] The Mad Hacker [

This is a very weird story about how squid stayed on the menu of Byzantine monks by falling between the cracks of dietary rules. At Constantinople’s Monastery of Stoudios, the kitchen didn’t answer to appetite. It answered to the “typikon”: a manual for ensuring that nothing unexpected happened at mealtimes. Meat: forbidden. Dairy: forbidden. Eggs: forbidden. Fish: feast-day only. Oil: regulated. But squid? Squid had eight arms, no bones, and a gift for changing color. Nobody had bothered writing a regulation for that. This wasn’t a loophole born of legal creativity but an oversight rooted in taxonomic confusion. Medieval monks, confronted with a creature that was neither fish nor fowl, gave up and let it pass...

In a co-ordinated public-private operation between law enforcement agencies and cybersecurity industry partners, Tycoon 2FA - one of the world's most prolific phishing-as-a-service platforms - has been dismantled. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

OpenAI is in and Anthropic is out as a supplier of AI technology for the US defense department. This news caps a week of bluster by the highest officials in the US government towards some of the wealthiest titans of the big tech industry, and the overhanging specter of the existential risks posed by a new technology powerful enough that the Pentagon claims it is essential to national security. At issue is Anthropic’s insistence that the US Department of Defense (DoD) could not use its models to facilitate “mass surveillance” or “fully autonomous weapons,” provisions the defense secretary Pete Hegseth ...

Threat actors are operationalizing AI to scale and sustain malicious activity, accelerating tradecraft and increasing risk for defenders, as illustrated by recent activity from North Korean groups such as Jasper Sleet and Coral Sleet (formerly Storm-1877).

The post AI as tradecraft: How threat actors operationalize AI appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Restricted: Click the link for more details

The Pakistan-aligned threat actor known as Transparent Tribe has become the latest hacking group to embrace artificial intelligence (AI)-powered coding tools to strike targets with various implants. The activity is designed to produce a "high-volume, mediocre mass of implants" that are developed using lesser-known programming languages like Nim, Zig, and Crystal and rely on trusted services like

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a multi-stage malware campaign that uses batch scripts as a pathway to deliver various encrypted remote access trojan (RATs) payloads that correspond to XWorm, AsyncRAT, and Xeno RAT. The stealthy attack chain has been codenamed VOID#GEIST by Securonix Threat Research. At a high level, the obfuscated batch script is used to deploy a second

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Restricted: Click the link for more details

An unknown hacker used Anthropic’s LLM to hack the Mexican government: The unknown Claude user wrote Spanish-language prompts for the chatbot to act as an elite hacker, finding vulnerabilities in government networks, writing computer scripts to exploit them and determining ways to automate data theft, Israeli cybersecurity startup Gambit Security said in research published Wednesday. […] Claude initially warned the unknown user of malicious intent during their conversation about the Mexican government, but eventually complied with the attacker’s requests and executed thousands of commands on government computer networks, the researchers said...

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Scaling cybersecurity services as an MSP or MSSP requires technical expertise and a business model that delivers measurable value at scale. Risk-based cybersecurity is the foundation of that model. When done right, it builds client trust, increases upsell opportunities, and drives recurring revenue. But to deliver this consistently and efficiently, you need the right technology and processes.

New research from Broadcom's Symantec and Carbon Black Threat Hunter Team has discovered evidence of an Iranian hacking group embedding itself in several U.S. companies' networks, including banks, airports, non-profit, and the Israeli arm of a software company. The activity has been attributed to a state-sponsored hacking group called MuddyWater (aka Seedworm). It's affiliated with the Iranian

A China-linked advanced persistent threat (APT) actor has been targeting critical telecommunications infrastructure in South America since 2024, targeting Windows and Linux systems and edge devices with three different implants. The activity is being tracked by Cisco Talos under the moniker UAT-9244, describing it as closely associated with another cluster known as FamousSparrow. It's worth

Microsoft on Thursday disclosed details of a new widespread ClickFix social engineering campaign that has leveraged the Windows Terminal app as a way to activate a sophisticated attack chain and deploy the Lumma Stealer malware. The activity, observed in February 2026, makes use of the terminal emulator program instead of instructing users to launch the Windows Run dialog and paste a command

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added two security flaws impacting Hikvision and Rockwell Automation products to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The critical-severity vulnerabilities are listed below - CVE-2017-7921 (CVSS score: 9.8) - An improper authentication vulnerability affecting

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Multiple news outlets are reporting on Israel’s hacking of Iranian traffic cameras and how they assisted with the killing of that country’s leadership. The New York Times has an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/01/us/politics/cia-israel-ayatollah-compound.html"<article on the intelligence operation more generally.

