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Microsoft on Wednesday announced that it has taken a " coordinated legal action " in the U.S. and the U.K. to disrupt a cybercrime subscription service called RedVDS that has allegedly fueled millions in fraud losses. The effort, per the tech giant, is part of a broader law enforcement effort in collaboration with law enforcement authorities that has allowed it to confiscate the malicious infrastructure and take the illegal service (redvds[.]com, redvds[.]pro, and vdspanel[.]space) offline. "For as little as US $24 a month, RedVDS provides criminals with access to disposable virtual computers that make fraud cheap, scalable, and difficult to trace," said Steven Masada, assistant general counsel of Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit. "Since March 2025, RedVDS‑enabled activity has driven roughly US $40 million in reported fraud losses in the United States alone." Crimeware-as-a-service (CaaS) offerings have increasingly become a lucrative business mod...

An INTERPOL-led collaborative operation targeting phishing, banking malware, and ransomware attacks has led to the identification of 1,300 suspicious IP addresses and URLs. The  law enforcement effort , codenamed  Synergia , took place between September and November 2023 in an attempt to blunt the "growth, escalation and professionalization of transnational cybercrime." Involving 60 law enforcement agencies spanning 55 member countries, the exercise paved the way for the detection of more than 1,300 malicious servers, 70% of which have already been taken down in Europe. Hong Kong and Singapore authorities took down 153 and 86 servers, respectively. Servers, as well as electronic devices, were confiscated following over 30 house searches. Seventy suspects have been identified to date, and 31 from Europe, South Sudan, and Zimbabwe have been arrested. Singapore-headquartered Group-IB, which also contributed to the operation,  said  it identified "more than 500 IP ...

The Russian-speaking cybercrime group called  RedCurl  is leveraging a legitimate Microsoft Windows component called the Program Compatibility Assistant ( PCA ) to execute malicious commands. "The Program Compatibility Assistant Service (pcalua.exe) is a Windows service designed to identify and address compatibility issues with older programs," Trend Micro  said  in an analysis published this month. "Adversaries can exploit this utility to enable command execution and bypass security restrictions by using it as an alternative command-line interpreter. In this investigation, the threat actor uses this tool to obscure their activities." RedCurl , which is also called Earth Kapre and Red Wolf, is known to be active since at least 2018, orchestrating corporate cyber espionage attacks against entities located in Australia, Canada, Germany, Russia, Slovenia, the U.K., Ukraine, and the U.S. In July 2023, F.A.C.C.T.  revealed  that a major Russian bank an...

A federal indictment unsealed earlier today alleges that a 35-year-old Texas man hacked into the computer network of an Eden Prairie business, stealing approximately $274,000. The indictment, filed in Minneapolis on October 13, 2010, charges Jeremy Parker of Houston, Texas, with one count of unauthorized access to a protected computer to further fraud and one count of wire fraud. It was unsealed following Parker's initial appearance in United States District Court. The indictment claims that from December 23, 2008, through October 15, 2009, Parker hacked into the computer network to obtain money belonging to Digital River, Inc., through a subsidiary, SWReg, Inc. SWReg pays independent software developers who write code that can run on Digital River's system. Royalties owed to these developers accumulate at SWReg, allowing developers to view their royalty balances online and cash out those accounts. When a developer cashes out, SWReg electronically transfers the money into the ...

Three members of an international organized cybercrime group that was behind a multi-million dollar theft primarily against U.S. businesses and financial institutions have been sentenced to prison, the U.S. Justice Department announced. The criminals used the GozNym banking Trojan to break into more than 4,000 victim computers globally, primarily in the United States and Europe, between 2015 and 2016, and fraudulently steal nearly $100 million from their banking accounts. In May this year, Europol dismantled the cybercrime network behind GozNym, with the United States issuing charges against a total of ten members of the group, 5 of which were arrested at that time, while five others, including the developer of GozNym, remain at the run. In a federal court in Pittsburgh on Friday, Krasimir Nikolov , one of the group's members, was sentenced to a period of time served after having served over 39 months in prison for his role as an "account takeover specialist" i...

Five alleged members of the infamous Scattered Spider cybercrime crew have been indicted in the U.S. for targeting employees of companies across the country using social engineering techniques to harvest credentials and using them to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data and break into crypto accounts to steal digital assets worth millions of dollars. All of the accused parties have been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of conspiracy, and one count of aggravated identity theft. They include - Ahmed Hossam Eldin Elbadawy, 23, aka AD, of College Station, Texas Noah Michael Urban, 20, aka Sosa and Elijah, of Palm Coast, Florida Evans Onyeaka Osiebo, 20, of Dallas, Texas Joel Martin Evans, 25, aka joeleoli, of Jacksonville, North Carolina; and Tyler Robert Buchanan, 22, aka tylerb, of the U.K. While the name Scattered Spider  is not directly referenced in the indictment document, it has been described as "a loosely organized financi...

