Phishing | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A China-aligned threat actor has set its sights on European government and diplomatic organizations since mid-2025, following a two-year period of minimal targeting in the region. The campaign has been attributed to TA416 , a cluster of activity that overlaps with DarkPeony, RedDelta, Red Lich, SmugX, UNC6384, and Vertigo Panda. "This TA416 activity included multiple waves of web bug and malware delivery campaigns against diplomatic missions to the European Union and NATO across a range of European countries," Proofpoint researchers Mark Kelly and Georgi Mladenov said . "Throughout this period, TA416 regularly altered its infection chain, including abusing Cloudflare Turnstile challenge pages, abusing OAuth redirects, and using C# project files, as well as frequently updating its custom PlugX payload." TA416 has also been observed orchestrating multiple campaigns aimed at diplomatic and government entities in the Middle East following the outbreak...

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has disclosed details of a new phishing campaign in which the cybersecurity agency itself was impersonated to distribute a remote administration tool known as AGEWHEEZE. As part of the attacks, the threat actors, tracked as UAC-0255 , sent emails on March 26 and 27, 2026, posing as CERT-UA to distribute a password-protected ZIP archive hosted on Files.fm and urged recipients to install the "specialized software." The targets of the campaign included state organizations, medical centers, security companies, educational institutions, financial institutions, and software development companies. Some of the emails were sent from the email address "incidents@cert-ua[.]tech." The ZIP file ("CERT_UA_protection_tool.zip") is designed to download malware packaged as security software from the agency. The malware, per CERT-UA, is a remote access trojan codenamed AGEWHEEZE.  A Go-based malware, AGEWHEEZE...

A multi-pronged phishing campaign is targeting Spanish-speaking users in organizations across Latin America and Europe to deliver Windows banking trojans like Casbaneiro (aka Metamorfo) via another malware called Horabot . The activity has been attributed to a Brazilian cybercrime threat actor tracked as Augmented Marauder and Water Saci . The e-crime group was first documented by Trend Micro in October 2025. "This threat group employs a wider-ranging attack model focused on a bespoke delivery and propagation mechanism that includes WhatsApp, ClickFix techniques, and email-centric phishing," BlueVoyant security researchers Thomas Elkins and Joshua Green said in a technical breakdown published Tuesday. "It is now evident that while these Brazil-based operators heavily leverage script-based WhatsApp automation to compromise retail and consumer users in Latin America, they concurrently maintain and deploy an advanced, email-hijacking engine to penetrate enterprise ...

The cybersecurity landscape is accelerating at an unprecedented rate. What is emerging is not simply a rise in the number of vulnerabilities or tools, but a dramatic increase in speed. Speed of attack, speed of exploitation, and speed of change across modern environments. This is the defining challenge of the new era of digital warfare: the weaponization of Artificial Intelligence. Threat actors, from nation-states to sophisticated criminal enterprises, are no longer just attacking. They are automating the entire kill chain. In this AI arms race, traditional defensive strategies are no longer sufficient. Periodic point-in-time assessments, manual triage, and human-speed response were already under pressure in fast-moving environments. Against AI-enabled adversaries, they are increasingly inadequate. Solutions like PlexTrac are built to help organizations move beyond fragmented findings, disconnected tools, and slow manual workflows by unifying exposure management, remediation, and...

Chinese-speaking users are the target of an active campaign that uses typosquatted domains impersonating trusted software brands to deliver a previously undocumented remote access trojan named AtlasCross RAT . "The operation covers VPN clients, encrypted messengers, video conferencing tools, cryptocurrency trackers, and e-commerce applications, with eleven confirmed delivery domains impersonating brands including Surfshark VPN, Signal, Telegram, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and others," Germany-based cybersecurity company Hexastrike said in a report published last week. The activity has been attributed to a Chinese cybercrime group called Silver Fox , which is also tracked as SwimSnake, The Great Thief of Valley (or Valley Thief), UTG-Q-1000, and Void Arachne. The discovery of AtlasCross RAT represents an evolution of the threat actor's arsenal from Gh0st RAT derivatives like ValleyRAT (aka Winos 4.0), Gh0stCringe, and HoldingHands RAT (aka Gh0stBins). The attack chains i...