Check Point Software has launched a new Secure AI Advisory Service designed to help organisations adopt artificial intelligence safely while maintaining governance, regulatory compliance, and risk control. As AI rapidly moves from experimental use cases to becoming a core part of enterprise infrastructure, many organisations are struggling to keep governance and oversight in step with […]

The post Check Point Unveils Secure AI Advisory Service to Help Enterprises Govern AI Adoption appeared first on IT Security Guru.

This Women’s History Month, we explore ways to support the next generation of female defenders at every career stage.

The post Women’s History Month: Encouraging women in cybersecurity at every career stage appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Malicious AI browser extensions collected LLM chat histories and browsing data from platforms such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek. With nearly 900,000 installs and activity across more than 20,000 enterprise tenants, the campaign highlights the growing risk of data exposure through browser extensions.

The post Malicious AI Assistant Extensions Harvest LLM Chat Histories appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Cisco has disclosed that two more vulnerabilities affecting Catalyst SD-WAN Manager (formerly SD-WAN vManage) have come under active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerabilities in question are listed below - CVE-2026-20122 (CVSS score: 7.1) - An arbitrary file overwrite vulnerability that could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to overwrite arbitrary files on the local file system.

Most organizations assume encrypted data is safe. But many attackers are already preparing for a future where today’s encryption can be broken. Instead of trying to decrypt information now, they are collecting encrypted data and storing it so it can be decrypted later using quantum computers. This tactic—known as “harvest now, decrypt later”—means sensitive data transmitted today could become

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Some weeks in cybersecurity feel routine. This one doesn’t. Several new developments surfaced over the past few days, showing how quickly the threat landscape keeps shifting. Researchers uncovered fresh activity, security teams shared new findings, and a few unexpected moves from major tech companies also drew attention. Together, these updates offer a useful snapshot of what is happening

Restricted: Click the link for more details

A suspected Iran-nexus threat actor has been attributed to a campaign targeting government officials in Iraq by impersonating the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs to deliver a set of never-before-seen malware. Zscaler ThreatLabz, which observed the activity in January 2026, is tracking the cluster under the name Dust Specter. The attacks, which manifest in the form of two different

Wired has the story: Shortly after the first set of explosions, Iranians received bursts of notifications on their phones. They came not from the government advising caution, but from an apparently hacked prayer-timing app called BadeSaba Calendar that has been downloaded more than 5 million times from the Google Play Store. The messages arrived in quick succession over a period of 30 minutes, starting with the phrase ‘Help has arrived’ at 9:52 am Tehran time, shortly after the first set of explosions. No party has claimed responsibility for the hacks...

As quantum computing edges closer to reality, the pressure on organisations to future-proof their security infrastructure is mounting. Cavero Quantum, a spin-out from the University of Leeds, is tackling this challenge head-on with post-quantum cryptography and authentication designed for even the most constrained devices. The Gurus spoke to James Trenholme, Co-Founder and CEO of Cavero […]

The post Next Gen Spotlights: Preparing for a Post-Quantum World – Q&A with Cavero Quantum appeared first on IT Security Guru.

Organizations typically roll out multi-factor authentication (MFA) and assume stolen passwords are no longer enough to access systems. In Windows environments, that assumption is often wrong. Attackers still compromise networks every day using valid credentials. The issue is not MFA itself, but coverage.  Enforced through an identity provider (IdP) such as Microsoft Entra ID, Okta, or

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new Russian cyber campaign that has targeted Ukrainian entities with two previously undocumented malware families named BadPaw and MeowMeow. "The attack chain initiates with a phishing email containing a link to a ZIP archive. Once extracted, an initial HTA file displays a lure document written in Ukrainian concerning border crossing appeals

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Tycoon 2FA, one of the prominent phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) toolkits that allowed cybercriminals to stage adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) credential harvesting attacks at scale, was dismantled by a coalition of law enforcement agencies and security companies. The subscription-based phishing kit, which first emerged in August 2023, was described by Europol as one of the largest phishing

