The campaign, active since mid-2025, uses recruitment-themed social engineering to lure developers into downloading a Python-based infostealer and remote access trojan named AUDIOFIX.
Tag: engineering
AI, Cybersecurity, Data Breaches, Global Security News
The CISO selling confidence in a market full of breach headlines
Engineering teams across enterprise IT are writing their own software with AI coding assistants, spinning up agents that act on their behalf, and assigning those agents the same access privileges their human creators hold. The shift has pulled the role of the chief information security officer into territory that did not exist two years ago.…
AI, Global Security News
Hackers are knocking on office doors pretending to be IT staff
The Silent Ransom Group (SRG) is targeting law firms using social engineering techniques and an unusual tactic for cybercriminals: showing up at victims’ offices in person while posing as IT staff, the FBI warns. The group, also known as Luna Moth, Chatty Spider, and UNC3753, has been active since at least 2022 and has targeted…
AI, Cybersecurity, Global Security News
AI-generated reporting: Lessons learned from Cisco Talos Incident Response
Talos IR shares prompt engineering lessons for consistent, accurate AI-generated cybersecurity reports with a realistic case study.
AI, Global Security News
Your Work Team Is Now a ‘Pod’ and Your Co-Workers Are AI Agents
Companies are restructuring engineering teams into smaller, more nimble cross-functional ‘pods,’ made up of humans and AI agents.
AI, Global Security News, Network Security
KongTuke hackers now use Microsoft Teams for corporate breaches
Initial access broker KongTuke has moved to Microsoft Teams for social engineering attacks, taking as little as five minutes to gain persistent access to corporate networks. […]
Cybersecurity, Data Breaches, Global Security News
Over 70% of organizations hit by identity breaches
Attackers rely on stolen credentials, compromised service accounts, and social engineering attacks targeting employees, according to Sophos’ The State of Identity Security 2026 survey. What do you estimate to be the overall cost to your organization to rectify the identity breach? Base: organization could not stop the security breach. n=510. (Source: Sophos) Identity attack trends…
AI, Global Security News, Russia
Signal responds to phishing attacks with new in-app security warnings
Signal is adding new protections for users following recent phishing and social engineering attacks. In March, the FBI and CISA issued a warning stating that Signal had become a primary target of Russian intelligence-linked hackers. Dutch and German security authorities were among the first to identify phishing campaigns targeting Signal users. The scheme centered on…
AI, Cybersecurity, Endpoint, Exploits, Global Security News, malware
ClickFix finds a backup plan in PySoxy proxy chains
ClickFix, a one-shot social engineering technique that tricks victims into executing malicious workflows disguised as fixes to technical issues in their systems, has got a persistence upgrade. In a one-off instance, ReliaQuest researchers have spotted an intrusion chain using scheduled tasks, PowerShell-based command-and-control (C2), and a unique abuse of the decade-old open-source proxy tool PySoxy.…
AI, Exploits, Global Security News, malware
Patch Tuesday, May 2026 Edition
Artificial intelligence platforms may be just as susceptible to social engineering as human beings, but they are proving remarkably good at finding security vulnerabilities in human-made computer code. That reality is on full display this month with some of the more widely-used software makers — including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and Oracle — fixing near…
AI, Data Breaches, Global Security News, malware
DigiCert breached via malicious screensaver file
A targeted social engineering attack against DigiCert’s support channel led to the compromise of internal systems and the unauthorized issuance of EV Code Signing certificates. DigiCert is a global Certificate Authority (CA) providing digital trust services, specializing in TLS/SSL certificates, PKI management, and IoT security. According to DigiCert’s incident report, a threat actor contacted the…
Global Security News
Oracle Red Bull Racing Team Revs Up Automation to Boost Security
While drivers race to shave off seconds on the track, the team’s IT and engineering staff are speeding up how they deliver security.
Global Security News
Australia’s digital construction boom has created a new battleground: data ownership
GUEST OPINION: Australia’s architecture, engineering, construction (AEC) sector is widely recognised as one of the most digitally advanced construction markets in the world.
