- 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 ...
- CAI cloud worm gives competitors’ malware the boot, then steals secrets and mines for coin
July 7, 2026
There’s no honor among thieves as a new worm steals from other infectious software. It pilfers “multiple” victims’ credentials and mines for cryptocurrency while killing competitors’ processes, including similar secret-harvesting malware. It’s called Cloud AI Infrastructure Attack Framework (CAI), and it’s a centralized botnet that targets cloud-native developer tools like Docker, Kubernetes, Redis, etcd, Kubelet, and ...
- Fake Netflix, Coca-Cola, and FIFA job scams target marketers
July 7, 2026
Attackers are impersonating major companies and recruiters to target marketing professionals, using trusted services and browser tricks to make the scam look legitimate. A BleepingComputer article detailing the campaign found at least 34 domains impersonating high-value companies, including Netflix, Coca-Cola, Adidas, and FIFA. The lure is a fake job interview or scheduling request from a “recruiter” representing one of ...
- Hacktivists call out Trump by hacking and defacing US Army websites
July 7, 2026
The U.S. Army has reportedly fixed two of its websites that had been defaced to display pro-Kurdish messages and to call out President Donald Trump, the latest case of hackers compromising systems run by the federal government in recent months. Security researcher Ronald Lovelace told Cyberscoop, which first reported the defacements, that error pages were modified on two U.S. Army ...
- When checking the URL isn’t enough: a Device Code Phishing attack via a Microsoft website
July 6, 2026
One of the most common pieces of anti-phishing advice is to double-check the website’s domain name before providing your credentials. Typically, a fraudulent domain stands out to the trained eye, differing from the official URL by at least a few characters. Recently, however, Kaspersky encountered a campaign where attackers instruct victims to input data directly ...
- Canadian spy agency says it hacked drug traffickers, extremists, and a ransomware gang last year
July 6, 2026
Offering a rare glimpse at the priorities of a top spy organization, Canada’s Communications Security Establishment (CSE) said it conducted a handful of state-authorized hacks last year in order to disrupt the operations of drug traffickers, violent extremists, and a ransomware gang. The disclosures in the Canadian intelligence agency’s annual report underscore some of the main national security ...
- Fake IT bods on Microsoft Teams coax workers into installing malware
July 6, 2026
Cybercriminals are using fake IT support calls on Microsoft Teams to persuade employees to surrender control of their PCs before installing the EtherRAT remote access trojan, according to researchers at Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42. Victims receive a phishing email disguised as an employee survey before a follow-up Microsoft Teams call from someone claiming to be IT ...
- Confidential computing’s core trust mechanism is broken. The fix may not exist
July 4, 2026
Vendors are trying to position “confidential computing” as the technical backbone of Europe’s sovereign cloud ambitions. But new research shows that a security protocol used to prove cryptographic trust in the system may have a fundamental architectural flaw. Confidential computing rests on a mechanism called remote attestation, in which a server cryptographically proves to a client ...
- NetNut cracked as Google and FBI target 2 million-device botnet
July 3, 2026
Tech companies working with US law enforcement “significantly degraded” the NetNut residential proxy network as part of an ongoing effort to disrupt the tools cybercriminals use to conceal their activity, say researchers. The work was carried out by Google, Lumen, Shadowserver, the FBI, and others, and marks a continuation of the IPIDEA proxy network disruption from January. According to Google Cloud, ...
- Verified X ad spreads Mac malware, while ConsentFix steals Microsoft accounts
July 3, 2026
Cybercriminals are finding new ways to trick people into compromising their own devices and accounts. One campaign used a sponsored ad on X to target Mac users, while another technique, dubbed ConsentFix, steals Microsoft 365 accounts without installing malware. Researchers have discovered a ClickFix-style attack running as a sponsored advertisement on X. The ad was posted from a ...
- AdaptHealth says attackers sweet-talked their way into cloud systems and stole patient data
July 3, 2026
AdaptHealth says attackers used social engineering to breach its systems and steal sensitive patient data, including passwords associated with insurance billing. The medical equipment company disclosed the attack to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday, noting that attackers accessed internal patient management systems, document storage platforms, and external electronic health record system portals. The attack targeted an ...
- WinRAR flaw could allow attackers to take control of your computer
July 2, 2026
Rarlab has released a new version of the popular WinRAR tool to patch a vulnerability that can be abused in remote code execution attacks. The issue is fixed in WinRAR 7.23, but users must install the new version manually because WinRAR still does not offer automatic updates. They also need to make sure they download the version that matches their ...
- Fake Google and Cloudflare verification pages spread multiple malware families
July 2, 2026
ClickFix attacks, which trick people into running malicious commands themselves, continue to evolve. This latest campaign uses fake Google and Cloudflare verification pages to convince victims to infect their own devices. A single mistake can install malware that steals passwords and other sensitive data, gives attackers remote access to your computer, or downloads additional malware that can ...