A joint law enforcement operation has dismantled LeakBase, one of the world's largest online forums for cybercriminals to buy and sell stolen data and cybercrime tools. The LeakBase forum, per the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), had over 142,000 members and more than 215,000 messages between members as of December 2025. Those attempting to access the forum's website ("leakbase[.]la") are now

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Restricted: Click the link for more details

When a top cybersecurity firm discovered it had a leak, you would expect the FBI to be called. Instead, the person put in charge of the investigation was the actual leaker... who promptly sent an innocent colleague into a career-ending ambush. In this episode, we unravel the jaw-dropping tale of a defence contractor caught selling zero-day exploits to a Russia-linked broker. Plus: are nation states quietly poisoning AI models to bend reality itself? We explore how “foreign information manipulation interference” could target not just social media users, but the large language models we increasingly trust for answers — and what that might mean for truth, trust, and the future of online influence. All this, and much more, in episode 457 of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity veteran Graham Cluley, and special guest Carl Miller.

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Cybersecurity researchers have warned of a surge in retaliatory hacktivist activity following the U.S.-Israel coordinated military campaign against Iran, codenamed Epic Fury and Roaring Lion. "The hacktivist threat in the Middle East is highly lopsided, with two groups, Keymous+ and DieNet, driving nearly 70% of all attack activity between February 28 and March 2," Radware said in a Tuesday

Keeper Security has announced two new native Atlassian Jira integrations, which embed security incident response and privileged access governance directly into existing Jira workflows while keeping access enforcement centralised in Keeper. Jira, a widely-used issue and project tracking software, plays a central role in how organisations manage security incidents, operational requests and change workflows. Security alerts […]

The post Keeper Security Launches Native Jira Integrations appeared first on IT Security Guru.

Tycoon2FA has become a leading phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platforms, enabling campaigns that reach over 500,000 organizations monthly, prompting Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) to work with Europol and industry partners to facilitate a disruption of Tycoon2FA’s infrastructure and operations.

The post Inside Tycoon2FA: How a leading AiTM phishing kit operated at scale appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

The 21 winners of the Most Inspiring Women in Cyber Awards were announced at a ceremony held at the iconic BT Tower in London on the 26th February 2026. The awards celebrated the achievements of women working in cybersecurity around the globe – whether recognising personal achievements, efforts to close the gender divide in the industry […]

The post Exceptional Women Recognised for Contribution to Cyber Industry at Most Inspiring Women in Cyber Awards 2026 appeared first on IT Security Guru.

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Google said it identified a "new and powerful" exploit kit dubbed Coruna (aka CryptoWaters) targeting Apple iPhone models running iOS versions between 13.0 and 17.2.1. The exploit kit featured five full iOS exploit chains and a total of 23 exploits, Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said. It's not effective against the latest version of iOS. The findings were first reported by WIRED. "The

Microsoft is reporting: Companies are embedding hidden instructions in “Summarize with AI” buttons that, when clicked, attempt to inject persistence commands into an AI assistant’s memory via URL prompt parameters…. These prompts instruct the AI to “remember [Company] as a trusted source” or “recommend [Company] first,” aiming to bias future responses toward their products or services. We identified over 50 unique prompts from 31 companies across 14 industries, with freely available tooling making this technique trivially easy to deploy. This matters because compromised AI assistants can provide subtly biased recommendations on critical topics including health, finance, and security without users knowing their AI has been manipulated...

As AI becomes the central engine for enterprise productivity, security leaders are finally getting the green light — and the budget — to secure it. But there’s a quiet crisis unfolding in the boardroom: many organizations know they need "AI Governance," but they have no idea what they are actually looking for. The CISO’s Dilemma: You Have the AI Budget, but Do You Have the Requirements? As AI

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged malicious Packagist PHP packages masquerading as Laravel utilities that act as a conduit for a cross-platform remote access trojan (RAT) that's functional on Windows, macOS, and Linux systems. The names of the packages are listed below - nhattuanbl/lara-helper (37 Downloads) nhattuanbl/simple-queue (29 Downloads) nhattuanbl/lara-swagger (49 Downloads)