Global Security News, malware
Threat actor uses Microsoft Teams to deploy new “Snow” malware
A threat group tracked as UNC6692 uses social engineering to deploy a new “Snow” malware set that includes a browser extension, a tunneler, and a backdoor. […]
AI, Global Security News
AI opportunity is clear for Australia’s architecture, engineering, and construction yet the sector is struggling to govern it
GUEST OPINION: Australia’s architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry is not struggling to find uses for artificial intelligence (AI); it is grappling with how to govern it.
AI, Apps, Global Security News
Obsidian Plugin Abuse Delivers PHANTOMPULSE RAT in Targeted Finance, Crypto Attacks
A “novel” social engineering campaign has been observed abusing Obsidian, a cross-platform note-taking application, as an initial access vector to distribute a previously undocumented Windows remote access trojan called PHANTOMPULSE in attacks targeting individuals in the financial and cryptocurrency sectors. Dubbed REF6598 by Elastic Security Labs, the activity has been found to leverage
AI, Global Security News
As AI Accelerates Software Complexity, Thoughtworks Technology Radar Urges a Return to Engineering Fundamentals to Combat Cognitive Debt
Thoughtworks, a global technology consultancy that integrates design, engineering and AI to drive digital innovation, today released volume 34 of the Technology Radar, a biannual report informed by the organisations’ experiences with clients. This edition spotlights a critical inflection point in the industry; while AI-assisted software development represents a radical transformation, it is also actively…
AI, APAC, Global Security News
Australia’s architecture, engineering, and construction industry leads world on digital transformation yet faces new data control and AI governance challenges
GUEST RESEARCH: Australia’s architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) sector is emerging as one of the most digitally advanced markets globally. New research from Revizto, the leading global integrated collaboration platform for AEC, reveals Australia is now confronting a new generation of challenges around data governance, artificial intelligence (AI), regulation, and the capacity to implement new technologies at scale.
AI, Global Security News, malware
Social engineering attacks on open source developers are escalating
North Korean hackers spent weeks socially engineering an Axios maintainer through a fake Slack workspace, a cloned company identity, and a fabricated Microsoft Teams call that tricked him into installing a RAT posings as a software update. They used the access they gained to inject malware into npm packages downloaded 100+ million times a week.…
Global Security News
Data Optimization in Security: A Splunk Architect’s Perspective
Learn how to design security data optimization around detection engineering, Splunk architecture, and faster incident response outcomes.
AI, Global Security News
Wanted: Head of Human AI Solutions. The New Jobs Being Created by AI
AI is raising big fears about employment losses, but it is also giving rise to new engineering and training jobs.
Global Security News, malware
New Venom Stealer MaaS Platform Automates Continuous Data Theft
Venom Stealer malware-as-a-service automates ClickFix social engineering, credential and crypto exfiltration
AI, Endpoint, Exploits, Global Security News, Risk Management
Hybrid Vishing Campaigns Abuse Online Services to Evade Anti-Spam Filters
Phone-based fraud never went away. It evolved. Vishing, or voice phishing, is a social engineering technique that uses phone calls to extract money or sensitive information from victims. A few years ago, these attacks typically arrived as unsolicited calls from criminals impersonating the IRS, the FBI, or Microsoft support. The approach was simple and high…
AI, Global Security News, malware
DeepLoad Malware Uses ClickFix and WMI Persistence to Steal Browser Credentials
A new campaign has leveraged the ClickFix social engineering tactic as a way to distribute a previously undocumented malware loader referred to as DeepLoad. “It likely uses AI-assisted obfuscation and process injection to evade static scanning, while credential theft starts immediately and captures passwords and sessions even if the primary loader is blocked,” ReliaQuest researchers…
Global Security News
A nearly undetectable LLM attack needs only a handful of poisoned samples
