All news with #phishing tag

🛡️ Google has filed suit against a group called Outsider Enterprise, accused of running phishing-as-a-service via Telegram using Gemini to create convincing fake sites. The operation reportedly offered nearly 300 scam templates impersonating Google, YouTube, and agencies like New York’s E‑ZPass. Google coordinated with carriers and used on‑device protections in Google Messages to block many malicious texts. The company hopes legal action and technical defenses will curb the campaign.

🛡️ A suspected China-aligned threat cluster exploited patched and unpatched Roundcube webmail flaws to target physics and engineering departments at U.S. and Canadian universities. The campaign, tracked as UNK_MassTraction and first seen in May 2026, used CVE-2024-42009 XSS to steal credentials and a follow-up RCE CVE-2025-49113 to drop web shells or deploy VShell. The payload, dubbed IceCube, siphons credentials, 2FA tokens and cookies, then attempts persistent access via SquareShell or VShell.

🔒 Cybercriminals abused Facebook Messenger chatbots to deliver phishing messages that appeared to come from legitimate Facebook Business accounts. The campaign, active from November 2025 until June 2026, coaxed victims to log in on fake pages and surrender credentials, MFA codes, contact details and images of government IDs. Meta disrupted the infrastructure after Huntress reported the activity, but business accounts remain attractive targets.

📧 A phishing campaign impersonates over 30 major brands to lure marketing professionals with fake job interview invites and steal Google credentials. The attackers abuse legitimate platforms like PeopleForce and an ExactTarget/Salesforce Marketing Cloud-linked domain, chaining redirects through services such as Wise Agent to reach malicious landing pages. The campaign uses real recruiter names and browser-in-the-browser popups to harvest sign-in data.

🛡️ Cybersecurity researchers uncovered a modular malware framework dubbed Avalon that uses a multi-stage phishing chain to bypass traditional defenses and deploy a ransomware component called CrownX. The campaign begins with a spoofed legal-document email pointing victims to a password-protected Proton Drive archive containing an ISO image. Interaction with a malicious Windows Shortcut inside the mounted image triggers an MSBuild-led loader that disables ETW, fetches additional payloads, and ultimately launches Avalon. The framework includes credential harvesting, crypto-wallet theft, lateral movement, data exfiltration, recovery disruption, anti-forensics, and disk tampering capabilities.

🎲 The Threat Source newsletter draws a connection between learning board games and developing cybersecurity skills, arguing that games sharpen pattern recognition, intuition, and adaptive thinking. The piece highlights how diverse games—from Ticket to Ride to Go—teach strategy, breaking habits, and embracing failure as a learning tool. It also summarizes Talos research on the ARToken phishing-as-a-service panel and recent threat trends affecting Microsoft 365, AI agents, and RMM vulnerabilities.

🔒 Modern phishing variants like ClickFix and the newer ConsentFix convert routine user actions into account takeover opportunities. Attackers trick victims into executing keyboard shortcuts or dragging callback links, which hands over OAuth tokens and session access to Microsoft 365 services without passwords or MFA bypass. The technique relies on familiar workflows and readily available tooling, with public sharing of blueprints lowering the barrier to entry.

🛡️ Cybercriminals are impersonating Interpol in a phishing campaign aimed at small businesses across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North America. The emails claim to be from the 'Cybercrime Investigation Unit' and urge recipients to open a password-protected Proton Drive file supposedly containing evidence. The file leads to an executable disguised as a video that deploys ransomware and instructs victims to contact attackers via Tox rather than listing a ransom.

🛡️ Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 warns attackers are registering AI-hallucinated domains and using them for phishing and malware distribution. The report shows models invent millions of links, many unregistered, and attackers are preemptively purchasing and cloning brand sites. Because new domains lack reputation data, they evade blocklists until damage is done. Unit 42 documents several real-world cases and offers mitigation steps for defenders and users.

🧭Researchers uncovered 212 domains registered within five days of the Venezuela earthquake, many claiming to offer aid, donations, or rescue services. While some registrations may be legitimate, 93% hid registrant contact details and several solicit Bitcoin with no verifiable accountability. The pattern mirrors past disaster-driven scams; donors are advised to use known charity sites and avoid new or crypto-only donation pages.