A new campaign has leveraged the ClickFix social engineering tactic as a way to distribute a previously undocumented malware loader referred to as DeepLoad . "It likely uses AI-assisted obfuscation and process injection to evade static scanning, while credential theft starts immediately and captures passwords and sessions even if the primary loader is blocked," ReliaQuest researchers Thassanai McCabe and Andrew Currie said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The starting point of the attack chain is a ClickFix lure that tricks users into running PowerShell commands by pasting the command into the Windows Run dialog under the pretext of addressing a non-existent issue. This, in turn, uses "mshta.exe," a legitimate Windows utility to download and run an obfuscated PowerShell loader. The loader, for its part, has been found to conceal its actual functionality among meaningless variable assignments, likely in an attempt to deceive security tools. It's ass...

Some weeks are loud. This one was quieter but not in a good way. Long-running operations are finally hitting courtrooms, old attack methods are showing up in new places, and research that stopped being theoretical right around the time defenders stopped paying attention. There's a bit of everything this week. Persistence plays, legal wins, influence ops, and at least one thing that looks boring until you see what it connects to. All of it below. Let's go. ⚡ Threat of the Week Citrix Flaw Comes Under Active Exploitation — A critical security flaw in Citrix NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway (CVE-2026-3055, CVSS score: 9.3) has come under active exploitation as of March 27, 2026. The vulnerability refers to a case of insufficient input validation leading to memory overread, which an attacker could exploit to leak potentially sensitive information. Per Citrix, successful exploitation of the flaw hinges on the appliance being configured as a SAML Identity Provider (SAML IDP)...

What is really slowing Tier 1 down: the threat itself or the process around it? In many SOCs, the biggest delays do not come from the threat alone. They come from fragmented workflows, manual triage steps, and limited visibility early in the investigation. Fixing those process gaps can help Tier 1 move faster, reduce unnecessary escalations, and improve how the entire SOC responds under pressure.  Here are three process fixes that can help unlock stronger Tier 1 performance. Process #1: Replace Tool Switching with One Cross-Platform Investigation Workflow The problem: Tier 1 often loses time moving between different tools, interfaces, and processes to investigate suspicious activity across operating systems. What starts as one alert can quickly turn into a fragmented workflow. Why it hurts productivity: Constant tool switching slows down triage, breaks investigation focus, and makes it harder to build a clear picture of what is happening. It also increases the chance of missed...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a remote access toolkit of Russian-origin that's distributed via malicious Windows shortcut (LNK) files that are disguised as private key folders. The CTRL toolkit, according to Censys, is custom-built using .NET and includes various executables" to facilitate credential phishing, keylogging, Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) hijacking, and reverse tunneling via Fast Reverse Proxy (FRP). "The executables provide encrypted payload loading, credential harvesting via a polished Windows Hello phishing UI, keylogging, RDP session hijacking, and reverse proxy tunneling through FRP," Censys security researcher Andrew Northern said . The attack surface management platform said it recovered CTRL from an open directory at 146.19.213[.]155 in February 2026. Attack chains distributing the toolkit rely on a weaponized LNK file ("Private Key #kfxm7p9q_yek.lnk") with a folder icon to trick users into double-clicking it. This tri...

Threat actors with ties to Iran successfully broke into the personal email account of Kash Patel, the director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and leaked a cache of photos and other documents to the internet. Handala Hack Team , which carried out the breach, said on its website that Patel "will now find his name among the list of successfully hacked victims." In a statement shared with Reuters, the FBI confirmed Patel's emails had been targeted, and noted necessary steps have been taken to "mitigate ​potential risks associated with this activity." The agency also said the published data was "historical in nature and involves no government information." The leak includes emails from ​2010 and 2019 allegedly sent by Patel. Handala Hack is assessed to be a pro-Iranian, pro-Palestinian hacktivist persona adopted by Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security ( MOIS ). It's tracked by the cybersecurity community under the m...

