All news in category “Incidents and Data Breaches”

🔒 The European Commission is investigating a breach after detecting traces of a cyberattack against its mobile device management platform on 30 January. The incident may have exposed some staff names and mobile numbers, but investigators say there is no evidence that individual mobile devices were compromised. The Commission says the affected system was contained and cleaned within nine hours. The activity is believed to be linked to exploitation of Ivanti Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) vulnerabilities.

🚨 Researchers warn of a massive, worm-driven campaign by TeamPCP that began around December 25, 2025, systematically compromising cloud-native environments. The group abused exposed Docker APIs, Kubernetes clusters, Ray dashboards, Redis servers, and a critical React2Shell vulnerability (CVE-2025-55182) to deploy proxy, scanning, and C2 infrastructure. Compromised hosts are used for persistence, data exfiltration, extortion, crypto-mining, and proxy/C2 relays, with tooling tailored to Kubernetes and AWS/Azure deployments.

🔐 German security agencies warn of an active campaign targeting high‑ranking politicians, soldiers, diplomats and journalists by seizing their Signal accounts. Attackers impersonate support teams to request secret PINs or trick users into approving device pairing via QR codes, then move the account to a number they control. No malware or software vulnerabilities are involved; the campaign relies on social engineering. Authorities note similar methods could be used against WhatsApp, and stress that official support will never request PINs via message.

🕵️‍♂️ Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 reports a state-sponsored threat actor tracked as TGR-STA-1030/UNC6619 has run global-scale "Shadow Campaigns," compromising at least 70 government and critical infrastructure organizations across 37 countries and conducting reconnaissance tied to 155 countries. The actor has been active since at least January 2024 and is assessed to operate from Asia. Initial access combined tailored phishing lures hosted on Mega.nz with exploitation of known flaws in SAP Solution Manager, Microsoft Exchange, D-Link, and Windows to deploy loaders such as Diaoyu. Victim environments were instrumented with Cobalt Strike, webshells, tunneling tools, and a bespoke Linux eBPF rootkit named ShadowGuard to hide activity and evade detection.

🔎 A detailed investigation by OCCRP traced a romance scammer who impersonated the Crown Prince of Dubai and defrauded a Romanian businesswoman of more than US $2.5 million. Over two years the con combined thousands of messages, staged in-person meetings, and an elaborate fake banking site showing a phantom £200 million balance. Photographs and bank-trace evidence led reporters and UK police to identify intermediaries and to locate the suspect at a mansion in Abuja, Nigeria. The case underscores the sophistication and international reach of modern romance and investment scams.

🔒 Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) have issued a joint advisory about a likely state‑sponsored phishing campaign that abuses Signal's legitimate features to seize accounts. Threat actors impersonate "Signal Support" or a "Signal Security ChatBot" to solicit SMS PINs or trick victims into scanning QR codes, enabling account registration on attacker‑controlled devices or silent device linking. Authorities recommend enabling Registration Lock, avoiding sharing verification codes, and routinely reviewing linked devices; the same methods can be applied to WhatsApp.

🔒 BridgePay Network Solutions confirmed a ransomware incident that took multiple payment systems offline, triggering a nationwide outage. The company says it has engaged federal law enforcement, including the FBI and U.S. Secret Service, and retained external forensic and recovery teams. Initial forensics report no payment card data compromised, files were encrypted, and restoration is ongoing with no ETA.

📝 Bruce Schneier reports that his name appears only incidentally in the Epstein files. He recounts a 2016 email from someone identified as “Vincenzo lozzo” addressing DDoS attacks and dismissing Schneier’s commentary as dramatizing and misunderstanding. He also notes a separate incidental mention of a Rabbi Schneier. Schneier emphasizes these mentions do not indicate any connection or wrongdoing.

🔒 Substack has confirmed a security incident in which an unauthorized third party accessed limited user information, including email addresses, phone numbers and other internal metadata. CEO Chris Best said the company detected evidence of the issue on February 3 and notified some users on February 5, saying the data collection occurred in October 2025. Substack stated that no financial data or passwords were accessed, that the vulnerability has been fixed, and that a full investigation is underway.

🛡️ A recent phishing campaign delivers malicious virtual hard disks that masquerade as PDF invoices and purchase orders, enabling attackers to install AsyncRAT. The files are hosted on IPFS and mount as local drives on Windows, which can bypass some built-in protections; inside each disk is a Windows Script File disguised as the expected PDF. Malwarebytes Labs, citing Securonix, identified the Dead#Vax campaign and recommends showing file extensions and exercising caution with disk images.

