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As AI tools become more accessible, employees are adopting them without formal approval from IT and security teams. While these tools may boost productivity, automate tasks, or fill gaps in existing workflows, they also operate outside the visibility of security teams, bypassing controls and creating new blind spots in what is known as shadow AI. While similar to the phenomenon of shadow IT, shadow AI goes beyond unapproved software by involving systems that process, generate, and potentially retain sensitive data. The result is a category of risk that most organizations are not yet equipped to govern: uncontrolled data exposure, expanded attack surfaces, and weakened identity security. Why shadow AI is spreading so quickly Shadow AI is expanding rapidly across organizations because it is easy to adopt and instantly useful, yet largely unregulated. Unlike traditional enterprise software, most AI tools require little to no setup, allowing employ...

Threat actors have been exploiting a previously unknown zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Reader using maliciously crafted PDF documents since at least December 2025. The finding, detailed by EXPMON's Haifei Li, has been described as a highly-sophisticated PDF exploit. The artifact ("Invoice540.pdf") first appeared on the VirusTotal platform on November 28, 2025. A second sample was uploaded to VirusTotal on March 23, 2026. Given the name of the PDF document, it's likely that there is an element of social engineering involved, with the attackers luring unsuspecting users into opening the files on Adobe Reader. Once launched, it automatically triggers the execution of obfuscated JavaScript to harvest sensitive data and receive additional payloads. Security researcher Gi7w0rm, in an X post , said the PDF documents observed contain Russian language lures and refer to issues regarding current events related to the oil and gas industry i...

An apparent hack-for-hire campaign likely orchestrated by a threat actor with suspected ties to the Indian government targeted journalists, activists, and government officials across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), according to findings from Access Now , Lookout , and SMEX . Two of the targets included prominent Egyptian journalists and government critics, Mostafa Al-A'sar and Ahmed Eltantawy, who were at the receiving end of a series of spear-phishing attacks that sought to compromise their Apple and Google accounts in October 2023 and January 2024 by directing them to fake pages that tricked them into entering their credentials and two-factor authentication (2FA) codes. "The attacks were carried out from 2023 to 2024, and both targets are prominent critics of the Egyptian government who have previously faced political imprisonment; one of them was previously targeted with spyware ," Access Now's Digital Security Helpline said. Also...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new variant ofmalware called Chaos that'scapable of hitting misconfigured cloud deployments, marking an expansion of the botnet's targeting infrastructure. "Chaos malware is increasingly targeting misconfigured cloud deployments, expanding beyond its traditional focus on routers and edge devices," Darktrace said in a new report. Chaos was first documented by Lumen Black Lotus Labs in September 2022, describing it as a cross-platform malware capable of targeting Windows and Linux environments to run remote shell commands, drop additional modules, propagate to other hosts by brute-forcing SSH keys, mine cryptocurrency, and launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks via HTTP, TLS, TCP, UDP, and WebSocket. The malware is assessed to be an evolution of another DDoS malware known as Kaiji  that has singled out misconfigured Docker instances.It's currently not known wh...

Cybersecurity researchers have lifted the curtain on a stealthy botnet that's designed for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Called Masjesu , the botnet has been advertised via Telegram as a DDoS-for-hire service since it first surfaced in 2023. It's capable of targeting a wide range of IoT devices, such as routers and gateways, spanning multiple architectures. "Built for persistence and low visibility, Masjesu favors careful, low-key execution over widespread infection, deliberately avoiding blocklisted IP ranges such as those belonging to the Department of Defense (DoD) to ensure long-term survival," Trellix security researcher Mohideen Abdul Khader F said in a Tuesday report. It's worth noting that the commercial offering also goes by the moniker XorBot owing to its use of XOR-based encryption to conceal strings, configurations, and payload data. It was first documented by Chinese security vendor NSFOCUS in December 2023, linking it to an ope...

The Russian threat actor known as APT28 (aka Forest Blizzard and Pawn Storm) has been linked to a fresh spear-phishing campaign targeting Ukraine and its allies to deploy a previously undocumented malware suite codenamed PRISMEX . "PRISMEX combines advanced steganography, component object model (COM) hijacking, and legitimate cloud service abuse for command-and-control," Trend Micro researchers Feike Hacquebord and Hiroyuki Kakara said in a technical report. The campaign is believed to be active since at least  September 2025. The activity has targeted various sectors in Ukraine, including central executive bodies, hydrometeorology, defense, and emergency services, as well as rail logistics (Poland), maritime and transportation (Romania, Slovenia, Turkey), and logistical support partners involved in ammunition initiatives (Slovakia, Czech Republic), and military and NATO partners. The campaign is notable for the rapid weaponization of newly disclosed ...

The Fragmented State of Modern Enterprise Identity Enterprise IAM is approaching a breaking point. As organizations scale, identity becomes increasingly fragmented across thousands of applications, decentralized teams, machine identities, and autonomous systems.  The result is Identity Dark Matter: identity activity that sits outside the visibility of centralized IAM and beyond the reach of security teams. According to Orchid Security ’s analysis , 46% of enterprise identity activity occurs outside centralized IAM visibility. In other words, nearly half of the enterprise identity surface may be operating unseen. This hidden layer includes unmanaged applications, local accounts, opaque authentication flows, and over-permissioned non-human identities. It is further amplified by disconnected tools, siloed ownership, and the rapid rise of Agentic AI. The consequence is a widening gap between what the security organizations think th...