All news in category “Threat and Trends Reports”

🛡️ Geopolitical tensions are driving a rise in destructive, non‑financial cyber campaigns that aim to disrupt operations rather than extort payment. Recent Iranian-linked wiper activity — exemplified by the March 2026 Handala attack on Stryker — shows attackers rely on stolen credentials and legitimate admin tools to move freely. Zero Networks recommends a five-step playbook focused on identity-aware access, default‑deny admin ports, scoped privileged access, detection of tunnels, and rapid automated containment to limit blast radius and preserve operations.

🔎 Cybersecurity researchers analyzed Predator, a commercial spyware component developed by Intellexa, and revealed how it disables iOS camera and microphone recording indicators. The malware intercepts communications between the system component that tracks module activity and SpringBoard, exploiting Objective‑C behavior to suppress status signals so the green/orange dots never appear. The report outlines the techniques, traces earlier dead code attempts, and offers practical mitigations for users at elevated risk.

🔒 This concise guide explains fast, practical steps to recover a compromised online account and limit attacker control. It recommends a prioritized, timed response—contain the incident, secure access, and check for persistent compromises—emphasizing actions like change passwords, remove unauthorized forwarding, enable two-factor authentication, and revoke sessions from a known-clean device. The piece also covers device cleanup, notifying contacts and banks, and long-term protections such as password managers, authenticator apps, hardware keys and regular software updates.

🔍 Enterprises now sit directly in adversaries' collection paths: they may not be primary targets but their shared telecom, cloud, MSP, and identity dependencies are being exploited upstream. Commercial spyware like Predator and state‑aligned groups documented in Singapore's February 2026 telco breaches show how device and backbone compromises create persistent, upstream access. CISOs must assume provider compromise, demand attestation, harden session and identity layers, and shift detection to low‑noise, long‑duration intelligence operations.

🔒 A new ESET analysis identified 54 EDR-killer tools that leverage BYOVD, abusing 34 signed vulnerable drivers to gain kernel-mode privileges and neutralize endpoint protection. These utilities are frequently reused in ransomware operations to disable defenses prior to encryption, decoupling evasion from the encryptor. ESET recommends blocking misused drivers and adopting layered detection to mitigate the threat.

🧛 Cisco Talos highlights a growing trend in 2025: attackers increasingly seek to be authorised as legitimate users rather than relying solely on loud exploits. Telemetry shows nearly a third of MFA spray attacks targeted IAM applications and fraudulent device registrations surged 178%, indicating adversaries focus on the mechanisms that grant access. Talos urges organisations to harden authentication, prioritise patching, manage EOS/EOL devices, and adopt phishing-resistant controls as part of a broader defensive posture.

📧 Microsoft Threat Intelligence and the Defender Security Research Team observed a surge of tax-themed phishing and malware campaigns in early 2026, exploiting W-2s, 1099s, IRS notices, and CPA communications to trick recipients. Attackers used Phishing-as-a-Service kits such as Energy365 and SneakyLog, QR-coded documents, and repackaged RMM tools (ScreenConnect, SimpleHelp, Datto) to steal credentials and gain remote access. Highly customized messages, multi-step flows, and legitimate hosting services helped these campaigns evade detection and target both individuals and tax professionals.

🔒 The Fortinet 2025 Global Cybersecurity Skills Gap Report shows persistent talent shortages are driving higher breach rates and financial losses, making validated skills essential. Certifications provide standardized, role-aligned evidence of operational readiness, support staged career progression, and signal employer investment to improve retention. Structured programs map learning to real roles and help close the readiness gap between knowing concepts and applying them under pressure.

📱 Zimperium zLabs reports a global surge in mobile banking malware targeting 1,243 financial brands across 90 countries. The firm analysed 34 active malware families affecting apps with more than three billion downloads and found industrialised campaigns exploiting weak app protections and widespread code sharing. Attacks now intercept authentication codes, hijack live sessions and can take control of devices, undermining traditional backend fraud controls.

🔔 ThreatsDay Bulletin highlights a wave of pragmatic, stealthy intrusions and abuse of lingering edge vulnerabilities. Notable findings include a nascent RaaS named The Gentlemen exploiting CVE-2024-55591 against FortiGate, a chained pre-auth RCE in BMC FootPrints, and active campaigns targeting Citrix NetScaler. The briefing underscores how small, well-crafted techniques— from deep-link MCP abuse to Teams phishing—are enabling remote access and data theft.

