Like a sleeper cell awaiting activation, a never-before-seen Windows backdoor dubbed Sleepwalker waits silently in memory for one specifically crafted network packet to wake it up and deliver commands using the malware's 23-instruction language. The commands can do everything from running code directly in memory to moving data off the computer. Malware researcher Dominik Reichel discovered the passive backdoor, which also has its own command language, and detailed Sleepwalker in a technical analysis on Monday. “What makes it worth writing up is what that packet carries: not a readable command, but a short program written in a command language of the backdoor’s own design,” Reichel said. “Its 23 instructions cover scheduling, several ways to move data, staged file delivery and running code directly in memory. Recovering the encryption key is not enough to understand one of these programs. The internal command language must be reverse engineered as well.” In addition to having its own command language, it's also notable that the remote host can be a VMware VMCI target instead of a normal network address. “Taken as a whole, the approach here is consistent with a targeted, well-resourced operation rather than an opportunistic one,” Reichel wrote. The malware, hidden inside a 64-bit Windows DLL file, impersonates Microsoft's dpapi.dll, part of Windows' data protection API for protecting sensitive data. It exports the same seven functions as the real dpapi.dll, but attempts to forward calls to a file named dpapisvc.dll, which is not a real Windows component. The file also has a forged ESET Management Agent version resource, and loads via side-loading into ERAAgent.exe, the Windows executable for ESET Management Agent. After confirming that its host process is named ERAAgent.exe, Sleepwalker goes to sleep inside the computer's memory, which also helps it remain hidden from traditional anti-virus tools. Unlike most backdoors, which call back to an attacker-controlled command-and-control (C2) server and start receiving commands, Sleepwalker lies in wait, checking every packet that passes through the network looking for a specific pattern - this is called a magic packet. Once it sniffs out a packet that matches the exact pattern, the backdoor decrypts the data and treats it as a command. “Because the backdoor never sends anything out on its own and does not open any obvious listening port by default, tools that watch for connections to known-bad domains or unusual outbound traffic will not see anything unusual,” Reichel wrote. “The absence of outbound connections to known-bad infrastructure does not rule out an infection, either. A machine can be fully compromised by this backdoor while producing nothing at all for a network monitor to flag.” Hidden commands Every command sent to the backdoor is encrypted using AES-256-CCM, and the command language is unique in that, once decrypted, it is neither text nor a document. Instead, each command is a short sequence of raw bytes, and it only makes sense when read in a specific order. Reichel’s write-up includes a key that shows how to read the bytes, and each of Sleepwalker’s 23 instructions is written in this command language. Some of the instructions carry an inner program. For example, a scheduler can also contain a network listener, with a routine that waits for a particular file to be assembled and checked before it will run on the compromised computer. Beyond the two magic-packet sniffing instructions and basic instructions - such as an exit command that stops all running programs and the packet listener, and an instruction that starts a second, smaller program running concurrently with the parent program - the backdoor has multiple others. These include four instructions on sending and hiding data. One of these opens a TCP connection to a chosen address and port, and then sends a block of data to a remote host, which can be a VMware VMCI target instead of a normal network address. Another one writes a block of data to a Windows named pipe on a chosen computer, and can optionally log in with a username and password first. Five other instructions focus on inbound task reception, such as waiting to receive - or reaching out on its own - a follow-up instruction, opening a TCP or UDP port, or creating and/or connecting to a named pipe. Additionally, the malware has five different instructions on building and running programs. A lot of unknowns…and detection tools As Reichel notes, however, a lot remains unknown about Sleepwalker. “I have no collection context tying the file to a confirmed intrusion, so I cannot identify a victim, industry, country or affected organization,” he wrote. While we know that the DLL is designed to execute via side-loading after being placed beside ERAAgent.exe, we don't know how the malware operator first gained access to the computer or delivered the malicious file. We also don’t know the operator or developer, or what post-compromise activity, if any, took place. “I found no related code that would support attribution to a known group, and this one sample cannot establish when or how widely Sleepwalker was deployed, whether variants exist or whether it belongs to a continuing campaign,” Reichel wrote. Perhaps most importantly, for anyone who believes that they may be infected with Sleepwalker or a related malware sample, Reichel wrote, “I have created a toolkit to help decode its bytecode, examine encrypted and network artifacts, summarize behavior and indicators and safely reproduce its receiving pipeline without executing commands or transmitting traffic,” urging targeted individuals to contact him. He also created a mitigation guide, with a remediation script for use after Sleepwalker is detected.®

If you're curious how easily tech companies can fingerprint your browser and device and potentially single them out from the crowd, a new utility Glassbox will show you. Aside from pinging a public geolocation API, it runs entirely in a user’s browser and doesn’t ship any info out to the web while acting just like all the various trackers, anti-fraud scripts, and other browser fingerprinting tricks one is likely to encounter online. Unlike some other available tools that do the same, Glassbox provides a whole bunch of raw, unfiltered data you can sift through to see what makes your browser stand out, along with an estimate of how identifiable its fingerprint may be. In this vulture’s testing, Glassbox's estimate ranged from 99 percent in the Chrome window I use daily for work to a low of 56 percent in Tor Browser with an active circuit. “The ‘identifiability’ number is an honest model, not a measurement,” Glassbox developer David Dale said of his tool in a Hacker News thread. “It sums published per-signal entropy, discounts your browser masks, and caps at the ~33 bits needed to single out one person on Earth.” Dale added in the thread that, since it runs locally, that identifiability number is an estimate, as Glassbox doesn’t have a live population to pull against. AmIUnique and the EFF’s Cover Your Tracks, the other tools mentioned above, provide real population numbers, he noted. Dale got the idea for GlassBox after learning about silent sawtooth waves used by fingerprinting code found on Alibaba's AliExpress site to identify browsers using audio. Rather than fork one of the existing open source tools - both EFF's Cover Your Tracks and AmIUnique have GitHub repos - he decided to build his own, with some help from AI. “I'm a solo entrepreneur and long-time security engineer; tools like Claude Code have made it much easier to polish ideas and offer the useful ones to a wider audience,” Dale told us in an email. “I knew a fair number of fingerprinting methods but not that one, and I wanted to see all of them in one place, running against my own browser,” he said on Hacker News. In other words, Glassbox factors Alibaba’s tricks into its identifiability estimates alongside 30 other probes for unique browser data - things like canvas, WebGL, font libraries, WASM features, API matrices, and cross-site login states. According to Glassbox, my particular Chrome session I use for work is unique to around 1 in 7.6 billion browsers, and my IP address narrows that further (my ISP apparently uses IPv6, making me even more identifiable). As for which browsers appear to be safer, I have Safari, Edge, Firefox, and Tor on my machine alongside Chrome; Firefox and Tor are the only ones that didn’t label me “effectively unique,” giving me estimated identifiability ratings of 89 and 56 percent, respectively. What that means is that I share the same fingerprint as 1 in 681 million Firefox users and 1 in 408 thousand Tor users - that still doesn’t exactly make me a ghost online, but it definitely puts me in a pool much larger than Chrome, Edge, or Safari. Again, those are estimates, Dale reminded us, not a hard truth as, he says, “a no-server tool [can’t] measure true rarity.” “The single highest-impact move is to use a browser that puts you in a large, identical crowd,” Dale explained in an email. “Counterintuitively, a heavily customized ‘hardened’ setup often makes you more identifiable, because almost nobody else looks exactly like it. Blending in beats standing out.” Aside from using a browser that does a good job of obfuscating its user, Dale said a VPN or Tor is a must, as is finding a way to close the WebRTC leak that has long dogged internet users and leaves browsers identifiable through some VPNs thanks to being enabled by default in most web browsers. Glassbox includes a page of suggestions for how to anonymize yourself online, and let’s face it: With everything from invisible pixels to silent sound waves doing their damndest to figure out who’s behind a browser in order to make money off them, that’s more important than ever. ®

A suspected Iran-linked cyberattack shut down a small UK power plant around the time that a series of digital intrusions disrupted American water utilities across 12 states. A British government spokesperson confirmed the hack to The Register on Monday and told us that the security incident affected a “small-scale energy generator.” “At no point was there a risk to the wider energy system,” the spokesperson said, adding that the UK’s energy system is “highly resilient,” and that the government works “closely with the energy sector to protect infrastructure.” In a series of xeets about the cyberattack, UK Energy Minister Michael Shanks said that his department briefed energy CEOs after the incident and “shared further advice with companies on the steps they should take to stay secure.” Government officials did not disclose which power station shut down, and the UK has not formally attributed the cyberattack to Iran - or any other government or hacking group. The Telegraph, which first reported the news, said that the incident shut down the power plant for four days in what is believed to be the first disruptive Iranian cyberattack of its kind in the UK. In late July, suspected Iranian cyber operatives disrupted more than 30 water facilities in Minnesota, with similar intrusions subsequently reported across at least 11 other US states. While neither state nor federal officials have attributed these hacks to Iran, private-sector threat analysts have told The Register that Iran is “almost certainly” behind these breaches, which are a direct response to the ongoing Middle East conflict. While these earlier water-system intrusions didn’t appear to have an AI assist - most or all of the American utility cyberattacks involved internet-connected programmable logic controllers (PLCs) - last week the feds warned that attackers are now using AI-generated exploitation scripts to break into internet-exposed Siemens S7 Series PLCs at water, manufacturing, energy, and other critical facilities. “This is not a theoretical risk – it is an active threat,” the FBI and four other federal agencies warned. “This appears to be a continuation of the same suite of activity we suspect is affiliated with Iran targeting PLCs,” Cynthia Kaiser, Halcyon Ransomware Research Center SVP and a former FBI cyber analyst, told The Register. “Iran-affiliated actors and adversaries are actively targeting a wide swath of operational technology because these PLCs underpin essential health, safety, and critical infrastructure across society,” Kaiser said. ®

