Mysterious hacking group Careto was run by the Spanish government


More than a decade ago, researchers at antivirus company Kaspersky identified suspicious internet traffic of what they thought was a known government-backed group, based on similar targeting and its phishing techniques.

Soon, the researchers realized they had found a much more advanced hacking operation that was targeting the Cuban government, among others. Eventually the researchers were able to attribute the network activity to a mysterious — and at the time completely unknown — Spanish-speaking hacking group that they called Careto, after the Spanish slang word (“ugly face” or “mask” in English), which they found buried within the malware’s code.

Read more…
Source: TechCrunch News


Sign up for our Newsletter
The latest news and insights delivered right to your inbox.


Related:

  • China remains embedded in US energy networks ‘for the purpose of taking it down’

    February 17, 2026

    Three new threat groups began targeting critical infrastructure last year, while a well-known Beijing-backed crew – Volt Typhoon – continued to compromise cellular gateways and routers, and then break into US electric, oil, and gas companies in 2025, according to Dragos’ annual threat report published on Tuesday. Dragos specializes in operational technology (OT) security, and as ...

  • OpenClaw AI agents targeted by infostealer malware for the first time

    February 17, 2026

    Thanks to its overnight success and widespread adoption, OpenClaw has painted a large target on its back and is now being attacked by infostealers, after security researchers Hudson Rock claimed to have seen a first-of-its-kind attack in the wild. OpenClaw (previously known as Clawdbot and Moltbot) is an open source AI assistant software designed to actually ...

  • China-linked snoops have been exploiting Dell 0-day since mid-2024, using ‘ghost NICs’ to avoid detection

    February 17, 2026

    China-linked attackers exploited a maximum-severity hardcoded-credential bug in Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines as a zero-day since at least mid-2024. It’s all part of a long-running effort to backdoor infected machines for long-term access, according to Google’s Mandiant incident response team. The US government and Google first warned about this campaign last year after detecting Brickstorm ...

  • Critical Vulnerabilities in Ivanti EPMM Exploited

    February 17, 2026

    Two critical zero-day vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-1281 and CVE-2026-1340) affecting Ivanti Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) are being actively exploited in the wild, affecting enterprise mobile fleets and corporate networks. These vulnerabilities allow unauthenticated attackers to remotely execute arbitrary code on target servers, granting them full control over mobile device management (MDM) infrastructure without requiring user interaction or credentials. Read ...

  • Indian pharmacy chain giant exposed customer data and internal systems

    February 17, 2026

    A major Indian pharmacy chain operated a flawed platform which exposed highly sensitive data of millions of users, experts have warned. DavaIndia Pharmacy, the pharmacy arm of Zota Healthcare, currently runs more than 2,300 stores across the country – however, its platform was bugged in a way that allowed unauthenticated users to create “super admin” ...

  • Google patches first Chrome zero-day of the year

    February 16, 2026

    Google has patched a high-severity vulnerability in the Chrome browser which was apparently being used as a zero-day in the wild. In a security advisory, Google said it addressed CVE-2026-2441, a “use after free in CSS in Google Chrome prior to 145.0.7632.75”. This bug, given a severity score of 8.3/10 (high), allows threat actors to execute ...