All news in category “Incidents and Data Breaches”

🔒 HEM expert has informed customers that a cyberattack on July 18, 2025 affected all ten of its branches in southern Germany. The retailer says business operations continued almost without disruption, but acknowledges that data was stolen and that customer and employee personal information — potentially including names, addresses, dates of birth, contact details and bank or credit card data — may have been compromised. The company is investigating the scope of the leak, working with data protection authorities, and notifying those potentially affected. Some customers complained about delayed notification; HEM expert says it will strengthen security and staff awareness.

🛡️ Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit says it has dismantled the infrastructure behind RaccoonO365, seizing 338 malicious websites tied to the Storm-2246 phishing kit. The DCU, acting under a court order from the Southern District of New York, identified Nigeria-based operator Joshua Ogundipe and disrupted a Telegram-based subscription service with roughly 850 members. Microsoft says the service, launched July 2024, enabled the theft of thousands of Microsoft365 credentials, included tools to bypass MFA, and recently promoted an AI-powered feature to scale attacks.

🪱 Researchers have identified a self-propagating npm worm dubbed Shai-Hulud that injects a 3MB+ JavaScript bundle into packages published from compromised developer accounts. A postinstall action executes the bundle to harvest npm, GitHub, AWS and GCP tokens and to run TruffleHog for broader secret discovery. The worm creates public GitHub repositories to dump secrets, pushes malicious Actions to exfiltrate tokens, and has exposed at least 700 repositories; vendors urge rotation of affected tokens.

🔍 Cyber threat group Scattered Spider has been linked to a new campaign targeting financial services, according to ReliaQuest. The attackers gained access by socially engineering an executive and abusing Azure AD self-service password reset, then moved laterally via Citrix and VPN to compromise VMware ESXi. They escalated privileges by resetting a Veeam service account, assigning Azure Global Administrator rights, and attempted data extraction from Snowflake and AWS. The activity contradicts the group's retirement claims and suggests regrouping or rebranding.

⚖️ The U.S. Department of Justice resentenced Conor Brian Fitzpatrick (aka Pompompurin) to three years in prison after vacating his prior 17‑day time‑served sentence for operating BreachForums and possessing child sexual abuse material. Fitzpatrick pleaded guilty in 2023 to access device conspiracy, access device solicitation, and CSAM possession and agreed to forfeit domains, devices, and cryptocurrency representing illicit proceeds. The resentencing followed a Fourth Circuit decision that remanded his case for a new term.

🔒 Microsoft and Cloudflare coordinated a court-ordered disruption that seized 338 domains used by RaccoonO365, a phishing-as-a-service accused of harvesting over 5,000 Microsoft 365 credentials across 94 countries since July 2024. The takedown, executed between September 2–8, 2025, removed malicious Workers scripts, placed interstitial phish warnings, and suspended accounts to cut criminal access. RaccoonO365 was marketed by subscription and used legitimate services like Cloudflare Turnstile and Workers to harden phishing pages and evade detection.

🛡️ This report analyzes the Sept 14–16 campaign that compromised over 180 NPM packages and propagated the self‑replicating Shai‑Hulud worm, which pushed malicious changes and exfiltrated secrets by publishing data.json files to public GitHub repositories. By parsing the GitHub events archive, researchers identified 207 affected repositories tied to 37 users and attributed those users to 17 employers. Several infected users were NPM maintainers who acted as “super spreaders.” Although exposed files were removed, archived events enable retrospective reconstruction and demand urgent auditing and remediation.

🔒 Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, 22, who operated the BreachForums hacking forum under the alias Pompompurin, was resentenced to three years in prison after the U.S. Court of Appeals vacated his earlier sentence of time served and 20 years of supervised release. Fitzpatrick pleaded guilty in July 2023 to conspiracy to commit access device fraud, solicitation to offer access, and possession of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Prosecutors say he violated pretrial release by using VPNs and unauthorized, unmonitored devices to conceal internet activity. BreachForums, created in 2022, rapidly grew to over 330,000 members and facilitated the sale and leakage of stolen data and access to corporate networks.

🛡️ Researchers disclosed a campaign that trojanized more than 40 npm packages, including the popular tinycolor, embedding self-replicating credential-stealing code. The malware harvested AWS, GCP and Azure credentials, used TruffleHog for secrets discovery, and established persistence via GitHub Actions backdoors. Affected packages were removed, but developers are urged to remove compromised versions, rebuild from clean caches, and rotate any exposed credentials.

🚨 Researchers at HUMAN disrupted a global Android ad-fraud operation dubbed "SlopAds" that used 224 malicious apps on Google Play to generate roughly 2.3 billion ad bid requests per day. The apps, downloaded over 38 million times across 228 countries, used obfuscation and steganography to hide a malicious FatModule payload assembled from PNG images. The campaign used Firebase Remote Config and hidden WebViews to deliver continuous fraudulent ad impressions and clicks; Google has removed the identified apps and updated Google Play Protect to warn affected users.