🔒 Many organizations invest heavily in login protections but leave password reset paths less scrutinized, creating an easy escalation route once attackers gain a foothold. The article explains common abuse scenarios — from helpdesk social engineering and intercepted reset tokens to misuse by over-permissioned admins — and recommends seven practical mitigations, including MFA, device posture checks, strict password policies, and avoiding knowledge-based authentication. It also highlights Specops tools to harden reset workflows and block breached passwords.

🔒 SpyCloud's 2026 Identity Exposure Report details a structural shift in credential theft, reporting a 23% increase in its recaptured datalake to 65.7B distinct identity records. Attackers are increasingly targeting non-human identities — exposed API keys, session tokens and AI-linked credentials — which often lack MFA and rotate infrequently. The report also flags large volumes of phished records, session artifacts, and malware-exfiltrated data that enable persistent, scalable access across cloud and enterprise environments.

🤖 Between January and February 2026, AI-assisted malware development matured from experimentation into operational capabilities that materially change attack economics. What once required coordinated teams can now be executed by a single experienced developer using an AI-powered IDE, accelerating weaponization, iteration, and delivery of attacks. Enterprise productivity and development tools have become enlarged attack surfaces, while automation and agentic workflows enable faster, more evasive intrusion chains. Defenders must shift toward behavior-based detection, robust telemetry, and secure development and supply chain controls.

🔍 Exfiltration Framework examines how attackers repurpose legitimate OS utilities, third-party endpoint tools, and cloud clients to move sensitive data while evading traditional detections. The research shows that static IOCs and tool-blocking strategies are frequently ineffective when adversaries operate inside trusted software and infrastructure. By normalizing execution context, parent-child process relationships, network patterns, forensic artifacts, and destination characteristics, the framework exposes stable behavioral signals that persist despite masquerading, renaming, or relocation. It recommends correlating endpoint, network, and cloud telemetry, applying behavioral baselining, and focusing on cumulative transfer analysis rather than single-event or allow-list approaches.

⚠️ Unit 42 examines real-world instances where malware calls external LLMs for decision making or cosmetic effect. The researchers present two representative cases: a trio of obfuscated .NET infostealers that call OpenAI GPT-3.5-Turbo but largely perform "AI theater" by logging model outputs without functional integration, and a Go dropper that queries GPT-4 to gate Sliver payload execution. The report highlights detection opportunities and recommends Advanced Threat Prevention, Advanced WildFire, and Cortex XDR/XSIAM to monitor telemetry and IOCs.

🔒 Most major cloud breaches in recent years have stemmed from basic misconfigurations rather than sophisticated zero-days or custom malware. The article highlights incidents such as Snowflake (2024), AT&T, Ticketmaster and Capital One to show how exposed credentials, public storage buckets and missing controls led to vast data exposure. Immediate actions recommended are enabling MFA everywhere, enforcing account-level public access blockers, activating comprehensive logging across AWS/Azure/GCP, and prioritizing remediation of exposed buckets and keys, while longer-term fixes include CSPM tools and infrastructure-as-code security checks.

🔒 ESET's research examines the prevalence and mechanics of EDR killers—separate tools attackers deploy to neutralize endpoint protection immediately before executing encryptors. Based on telemetry and incident analysis of nearly 90 active samples, the blogpost covers BYOVD, anti-rootkit abuse, driverless disruption, commercialization of kits, and indicators suggestive of AI-assisted development. The authors highlight predictable affiliate-driven tooling choices and warn that driver-based attribution is often misleading; they recommend prevention-focused, multilayered defenses and rapid containment.

🔐 Modern phishing now uses adversary-in-the-middle proxies that capture entire authentication flows, including MFA prompts and session cookies. Employees can complete legitimate logins and still be compromised because attackers replay session tokens from a different machine. Organizations must move beyond traditional MFA and outdated awareness training and instead deploy phishing-resistant authentication, bind sessions to managed devices, and monitor post-authentication behavior.

🔒 Security leaders at the UK's critical national infrastructure (CNI) firms are increasingly turning to regulatory compliance to steer cyber investment and maturity, Bridewell's Cybersecurity in CNI Report 2026 finds. The study shows 35% of leaders cite regulation as the primary influence, up from 26% in 2025. Adoption of frameworks like the NCSC CAF and NIS2 remains uneven, and organisations report widespread incidents and rising AI concerns.

🔍 Flare's analysis of fraud-focused communities reveals an organized underground market selling refund methods, tutorials, and operational services that exploit retailer and payment-provider workflows. Actors advertise step-by-step techniques—such as refund without return, chargeback abuse, goods swapping, and empty-box returns—while offering operators on commission. High-volume targets include Amazon, PayPal, Apple, and major retailers; tutorials typically sell for $50–$300. Researchers urge stronger intelligence sharing, refined controls, and continuous monitoring to close operational gaps.