Two Cybersecurity Professionals Get 4-Year Sentences in BlackCat Ransomware Attacks

The U.S. Department of Justice DoJ on Thursday announced the sentencing of two cybersecurity professionals to four years each in prison for their role in facilitating BlackCat ransomware attacks in 2023. Ryan Goldberg , 40, of Georgia, and Kevin Martin , 36, of Texas, were accused of deploying th...

Kraken Exchange Faces Extortion After Insider Recorded System Footage

Kraken exchange faces extortion after a staff member misused access to record internal systems, about 2,000 accounts affected, no funds or systems breached...

Bearlyfy Hits Russian Firms with Custom GenieLocker Ransomware

A pro-Ukrainian group called Bearlyfy has been attributed to more than 70 cyber attacks targeting Russian companies since it first surfaced in the threat landscape in January 2025, with recent attacks leveraging a custom Windows ransomware strain codenamed GenieLocker. "Bearlyfy also known as...

Dark Web Roast February 2026 Edition

Dark Web Roast - February 2026 Edition By Trellix Advanced Research Center · March 18, 2026 Executive Summary February 2026 delivered another stellar month in the ongoing theatre of the absurd that is the cybercriminal underground, where ransomware gangs bulk-scheduled their extortion like a...

TeamPCP Worm Exploits Cloud Infrastructure to Build Criminal Infrastructure

Cybersecurity researchers have called attention to a "massive campaign" that has systematically targeted cloud native environments to set up malicious infrastructure for follow-on exploitation. The activity, observed around December 25, 2025, and described as "worm-driven," leveraged exposed Dock...

Please Don’t Feed the Scattered Lapsus ShinyHunters

A prolific data ransom gang that calls itself Scattered Lapsus ShinyHunters SLSH has a distinctive playbook when it seeks to extort payment from victim firms: Harassing, threatening and even swatting executives and their families, all while notifying journalists and regulators about the extent of...

Mandiant Finds ShinyHunters-Style Vishing Attacks Stealing MFA to Breach SaaS Platforms

Google-owned Mandiant on Friday said it identified an "expansion in threat activity" that uses tradecraft consistent with extortion-themed attacks orchestrated by a financially motivated hacking group known as ShinyHunters. The attacks leverage advanced voice phishing aka vishing and bogus...

Predicting 2026

Welcome to this week's edition of the Threat Source newsletter. It's become traditional at this time of year to make predictions about cybersecurity for the coming year. Obviously, no one has a crystal ball to predict the future, and if they did, they would be quietly making a fortune rather than...

One million customers on alert as extortion group claims massive Brightspeed data haul

US fiber broadband company Brightspeed is investigating claims by the Crimson Collective extortion group that it stole sensitive data belonging to more than 1 million residential customers, including extensive personally identifiable information PII, as well as account and billing details...

How AI made scams more convincing in 2025

This blog is part of a series where we highlight new or fast-evolving threats in consumer security. This one focuses on howAI is being used to design more realistic campaigns, accelerate social engineering, and how AI agents can be used to target individuals. Most cybercriminals stick with what...

2 US Cybersecurity Experts Guilty of Extortion Scheme for ALPHV Ransomware

Can you trust your cybersecurity team? A recent federal case reveals how two US-based cybersecurity experts turned into affiliates for the BlackCat ransomware group, extorting over $1.2M in Bitcoin. Read the full story on their 2023 crime spree...

Trend Micro's Pivotal Role in INTERPOL's Operation Sentinel: Dismantling Digital Extortion Networks Across Africa

Continuing a Legacy of Successful Collaboration...

Ukrainian National Pleads Guilty in Nefilim Ransomware Conspiracy

Ukrainian man pleads guilty in United States to deploying Nefilim ransomware in global extortion scheme targeting companies across multiple countries...

Hackers Stole Millions of PornHub Users’ Data for Extortion

Plus: Cisco discloses a zero-day with no available patch, Venezuela accuses the US of a cyberattack, and more...

Hackers Claim Stealing 94GB of Pornhub Premium User Watch Histories

Cybercriminal group ShinyHunters targets former Pornhub Premium users in a massive 94GB data extortion campaign. Learn about the stolen data details, the involvement of a smishing attack, and the conflicting reports on the breach...

EUVD-2025-203380

The Convercent Whistleblowing Platform operated by EQS Group exposes an unauthenticated API endpoint at /GetLegalEntity that returns internal customer legal-entity names based on a supplied searchText fragment. A remote unauthenticated attacker can query the endpoint using common legal-suffix ter...

Dark Web Roast – November 2025 Edition

Dark Web Roast – November 2025 Edition By Trellix Advanced Research Center · December 9, 2025 Executive summary November 2025 delivered a masterclass in underground incompetence that would make any cybersecurity professional simultaneously laugh and cry. From the Silent data-extortion group getti...

Scammers harvesting Facebook photos to stage fake kidnappings, warns FBI

The FBI has warned about a new type of scam where your Facebook pictures are harvested to act as “proof-of-life” pictures in a virtual kidnapping. The scammers pretend they have kidnapped somebody and contact friends and next of kin to demand a ransom for their release. While the alleged victim i...

From Extortion to E-commerce: How Ransomware Groups Turn Breaches into Bidding Wars

Ransomware has evolved from simple digital extortion into a structured, profit-driven criminal enterprise. Over time, it has led to the development of a complex ecosystem where stolen data is not only leveraged for ransom, but also sold to the highest bidder. This trend first gained traction in...

The State of Security Today: Setting the Stage for 2026

As we close out 2025, one thing is clear: the security landscape is evolving faster than most organizations can keep up. From surging ransomware campaigns and AI-enhanced phishing to data extortion, geopolitical fallout, and gaps in cyber readiness, the challenges facing security teams today are ...