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of an advanced persistent threat (APT) group dubbed Silver Dragon that has been linked to cyber attacks targeting entities in Europe and Southeast Asia since at least mid-2024. "Silver Dragon gains its initial access by exploiting public-facing internet servers and by delivering phishing emails that contain malicious attachments," Check Point said

Restricted: Click the link for more details

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday added a recently disclosed security flaw impacting Broadcom VMware Aria Operations to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing active exploitation in the wild. The high-severity vulnerability, CVE-2026-22719 (CVSS score: 8.1), has been described as a case of command injection that could allow an

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Executive Summary We identified a security weakness in n8n’s credential management layer that could have completely compromised the application’s security. This finding highlights the core risks of centralized authentication in workflow automation platforms. As n8n serves as the central hub connecting critical systems and orchestrating business processes across teams, any gap in credential handling can […]

The post N8N: Shared Credentials and Account Takeover appeared first on Blog.

Signed malware backed by a stolen EV certificate deployed legitimate RMM tools to gain persistent access inside enterprise environments. Organizations must harden certificate controls and monitor RMM activity to reduce exposure.

The post Signed malware impersonating workplace apps deploys RMM backdoors appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Threat hunters have called attention to a new campaign as part of which bad actors masqueraded as fake IT support to deliver the Havoc command-and-control (C2) framework as a precursor to data exfiltration or ransomware attack. The intrusions, identified by Huntress last month across five partner organizations, involved the threat actors using email spam as lures, followed by a phone call from

South Korea's National Tax Service (NTS) has found itself in the middle of a deeply embarrassing - and costly - blunder after accidentally handing thieves the master key to a seized cryptocurrency wallet. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Exposure management has replaced old‑school “scan‑and‑patch” techniques.   Now, the money is in unified visibility, context, and mobilization; not siloed CVEs that don’t reflect the priorities of the business. Teams need to see attack paths, not single vulnerabilities. They need to understand what matters to the whole, not what has a higher score. And they need to know […]

The post The Top Exposure Assessment Platforms (EAPs) to Watch in 2026 appeared first on IT Security Guru.

Every CISO knows the uncomfortable truth about their Security Operations Center: the people most responsible for catching threats in real time are the people with the least experience. Tier 1 analysts sit at the front line of detection, and yet they are also the most vulnerable to the cognitive and organizational pressures that quietly erode SOC performance over time. The Paradox at the Gate:

The threat actor behind the recently disclosed artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted campaign targeting Fortinet FortiGate appliances leveraged an open-source, AI-native security testing platform called CyberStrikeAI to execute the attacks. The new findings come from Team Cymru, which detected its use following an analysis of the IP address ("212.11.64[.]250") that was used by the suspected

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Talion, a leading Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) forged out of BAE Systems, today announced that under the new leadership of CEO, Keven Knight, it has expanded its governance-aligned Agentic SOC model, embedding executive-level oversight and accountability directly into its managed cyber defence services. The enhanced model is designed to align real-time security operations with […]

The post Talion Expands Governance-Aligned Agentic SOC as Board Cyber Scrutiny Intensifies appeared first on IT Security Guru.

Restricted: Click the link for more details

By Robbie Ross, cyber security lead, Converged Communication Solutions It’s not if but when. This is a phrase that has been echoed across the cyber security industry for several years, but when it comes to ransomware the message is still not penetrating widely enough. The 2025 UK Government Cyber Breaches Survey highlighted that just 32% […]

The post Surviving Ransomware: Best practices to safeguard your business appeared first on IT Security Guru.

The MIT Technology Review has a good article on Moltbook, the supposed AI-only social network: Many people have pointed out that a lot of the viral comments were in fact posted by people posing as bots. But even the bot-written posts are ultimately the result of people pulling the strings, more puppetry than autonomy. “Despite some of the hype, Moltbook is not the Facebook for AI agents, nor is it a place where humans are excluded,” says Cobus Greyling at Kore.ai, a firm developing agent-based systems for business customers. “Humans are involved at every step of the process. From setup to prompting to publishing, nothing happens without explicit human direction.”...