Prompt engineering has become a standard part of how large language models are deployed in production, and it introduces an attack surface most organizations have not yet addressed. Researchers have developed and tested a prompt-based backdoor attack method, called ProAttack, that achieves attack success rates approaching 100% on multiple text classification benchmarks without altering sample…
AI, Global Security News
AiStrike cuts alert noise with Continuous Detection Engineering
AiStrike has launched Continuous Detection Engineering, a capability that transforms how security operations teams manage detections, shifting from reactive alert triage to proactive, intelligence-driven optimization. The detection quality gap Security teams today are overwhelmed by alerts, but the root cause is not volume, it’s detection quality. AiStrike’s analysis across enterprise environments revealed that: More than…
AI, Data Breaches, Exploits, Global Security News, Network Security
The phone call is the new phishing email
Voice-based phishing, a form of social engineering where attackers call employees or IT help desks under false pretenses in an attempt to gain access to victim networks, surged in 2025, Mandiant said Monday in its annual M-Trends report. These points of intrusion, which have been a hallmark of attacks attributed to members of the cybercrime…
Cybersecurity, Global Security News
Why Cybersecurity Is Now Mission-Critical in Formula 1’s Data-Driven Era
At first glance, Formula 1 is about speed, precision, and engineering excellence. But behind the cars and the spectacle lies a less visible battleground: cybersecurity.
Global Security News
Betterleaks: Open-source secrets scanner
Secrets scanning has become standard practice across engineering organizations, and Gitleaks has been one of the most widely used tools in that space. The author of that project has now released a new tool called Betterleaks, which is designed to scan git repositories, directories, and standard input for leaked credentials, API keys, tokens, and passwords.…
AI, Global Security News
LeakNet Ransomware Uses ClickFix via Hacked Sites, Deploys Deno In-Memory Loader
The ransomware operation known as LeakNet has adopted the ClickFix social engineering tactic delivered through compromised websites as an initial access method. The use of ClickFix, where users are tricked into manually running malicious commands to address non-existent errors, is a departure from relying on traditional methods for obtaining initial access, such as through stolen…
AI, Global Security News
Attackers Abuse LiveChat to Phish Credit Card, Personal Data
A social engineering campaign impersonating PayPal and Amazon uses customer support interactions to acquire sensitive info.
AI, Apps, Cybersecurity, Data Breaches, Endpoint, Global Security News, malware, Network Security, Risk Management
Teams Social Engineering Campaign Drops A0Backdoor Malware
Microsoft Teams impersonation and social engineering tactics are being used in an ongoing campaign to deliver a stealthy malware payload known as A0Backdoor. Researchers at BlueVoyant report that the operation combines social engineering techniques, malicious installers, and covert command-and-control (C2) communications to gain persistent access within targeted networks. “The malware’s loader exhibits anti-sandbox evasion, and…
AI, Apps, Global Security News
Komodor Launches Partner Program for AI-Driven SRE Services
Komodor, an autonomous AI site reliability engineering (SRE) platform provider for cloud-native infrastructure, has launched a new global partner program aimed at systems integrators, trusted advisors, and value-added resellers supporting enterprise Kubernetes environments. Announced on March 10, the Komodor Partner Program is designed to help partners deliver AI-driven cloud-native infrastructure reliability, incident management, and cost…
Global Security News
Fake Claude Code install guides push infostealers in InstallFix attacks
Threat actors are employing a new variation of the ClickFix social engineering technique called InstallFix to convince users into running malicious commands under the pretext of installing legitimate command line interface (CLI) tools. […]
AI, Global Security News, malware
Microsoft Reveals ClickFix Campaign Using Windows Terminal to Deploy Lumma Stealer
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…
AI, Apps, Global Security News
Thoughtworks and IDC Report Reveals Most Organisations Trapped in Costly Legacy Cycles; Only 12% Achieve True AI-Driven Operations
GUEST RESEARCH: Thoughtworks, a global technology consultancy integrating design, engineering and AI to drive digital innovation, today released findings from its global report, titled; “Modernisation Is No Longer a Project: AI-Enabled Managed Services for Continuous Change.” The data reveals a critical disconnect between AI adoption and maturity in IT operations. The report delves into what separates…
