All news in category “Threat and Trends Reports”

🛡️ Gootloader operators now deliver malformed ZIP archives that concatenate up to 1,000 parts to evade analysis and detection. The archived JScript unpacks successfully with Windows' built-in extractor while tools relying on 7-Zip and WinRAR often crash. Samples employ truncated EOCD entries, randomized disk fields, metadata mismatches and XOR-encoded blobs appended client-side. Researchers devised a YARA rule and advise changing the default .js opener to Notepad and blocking wscript.exe/cscript.exe where possible.

🔮 Cisco Talos outlines expectations for cybersecurity in 2026, warning of continued geopolitical-driven campaigns such as infostealers, phishing, and proxy-enabled destructive operations. The briefing highlights the growing risk posed by inadequately governed generative AI agents that could cause breaches or mimic insider threats through flawed design or prompt manipulation. Talos also emphasizes that familiar weaknesses — unpatched systems, leaked credentials, and absent MFA — will remain primary enablers of intrusion. The advisory specifically flags UAT-8837, a medium-confidence China-nexus APT targeting critical infrastructure since 2025, and urges patching, credential hygiene, and proactive hunting.

🚨 New research from Symantec and Carbon Black shows cybercriminals increasingly favour data theft and extortion over file encryption. While counts of traditional ransomware incidents remained broadly stable in 2025, attacks that rely solely on stolen data rose sharply. Threat actors exploit unpatched zero‑days, software supply‑chain weaknesses and credential theft, prompting firms to prioritise patching, robust credential hygiene and MFA.

🔒 Cyble's Annual Threat Landscape Report 2025 (published Jan 15, 2026) found a sharp rise in attacks against industrial environments, with ICS vulnerability disclosures nearly doubling to 2,451 across 152 vendors in 2025. The report highlights an August spike (802 disclosures) and Q3 accounting for 45.26% of disclosures. HMI and SCADA systems were increasingly exploited, with Siemens and Schneider among the most affected vendors. Cyble warns threat actors — including ransomware groups and coordinated hacktivists — will focus on exposed HMI/SCADA and VNC takeovers in 2026.

🔒 IANS' 2026 State of the CISO Report, drawn from interviews with 662 North American CISOs, shows the role shifting toward the executive suite: 46% now hold executive titles while 27% are VPs and 27% directors. Over half report that their remit has expanded to include SecOps, security architecture, GRC, app security, IAM and supplier risk. Despite greater boardroom influence and wider accountability, 52% say their scope is no longer fully manageable, risking delayed strategy and reactive security.

🛡️ This week’s ThreatsDay covers a broad set of active risks: a critical Redis XACKDEL stack‑overflow RCE (CVE‑2025‑62507, CVSS 8.8) with ~2,924 servers affected, signed malware campaigns by BaoLoader, and surging abuse of legitimate RMM tools delivered by phishing. Researchers also disclosed RCE in AI/ML libraries via Hydra.instantiate() misuse and a new voice‑cloning evasion technique, VocalBridge. Multiple OT, Wi‑Fi, and smart‑contract incidents — and law‑enforcement activity — round out this week’s notable developments. Prioritize patches, certificate vetting, and account hygiene.

📉 ISACA's State of Privacy 2026 report reveals privacy teams are shrinking and underfunded despite mounting regulatory and technological pressures. The median privacy staff size fell to five from eight year-over-year, and technical privacy roles are notably understaffed while demand for those skills rises. Respondents report increased stress—35% say their role is 'significantly more stressful' and 30% 'slightly more stressful'—attributed to rapid tech evolution, compliance complexity and resource shortages. To close skill gaps, organizations are training interested non-privacy staff and increasing reliance on contractors, consultants and planned AI tools for privacy tasks.

🔒 In Q4 2025, Check Point Research found Microsoft to be the most impersonated brand in phishing campaigns, responsible for 22% of branded phishing attempts. Google followed with 13%, while Amazon rose to 9%, driven by Black Friday and holiday sales, displacing Apple. After a lengthy absence, Facebook (Meta) reappeared in the top ten at fifth, underscoring renewed interest in social media account takeover. The pattern reflects a multi-quarter trend of attackers abusing trusted enterprise and consumer brands to harvest credentials and gain initial access.

🔍 Cisco Talos is tracking UAT-8837, an assessed China-nexus APT that since 2025 has focused on obtaining initial access to high-value and critical infrastructure organizations in North America. The actor uses both n-day and zero-day exploits (including CVE-2025-53690 in SiteCore) and often deploys open-source tooling—Earthworm, SharpHound, DWAgent, Certipy, and GoTokenTheft—to harvest credentials, enumerate Active Directory, and create remote tunnels. Operators perform hands-on-keyboard reconnaissance, create backdoored accounts and remote admin access, and cycle tools when endpoint protections block their payloads. Talos provides IOCs, Snort rules, and ClamAV signatures to detect and mitigate this activity.

