TrendAI™ Research tracked a sustained malvertising campaign that abused Google Ads to deliver ClickFix social engineering attacks disguised as popular AI developer tools. The campaign impersonated at least six legitimate brand names, including ChatGPT Codex, Perplexity, Cursor IDE, JetBrains, Claude AI, and claude.ai, and simultaneously ran Mac utility scam lures.
By leveraging paid search ads targeting users actively seeking AI development tools, the attackers were able to target technically proficient users who are more likely to interact with command-line instructions without suspicion. This marks a sophisticated evolution of the ClickFix social engineering technique, where victims are tricked into manually executing malicious commands, typically by copying and pasting PowerShell or terminal commands under the guise of “fixing” a problem or completing a software installation.
Read more…
Source: Trend Micro
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- TransUnion says hackers stole 4.4 million customers’ personal information
August 28, 2025
Credit reporting giant TransUnion has disclosed a data breach affecting more than 4.4 million customers’ personal information. In a filing with Maine’s attorney general’s office on Thursday, TransUnion attributed the July 28 breach to unauthorized access of a third-party application storing customers’ personal data for its U.S. consumer support operations. TransUnion claimed “no credit information was ...
- Jamaica: Cyber attack on Office of Registrar General contained, but services impacted
August 27, 2025
The Office of the Registrar-General (ORG), formerly the Registrar General’s Department (RGD), says it was affected by a cyber incident detected on Sunday and is working to determine its full scope. “Our initial assessment indicates that this incident was primarily designed to disrupt the availability of our systems,” the ORG said Wednesday. “As investigations are still ...
- The first AI-powered proof of concept ransomware has been spotted
August 27, 2025
Security researchers from ESET have identified the first known AI-powered ransomware, which serves as a warning for security teams as generative AI has, and will, continue to make cyberattacks much more accessible for criminals. Peter Strycek and Anton Cherepanov discovered the proof of concept, which they dubbed ‘PromptLock’, which, ‘leverages Lua scripts generated from hard-coded prompts ...
- Nevada hit by cyber attack disrupting state services for thousands
August 27, 2025
A cyber attack targeting Nevada’s state technology systems has left thousands of residents without access to vital services for days, with many offices still struggling to restore full operations. The attack, which began early Sunday morning, forced the closure of numerous state agencies, including the DMV, State Police, and Attorney General’s offices on Monday and Tuesday. ...
- Deception in Depth: PRC-nexus espionage campaign hijacks web traffic to target diplomats
August 25, 2025
This blog post presents Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) findings and analysis of this espionage campaign, as well as the evolution of the threat actor’s operational capabilities. GTIG examine how the malware is delivered, how the threat actor utilized social engineering and evasion techniques, and technical aspects of the multi-stage malware payloads. In this campaign, the ...
- A new security flaw in TheTruthSpy phone spyware is putting victims at risk
August 25, 2025
A stalkerware maker with a history of multiple data leaks and breaches now has a critical security vulnerability that allows anyone to take over any user account and steal their victim’s sensitive personal data, TechCrunch has confirmed. Independent security researcher Swarang Wade found the vulnerability, which allows anyone to reset the password of any user of ...