Phishing | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Attackers whose methods line up with the data-extortion group  ShinyHunters  have spent the past year walking into corporate Salesforce environments without exploiting a single flaw in the platform. The way in has been the trust the organization had already extended, usually through the OAuth connections that tie Salesforce to the apps and third-party vendors around it. In  research published July 13 , Microsoft mapped the campaigns, which ran from mid-2025 into mid-2026, to three distinct techniques. It also worked with Salesforce to roll out new detection and governance tooling aimed at addressing the activity authentication logs miss. That is what makes this hard to catch. When the access comes from a real user who approved a connected app, or from an integration the company already trusts, the traffic reads as ordinary use, and sign-in and authentication monitoring barely registers it. What matters is what the app or account does once it is in, and that is ex...

Somewhere right now, a security tool is quietly finding bugs faster than any human can fix them. That's supposed to be the good news. The catch is that the attackers have the same tools, pointed the other way, and they don't file tickets. That's the shape of this week. Trusted code turns on the people who installed it. Old bugs from last year are still landing because the fix sat in a queue too long. Fake installers, poisoned packages, systems left facing the open internet, and helpful little AI assistants running instructions that were never yours. The gap between "patch exists" and "already exploited" keeps shrinking, and nobody's closing it. None of it is exotic. That's what wears you down. Same ordinary mistakes, just happening faster than we can keep up. Here's the full mess, top to bottom. ⚡ Threat of the Week Progress Tells ShareFile Customers to Shut Down Storage Zone Controllers — Progress urged customers to shut down Win...

A new phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) operation called Forg365 is using a combination of device code phishing , adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) tactics, antibot evasion, artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted lure creation, and post-compromise mailbox operations targeting Microsoft 365 accounts. Distributed via Telegram and costing $400 a month (or $3,800 per year), attack chains leverage phishing lures that make use of legitimate email delivery infrastructure, such as Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) and Twilio SendGrid, to imitate a redirection chain that blends into regular email traffic before it ends in Forg365-controlled domains. "The panel exposes a mature operator workflow: accounts, links, invitations, OAuth app configuration, redirect links, SVG generation, campaign sending, SMTP profiles, SMTP rotation, AI email generation, token vaulting, account intelligence, keyword alerts, viewer links, and browser-extension support," ZeroBEC said . The email securi...

An attacker running a live Microsoft 365 phishing operation left a Python web server listening on a public port with directory listing switched on. The command that did it:  python3 -m http.server 8080 , was still sitting in the readable  .bash_history . From that one lapse, French security firm  Lexfo  lifted the operator's entire toolkit and pivoted through it to two more phishing operators, three campaigns in all. Each ran a custom fork of the open-source Evilginx proxy , cloned from public GitHub. The largest of the three had been running for more than a year, its victims overwhelmingly corporate mailboxes. The three got past MFA in two mechanically different ways, one by proxying the live login , one by abusing a legitimate Microsoft sign-in flow. The two need different defenses, which is the part that matters most if you run Microsoft 365. Directory listing on a working attack server is close to a full confession. The listing exposed phishing conf...

A threat actor has been targeting organizations spanning multiple sectors with voice-based fake security requests that prompt Microsoft 365 users to enroll a new Entra passkey with an aim to carry out data extortion attacks. The threat actor, tracked by Okta under the moniker O-UNC-066 , has deployed a panel-controlled phishing kit that's capable of targeting the passkey enrollment process . The activity has singled out food and beverage, technology, healthcare, automotive, construction, and aviation industries. "The threat actor registers domains that incorporate the word passkey as part of a voice-enabled phishing ('vishing') scheme," Okta researcher Houssem Eddine Bordjiba said . "The threat actor then calls targeted users on the phone in an attempt to persuade them that they need to register a new passkey." Users are then directed to a phishing kit that's identical to the Microsoft passkey enrollment process, giving the impression that th...