Threat actors are using adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) phishing pages to seize control of TikTok for Business accounts in a new campaign, according to a report from Push Security. Business accounts associated with social media platforms are a lucrative target, as they can be weaponized by bad actors for malvertising and distributing malware. "TikTok has been historically abused to distribute malicious links and social engineering instructions," Push Security said . "This includes multiple infostealers like Vidar, StealC, and Aura Stealer delivered via ClickFix-style instructions with AI-generated videos posed as activation guides for Windows, Spotify, and CapCut." The campaign begins with tricking victims into clicking on a malicious link that directs them to either a lookalike page impersonating TikTok for Business or a page that's designed to impersonate Google Careers, along with an option to schedule a call to discuss the opportunity. It's worth n...

Unmasking impostors is something the art world has faced for decades, and there are valuable lessons from the works of Elmyr de Hory that can apply to the world of defensive cybersecurity. During the 1960s, de Hory gained infamy as a premier forger, passing off counterfeit masterworks of Picasso, Matisse, and Renoir to unsuspecting collectors and renowned museums. Over the next several decades, more than a thousand of his works slipped past experts who relied on trusted signatures, familiar patterns, and reputable provenance. It’s not unlike the challenges SOCs are facing now. We’re firmly in the Age of Imitation. Cyberattackers, equipped with AI, are mastering the art of imitating the familiar, posing as trusted users and masking their activity within legitimate processes and ordinary network traffic. As history shows, it’s often easier to identify impostors when you know what to look for. Key takeaways for defenders: Mimicry is the new normal: 81% of attacks are malware-free Ag...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said a Russian national has been sentenced to two years in prison for managing a botnet that was used to launch ransomware attacks against U.S. companies. Ilya Angelov, 40, of Tolyatti, Russia, was also fined $100,000. Angelov, who went by the online aliases "milan" and "okart," is said to have co-managed a Russia-based cybercriminal group known as TA551 (aka ATK236, G0127, Gold Cabin, Hive0106, Mario Kart, Monster Libra, Shathak, and UNC2420 ) between 2017 and 2021. "Angelov's group built a network of compromised computers (a 'botnet') through distribution of malware-infected files attached to spam emails," the DoJ said. "Angelov and his co-manager then monetized this botnet by selling access to individual compromised computers ('bots')." According to the sentencing memorandum , the threat group developed programs to distribute spam email and refined malware to bypass security tools...

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to an active device code phishing campaign that's targeting Microsoft 365 identities across more than 340 organizations in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Germany. The activity, per Huntress, was first spotted on February 19, 2026, with subsequent cases appearing at an accelerated pace since then. Notably, the campaign leverages Cloudflare Workers redirects with captured sessions redirected to infrastructure hosted on a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering called Railway, effectively turning it into a credential harvesting engine. Construction, non-profits, real estate, manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, legal, and government are some of the prominent sectors targeted as part of the campaign.  "What also makes this campaign unusual is not just the device code phishing techniques involved, but the variety of techniques observed," the company said. "Construction bid lures, landing page code...

An ongoing phishing campaign is targeting French-speaking corporate environments with fake resumes that lead to the deployment of cryptocurrency miners and information stealers. "The campaign uses highly obfuscated VBScript files disguised as resume/CV documents, delivered through phishing emails," Securonix researchers Shikha Sangwan, Akshay Gaikwad, and Aaron Beardslee said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Once executed, the malware deploys a multi-purpose toolkit that combines credential theft, data exfiltration, and Monero cryptocurrency mining for maximum monetization." The activity has been codenamed FAUX#ELEVATE by the cybersecurity company. The campaign is noteworthy for the abuse of legitimate services and infrastructure, such as Dropbox for staging payloads, Moroccan WordPress sites for hosting command-and-control (C2) configuration, and mail[.]ru SMTP infrastructure for exfiltrating stolen browser credentials and desktop files. This is an ...

