Phishing | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The FBI and CISA have updated  their March warning  about Russian intelligence phishing Signal accounts, and the operators have added a step: they now coax targets into handing over their Signal Backup Recovery Key. Hand it over once, and the attacker can restore the account's backup, read the private and group message history, and take over the account. Worse, the key keeps working. Make a new account on the same phone number, and the old key can still be used against it, the advisory warns. The fix is blunt: generate a new key in Settings, which kills the old one for future backup downloads, and accept that anything the attacker already pulled is gone. The updated advisory, PSA I-062626-PSA , adds two public tracking names the March notice lacked: UNC5792 and UNC4221. The FBI ties the activity to multiple Russian Intelligence Services (RIS) groups, including FSB officers embedded with the FSB Border Guards and others working for the Russian military services. The ca...

An active phishing campaign has been targeting hotel and other hospitality organizations across Europe and Asia since April 2026, using photo-themed ZIP files to drop a Node.js implant and dig into front-desk machines, Microsoft says. The company has not attributed the activity to a known threat actor, and the operators' end goal is still unclear. The lure plays to how hotels work. Phishing emails carry the display name "Booking Manager (via Calendly)" and reference guest complaints, bedbug infestations, room inquiries, health inspections, and stay reviews. The lures came in Japanese, Danish, and Dutch, with Japanese the most common. The subject line names no recipient or property, which points to high-volume, list-driven sending rather than tailored spear phishing. The pressure is reputational: complaints, final warnings, threatened inspections. The delivery is the interesting part. The operators route messages through Calendly's email notification system a...

The Russian state-sponsored threat actor known as Turla has been attributed to a previously undocumented .NET backdoor called STOCKSTAY that has been deployed against government and military organizations in Ukraine, and entities that have an interest in Italian foreign policy. Describing the Windows backdoor as continually developed by the hacking group, Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said the cyber espionage tool shares significant code and functional overlaps with Kazuar , a staple implant put to use by the adversary since 2017. Suspected development activity of malware dates back to December 2022. "STOCKSTAY is a multi-component backdoor written in .NET, using the Windows Forms framework, which communicates with its command-and-control (C2) via a secure WebSocket connection, utilizing the open-source websocket-sharp library," GTIG said . "STOCKSTAY consists of several distinct components that communicate with one another via an inter-process commu...

Every weapon begins as an extension of the hand that holds it. The spear lengthened the reach of the arm. The bow sent the point flying without the throw. The rifle placed a man's death a quarter mile beyond his sight, and the aircraft carried that death across oceans. At each turn, the distance between the warrior and the wound grew wider, and yet one thing never moved: a human chose the target, and a human struck the blow. For the entire history of conflict, the cyber realm included, the hand has remained on the weapon. Offensive AI is the moment the weapon learns to aim itself. For three years, artificial intelligence (AI) has been an extension of the pen. It drafted the phishing email, proposed the exploit, sketched the malicious function, and then, like every tool that came before it, handed the work back to a human to carry out. In 2023, I published a whitepaper at the SANS Technology Institute showing how a person of almost no skill could coax a chatbot into producing m...

It’s Monday again. This week’s threat list looks painfully familiar: abused integrations, fake tools, poisoned websites, ransomware crews trying to shut down security tools, and mobile malware asking for way too much control. The annoying part is how little of this feels new. Weak credentials, sketchy downloads, browser extensions with too much access, and WordPress sites are used to push more attacks. Nothing clever. Just sloppy, cheap, and effective. Here’s the Monday recap. Let’s get into the week’s mess. ⚡ Threat of the Week FortiBleed Campaign Identifies Over 80K Targets — A large-scale campaign codenamed FortiBleed has systematically targeted and compromised Fortinet FortiGate firewall and SSL VPN gateway devices worldwide. According to SOCRadar, it has been running since at least February 2026, with over 80,000 devices identified with working usernames and passwords that have been tested by suspected Russian-speaking threat actors using automated tools running around...

