ransomware | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The Iranian state-sponsored hacking group known as MuddyWater (aka Mango Sandstorm, Seedworm, and Static Kitten) has been attributed to a ransomware attack in what has been described as a "false flag" operation. The attack, observed by Rapid7 in early 2026, has been found to leverage social engineering techniques via Microsoft Teams to initiate the infection sequence. Although the incident initially appeared to be consistent with a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) group operating under the Chaos brand, evidence points to it being a targeted state-backed attack that masquerades as opportunistic extortion. "The campaign was characterized by a high-touch social engineering phase conducted via Microsoft Teams , where the attackers utilized interactive screen-sharing to harvest credentials and manipulate multi-factor authentication (MFA)," Rapid7 said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Once inside, the group bypassed traditional ransomware workflows, for...

An active phishing campaign has been observed targeting multiple vectors since at least April 2025 with legitimate Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) software as a way to establish persistent remote access to compromised hosts. The activity, codenamed VENOMOUS#HELPER , has impacted over 80 organizations, most of which are in the U.S., according to Securonix. It shares overlaps with clusters previously tracked by Red Canary and Sophos, the latter of which has given it the moniker STAC6405 . While it's not clear who is behind the campaign, the cybersecurity company said it aligns with a financially motivated Initial Access Broker (IAB) or a ransomware precursor operation. "In this case, a customized SimpleHelp and ScreenConnect RMMs are used to bypass defenses as they are legitimately installed by the unsuspecting victim," researchers Akshay Gaikwad, Shikha Sangwan, and Aaron Beardslee said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Setting aside the fact that the ...

A previously unknown threat actor has been observed targeting government and military entities in Southeast Asia, alongside a smaller cluster of managed service providers (MSPs) and hosting providers in the Philippines, Laos, Canada, South Africa, and the U.S., by exploiting the recently disclosed vulnerability in cPanel. The activity, detected by Ctrl-Alt-Intel on May 2, 2026, involves the abuse of CVE-2026-41940 , a critical vulnerability in cPanel and WebHost Manager (WHM) that could result in an authentication bypass and allow remote attackers to gain elevated control of the control panel. The attack efforts have originated from the IP address "95.111.250[.]175," primarily singling out government and military domains associated with the Philippines (*.mil.ph and (*.ph)) and Laos (*.gov.la), as well as MSPs and hosting providers, using publicly-available   proof-of-concepts (PoCs). In addition, Ctrl-Alt-Intel revealed that the threat actor used a separate custom exp...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday announced the sentencing of two cybersecurity professionals to four years each in prison for their role in facilitating BlackCat ransomware attacks in 2023. Ryan Goldberg , 40, of Georgia, and Kevin Martin , 36, of Texas, were accused of deploying the ransomware against multiple victims located throughout the U.S. between April and December 2023. The two defendants, who pleaded guilty to their crimes in December 2025, conspired with Angelo Martino, 41, of Florida, to conduct the attacks. "The three men agreed to pay the ALPHV BlackCat administrators a 20% share of any ransoms received in exchange for access to the ransomware and ALPHV/BlackCat's extortion platform," the DoJ said . "All three men worked in the cybersecurity industry – meaning that they had special skills and experience in securing computer systems against harm, including the type of harm they themselves were committing against the victims in this ca...

The internet is noisy this week. We are seeing some wild new tactics, like people using fake cell towers to send scam texts, while some developers are accidentally downloading tools that peek into their private files during a simple install. It is definitely a busy time to be online. Security is always a moving target. Millions of servers are currently sitting online without any passwords, and old software bugs are showing up in the most unexpected places. Even with the right fixes available, staying one step ahead is a full-time job for all of us. Data is shifting in strange ways, too. Some browser tools are now legally selling user history for profit, and new kits are making it simpler for almost anyone to launch a campaign. You have to see these latest updates to believe them. Let’s look at the full list... SMS blaster phishing crackdown Canadian Authorities Arrest 3 Men for Alleged Use of SMS Blaster Canadian authorities have ar...