All news in category “Incidents and Data Breaches”

🛑 Law enforcement seized servers and domains of the E-Note cryptocurrency exchange, accused of laundering more than $70 million originating from ransomware attacks and account takeovers. Authorities confiscated e-note.com, e-note.ws and jabb.mn, removed mobile apps, and obtained customer databases and transaction records. The DOJ has indicted Russian national Mykhalio Petrovich Chudnovets on one count of money laundering conspiracy; he faces up to 20 years in prison but has not been arrested. The seized records may help identify additional cybercriminals and the network of money mules used to move and convert illicit funds.

🔐 Proofpoint has observed a sharp increase in phishing campaigns that abuse Microsoft's OAuth device code authorization flow to gain access to Microsoft 365 accounts. Attackers use social engineering — QR codes, embedded buttons and hyperlinks — to trick users into entering device codes on Microsoft's legitimate verification page, which yields valid access tokens. Readily available tools such as SquarePhish2 and Graphish have lowered the bar for both state-aligned and financially motivated actors.

🚨 French authorities arrested a Latvian crew member after discovery of a remote access tool aboard the Italian passenger ferry Fantastic, owned by Grandi Navi Veloci. A Bulgarian crewmember was released without charge. The malware was detected and neutralized by GNV while the ship was docked in Sète, and France's DGSI seized items for forensic analysis. Investigators are treating the case as suspected foreign interference and continue cooperation with Italian authorities.

🛡️ Kaspersky researchers uncovered a new Windows infostealer named Stealka in November 2025 that steals browser data, extension files and application settings to enable account takeover, cryptocurrency theft and deployment of a cryptominer. The malware is most often distributed as game cracks, cheats and pirated software hosted on legitimate platforms; activation requires the victim to run the delivered file. Stealka specifically targets Chromium- and Gecko-based browsers and dozens of popular wallet, password manager and 2FA extensions. Users are advised to rely on reputable endpoint protection, avoid pirated software and keep secrets out of browser storage.

🔒 Cybernews reports researchers found an unsecured 16 TB MongoDB instance exposing roughly 4.3 billion personal and professional records. The dataset included names, emails, phone numbers, LinkedIn profile details, employment history, education, social accounts and profile images — data consistent with large-scale LinkedIn scraping. The operator secured the database two days after discovery on 25 November 2025, but ownership and the full exposure window remain unknown.

🚨Chainalysis reports North Korea's crypto thefts surged in 2025, exceeding $2bn and pushing the regime's cumulative haul to over $6.7bn. The firm says DPRK actors accounted for 60% of funds stolen this year, with the Bybit breach alone yielding an unprecedented $1.5bn; attackers are increasingly embedding IT workers inside exchanges and custodians to gain privileged access. They favor Chinese-language services, cross-chain bridges and mixers for laundering, while personal wallet thefts tripled in incidents but fell in average value to $713m overall.

🛡️ Darktrace links a newly observed, heavily obfuscated BeaverTail JavaScript variant to DPRK-associated Lazarus clusters, targeting cryptocurrency traders, developers and retail staff. The cross-platform loader and stealer harvests host details and retrieves follow-on payloads, with recent samples using layered Base64 and XOR encoding. Delivery has expanded via trojanized npm packages, fake interview platforms and command-injection lures.

🛡️The Greens say recent findings of Russian influence operations during the federal election confirm that existing protections for parliamentary democracy are inadequate. Although Germany implemented the NIS-2 law on December 6, 2024, it covers the federal administration and Bundestag administration but not the Bundestag as an institution or MPs' constituency offices. The federal government attributes an August 2024 cyberattack on air traffic control to the GRU-linked group Fancy Bear and says the campaign "Storm 1516" targeted the election with disinformation; the Russian ambassador was summoned.

📱 ENKI links the North Korean actor Kimsuky to a campaign delivering a new Android remote-access trojan dubbed DocSwap via QR codes on phishing sites impersonating CJ Logistics. Victims are lured by smishing or phishing to scan a QR that prompts installation of a malicious "SecDelivery.apk," which decrypts and loads an embedded payload and requests broad permissions. The app mimics OTP authentication to reassure users while launching a background service that connects to attacker infrastructure and exposes capabilities including keystroke logging, audio and camera capture, and data exfiltration.

🔒 In mid-December, a Raspberry Pi paired with a cellular modem was found attached to a ferry owned by the Mediterranean Shipping Company, apparently intended to give remote access to the vessel’s internal network. Robust segmentation and disabled remote access to critical control systems prevented lateral movement and a potential sabotage scenario. Analysts warn many organizations remain vulnerable because physical security and port-level controls are often overlooked, and they recommend stronger NAC, 802.1X enforcement, port locks, and continuous external infrastructure monitoring.