🐛 Security researchers report at least 187 npm packages compromised in an active supply-chain campaign dubbed Shai‑Hulud. The malware, first observed in the widely used @ctrl/tinycolor package, includes a self‑propagating payload that injects a bundle.js, abuses TruffleHog to harvest tokens and cloud credentials, and creates unauthorized GitHub Actions workflows to exfiltrate secrets. Affected vendors including CrowdStrike say they removed malicious packages and rotated keys; developers are urged to audit environments, rotate secrets, and pin dependencies.

🦠 On the evening of September 15 a worm-like supply-chain attack began targeting popular npm components, compromising nearly 150 packages including @ctrl/tinycolor. Malicious code was added as a cross-platform postinstall script (bundle.js) that harvests credentials using a bundled TruffleHog, validates tokens via npm and GitHub APIs, and — where possible — publishes trojanized package updates. Harvested secrets are exfiltrated by creating public GitHub repositories and by deploying GitHub Actions that forward data to an attacker-controlled webhook.

🔒 Fifteen prominent ransomware groups, including Scattered Spider, ShinyHunters and Lapsus$, posted a collective statement on BreachForums announcing they are ceasing operations and entering a period of “silence.” The announcement framed their activity as exposing systemic vulnerabilities rather than pure extortion and said some members intend to retire on accumulated funds while others will continue studying systems quietly. Analysts and threat intelligence experts cautioned this could be a temporary PR move, noting past groups have rebranded or spawned successors rather than vanishing permanently.

🔒 Luxury fashion groups Gucci, Alexander McQueen and Balenciaga have had customer data exposed in an attack linked to the ShinyHunters group. A sample of files shared with the BBC reportedly included thousands of genuine customer records and spending details, and the group claims data on 7.4 million email addresses. Kering confirmed temporary unauthorized access in June but said no financial information or government identifiers were involved. Security experts warn the data could fuel follow-on fraud, especially if sold on criminal forums.

🔍 A coordinated ad and click-fraud operation named SlopAds ran 224 Android apps that amassed roughly 38 million downloads across 228 countries, according to HUMAN's Satori Threat Intelligence and Research Team. The campaign generated up to 2.3 billion bid requests per day and primarily targeted traffic from the U.S., India, and Brazil. Google removed the offending apps from the Play Store after the investigation, which found sophisticated evasion tactics including steganography and conditional payloads.

🐛 A self-replicating worm dubbed Shai-Hulud has infected at least 187 NPM packages, stealing developer credentials and publishing them to public GitHub repositories that include the string 'Shai-Hulud'. The malware searches for NPM tokens, uses them to inject itself into the top 20 packages accessible to the token and auto-publishes new versions, and leverages tools such as TruffleHog to locate secrets. The campaign briefly affected multiple packages linked to CrowdStrike and was first observed being modified on Sept. 14.

🔒 Kering has confirmed that an unauthorised third party accessed limited customer data from several of its luxury brands, including Gucci, Balenciaga, and Alexander McQueen. The exposed information may include names, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, and store purchase histories, while payment card and financial data do not appear to have been compromised. Reports link the incident to the ShinyHunters group and to earlier 2024 breaches and alleged Salesforce CRM access; chat logs indicated ransom discussions, and police later arrested suspects tied to underground leak site BreachForums. Customers have been notified and should be vigilant for phishing, SMS scams, and suspicious calls.

🔒 Jaguar Land Rover has extended a pause in production for another week as it continues a forensic investigation into a severe cyberattack disclosed on 2 September 2025. The automaker said operations will remain suspended until Wednesday 24th September 2025 while it prepares a controlled global restart. JLR confirmed some data was stolen but has not attributed the breach to a known group. A group calling itself Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters posted screenshots and claimed to have deployed ransomware.

🔍 Acronis researchers warn of a campaign using a FileFix variant to deliver the StealC information stealer via a multilingual, heavily obfuscated phishing site. The lure mimics a Facebook security notice and hijacks the clipboard to implant a multi-stage PowerShell command that victims are tricked into executing through File Explorer. Attackers store encoded payload components as images on Bitbucket, decode them locally with a Go-based loader, and ultimately unpack shellcode that launches StealC. The infrastructure uses junk code, fragmentation and other anti-analysis techniques to evade detection and complicate forensic analysis.

🛡️ A new FileFix campaign impersonates Meta support to trick users into pasting a disguised PowerShell command into the File Explorer address bar, which then downloads and executes malware. The attackers hide a second-stage script and encrypted binaries inside a seemingly benign JPG hosted on Bitbucket using steganography. The final payload is the StealC infostealer, designed to harvest browser credentials, messaging logins, crypto wallets, cloud keys and more. Security vendor Acronis observed multiple evolving variants over a two-week period and urges user education on these novel ClickFix/FileFix tactics.