All news in category “Incidents and Data Breaches”

🔒 Two American cybersecurity workers, Ryan Goldberg and Kevin Martin, were each sentenced to four years in prison for helping the BlackCat (ALPHV) ransomware gang carry out attacks in 2023, the US Department of Justice said. The pair — who pleaded guilty in December 2025 — worked with a former negotiator, Angelo Martino, and shared proceeds from ransoms, including a $1.2m Bitcoin payout. Prosecutors said they abused specialist cyber skills; the FBI tracked Goldberg across ten countries before his arrest.

⚖️ He pleaded guilty after secretly working for a ransomware gang while ostensibly negotiating payments for victims. The arrangement permitted a trusted intermediary to funnel information and influence negotiations in the gang’s favor, undermining client trust and incident response. Prosecutors say the conduct included clandestine communications that advantaged criminals and complicated recovery. The plea underscores risks in relying on third-party negotiators without robust oversight.

🔒 The U.S. Department of Justice has sentenced two cybersecurity professionals to four years in prison for their roles in deploying ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware against multiple U.S. victims between April and December 2023. Ryan Goldberg and Kevin Martin pleaded guilty in December 2025 after conspiring with Angelo Martino to gain access to the ransomware in exchange for a share of ransoms. Authorities say one extortion yielded approximately $1.2 million in Bitcoin, which the defendants laundered, and that the men abused their security expertise while employed by Sygnia and DigitalMint.

🔒 A new supply chain campaign used sleeper Ruby gems and Go modules published by BufferZoneCorp to deploy post-install payloads that harvest credentials and establish persistence. The malicious Ruby packages exfiltrated environment variables, SSH keys, AWS secrets, .npmrc/.netrc files and developer configuration during install. The Go modules tampered with GitHub Actions by installing fake go wrappers, intercepting builds, and adding a hard-coded SSH key to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. Users should remove affected packages, rotate exposed credentials, and inspect systems and CI runners for unauthorized SSH entries and outbound connections.

🔒 Two former employees of incident response firms Sygnia and DigitalMint were each sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to obstruct commerce by extortion for acting as affiliates of the BlackCat (ALPHV) ransomware group between May and November 2023. Prosecutors say they paid a 20% share for access to BlackCat's ransomware and extortion platform and breached multiple U.S. companies, including medical and manufacturing firms; one Tampa medical device company paid $1.27 million after a $10 million demand. DigitalMint said the individuals were immediately terminated and their conduct was condemned by the company.

🚨 A Romanian national, Thomasz Szabo, was sentenced to four years in U.S. federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy and threats involving explosives. Extradited from Romania in November 2024, Szabo led an online swatting community that organized bomb threats and swatting calls beginning in late 2020 and targeting more than 75 public officials, journalists, and religious institutions. The court also ordered three years of supervised release.

🔒The FBI warned transportation and logistics firms of a marked increase in cyber-enabled cargo thefts, estimating losses in the U.S. and Canada could reach nearly $725 million in 2025. Criminals are using phishing, typosquatting domains, and account compromise to post fraudulent load listings and impersonate carriers, rerouting high-value shipments. The bureau urged multi-factor authentication, dual-channel verification of shipment requests, and reporting incidents to IC3 and local law enforcement.

⚠️ A supply chain attack delivered two malicious PyPI releases of PyTorch Lightning (versions 2.6.2 and 2.6.3) published on April 30, 2026; the packages execute automatically on import to harvest credentials. The malicious build hides a _runtime directory with a downloader that fetches the Bun JavaScript runtime and runs an obfuscated 11MB payload that validates GitHub tokens against the api.github[.]com/user endpoint and injects worm-like commits across writable branches. The threat also tampers with local npm packages by adding postinstall hooks, incrementing patch versions, repacking .tgz files, and enabling accidental republishing back to npm. PyPI has quarantined the project; maintainers are investigating, and users should block the affected releases, downgrade to 2.6.1, and rotate any exposed credentials.

🔒 Ukrainian authorities have arrested three suspects accused of compromising more than 610,000 accounts on the online gaming platform Roblox. Investigators say the group used social engineering lures that delivered infostealer malware to harvest usernames, passwords and authentication tokens, then assessed accounts for rare items and Robux. At least 357 high‑value accounts were identified and sold on Russian websites for cryptocurrency, reportedly generating over $225,000. Searches at ten properties recovered computers, storage devices, mobile phones, bank cards, handwritten notes and cash; analysis is ongoing and the suspects face up to 15 years if convicted.

🐍 Securonix has identified a stealthy Python-based backdoor, Deep#Door, that uses an obfuscated batch loader to install a persistent implant on Windows systems. The self-contained dropper embeds and reconstructs its Python payload at runtime, disables security controls such as Windows Defender, and leverages multiple persistence mechanisms to maintain access. It uses public TCP tunneling for C2 and supports credential theft, keylogging, media capture and optional destructive actions, complicating detection and remediation.