💰 Threat actors linked to North Korea stole at least $2.02 billion in cryptocurrency during 2025, a 51% increase year‑over‑year that made DPRK actors the leading source of global crypto theft. Chainalysis attributes much of the total to a February compromise of Bybit, estimated at $1.5 billion and linked to the cluster TraderTraitor. The report details systematic laundering across DeFi, mixers, bridges and OTC services, and an expanded use of IT infiltration schemes such as Wagemole to gain privileged access and facilitate high‑impact thefts.

🔍 Check Point reports a Chinese-linked group known as Ink Dragon is exploiting misconfigured IIS servers to assemble a stealthy global relay network. Attackers compromise web-facing IIS instances, harvest local credentials, move laterally via RDP, and install a custom IIS module that forwards commands and data between victims to hide C2 origins. Targets include government networks in Southeast Asia, South America and Europe; communications are concealed inside ordinary mailbox drafts. Mitigations include auditing IIS modules against a known baseline, enabling advanced IIS logging, hardening view state settings, and deploying a web application firewall (WAF).

🔒 French authorities arrested a 22-year-old on December 17, 2025, in connection with a cyberattack that breached the Ministry of the Interior's internal email servers earlier in the month. The suspect, born in 2003 and previously convicted for similar offenses in 2025, faces charges of unauthorized access to an automated personal data processing system as part of an organized group, punishable by up to 10 years' imprisonment. Investigations involve the Paris cybercrime unit and OFAC, and officials said a further statement will follow after police custody.

⚠️ Amazon's GuardDuty team is tracking an ongoing cryptomining campaign that uses compromised Identity and Access Management (IAM) credentials to abuse EC2 and ECS resources. The attacker deployed an yenik65958/secret Docker Hub image containing the SBRMiner-MULTI miner and configured large ECS tasks and auto-scaling EC2 groups to maximize mining. The actor also enabled instance termination protection to hinder remediation; Amazon has removed the malicious image, alerted affected customers, and recommends rotating compromised IAM credentials while following GuardDuty mitigation guidance.

🔒 Threat actors are abusing WhatsApp's legitimate device-linking feature in a campaign named GhostPairing, tricking victims into entering pairing codes on fake verification pages. Once a code is submitted, attackers gain full access to conversations and shared media and can send messages as the victim to propagate the lure. Users should check Settings → Linked Devices for unauthorized sessions, block and report suspicious messages, and enable two-factor authentication.

🛡️ Researchers at QiAnXin XLab disclosed a large-scale NDK-compiled botnet dubbed Kimwolf that has infected at least 1.8 million Android-based TVs, set-top boxes, and tablets across multiple countries. The infrastructure issued an estimated 1.7 billion DDoS commands over a three-day period in November 2025 and supports 13 UDP/TCP/ICMP attack methods while also offering proxy forwarding, reverse shell, and file management functions. Operators responded to repeated C2 takedowns by moving to ENS domains and deploying an EtherHiding technique that resolves C2 IPs via a smart contract.

🔒 Cisco Talos identified a targeted campaign, tracked as UAT-9686, that compromises appliances running Cisco AsyncOS, including Secure Email Gateway and Secure Email and Web Manager. The actor, assessed as a Chinese-nexus APT, deployed a Python backdoor called AquaShell that decodes specially crafted HTTP POSTs and executes system shell commands after being placed in a web server file. Operators also used a Go-based reverse SSH tool (AquaTunnel), Chisel for tunneling, and a log wiper named AquaPurge. Cisco has published advisories and recommends following remediation guidance and opening cases with TAC if IOCs are observed.

🔴 Researchers observed the critical React2Shell vulnerability (CVE-2025-55182) being exploited to gain initial access and deploy the Weaxor ransomware in under a minute. The attacker executed an obfuscated PowerShell command to stage a Cobalt Strike beacon, disabled Windows Defender real‑time protection, and launched the encryptor. Encrypted files used the .WEAX extension while shadow copies were removed and event logs cleared to impede recovery and forensic analysis.

🔒 Recorded Future's Insikt Group observed APT28 conducting a sustained credential-phishing campaign targeting users of UKR.net between June 2024 and April 2025. The actor, tracked as APT28 or BlueDelta and assessed as affiliated with the GRU, used UKR.net-themed login pages hosted on legitimate services like Mocky and chained redirects from link shorteners and Blogger subdomains to capture passwords and 2FA codes. Phishing emails delivered PDFs that directed recipients to these pages, and the group has moved from abusing compromised routers to leveraging proxy tunneling services such as ngrok and Serveo.

📚 Kaspersky reported a targeted phishing campaign linked to Operation ForumTroll observed in October 2025 that impersonated the Russian eLibrary service. Attackers used a long-aged bogus domain to send personalized emails with one-time links to ZIP archives named for each victim, which contained a .LNK that runs a PowerShell downloader. The chain fetches a staged payload that loads a final DLL, persists via COM hijacking, deploys the Tuoni C2 framework for remote access, and shows a decoy PDF to victims.