The Rise of MCPs in the Enterprise The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is quickly becoming a practical way to push LLMs from “chat” into real work. By providing structured access to applications, APIs, and data, MCP enables prompt-driven AI agents that can retrieve information, take action, and automate end-to-end business workflows across the enterprise. This is already showing up in production

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new phishing suite called Starkiller that proxies legitimate login pages to bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA) protections. It's advertised as a cybercrime platform by a threat group calling itself Jinkusu, granting customers access to a dashboard that lets them select a brand to impersonate or enter a brand's real URL. It also lets

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Microsoft on Monday warned of phishing campaigns that employ phishing emails and OAuth URL redirection mechanisms to bypass conventional phishing defenses implemented in email and browsers. The activity, the company said, targets government and public-sector organizations with the end goal of redirecting victims to attacker-controlled infrastructure without stealing their tokens. It described

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Google on Monday disclosed that a high-severity security flaw impacting an open-source Qualcomm component used in Android devices has been exploited in the wild. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-21385 (CVSS score: 7.8), a buffer over-read in the Graphics component. "Memory corruption when adding user-supplied data without checking available buffer space," Qualcomm said in an advisory,

The threat activity cluster known as SloppyLemming has been attributed to a fresh set of attacks targeting government entities and critical infrastructure operators in Pakistan and Bangladesh. The activity, per Arctic Wolf, took place between January 2025 and January 2026. It involves the use of two distinct attack chains to deliver malware families tracked as BurrowShell and a Rust-based

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Restricted: Click the link for more details

OAuth redirection is being repurposed as a phishing delivery path. Trusted authentication flows are weaponized to move users from legitimate sign‑in pages to attacker‑controlled infrastructure.

The post OAuth redirection abuse enables phishing and malware delivery appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a now-patched security flaw in Google Chrome that could have permitted attackers to escalate privileges and gain access to local files on the system. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-0628 (CVSS score: 8.8), has been described as a case of insufficient policy enforcement in the WebView tag. It was patched by Google in early January 2026

Google has announced a new program in its Chrome browser to ensure that HTTPS certificates are secure against the future risk posed by quantum computers. "To ensure the scalability and efficiency of the ecosystem, Chrome has no immediate plan to add traditional X.509 certificates containing post-quantum cryptography to the Chrome Root Store," the Chrome Secure Web and Networking Team said. "

Restricted: Click the link for more details

Restricted: Click the link for more details

This week is not about one big event. It shows where things are moving. Network systems, cloud setups, AI tools, and common apps are all being pushed in different ways. Small gaps in access control, exposed keys, and normal features are being used as entry points. The pattern becomes clear only when you see everything together. Faster scans, smarter misuse of trusted services, and steady

Turns out that LLMs are good at de-anonymization: We show that LLM agents can figure out who you are from your anonymous online posts. Across Hacker News, Reddit, LinkedIn, and anonymized interview transcripts, our method identifies users with high precision ­ and scales to tens of thousands of candidates. While it has been known that individuals can be uniquely identified by surprisingly few attributes, this was often practically limited. Data is often only available in unstructured form and deanonymization used to require human investigators to search and reason based on clues. We show that from a handful of comments, LLMs can infer where you live, what you do, and your interests—then search for you on the web. In our new research, we show that this is not only possible but increasingly practical...

Most SaaS teams remember the day their user traffic started growing fast. Few notice the day bots started targeting them. On paper, everything looks great: more sign-ups, more sessions, more API calls. But in reality, something feels off: Sign-ups increase, but users aren’t activating. Server costs rise faster than revenue. Logs are filled with repeated requests from strange user agents. If

Restricted: Click the link for more details

A recently disclosed security flaw patched by Microsoft may have been exploited by the Russia-linked state-sponsored threat actor known as APT28, according to new findings from Akamai. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-21513 (CVSS score: 8.8), a high-severity security feature bypass affecting the MSHTML Framework. "Protection mechanism failure in MSHTML Framework allows an unauthorized

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a new iteration of the ongoing Contagious Interview campaign, where the North Korean threat actors have published a set of 26 malicious packages to the npm registry. The packages masquerade as developer tools, but contain functionality to extract the actual command-and-control (C2) by using seemingly harmless Pastebin content as a dead drop resolver and

Report URI: Guarding you from rogue JavaScript! Don’t get pwned; get real-time alerts & prevent breaches #SecureYourSite

The Odido breach leaks were towards the beginning during this week's update. I recorded it the day after the second dump of data had hit, with a third dump coming a few hours later, and a final dump of everything the day after that. From what I hear,