Developer Matt Callaghan claims he caught Alibaba's B2C website, AliExpress, trying to track web users by playing sounds through browsers vulnerable to audio fingerprinting. The software engineer drew attention to the issue late last week after investigating why his Bluetooth headphones stopped playing music whenever he visited the AliExpress website. “Recently I ran into a strange problem with my Bluetooth headphones,” Callaghan wrote. “They support multipoint Bluetooth audio, so they can be connected to my PC and phone at the same time. Normally, the PC takes priority playing audio, with my phone being able to play audio when nothing is playing on the PC. “Usually I listen to music on my phone but with notifications or YouTube playing through the PC, this works reliably until I open an AliExpress page in Firefox or Chrome. “Shortly after loading the AliExpress homepage, audio from my phone would stop playing. Closing the AliExpress tab fixes it immediately. Muting the tab/Firefox/Windows does not help, and there is no visible video, music, or other media playing on the page.” Callaghan tried to find any hidden conventional media elements but found nothing. Further digging revealed two audio scripts that he said were “extremely obfuscated” within AliExpress's browser security and anti-abuse tooling. He said the scripts built a WebAudio graph that introduced a sawtooth oscillator to generate a waveform, an analyzer to measure the result after the waveform passes through a browser’s audio implementation, and a script to read the associated frequency data. The scripts set the audio’s gain to zero, meaning the end user won’t hear anything, but the WebAudio graph will still be processed by the browser. “This is very different from an autoplaying video,” said Callaghan. “There is no media element for the browser's normal tab mute control to stop. As far as the page is concerned, it is performing live audio processing. “In my case, that appears to have been enough for Firefox or Windows to keep the Bluetooth audio path active, preventing my multipoint headphones from switching cleanly back to the phone.” Callaghan found further evidence in the code looking for data related to screen dimensions, device memory, browser plugins, WebGL rendering, mouse events, and more. As well as signs that AliExpress is encrypting data and sending it to its telemetry services, the developer said all of it amounts to “a fairly comprehensive browser and device fingerprint.” The Register has asked Alibaba to comment. Despite Callaghan saying he could reliably reproduce this issue on both Firefox and Chrome, Firefox issued a Xtatement saying its anti-fingerprinting technology thwarts AliExpress’ tracking tricks. It pointed to a blog post from Tom Ritter, a security engineer on the Firefox team, who explained that as of version 118 (September 2023), the protections it introduced eliminated the efficacy of WebAudio-based fingerprinting. These protections are not designed to stifle fingerprinting efforts at the source. Instead, they work to group all users together, making it look like all fingerprinted users are the same, effectively nullifying the tracking attempts. For 99.24 percent of users, they fall into one of three “buckets” – user categories delineated by types of hardware. The vast majority fall into buckets one and two: Bucket one: x86/x64 CPUs lacking FMA (Fused Multiply-Add) instructions Bucket 2: x64 CPUs with FMA instructions And for the remaining 0.76 percent, the fingerprinting script failed entirely, according to Firefox’s data. However, Ritter said there are 48 users worldwide who do not fall into the three buckets, or the 0.76 percent whose machines did not allow the scripts to run. These 48 users fell into 23 other minuscule buckets, which means they are not grouped into the masses like the rest, and so fingerprinting is more effective on this vast minority of users. “This is very unfortunate, as it makes these users completely unique, but it is also not terribly unusual - computers are weird and these results could have been caused by bad RAM, a CPU bug, or possibly some crazy architecture (LoongArch??),” said Ritter. “But at the end of the day, WebAudio fingerprinting is nearly useless. I don't expect browser fingerprinting to disappear from websites entirely (unless some regulatory action occurs, fingers crossed) - it's still going to be effective against a majority of users on the web, but at least for privacy-focused browsers, it should be wildly less effective.” Brave, maker of the eponymous privacy-centric browser, also Xeeted a response to Calalghan’s findings, saying it has protected users from fingerprinting for six years. “Brave injects random data into the browser's output so you show a different fingerprint to different sites. This fingerprint also resets across sessions. “For added protection, we also block the specific scripts used by AliExpress for the tracking method mentioned above. Again, this is done by default for all Brave users. You don't have to change any settings to be shielded from this audio fingerprinting.” Ritter said Chrome and Safari “probably have defenses against this [brand of fingerprinting].” Safari deploys Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection to prevent WebAudio-based tracking and other methods of fingerprinting. It works differently to Firefox, though, injecting audio errors into an audio buffer, instead of trying to lump all users into an identical bucket. Chrome, on the other hand, does not aggressively protect users from fingerprinting, as privacy consultant Alexander Hanff said earlier in the year. "There are at least thirty distinct fingerprinting techniques that work in Chrome right now, today, as you read this," he wrote. "Not theoretical attacks from academic papers that might work under laboratory conditions – real, production techniques deployed on millions of websites to identify and track you without your knowledge or consent." ® Updated 08/25 at 1805 GMT to clarify the behavior was observed on AliExpress, which is Alibaba's B2C web site for small-scale purchases.

Are you sick and tired of maintaining a password manager? Struggling with choosing the right one for you? Well, readers who live Down Under can get themselves down to their local AusPost branch where they can pick up an old-school alternative for just AU$4.90 (US$3.51). Password books are something of a historical relic, phased out largely because of the scrutiny associated with using one and the now-gray-haired elders who once scoffed at the mere notion of such an opsec crime. They might not be able to suggest a strong password for each of your many online accounts, and they won’t do you much good if your house is burgled, but you could argue that there is still value to be found in a pen-and-paper password vault. That’s exactly the conclusion drawn by the thousands of social media users who flocked to a post this week from one Australian who found stacks of password books for sale in their local post office. Small books are priced at AU$4.90 (US$3.51), while larger options will set you back a dollar extra. Granted, there are myriad issues associated with relying on a physical document for digital account security. For one, it’s a single point of failure. Lose the book or have it stolen, and it’s a painful road to restoring access to all your accounts. One could argue that if it’s kept inside the home and it’s stolen, then you’ve got bigger problems on your hands, but perhaps that’s not as true nowadays, when so many of our valuables are either stored or primarily accessed online. That said, it might bring a quick end to a hostage scenario – the type that is becoming all the more common as crypto wealth becomes increasingly common. Password books are also not as easily manageable as a modern password manager. The technological equivalent can auto-fill credentials, auto-update them if they’re found in public breaches, and suggest unique, strong strings to minimize the risk of compromise. You can’t store a passkey in a password book, either – a major issue now that the world is transitioning toward the new authentication standard. But using a password book no longer carries the same stigma as it once did among infosec types. The general consensus, gleaned from the hundreds of social media comments on the post, now seems to be that there's little wrong with storing passwords on paper at home. It’s certainly more secure than reusing the same weak password across multiple accounts, provided the book contains strong strings unique to each website. With the prevalence of infostealers nowadays, it's far more likely that crims will use a weak, reused, seldom-changed password to break into an online account than burgle a house to gain access to someone’s online banking. Plus, as many pointed out, it’s a much better route than writing passwords in a cloud document, which can be accessed by any device that has access to it – think Apple Notes, Google Docs, etc. At work, though, it’s probably best to stick to the password manager, the IT guys say. Mistakes by staff working at even the lowest rungs of the corporate ladder could lead to multimillion-dollar cyberattacks should that password book fall into the wrong hands. Pentesting consultants often send hired white hats to breach a company’s office and extract whatever value they can, sometimes through piss corridors. Such access can lead to malicious USB sticks dropping malware, bugs planted near the water fountain, and even someone stealing the password book from your desk drawer. Don’t believe it’s real? Security consultant Alethe Denis told us two years ago that’s exactly how her pentest team was able to surreptitiously extract corporate data over a company’s own Wi-Fi for over a week. They went dumpster diving, got the Wi-Fi creds, walked straight into a conference room, and deployed a data-stealing implant. In and out, all using physically stolen secrets. Helpful in the worst of times So, yes, password books contain plenty of potential pitfalls, Poignantly, however, they often prove invaluable in the event of a loved one’s passing. Having access to a password book, or at least some sort of plan to share passwords in the event of a death, is vital to ensuring family and friends have space to grieve without going through the arduous process of recovering an account through a platform provider, or via the courts. A slew of Redditors agreed, saying it made the whole process so much easier. One shared the tale of how their mother’s own special way of storing passwords resulted in a treasured family investigation. After password books spent years as outcasts of the cybersecurity world, they’re now having a second moment in the sun. And while the leading minds in cybersecurity are busy working on ways to stop phisherfolk from hacking into your accounts, or rogue AI agents from doing the same, there’s still something to celebrate in the safeguards of yesteryear, both in life and death. ®

AI agents excel at hacking organizations, as they’ve demonstrated in real-life attacks multiple times over the past few weeks. They also expose a whole new attack surface for organizations trying to protect against both human and AI intrusions. As if defenders needed more worries to keep them up at night, agents introduce new data-integration channels that attackers can abuse. They also introduce a new type – and ever growing number – of non-human identities that are difficult to manage and can bypass traditional, static security policies. “There is tremendous risk associated with agentic AI and machine identities,” Matt Hartman, former acting head of cyber of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told The Register. “As AI moves from generating content – yesterday's use case – to taking actions, it is inevitable that agents are going to receive access to sensitive systems and sensitive data,” Hartman said. “One area where organizations are struggling today is that they're going to need to treat every agent as a privileged identity.” Enterprises also face agentic threats from outside their organization, he added. “AI-enabled or AI-amplified identity and social engineering attacks are increasing significantly by the minute,” Hartman said. “We're seeing very highly personalized phishing, very good impersonation, automated reconnaissance. That really makes traditional indicators of trust increasingly unreliable.” For defenders, this means a “continued focus on strong identity, on phishing-resistant authentication, on behavioral signals, and on zero-trust principles therein,” he added. “Nothing deeply new here - but it is a whole new attack surface.” Meanwhile, on the attackers’ side, agents don’t take time off, and they remain singularly focused on completing a task, whether that’s finding vulnerabilities and exploit chains or mapping networks and identifying sensitive files. All of this makes these near-autonomous attack bots a gift from the heavens for financially motivated criminals and government-backed cyber operatives. It also presents a security use case for defenders: agentic red teaming. As former NSA cyber boss Rob Joyce said during a talk at RSAC: if you aren’t using AI agents to attack your own organizations, you can bet that someone else is. “You are going to be red-teamed whether you pay for it or not,” Joyce said. “The only difference is, you know who gets the results delivered to them.” Hartman echoed Joyce’s words. “What we are seeing as the leading capabilities to help defenders – there is a burgeoning market for continuous, AI-native, AI-enabled, automated red teaming and pen-testing,” he told us. After spending nearly two decades in the federal government at CISA, Hartman joined Merlin Group in October as its chief strategy officer. In his new private-sector role, he helps determine which early- to growth-stage cybersecurity and emerging technology companies the group invests in, and then works with these firms to navigate government, critical infrastructure, and other highly regulated markets. The goal is to integrate and scale “promising technologies” into critical environments, Hartman said. Right now, most of these technologies use AI agents to fight AI agents. “Organizations are just inundated with vulnerabilities, and adversaries are able to leverage AI to find vulnerabilities and exploit them in seconds when it used to take days,” he said. Agentic red teaming “is a category of products that every organization, including federal agencies, absolutely needs in the near term just to keep pace.” 'Largest controlled live AI cyberattack on record' Mandiant founder and former CEO Kevin Mandia has a new company, Armadin, which launched in March with a startling $190 million in seed and Series A funding. The firm builds and trains autonomous attacker swarms – thousands of AI agents that run 24/7 in organizations’ infrastructure to simulate real-life attackers. Ahead of Black Hat earlier this month, the startup said it and Tenex.ai, an agentic security operations provider, executed what they called the “largest controlled live AI cyberattack on record” for an unnamed “leading” global institution. Over the three-day attack, Armadin's swarm generated 17 million offensive actions, discovered 38 validated attack paths, and produced 238 security findings. Tenex.ai's agentic platform separately triaged 100 percent of 101,169 alerts and reconstructed the entire attack across 231 billion raw events. This exercise, we’re told, would have taken a five-person analyst team about 2,400 hours – or four months – to pull off. Co-founder and Chief Offensive Security Officer Evan Peña was the global red-team lead at Mandiant before co-founding Armadin. At Mandiant, he led a 210-person team whose members spanned the globe. “The problem was it was 100 percent human-led security assessments, and that would generally limit the amount of time that we would have,” Peña told The Register. His red team “would do a couple weeks or a one-month engagement, and then we would report on the engagement, give them a PDF file, walk away, and they would hire us again in a year. In today’s age of AI, it’s very archaic to think about that when we can scale so significantly with AI.” Attack yourself before someone else does At Armadin, Peña leads the human team that trains the AI agents. One of the lessons learned from OpenAI’s models autonomously attacking Hugging Face, according to Peña, is that organizations need to perform safe offensive AI attacks against their own systems. "Safe" is the keyword here: remember OpenAI’s rogue models intentionally didn’t have any guardrails in place. Yes, his statement is self-serving as it's core to Armadin's business. But he’s not wrong. “Organizations can cover so much more attack surface because we are able to leverage these agents at scale, and we have three things that we didn’t have before,” he said. “We have more time, because agents don’t sleep and they don’t take holidays. There’s no workforce requirements for them.” Number two, he said, is expertise. Attack agents need pre-training before they are set loose on organizations’ infrastructure. They need to know how to code, and perform source-code review. They need to know how to do application security, how to spot network misconfigurations, and hack into different systems and networks. “And then you add post-training to that from human expertise,” Peña said. “Number three is coverage,” he said. “We were only able to cover a finite amount of attack surface in the past. So if you had 10,000 external systems with a limited amount of time and humans, you could maybe cover 2,000 or 1,000 of those within that particular period of time. Now we can cover all 10,000 in probably hours.” Armadin’s AI agents have broken into every single customer’s environment, according to Peña. “We have found over 50 zero-days, and by zero-days, I don't just mean this zero-day allowed you to deface a web page. That’s cool, but I want to break into your network from the internet,” he said. “The zero-days I'm referring to allow an attacker to get remote code execution on an actual system. They're very high-impact zero-days. We don't care about noise, we care about impact.” Quarterly pen-testing doesn't cut it anymore The biggest challenge these days for defenders is the scale and speed AI brings to previously manual attackers’ dirty work – like scoping potential victims, performing reconnaissance, identifying vulnerable systems and exploits, and reading logs. Now all of these tasks can be automated. Penetration testing needs to keep up, Jay Bavisi, founder and group president of EC-Council, told The Register. The largest and best organizations do pen-testing once a year to meet compliance requirements, and “the better ones” run these exercises quarterly, Bavisi said. This is largely because human-led pen-tests take about three months. “So you have a serious problem with speed,” he said in an interview. “Then comes the second problem, which is scope. Nobody pen tests the entire organization.” There’s also what Bavisi calls a “sophistication problem,” because different human pen-testers will produce varied results, and organizations can’t hire hundreds of thousands of humans to try to break into their networks on a continuous basis. “The bad guys are already using AI to get rid of the speed problem. You pen-test once a year for compliance. They do it all the time because you're a gold mine. They don't have a scope problem because they're not just looking at the crown jewels - they're looking at your entire organization. And they don't have a sophistication problem because they're using algorithmic systems.” In June, the global cybersecurity training organization began offering pen-testing professionals a sponsored attempt to take the CPENT AI examination, and upskill themselves for the AI era. For every participant who passes, the council donates $1,000 in cybersecurity training and certification credits to nonprofit partners. For every completed training program, regardless of an exam pass or fail, the nonprofits get $250, and all of this has a $1 million max. “The traditional model of pen-testing once a year or once a quarter, that’s going away, and AI will take over with automated pen-testing,” Bavisi said. “But will the role of pen testers vanish? No, it will not. It will evolve into something much bigger and something far more important.” AI systems and AI-integrated applications mean there’s a lot more for security professionals to try to break and break into, and humans need to determine: What is the result of this system breaking? What’s the business impact? What do I prioritize fixing? “The present pen-testers have to be reskilled into understanding business impact and being able to make those important engineering decisions,” Bavisi said. Meanwhile, “offensive AI security professionals are the ones that are going to have to test the robustness of AI systems, because AI systems will become the heartbeat of organizations,” he added. “Pen-testers have to become masters of testing LLMs, understanding agentic behavior, thinking about what is the harm taxonomy, figuring out what kind of guardrails did we put in place.” The job of pen-testers has changed, in other words. “It now has a far wider scope.” ®