A new report from INTERPOL has revealed a "dramatic increase" in cybercrime in Asia and the South Pacific, fueled by rapid digitalization, internet penetration, new technologies, organized criminal networks, and a disparity in cybersecurity maturity. According to INTERPOL's 2025/2026 Asia and South Pacific Cyberthreat Assessment Report, phishing has emerged as the most widespread and financially damaging form of cybercrime, with a third of countries in the region reporting more than 10,000 cases between January 2024 and March 2025. In all, over half of INTERPOL member countries have reported that cybercrime accounted for no less than 30% of all crimes recorded nationally. "The findings in this report highlight a rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape across Asia and the South Pacific, where cybercriminals are leveraging artificial intelligence, ransomware-as-a-service models and sophisticated social engineering techniques on an industrial scale," Neal Jett...

The North Korean state-sponsored hacking group known as ScarCruft (aka APT37) has been observed using spear-phishing messages impersonating Microsoft Account security notifications to deliver a new malware called NarwhalRAT . "The attack email contained a message impersonating an MS account security alert," the Genians Security Center (GSC) said . "It was designed to create concern over possible account compromise and OTP abuse, thereby inducing the recipient to execute the attachment." "The email body instructed the recipient to refer to the attached advisory. However, the actual attachment was not an HWP [Hangul Word Processor] document, but a ZIP archive that contained a malicious LNK file." The email message claims "abnormal activity" related to repeated generation of one-time passwords, passing it off as a phishing attempt aimed at the target's Microsoft Account by a third-party, and urging them to change their password. The end ...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged two malicious cyber campaigns that exhibit similarities with a persistent North Korean threat cluster known as Contagious Interview (aka Famous Chollima, HexagonalRodent, and Void Dokkaebi). According to a report published by Proofpoint, the threat actor has been found orchestrating phishing campaigns using developer role recruitment or code review themes to target nearly 100 organizations in finance, cryptocurrency, education, technology, and several other sectors. The activity has been codenamed UNK_DeadDrop . "The infection chain begins with emails containing links to actor-controlled GitHub repositories hosting malicious scripts that result in the execution of cross-platform malware for macOS, Linux, and Windows, including an open-source Go framework named Overlord ," Proofpoint researchers Saher Naumaan and Carlos Rubio said . A crucial aspect connecting the campaign to Pyongyang is the use of Microsoft Visual Studio Code (...

Stuff broke again. Not in a movie way. An old tool was left exposed. An abandoned package was abused. A deprecated feature was still running in prod. This week is the same lesson in a new form: phishing kits are easier to rent, AI names are useful bait, old login paths still fail, and forgotten software keeps becoming someone else's entry point. Scroll through the full Monday Cybersecurity Recap below for the news, tools, webinars, and fixes worth your time this week. ⚡ Threat of the Week Google Patches Actively Exploited Chrome 0-Day - Google released security updates to address 74 vulnerabilities, including one that has come under active exploitation in the wild. The high-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-11645 (CVSS score: 8.8), has been described as an out-of-bounds memory access in V8, Chrome's JavaScript and WebAssembly engine. Google acknowledged that an "exploit for CVE-2026-11645 exists in the wild," but stopped short of sharing addition...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of fraudulent activity targeting users across the Middle East and North Africa by employing various fraudulent Facebook accounts impersonating politicians, public figures, and trusted organizations. "These accounts promoted fake offers, including free mobile internet packages, financial compensation, and government subsidy programs," Group-IB analysts Anna Yurtaeva and Viacheslav Shevchenko said . "Victims were encouraged to click embedded links to claim the advertised benefits, but were instead redirected through a chain of intermediary websites that ultimately led to phishing and traffic monetization infrastructure." The Singapore-headquartered cybersecurity company has these campaigns to Sniper Dz , a turnkey phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform that was taken down last month in an INTERPOL-led operation. The findings indicate that the platform goes beyond facilitating credential theft, generating illicit ...