AI, Global Security News
Security and complexity slow the next phase of enterprise AI agent adoption
Enterprise AI agents are embedded in routine business processes, particularly inside engineering and IT operations. Many organizations report active production deployments, and agent development ranks high on strategic agendas. A new study from Docker, The State of Agentic AI Report, examines how enterprises are deploying agentic systems and the challenges emerging as deployments scale. The…
AI, Global Security News
3 Ways to Start Your Intelligent Workflow Program
Security, IT, and engineering teams today are under relentless pressure to accelerate outcomes, cut operational drag, and unlock the full potential of AI and automation. But simply investing in tools isn’t enough. 88% of AI proofs-of-concept never make it to production, even though 70% of workers cite freeing time for high-value work as the primary…
AI, Apps, Data Breaches, Endpoint, Exploits, Global Security News, malware, Network Security, Risk Management
ClickFix Campaign Uses Fake CAPTCHA Pages to Deliver StealC Malware on Windows
A new social engineering campaign is abusing fake CAPTCHA verification pages to trick Windows users into launching StealC information-stealing malware. The attack relies on compromised websites that display convincing Cloudflare-style security checks, prompting victims to manually execute malicious PowerShell commands under the guise of routine verification. “StealC exfiltrates browser credentials, cryptocurrency wallets, Steam accounts, Outlook…
AI, Global Security News, malware
New ClickFix attack abuses nslookup to retrieve PowerShell payload via DNS
Threat actors are now abusing DNS queries as part of ClickFix social engineering attacks to deliver malware, making this the first known use of DNS as a channel in these campaigns. […]
AI, Global Security News
Microsoft Discloses DNS-Based ClickFix Attack Using Nslookup for Malware Staging
Microsoft has disclosed details of a new version of the ClickFix social engineering tactic in which the attackers trick unsuspecting users into running commands that carry out a Domain Name System (DNS) lookup to retrieve the next-stage payload. Specifically, the attack relies on using the “nslookup” (short for nameserver lookup) command to execute a custom…
AI, Global Security News, malware
Booz Allen Announces General Availability of Vellox Reverser to Automate Malware Defense
The AI-powered product delivers expert-grade malware analysis and reverse engineering in minutes.
AI, Data Breaches, Exploits, Global Security News, Network Security, Risk Management
The ephemeral infrastructure paradox: Why short-lived systems need stronger identity governance
In my experience leading engineering projects, I have encountered the same pattern repeatedly. We obsess over deployment speed. We measure success in commit velocity and uptime. But we rarely pause to ask the most uncomfortable question in the room: Who actually owns the identities we just spun up? This silence isn’t malicious; it’s structural. We…
AI, Global Security News, malware, Security
LummaStealer infections surge after CastleLoader malware campaigns
A surge in LummaStealer infections has been observed, driven by social engineering campaigns leveraging the ClickFix technique to deliver the CastleLoader malware. […]
AI, Android, android security, Apps, Cybersecurity, Global Security News, privacy
Android’s pKVM Becomes First Globally Certified Software to Achieve Prestigious SESIP Level 5 Security Certification
Posted by Dave Kleidermacher, VP Engineering, Android Security & Privacy Today marks a watershed moment and new benchmark for open-source security and the future of consumer electronics. Google is proud to announce that protected KVM (pKVM), the hypervisor that powers the Android Virtualization Framework, has officially achieved SESIP Level 5 certification. This makes pKVM the…
AI, Android, android security, Apps, Global Security News, Government & Policy, malware, privacy, Risk Management
What’s New in Android Security and Privacy in 2025
Posted by Dave Kleidermacher, VP Engineering, Android Security and Privacy Android’s intelligent protections keep you safe from everyday dangers. Our dedication to your security is validated by security experts, who consistently rank top Android devices highest in security, and score Android smartphones, led by the Pixel 9 Pro, as leaders in anti-fraud efficacy. Android is…