Plus: Apple sends out an “unprecedented” number of spyware warnings, Ukraine hits a Russian ecommerce giant with cyber and drone attacks, and more.

An old friend messages you about an incredible crypto opportunity they’ve been using, showing screenshots of impressive returns. The platform looks professional and the interface is slick, so you decide to invest a few thousand dollars to test it. Seeing your money grow daily encourages you to add more. Just when you want to withdraw your funds, the platform vanishes overnight, your friend stops responding, and you realize the entire thing was an elaborate hoax designed to separate you from your savings.

Incidents like these don’t only target tech enthusiasts or risk-seeking traders. The victims also included retirees, first-time investors, and everyday people trying to build financial security who are systematically targeted by criminal operations.

If you are considering investing in cryptocurrency, this guide will help you learn about common types of crypto fraud, recognize their warning signs, and adopt strategies to avoid falling victim to crypto-related cyber threats.

Key Takeaways

• The 66% increase in crypto-related fraud over the previous year makes investment scams the costliest fraud category the country faces today.
• From early, short-lived crypto scams to today’s organized criminals, months of relationship-building, professional marketing, fake trading platforms, and smart-contract manipulation are used to appear legitimate.
• Individuals aged 60+ lost more than $2.8 billion in crypto-related scams in 2024, while people of all ages are targeted in social media, dating apps, and fake brokerage sites.
• You can dramatically reduce your risk in crypto investments by understanding how these scams work, recognizing red flags, and following essential security practices.

What Are Crypto and NFT Scams?

Crypto and NFT scams are fraudulent schemes that exploit the unique characteristics of blockchain-based digital assets to deceive victims and steal their money or tokens. Unlike traditional financial fraud, these scams leverage the irreversible and complex nature of blockchain transactions, the lack of consumer protection mechanisms in an unregulated sector, and the fear of missing out on the next big opportunity.

Cryptocurrency is digital money that uses cryptography for security and is traded on decentralized networks called blockchains. It is digital cash that no single bank or government regulates. On the other hand, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique digital certificates of ownership recorded on a blockchain, commonly used to represent digital art, collectibles, or membership rights. Being non-fungible means each token is one-of-a-kind and can’t be exchanged one-to-one like currency.

The scams targeting these assets take many forms, including fake investment platforms that display fabricated profits, fraudulent token projects where creators disappear with investors’ money, phishing websites that steal your digital wallet credentials, and long-con relationship scams. Unfortunately, transactions related to these scams cannot be reversed by calling your bank or credit card company. Once your crypto or NFTs are gone, they’re almost always gone for good.

Why Scammers Prefer Cryptocurrency and NFTs as a Payment Method

In 2024, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded 859,000+ cybercrime complaints, with total losses of $16.6 billion, a 33% increase over 2023. Of that total, approximately $9.3 billion involved crypto investments or payments, spread across roughly 150,000 complaints.

Losses from global rug-pull scams, which are phony crypto offerings that quickly skyrocket and then plunge to near worthlessness, reached nearly $6 billion in early 2025, despite a decline in incidents.

Scammers now prefer cryptocurrency as the payment method for all kinds of fraud, whether it’s for tech support, romance, phishing, or extortion scams, because it’s difficult to trace and impossible to reverse. The moment someone tells you to download a crypto wallet app or send payment via Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other digital currency, you’re likely dealing with a criminal.

Everyone Is a Target, But Some Groups Face Higher Risk

Because of the decentralized, borderless nature of cryptocurrency, international criminal syndicates are able to operate from jurisdictions with weak enforcement while targeting victims worldwide. This problem isn’t just affecting young, tech-savvy early adopters or risk-seeking day traders. It is also affecting ordinary people worldwide, including first-time investors and victims of other types of scams across all age groups.

Individuals aged 60 and over, who lost a total of $2.8 billion in 33,000 crypto fraud incidents in 2024, face particularly severe financial impact as this amount represents their life savings, retirement funds, or money earmarked for healthcare, housing, or supporting family members. The emotional and financial devastation extends far beyond the dollar figures.

Older adults are so heavily targeted because they’re more likely to have substantial savings available to invest, may be less familiar with how cryptocurrency works, and often have more time to engage with scammers. In some cases, individuals were seeking to financially recover after recent market downturns, making high-return crypto promises particularly appealing.

Younger investors are targeted through different channels, such as social media, but the fundamental vulnerability remains the same: the promise of quick wealth and sophisticated social engineering.

The Most Common Crypto and NFT Scam Types

Pig-Butchering Investment Schemes 

Considered the most devastating category, pig-butchering scams originate from the farming practice of fattening a pig before slaughter, chillingly describing the scammer’s approach. These long cons run for months as criminals build relationships with victims through dating apps, social media, or wrong-number texts that turn into friendly conversations.

Gradually, the scammer will introduce the topic of cryptocurrency, positioning themselves as either a successful investor or someone learning from a knowledgeable mentor. Patiently, they guide the victim onto a fake but professionally designed, fully functional trading platform that shows real-time market data and walk them through making initial deposits and trades. On screen, the victim sees their account balance grow, which encourages them to deposit increasingly larger sums. Many even liquidate retirement accounts, take out loans, or sell property to invest more.

When the victim attempts to withdraw funds, the platform suddenly requires tax payments or verification fees, or threatens frozen accounts unless more money is deposited. 

If victims refuse to send additional funds, the scammer ghosts them, the platform shuts down, and they discover that no trading ever occurred. Every dollar they sent went directly into criminal wallets.

Rug Pulls in Memecoins and DeFi Projects 

Modern rug pull schemes are named for the action of pulling the rug out from under someone and leaving them shocked or helpless. One popular rug-pull method involves memecoins such as Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, which were hype-driven cryptocurrencies inspired by internet trends. Another involves DeFi (decentralized finance) projects, which offer financial services such as trading, lending, and investing outside of traditional banks. 

Both can be legitimate, but their fast-moving, lightly regulated nature also makes them prime targets for scams, especially rug pulls where creators suddenly drain funds and disappear. However, these schemes do not offer a clear utility or roadmap, relying entirely on hype, memes, and community without articulating a specific use case, technical innovation, or development path.

To build credibility before they exit, scammers might:

1. Launch a crypto campaign with seeming transparency, using identities that are often stolen or fabricated
2. Seed a liquidity pool that is locked for a period to demonstrate their commitment
3. Employ obscure auditing firms that merely rubber-stamp the project without a genuine security review
4. Coordinate with influencer networks to create viral social media buzz around the fake crypto project
5. Use bot networks to simulate active trading and enthusiastic community discussion
6. Gradually siphon the funds through complex smart-contract functions while maintaining the appearance of locked liquidity
7. Finally drain the remaining funds and disappear, often blaming hackers or claiming the project was itself compromised

Phishing and Wallet-Draining Attacks

Targeting NFT holders and crypto traders, this evolving scam includes:

• Fake mint sites and marketplace clones: Scammers create websites that look identical to legitimate NFT platforms. Victims who connect their wallets to these phishing sites and approve transactions inadvertently sign malicious contracts that drain their assets.
• Discord and social media impersonation: Criminals compromise or imitate official project Discord servers, Twitter accounts, and Telegram groups, posting fake announcements about NFT drops or security updates that link to phishing sites.
• Malicious wallet updates: These involve fake browser extensions, mobile apps, or email warnings claiming your wallet software needs an urgent security patch. Once you install the malicious version, attackers access your private keys or seed phrases.
• Customer support impersonation: Scammers pose as support staff from crypto exchanges, wallet providers, or NFT platforms, asking victims to share security information or provide remote access to their computers to resolve fabricated issues.

