All news in category “Incidents and Data Breaches”

🔐 NTT Security warns of a newly disclosed malware strain called StoatWaffle that automatically executes when developers open and trust weaponized Visual Studio Code folders. The threat leverages a crafted .vscode/tasks.json with a runOn: folderOpen setting to trigger a Node.js-based loader, credential stealer and RAT without explicit user action. Operators attributed to WaterPlum are evolving the long-running Contagious Interview campaign to target developer workflows and toolchains.

🔒 Aleksei Volkov, a Russian initial access broker tied to dozens of ransomware incidents that produced more than $9m in documented victim losses, has been sentenced to 81 months in a US federal prison. He pleaded guilty to offenses including trafficking in access information, access device fraud and aggravated identity theft. Volkov was linked to Yanluowang and other cybercrime groups, and has agreed to pay at least $9.2m in restitution.

🛡️ The FBI has attributed a sustained campaign of targeted malware and hack-and-leak operations to the Iranian-linked threat actor Handala, noting activity against dissidents, journalists and opposition groups dating to autumn 2023. The group claimed responsibility for a wiper attack on US medtech firm Stryker and used a multi-stage payload that disguises itself as legitimate Windows applications. Investigators observed social engineering lures, PowerShell-based evasion, and a Telegram-based command-and-control channel enabling remote access and data exfiltration, and urged standard hardening and reporting measures.

🔒 Two GitHub Actions maintained by Checkmarx — ast-github-action and kics-github-action — were compromised by the credential-stealing operation TeamPCP. The malware harvests CI and cloud credentials and exfiltrates encrypted archives named tpcp.tar.gz to a vendor-typosquat domain. Actors also create a fallback repository (docs-tpcp) using stolen GITHUB_TOKENs and have trojanized Open VSX extensions. Organizations are advised to rotate secrets, audit runner logs, and pin Actions to full commit SHAs.

🔒 Aleksei Olegovich Volkov, a 26-year-old Russian national, was sentenced in the U.S. to 81 months in prison after pleading guilty to facilitating dozens of ransomware attacks as an initial access broker. Authorities say he helped breach networks and sell access to ransomware groups, resulting in over $9 million in actual losses and more than $24 million in intended losses. He was arrested in Italy in January 2024, extradited to the U.S., and agreed to pay restitution and forfeit tools used in the crimes.

🔒 Mazda Motor Corporation disclosed unauthorized access to a warehouse management system used for parts procured from Thailand, affecting 692 records containing employee and business partner information. The exposed data types included user IDs, full names, email addresses, company names and business partner IDs, and Mazda says no customer data was involved. The company reported the incident to the Personal Information Protection Commission and implemented security patches, reduced internet exposure, increased monitoring and stricter access controls while investigating with external specialists.

🔁 Tycoon2FA, a phishing-as-a-service platform disrupted by Europol and Microsoft on March 4, has returned to pre-takedown activity levels within days. CrowdStrike observed a brief decline to about 25% of normal volumes on March 4–5, 2026, before activity rebounded and cloud compromise remediations returned to early-2026 levels. The service continues to use similar TTPs targeting Microsoft 365 and Gmail, exploiting redirection, URL shorteners, and compromised domains. CrowdStrike warns that without arrests or physical seizures, operators can quickly recover and replace impacted infrastructure.

🧨 The TeamPCP group is deploying a geopolitically targeted wiper that seeks out Iranian systems and either destroys host data or implants a persistent backdoor on Kubernetes nodes. Aikido researchers link the campaign to the earlier CanisterWorm and Trivy supply-chain incidents, noting identical C2 infrastructure and the same /tmp/pglog drop path. When Iran indicators (timezone/locale) and Kubernetes are detected, the malware creates a privileged DaemonSet named Host-provisioner-iran that mounts the host root and runs Alpine containers called "kamikaze" to delete top-level directories and force a reboot. If Kubernetes is present but the host is not identified as Iranian, it deploys host-provisioner-std to write a Python backdoor and install it as a systemd service; variants also propagate via SSH or unauthenticated Docker APIs.

🔒 Crunchyroll is investigating claims that attackers stole personal data for roughly 6.8 million users after compromising a support agent's Okta SSO credentials. The actor says they accessed multiple applications — including Zendesk, Slack and Google Workspace — and downloaded about 8 million support tickets containing names, emails, IPs, locations and ticket contents. Intrusive payment details were reportedly present only when customers shared them in tickets. The attacker demanded $5 million in extortion but, according to the actor, received no response.

🛡️ The North Korean-linked group Contagious Interview (aka WaterPlum) is abusing Visual Studio Code auto-run tasks to distribute a Node.js-based malware family called StoatWaffle. Malicious projects use tasks.json with runOn: folderOpen to automatically fetch and install Node.js, then execute a downloader that chains to next-stage modules. StoatWaffle includes a browser credential stealer and a RAT capable of file operations, command execution, and data exfiltration.