U.S. and Bulgarian authorities this week took control of the dark web site used by the NetWalker ransomware cybercrime group to publish data stolen from its victims. "We are striking back against the growing threat of ransomware by not only bringing criminal charges against the responsible actors, but also disrupting criminal online infrastructure and, wherever possible, recovering ransom payments extorted from victims,"  said  Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicholas L. McQuaid of the Justice Department's Criminal Division. "Ransomware victims should know that coming forward to law enforcement as soon as possible after an attack can lead to significant results like those achieved in today's multi-faceted operation." In connection with the takedown, a Canadian national named Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins from the city of Gatineau was charged in the U.S. state of Florida for extorting $27.6 million in cryptocurrency from ransom payments. Separately, the...

As many as 37 individuals have been arrested as part of an international crackdown on a cybercrime service called  LabHost  that has been used by criminal actors to steal personal credentials from victims around the world. Described as one of the largest Phishing-as-a-Service ( PhaaS ) providers, LabHost offered phishing pages targeting banks, high-profile organizations, and other service providers located primarily in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. As part of the operation, codenamed PhishOFF and Nebulae (referring to the Australian arm of the probe), two LabHost users from Melbourne and Adelaide were arrested on April 17, with three others arrested and charged with drug-related offenses. "Australian offenders are allegedly among 10,000 cybercriminals globally who have used the platform, known as LabHost, to trick victims into providing their personal information, such as online banking logins, credit card details and passwords, through persistent phishing attacks sent vi...

Between a series of recent high-profile cybersecurity incidents and the heightened geopolitical tensions, there's rarely been a more dangerous cybersecurity environment. It's a danger that affects every organization – automated attack campaigns don't discriminate between targets. The situation is driven in large part due to a relentless rise in vulnerabilities, with tens of thousands of brand-new vulnerabilities discovered every year. For tech teams that are probably already under-resourced, guarding against this rising tide of threats is an impossible task. Yet, in the battle against cybercrime, some of the most effective and most sensible mitigations are sometimes neglected. In this article, we'll outline why cybersecurity risks have escalated so dramatically – and which easy wins your organization can make for a significant difference in your cybersecurity posture, right now. Recent major cyberattacks point to the danger Cyber security has arguably never been mo...

Three members of one of the world's largest cybercrime organizations that stole over a billion euros from banks across the world over the last five years have been indicted and charged with 26 felony counts, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday. The three suspects are believed to be members of the organized Russian cybercrime group known as FIN7 , the hackers group behind Carbanak and Cobalt malware and were arrested last year in Europe between January and June. The suspects—Dmytro Fedorov, 44, Fedir Hladyr, 33, and Andrii Kopakov, 30—are all from Ukraine and accused of targeting 120 companies based in the United States, as well as U.S. individuals. The victims include Chipotle Mexican Grill, Jason's Deli, Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, Sonic Drive-in, Taco John's, Chili's, Arby's, and Emerald Queen Hotel and Casino in Washington state. Carbanak (FIN7) Group Charged for Stealing 15 Million Credit Cards According to the press release published ...

The Cyber Police of Ukraine has announced the arrest of a local man who is suspected to have offered their services to LockBit and Conti ransomware groups. The unnamed 28-year-old native of the Kharkiv region allegedly specialized in the development of crypters to encrypt and obfuscate malicious payloads in order to evade detection by security programs. The product is believed to have been offered to the Conti and LockBit ransomware syndicates that then used the crypter to disguise the file-encrypting malware and launch successful attacks. "And at the end of 2021, members of the [Conti] group infected the computer networks of enterprises in the Netherlands and Belgium with hidden malware," according to a translated version of the statement released by the agency. As part of the investigation, authorities conducted searches in Kyiv and Kharkiv, and seized computer equipment, mobile phones, and notebooks. If found guilty, the defendant is expected to face up to 15 years ...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday announced the disruption of the online infrastructure associated with DanaBot (aka DanaTools) and unsealed charges against 16 individuals for their alleged involvement in the development and deployment of the malware, which it said was controlled by a Russia-based cybercrime organization. The malware, the DoJ said, infected more than 300,000 victim computers around the world, facilitated fraud and ransomware, and caused at least $50 million in damages. Two of the defendants, Aleksandr Stepanov (aka JimmBee), 39, and Artem Aleksandrovich Kalinkin (aka Onix), 34, both from Novosibirsk, Russia, are currently at large. Stepanov has been charged with conspiracy, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, aggravated identity theft, unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information, unauthorized impairment of a protected computer, wiretapping, and use of an intercepted communication. Kalinkin has been charged with cons...

Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit said it teamed up with Cloudflare to coordinate the seizure of 338 domains used by RaccoonO365 , a financially motivated threat group that was behind a phishing-as-a-service (Phaas) toolkit used to steal more than 5,000 Microsoft 365 credentials from 94 countries since July 2024. "Using a court order granted by the Southern District of New York, the DCU seized 338 websites associated with the popular service, disrupting the operation's technical infrastructure and cutting off criminals' access to victims," Steven Masada, assistant general counsel at DCU, said . "This case shows that cybercriminals don't need to be sophisticated to cause widespread harm – simple tools like RaccoonO365 make cybercrime accessible to virtually anyone, putting millions of users at risk." The initial phase of the Cloudflare takedown commenced on September 2, 2025, with additional actions occurring on September 3 and September 4. This in...

Microsoft on Thursday unmasked four of the individuals that it said were behind an Azure Abuse Enterprise scheme that involves leveraging unauthorized access to generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) services in order to produce offensive and harmful content. The campaign, called LLMjacking, has targeted various AI offerings, including Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service. The tech giant is tracking the cybercrime network as Storm-2139. The individuals named are - Arian Yadegarnia aka "Fiz" of Iran, Alan Krysiak aka "Drago" of United Kingdom, Ricky Yuen aka "cg-dot" of Hong Kong, China, and Phát Phùng Tấn aka "Asakuri" of Vietnam "Members of Storm-2139 exploited exposed customer credentials scraped from public sources to unlawfully access accounts with certain generative AI services," Steven Masada, assistant general counsel for Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU), said . "They then altered the capabilities of ...

Ever wonder what happens when attackers don't break the rules—they just follow them better than we do? When systems work exactly as they're built to, but that "by design" behavior quietly opens the door to risk? This week brings stories that make you stop and rethink what's truly under control. It's not always about a broken firewall or missed patch—it's about the small choices, default settings, and shortcuts that feel harmless until they're not. The real surprise? Sometimes the threat doesn't come from outside—it's baked right into how things are set up. Dive in to see what's quietly shaping today's security challenges. ⚡ Threat of the Week FBI Warns of Scattered Spider's on Airlines — The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has warned of a new set of attacks mounted by the notorious cybercrime group Scattered Spider targeting the airline sector using sophisticated social engineering techniques to obtain initial access. Cybersecurity vendors Palo Alto Networks Unit 4...

Power doesn't just disappear in one big breach. It slips away in the small stuff—a patch that's missed, a setting that's wrong, a system no one is watching. Security usually doesn't fail all at once; it breaks slowly, then suddenly. Staying safe isn't about knowing everything—it's about acting fast and clear before problems pile up. Clarity keeps control. Hesitation creates risk. Here are this week's signals—each one pointing to where action matters most. ⚡ Threat of the Week Ghost Tap NFC-Based Mobile Fraud Takes Off — A new Android trojan called PhantomCard has become the latest malware to abuse near-field communication (NFC) to conduct relay attacks for facilitating fraudulent transactions in attacks targeting banking customers in Brazil. In these attacks, users who end up installing the malicious apps are instructed to place their credit/debit card on the back of the phone to begin the verification process, only for the card data to be sent to an attacker-controlled NFC relay...

Every week, someone somewhere slips up—and threat actors slip in. A misconfigured setting, an overlooked vulnerability, or a too-convenient cloud tool becomes the perfect entry point. But what happens when the hunters become the hunted? Or when old malware resurfaces with new tricks? Step behind the curtain with us this week as we explore breaches born from routine oversights—and the unexpected cracks they reveal in systems we trust. ⚡ Threat of the Week Google Patches Actively Exploited Chrome 0-Day — Google has addressed a high-severity security flaw in its Chrome browser for Windows that has been exploited by unknown actors as part of a sophisticated attack aimed at Russian entities. The flaw, CVE-2025-2783 (CVSS score: 8.3), is said to have been combined with another exploit to break out of the browser's sandbox and achieve remote code execution. The attacks involved distributing specially crafted links via phishing emails that, when clicked and launched using Chrome, trig...

The United States Department of Justice today disclosed the identities of two Russian hackers and charged them for developing and distributing the Dridex banking Trojan using which the duo stole more than $100 million over a period of 10 years. Maksim Yakubets , the leader of 'Evil Corp' hacking group, and his co-conspirator Igor Turashev primarily distributed Dridex — also known as ' Bugat ' and ' Cridex ' — through multi-million email campaigns and targeted numerous organizations around the world. The State Department has also announced a reward of up to $5 million—the largest offered bounty to date for a cybercrime suspect—for providing information that could lead to the arrest of Yakubets, who remains at large. "Bugat is a multifunction malware package designed to automate the theft of confidential personal and financial information, such as online banking credentials, from infected computers," the DoJ said in its press release . ...