All news with #check point tag

🎭 In episode 435 of Smashing Security, host Graham Cluley and guest Jenny Radcliffe discuss a sophisticated phishing campaign that used fake casting calls to lure Israeli performers, illustrating how flattering, opportunity-based lures can be as persuasive as fear-based tactics. They also cover Check Point’s findings on Iran-linked activity, the UK ICO’s warning about students hacking schools, and lighter cultural items including Endeavour and a local “Catman” story. The episode blends practical security analysis with humour and sponsored segments.

🔐 Check Point has agreed to acquire Lakera, an AI-native security platform focused on protecting agentic AI and LLM-based deployments, in a deal expected to close in Q4 2025 for an undisclosed sum. Lakera’s Gandalf adversarial engine reportedly leverages over 80 million attack patterns and delivers detection rates above 98% with sub-50ms latency and low false positives. Check Point will embed Lakera into the Infinity architecture, initially integrating into CloudGuard WAF and GenAI Protect, offering near-immediate, API-based protection as an add-on for existing customers.

🚀 Check Point is acquiring Lakera to build a comprehensive AI security stack for enterprises adopting generative and AI-driven applications. The move aims to protect the emerging AI attack surface by combining Check Point's security platform with Lakera's AI threat analysis and model-protection capabilities. Customers should expect integrated defenses for models, data, and pipelines, increased visibility into model behavior, and tools for managing model risk and compliance.

🔒 Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is now Nutanix Ready validated with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure 7.3, delivering integrated network security for Nutanix environments. The update leverages Nutanix Flow Network Security features—entity groups, vNIC-specific policies, and global policy scopes—to extend microsegmentation and policy consistency. Customers can deploy CloudGuard via native Service Insertion and firewall chaining, enabling protection with minimal operational overhead.

🔒 Check Point has been named a Leader in the 2025 IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Enterprise Hybrid Firewalls, reflecting the maturity of its Hybrid Mesh Firewall capabilities. The recognition highlights the company's focus on unifying, automating and simplifying security operations at scale. IDC reports the firewall market reached $12.3 billion in 2024, underscoring the importance of resilient, centralized protection. Enterprises face wider attack surfaces and operational complexity that such platforms aim to mitigate.

🔒 Researchers at Check Point report a 56% year-over-year increase in cyberattacks against German educational institutions as the new school year begins, well above the global average. Analysts observed targeted phishing campaigns, including an August 2025 scheme that redirected victims to fake university and Outlook login pages to harvest credentials. To mitigate risk, experts recommend targeted phishing awareness training, mandatory multi-factor authentication (MFA), early detection of suspicious domains, regular system updates and deployment of modern threat-prevention solutions as part of a preventive, multi-layered security strategy.

⚠️ Check Point warns that Hexstrike-AI, an agentic AI orchestration platform integrating more than 150 offensive tools, is being abused by threat actors to accelerate vulnerability discovery and exploitation. The system abstracts vague commands into precise, sequenced technical steps, automating reconnaissance, exploit crafting, payload delivery and persistence. Check Point observed dark‑web discussions showing the tool used to weaponize recent Citrix NetScaler zero-days, including CVE-2025-7775, and cautions that tasks which once took weeks can now be completed in minutes. Organizations are urged to patch immediately, harden systems and adopt adaptive, AI-enabled detection and response measures.

🔒 HexStrike-AI, an open-source red‑teaming framework, is being adopted by malicious actors to rapidly weaponize newly disclosed Citrix NetScaler vulnerabilities such as CVE-2025-7775, CVE-2025-7776, and CVE-2025-8424. Check Point Research reports dark‑web chatter and evidence of automated exploitation chains that scan, exploit, and persist on vulnerable appliances. Defenders should prioritize immediate patching, threat intelligence, and AI-enabled detection to reduce shrinking n‑day windows.

📚 Check Point Research reports a sharp rise in cyber attacks against the education sector between January and July 2025. Across that period the sector averaged 4,356 attacks per organization each week, representing a 41% year‑over‑year increase. The trend is global, affecting both developed and developing regions and coincides with the back‑to‑school season. Schools and institutions are urged to strengthen defenses and incident preparedness.

⚠ Check Point uncovered a global phishing campaign that delivered 115,000 fake invitations via Google Classroom to about 13,500 organizations worldwide within a single week. Attackers used seemingly legitimate classroom invites to present unrelated commercial offers and instructed recipients to continue contact via WhatsApp, shifting conversations off monitored email channels. Because many filters treat messages from Google services as trustworthy, these messages often bypass conventional protections. Experts advise staff training, adoption of AI-driven detection that evaluates context and intent, and extending phishing defenses beyond email to collaboration and messaging platforms.

🚀 Check Point has been named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Hybrid Mesh Firewall, recognized for ability to execute and completeness of vision. The firm emphasizes its AI-powered network security to deliver consistent, high-performance threat prevention across on-premises, cloud and SASE environments. The recognition highlights unified management and proactive defenses designed for distributed enterprises facing AI-driven attacks.

⚠️ Cybersecurity researchers warn of a targeted social‑engineering campaign delivering an in‑memory implant called MixShell to supply‑chain manufacturers through corporate 'Contact Us' forms. The activity, tracked as ZipLine by Check Point, uses weeks of credible exchanges, fake NDAs and weaponized ZIPs containing LNK files that trigger PowerShell loaders. MixShell runs primarily in memory, uses DNS tunneling for C2 with HTTP fallback, and enables remote commands, file access, reverse proxying, persistence and lateral movement. Malicious archives are staged on abused Heroku subdomains, illustrating use of legitimate PaaS for tailored delivery.

🔒 ZipLine is a highly sophisticated social-engineering phishing campaign identified by Check Point Research that reverses the typical attack flow by initiating contact through corporate “Contact Us” forms. Attackers cultivate multi-week, professional email exchanges and often request NDAs before delivering a malicious ZIP containing the in-memory backdoor MixShell. MixShell maintains covert command-and-control via DNS tunneling with HTTP fallback and executes in memory to reduce forensic traces. The campaign primarily targets U.S. manufacturing and supply-chain–critical organizations and has evolved a second wave that uses an AI transformation pretext to increase legitimacy.

🔒 CloudGuard WAF-as-a-Service is now available on the AWS Marketplace and verified as Deployed on AWS. This pay-as-you-go service simplifies web application and API protection for AWS customers and reduces procurement friction. The offering has been recognized in the Gartner Market Guide for WAAP and named a Leader in the GigaOm Radar. Independent testing reported a 99.4% threat detection rate and 0.81% false positives, underscoring strong efficacy with low noise.

🔗 The Harmony SASE MCP Server connects AI and IDE assistants to Harmony SASE, enabling direct, secure access to networking and security context. Built on the open Model Context Protocol (MCP), it exposes a curated set of endpoints so AI tools like Claude, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot can enrich workflows, accelerate investigations, and integrate SASE telemetry into familiar analyst and developer interfaces.