Google on Friday said it's pursuing legal action against a Chinese cybercrime network, accusing it of using its Gemini artificial intelligence (AI) agent to send phishing text messages targeting Americans. The network is said to be behind the development and management of a phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) software kit called Outsider, per the tech giant. "The operation weaponized Gemini to help generate fraudulent phishing pages and deploy massive SMS phishing ('smishing') attacks, often through text messages impersonating legitimate brands, alerting recipients of 'brokerage account issues' or insisting they are eligible for 'rewards through their mobile phone carrier,'" Google said . "The texts prompt users to click a link leading to a fraudulent website that mimics trusted institutions to steal personal and financial information." Google said it's filing the lawsuit to dismantle the network's infrastructure, and that it...

An INTERPOL-led operation last month resulted in the disruption of Sniper Dz , a decade-long phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform, Group-IB said Thursday. The effort, codenamed Operation Ramz , took place between October 2025 and February 2026, and saw authorities from 13 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region making 201 arrests. Included among them was Guedz, the primary developer and administrator of Sniper Dz, a PhaaS service that's said to have collected more than 45,000 victim records. The arrest was made by the Algerian National Police. Over the years, the platform rebranded itself as Joker Dz, Storm Dz, and Spam Dz. As part of Operation Ramz, the website used to offer PhaaS capabilities to other cybercriminals was taken down. Authorities also seized hardware containing phishing software and scripts. "Active since at least 2015, Sniper Dz evolved into a sophisticated criminal platform offering ready-made phishing kits, hosting infrastructu...

Two security teams have shown, in separate research published this week, that OpenClaw , the popular self-hosted AI agent, can be driven to run attacker-controlled code or hand over sensitive data through ordinary-looking inputs. Imperva buried instructions inside shared contacts, vCards, and location pins that the agent executed without the victim ever seeing them. Varonis built a test agent on the platform, gave it a mailbox full of synthetic business data, and watched a single plain email talk it into forwarding mock AWS keys and a fake customer export to an outside address. The flaw Imperva found is patched in OpenClaw 2026.4.23, so update if you run it. The phishing weakness Varonis found is not something a patch fixes; it comes down to limiting what the agent can do on its own. Different doors into the same room: the agent trusts what reaches it, and its access becomes the attacker's. Hidden commands in a shared contact Imperva researcher Yohann Sillam looked at ...

Meta on Monday said it detected and blocked spear-phishing attempts linked to Israeli spyware vendor NSO Group . In addition, the tech giant said it's filing a federal court contempt order against the company for violating a permanent injunction that barred it from targeting WhatsApp and its users. "They tried to trick people into clicking on malicious links to drive them to external websites outside of WhatsApp, similar to previously reported 1-click phishing campaigns linked to NSO," Meta said . The social media company also said it caught NSO Group creating test accounts and groups on WhatsApp. They have since been taken down by Meta. The list of malicious domains linked to the activity is listed below - fr24cast[.]com ghazacast[.]com ikhwancast[.]com Meta did not disclose any technical details about the campaign, including when the activity occurred, how many users were targeted, if any of those attacks were successful, and how the activity was t...

Phishing has always been a numbers game. AI has turned it into a volume machine. Attackers can now create convincing emails, fake login pages, and tailored lures in minutes. Every polished message adds another case for Tier 1 to review, another link to inspect, and another alert that cannot be dismissed at a glance. As the queue grows, a credential theft attempt or malware delivery can easily get buried among routine checks. SOC leaders need to help their teams cut through the noise faster and catch the alerts that could turn into a serious incident. Where Tier 1 Teams Lose Time on AI Phishing AI helps attackers launch more convincing campaigns, vary the message, and rotate infrastructure faster. For Tier 1 teams, that means fewer alerts can be ruled out quickly. AI-driven change What Tier 1 has to deal with SOC impact More lure variations Similar campaigns no longer look identical. More alert...