A recent EvilTokens campaign targeting businesses across the US and Europe is exposing a new email security blind spot. This “ghost phishing” technique keeps the malicious page hidden until it decrypts and comes to life inside the victim’s browser. For security leaders, the risk is clear: traditional URL checks may miss the attack while Microsoft 365 access, sensitive data, and response time are already at stake. The Email Looks Safe. The Browser Tells a Different Story A recent EvilTokens attack shows how a phishing link can appear harmless during initial inspection while still leading to Microsoft 365 account takeover. The kit uses Microsoft Device Code Phishing to convince victims to complete a legitimate Microsoft login flow and unknowingly authorize access to their accounts. It does not need to steal the password directly. The real attack remains hidden until the page opens in the browser. Its HTML is encrypted with AES-GCM and becomes visible only after the browser dec...

A new banking fraudulent operation is targeting customers of Mexican banks, fintech, payment processors, and cryptocurrency exchanges using ClickFix lures. The activity cluster, tracked by Elastic Security Labs under the moniker REF6045 , involves infecting victims through fake CAPTCHA verification pages that deceive them into running a malicious command that installs a PowerShell toolkit dubbed SCMBANKER . Some components of the malware date back to October 2025. "Once installed, the operator can see when a victim opens a banking session, lock the screen behind a fake bank warning, push the victims towards live phone interaction, redirect the browser, or replace account numbers copied to the clipboard," security researchers Jia Yu Chan and Salim Bitam said . "For a full takeover, they can also deploy a commercial remote-access tool." SCMBANKER is specifically designed to go after Mexico's financial ecosystem, with evidence pointing to the use of a large...

For years, account takeover (ATO) followed a predictable script. Attackers bought stolen credentials in bulk, ran them through automated tools, and waited for matches. Credential stuffing was cheap, scalable, and for defenders, relatively well understood. That era is ending. Not because attackers gave up, but because the front door finally got harder to kick in. Passkeys are now mainstream. According to the FIDO Alliance's 2026 research, 75% of global consumers have enabled a passkey on at least one account. At the same time, passkeys are becoming more common in the workplace, with 68% of companies now using, testing, or introducing them for employee sign-ins.  Phishing-resistant, passwordless authentication is no longer aspirational, it's becoming the default. When the password disappears, so does the value of a stolen password. So where does the attack go next? It moves downstream, to the moments where systems still trust a human to prove who they are. The attac...

A new Android malware operation called RedWing is being rented out on Telegram as a ready-made bank-fraud service. It lets even low-skill criminals take over a victim's phone, steal their banking logins, and capture the one-time codes that protect their accounts. Zimperium's zLabs , which found the operation, says it looks like a new variant of Oblivion , a $300-a-month rent-a-malware tool documented earlier this year. RedWing is sold as a complete product, in subscription tiers with referral discounts, guides, and how-to videos, so a buyer needs no malware-writing skill. A Telegram bot builds each buyer a custom app on demand. Researchers say a substantial number of the resulting droppers and payloads currently evade conventional security tools. Infection starts with a phishing link that opens a fake app-store page. The kit's dropper builder can mimic Google Play, the Galaxy Store, and AppGallery, or build fully custom pages, complete with fake ratings, reviews, ...

A Microsoft 365 device code phishing campaign has been observed leveraging collaboration-themed lures to take control of victim accounts between the last week of June 2026 and into early July, per findings from ZeroBEC. "The campaign did not depend on a fake Microsoft password page. It used a malicious collaboration-style lure to push users into the legitimate Microsoft device login experience, while a backend broker generated and polled Microsoft Authentication Broker device-code tokens," the email security company said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The activity is assessed to share "strong" overlaps with a campaign documented by Microsoft in February 2025 under the moniker Storm-2372 , including the use of messaging or Teams-style lures to trick unsuspecting victims into entering an attacker-provided device code, along with their credentials, effectively allowing the threat actor to recover the token and hijack their account. Despite these simi...

