading as a legitimate PDF document and embedded with full PDF content to evade user suspicion," CYFIRMA said in a technical report. Transparent Tribe, also called APT36, is a hacking group that's known for mounting cyber espionage campaigns against Indian organizations. Assessed to be of Pakistani origin, the state-sponsored adversary has been active since at least 2013. The threat actor boasts of an ever-evolving arsenal of RATs to realize its goals. Some of the trojans put to use by Transparent Tribe in recent years include CapraRAT , Crimson RAT , ElizaRAT , and DeskRAT . The latest set of attacks began with ...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a phishing campaign that involves the attackers impersonating legitimate Google-generated messages by abusing Google Cloud's Application Integration service to distribute emails. The activity, Check Point said, takes advantage of the trust associated with Google Cloud infrastructure to send the messages from a legitimate email address ("noreply-application-integration@google[.]com") so that they can bypass traditional email security filters and have a better chance of landing in users' inboxes. "The emails mimic routine enterprise notifications such as voicemail alerts and file access or permission requests, making them appear normal and trustworthy to recipients," the cybersecurity company said . Attackers have been observed sending 9,394 phishing emails targeting approximately 3,200 customers over a 14-day period observed in December 2025, with the affected organizations located in the U.S., Asia-Pac...

The threat actor known as Silver Fox has turned its focus to India, using income tax-themed lures in phishing campaigns to distribute a modular remote access trojan called ValleyRAT (aka Winos 4.0). "This sophisticated attack leverages a complex kill chain involving DLL hijacking and the modular Valley RAT to ensure persistence," CloudSEK researchers Prajwal Awasthi and Koushik Pal said in an analysis published last week. Also tracked as SwimSnake, The Great Thief of Valley (or Valley Thief), UTG-Q-1000, and Void Arachne, Silver Fox is the name assigned to an aggressive cybercrime group from China that has been active since 2022. It has a track record of orchestrating a variety of campaigns whose motives range from espionage and intelligence collection to financial gain, cryptocurrency mining, and operational disruption, making it one of the few hacking crews with a multi-pronged approach to their intrusion activity. Primarily focused on Chinese-speaking individuals...

Last week's cyber news in 2025 was not about one big incident. It was about many small cracks opening at the same time. Tools people trust every day behave in unexpected ways. Old flaws resurfaced. New ones were used almost immediately. A common theme ran through it all in 2025. Attackers moved faster than fixes. Access meant for work, updates, or support kept getting abused. And damage did not stop when an incident was "over" — it continued to surface months or even years later. This weekly recap brings those stories together in one place. No overload, no noise. Read on to see what shaped the threat landscape in the final stretch of 2025 and what deserves your attention now. ⚡ Threat of the Week MongoDB Vulnerability Comes Under Attack — A newly disclosed security vulnerability in MongoDB has come under active exploitation in the wild, with over 87,000 potentially susceptible instances identified across the world. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-14847 (CVSS score: 8.7)...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of what has been described as a "sustained and targeted" spear-phishing campaign that has published over two dozen packages to the npm registry to facilitate credential theft. The activity, which involved uploading 27 npm packages from six different npm aliases, has primarily targeted sales and commercial personnel at critical infrastructure-adjacent organizations in the U.S. and Allied nations, according to Socket. "A five-month operation turned 27 npm packages into durable hosting for browser-run lures that mimic document-sharing portals and Microsoft sign-in, targeting 25 organizations across manufacturing, industrial automation, plastics, and healthcare for credential theft," researchers Nicholas Anderson and Kirill Boychenko said .

It's getting harder to tell where normal tech ends and malicious intent begins. Attackers are no longer just breaking in — they're blending in, hijacking everyday tools, trusted apps, and even AI assistants. What used to feel like clear-cut "hacker stories" now looks more like a mirror of the systems we all use. This week's findings show a pattern: precision, patience, and persuasion. The newest campaigns don't shout for attention — they whisper through familiar interfaces, fake updates, and polished code. The danger isn't just in what's being exploited, but in how ordinary it all looks. ThreatsDay pulls these threads together — from corporate networks to consumer tech — revealing how quiet manipulation and automation are reshaping the threat landscape. It's a reminder that the future of cybersecurity won't hinge on bigger walls, but on sharper awareness. Open-source tool exploited Abuse of Nezha for Post-Exploitation Bad actors are le...

The fraudulent investment scheme known as Nomani has witnessed an increase by 62%, according to data from ESET, as campaigns distributing the threat have also expanded beyond Facebook to include other social media platforms, such as YouTube. The Slovak cybersecurity company said it blocked over 64,000 unique URLs associated with the threat this year. A majority of the detections originated from Czechia, Japan, Slovakia, Spain, and Poland. Nomani was first documented by ESET in December 2024 as leveraging social media malvertising, company-branded posts, and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered video testimonials to deceive users into investing their funds in non-existent investment products that falsely claim significant returns. When victims request payout of the promised profits, they are asked to pay more fees or provide additional personal information, such as ID and credit card information. As is typical of investment scams of this kind, the end goal is financial loss. It...