The common thread across all these attacks is social engineering combined with the irreversible nature of blockchain transactions. Your confusion, an urgent email, one click, and your assets are gone with no way to reverse the transaction.

Crypto and NFT Scams Still Evolving

From 2020 to 2022, many of these early crypto and NFT scams consisted of poorly designed websites, unrealistic promises, and little effort to hide criminal intentions. Today, crypto criminals have become more efficient and effective. As an example, the number of rug-pull incidents declined by about 66% in early 2025, yet the total value stolen still exploded to $6 billion, up from roughly $90 million the year before. 

Organized crypto scam operations are characterized by:

• Multi-wallet structures where funds might pass through dozens of addresses across different blockchains before disappearing into mixers that blend transactions to hide their origin or are cashed out through unregulated exchanges.
• Honeypot smart contracts, which are seemingly legitimate tokens that can be purchased normally, but the underlying code contains hidden functions that prevent buyers from selling when they want to cash out. The contract is designed to trap liquidity, hence the name.
• Professional marketing and community-building, where scammers may hire website designers, influencers, and individuals to post fake positive reviews on social media. They could also deploy bots to simulate active trading and enthusiastic community discussion, and create fabricated LinkedIn accounts with AI-generated profile photos.

How to Protect Yourself from Crypto and NFT Scams Today

Protecting yourself from modern crypto scams requires more than awareness; it demands consistent habits, smart decision-making, and the right tools. As threats continue to evolve, building strong security practices today is the best way to stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated attacks.

Step 1: Decide If Crypto and NFTs Fit Your Risk Profile

Given that investment fraud is now the top fraud category by value in the U.S. and crypto-enabled fraud accounts for the majority of those losses, you will need to critically evaluate whether investing in cryptocurrency or NFTs aligns with your financial goals and risk tolerance.

This space combines extreme price volatility, complex technical requirements, irreversible transactions, minimal consumer protection, and a target-rich environment for criminals. If any of the following apply to you, your wisest choice is to proceed with extreme caution or avoid crypto investment entirely:

• You’re investing money you can’t afford to lose.
• You feel time pressure or fear of missing out, driving your decisions.
• You don’t fully understand cryptocurrency wallets, private keys, and blockchain transactions.
• You’re being introduced to the opportunity by someone you met only online.
• The promised returns seem unusually high compared to traditional investments.
• If something goes wrong, you likely have no way to recover your funds.

Choosing not to invest in crypto isn’t missing out, but making a risk-aware decision. Traditional, regulated investment vehicles may offer lower potential returns, but they come with legal protections, regulatory oversight, and mechanisms for recovering from fraud.

Step 2: Adopt Essential Anti-Scam Rules

If you decide to invest in cryptocurrency or NFTs anyway, adopt these fundamental security practices to dramatically reduce your vulnerability:

Never Send Crypto Based on Unsolicited Contact

If someone reaches out to you through any medium who steers the conversation to cryptocurrency investment opportunities, you’re almost certainly being targeted for fraud. Legitimate investment opportunities don’t find you this way.

Similarly, any communication that promises guaranteed returns, uses urgency, or pressures you before you can independently verify information is a red flag.

Verify Platforms Independently and Exhaustively

Before depositing funds anywhere, verify the platform’s legitimacy through multiple independent sources. Look for:

• Regulatory registration: Many scam platforms falsely claim regulatory compliance, so verify directly with your country’s regulator. In the U.S., check the websites of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for registered entities. 
• Independent reviews: Beyond testimonials or reviews on the platform, look for experiences on Reddit, Twitter, and crypto community forums. Scammers might seed fake positive reviews, so look for detailed negative experiences rather than just star ratings.
• Team transparency: Legitimate projects are run by real people whose professional backgrounds can be verified through LinkedIn, academic publications, or previous work. Note that AI-generated faces and bios are common in scams.
• Active audit reports: If a DeFi project claims to be audited, verify that the audit was performed by a reputable firm and read the report, not just the passed audit badge.
• Domain age and history: Use WHOIS lookup tools to check when a website’s domain was registered. Scam sites are often brand new, while legitimate platforms have longer operational histories.

Master Wallet Security Fundamentals

If you’re holding cryptocurrency or NFTs yourself rather than on an exchange, you’re personally responsible for security. Essential practices include:

• Use hardware wallets: These are physical devices such as Ledger or Trezor for significant holdings rather than software wallets on your computer or phone. Hardware wallets keep your private keys isolated from internet-connected devices, dramatically reducing risk.
• Store your seed phrase offline in multiple secure locations: This is the 12- to 24-word recovery phrase for your wallet. Write it on paper or stamp it on metal plates, never store it digitally in photos, cloud storage, or password managers.
• Never share your seed phrase or private keys: No legitimate support person will ever ask for these. If someone does, they’re attempting theft.
• Verify transaction details carefully before approving: Check that the recipient address, amount, and token type are exactly what you intend. Malware can change clipboard contents, so compare addresses character by character.
• Use a separate email account: Create a separate email address for your crypto activities, distinct from your day-to-day credentials, and enable two-factor authentication, preferably via authenticator apps rather than SMS.
• Be extremely skeptical: In the current environment, you should assume any new cryptocurrency token or NFT project is a scam until you’ve verified otherwise through sustained, careful research. 

Step 3: Respond Immediately If You’ve Been Scammed by Crypto and NFTs

Discovering you’ve been scammed is devastating, but taking immediate action could limit the damage and help law enforcement track and stop criminal operations:

Stop All Further Payments Immediately

Scammers often follow successful scams with additional pitches: recovery services usually run by the same criminals, tax payments supposedly required to unlock frozen funds, or claims that you’re so close to breaking even if you just invest a bit more. Every additional dollar you send is stolen money. Stop entirely.

Document Everything Comprehensively

Before anything disappears or times out, make sure to save:

• Screenshots of all conversations, transactions, and account dashboards
• Email messages, text messages, and voice messages
• Wallet addresses, transaction hashes, and blockchain records
• Platform URLs and any documents or contracts you signed
• Names, social media profiles, and phone numbers used by the scammers

This documentation is essential for law enforcement investigations and any potential recovery efforts.

Report to Multiple Authorities

While full recovery is rare, rapid reporting has occasionally allowed exchanges to freeze funds or helped international task forces seize assets before they’re fully laundered. Don’t expect miracles, but don’t assume recovery is impossible either.

Make formal reports to the:

• FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3): Even if your loss seems small compared to the billions reported annually, your complaint adds to the IC3 pattern analysis that helps identify and dismantle criminal networks.
• Federal Trade Commission: Complaints made to ReportFraud.ftc.gov feed into consumer protection initiatives and help identify trending scam tactics.
• Your exchange or wallet provider’s fraud team: If you used a legitimate platform for any part of the transaction, reporting the incident will enable your exchange or wallet to flag addresses or provide transaction data to investigators.
• Your local or state law enforcement: These agencies work with federal law enforcement, particularly if losses are substantial. 

Consider Professional Help for Significant Losses

If you’ve lost large sums, consider consulting with lawyers who specialize in cryptocurrency fraud or employing blockchain forensics firms that can trace funds across chains. 

Protect Yourself from Recovery Scams

After a crypto scam, many victims are approached by fake recovery specialists who claim they can get your money back for an upfront fee in, you guessed it, cryptocurrency. These are almost always the same criminals or their associates running a second scam. Legitimate legal professionals work on contingency or retainer, and will not ask victims to send cryptocurrency for recovery services.

Step 4: Install a Trusted Security Solution

Comprehensive cybersecurity solutions may not be a guaranteed shield against all fraud, but they serve as a critical layer that catches threats you might not spot in that moment. Solutions such as McAfee+ help block known phishing sites and warn you before you enter credentials or connect wallets to fraudulent platforms. They also help detect malware and keyloggers that capture your password and seed phrase keystrokes, take screenshots when you open wallet applications, or even replace destination addresses in your clipboard when you copy-paste. Antivirus and anti-malware tools continuously monitor for threats and help remove them before they can compromise your security.

A secure virtual private network (VPN) can protect your connection on public Wi-Fi networks or compromised routers, preventing man-in-the-middle attacks that might intercept your login credentials or transaction data.

Since many crypto scams begin with or lead to broader identity theft, identity monitoring services can alert you if your personal information, passwords, or financial details appear in data breaches or on dark web marketplaces. This early warning allows you to change compromised credentials before they’re exploited.

Final Thoughts

The rising number of crypto-related fraud incidents and losses represents a grim milestone. As long as these scams promise high returns and operate with minimal oversight, criminal organizations will continue developing new tactics to steal from investors. 

Going forward, your effective defense strategy will combine healthy skepticism, technical hygiene, continuous education, and practical tools. Approach any crypto investment opportunity with a questioning eye until you’ve independently verified that it is legitimate.

Maintain strong security practices, including using hardware wallets for significant holdings, storing seed phrases offline, enabling two-factor authentication everywhere, and carefully verifying transactions before approving.

Most importantly, build a network of trusted advisors, such as family members, friends, or financial professionals, who can offer guidance when you’re evaluating opportunities. Share what you’ve learned from this article and other McAfee guides with people in your life who might be exploring crypto investments, especially those who may be more vulnerable to relationship-based scams.

The post How to Spot a Crypto Scam: The Top Red Flags to Watch For appeared first on McAfee Blog.

A data breach doesn’t have to hit the company you shopped with directly to put your information at risk. 

That’s the lesson from this week’s Pokémon Center breach. Customers in the United Kingdom and Germany are being notified that personal and order information was exposed after attackers compromised CEVA Logistics, the third-party company used to fulfill and ship Pokémon Center orders. 

The good news: Pokémon Center says CEVA did not have access to customers’ payment-card information.  

The bigger concern is what criminals could potentially do with the information that was exposed, particularly when it can make a phishing message look unusually convincing. 

What Happened in the Pokémon Center Data Breach? 

According to breach notifications reviewed by BleepingComputer, attackers may have obtained Pokémon Center customers’ full names, mailing addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and information about the products they ordered. The affected customers were in the UK and Germany. 

The intrusion occurred at CEVA Logistics rather than Pokémon Center itself. Reporting indicates attackers accessed CEVA systems between late July and August 1, disrupting operations at eight European warehouses and affecting multiple retailers. Valve previously notified European Steam hardware customers that their information had also been exposed through the CEVA incident. 

Why Does Shipping Data Matter to Scammers? 

A name and email address may not seem as sensitive as a credit-card number. But when criminals also know your address, phone number, and what you recently bought, they have something valuable: context. 

Context helps scammers make phishing messages believable. 

Phishing is when a criminal pretends to be a trusted company or person to persuade you to click a malicious link, hand over a password, share personal information, or send money. 

After a breach like this, criminals could potentially impersonate Pokémon Center, a delivery company, or another retailer and reference details that make their message feel legitimate. 

They might claim an order needs to be rescheduled, a delivery fee must be paid, or a refund is waiting. Knowing that you really placed an order can make the bait much harder to spot. 