🔒 Cisco Talos researchers disclosed DKnife, a modular Linux-based adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) framework used by China-linked actors since at least 2019. The toolkit deploys seven router-focused implants to perform deep packet inspection, TLS termination, DNS and update hijacking, credential harvesting, and malware delivery via intercepted APKs and binary replacement. Operators used DKnife to push ShadowPad and DarkNimbus variants and to target Chinese-language services and app updates through compromised routers and edge devices.

🔒 Kyle Svara, 26, pleaded guilty in federal court to phishing access codes and hacking nearly 600 Snapchat accounts to steal nude photos that he kept, sold, or traded. Between May 2020 and February 2021 he used social engineering to harvest credentials from roughly 570 victims and accessed at least 59 accounts to download private images. Svara advertised hacking services online, communicated via Kik, and accepted paid jobs including work for former Northeastern coach Steve Waithe. He now faces multiple federal charges, and is scheduled for sentencing on May 18.

🔒 Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 reports an Asia-origin, state-backed actor tracked as TGR-STA-1030 breached at least 70 government and critical-infrastructure organizations across 37 countries and scanned infrastructure tied to 155 countries in late 2025. Active since January 2024, the group used MEGA-hosted phishing ZIPs to deliver a guarded loader, Diaoyu Loader, which requires a zero-byte pic1.png and checks for select AV processes before pulling images from GitHub to stage a Cobalt Strike payload. It also exploited N-day flaws, deployed web shells, tunnelers and an eBPF Linux rootkit ShadowGuard, maintaining prolonged access for intelligence collection.

⚠️Flickr says a vulnerability in a third‑party email service may have exposed member names, email addresses, IP addresses, general location data, Flickr usernames, account types and records of platform activity. The company says it shut off access to the affected system within hours on February 5, 2026, and that passwords and payment card data were not compromised. Flickr urged affected users to review account settings, remain vigilant for phishing, and change reused passwords while it investigates and strengthens monitoring of third‑party providers.

⚠️ Cybersecurity researchers disclosed a supply chain attack that replaced legitimate dYdX packages on npm and PyPI with malicious releases designed to steal wallet credentials and enable remote code execution. Malicious code ran during normal use, exfiltrating seed phrases, device data and calling back to a command-and-control endpoint. dYdX and researchers advise isolating affected hosts, moving funds from clean systems and rotating credentials.

⚠️ Researchers at Sysdig uncovered an attack that fully compromised an AWS environment in under eight minutes by exploiting a cloud misconfiguration and using LLMs to accelerate reconnaissance and exploitation. Attackers reused credentials found in public S3 buckets, modified a Lambda function to escalate privileges, moved laterally across numerous principals, and disabled model-call logging in Amazon Bedrock. Security experts warn that AI-enabled automation compresses attack timelines and reduces defenders' reaction windows.

🔎 Palo Alto Networks has identified a new Asia-based cyberespionage group, tracked as TGR-STA-1030 (UNC6619), that has compromised 70 government and critical-infrastructure organizations across 37 countries over the past year. The actor employs phishing, N-day exploits, and a multifaceted toolset including a custom loader named Diaoyu, Cobalt Strike implants, multiple web shells, and a bespoke eBPF-based Linux rootkit called ShadowGuard. Researchers report the group conducts extensive scanning and targeted reconnaissance tied to regional events, operates on GMT+8 hours, and shows indicators consistent with nation-state activity.

🔒 Spain's Ministry of Science partially shut down several IT systems after reporting a "technical incident" that suspended citizen- and company-facing services. A threat actor using the alias GordonFreeman claims to have exploited an IDOR vulnerability to obtain full-admin credentials and posted samples of personal records, email addresses, enrollment applications and screenshots of official paperwork. The forum post has been taken offline and the leaked data has not been independently verified. The ministry said it will extend affected deadlines while assessing the incident.

🔐 Substack disclosed that a third party exploited an unspecified weakness in its systems in October, exposing user email addresses, phone numbers and other internal metadata. The company identified the issue on February 3, said it has fixed the vulnerability, and is conducting a full investigation. Substack maintains the breach did not include passwords, credit card numbers, or financial data, but has not disclosed the full scope or publicly posted a detailed incident report.

🛡️ Ransomware groups are abusing virtual machines provisioned by ISPsystem to host and deliver malware at scale. Sophos researchers found identical Windows VM hostnames and system identifiers reused from default VMmanager templates, enabling operators such as LockBit, Qilin, Conti, BlackCat/ALPHV and others to hide malicious infrastructure among legitimate hosts. The tactic complicates attribution and slows takedown efforts, and Sophos tied most malicious VMs to a small cluster of poorly reputed hosting providers.