All news in category “Threat and Trends Reports”

🛡️ ENISA's study of 586 public administration incidents found DDoS attacks made up roughly 60% of events, with 63% attributed to hacktivist groups. Central government incidents accounted for 69% of the total, while data breaches (17%) and ransomware (10%) caused disproportionate disruption. ENISA warns the sector's low maturity and recent inclusion in NIS2 increase risk and recommends CDNs/WAFs for DDoS mitigation, MFA/PAM/DLP for data protection, and EDR, segmentation and backups to combat ransomware.

🛡️ This bulletin catalogues a broad set of 2025 incidents showing cybercrime’s increasing real-world impacts. Microsoft patched three Windows GDI flaws (CVE-2025-30388, CVE-2025-53766, CVE-2025-47984) rooted in gdiplus.dll and gdi32full.dll, while Check Point warned partial fixes can leave data leaks lingering. Threat actors expanded toolsets and infrastructure — from RondoDox’s new exploits and TruffleNet’s AWS abuse to FIN7’s SSH backdoor and sophisticated phishing campaigns — and law enforcement action ranged from large fraud takedowns to prison sentences and cross-border crackdowns.

🔍 ESET Research summarizes notable APT operations observed from April through September 2025, highlighting activity by China-, Iran-, North Korea-, and Russia-aligned groups. The report documents increased use of adversary-in-the-middle techniques, targeted spearphishing (including emails sent from compromised internal inboxes), and expanded campaigns against government, energy, healthcare, and maritime sectors. Notable tools and threats include BLOODALCHEMY, SoftEther VPN infrastructure, a WinRAR zero-day exploit, and a newly identified Android spyware family named Wibag. Findings are based on ESET telemetry and verified analysis.

🚨 Google Cloud Security's Cybersecurity Forecast 2026 warns of a rise in cyber-physical attacks across EMEA targeting energy grids, transport and digital infrastructure. The report highlights increased state-sponsored espionage from Russia and China and anticipates these operations may form hybrid warfare combined with information operations to erode public trust. It also flags supply-chain compromises of managed service providers and software dependencies, and notes that cybercrime — including ransomware aimed at ERP systems — will remain a major disruptive threat to ICS/OT. Analysts further expect adversaries to increasingly leverage AI and multimodal deepfakes.

🔐 CISOs are urged to learn from 1990s ERP migrations as they evaluate vendor-led security platforms from Cisco, CrowdStrike, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks and others. Research shows many enterprises run 40–80 discrete security tools, driving silos, integration headaches, and alert fatigue. The article warns that platformization can repeat ERP mistakes—data inconsistency, excessive customization, political resistance, and costly timelines—and recommends executive sponsorship, phased implementations, a modern data pipeline, team retraining, and process reengineering to succeed.

🔍 Forrester warns that 2026 will demand precision, resilience and strategic foresight from CIOs and CISOs as volatility persists and the AI hype phase gives way to a results-driven era. Leaders will face rising pressure to deliver measurable, secure outcomes from AI initiatives while managing vendor promises, postponements and tighter financial scrutiny. Neocloud growth, talent bottlenecks and accelerating quantum risk will further complicate planning and force cross-functional governance.

🔭 Researchers at UC San Diego and the University of Maryland showed that a <$750 motorized satellite‑TV kit can intercept large volumes of geostationary traffic. They captured 3.7TB from 411 transponders across 39 satellites and found roughly half of sensitive streams — including VoIP, SMS, in‑flight Wi‑Fi and military telemetry — were unencrypted. Some operators patched rapidly, but many did not respond. Users should adopt VPNs, end‑to‑end messaging and prefer encrypted cellular services.

🛡️ The Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) released a November 2025 report describing how adversaries are evolving beyond productivity uses of AI to operationalize novel offensive capabilities. GTIG observed state-sponsored actors (including North Korea, Iran, and the People’s Republic of China) and criminal groups using AI for reconnaissance, tailored phishing-lure generation, prompt-based guardrail evasion, and AI-powered polymorphic malware. Google reports it has disabled malicious assets and applied this intelligence to strengthen both its classifiers and AI model defenses.

⚠️ The Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) reports that adversaries are evolving beyond simple productivity uses of AI toward operational misuse. Observed behaviors include state-sponsored actors from North Korea, Iran and the People's Republic of China using AI for reconnaissance, automated phishing lure creation and data exfiltration. The report documents AI-powered malware that can generate and modify malicious scripts in real time and attackers exploiting deceptive prompts to bypass model guardrails. Google says it has disabled assets linked to abuse and applied intelligence to improve classifiers and harden models against misuse.