🛡️ A Brazilian DDoS-mitigation firm, Huge Networks, was implicated in enabling a Mirai-based botnet that launched sustained DDoS attacks against regional Brazilian ISPs. An exposed archive contained Portuguese Python attack scripts, private SSH keys belonging to CEO Erick Nascimento, and tooling that mass-scanned for TP-Link Archer AX21 devices vulnerable to CVE-2023-1389. The CEO says the malicious activity followed a January 2026 intrusion, that affected droplets were wiped and keys rotated, and that a third-party forensics firm has been engaged.

🛡️ Securonix researchers disclosed a stealthy Python-based backdoor named DEEP#DOOR that establishes persistent access and extensive surveillance on compromised Windows hosts. Delivered via an obfuscated batch dropper, the implant extracts and runs an embedded svc.py payload and uses the public Rust-based tunneling service bore.pub for command-and-control. Its capabilities include remote shells, credential and key theft, webcam and audio capture, and robust anti-analysis measures.

🚨 Dubai-led authorities shut down nine cryptocurrency investment fraud centers and arrested 276 suspects in a coordinated international operation. Investigators said the networks ran pig-butchering (romance baiting) schemes that built trust with victims and pushed them to fake crypto platforms where funds were quickly seized and laundered. Several individuals now face wire fraud and money-laundering charges, and U.S. agencies linked millions in losses through FBI IC3 complaints.

🔍 Researchers have reverse-engineered a sophisticated malware strain called Fast16, concluding it is almost certainly state-sponsored and likely of US origin. The malware was reportedly deployed against Iranian targets years before Stuxnet, and it propagates automatically across networks while avoiding overt disruption. Instead of crashing systems, Fast16 silently tampers with numerical computations inside specialized simulation and engineering applications, altering results in ways that can turn routine analyses into faulty designs or trigger catastrophic equipment failures.

🔎 Europol announced arrests and seizures after a two‑year probe into professionalised Albanian scam call centres that ran an investment fraud operation estimated to have cost victims at least €50m. Authorities arrested 10 suspects and searched three call centres and nine homes, seizing nearly €900,000, 443 computers, 238 mobile phones and multiple storage devices. Victims were lured via misleading ads and pressured by retention agents posing as investment advisors.

🔒 A supply-chain campaign dubbed "mini Shai-Hulud" infected SAP-related npm packages in late April, inserting install-time malware that harvested developer credentials, GitHub and npm tokens, GitHub Actions secrets, and cloud credentials across AWS, Azure, GCP and Kubernetes. Researchers identified affected packages including mbt@1.2.48 and several @cap-js modules. The malicious releases were later replaced with safe versions.

🚨 US Marines stationed near the Persian Gulf reported receiving chilling WhatsApp messages beginning Monday that urged them to call home and make final goodbyes. The messages were signed by the Iran-linked Handala hacking group and allegedly originated from a Bahraini phone number that was likely spoofed or hijacked. A day later, Handala posted that it had published names and phone numbers of 2,379 Marines and boasted of possessing addresses, family details and daily routines. While authorities caution that such claims may rely on scraped or recycled data rather than a fresh breach, the campaign’s intent to intimidate service members is clear.

🧩 Researchers at SentinelOne uncovered a modular malware framework compiled in 2005 that targeted engineering modeling software by corrupting high‑precision floating‑point arithmetic. The framework uses an embedded Lua VM inside a malicious service loader (svcmgmt.exe) and includes a kernel rootkit, fast16.sys, which applies 101 pattern rules to modify infected executables. The implant appears crafted for strategic sabotage, selectively altering simulation outputs and spreading across network shares to compromise multiple workstations.

🔒 A developer at an AI startup downloaded a dubious Roblox script onto a work laptop, a single error that cascaded into a costly breach and caused roughly $2 million in remediation. The episode also highlights the long-standing SS7 telecom weakness that enables pervasive mobile tracking and interception. Host Graham Cluley and guest James Ball interview Rob Edmondson of CoreView about how to lock down Microsoft 365 before misconfigurations are exploited.

🔒 Multiple official SAP npm packages were recently compromised in a supply-chain operation that installs a malicious preinstall script during package installation. The script downloads the Bun runtime and executes an obfuscated payload that harvests a wide range of secrets — including npm and GitHub tokens, SSH keys, cloud credentials, Kubernetes configs, and CI/CD environment variables — and exfiltrates them to public GitHub repositories. Researchers attribute the campaign with medium confidence to TeamPCP and warn it includes self-propagation logic to modify other packages using stolen credentials.