Another week, another reminder that the internet is still a mess. Systems people thought were secure are being broken in simple ways, showing many still ignore basic advisories. This edition covers a mix of issues: supply chain attacks hitting CI/CD setups, long-abused IoT devices being shut down, and exploits moving quickly from disclosure to real attacks. There are also new malware tricks showing attackers are becoming more patient and creative. It’s a mix of old problems that never go away and new methods that are harder to detect. There are quiet state-backed activities, exposed data from open directories, growing mobile threats, and a steady stream of zero-days and rushed patches. Grab a coffee, and at least skim the CVE list. Some of these are the kind you don’t want to discover after the damage is done. ⚡ Threat of the Week Trivy Vulnerability Scanner Breached in for Supply Chain Attack — Attackers have backdoored the widely used open-source Trivy vulnerability scanner, ...

Microsoft has warned of fresh campaigns that are capitalizing on the upcoming tax season in the U.S. to harvest credentials and deliver malware. The email campaigns take advantage of the urgency and time-sensitive nature of emails to send phishing messages masquerading as refund notices, payroll forms, filing reminders, and requests from tax professionals to deceive recipients into opening malicious attachments, scanning QR code, or interacting with suspicious links. "Many campaigns target individuals for personal and financial data theft, but others specifically target accountants and other professionals who handle sensitive documents, have access to financial data, and are accustomed to receiving tax-related emails during this period," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence and Microsoft Defender Security Research teams said in a report published last week. While some of these efforts direct users to sketchy pages designed through Phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platforms, ot...

Threat actors affiliated with Russian Intelligence Services are conducting phishing campaigns to compromise commercial messaging applications (CMAs) like WhatsApp and Signal to seize control of accounts belonging to individuals with high intelligence value, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said Friday. "The campaign targets individuals of high intelligence value, including current and former U.S. government officials, military personnel, political figures, and journalists," FBI Director Kash Patel said in a post on X. "Globally, this effort has resulted in unauthorized access to thousands of individual accounts. After gaining access, the actors can view messages and contact lists, send messages as the victim, and conduct additional phishing from a trusted identity." It's worth noting that the attacks are designed to break into the victims' CMA accounts through phishing and do not ...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing how individuals and organizations conduct many activities, including how cybercriminals carry out phishing attacks and iterate on malware. Now, cybercriminals are using AI to generate personalized phishing emails, deepfakes and malware that evade traditional detection by impersonating normal user activity and bypassing legacy security models. As a result, rule-based models alone are often insufficient for identity security against AI-enabled threats. Behavioral analytics must evolve beyond monitoring suspicious activity patterns over time into dynamic, identity-based risk modeling capable of identifying inconsistencies in real time. Common risks introduced by AI-enabled attacks AI-enabled cyber attacks introduce very different security risks compared to traditional cyber threats. By relying on automation and mimicking legitimate behavior, AI allows cybercriminals to scale their attacks while reducing obvious signals to remain undetected. AI-...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a new Android malware family called Perseus that's being actively distributed in the wild with an aim to conduct device takeover (DTO) and financial fraud. Perseus is built upon the foundations of Cerberus and Phoenix, at the same time evolving into a "more flexible and capable platform" for compromising Android devices through dropper apps distributed via phishing sites. "Through Accessibility-based remote sessions, the malware enables real-time monitoring and precise interaction with infected devices, allowing full device takeover and targeting various regions, with a strong focus on Turkey and Italy," ThreatFabric said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Beyond traditional credential theft, Perseus monitors user notes, indicating a focus on extracting high-value personal or financial information." Cerberus was first documented by the Dutch mobile security company in August 2019, highlighting th...