ransomware | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of an emergent ransomware family dubbed Reynolds that comes embedded with a built-in bring your own vulnerable driver (BYOVD) component for defense evasion purposes within the ransomware payload itself. BYOVD refers to an adversarial technique that abuses legitimate but flawed driver software to escalate privileges and disable Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions so that malicious activities go unnoticed. The strategy has been adopted by many ransomware groups over the years. "Normally, the BYOVD defense evasion component of an attack would involve a distinct tool that would be deployed on the system prior to the ransomware payload in order to disable security software," the Symantec and Carbon Black Threat Hunter Team said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "However, in this attack, the vulnerable driver (an NsecSoft NSecKrnl driver) was bundled with the ransomware itself." Broadcom's ...

Are ransomware and encryption still the defining signals of modern cyberattacks, or has the industry been too fixated on noise while missing a more dangerous shift happening quietly all around them? According to Picus Labs’ new Red Report 2026, which analyzed over 1.1 million malicious files and mapped 15.5 million adversarial actions observed across 2025, attackers are no longer optimizing for disruption. Instead, their goal is now long-term, invisible access. To be clear, ransomware isn’t going anywhere, and adversaries continue to innovate. But the data shows a clear strategic pivot away from loud, destructive attacks toward techniques designed to evade detection, persist inside environments, and quietly exploit identity and trusted infrastructure. Rather than breaking in and burning systems down, today’s attackers increasingly behave like Digital Parasites. They live inside the host, feed on credentials and services, and remain undetected for as long as possible. Public attent...

SmarterTools confirmed last week that the Warlock (aka Storm-2603) ransomware gang breached its network by exploiting an unpatched SmarterMail instance. The incident took place on January 29, 2026, when a mail server that was not updated to the latest version was compromised, the company's Chief Commercial Officer, Derek Curtis, said. "Prior to the breach, we had approximately 30 servers/VMs with SmarterMail installed throughout our network," Curtis explained . "Unfortunately, we were unaware of one VM, set up by an employee, that was not being updated. As a result, that mail server was compromised, which led to the breach." However, SmarterTools emphasized that the breach did not affect its website, shopping cart, My Account portal, and several other services, and that no business applications or account data were affected or compromised. About 12 Windows servers on the company's office network, as well as a secondary data center used for quality cont...

The threat actor known as Bloody Wolf has been linked to a campaign targeting Uzbekistan and Russia to infect systems with a remote access trojan known as NetSupport RAT . Cybersecurity vendor Kaspersky is tracking the activity under the moniker Stan Ghouls . The threat actor is known to be active since at least 2023, orchestrating spear-phishing attacks against manufacturing, finance, and IT sectors in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. The campaign is estimated to have claimed about 50 victims in Uzbekistan, with 10 devices in Russia also impacted. Other infections have been identified to a lesser degree in Kazakhstan, Turkey, Serbia, and Belarus. Infection attempts have also been recorded on devices within government organizations, logistics companies, medical facilities, and educational institutions. "Given Stan Ghouls' targeting of financial institutions, we believe their primary motive is financial gain," Kaspersky noted. "That said, their hea...

Cybersecurity researchers have called attention to a "massive campaign" that has systematically targeted cloud native environments to set up malicious infrastructure for follow-on exploitation. The activity, observed around December 25, 2025, and described as "worm-driven," leveraged exposed Docker APIs, Kubernetes clusters, Ray dashboards, and Redis servers, along with the recently disclosed React2Shell (CVE-2025-55182, CVSS score: 10.0) vulnerability. The campaign has been attributed to a threat cluster known as TeamPCP (aka DeadCatx3, PCPcat, PersyPCP, and ShellForce). TeamPCP is known to be active since at least November 2025, with the first instance of Telegram activity dating back to July 30, 2025. The TeamPCP Telegram channel currently has over 700 members, where the group publishes stolen data from diverse victims across Canada, Serbia, South Korea, the U.A.E., and the U.S. Details of the threat actor were first documented by Beelzebub in December 2025...