Every year, cybercriminals find new ways to steal money and data from businesses. Breaching a business network, extracting sensitive data, and selling it on the dark web has become a reliable payday.  But in 2025, the data breaches that affected small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) challenged our perceived wisdom about exactly which types of businesses cybercriminals are targeting.  This article will outline the learnings from key data breaches in 2025 as well as the most effective ways for SMBs to protect themselves in the coming year. Examining the 2025 data breaches Prior to 2025, large businesses were popular targets for hackers because of their large pools of resources. It was assumed that smaller businesses simply weren't as vulnerable to cyberattacks because there was less value in attacking them. But new security research from the Data Breach Observatory shows that's changing: Small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are now more likely to become a target. ...

The U.S. Justice Department (DoJ) on Monday announced the seizure of a web domain and database that it said was used to further a criminal scheme designed to target and defraud Americans by means of a bank account takeover scheme. The domain in question, web3adspanels[.]org, was used as a backend web panel to host and manipulate illegally harvested bank login credentials. Users to the website are now greeted by a seizure banner that says the domain was taken down in an international law enforcement operation led by authorities from the U.S. and Estonia. "The criminal group perpetrating the bank account takeover fraud delivered fraudulent advertisements through search engines, including Google and Bing," the DoJ said . "These fraudulent advertisements imitate the sponsored search engine advertisements used by legitimate banking entities." The ads served as a conduit to redirect unsuspecting users to fake bank websites operated by the threat actors, who harvested ...

Threat actors have been observed leveraging malicious dropper apps masquerading as legitimate applications to deliver an Android SMS stealer dubbed Wonderland in mobile attacks targeting users in Uzbekistan. "Previously, users received 'pure' Trojan APKs that acted as malware immediately upon installation," Group-IB said in an analysis published last week. "Now, adversaries increasingly deploy droppers disguised as legitimate applications. The dropper looks harmless on the surface but contains a built-in malicious payload, which is deployed locally after installation – even without an active internet connection." Wonderland (formerly WretchedCat), according to the Singapore-headquartered cybersecurity company, facilitates bidirectional command-and-control (C2) communication to execute commands in real-time, allowing for arbitrary USSD requests and SMS theft. It masquerades as Google Play, or files of other formats, such as videos, photos, and wedding in...

Threat hunters have discerned new activity associated with an Iranian threat actor known as Infy (aka Prince of Persia), nearly five years after the hacking group was observed targeting victims in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Turkey. "The scale of Prince of Persia's activity is more significant than we originally anticipated," Tomer Bar, vice president of security research at SafeBreach, said in a technical breakdown shared with The Hacker News. "This threat group is still active, relevant, and dangerous." Infy is one of the oldest advanced persistent threat (APT) actors in existence, with evidence of early activity dating all the way back to December 2004, according to a report released by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 in May 2016 that was also authored by Bar, along with researcher Simon Conant. The group has also managed to remain elusive, attracting little attention, unlike other Iranian hacking crews such as Charming Kitten , MuddyWater , and OilRig ...

A suspected Russia-aligned group has been attributed to a phishing campaign that employs device code authentication workflows to steal victims' Microsoft 365 credentials and conduct account takeover attacks. The activity, ongoing since September 2025, is being tracked by Proofpoint under the moniker UNK_AcademicFlare . The attacks involve using compromised email addresses belonging to government and military organizations to strike entities within government, think tanks, higher education, and transportation sectors in the U.S. and Europe. "Typically, these compromised email addresses are used to conduct benign outreach and rapport building related to the targets' area of expertise to ultimately arrange a fictitious meeting or interview," the enterprise security company said . As part of these efforts, the adversary claims to share a link to a document that includes questions or topics for the email recipient to review before the meeting. The URL points to a Clo...

Authorities in Nigeria have announced the arrest of three "high-profile internet fraud suspects" who are alleged to have been involved in phishing attacks targeting major corporations, including the main developer behind the RaccoonO365 phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) scheme. The Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre (NPF–NCCC) said investigations conducted in collaboration with Microsoft and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) led to the identification of Okitipi Samuel, also known as Moses Felix, as the principal suspect and developer of the phishing infrastructure. "Investigations reveal that he operated a Telegram channel through which phishing links were sold in exchange for cryptocurrency and hosted fraudulent login portals on Cloudflare using stolen or fraudulently obtained email credentials," the NPF said in a post shared on social media. In addition, laptops, mobile devices, and other digital equipment linked to the operation have been se...