Google's Threat Intelligence Group has detailed a China-linked espionage cluster, tracked as UNC6508, that lurked inside North American medical, academic, and military research networks for more than a year. The attackers got in by planting a backdoor on victims' REDCap research-data servers to steal login credentials. The clever part was exfiltration: instead of using malware to ship data out, they quietly rewrote victims' own Google Workspace mail rules to auto-forward any message matching their target keywords to an attacker-controlled inbox, blending in with normal email behavior. The campaign focused on stealing sensitive research and defense-related communications, and went undetected for an unusually long time.
The North Korean campaign known as Contagious Interview is still expanding its assault on software developers, now leaning on poisoned developer tools and fake job offers. Researchers at Proofpoint and Expel describe obfuscated malicious npm packages, published from throwaway accounts, that install the OtterCookie infostealer through a post-install script, alongside recruitment and code-review phishing lures. The group is using generative AI to build its malware loaders and to set up fake companies and LinkedIn profiles for social engineering. Expel says the operation stole $12 million in cryptocurrency in the first three months of 2026, draining more than 26,000 wallets from over 2,700 infected developer machines.
Researchers at Tenet Security have disclosed Agentjacking, a new attack that turns AI coding assistants like Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex into tools for running an attacker's code on a developer's machine. The trick abuses Sentry, a widely used error-tracking service: anyone can submit a fake error event using a project's DSN, a public write-only key embedded in website code, and the AI agent, fetching that event through Sentry's MCP integration, cannot tell the malicious instructions from real diagnostics and runs them with the developer's privileges. No phishing, malware, or server breach is needed, and it bypasses traditional controls because every step is technically authorized. Tenet found 2,388 exposed organizations.
Attackers hijacked more than 400 packages in the Arch User Repository (AUR), the community add-on store for Arch Linux, in a supply-chain attack dubbed Atomic Arch. Rather than exploiting a flaw, they adopted abandoned packages and quietly edited the build recipe (PKGBUILD) to pull in a malicious npm package, atomic-lockfile, at install time. The payload is a Rust credential stealer that grabs browser logins, SSH keys, crypto wallets, and developer tokens; when run as root it also loads an eBPF rootkit that hides its processes, files, and network connections. Only the AUR is affected, not Arch's official repositories. The package names and histories looked completely normal.
Sygnia has detailed Operation Highland, a campaign in which the China-linked group Velvet Ant hid inside the Linux authentication stack itself for close to a decade, with traces back to 2016. Instead of dropping detectable malware, the attackers replaced the trusted PAM login module (pam_unix.so) and OpenSSH binaries with backdoored versions, found in nine distinct variants. Some accepted a hardcoded secret password; others silently logged real usernames, passwords, and every command typed, with a hidden switch to turn logging off. Because login programs are trusted and rarely inspected, the activity looked like normal administration and evaded scanners on a network with no direct internet access.
Google has filed suit against a Chinese cybercrime network it says abused its Gemini AI to mass-produce phishing text messages and fake websites targeting Americans. The group runs a phishing-as-a-service kit called Outsider and used Gemini to generate fraudulent pages and large smishing campaigns. The texts impersonate trusted brands, warning of "brokerage account issues" or dangling carrier "rewards," and link to lookalike sites that harvest personal and financial details. Google says the lawsuit aims to dismantle the network's infrastructure. The case underscores how criminals are folding mainstream AI tools into industrialized phishing operations.
The Gentlemen, a ransomware-as-a-service operation tracked by Microsoft as Storm-2697, has been upgraded with a self-spreading mode and now claims 478 victims across dozens of countries and industries. Written in Go and obfuscated to evade analysis, its optional --spread switch turns a single-machine infection into a network worm that deploys the encryptor to every reachable system, using stolen or reused credentials to move laterally. A --wipe switch destroys recoverable data and forensic traces. On each host it disables Defender, weakens firewall and authentication settings, and adds scheduled tasks for persistence. Initial access often comes through compromised Fortinet edge-device credentials.
In an unusual misinformation campaign, fraudulent data-breach notices were submitted to Maine's official Attorney General breach portal and published before anyone verified them, forcing named companies to issue denials. One filing falsely claimed a Discord breach affecting more than 10 million people, submitted not by a company representative but by an individual using a personal Gmail address, a placeholder phone number, and impossible dates. Because the portal is public and a listing does not mean a breach is confirmed, the fakes can spread fear, damage reputations, and seed convincing phishing lures. It highlights how trusted disclosure channels can be weaponized.
Researchers at BlackFog have detailed OnyxC2, a new malware-as-a-service sold on cybercrime forums that packages professional-grade data theft for as little as $250 a month, with a $500 premium tier adding hidden-desktop control and a $6,000 buyout option. It ships with a polished control panel and ready-made lures disguised as FinePrint, Windows Settings, a fake Windows update, and a game installer. Its payloads slipped past VirusTotal scanning when first uploaded and were still undetected weeks later, and builds use AES-256 encryption. The low price and turnkey design lower the barrier for less-skilled criminals to run capable infostealing campaigns.
Lumen's Black Lotus Labs warns that JDY, a covert botnet tied to Chinese state-linked groups including Volt Typhoon, has more than doubled to over 1,500 hacked home and small-office routers, firewalls, and IoT devices. Unlike a DDoS botnet, JDY is a distributed scanning network: it fingerprints exposed services across the internet and flags systems vulnerable to newly disclosed bugs, often within hours of disclosure. It keeps a heavy focus on the US, especially military and associated networks, and survived the 2024 FBI takedown of its parent KV-botnet. Because traffic comes from thousands of ordinary residential IPs, simple IP blocking does not stop it.
TrustStrike Labs