🔔 The TeamPCP threat actor extended its Trivy supply‑chain attack by pushing malicious Docker images and hijacking Aqua Security's GitHub organization, tampering with multiple repositories. Security researchers and Socket identified Docker Hub images tagged 0.69.5 and 0.69.6 that lack corresponding GitHub releases and contain indicators of compromise linked to the TeamPCP Cloud stealer. Aqua said incomplete token rotation after an earlier incident allowed attackers to reuse credentials, and the company published safe Trivy releases while engaging Sygnia to investigate and remediate.

🛡️ Tycoon2FA, a subscription-based phishing-as-a-service platform, has resumed operations following a coordinated takedown that seized 330 domains. The service uses adversary-in-the-middle techniques to intercept live authentication sessions and bypass multifactor authentication, and it continues to deploy AI-generated decoy pages and malicious URLs. CrowdStrike reported multiple suspected Tycoon2FA-enabled incidents in early March. Organisations are urged to prioritise continuous detection, real-time signal correlation, and layered defences to counter this adaptive threat.

🛡️Microsoft Defender's predictive shielding disrupted a GPO-based ransomware campaign targeting a large educational institution with more than a couple thousand devices. The attacker created malicious GPOs to disable protections and deploy scheduled tasks via the SYSVOL share; Defender detected policy tampering and applied GPO hardening, temporarily pausing policy propagation. Roughly 700 devices were hardened within hours, preventing any encryption via the GPO path and contributing to an overall ~97% protection rate. Combined with attack disruption that blocked compromised accounts and lateral movement, the intervention contained the incident and limited impact from concurrent SMB-based ransomware activity.

🚨 A financially motivated group known as TeamPCP deployed a self‑propagating worm called CanisterWorm that spreads through poorly secured cloud control planes and conditionally executes a destructive wiper on systems set to Iran’s timezone or Farsi locale. The actors leveraged exposed Docker APIs, misconfigured Kubernetes clusters, Redis servers and the React2Shell vector, and inserted credential‑stealing code into official Trivy releases via compromised GitHub Actions. Researchers observed the group using ICP canisters to host payloads and noted the malicious builds were active only intermittently, leaving uncertainty about the extent of successful data destruction.

🛡️ Researchers have identified additional compromised Docker images tied to the Trivy supply‑chain incident after attackers injected credential‑stealing malware into official releases and GitHub Actions. New Docker tags 0.69.5 and 0.69.6 were uploaded on March 22 without matching GitHub releases and contain IOCs linked to the TeamPCP infostealer. Aqua Security confirmed repository tampering and advised teams to treat CI/CD scans as potentially compromised while noting its commercial products appear unaffected.

🔓 A researcher developed a hardware voltage-glitching exploit, dubbed Bliss, that targets the Xbox One boot ROM to bypass early ARM Cortex memory protections. By inducing two precisely timed voltage collapses, the attacker can skip critical setup and redirect execution into attacker-controlled data. The exploit is a silicon-level, unpatchable compromise that enables loading unsigned code and accessing the console’s security processor.

⚠️Microsoft reported large-scale IRS-themed phishing campaigns in February 2026 that targeted more than 29,000 users across 10,000 organizations, using tax refund, payroll and W‑2 lures to harvest credentials and deliver remote access tools. Attackers leveraged Phishing-as-a-Service kits (notably Energy365 and SneakyLog/Kratos) and abused legitimate RMM products such as ScreenConnect, Datto, and SimpleHelp to maintain persistent access. Microsoft advises enforcing 2FA, applying conditional access, and blocking malicious domains and payloads to reduce exposure.

🔐 The FBI warns that Iranian-linked actors, including Handala and a state-associated Homeland Justice group, are using Telegram as command-and-control infrastructure in Windows malware campaigns. Attackers employ social engineering to install malware that exfiltrates screenshots and files from journalists, dissidents, and opposition groups worldwide. The alert followed the seizure of four clearnet domains and references prior disruptive operations such as Handala's attack on Stryker.

🔎 Behavioral analytics and threat intelligence combined to identify a suspected North Korea-linked fake IT worker within 10 days of hire. LevelBlue SpiderLabs and Cybereason XDR flagged geolocation anomalies, unmanaged device access, and use of Astrill VPN, triggering a high-severity alert and timely account revocation. Organizations should enforce EntraID Conditional Access, manage endpoints, and maintain software baselines to detect such insider threats.

🛡️ A Europol-backed, German-led operation has dismantled over 373,000 .onion sites tied to a fraudulent platform called Alice with Violence CP that advertised child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and cybercrime-as-a-service. The multi-year investigation, concentrated between 9–19 March, turned thousands of decoy domains into an honeypot that helped identify 440 customers. Authorities have issued an international arrest warrant for an alleged Chinese operator and continue probes into more than 100 suspects.