Game Cheat Spyware, 24-Hour Ransomware, Chrome Sync Stalking + 12 More Stories

Cybersecurity researchers 11 malicious NuGet packages published as .NET command-line tools that present themselves as game utilities, bots, and “panels,” each of which act as a first-stage downloader responsible for fetching and executing a second-stage Python payload named “pepesoft.exe” from GitHub Releases and Hugging Face paths under the username “pepegit666,” along with a dormant BitTorrent fallback mechanism built into it. “The recovered payloads use downloader-supplied AWS-style key material to retrieve remote configuration, authenticate to Google Sheets, bind activations to hardware, and honor a remote HWID/UUID ban-list,” Socket said. “In the three direct-bytecode payloads, the larger game-automation application also exposes Telegram bot commands that can send screenshots back to the configured chat.”

An IT services company in South Asia was targeted by a previously undocumented ransomware family called Spirals in June 2026. “The Rust-based payload is either a new ransomware threat or one purpose-built for this attack,” Broadcom’s Symantec and Carbon Black Threat Hunter Team said. “Less than 24 hours after the initial breach, the ransomware payload was being pushed to machines on the network.” The attacker is said to have obtained initial access by compromising an internet-facing IIS web server and uploading an ASP.NET web shell. Over the next three hours, they established persistent access, conducted reconnaissance, uninstalled endpoint security software, dumped the Security Account Manager (SAM) hive, and set up covert remote access prior to deploying the payload across the network using PsExec. The ransom note seeks to apply pressure by threatening to publish stolen data after six days if a ransom is not paid and directs victims to a Tor portal for negotiations. The actor behind the attack remains unknown.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added CVE-2026-46817, an improper privilege management vulnerability in Oracle E-Business Suite, and CVE-2023-4346, an overly restrictive account lockout mechanism vulnerability in KNX Association KNX Protocol Connection Authorization Option 1, to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, requiring federal agencies to apply the fixes by July 18 and 29, 2026, respectively. Reports about active exploitation of CVE-2026-46817 emerged late last month. It’s currently not known how the KNX Protocol flaw is being abused and by whom.

CISA, in partnership with the National Security Agency (NSA), Japan Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC), Netherlands’ National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NL), and United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-UK), has published joint guidance to “helps software manufacturers and online service providers collaborate effectively with security researchers who identify weaknesses in software, networks, and hardware in a structured, transparent framework.” The agency said a “well-defined coordinated vulnerability disclosure (CVD) program enables software manufacturers and online service providers to better assess potential risk, improve their vulnerability management processes, and make informed decisions that improve product security for their customers.”

Authorities from the Netherlands have arrested a 46-year-old man with Israeli and Polish citizenship, who is alleged to be behind an international criminal organization with more than 700 employees who were employed at about 20 fraudulent call centers. These individuals posed as financial advisors to conduct investment fraud. “By maintaining regular contact, sometimes over a period of months, these scammers build a bond of trust with their victims,” the Dutch police said. “The initial deposit is always a relatively small amount that yields an immediate profit. The online platform where victims can view their investments is indistinguishable from the real thing, yet in reality, no actual investments are being made. Scammers use a friendly approach and cunning tactics to manipulate victims into depositing ever-larger sums. The money – often cryptocurrency – that victims believe they are investing ends up in the scammers’ pockets.” The operation has also led to the arrest of four “financial advisors.”

Spanish National Police have disrupted a cybercrime network accused of stealing and laundering about €140 million through fake investment platforms, CEO fraud, invoice fraud, and adversary-in-the-middle attacks across Europe. Four people have been apprehended in connection with the operation: two in Portugal, one in Spain, and one in Panama. “The suspects established and managed a network of over 800 bank accounts to receive substantial sums of illicit money swindled from numerous victims; these funds were immediately dispersed and concealed across another network of accounts, creating a chain of transactions that safeguarded the criminal proceeds and allowed the vast amounts of defrauded money to be hidden and laundered through ‘money mule’ accounts in third countries,” police said. “To create the complex web of accounts used for money laundering, the group utilized an extensive network of money mules – European citizens who had arrived in Spain from other countries – to set up companies and subsequently open bank accounts across Spanish territory.”

Bitdefender Labs has demonstrated three attack techniques in which Windows’ bind links can be misused to evade endpoint detection and response (EDR) products. “Windows includes a file-system virtualization feature that can redirect one local path to another without modifying the original file or leaving a persistent filesystem artifact,” Bitdefender’s Martin Zugec said. “It is implemented by bindflt.sys, the Bind Filter minifilter driver, and used legitimately by Store apps, Windows Sandbox, and Windows containers.” The techniques can be leveraged by an attacker running as a local administrator to bypass EDR sensors and built-in Windows defenses such as AMSI and AppLocker. The techniques include: File-Binding, Process-Binding, and Silo-Binding, each of which shadow a trusted file or DLL path, a trusted executable path, and a user-defined Windows silo. Microsoft has assessed the findings as low severity because it requires administrator access.

A financially-motivated threat actor has set up more than 290 fake GitHub repositories impersonating trusted software and security tooling vendors, including Arctic Wolf, to distribute a Windows infostealer that shares the same codebase as BoryptGrab. The 292 impersonated repositories span security tooling, fintech and personal finance, cryptocurrency wallets and exchanges, developer and productivity tools, secure email providers, macOS utilities, and gaming software. “The payload is a pure smash-and-grab in-memory infostealer, with a 41-entry cryptocurrency wallet path table and 19+ targeted browser names for broad, financially driven credential collection,” Arctic Wolf said. “Stolen data is packaged into a ZIP archive and exfiltrated to a C2 with an IP residing in Russia, on a hosting provider repeatedly associated with malware operations.” The malware does not set up persistence on the host and is instead designed to collect as much data as possible in a single execution. The brandjacking campaign is said to be the work of a Russian-speaking operator.