🔍 In 2026 many SOCs still rely on legacy workflows—manual sample reviews, static reputation checks, fragmented tooling, and frequent, avoidable escalations—that slow investigations and drive alert fatigue. The article recommends shifting to automation-optimized, behavior-focused operations using interactive sandboxes to detonate threats, surface rich behavioral indicators, and integrate results into SIEM, SOAR, and EDR. These changes can shorten MTTR, accelerate detection, and reduce Tier 1→Tier 2 escalations while enabling analysts to focus on high-priority response.

🛡️ Ransomware groups are increasingly threatening victims with regulatory complaints in addition to data leaks, citing alleged violations of rules such as GDPR. Security vendors including Akamai report the tactic has grown over the past two years and is used by gangs like Anubis and Ransomhub to pressure high-compliance sectors such as healthcare. Experts warn AI accelerates the process by quickly identifying 'material' issues and producing legally framed complaints, tightening deadlines and raising stakes for victims.

🔒 In the CEO Outlook 2026 survey, Trend Micro CEO Eva Chen describes how rapid AI adoption and expanding cloud footprints are transforming the cyberthreat landscape and elevating business risk. She flags rising ransomware, supply-chain exposures and AI-enabled attacks, and urges firms to prioritize automation, XDR and cloud security. Chen also stresses the role of channel partners and talent development in building resilience against increasingly sophisticated threats.

🛡️ Researchers at Check Point disclosed VoidLink, a sophisticated modular malware framework targeting Linux servers and containers in cloud environments. Written primarily in Zig with supporting components in Go, C, and JavaScript, the platform uses a two-stage loader and an extensible plugin ecosystem (37 built-in modules) delivered via a professional web-based C2 dashboard to harvest credentials and access source code systems. It detects major cloud providers and container runtimes, adapts evasion strategies based on detected EDR and kernel hardening, and employs rootkits and covert C2 channels to maintain stealthy, long-term access.

🛡️ FortiGuard Labs uncovered a phishing campaign that delivers a fileless Remcos RAT via a malicious Word document which loads a remote RTF exploiting CVE-2017-11882. The exploit executes shellcode to fetch a VBScript that launches a Base64 PowerShell loader. That PowerShell downloads an image with an embedded .NET module, which the loader runs in memory to install persistence and inject the Remcos payload into a legitimate process using process hollowing.

🔒 New 2026 analysis of 4,700 leading websites finds 64% of third-party applications access sensitive data without demonstrable business justification, rising from 51% in 2024. The report identifies recurring causes such as over-permissioned scripts, shadow deployments via tag managers, and persistent trackers. Specific tools flagged include Google Tag Manager, Shopify apps, and the Facebook Pixel, while government and education sites show marked increases in compromise. The study cautions that governance gaps and limited mitigation adoption leave organizations exposed.

🪙 Chainalysis reports cryptocurrency-related fraud reached at least $14bn in 2025 and expects the total to rise to $17bn as more illicit wallets are identified. Impersonation scams surged in volume by 1,400% YoY and payment values jumped, while AI-linked operations now extract substantially higher revenues. The report warns of industrialized, Asia-linked networks using layered laundering to convert crypto into real-world assets and urges combined prevention and law enforcement responses.

🔒 Cybercrime has evolved into a structured, global underground economy that mirrors legitimate corporations, with departments, KPIs, and scalable supply chains. Models like ransomware-as-a-service let nontechnical actors license malware, buy access, and outsource extortion, while payments and sales are managed via closed forums and cryptocurrencies. The result is an efficient, agile adversary that exploits human error, leverages AI for social engineering, and gains a persistent speed advantage over often bureaucratic defenders.

🔍 A newly identified cloud-native Linux malware framework named VoidLink targets modern cloud and container environments, providing custom loaders, implants, rootkits, and memory-loaded plugins. According to Check Point, it is written in Zig, Go, and C and adapts behavior based on Kubernetes, Docker, and cloud metadata queries. Communications can use HTTP, WebSocket, DNS tunneling, or ICMP encapsulated in a custom encrypted layer VoidStream, and the framework includes extensive anti-forensics and runtime protections. Analysts assess it appears under active development and may be a commercial or customer-targeted framework rather than evidence of a current widespread campaign.

🔍 The World Economic Forum’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook warns cybersecurity risk will accelerate in 2026, driven primarily by advances in AI, deepening geopolitical fragmentation and supply‑chain complexity. Based on survey responses from 804 leaders (including 316 CISOs) across 92 countries, the report finds eroding confidence in national preparedness and divergent priorities between CEOs and CISOs. It highlights both the risk and defensive potential of AI and calls for strengthening collective cyber resilience through collaboration, governance and balanced adoption with robust safeguards.

📈 In December 2025 organizations experienced an average of 2,027 cyber attacks per organization per week, reflecting a 1% month-over-month and 9% year-over-year increase. Latin America recorded the steepest rise, with 3,065 attacks per week on average, a 26% year-over-year jump. Check Point attributes sharper regional and sector-level spikes primarily to accelerating ransomware operations and growing exposure tied to enterprise adoption of generative AI. The findings signal heightened risk even as overall growth appears moderate.