- Top AI tools such as OpenClaw and Github Copilot can be hijacked to create new massive botnets
July 15, 2026
Your favorite AI service could be subverted to deploy code that turns your phone or PC into a botnet, according to researchers at Intuit, Technion, and Tel Aviv University. The technique has been given the name HalluSquatting, a portmanteau of adversarial hallucination squatting, and is similar to typosquatting in that it relies on a mistake in ...
- Warning: Scammers are using FaceTime to empty bank accounts
July 14, 2026
Apple is urging users to treat any suspicious FaceTime call or message as untrusted, especially if it involves payments, refunds, password resets, or requests for personal information. This warning appears in a broader Apple support article about scams that target iPhone and iPad users through social engineering. Apple says attackers may contact people by phone calls, FaceTime, text ...
- Microsoft tops last month’s record with 622 Patch Tuesday CVEs
July 14, 2026
Remember last month when we were awed by Microsoft’s record-setting Patch Tuesday that addressed 206 CVEs? That was a quaint era compared to this month: Redmond just rolled out patches for 622 CVEs specific to its products, slightly more than tripling last month’s all-time high. Redmond’s Patch Tuesday release is once again one for the record books, with everything under ...
- Ghostcommit attack hides malicious AI instructions in images
July 13, 2026
Ghostcommit is a proof of concept that shows how AI assistants used to review software code can be tricked by hidden instructions embedded in images. The academic ASSET Research Group showed that an attacker can place instructions inside an image file, point to it in an AGENTS.md file, and get an AI coding agent to follow those instructions during a ...
- EU-UK sanctions target Russia over Europe-wide ‘vast cyber campaign’
July 13, 2026
The European Union and the UK have announced coordinated sanctions against Russia after accusing Moscow’s FSB intelligence agency of carrying out a cyber attack in December targeting Poland’s energy grid and orchestrating a wider campaign of digital sabotage across Europe. The joint measures focus on individuals and organisations linked to Russia’s security services, with the EU ...
- Trump administration subpoenas New York Times journalists over new Air Force One reporting
July 11, 2026
The Trump administration has issued subpoenas to several New York Times journalists after the newspaper reported on security concerns with the president’s new plane. The Times said its journalists were subpoenaed on Friday by the US justice department to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan five days later, marking the latest effort by the Trump White ...
- Ukrainians are using VPNs to cause havoc in Russia by changing fuel station statuses on maps in a bid to cause chaos and confusion
July 11, 2026
A coordinated online campaign has reportedly encouraged users to alter fuel station information on digital maps across Russia, creating confusion among drivers. The activity involves changing station statuses by marking locations with available fuel as empty or showing closed stations as operational. Supporters of the campaign claim the effort is designed to disrupt travel decisions, increase uncertainty, ...
- Two Chrome updates in two days fix critical vulnerabilities
July 10, 2026
Updating Chrome is becoming an almost daily task lately. But it’s too important to ignore. On Wednesday, July 8, Google released another Chrome update, just one day later after the previous one. Between them, the two updates fixed 27 security vulnerabilities, including two critical flaws that could be exploited to compromise Chrome. Google says both are “use-after-free” memory vulnerabilities, which ...
- Supermarket chain Lidl warns customers after data leak
July 10, 2026
Unknown individuals managed to gain access to customer data held by the supermarket chain Lidl. The German company informed affected customers of this via email this week. Thus far, the supermarket chain has declined to say how many customers were affected. However, the discount retailer did state that it has notified the Dutch Data Protection Authority. Read ...
- No Manners Here: The Ruthless Rise of The Gentlemen Ransomware
July 10, 2026
The Gentlemen (aka Storm-2697) is a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) program active since at least July 2025. Public reporting indicates that the operators were likely active months earlier as an affiliate (known as ArmCorp) of Qilin RaaS, which Unit 42 tracks as Spikey Scorpius. Their ransomware variants are written in both C and Go programming languages, enabling ...
- Florida ransomware negotiator convicted for helping ransomware gang extort US companies
July 10, 2026
Florida man Angelo Martino has been sentenced to more than five years in prison for conspiring with hackers to deploy ransomware during his job as a ransomware negotiator for a U.S. cybersecurity company. The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed the sentence on Thursday, noting that the government seized more than $10 million worth of cryptocurrency and assets. Martino ...
- Accenture confirms breach after hacker steals 35GB of source code and other data
July 9, 2026
Accenture has confirmed suffering a cyberattack, days after threat actors started selling an archive allegedly coming from the firm. “We are aware of this isolated matter, and we have remediated its source. There is no impact to Accenture operations and service delivery,” Accenture said in a statement. It follows a relatively unknown threat actor called 888 posting ...
- An unnamed US county paid $1M extortion demand to cybercriminals
July 9, 2026
A US county reportedly paid $1 million to Kairos, an extortion gang that claimed to have stolen more than 2 TB of data, but the county never received independently verifiable proof that the stolen files had been deleted – just the criminals’ promise. This means the county’s stolen files may turn up for sale on a ...
- GigaWiper: Anatomy of a destructive backdoor assembled from multiple malware
July 9, 2026
In October 2025, Microsoft Threat Intelligence identified destructive wiping activity and uncovered a sophisticated Go programming language (Golang)-based backdoor we now track as GigaWiper, a versatile implant that combines robust command-and-control (C2) capabilities with multiple destructive payloads, including disk wiping, fake ransomware, and system-level sabotage. GigaWiper is particularly notable for its makeup. It’s not a single, ...
- Microsoft has fixed the “RoguePlanet” zero-day in Microsoft Defender
July 9, 2026
Microsoft has quietly fixed the “RoguePlanet” zero-day in Microsoft Defender, closing the latest hole exposed by security researcher Nightmare Eclipse after months of public sparring over the company’s handling of vulnerability reports. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-50656, was addressed through an update to the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine rather than via its monthly Patch Tuesday bundle. Microsoft said ...
- 6.9 million driver’s license numbers stolen from AssuranceAmerica
July 9, 2026
Insurance provider AssuranceAmerica has confirmed a data breach affecting the personal information and driver’s license numbers of up to 6.9 million people. AssuranceAmerica provides car and rental insurance to customers across 14 US states through a network of over 9,500 independent agents. The breach notice letter also mentions information about customers’ auto insurance policies and accounts, their drivers and ...
- Vidar Stealer Unmasked: Code Signing Abuse, Go Loaders and File Inflation
July 7, 2026
In April 2026, Unit 42 researchers identified a financially motivated campaign delivering Vidar stealer and the XMRig cryptocurrency miner to consumer and small- and medium-sized business victims worldwide. Attackers lure victims via malvertising to pages for downloading files that impersonate cracked versions of copyright-protected software. Upon execution, the loader drops and runs both Vidar stealer and ...