Importantly, there is currently no evidence that the stolen Pokémon Center information is being used in such a campaign. But personalized phishing is a common reason breached contact and transaction information deserves attention. 

Key Takeaways 

Pokémon Center says the breach occurred at its logistics provider, CEVA, not its own shopping platform. 

  Names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and order details may have been exposed. 

  Pokémon Center says payment-card information was not available to CEVA. 

  Real order details could make future phishing or delivery scams appear more credible. 

  Customers should independently verify unexpected messages about refunds, cancellations, or deliveries. 

3 Easy Safety Actions to Take If Your Information Is Exposed in a Data Breach 

Getting a breach notification doesn’t necessarily mean someone has already misused your information. It does mean you should take a few steps to make that information harder to use against you. 

1) Find out exactly what was exposed. Read the company’s breach notice carefully. An exposed email address calls for different precautions than a stolen password, Social Security number, financial information, or medical record.

2) Secure the accounts that could be at risk. Change any exposed or reused passwords, use a unique password for every account, and turn on multi-factor authentication where it’s available. If sensitive financial or identity information was stolen, consider a credit freeze or fraud alert as well.

3) Be extra skeptical of messages that know something about you. Breached information can help scammers create convincing emails, texts, and calls. A message that knows your name, address, recent purchase, or other real details isn’t necessarily legitimate. Go directly to the company’s website or app to verify unexpected requests rather than clicking a link or calling a number in the message.  

How McAfee Protects Against Breaches 

Before a breach  

Personal Data Cleanup reduces your digital footprint by removing your personal information from many data broker sites, making it harder for scammers to find and target you.  

Online Account Cleanup scans for accounts you no longer use and helps you delete them, along with your personal info.  

During a breach  

Identity Monitoring watches for your personal information, including email addresses, driver’s license numbers, passport numbers, bank accounts, credit cards, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, and more, across the dark web and known data leaks.   

Plus, we alert users on average up to 10 months earlier than similar services, so you can act fast when your personal information appears where it shouldn’t.  

After a breach  

Scam Detector identifies suspicious texts, emails, and links that often follow major breaches, while web protection blocks malicious websites designed to steal even more of your information. 

Other Scam and Security News This Week 

FBI warns about callers impersonating federal agents. The FBI’s Boston Division is warning about scammers who spoof its real phone number, pretend victims are connected to crimes, and then try to move conversations onto encrypted messaging apps. The key reminder: caller ID can be faked, and the FBI says it will not call private citizens to demand payment, threaten arrest, or request sensitive information. 

(Source: FBI Boston) 

CareCloud breach grows to more than 3.75 million patients. Healthcare technology company CareCloud has confirmed with federal regulators that hackers stole personal and medical information belonging to more than 3.75 million people, including Social Security numbers, health information, government-issued ID numbers, and some financial data. Because medical and identity information cannot simply be replaced like a password, affected people should take breach notifications particularly seriously. 

(Source: TechCrunch) 

Hacker claims millions of corporate directory records were stolen. A cybercriminal known as “TheHatman” is offering databases allegedly taken from the Microsoft Azure and Entra environments of several major companies, although some named organizations dispute that their current systems were breached and say portions of the information appear old. Even older employee information can still be useful for impersonation and targeted phishing, so the claims are worth watching without treating every advertised dataset as independently confirmed. 

(Source: TechRadar) 

This Week’s Safety Tips 

✓ Treat unexpected delivery messages with caution. Open the retailer or carrier’s official app or website instead of following a link in a text or email. 

✓ Don’t trust caller ID alone. Scammers can spoof a legitimate organization’s real phone number. 

✓ Use unique passwords and multi-factor authentication. Stolen personal information becomes more dangerous when criminals can also get into your accounts. 

✓ Pay attention to breach notices. Knowing exactly what information was exposed helps you recognize the scams criminals may try next. 

And we’ll be back next week with more cybersecurity news and scam alerts. 

The post Pokémon Center Breach Shows Why Your Delivery Data Matters: This Week in Scams appeared first on McAfee Blog.

One of the best ways to lower your AWS bill by 99 percent or more is by not checking your keys into public GitHub repositories. Many of us have done this inadvertently over the years, and the defenses against it have improved dramatically (my personal favorite being "using non-ephemeral credentials derived from OIDC or SSO is an anti-pattern"), but it still happens. On Friday, BleepingComputer reported on a Truffle Security finding that hundreds of leaked AWS keys are root keys and are somehow still active and valid. AWS Security is full of very smart people who care deeply about a number of things, including "not abetting crime." If they detect (usually via automated means) that a credential has been leaked, they're quick to apply a Quarantine Policy to it. Trouble is, that policy enumerates a bunch of bad behaviors in an ever-expanding graph of principals and associated behaviors. AWS' considered position on this is that they don't want to break customer environments: "The policy aims to limit the potential damage that may be caused by fraud-related activity leading to unauthorized charges, while not impacting the existing resources." AWS' considered position on this is wrong. If I get access to your credentials (much less a root credential, good god), deactivating them may very well break your workload because anything that relies on those credentials will start failing. Until you rotate them, those workloads will continue to fail. That's not good! But I promise you, as a bad actor, I can do far worse to you. Hold my tea Go ahead and apply a quarantine policy to a credential set and toss it my way. I won't be able to buy savings plans, read your S3 data, modify Lambda functions, and do a host of other things. But here's what I can do. Anything I damn well feel like on RDS. You don't have anything important in databases, right? ssm:SendCommand / ssm:StartSession are permitted, which means I can run commands as root on EC2 instances, which will in turn invoke with that instance role’s permissions. sts:AssumeRole means that I can assume any other role in the account and get its permissions, rendering the entire restriction list potentially moot. I can use autoscaling:CreateAutoScalingGroup / UpdateAutoScalingGroup to launch instances via the Auto Scaling service-linked role, so the ec2:RunInstances deny never applies. cloudtrail:LookupEvents gets denied (that'll stop you from... reading the audit log), but I can call both cloudtrail:StopLogging and DeleteTrail which do exactly what you expect; you don't have an audit log anymore. SES denies ses:GetSendQuota / ListIdentities actions, but y'know what's missing? SendEmail, so I can blast my spam out to your entire list. sns:GetSMSAttributes means I can't get your SMS configuration, but I can absolutely sns:Publish to send fraudulent text messages wherever I'd like. s3:DeleteObject gets denied, but s3:PutObject is allowed. I can't delete your data, but I can fill a bucket to petabytes. Next, they fail to block s3:PutBucketVersioning, s3:PutObjectLockConfiguration, s3:PutObjectRetention, and s3:PutObjectLegalHold. So on any existing bucket, like that one I just stuffed petabytes into, I can enable versioning, turn on Object Lock, and set a bucket-default COMPLIANCE-mode retention out to 2126, or alternatively slap it on per object. COMPLIANCE retention can't be shortened or removed by anyone, including the account root and AWS Support. The only way to remove it is to delete the entire AWS account. secretsmanager:GetSecretValue, ssm:GetParameter* (WithDecryption), and kms:Decrypt are all unencumbered, so your secrets are now my secrets. Sharing is good! Backups are important, so it's a shame you don't have any. Well, not after I kick off backup:DeleteRecoveryPoint / DeleteBackupVault, and rds:DeleteDBSnapshot. If you're using CloudFormation, and for some things you almost certainly are, cloudformation:DeleteStack going unmentioned means you're not using it anymore and all of your stacks are gone. I would make different choices This isn't a comprehensive list - just a few things that occurred to me over the course of about an hour. I'm not a bad actor; I'm almost positive that I'm missing a whole bunch. AWS is almost certainly going to change this. My question for them is simply, "how big of a customer incident needs to happen before you do?" ®

Hackers slipped malware into several popular Rust packages this week, turning routine software builds into a route onto developers' machines. The Rust Security Response Team disclosed the supply chain attack on Thursday after receiving a tip about a crate called proc-macro1. An investigation found that its build script fetched malware from a remote server. The attack extended beyond a single dodgy crate. Someone had published a new version of arrayref, a legitimate and widely used Rust package, with proc-macro1 added as a dependency. The attacker had also yanked recent legitimate releases of arrayref, helping steer users toward the poisoned release. The Rust team does not believe arrayref's maintainer was responsible. It suspects the developer's computer or credentials were compromised and locked the account while attempting to contact them. The attacker also published malicious versions of two other crates maintained by the same developer, internment and append-only-vec. The poisoned releases weren't around for long. Arrayref 0.3.10 was available on crates.io for 86 minutes, internment 0.8.7 for 90 minutes, and append-only-vec 0.1.9 for 107 minutes before they were removed. That's a narrow window, but arrayref is hardly some forgotten package gathering dust in the registry. Security firm Aikido, which separately analyzed the attack, puts arrayref at roughly 245 million lifetime downloads and append-only-vec at more than 4 million. However, those figures don't tell us how many developers pulled the malicious versions during the brief period they were live. Aikido found that the attacker largely left the legitimate source code untouched, adding only a dependency on proc-macro1, a typosquat of the legitimate proc-macro2 package. The malicious code was tucked inside proc-macro1's build.rs file. Cargo, Rust's package manager, runs build scripts during compilation. This allowed proc-macro1 to identify the operating system and processor architecture of the developer or build machine, download a matching payload, and execute it. Aikido found malware built for Linux, Windows, Intel Macs, and Apple Silicon Macs. The second-stage payload was more than a simple downloader. Aikido found code targeting Chromium-based browser data, including profiles for Google Chrome, Brave, and Microsoft Edge, as well as browser extension storage used by cryptocurrency wallets. It also found functionality to establish persistence and receive commands from the attacker's server. The Rust team also deleted proc-macro-en, aovine, arone, aronenao, and tinymember, warning that every version of those crates should be considered malicious. Developers have been urged to check their Cargo lockfiles and local registry caches for the affected packages. Rust credits Nextron Systems' research team with initially discovering and reporting the attack. It has not said how the legitimate maintainer was compromised, how many developers downloaded the poisoned releases, or how many systems ultimately executed the payload. The malicious packages may have lasted less than two hours on crates.io, but whoever was behind them chose a well-traveled route into developers' machines. ®

Cisco has revealed its Secure Workload Software, a micro-segmentation tool formerly known as Tetration that is supposed to stop attackers moving laterally across a network, has four critical flaws plus another high-severity bug. CVE-2026-20315 and CVE-2026-20317 are the two perfect-ten-rated bugs. Both relate to improper access control. Cisco has not offered much detail about either, saying only that 20315 “covers authorization, authentication, privileges, and bypasses” and that 20317 has to do with “missing authentication, authentication bypass, and reliance on untrusted inputs.” The 9.9-rated flaw is CVE-2026-20231, which describes issues related to “Improper neutralization of special elements (covers command, OS, argument injection).” CVE-2026-20318 is the 9.6-er and is an improper input validation problem. Coming in last, at 7.5, is CVE-2026-20319, a problem related to “Improper restriction of operations within the bounds of a memory buffer” including overflows and out-of-bounds writes. Cisco offers Secure Workload Software as a SaaS-y service and for on-prem deployment. The company has fixed the flaws with its SaaS, but users still need to upgrade the Agent and Connector tools needed to use the cloudy software. On-prem users who have deployed version 3.10 or earlier need to get to version 3.10.9.1. Users of version 4.0 or later need to adopt 4.0.4.16 sooner rather than later. Cisco revealed the flaws on Thursday and says it discovered them after “a comprehensive internal security review” that involved “existing testing processes as well as frontier AI models.” Cisco is a known participant in Project Glasswing, which grants access to Anthropic’s too-powerful-for-public-release Mythos bug-finding model. So maybe that’s the frontier model involved in this research. Thankfully, Cisco says it has detected no malicious use of the vulnerabilities. ®

