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Microsoft has disclosed details of a credential theft campaign that employs fake virtual private network (VPN) clients distributed through search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning techniques. "The campaign redirects users searching for legitimate enterprise software to malicious ZIP files on attacker-controlled websites to deploy digitally signed trojans that masquerade as trusted VPN clients while harvesting VPN credentials," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence and Microsoft Defender Experts teams said . The Windows maker, which observed the activity in mid-January 2026, has attributed it to Storm-2561 , a threat activity cluster known for propagating malware through SEO poisoning and impersonating popular software vendors since May 2025. The threat actor's campaigns were first documented by Cyjax, highlighting the use of SEO poisoning to redirect users searching for software programs from companies like SonicWall, Hanwha Vision, and Pulse Secure (now Ivanti Secure...

Disclaimer : This report has been prepared by the Threat Research Center to enhance cybersecurity awareness and support the strengthening of defense capabilities. It is based on independent research and observations of the current threat landscape available at the time of publication. The content is intended for informational and preparedness purposes only. Read more blogs around threat intelligence and adversary research: https://atos.net/en/lp/cybershield  Summary Atos Researchers identified a new variant of the popular ClickFix technique, where attackers convince the user to execute a malicious command on their own device through the Win + R shortcut. In this variation, a “net use” command is used to map a network drive from an external server, after which a “.cmd” batch file hosted on that drive is executed. Script downloads a ZIP archive, unpacks it, and executes the legitimate WorkFlowy application with modified, malicious logic hidden inside “.asar” archive. This acts as...

Google on Thursday released security updates for its Chrome web browser to address two high-severity vulnerabilities that it said have been exploited in the wild. The list of vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2026-3909 (CVSS score: 8.8) - An out-of-bounds write vulnerability in the Skia 2D graphics library that allows a remote attacker to perform out-of-bounds memory access via a crafted HTML page. CVE-2026-3910 (CVSS score: 8.8) - An inappropriate implementation vulnerability in the V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine that allows a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code inside a sandbox via a crafted HTML page. Both vulnerabilities were discovered and reported by Google itself on March 10, 2026. As is customary in these cases, no details are available about how the issues are being abused in the wild and who is behind the efforts. This is done so as to prevent other threat actors from exploiting the issues. "Google is aware that exploits for both CVE-2026-3909 an...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed multiple security vulnerabilities within the Linux kernel's AppArmor module that could be exploited by unprivileged users to circumvent kernel protections, escalate to root, and undermine container isolation guarantees. The nine confused deputy vulnerabilities have been collectively codenamed CrackArmor by the Qualys Threat Research Unit (TRU). The cybersecurity company said the issue has existed since 2017. No CVE identifiers have been assigned to the shortcomings. AppArmor is a Linux security module that provides mandatory access control (MAC) and secures the operating system against external or internal threats by preventing known and unknown application flaws from being exploited. It has been included in the mainline Linux kernel since version 2.6.36. "This 'CrackArmor' advisory exposes a confused deputy flaw allowing unprivileged users to manipulate security profiles via pseudo-files, bypass user-namespace restricti...

A court-authorized international law enforcement operation has dismantled a criminal proxy service named SocksEscort that enslaved thousands of residential routers worldwide into a botnet for committing large-scale fraud. "SocksEscort infected home and small business internet routers with malware," the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said . "The malware allowed SocksEscort to direct internet traffic through the infected routers. SocksEscort sold this access to its customers." SocksEscort ("socksescort[.]com") is said to have offered to sell access to about 369,000 different IP addresses in 163 countries since the summer of 2020, with the service listing nearly 8,000 infected routers as of February 2026. Of these, 2,500 were located in the U.S. As of December 2025, SocksEscort's website claimed to offer "static residential IPs with unlimited bandwidth" and that they can bypass spam blocklists. It advertised over 35,900 proxies from 102 c...