🔍 Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) reports an operational shift from adversaries using AI for productivity to embedding generative models inside malware to generate or alter code at runtime. GTIG details “just-in-time” LLM calls in families like PROMPTFLUX and PROMPTSTEAL, which query external models such as Gemini to obfuscate, regenerate, or produce one‑time functions during execution. Google says it disabled abusive assets, strengthened classifiers and model protections, and recommends monitoring LLM API usage, protecting credentials, and treating runtime model calls as potential live command channels.

📉 Juniper Research predicts an 11% decline in consumer SMS fraud losses in 2026, dropping from $80bn in 2025 to $71bn. The firm credits reduced messaging volumes and stronger operator security—especially enhanced firewall capabilities—for making it harder for fraudsters to conceal malicious traffic. Nevertheless, large-scale smishing campaigns, PhaaS platforms and the transition to RCS keep risks elevated and require ongoing defensive improvements.

🔒 A growing scam exploits WhatsApp’s screen-sharing feature to trick users into exposing verification codes, passwords and banking details during video calls. Attackers pose as banks, service providers or contacts, create urgency, then request screen sharing or the installation of remote-access apps like AnyDesk or TeamViewer. Once granted, they capture OTPs, install malware or coerce transfers, enabling account takeover and financial theft. Stay skeptical: never share screens, passwords or verification codes with strangers.

📱 Security researchers at Zscaler report a 67% year-on-year rise in Android-targeted malware after finding 239 malicious apps on Google Play that were downloaded 42 million times. The analysis covers more than 20 million mobile requests observed between June 2024 and May 2025 and highlights productivity and Tools apps as common vectors. Sectors such as manufacturing and energy were disproportionately targeted, with the energy sector seeing a 387% spike in mobile attacks.

🛡️ Many ISO and ISMS certification efforts falter not because the standards are unclear but because organisations treat certification as a one-off checkbox activity rather than embedding controls into daily operations. Common failures include weak senior leadership commitment, insufficient employee involvement and training, wishful thinking about risks, and underinvestment in proper implementation. Practical remedies include clear planning, honest risk assessment, executive sponsorship, targeted competency building, and treating the ISMS as a continuous process rather than a closed project.

🔒 CrowdStrike's 2025 analysis documents a sharp rise in physical attacks and kidnappings tied to cyber intrusions, concentrated in Europe. The report cites the January 2025 kidnapping of a Ledger co‑founder and records 17 similar incidents in Europe from January through September 2025, 13 of them in France. Consultants warn attackers increasingly pair cyber operations with real‑world violence, driving organizations to strengthen physical and executive security and adjust incident response playbooks.

🔍 Threat intelligence is valuable but only effective when organizations maintain reliable asset management. Asset management—the inventory, monitoring, and administration of hosts—provides the foundational visibility needed to detect, patch, and prevent intrusions. Bradley Duncan cites historic malware like Emotet and Qakbot to show how poor asset hygiene enabled massive infections and urges proactive measures such as Unit 42's Attack Surface Assessment.

🔒 A Zscaler report found 239 malicious Android apps on Google Play that were downloaded a combined 42 million times between June 2024 and May 2025, driven largely by adware, spyware, and banking trojans. Telemetry shows a 67% year-over-year increase in mobile-targeted malware, with adware now comprising roughly 69% of detections and spyware up 220% YoY. Zscaler highlights evolving strains such as Anatsa, Android Void, and Xnotice, and advises timely updates, strict app permissions, disabling unnecessary Accessibility access, and regular Play Protect scans.

🔒 Modern browsers include sandboxing, but attackers exploit expected behaviors to bypass protections. A new on-demand webinar from Keep Aware outlines the top three browser-layer threats—credential theft, malicious extensions, and lateral movement—and explains why tools like CASBs, SWGs, and EDRs often miss these attacks. It shows how real-time browser visibility, policy enforcement, and behavioral detection extend protection into everyday user activity. The session is aimed at CISOs and security leaders seeking practical steps to close this blind spot.

🔎 Trustwave SpiderLabs has identified a coordinated alliance now operating as Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters (SLH), merging reputational capital from Scattered Spider, ShinyHunters and LAPSUS$. The collective presents a unified operational brand, complete with a named "Operations Centre," centralized narrative and affiliate-driven extortion model. Analysis attributes fewer than five core operators managing roughly 30 personas and highlights Telegram as a persistent command-and-branding hub. Trustwave warns this consolidation aims to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of BreachForums and to sustain public, intimidation-based extortion tactics.

🔐 Fortinet’s CISO Collective outlines priorities and risks CISOs will face in 2026. The briefing warns that AI will accelerate innovation while expanding attack surfaces, increasing LLM breaches, adversarial model attacks, and deepfake-enabled BEC. It highlights geopolitical and space-related threats such as GPS jamming and satellite interception, persistent regulatory pressure including NIS2 and DORA, and a chronic cybersecurity skills gap. Recommendations emphasize governed AI, identity hardening, quantum readiness, and resilience-driven leadership.