Google is tracking three distinct suspected Russian cyber-spy groups that are targeting individuals in academia, aerospace, defense, government agencies, and think tanks across Europe and the US. The UNC (unclassified) groups, as Google calls them, have been orchestrating these highly targeted campaigns since at least last year, and they remain ongoing. Some of the phishing and OAuth-abuse operations used in the attack took place this month. Each campaign had fewer than 100 targets, and under 10 victims, the threat-intel team told The Register. Despite the small numbers, if you work in government, NGOs, academia, or aerospace, you may be a target, and over the past few months the Russian snoops have adapted their attacks to abuse legitimate authentication flows. This makes these types of social engineering tactics appear more legitimate – and allows the cyber operatives to compromise personal accounts across multiple platforms, Google warns. It also means that potential victims may not recognize these as phishing attempts. Google says it wants to raise awareness about these campaigns “so that targets can more readily recognize malicious outreach.” In other words: don’t blindly trust that calendar invite that purports to come from the US State Department. UNC6293 The security analysts have been tracking one of the three, UNC6293, for almost two years. UNC6293 is a suspected APT29 (aka Cozy Bear, which Google now tracks as Ice Relic – insert eyeroll) phishing squad that poses as US State Department employees to lure victims into giving the snoops long-term access to their email correspondence. APT29 is probably best known for the 2020 SolarWinds hack, and infosec analysts from the UK and US governments, and the private sector, often link it to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). On Thursday, Google’s Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said it's now tracking two other suspected Russian groups, UNC7005 and UNC5976, which also conduct phishing, abuse OAuth flows, and/or deploy malware to these same types of targeted individuals. Last summer, GTIG documented UNC6293 phishing for app passwords belonging to people who are critical of Russia. In this campaign, they impersonated State Department personnel, and they’ve continued using that lure while also adding OAuth phishing into their toolkit. “In June 2026, GTIG observed OAuth phishing where UNC6293 requested targets share either the full URL or ‘verification code’ after performing a legitimate login to an external provider,” Google threat analysts Gabby Roncone and Wesley Shields said in the Thursday report. “By providing the requested verification code the target would grant UNC6293 access to the account.” UNC7005 GTIG also asserts, with “moderate confidence,” that UNC7005 is another initial access group connected to APT29/Cozy Bear/Ice Relic – and the SVR. This crew, first identified in February, usually targets academia, diplomatic, and nonprofit personnel across Ukraine, Western Europe, and the US. While it shares similarities with UNC6293, Google tracks it separately “due to its lower sophistication and poor operational security, infrastructure with divergent characteristics, and incorporation of malware.” Reliaquest and Microsoft first sounded the alarm on this group - Redmond tracks UNC6293 as Storm-2945 - after spotting a campaign compromising captive portal networks to deliver infostealers, keyloggers, and other malware. The Russian intelligence operatives targeted users of public Wi-Fi networks at places like hotels, conference centers, and other shared venues in the hospitality sector in an AI-assisted operation that began in February. UNC7005 also enjoys device-code phishing for both Microsoft and WhatsApp accounts. Most recently, the phishing lures look like invitations to diplomatic events and conferences delivered via email with links to attacker-controlled websites. The crew also tends to reuse website templates. They did this in May, we’re told, re-using the website template from an operation that used the theme of an "embassy invite." The later campaign spoofed the real GLOBSEC forum - a geopolitical gabfest that focuses on Eastern Europe. Once victims visit the attacker-controlled website, the snoops fingerprint the victim’s system and prompt them to confirm their attendance at a conference. “The registration process is thorough, and notably contains an epicurean wine selection, which was a theme in multiple previous ICE RELIC-linked phishing campaigns,” the Googlers wrote. In May and June, UNC7005 carried out social engineering attacks spoofing WhatsApp and prompting the victim to either join a voice call, encrypted chat, or download a file. Joining the voice call triggers a malicious JavaScript that records audio and video of the target, which the malware uploads to the attacker’s command-and-control server. While Google doesn’t say how the Russians use the stolen images and audio, attackers can use both to help carry out convincing social engineering campaigns. Also in May, the goons conducted “a much broader phishing wave than any we had previously observed,” Roncone and Shields wrote. This one targeted prominent, mostly US-based academics, diplomats, and researchers whose work focused on Russia and former Soviet states. The miscreants’ website was more “elaborately built to social engineer the target,” with specific information about a resolution supporting Ukraine, plus contact details for general questions or tech support. Those contacts were a hotline to the attackers, not a helpdesk. When users click the button that, they believe, will download a “Summit Companion App” to read the full resolution, they inadvertently put infostealers on their own Mac OS and Windows devices. Since August, the same crew also started both Google and Microsoft account OAuth phishing operations using cloud infrastructure. UNC5976 Finally, UNC5976 is yet another suspected Russian cyberespionage group and again likes to steal OAuth tokens. GTIG began tracking OAuth-related activity from this crew in March 2026. In these campaigns, UNC5976 buys up several domains with names related to file sharing and then creates a cloud project related to the domain. The domains host a fake file sharing page that prompts users to “Continue with Google” via a popup link. The links takes them to a legitimate Google OAuth login page, asks them to sign in, and after authenticating the credentials redirects the victim to a Google Cloud project URL that saves the authentication token for the attacker. GTIG calls UNC5976 “distinct” from the other two initial access groups, and notes that this may indicate “differing strategic mandates and potential alignment with alternative Russian intelligence services.” It also uses dedicated infrastructure for post-compromise activity instead of residential proxies, plus more malware and tooling in its OAuth operations. ®

This week on “Uncanny Valley,” Andy Greenberg discusses sitting in on a war game simulating a cyberattack from the Chinese hacking group Volt Typhoon

US Bank says that it's investigating ransomware crew LockBit’s claims that it breached the financial institution and stole data, which the crims threaten to leak on September 3 unless the bank pays an extortion demand. "We have investigated this matter and the available evidence indicates that the claim regarding a potential cyber incident is related to a fourth party event that occurred outside of our environment. At this time, there is no evidence that our systems, networks or data repositories were compromised," Lee Henderson, US Bank VP of public affairs, said in an emailed statement to The Register. If the extortionists’ claims are true, and even if the bank pays the ransom demand, there’s still no guarantee that the digital thieves will delete the stolen files. When cops took down an earlier iteration of LockBit in 2024, they found evidence that the crooks retained victim data - even after the victims paid the extortion demands. “We have provided relevant information to law enforcement and continue to support their investigation," Henderson continued. "The security and privacy of our customers’ information is our highest priority. We will continue to provide updates as warranted.” LockBit added the bank to its leak site late Wednesday night, and gave the bank 14 days to pay a ransom demand or else see its data dumped online. The post doesn’t say how many files the crew allegedly stole, or what they contained. In February 2024, international cops seized servers, domain infrastructure, and decryption keys in an effort to dismantle the notorious ransomware group, and in May 2024, they outed LockBitSupp's true identity - although Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev, a Russian national, remains at large. In September 2025, however, LockBit reemerged with its new LockBit 5.0 ransomware variant. LockBit’s latest claims follow previous third-party breaches affecting US Bank customers’ data, and at least one law firm says that it’s considering a class-action lawsuit against US Bank National Association, the primary banking subsidiary of US Bancorp, on behalf of a small group of customers whose credit card information may have been exposed in a third-party security snafu that reached the bank through its vendor, Fidelity National Information Services. US Bank reportedly found out about the third-party incident on May 7, and in June, began notifying 537 customers, all Massachusetts residents, that their names, mailing addresses, and credit card numbers may have been stolen by the digital crooks. Customers’ Social Security numbers, online banking credentials, and account balances reportedly weren’t accessed. A much larger incident affecting around 11,000 customers occurred in 2022, after a different vendor “accidentally shared” a file containing personal information associated with closed US Bank credit card accounts, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, closed account numbers, and outstanding balances.® Updated on Aug 21 with a new statement from US Bank.

A young security researcher figured out a way to enroll a Linux device into Apple’s Find My network and read live location data from it. Find My is Apple’s app for, you guessed it, finding things – whether AirTags, iPads, or other supported devices and items. It also works for people. Families can track each other's whereabouts for safety reasons, and friends can tell when others are hanging out without them. In typical Apple fashion, though, the full Find My experience is limited to Apple hardware, like an iPhone or Mac. iBiz also offers Find Devices via the iCloud website, although it lacks Find My’s people-tracking feature for viewing locations others have shared with you. However, the 22-year-old researcher, who goes by “Zerotistic,” devised a way to enroll a Linux-based machine into the iNetwork, tricking Apple into sending the people-location data it exclusively reserves for Apple devices. It’s important to note, at this point, that this is not an exploit that allows anyone to arbitrarily retrieve any Apple user's location. It refers to registering a non-Apple device to the Find My network and retrieving the location data of people who had already chosen to share their locations with the Apple account owner. Retrieving people-location data requires Apple to trust that the machine you’re using belongs to its network and is capable of receiving the data, which is sent over Apple’s Push Notification service (APNs). The first step was tying the Linux machine to the researcher’s Apple account. Zerotistic obtained an identity delegate by going through Apple’s standard GrandSlam authentication protocol. In pursuit of an Apple Identity Services (IDS) device certificate, which links the intended device to an Apple Account, they then used that delegate to build a custom certificate signing request (CSR). Lots of trial and error later, Zerotistic discovered that the CSR had to use the PKCS#10 format and a 2048-bit RSA key signed using SHA-1, linking the Linux machine to their Apple account. They bundled this up into a compressed XML file and sent it to Apple’s authenticateDS profile-enrollment endpoint. The SHA-1 signature requirement and XML encoding were surprises. The researcher’s “best guess” is that the CSR had to conform to older standards because authenticateDS is a legacy endpoint. Apple signed the CSR, handing the Linux device the IDS certificate needed to register its public key to the researcher’s Apple account. The Linux device was registered at this point, but further work was needed to convince Apple that it was capable of running Find My. Zerotistic found that a Find My registration request required the device to subscribe to six different subservices, define the types of encryption it supported, and provide the public keys to support Apple’s device-to-device messaging format. It also had to be signed using an IDS certificate and an APNs certificate obtained during initial network setup. At this point, the researcher had enrolled the Linux machine in an Apple account and convinced Find My that it was capable of receiving location data via a persistent binary TLS connection to Apple’s private APNs servers. However, this registration did not automatically retrieve the location data of people who had previously shared their locations with Zerotistic, as a box-fresh Apple device would after setup. Issuing a SubscribeAndFetch request fixed this, prompting the device of the researcher’s friend to push an encrypted location key to the newly registered Linux device. The final challenge was reading the location data the Linux device fetched from Apple’s SearchParty service. Zerotistic was not simply using the GUI Find My app on Linux; they were receiving the encrypted data and had to figure out how to unpack the location message. This required a Linux script to unwrap Apple’s messaging envelope, extract the shared location key, and decrypt the Find My location data, which is comprised of coordinates, timestamps, and accuracy information. Once developed, the script could fetch and decode subsequent location reports for the existing location share. It took the researcher less than a week of tinkering to develop the Find My-busting technique, they said. The Register asked Apple if it was aware of the researcher’s work and if it had any plans to address the issue, but it did not immediately respond. ®

Authored by Aayush Tyagi 

What McAfee Labs found 

McAfee Labs’ latest investigation into the WeedHack malware campaign found that the threat has continued to evolve even after its original command-and-control infrastructure was disrupted by McAfee. Researchers identified multiple active websites still distributing WeedHack to gamers, often by impersonating legitimate Minecraft clients, offering paid tools for free, or using trusted platforms to make malicious downloads appear credible. 