⚠️ Check Point Research found that cybercriminals pre-built and partially deployed fraud infrastructure targeting FIFA World Cup 2026 before the June 11 kickoff, focusing on financial services, transportation, hospitality, and gambling. Pre-tournament research highlighted weak DMARC enforcement among partners, a 60x surge in fake sportsbook apps concentrated on Google Play, and large volumes of lookalike travel and hotel domains created two months prior. Check Point's exposure, brand protection, and dark web monitoring capabilities flagged the activity and report rapid remediation metrics.

🛡️ Trend Micro's TrendAI discovered a phishing campaign targeting Booking.com partner accommodations in Japan that uses guest complaint impersonations to trick staff into opening malicious attachments. The delivered malware, TONResolver, is hosted via a smart contract on the TON blockchain and acts as a remote access trojan, establishing persistent backdoor connectivity for follow-up intrusion. Attackers abused scheduling-tool notifications to bypass SPF/DKIM/DMARC protections and used Node.js obfuscation and LNK-based delivery to frustrate detection.

🔔 The U.S. Department of State is offering up to $10 million through its Rewards for Justice program for information identifying members of UNC5792 and UNC4221, two groups tied to Russian intelligence and military services. The bounty follows FBI and CISA updates that these groups conducted phishing campaigns targeting Signal and WhatsApp users, including attempts to steal Signal Backup Recovery Keys by impersonating support agents. Targets included U.S. and NATO officials, journalists, NGOs, and researchers.

🛡️ Infoblox reports that over 236,000 domains use DCloud Uni‑App templates to power investment scams, including fake crypto exchanges, wallet drainers, gambling sites, and WhatsApp phishing pages. The malicious sites span continents, target multiple languages, and have been active since mid‑2022, with some operators stripping framework fingerprints to evade detection. While many domains use mainstream hosting providers, a subset relies on bulletproof hosting and centralized template sales may explain coordinated activity.

📧 Email accounts act as hubs for identity verification, password resets and long-term records, making them prime targets for cybercriminals. Attackers use phishing, account takeover, forwarding rules and abused tokens to maintain access, intercept codes and harvest sensitive information. Corporate inbox breaches can lead to data theft, ransomware or expensive fraud, while sophisticated tools like GenAI increase phishing success rates. Regularly review security settings, use MFA or passkeys, and remain vigilant to reduce risk.

🔔 The FBI has issued a public service announcement warning that multiple clusters of Russian intelligence actors, including FSB officers and military hackers, are targeting high-risk users to steal Signal Backup Recovery Keys. The campaign uses phishing messages masquerading as messaging app support to elicit verification codes, account PINs, and recovery keys. Victims include government officials, military personnel, journalists and Ukrainian officials. Users are advised to only trust official support channels and to generate a new recovery key to invalidate older backups.

🔐 The FBI and CISA warn that Russian-linked threat actors have shifted phishing tactics to steal Signal Backup Recovery Keys, enabling access to users' historical messages. The campaign, tracked as UNC5792 and UNC4221, targets high-value individuals including officials, journalists, and military personnel. Attackers impersonate Signal support, trick users into enabling backups and then request the recovery key to restore data to attacker-controlled devices. Authorities advise that official support never asks for codes or recovery keys and recommend reporting incidents to the FBI or CISA.

🔔 Push Security discovered a campaign where attackers create fraudulent OpenAI tenants impersonating real companies and send legitimate-looking invites to employees. The invites originate from OpenAI notification addresses, pass authentication checks, and assign recipients Owner privileges within the fake organization. Attackers used Gmail accounts to pose as company executives and even attached a billing card to the tenant, likely to reduce suspicion. Push Security warns employees could be tricked into submitting sensitive data into the workspace and advises verification and monitoring of SaaS memberships.

🛒 Researchers warn that threat actors are abusing Shop, Shopify’s order-tracking app, by adding fake purchase receipts to users' histories to trick them into calling scam phone numbers. Fraudulent receipts impersonate brands like Apple, PayPal, Norton, and McAfee, and aim to collect credentials, payment details, OTPs, or persuade victims to install remote access software. Users are advised to verify charges with their bank rather than call numbers on suspicious receipts.

🛡️ The Bluekit phishing-as-a-service platform has added browser-in-the-middle (BitM) capabilities and nearly 70 new hostnames, enabling attackers to load legitimate login pages and capture valid session tokens. Netcraft found Bluekit uses the open-source rrweb library to serialize and stream page DOM data over WebSockets while fetching assets through phishing infrastructure. The kit also includes advanced anti-analysis features such as randomized CSS filters, large rotating obfuscated JavaScript bundles, custom CAPTCHAs, browser fingerprinting, and WebRTC IP-mismatch checks.