A streaming box should not need a threat model. Neither should a username field, a demo repo, a reset flow, or a browser permission prompt. That is the irritating part this week: the risky pieces were ordinary. Home devices became a routing cover. Clean code pulled dirt from a dependency. Identity shortcuts aged badly. AI systems trusted the wrong instructions. Same soft spot throughout: trust placed one layer too early. Below is the full recap, since this is apparently what counted as a normal week. ⚡ Threat of the Week NetNut Residential Proxy Network Disrupted — Google, in collaboration with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Lumen, and other partners, took action against the NetNut residential proxy network, also known as Popa, building upon its takedown of IPIDEA in January 2026. Google said it disabled Google accounts and associated Google services used by NetNut for malware command-and-control (C2) and updated Google Play Protect, in addition to disabling ...

A suspected China-nexus threat activity cluster has been observed targeting Indian taxpayers, tax professionals, and corporate finance teams to deliver a remote access trojan designed to steal sensitive data from compromised hosts. The multi-stage campaign, codenamed Operation DragonReturn by Seqrite Labs, involves sending spear-phishing emails impersonating the Income Tax Department of India. It was first observed on May 18, 2026. The activity, per the cybersecurity company, coincides with the annual income tax filing season in the country. "It is not opportunistic – the precision of the lure document, the use of real legal citations, bilingual content, and active payload rotation indicate a deliberate, resourced, and sustained threat operation focused exclusively on the Indian taxpayer ecosystem," security researchers Dixit Panchal and Soumen Burma said . The end goal of the campaign is assessed to be the deployment of malware for financial gain or sensitive data the...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a previously undocumented modular malware framework codenamed Avalon that's distributed by means of a multi-stage phishing chain capable of bypassing traditional security controls. Avalon combines credential collection, lateral movement, remote access, recovery disruption, and ransomware execution, bringing together diverse functions under one umbrella. The ransomware component has been internally named CrownX.  "The attack began with a spoofed legal document email directing recipients to a password protected archive on Proton Drive," Blackpoint Cyber researchers Nevan Beal and Sam Decker said . "Malicious content was embedded inside an ISO image rather than attached directly, reducing the likelihood of detection at the email layer." Should the email recipient interact with a document-themed Windows Shortcut ("Secure Document CA-283505.pdf.lnk") inside the mounted image, it triggers a staged malware s...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new multi-stage malware delivery attack chain that uses social engineering and Blogger pages to deliver an information stealer called PureLogs . The activity has been codenamed VEIL#DROP by Securonix. It's suspected that the initial payloads are distributed either via spear-phishing or a drive-by compromise , which occurs when an unsuspecting user lands on a website (legitimate or otherwise) under the attacker's control. "The infection chain begins with a deceptively named JavaScript file masquerading as a document (e.g., transcript.pdf.js), which executes through Windows Script Host and launches PowerShell with execution policy bypasses enabled," researchers Akshay Gaikwad, Shikha Sangwan, and Aaron Beardslee said in a report shared with The Hacker News. At a high level, the PowerShell script is responsible for retrieving a next-stage payload hosted on Blogger ("htlwub00klocate.blogspot[.]com"), allowing the ...

A Brazilian banking trojan called Ousaban is going after Windows users who bank in Spain and Portugal.  Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs  identified the campaign in May 2026. It opens with a phishing PDF disguised as a corrupted file, checks that the visitor is really in Spain or Portugal, and hides its real payload inside an image. The goal is the usual one: steal banking logins and take over accounts. Ousaban sits quietly on a Windows PC and waits for the user to open a banking site. When a target bank loads, it can capture screenshots and keystrokes, tamper with the clipboard, show fake messages, and give the attacker remote control. Together, those are the tools for hijacking a live banking session and taking over an account. Ousaban watches for more than two dozen banks across the two countries, among them Banco Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank, Bankinter, and Caixa Geral de Depósitos. How the attack works It starts with a phishing PDF disguised as a corrupted file. Th...