Monday again. The weekend was meant to be quiet. It wasn't. Last week had poisoned packages, a broken AI helper, and a worm tearing through repos. The ugly part: basic tricks still worked. A chatbot got fooled. A bot token got leaked inside the malware. The same old mistakes showed up again. And while everyone chased the loud stuff, quieter attackers sat in inboxes for months, reading mail and stealing it bit by bit. Lots to cover. Grab coffee. Read up. ⚡ Threat of the Week Miasma Worm Hits 73 Microsoft GitHub Repositories in Supply Chain Attack - Microsoft's GitHub repositories became the latest to fall victim to the ongoing Miasma self-replicating supply chain attack campaign. The incident impacted 73 Microsoft repositories across four of its GitHub organizations, including Azure, Azure-Samples, Microsoft, and MicrosoftDocs. The development prompted GitHub to disable access to those repositories. Miasma is assessed to be a variant of the Mini Shai-Hulud worm that T...

Security researchers and the FBI are warning that a wave of FIFA-themed fraud is already hitting World Cup 2026 fans, days before the June 11 kickoff. Recent reports describe thousands of lookalike FIFA domains, banking malware hidden inside pirate streaming apps, and at least one operation that copies FIFA's login page well enough to take over real accounts. It is an obvious target. More than six million fans are expected across 16 cities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and FIFA said it received more than 150 million ticket requests in the first 15 days, leaving the tournament around 30 times oversubscribed. Tickets are scarce, fans are anxious, and money is moving fast, which is exactly what fraud needs. One Operator, 300 Cloned FIFA Sites The most detailed findings come from Group-IB , which tracked more than 4,300 fraudulent FIFA domains registered since August 2025. At the center is a group it calls GHOST STADIUM , a Chinese-speaking, money-driven operation...

A new China-linked cybercrime group known as TA4922 has expanded its targeting focus to target European organizations in the U.K., Germany, Italy, and South Africa. These efforts have been complemented by a "rapid operational tempo" and a continually evolving malware arsenal comprising known families like ValleyRAT (aka Winos 4.0) and Atlas RAT (aka AtlasCross RAT), as well as previously undocumented tools called RomulusLoader and SilentRunLoader , according to Proofpoint. The enterprise security company is keeping tabs on the activity under the moniker TA4922, describing it as a Chinese-speaking threat actor largely targeting East Asia. TA4922 is assessed to share some level of overlap with Silver Fox , with the threat actor's tradecraft more focused on cybercriminal objectives than espionage. "The actor is likely financially motivated and focused on obtaining remote access to victim environments for financial gain, such as data theft, fraud, access resale...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new malspam campaign that makes use of Google's DoubleClick domain as a way to evade detection and ultimately deliver an unidentified .NET-based loader. "Before the victim ever reaches attacker-controlled infrastructure, the lure routes through DoubleClick, a legitimate Google-owned domain that many security tools are less likely to treat as suspicious," Huntress researchers Anna Pham and Adam Mooney said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "From there, the victim is passed into a malspam kit that personalizes itself on the fly using the victim's email address, dynamically pulling in company branding and location details to make the page feel convincing without requiring the operators to handcraft a lure for each target." What makes this attack noteworthy is that it eliminates the need for having a bespoke kit for each targeted organization, thereby making these operations more scalable and cost-effective...

The Russian hacking group known as Gamaredon has been attributed to the continued exploitation of a WinRAR vulnerability to deliver multiple malware families aimed at data theft and propagation. Per Sekoia, the activity involves the weaponization of CVE-2025-8088 , a path traversal flaw in WinRAR, to launch an HTML Application payload dubbed GammaPhish, which is then used to retrieve an intermediate Visual Basic Script (VBScript) downloaders codenamed GammaLoad. The infection chain was observed by the French cybersecurity company in January 2026. "Their primary objectives are to fingerprint the host system, update the network configuration in the registry using dead drop resolvers (DDRs), fetch and execute arbitrary VBScript payloads from the C2 servers," Sekoia said . One of the payloads is a VBScript worm known as GammaWorm that establishes persistence via scheduled tasks and is designed to hide legitimate directories in network shares and USB drives and replace wit...