The U.S. Justice Department has unsealed a December 2024 indictment charging three Russian nationals and two related bulletproof hosting companies for their roles in cybercrimes against U.S. victims, causing tens of millions of dollars in losses. The charges are against Alexander Alexandrovich Volosovik, Kirill Andreevich Zatolokin, Yulia Vladimirovna Pankova, Media Land LLC, and ML.Cloud LLC. In tandem, the U.S. Department of State’s Rewards for Justice (RFJ) program has announced its offering a reward of up to $10 million and possible relocation for actionable information on foreign government-linked associates of Pankova, Volosovik, and Zatolokin, their malicious cyber activities, or foreign government-linked use of Media Land or ML.Cloud. The defendants and the companies were sanctioned by the U.S., the U.K., and Australia in November 2025. Earlier this week, the Council of the European Union also levied sanctions against Media Land, ML.Cloud, and Volosovik, as part of the first joint cyber sanctions package issued against Russia in collaboration with the U.K.

A legitimate Chrome sync technique meant for user convenience is being misused by stalkers to gain broad access to a device owner’s private information. “Chrome’s sync feature exists to make life easier,” Certo said. “Sign in with a Google account, and Chrome will keep your bookmarks, open tabs, browsing history, autofill data, and saved passwords in step across every device you use — your phone, tablet, laptop, whatever you’re signed into.” However, this can be turned into a surveillance tool in a simple step. All a digital intruder has to do is gain brief physical access to a victim’s phone, open the Chrome app and add a Google account under their control, and ensure sync is switched on for that account. “The victim carries on using their phone as normal,” Certo explained. “From this point, their browsing activity is copied to the attacker’s Google account in the background. The attacker opens the same Google account on their own device and reviews the victim’s browsing history whenever they choose, from anywhere with an internet connection.”

A sustained phishing campaign dubbed SeasonalInvite has been observed deploying and abusing commercial Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tools since at least January 2026 by making use of social engineering themes tied to the seasonal calendar in attacks targeting both Windows and macOS users. The attacks involve the abuse of ConnectWise ScreenConnect, LogMeIn Resolve, Kaseya, and O&O Syspectr. The bogus pages are likely distributed via phishing emails and poisoned search results. Forescout said it identified 959 eCard-themed domains and a traffic distribution system (TDS) using 2,658 gate pages to route victims to phishing pages while blocking automated security scanners. “The phishing pages are generated by a kit and contain indicators of likely AI-generated code, suggesting the threat actor used a large language model (LLM) to assemble delivery pages and rapidly retool the campaign,” it noted.

Cybersecurity researchers have identified a new AI-powered device code phishing toolkit called Jalisco, along with a credential harvester codenamed OmegaLord that captures phone numbers alongside passwords to intercept multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes. “Jalisco is a device code phishing toolkit that provisions fresh OAuth codes in real time, defeating the time-based controls defenders rely on and pairing naturally with AI-powered kits like ‘EvilTokens,'” ReliaQuest said. “OmegaLord, by contrast, is a JavaScript-based credential harvester that impersonates a PDF reader and collects phone numbers alongside credentials—a deliberate step toward intercepting or hijacking MFA.” The development comes amid a surge in device code phishing attacks in 2026 that employ purpose-built tools to run such campaigns at scale. “Once inside a compromised Microsoft 365 account, attackers establish persistence by pairing multiple attacker-controlled devices to the victim’s Entra ID tenant, then move quickly to exfiltrate sensitive data from software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms for extortion,” the company added. In some cases, threat actors have been observed enrolling more than five devices to a single compromised account in an attempt to extend the window for exfiltration.

A new analysis from Hunt.io has uncovered more than 3,900 threat activities enabling servers across 302 Eastern European infrastructure providers within the past 3 months. “Keitaro leads Eastern European threat activity enablement with 1,277 unique threat activity enabling IPs, followed by Tactical RMM (232) and Acunetix (173),” the threat intelligence company said. “Cloud Atlas APT infrastructure was observed across multiple Eastern European providers, confirming the group’s continued reliance on Eastern European hosting. Proton66 OOO was linked to active exploitation of CVE-2026-35273, a critical Oracle PeopleSoft zero-day attributed to the ShinyHunters group, with threat activity enabling infrastructure directly traceable to this Russian provider.”

A financially motivated campaign has been observed delivering Vidar stealer and the XMRig cryptocurrency miner to consumer and small- and medium-sized business victims worldwide. The campaign was detected in April 2026. “Attackers lure victims via malvertising to pages for downloading files that impersonate cracked versions of copyright-protected software,” Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said. “Upon execution, the loader drops and runs both Vidar stealer and XMRig. Vidar stealer targets information like browser credentials, cookies, and crypto wallets. XMRig mines Monero cryptocurrency.” The loader binaries use the Factory-v3 framework, which refers to a malware-as-a-service (MaaS0 builder used for different families of stealer malware. “The tag X3D MINER appears in Telegram operator notifications sent for every new victim infection,” Unit 42 added. “The operator behind this campaign runs a dual-monetization scheme. Criminals sell credentials and session cookies stolen by Vidar stealer on criminal log markets, while XMRig provides passive income from hijacked victim CPU cycles.”