Among the findings: 

→ More than 6,300 attempts to access malicious sites were blocked by McAfee WebAdvisor in the past month. 

→ Researchers found lookalike gaming websites designed to closely replicate legitimate projects, including their branding, feature lists, FAQs, installation guides, developer credits, and links to genuine GitHub repositories. 

→ In one case, the top two Google results observed by researchers for a popular Minecraft client led to sites distributing WeedHack, demonstrating how SEO poisoning can put malicious downloads directly in gamers’ paths. 

→ Nearly half of the malicious URLs identified were Discord links (49.6%), followed by MediaFire (23.4%) and GitHub (8.2%), showing how attackers can use familiar platforms alongside fake websites to distribute malware. 

→ Researchers also identified a malicious site built using an AI-powered website creation platform, illustrating how readily available tools can make it easier to launch convincing new malicious sites. 

Threats like these show why protection needs to start before a malicious download ever reaches your device. McAfee helps block dangerous websites and downloads before malware has a chance to install, helping you stay focused on the game. 

Threats like these show why protection needs to start before a malicious download ever reaches your device. McAfee helps block dangerous websites and downloads before malware has a chance to install, helping you stay focused on the game. 

Background 

2026 has seen a significant shift in malware tactics, where traditional perimeter breaching techniques are being traded in for more elusive methods, such as AI-powered phishing and widespread deployment of Info-stealer malware. Over 560,000 new malware variants are detected every day, with infostealers accounting for the most active category.

McAfee Labs has also seen a significant spike in Malware-as-a-service (MaaS) campaigns, that offer their customers access to sophisticated infostealers and backdoor malware samples at minimal cost. These campaigns provide detailed tutorials to their customers, teaching them how to target popular gaming software, develop authentic-looking websites, and implement SEO Poisoning techniques in order to bamboozle gamers and infect their systems. 

Introduction 

Recently, McAfee Labs has covered a Malware-as-a-service campaign, called ‘Weedhack’ that infected over 116,464 gamers and utilized SEO Poisoning techniques to infect such a large user base.

Read the original article here: Game Over: WeedHack – The Rise of Minecraft Malware-as-a-Service Campaigns

While uncovering the depths of this campaign, we’ve encountered multiple websites and file hosting services that are still active and distributing WeedHack malware. In this article, we cover some of the most prominent examples we’ve encountered in the wild to educate our readers and provide key insights on how to identify and avoid such malicious websites.  

Note: This list is not exhaustive, and there may be additional websites that are not covered in this article.

Malicious websites spreading WeedHack 

During our investigation of this campaign, we observed that most of these websites appear legitimate, as they are well-crafted and often mimic legitimate websites. We observed a series of dedicated brand-impersonation attacks targeting several popular Minecraft clients. 

We published the original article in the first week of July, and, as a result, we’ve seen a disruption in WeedHack’s campaign: its C2 server is no longer active. Consequently, we have observed a shift in tactics by these attackers.  

The WeedHack Dashboard has been taken down, yet we’ve discovered websites that are actively spreading WeedHack malware.  

Out of these URLs, most belonged to file-hosting services:  

• 49.6% were Discord links 
• 23.4% were MediaFire links, 
• 8.2% were GitHub links 
• 4.6% were Dropbox links 

The remaining URLs were customer-facing websites designed to deceive users. 

In the last month, McAfee WebAdvisor has prevented more than 6,300 users from accessing these malicious websites. At the time of writing this blog, the following websites were still distributing WeedHack malware.  

 

This website ‘glazed-client.com’ replicates the original website called ‘glazedclient.com’. It provides a free and open-source Minecraft add-on called ‘Glazed Client’ designed specifically for DonutSMP server.  
 
The website contains a feature list, along with Archive, Credits, and FAQ sections, that are identical to those on the original website. 

Under the download section, the website provides three download options, and all of them are infected with WeedHack.  

This website has a GitHub link, which links to a legitimate GitHub repository in order to build trust with the visitors.  

Example 2 – radium-client.com 

 

The website ‘radium-client.com’ is replicating a legitimate website called ‘radiumclient.com’. The original website offers Minecraft client for $9.99 per month, but the malicious website offers the same tool for free.  

The malicious replica also has a detailed feature and download section. The downloaded JAR file is infected with WeedHack.  

In this instance, the malicious website contains a discord link, similar to the original website, but it points to a channel called ‘EasyClients’, that has over 1,900 members.  

This channel offers 7 different DonutSMP clients for free (Image 7, Highlighted in Red) which are also infected with WeedHack.  

Example 3 – seedcrackerx.github.io 

In this example, we see GitHub’s web hosting service ‘GitHub.io’ being exploited by attackers. Here they are impersonating ‘SeedCrackerX’ tool, which is a Minecraft seed cracking software capable of identifying the exact world seed used to generate a Minecraft world.  

Here, the malicious websites imitate the original website ‘seedcrackerx.com’, by replicating its fonts and color palette. The website also includes an elaborate tutorial and FAQ section, educating the visitors on how to properly install the tool. 

Under the download section, the website offers seven versions to choose from, but all of them are infected with WeedHack. (Highlighted in Red) 

This malicious website has also linked the genuine GitHub repository hosting the SeedCrackerX tool (Highlighted in Green), to appear more legitimate.  

Example 4 – xenoclient.lol and xenonclient.com 

Xenon Client is one of the most popular Minecraft Clients, known for being lightweight, community driven and offering niche vanilla-friendly utilities. Given its widespread popularity, this client is a prominent target for threat actors.

 

During our research, we identified that the top two Google search results for ‘Xenon Client’ directed users to websites (Highlighted in Red) that are spreading WeedHack.  

The “xenoclient.lol” website is particularly noteworthy, for the range of features and support it offers. The website includes comprehensive download and installation guides, as well as FAQ and Credits sections. Additionally, it lists the original Xenon Client GitHub repository and features a community section for like-minded gamers, further enhancing its professional appearance. 

It offers 2 purchase options for free and premium, where the premium version is listed for $5.  

The free option, on the other hand, offers six download options for the main client and six additional options for the client optimizer. At the time of writing, only one download link remains operational (highlighted in red), and it delivers a payload infected with WeedHack. 

Another website, “xenonclient.com,” is also targeting Minecraft players, luring them with a free version of the same client. 

Similar to other websites in the campaign, this site includes an installation guide and a feature list for the Xenon Client to enhance its apparent legitimacy.  

The final JAR file downloaded from this website infects users with WeedHack. 

Example 5 – nova-client.com 

Nova client is an open-source client designed for Minecraft Bedrock Edition.

 

This client is an easy target for attackers because it lacks an official website. The legitimate client is hosted on GitHub and Modrinth; however, attackers have created a spoofed website and leveraged SEO poisoning techniques to outrank the official sources in search results.  

This website also includes a Features page, installation guide, and FAQ section. In addition, it displays screenshots from the legitimate Nova Client to deceive users. 
 
What is interesting here is that attackers have also included a credits section, which is common with legitimate Minecraft client websites. However, they do not mention anyone who has actually worked on the project and instead used generic team names.  

The download section provides Nova Client for Minecraft 1.21.11, but the download file spreads WeedHack malware. 

Example 6 –  cheatlib.xyz 

CheatLib advertises that their clients have been downloaded over 1.6 million times, are free from malware and offers round-the-clock support.

 Similar to other such websites, it also features a setup guide and a FAQ section to address common user issues. 

They provide eight Minecraft Mods and inform users which Minecraft servers and anti-cheat systems they can bypass, as well as the current status of each mod.  

Although the website offers eight distinct mods, all eight files share the same hash and distribute the WeedHack payload. 

This website also links to a Discord channel called ‘CheatLib’ with over 220 users, which also provides access to WeedHack infected mods. 

Example 7 – meteorclients.com 

This malicious domain ‘meteorclients.com’ is impersonating a legitimate website ‘meteorclient.com’. They claim that this client has been downloaded over 10 million times and has over 15 thousand active users at any given time.  

The Team section contains the names of the legitimate Meteor Client developers, which appear to have been copied from the project’s official website, to create an appearance of authenticity.  

They also provide an interactive preview of Meteor client on the website, enabling users to test and familiarize themselves with the client. The website offers a single download option, which is infected with WeedHack. 

Example 8 – 22qq-client.com 

22qq-client is a Minecraft Mod for Crystal PVP servers.

This mod does not have a dedicated website, and attackers are exploiting this issue. This website is meant to serve as the official page for the client. 

The attackers attempt to establish credibility by using screenshots from the legitimate client.  

They also offer an interactive preview of the client to give users an overview of its functionality. This website provides multiple download buttons, but all of them download the same JAR file, which is infected with WeedHack. 

Example 9 – kryptonclientcrack.lovable.app 

Krypton Client is a paid Minecraft tool for DonutSMP server, hosted on ‘kryptonclient.org’. This malicious counterpart claims to offer a cracked version of the tool.  

The attackers have used an AI-powered tool called ‘lovable.app’ that allows customers to build and launch functional web applications and websites, using natural language. Such tools make it easier for attackers to deploy new malicious domains on the fly.  

The website claims that the tool has been downloaded more than five thousand times and has been thoroughly tested for safety. They offer a single download option, which is infected with WeedHack. 

Example 10 – File Hosting Services  

In the course of our investigation, we observed that multiple attackers were exploiting various file hosting services to spread malware. 

Links to these websites are then distributed via different communication channels, such as Discord, Reddit and other online platforms. 

We also observed that threat actors extended their targeting beyond Minecraft clients, compromising various popular and independent community websites within the Minecraft ecosystem.

At the time of this analysis, the following Planet Minecart links were spreading WeedHack malware. 

hxxps://static.planetminecraft.com/files/resource_media/mod/mousetweaks-fabric-mc1-21-9-2-29.jar 

hxxps://static.planetminecraft.com/files/resource_media/mod/no-delay-optimizer1-21-4.jar 

Similarly, we observed another community website, called EndMods was also targeted by WeedHack.

The following link is still active, at the time of publication, and is still spreading the WeedHack malware.  
hxxps://endmods.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/KRYPTON-CLIENT1.0.zip 

How To Protect Yourself Online 

At McAfee Labs, we investigate threats across the digital landscape, and gamers are a frequent target. We’ve seen multiple malware-as-a-service campaigns similar to WeedHack use fake downloads, impersonated websites, malicious mods, and other lures to target gaming communities. 

