All news with #threat report tag

Audit Microsoft 365 for Hidden Malicious OAuth Applications

🔍 Matt Kiely of Huntress Labs urges Microsoft 365 administrators to audit OAuth applications across their tenants and provides a pragmatic starting tool, Cazadora. The research shows both abused legitimate apps (Traitorware) and bespoke malicious apps (Stealthware) can persist for years and that Azure’s default user-consent model enables these abuses. Operators should check Enterprise Applications and Application Registrations for suspicious names, anomalous reply URLs (notably a localhost loopback with port 7823), and other anomalous attributes, then take remediation steps.

AI-Driven Social Engineering Tops ISACA Threats for 2026

⚠️A new ISACA report identifies AI-driven social engineering as the top cyber threat for 2026, cited by 63% of nearly 3,000 IT and security professionals. The 2026 Tech Trends and Priorities report, published 20 October 2025, shows AI concerns outpacing ransomware (54%) and supply chain attacks (35%), while only 13% of organizations feel very prepared to manage generative AI risks. ISACA urges organizations to adopt AI governance, strengthen compliance amid divergent US and EU approaches, and invest in talent, resilience and legacy modernization.

Weekly Recap: F5 Breach, Linux Rootkits, and Trends

🔒 This weekly recap highlights long-lived, stealthy intrusions and emerging tactics that are reshaping defender priorities. Chief among them, F5 disclosed a year-long breach involving the BRICKSTORM malware and stolen BIG-IP source material, while researchers uncovered new Linux rootkits such as LinkPro and campaigns abusing blockchain smart contracts for malware delivery. The report urges inventorying edge devices, prioritizing patches, and improving detection, baselining, and intelligence sharing.

Analyzing ClickFix: Why Browser Copy-Paste Attacks Rise

🔐 ClickFix attacks trick users into copying and executing malicious code from a webpage—often presented as a CAPTCHA or a prompt to 'fix' an error—so the payload runs locally without a download. Researchers link the technique to Interlock and multiple public breaches and note delivery has shifted from email to SEO poisoning and malvertising. The articles says clipboard copying via JavaScript and heavy obfuscation let these pages evade scanners, and that traditional EDR and DLP often miss the attack. Push Security recommends browser-based copy-and-paste detection to block attacks before the endpoint is reached.

2025 APJ eCrime Landscape: Emerging Threat Trends and Risks

🔒 The CrowdStrike 2025 APJ eCrime Landscape Report outlines a rapidly evolving criminal ecosystem across Asia Pacific and Japan, driven by regional marketplaces and increasingly automated ransomware. The report highlights active Chinese-language underground markets (Chang’an, FreeCity, Huione Guarantee) and the rise of AI-developed ransomware, with 763 APJ victims named on ransomware and dedicated leak sites between January 2024 and April 2025. It profiles local eCrime groups (the SPIDER cluster) and service providers such as Magical Cat and CDNCLOUD, and concludes with prioritized defenses for identity, cloud, and social-engineering resilience.

Tracking HoldingHands Malware Expansion Across Asia

🔍 FortiGuard Labs observed a January 2025 campaign that began with Winos 4.0 infections in Taiwan and evolved into a cross‑regional HoldingHands operation affecting China, Taiwan, Japan, and Malaysia. The actor uses phishing PDFs, cloud-hosted and bespoke domains, and multi-stage loaders that leverage Windows Task Scheduler to evade detection. Shared infrastructure, reused code (including digital signatures and debug paths), and repeated JavaScript download scripts link disparate samples, and Fortinet provides detections, IOCs, and mitigation guidance.

Hidden SEO Links: Business Risks and How to Protect

🔍 Hidden blocks of links embedded on corporate websites can quietly erode search rankings and damage reputation by pointing to dubious domains such as pornography or gambling. Invisible to users but parsed by search engines and security tools, these links divert link equity and often trigger algorithmic penalties. Attackers inject them via compromised admin credentials, vulnerable CMS components, infected templates, or breached hosting. Regular updates, strict access controls, routine audits, backups, and mandatory 2FA help prevent and limit impact.

Significant Satellite Traffic Found Transmitted Unencrypted

⚠️Researchers used a commercial off-the-shelf satellite dish to perform the most comprehensive public study yet of geostationary satellite communications. They discovered a shockingly large volume of sensitive traffic—critical infrastructure telemetry, internal corporate and government communications, private voice calls and SMS, and consumer Internet streams such as in-flight Wi‑Fi—being broadcast unencrypted. Much of this data can be passively observed by anyone with a few hundred dollars of consumer-grade hardware, and a single transponder's footprint may cover up to 40% of the Earth's surface.

CISOs Urged to Accelerate Post-Quantum Cryptography Plans

🔐 Enterprises acknowledge that quantum computing threatens current public-key cryptography, yet progress toward post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is uneven and slow. A PwC report finds fewer than 10% prioritize PQC in budgets, only 3% have fully implemented leading measures, 29% are piloting, and 49% have not started. Financial services, government, telecom and cloud are moving faster, while manufacturing, healthcare and industrial sectors lag due to legacy systems, skills shortages, and standards uncertainty. Experts advise inventories, pilot programs, crypto agility, and investment before the 2030 deprecation deadline to avoid 'harvest now, decrypt later' risks.

Germany Is the EU's Top Target for Cyberattacks in 2025

🔒 The Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025 finds Germany was the most targeted EU country in the first half of 2025, receiving 3.3% of global cyberattacks. Attackers are driven more by profit than espionage, with ransomware used in 52% of incidents and pure espionage accounting for 4%. The report highlights threats linked to Russia, China, North Korea and Iran and recommends MFA—which can block 99.9% of credential-based attacks.

