Protecting customers from Octo Tempest attacks across multiple industries

In recent weeks, Microsoft has observed Octo Tempest, also known as Scattered Spider, impacting the airlines sector, following previous activity impacting retail, food services, hospitality organizations, and insurance between April and July 2025. This aligns with Octo Tempest’s typical patterns ...

A Group of Young Cybercriminals Poses the ‘Most Imminent Threat’ of Cyberattacks Right Now

The Scattered Spider hacking group has caused chaos among retailers, insurers, and airlines in recent months. Researchers warn that its flexible structure poses challenges for defense...

Change Healthcare Breach Hits 100M Americans

Change Healthcare says it has notified approximately 100 million Americans that their personal, financial and healthcare records may have been stolen in a February 2024 ransomware attack that caused the largest ever known data breach of protected health information. Image: Tamer Tuncay,...

Attacks, Vulnerabilities and Actors 25 to 31 March 2024

For a detailed threat digest, download the pdf file here Summary HiveForce Labs recently made several significant discoveries in the realm of cybersecurity threats. In the past week alone, a total of twelve attacks were executed, ten vulnerabilities were uncovered, and two active adversaries were...

Microsoft Warns of Storm-0539: The Rising Threat Behind Holiday Gift Card Frauds

Microsoft is warning of an uptick in malicious activity from an emerging threat cluster it's tracking as Storm-0539 for orchestrating gift card fraud and theft via highly sophisticated email and SMS phishing attacks against retail entities during the holiday shopping season. The goal of the attac...

FBI and CISA Release Advisory on Scattered Spider Group

Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory CSA on Scattered Spider—a cybercriminal group targeting commercial facilities sectors and subsectors. The advisory provides tactics, techniques, and...

A week in security (October 23 – October 29)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Malvertising via Dynamic Search Ads delivers malware bonanza Octo Tempest cybercriminal group is "a growing concern"—Microsoft Update now! Apple patches a raft of vulnerabilities Patch…later? Safari iLeakage bug not fixed Update vCenter Server now! VMWare fixes...

Octo Tempest cybercriminal group is “a growing concern”—Microsoft

Octo Tempest is believed to be a group of native English speaking cybercriminals that uses social engineering campaigns to compromise organizations all over the world. Initially the group made a name for itself by SIM swapping. SIM swapping, also known as SIM jacking, is the act of illegally taki...

Microsoft Releases Patches for 132 Vulnerabilities, Including 6 Under Active Attack

Microsoft on Tuesday released updates to address a total of 132 new security flaws spanning its software, including six zero-day flaws that it said have been actively exploited in the wild. Of the 132 vulnerabilities, nine are rated Critical, 122 are rated Important in severity, and one has been...

DEV-0832 (Vice Society) opportunistic ransomware campaigns impacting US education sector

In recent months, Microsoft has detected active ransomware and extortion campaigns impacting the global education sector, particularly in the US, by a threat actor we track as DEV-0832, also known as Vice Society. Shifting ransomware payloads over time from BlackCat, QuantumLocker, and Zeppelin,...

TeamTNT Returns — Or Does It?

Our honeypots caught malicious cryptocurrency miner samples targeting the cloud and containers, and its routines are reminiscent of the routines employed by cybercriminal group TeamTNT, which was said to have quit in November 2021. Our investigation shows that another threat actor group, WatchDog...

TeamTNT Returns – or Does It?

Our honeypots caught malicious cryptocurrency miner samples targeting the cloud and containers, and its routines are reminiscent of the routines employed by cybercriminal group TeamTNT, which was said to have quit in November 2021. Our investigation shows that another threat actor group, WatchDog...

Dismantling a Prolific Cybercriminal Empire: REvil Arrests and Reemergence

Dismantling a Prolific Cybercriminal Empire: REvil Arrests and Reemergence By John Fokker · September 29, 2022 We’ve recently seen reports that the REvil ransomware gang is back online after the January 2022 arrests of several its members by Russian authorities claiming to dismantle the group and...

How 1-Time Passcodes Became a Corporate Liability

Phishers are enjoying remarkable success using text messages to steal remote access credentials and one-time passcodes from employees at some of the worlds largest technology companies and customer support firms. A recent spate of SMS phishing attacks from one cybercriminal group has spawned a...

Hackers for Hire: Adversaries Employ ‘Cyber Mercenaries’

A for-hire cybercriminal group is feeling the talent-drought in tech just like the rest of the sector and has resorted to recruiting so-called “cyber-mercenaries” to carry out specific illicit hacks that are part of larger criminal campaigns. Dubbed Atlas Intelligence Group A.I.G., the cybergang...

Ransomware Task Force priorities see progress in first year

This blog is part of our live coverage from RSA Conference 2022: US President Joseph R. Biden Jr., The White House, and law enforcement agencies across the world paid close attention last year when a group of more than 60 cybersecurity experts launched the Ransomware Task Force, heeding the group...

Evil Corp Pivots LockBit to Dodge U.S. Sanctions

Evil Corp has shifted tactics once again, this time pivoting to LockBit ransomware after U.S. sanctions have made it difficult for the cybercriminal group to reap financial gain from its activity, researchers have found. Researchers from Mandiant Intelligence have been tracking a “financially...

Researchers Expose Inner Workings of Billion-Dollar Wizard Spider Cybercrime Gang

The inner workings of a cybercriminal group known as the Wizard Spider have been exposed, shedding light on its organizational structure and motivations. "Most of Wizard Spider's efforts go into hacking European and U.S. businesses, with a special cracking tool used by some of their attackers to...

Conti Leaks: Examining the Panama Papers of Ransomware | Trellix

Conti Leaks: Examining the Panama Papers of Ransomware By John Fokker, Jambul Tologonov · March 31, 2022 Introduction It isn’t often the whole world gets an inside look of the business operations of a top tier cybercriminal group. Very early on in the Russian-Ukrainian Crisis the predominantly...

‘Dark Herring’ Billing Malware Swims onto 105M Android Devices

Nearly 500 malicious apps lurking on the Google Play Store have successfully installed Dark Herring malware — a cash-stealer intended to add sneaky charges onto mobile carrier bills — on more than 100 million Android devices across the globe. That’s quite a school of fish. Dark Herring malware wa...