News – February 2026


  • Anthropic ditches its core safety promise in the middle of an AI red line fight with the Pentagon

    February 25, 2026

    Anthropic, a company founded by OpenAI exiles worried about the dangers of AI, is loosening its core safety principle in response to competition. Instead of self-imposed guardrails constraining its development of AI models, Anthropic is adopting a nonbinding safety framework that it says can and will change. In a blog post Tuesday outlining its new policy, ...

  • North Korea’s Lazarus Group targets healthcare orgs with Medusa ransomware

    February 24, 2026

    North Korea’s Lazarus Group appears to have added another tool to its kit. It has begun using Medusa ransomware in extortion attacks targeting at least one US healthcare organization and an unnamed victim in the Middle East, according to Symantec and Carbon Black threat hunters. The US healthcare attempt failed, while the Middle East organization was ...

  • Predator spyware allows full sensor surveillance on iPhones

    February 24, 2026

    Apple may have introduced colored status bar indicators in iOS 14 to alert users when the camera or microphone is active, but experts have warned this does not stop all malware. Spyware developed by Intellexa and Cytrox, dubbed Predator, can operate on compromised iOS devices without showing any camera or microphone indicators. Predator bypasses the indicator ...

  • Fake Zoom meeting “update” silently installs surveillance software

    February 24, 2026

    A fake Zoom meeting website is silently pushing surveillance software onto Windows machines. Visitors land on a convincing imitation of a Zoom video call. Moments later, an automatic “Update Available” countdown downloads a malicious installer—without asking for permission. The software being installed is a covert build of Teramind, a commercial monitoring tool companies use to record ...

  • Bring the Fight to the Edge: Turning Time Into an Advantage in OT Security

    February 24, 2026

    Industrial organizations are facing a growing paradox in cybersecurity. While operational technology (OT) environments are increasingly connected, most security strategies still assume threats will only materialize once attackers reach the plant floor. In reality, attacks that disrupt industrial operations rarely begin in OT environments. They originate upstream, progress over time and frequently exploit the persistent assumption ...

  • Russian hackers target European firms with new spear-phishing cyberattacks

    February 24, 2026

    APT28, the infamous Russian state-sponsored hacking group also known as Fancy Bear, or Sofacy, has been observed targeting “specific entities” in Western and Central Europe with infostealers. In a newly released report, security researchers Lab52 from S2 Grupo detailed “Operation MacroMaze”, which has been ongoing since at least late September 2025 through January 2026. The campaign ...

  • Australia: Cyber attack takes major chicken processor Hazeldenes offline leaving businesses without meat

    February 23, 2026

    A cyber attack at major chicken meat processor Hazeldenes in central Victoria has led it to shutdown its wi-fi system on site, and a shortage of chicken at pubs and butchers across the state. Retail and industry have told the ABC that the chicken meat processor has been unable to fill some orders because it cannot ...

  • AWS says more than 600 FortiGate firewalls hit in AI-augmented campaign

    February 23, 2026

    Cybercriminals armed with off-the-shelf generative AI tools compromised more than 600 internet-exposed FortiGate firewalls across 55 countries in just over a month, according to a new incident report from AWS. The campaign, which ran from mid-January to mid-February, relied less on clever zero-days and more on the equivalent of trying every digital door handle – just ...

  • Hacker gained access to PayPal systems resulting in unauthorised transactions

    February 22, 2026

    Some PayPal users have started to receive email from the company confirming a data breach that exposed personal information to a threat actor who gained access to PayPal’s systems, leading to some seeing unauthorized transactions on their accounts and the resetting of passwords. A breach notification letter, which the authors have verified, has confirmed that some ...

  • Massive Winos 4.0 Campaigns Target Taiwan

    February 20, 2026

    FortiGuard Labs recently observed several targeted phishing campaigns in Taiwan that use themes designed to exploit local business processes. These campaigns disseminate Winos 4.0 (ValleyRat) and subsequent malicious plugins through weaponized attachments or embedded links. The lures mimic official communications, such as tax audit notifications, tax filing software installers, and cloud-based e-invoice downloads. Fortinet researchers analysis ...