All news in category “Incidents and Data Breaches”

🛡️ A targeted campaign used political lures and a ZIP archive to deliver a DLL side-loading chain that installs the backdoor LOTUSLITE (kugou.dll), aimed at U.S. government and policy organizations. Acronis researchers attributed the activity with moderate confidence to the Chinese-linked Mustang Panda cluster and observed registry persistence, WinHTTP C2 communications, and remote CMD tasking. It remains unclear whether intended targets were successfully compromised.

⚠️ Cisco Talos says a China-aligned advanced persistent threat tracked as UAT-8837 has been leveraging a critical Sitecore zero-day (CVE-2025-53690, CVSS 9.0) to gain initial access to North American critical infrastructure. The actor uses both exploit-based access and compromised credentials, then deploys open-source tools for credential harvesting, Active Directory reconnaissance, and persistent remote access. Observed artifacts include GoTokenTheft, EarthWorm, DWAgent, SharpHound, Impacket, Rubeus, and Certipy, raising supply chain and OT exposure concerns.

🔒 Researchers at Wiz found a subtle misconfiguration in AWS CodeBuild build-trigger handling that could let unauthenticated actors infiltrate build environments and leak credentials. A two-character mistake in an unanchored regex filter allowed threat actor ID bypasses, putting public repositories such as the AWS JavaScript SDK at risk. AWS patched the issue within 48 hours, hardening CodeBuild and auditing public build logs. Wiz recommends anchored regexes, fine-grained PATs, and stricter build gates to reduce exposure.

🔒 Utrecht-based Eurail BV has confirmed that an unauthorized party accessed its customer database, potentially exposing a range of personal information for Interrail pass holders and some DiscoverEU participants. Affected items may include identification data (first and last name, date of birth, gender), contact details (email, home address, telephone) and passport details (number, issuing country, expiry). The company says the investigation is ongoing and that there is currently no indication the data have been misused or publicly shared; it is advising customers to remain vigilant, change passwords for Rail Planner and related accounts, and consult the provider’s FAQ for guidance.

🔒 Grubhub confirmed unauthorized actors downloaded data from certain systems and said it investigated, halted the activity, and is taking steps to strengthen its security posture. The company stated that financial information and order histories were not affected but declined to answer further questions about timing, affected users, or extortion. Grubhub said it is working with a third-party cybersecurity firm and law enforcement, while sources tell BleepingComputer that threat actors are demanding payment.

🛠️ Verizon confirmed that a nationwide wireless outage on January 14 was caused by a software issue and said there is no indication the disruption was a cybersecurity incident. The outage left many customers nationwide unable to make calls, with phones stuck in SOS mode and callers sometimes hearing that the "called party is temporarily unavailable." New York City officials warned some Verizon customers might not be able to reach 911. Verizon said engineers resolved the problem the same day, advised restarts, apologized, and will provide a $20 credit to affected accounts.

🔒 Eurail B.V. has acknowledged unauthorized access to its Interrail customer database, potentially exposing identity, contact and passport information for affected customers. The company says there are no indications of misuse or public sharing so far and that investigations are ongoing. Customers who booked under the EU DiscoverEU program may have had copies of identity documents, IBANs and health data accessed. Eurail recommends vigilance and changing passwords for associated accounts.

⚠️ The controversial ICE List doxxing site, launched after an alleged DHS whistleblower provided details on thousands of ICE and Border Patrol officials, has been taken offline by a sustained DDoS attack. Founder Dominick Skinner reported that overwhelming traffic appears to originate from Russian IP addresses routed through proxies, complicating attribution. Skinner and his team are attempting server migrations to restore access but expect the site to remain a target.

🛡️Microsoft said it executed coordinated legal action in the U.S. and U.K. to seize infrastructure and take RedVDS (redvds[.]com) offline after linking the service to large‑scale fraud. For as little as US $24 per month, the subscription offered disposable Windows RDP hosts and a Telegram management bot with no activity logs. Microsoft attributed roughly US $40 million in U.S. fraud since March 2025 and says RedVDS‑enabled attacks compromised over 191,000 organizations worldwide since September 2025.

🛡️ International law enforcement, together with Microsoft, dismantled the RedVDS cybercrime service after seizing servers hosted in Germany. Authorities from Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom, confirmed by the ZIT and the State Criminal Police Office of Brandenburg, say the platform enabled large-scale phishing and boss‑scam frauds. Microsoft reports $40 million in US losses over seven months and highlights prolific phishing volumes from rented virtual machines. No arrests have been reported; suspects are believed to be located in an unspecified Middle Eastern country.