AI-powered tools can make it faster and easier for scammers to create convincing websites, imitate legitimate services, and launch new campaigns at scale. That makes it even more important to know what you’re downloading, and where it’s coming from. 

Here are a few ways gamers can stay safer: 

→ Stick to trusted sources. Download games, mods, clients, and other files from official developer websites or reputable mod platforms whenever possible. If you can’t verify the source, don’t download it. 

→ Never turn off your security software for a download. Be suspicious of any mod, cheat, or client that tells you to disable your antivirus or other protections before installing it. 

→ Scan files before opening them. Check downloaded mods, installers, and archives before running them — even if they came from a popular gaming community or website. 

→ Be skeptical of offers that seem too good to be true. “Free” premium features, exclusive cheats, cracked software, or paid clients can be used as bait to convince gamers to download malware. 

→ Check the URL before you download. Scammers can create lookalike domains and convincing copies of legitimate gaming sites. Small changes in a web address can be a sign you’re on an impersonation site. 

→ Pay attention to security warnings. If your antivirus flags a download, don’t automatically assume it’s a false positive. Stop and investigate before allowing the file to run. 

→ Keep your devices and software updated. Install updates for your operating system, browser, games, and security software to help protect against known vulnerabilities. 

Indicator of Compromise(s)  

hxxps://glazed-client.com/

hxxps://github.com/Hl3n/GambleRigMod

hxxps://www.radium-client.com/

hxxps://discord.com/channels/1467145812906872834/

hxxps://seedcrackerx.github.io/

hxxps://github.com/seedcrackerx/seedcrackerx.github.io

hxxps://xenonclient.com/

hxxps://xenoclient.lol

hxxps://nova-client.com/

hxxps://cheatlib.xyz/

hxxps://discord.com/channels/1478170973755936990

hxxps://meteorclients.com

hxxp://22qq-client.com/

hxxps://kryptonclientcrack.lovable.app

hxxps://github.com/lsellh/

hxxps://static.planetminecraft.com/files/resource_media/mod/mousetweaks-fabric-mc1-21-9-2-29.jar

hxxps://static.planetminecraft.com/files/resource_media/mod/no-delay-optimizer1-21-4.jar

hxxps://endmods.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/KRYPTON-CLIENT1.0.zip

 

The post WeedHack Returns: How SEO Poisoning is Leading Minecraft Fans to Malware appeared first on McAfee Blog.

France's tax authority says attackers may have stolen the contents of messages exchanged with hundreds of taxpayers during the data raid it confirmed last week. In an update published this week, the General Directorate of Public Finances (DGFiP) said lists of messages exchanged with the authority were exposed. For around 250 people, the compromised information also included the messages themselves. Slightly more than 350,000 individuals were affected. The other exposed data included tax identification numbers, marital status, email and postal addresses, and phone numbers. Tax records also exposed details such as household composition, number of dependents, family quotient, reference tax income, and withholding rates. Beyond the personal and tax information, DGFiP said the other affected datasets contained information that was already publicly available. For approximately 250,000 businesses and professionals, the affected data was limited to company names and SIREN numbers, the unique nine-digit identifiers assigned to French businesses. The compromised cadastral data was limited to property addresses and dimensions, which DGFiP said were already publicly available. DGFiP said it was notifying affected taxpayers by email or post this week. DGFiP's latest FAQ pegs the total number of affected parties at roughly 600,000. That appears lower than the 678,000 "individuals and professionals" DGFiP said were affected last week, shortly after the alleged cybercriminal behind the attack, "ZeroBytes," claimed to have stolen data belonging to more than 2 million. The authority did not explain the discrepancy. The notifications warn that criminals could use the stolen details to make phishing attempts appear more convincing. DGFiP highlighted impersonation attempts, CEO fraud, and scams involving bogus bank advisers as possible follow-on attacks. The authority said it would never ask taxpayers to provide sensitive information such as PINs or identity documents by phone, text message, or email, and would request such material only through its secure portal. Separately, the tax authority disclosed a "technical vulnerability" in the government's Vacant Successions Portal (PSV), which is used to search for estates without known heirs. DGFiP suspended the service after discovering the flaw. It said there was no evidence so far that personal data had leaked, although its investigation into possible exposure of applicants' details continues. The incident adds to a torrid year for cybersecurity across France's public sector. In February, the finance ministry, which oversees DGFiP, 'fessed up to an intrusion into a database containing citizens' bank details that affected 1.2 million people. The Health Ministry confirmed in March that 15.8 million administrative files, 165,000 of which contained doctors' notes, were stolen during an attack on healthtech company Cegedim Santé. A month later, a 15-year-old allegedly carried out an attack on France Titres, which handles the country's identity documents. The attacker claimed the breach affected between 18 million and 19 million people. In June, France also began probing an alleged breach of Tchap, the government's encrypted messaging platform, after attackers claimed to have accessed 73,000 user accounts, 643,000 messages, and nearly 60,000 media files. ®

PWNED Welcome back to PWNED, the column where we make fun of those who are security self-owned, so hopefully you don’t do the same. This week, we have a story that’s hot off the presses about a company almost sabotaging its security by using AI for programming. Have a story about someone leaving a gaping hole in their network? Share it with us at pwned@sitpub.com. Anonymity is available upon request. Our tale of machine learning malfeasance comes courtesy of Sergiy Fitsak, managing director of Softjourn, a consulting and software development company. He reminds us that, when it comes to AI, don’t trust: verify. During the course of business, one engineer asked an AI agent to recommend a package that they needed for a common task. The agent came back with the name of a legitimate-sounding package, which was formatted like a familiar library. At many organizations, this would have been the end of the story. The developer would have taken the AI agent’s advice and downloaded and installed the recommended package. However, at Softjourn, the company has a policy which they actually followed: double-check any software recommendations made by AI to make sure they are legit. The developer skimmed the recommended package’s source code on GitHub and noticed that it had few downloads and had just been created a few days earlier. In other words, it was suspicious. According to Fitsak, attackers have found a way to exploit package names hallucinated by AI models. “The problem is that AI models sometimes invent package names that sound plausible but don't exist, a pattern security researchers have started calling 'slopsquatting,'” he told us. “Attackers have caught on and now register real packages under those exact invented names, betting that a developer under deadline pressure will install first and check later.” If Softjourn hadn’t been so careful, they could have installed a malware package. We don’t know the exact payload, but this malware package could have given crims a backdoor into their systems and the ability to steal data or wreak other havoc. “We caught it because we'd already built a habit of verifying download counts and reviewing source code on GitHub before installing anything an AI recommends, even when it looks routine,” Fitsak said. “It takes a few extra minutes. Skipping that step once is how a team ends up explaining a supply chain compromise instead of shipping a feature on time.” The lesson here is a very simple one: Don’t trust the package names that AI agents recommend. Have a human check the supply chain. And always have a human in the loop so they can take the time to stop and approve any outside code that comes into a project. ®

Attackers are using AI-generated exploitation scripts to break into internet-exposed Siemens S7 Series programmable logic controllers (PLCs) at water, manufacturing, energy, and other critical facilities, in what five US federal agencies on Wednesday called an “active threat.” In this latest round of intrusions against American critical infrastructure, the attackers use open source industrial automation libraries – specifically snap7.dll/python-snap7 – combined with AI coding assistants. Armed with the open source libraries and AI, the miscreants create custom tools that mimic operational technology (OT) monitoring software and provide read/write access to the PLC devices’ memory, configuration data, and ladder logic programs via the S7comm protocol. “This is not a theoretical risk – it is an active threat,” the feds warned. While the joint alert from the National Security Agency (NSA), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Energy (DOE), and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) doesn’t attribute the threats to a particular government or criminal group, Iranian cyber operatives are suspected of being behind recent attacks targeting PLCs at water and wastewater facilities across at least 12 states, including a cyberattack that disrupted more than 30 community water systems in Minnesota in late July. “This appears to be a continuation of the same suite of activity we suspect is affiliated with Iran targeting PLCs,” Cynthia Kaiser, Halcyon Ransomware Research Center SVP, told The Register. “Iran-affiliated actors and adversaries are actively targeting a wide swath of operational technology because these PLCs underpin essential health, safety, and critical infrastructure across society.” National security and infosec experts last week told The Register that while there is no indication that the water-system hackers used AI in their intrusions, they worried that attackers would soon add AI to their arsenals for attacks against critical infrastructure. Now, that threat appears to be here. “What the advisory highlights with regard to AI usage aligns with what we’ve expected: state-sponsored adversaries are leveraging AI across the board for discrete tasks, like code checks and scripting, to scale their operations and move faster,” Kaiser, a former FBI cyber division deputy assistant director, told us on Wednesday. “The advisory reflects the broader reality that threat actors are using AI to increase their efficiency.” Siemens S7 Series PLCs under fire According to the Wednesday security alert, the latest attacks specifically target internet-exposed Siemens S7 Series PLCs across critical manufacturing, energy, water and wastewater, chemical, food and agriculture, and commercial facilities – in other words: most of the critical industries providing goods and services that Americans use in their daily lives. “Additionally, Siemens S7 Series PLCs are used in other sectors, including the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), and could be targeted there as well,” the feds warned. The Register reached out to the agencies for additional information about the attacks but did not receive any response to our questions. Attackers use internet-scanning services such as Censys and ZoomEye to find exposed, “poorly protected” PLCs running outdated software or using default passwords – and now they’ve got an AI boost. “Threat actors are using AI assistance to generate exploitation scripts using publicly available information on these Siemens S7 Series PLCs for initial access, credential access, denial of service, and other objectives,” the agencies said. “If these PLCs are exposed to the Internet or insufficiently segmented, then threat actors can exploit various critical and high severity known vulnerabilities in these PLCs.” The use of AI also indicates “an evolution in threat actor capabilities,” reducing the need for advanced technical knowledge about OT, and allowing the attacker to more rapidly develop working industrial control system malware and attack chains, the alert says. “I think that the bigger issue is still how exposed OT environments are,” Benny Czarny, CEO and founder of critical infrastructure security firm Opswat, told The Register in an email. “AI makes it much easier for an attacker to create and modify scripts targeting PLCs, so the barrier to attacking industrial systems continues to fall. But for me the answer is not simply better AI detection.” To mitigate this threat, the feds say critical infrastructure owners and operators should first – immediately – inventory all Siemens S7 Series PLCs in their environment, apply security patches as needed, and make sure no PLCs are accessible from the internet. It's also worth checking for anomalous S7comm behavior, including connections from non-engineering workstations, unusual data block access patterns, or write operations outside change windows, the feds suggest. Sequential IP scanning on port 102 and repeated connection attempts with varying parameters can indicate attackers conducting reconnaissance, and Snap7.dll library usage outside approved workstations may also indicate the presence of intruders on the network – so be sure to use these and the rest of the detection strategies detailed in the government security advisory to hunt for anomalies that may indicate a compromise. In addition to looking for indicators of compromise relevant to these intrusions, Czarny said it's critical to reduce the OT attack surface. “If data only needs to leave an OT network, use a data diode,” he said. “There should be no network path back to the PLC for an attacker to exploit. Yes, AI makes this more urgent. But the real lesson for me is still the same: stop giving attackers a path to the critical system in the first place. And do not rely on antivirus and sandboxes to protect your data flow.” ®