Large language models keep inventing web addresses that do not exist. Attackers have started buying those made-up domains before anyone else can, then hosting phishing pages on them to catch traffic that AI tools point their way. Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 calls the trick phantom squatting , and its new research shows it is already happening in the wild. The reason it matters is trust. Developers and AI assistants increasingly treat the links a model hands back as real. When a model invents a domain that does not exist yet, whoever registers it first inherits all of that misplaced trust, with no phishing email and no malicious ad required. To measure the problem, Unit 42 asked two AI models 685,339 questions about 913 well-known brands across technology, finance, healthcare, government, gambling, and other sectors. The models produced 2.1 million links. Threat intelligence already flagged 13,229 of them as outright malicious, meaning the AI was handing out known-ba...

The FIFA World Cup 2026 opened on June 11. By that date, according to Check Point Research, the fraud infrastructure targeting it had already been built, staged, and partially deployed. Threat actor activity was pre-planned, months out, across three sectors and at least ten languages. Check Point Exposure Management published the FIFA World Cup 2026 Cyber Threat Report this month, covering financial services, transportation, hospitality, and gambling. Here are three findings worth reading carefully. 1 in 3 FIFA Partners Can't Block Email Impersonation Pre-tournament research by Proofpoint found that more than one-third of official FIFA World Cup 2026 partners lack sufficient DMARC enforcement to prevent domain spoofing. That means attackers can send an email that appears to come from a sponsor, a vendor, or a logistics partner, with no technical barrier stopping it. The World Cup supply chain is enormous. Airlines, hotels, broadcast partners, merchandise contractors, an...

This week was a reminder that attackers do not always need big tricks. One small mistake, one old access path, one missed patch, and suddenly the door is open. The noise is not all noise, either. Forums are talking, researchers are finding easy cracks, and defenders have more cleanup waiting. Here’s the full Monday recap. ⚡ Threat of the Week New DirtyClone Linux Kernel Flaw Lets Local Users Gain Root via Cloned Packets — Cybersecurity researchers detailed a new variant of the Dirty Frag Linux kernel flaw. Called DirtyClone (aka CVE-2026-43503), it allows local users to gain root privileges via cloned packets. The exploit works successfully on Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora systems with default namespace configurations. "Any local user on a server or device running a vulnerable kernel who holds or can acquire the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability (frequently obtainable via unprivileged user namespaces) [is exploitable]," JFrog said. "This poses the highest risk to multi-te...

New findings unearthed by Infoblox show that more than 236,000 websites are using investment scam templates built using a legitimate Chinese open-source, cross-platform application development framework called DCloud Uni-App . The templates power bogus cryptocurrency exchanges, multi-language pig-butchering operations, WhatsApp phishing networks, fake gambling platforms, brand-impersonation sites, and crypto wallet drainers. A total of 236,493 distinct second-level domains have been identified by the DNS threat intelligence company. "For the last two years, there's been a dramatic scaling up of scam websites using the DCloud framework, and operators of these sites continue to launch complex real-world schemes to trick victims," Infoblox said in an exhaustive report published last week. It's being assessed that unknown threat actors are selling DCloud investment scam templates, although there are indications of centralized ownership across a significant chunk o...

The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) said it, together with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), uncovered a long-running campaign orchestrated by Russian intelligence services to break into the messaging accounts of government officials, military personnel, politicians, and activists in Ukraine, Europe, and the U.S. The systematic cyber attacks aimed at stealing sensitive information from the victims, the agency added. "The goal of these 'hacks' is to gain access to sensitive military, political, and economic information exchanged by users, as well as to steal their personal data," the agency warned in a post shared on Telegram. To pull off the operation, the attackers send SMS messages that masquerade as the messaging platform's support bot and urge users to disclose their account credentials.  The SSU noted that these attacks include not only organizations, officials or public figures, but also personal accounts belonging to Ukrainian nati...