CISO Role Expands: From Operator to Enterprise Risk Lead

🔒 The CISO role has evolved from a primarily technical post into a broad enterprise leadership responsibility. Foundry’s 2025 Security Priorities Study shows many security leaders now brief boards multiple times a month and oversee areas beyond cybersecurity, including risk, compliance, privacy, and AI oversight. This shift requires stronger strategic communication and executive influence in addition to operational expertise.

Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025: Threat Trends

🔒 Microsoft's 2025 Digital Defense Report finds that most attacks aim to steal data for profit, with extortion and ransomware responsible for over 52% of incidents while espionage accounts for only about 4%. Covering July 2024–June 2025, the report highlights rising use of AI, automation, and off‑the‑shelf tools that enable scalable phishing, malware, and identity theft. Microsoft urges adoption of phishing‑resistant MFA, AI‑driven defenses, and strengthened cross‑sector collaboration to protect critical public services and build resilience.

Microsoft: 100 Trillion Signals Daily as AI Fuels Risk

🛡️ The Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025 reveals Microsoft systems analyze more than 100 trillion security signals every day and warns that AI now underpins both defense and attack. The report describes adversaries using generative AI to automate phishing, scale social engineering and discover vulnerabilities faster, while autonomous malware adapts tactics in real time. Identity compromise is the leading vector—phishing and social engineering caused 28% of breaches—and although MFA blocks over 99% of unauthorized access attempts, adoption remains uneven. Microsoft urges board-level attention, phishing-resistant MFA, cloud workload mapping and monitoring, intelligence sharing and immediate AI and quantum risk planning.

UNC5142 EtherHiding: Smart-Contract Malware Distribution

🔐 Since late 2023, Mandiant and the Google Threat Intelligence Group tracked UNC5142, a financially motivated cluster that compromises vulnerable WordPress sites to distribute information stealers. The actor's CLEARSHORT JavaScript loader uses Web3 to query smart contracts on the BNB Smart Chain that store ABIs, encrypted landing pages, AES keys, and payload pointers. By employing a three-contract Router-Logic-Storage design and abusing legitimate hosting (Cloudflare Pages, GitHub, MediaFire), operators can rotate lures and update payload references on-chain without changing injected scripts, enabling resilient, low-cost campaigns that GTIG found on ~14,000 injected pages by June 2025 and which showed no on-chain updates after July 23, 2025.

2025 Insider Risk Report: Hidden Costs of Everyday Actions

🔍 The 2025 Insider Risk Report finds insider-driven data loss is widespread and costly, with 77% of organizations affected and many incidents stemming from human error or compromised accounts rather than malice. It warns that traditional DLP often lacks behavioral context and visibility across endpoints, SaaS, and GenAI. The report urges adoption of behavior-aware, AI-ready platforms and five practical practices to reduce false positives and prevent data loss.

Microsoft Tops Brand Phishing Impersonations in Q3 2025

🔍 Cyber criminals continue to favor familiar brands, with Microsoft used in 40% of all brand impersonation attempts in Q3 2025, according to Check Point Research’s Brand Phishing Report. Google represented 9% and Apple 6%, and together these tech giants comprised more than half of brand-related phishing activity. The findings highlight persistent targeting of the technology sector and underscore the need for stronger defenses and user awareness.

Majority in Germany Sees Threat from Hybrid Attacks

⚠️ A YouGov survey commissioned by the digital policy briefing Digitalwende for Süddeutsche Zeitung Dossier reports that 61% of more than 2,000 respondents view the threat from hybrid attacks as strong or very strong. The poll describes hybrid attacks as combinations of cyber operations, military actions and disinformation aimed at destabilizing societies. Perceived risk differs by party: Greens (72%), Union (71%), SPD (67%) and AfD (49%).

US Q3 Report: Over 23 Million Data Breach Victims This Year

📊 The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC)'s Q3 2025 analysis found 835 publicly reported corporate data compromises in the United States, resulting in approximately 23 million victim notifications. That follows 1,732 incidents in H1 2025 and brings the year-to-date total to nearly 202 million victims. The report attributes 83% of breaches to cyber-attacks, highlights a rise in physical attacks, and criticizes the increasing frequency of notices that omit details about the cause. Major victims this quarter included Anne Arundel Dermatology, DaVita, TransUnion and several large healthcare providers.

ThreatsDay Bulletin: $15B Crypto Seizure, Weekly Risks

🔔 This week’s ThreatsDay bulletin highlights a historic U.S. DOJ seizure of roughly $15 billion in cryptocurrency linked to an alleged transnational fraud network, alongside active commodity malware, phishing-as-a-service, and novel abuses of legitimate tools. Notable incidents include the Brazil-distributed Maverick banking trojan spread via a WhatsApp worm, consumer-grade interception of geostationary satellite traffic, and UEFI BombShell flaws enabling bootkit persistence. Priorities: identity resilience, patching, and monitoring of remote-access and cloud services.

Young Europeans’ Digital Aspirations and Future Skills

🔍 Janice Richardson, researcher and Council of Europe expert, reflects on Google’s Future Report, based on more than 7,000 teens from seven EU countries. She highlights young people’s use of the internet for learning, cultural exploration and creative problem solving, noting strong critical thinking and pragmatic attitudes toward algorithms. Richardson stresses closing the digital literacy gap and equipping teachers and parents to support safe, balanced online engagement.