Veeam has released security updates to address multiple critical vulnerabilities in its Backup & Replication software that, if successfully exploited, could result in remote code execution. The vulnerabilities are as follows - CVE-2026-21666 (CVSS score: 9.9) - A vulnerability that allows an authenticated domain user to perform remote code execution on the Backup Server. CVE-2026-21667 (CVSS score: 9.9) - A vulnerability that allows an authenticated domain user to perform remote code execution on the Backup Server. CVE-2026-21668 (CVSS score: 8.8) - A vulnerability that allows an authenticated domain user to bypass restrictions and manipulate arbitrary files on a Backup Repository. CVE-2026-21672 (CVSS score: 8.8) - A vulnerability that allows local privilege escalation on Windows-based Veeam Backup & Replication servers. CVE-2026-21708 (CVSS score: 9.9) - A vulnerability that allows a Backup Viewer to perform remote code execution as the postgres user. The sho...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new banking malware targeting Brazilian users that's written in Rust, marking a significant departure from other known Delphi-based malware families associated with the Latin American cybercrime ecosystem. The malware, which is designed to infect Windows systems and was first discovered last month, has been codenamed VENON by Brazilian cybersecurity company ZenoX. What makes VENON notable is that it shares behaviors that are consistent with established banking trojans targeting the region, such as Grandoreiro, Mekotio, and Coyote, specifically when it comes to features like banking overlay logic, active window monitoring, and a shortcut (LNK) hijacking mechanism. The malware has not been attributed to any previously documented group or campaign. However, an earlier version of the artifact, dating back to January 2026, has been found to expose full paths from the malware author's development environment. The paths repea...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a suspected artificial intelligence (AI)-generated malware codenamed Slopoly put to use by a financially motivated threat actor named Hive0163 . "Although still relatively unspectacular, AI-generated malware such as Slopoly shows how easily threat actors can weaponize AI to develop new malware frameworks in a fraction of the time it used to take," IBM X-Force researcher Golo Mühr said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Hive0163's operations are driven by extortion through large-scale data exfiltration and ransomware. The e-crime group is primarily associated with a wide range of malicious tools, including NodeSnake, Interlock RAT, JunkFiction loader, and Interlock ransomware. In one ransomware attack observed by the company in early 2026, the threat actor was observed deploying Slopoly during the post-exploitation phase so as to maintain persistent access to the compromised server for more than a week. Slo...

Phishing has quietly turned into one of the hardest enterprise threats to expose early. Instead of crude lures and obvious payloads, modern campaigns rely on trusted infrastructure, legitimate-looking authentication flows, and encrypted traffic that conceals malicious behavior from traditional detection layers. For CISOs, the priority is now clear: scale phishing detection in a way that helps the SOC uncover real risk before it becomes credential theft, business interruption, and board-level fallout. Why Scaling Phishing Detection Has Become a Priority for Modern SOCs For many security teams, phishing is no longer a single alert to investigate — it is a continuous stream of suspicious links, login attempts, and user-reported messages that must be validated quickly. The problem is that most SOC workflows were never designed to handle this volume. Each investigation still requires time, context gathering, and manual validation, while attackers operate at machine speed. When phishing ...

Another Thursday, another pile of weird security stuff that somehow happened in just seven days. Some of it is clever. Some of it is lazy. A few bits fall into that uncomfortable category of “yeah… this is probably going to show up in real incidents sooner than we’d like.” The pattern this week feels familiar in a slightly annoying way. Old tricks are getting polished. New research shows how flimsy certain assumptions really are. A couple of things that make you stop mid-scroll and think, “wait… people are actually pulling this off?” There’s also the usual mix of strange corners of the ecosystem doing strange things — infrastructure behaving a little too professionally for comfort, tools showing up where they absolutely shouldn’t, and a few cases where the weakest link is still just… people clicking stuff they probably shouldn’t. Anyway. If you’ve got five minutes and a mild curiosity about what attackers, researchers, and the broader internet gremlins were up to lately, this week’...

The most dangerous phishing campaigns aren’t just designed to fool employees. Many are designed to exhaust the analysts investigating them. When a phishing investigation takes 12 hours instead of five minutes, the outcome can shift from a contained incident to a breach. For years, the cybersecurity industry has focused on the front door of phishing defense: employee training, email gateways that filter known threats, and reporting programs that encourage users to flag suspicious messages. Far less attention has been paid to what happens after a report is filed, and how attackers exploit the investigation process that follows.  Alert fatigue in Security Operations Centers isn't just an operational inconvenience . It can become an attack surface. SOC teams increasingly report phishing campaigns that appear designed not only to compromise targets but also to overwhelm the analysts responsible for investigating them.  This shifts how organizations should think about phishing d...