🔐 The npm ecosystem has shifted from simple typosquatting to coordinated, credential-driven supply‑chain intrusions that target maintainers, CI pipelines, and trusted automation. Attackers now compromise legitimate packages via stolen tokens and publish trojanized updates that quietly propagate to millions of downstream projects. Detection increasingly requires runtime and anomaly analysis rather than static scanning, while mitigations focus on treating CI runners as production assets, aggressively rotating and scoping publish tokens, disabling unnecessary lifecycle scripts, and pinning dependencies to immutable versions.

🔒 Microsoft says it disrupted RedVDS, a cybercrime-as-a-service platform tied to at least $40 million in U.S. losses since March 2025. The company filed civil lawsuits in the U.S. and U.K., and — working with Europol and German authorities — seized servers, took the marketplace and customer portal offline, and removed malicious infrastructure. RedVDS rented disposable Windows cloud servers worldwide to enable large-scale phishing, BEC, credential theft and AI‑enhanced impersonation campaigns.

🔒 Kyowon Group confirmed a ransomware incident in January that disrupted services and resulted in the theft of customer data. The company says roughly 9.6 million accounts (about 5.5 million people) may be affected and that approximately 600 of its 800 servers were impacted. Kyowon is working with authorities and security experts to investigate, restore services, and will disclose confirmed details to customers.

🔒 The French data protection authority, CNIL, fined Free Mobile and parent company Free a combined €42 million for insufficient protection of customer data after an October 2024 breach that exposed information of nearly 23 million subscribers. CNIL cited weak VPN authentication, poor detection of abnormal activity, delayed notifications, and excessive data retention. The companies must complete security fixes and perform mandated data clean-up within required deadlines.

🔍 The near-total internet blackout Iran imposed on January 8 may offer SOC teams a rare chance to observe and digitally fingerprint government-controlled traffic. Vendors argue that with residential and business noise silenced, remaining connections likely originate from state assets, making them high-confidence signals for threat modeling and short-term intelligence collection. Analysts caution, however, that sophisticated state actors can deceive attribution, legitimate government traffic may be benign, and routing artifacts often disappear once services are restored, so captured data should be treated as contextual input, not definitive proof.

🚨 Black Lotus Labs said it null-routed traffic to more than 550 command-and-control nodes tied to the AISURU/Kimwolf botnet after detecting rapid growth beginning in early October 2025. Researchers attribute the expansion to a malicious ByteConnect SDK delivered to unsanctioned Android TV devices and proxy services that expose Android Debug Bridge (ADB). The botnet, leveraged for DDoS and residential proxy leasing, has infected more than two million devices and has been linked to hosting providers and proxy marketplaces where compromised nodes were offered for sale.

🔴 Verizon Wireless is experiencing a widespread outage across the United States, leaving affected phones displaying an SOS indicator and unable to make normal cellular calls. Reports to DownDetector began around 12 PM ET, and callers attempting to reach impacted numbers hear a recording that the called party is temporarily unavailable. The disruption appears to span multiple states rather than a single region, and some other carriers also showed issues during similar timeframes. Verizon has been contacted and the incident is under investigation.

🛡️ Microsoft announced on 14 January that it has seized the infrastructure and website of RedVDS, a subscription-based cybercrime platform that rented disposable virtual machines and AI tools to facilitate phishing, business email compromise (BEC) and fraud. The service, available from about $24/month, has been linked to more than $40 million in losses in the US and nearly 190,000 victimised organisations worldwide. Legal partners in the US and the UK, with international law enforcement support, coordinated the takedown.

📧 CyberProof documented a wave of phishing-led intrusions where attackers used fake PayPal alerts to trick victims into installing legitimate remote access software. The campaign targeted both personal and corporate accounts and represents a shift from seasonal lures to high-urgency financial themes. Attackers initially deployed LogMeIn Rescue then pivoted to AnyDesk to maintain access while avoiding EDR detection. Recommended mitigations include tighter phishing controls, restricting RMM ports and adopting a zero-trust posture.

📌 Microsoft Threat Intelligence exposed RedVDS, a criminal VDS marketplace that sold inexpensive, unlicensed Windows RDP servers enabling widespread BEC, mass phishing, account takeover, and financial fraud. The service repeatedly cloned a single Windows Server 2022 image (host name WIN-BUNS25TD77J), producing consistent fingerprints defenders could detect. RedVDS tenants deployed mass-mailer tools, harvesters, remote access utilities and AI writing assistants to craft and scale phishing campaigns. In coordination with law enforcement, Microsoft disrupted the infrastructure and published detection and mitigation guidance including Defender XDR telemetry and recommended email and identity controls.