Widespread PHP Flaw May Cause Many Site Outages Today

Expect to see quite a few websites serving error pages today: Nearly 70 percent of websites need to update their core software to fix a pair of vulnerabilities that allow an attacker to seize full control over affected servers. Experts say there are working exploits for the flaws, and that these...

Feds Suspect Ransom Negotiator Ran ShinyHunters Extortion Site

U.S. federal investigators pursuing the ShinyHunters hacking group that recently stole highly sensitive data from the FBI have identified executives at two different ransomware negotiation firms who maintained unusually close relations with the extortion group, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. Source...

U.K. Sanctions Cryptomus for RU Money Laundering

The United Kingdom has issued economic sanctions against Cryptomus , a chameleonic cryptocurrency platform that experts say serves as a major conduit for payments related to ransomware, narcotics, darknet markets, fraud and cybercrime services that are helping Russia circumvent existing financial...

Microsoft Patches More Than 1,400 Security Flaws

Microsoft today issued updates to fix more than 1,400 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and other software. Today's epic patch batch dwarfs September's record of nearly 1,000 fixes, which was already about ten times the normal monthly patch load from Redmond. Just one of t...

FBI Arrests Executive at Ransomware Negotiation Firm

Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI on Thursday arrested an executive at a Canadian cybersecurity firm in connection with an investigation into the ShinyHunters hacking group that recently relieved the FBI of sensitive data on thousands of agents, multiple sources tell...

ShinyHunters Extorted Boeing Spin-off Prior to Arrests

A teenager from Amman, Jordan suspected of leading the prolific data theft and extortion group ShinyHunters has been detained and is reportedly cooperating with the FBI to identify other members of the hacking gang. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that the suspect, who uses the hacker handle "Rey ,"...

Dutch Police Arrest ‘Reformed’ Hacker in Shiny Hunters Investigation

Authorities in the Netherlands have arrested a 24-year-old convicted cybercriminal on suspicion of aiding in data thefts and extortions by the prolific hacker group ShinyHunters. In the days immediately following the suspect's arrest, remaining ShinyHunters members dramatically escalated their...

U.S. Soldier Gets 70 Months in Prison for AT&T, Verizon Extortions

A U.S. Army soldier who pleaded guilty to hacking into multiple telecommunications companies and stealing mobile call and text metadata for more than 100 million AT &T customers in 2024 was sentenced to 70 months in federal prison today and ordered to pay nearly $300,000 in restitution to victims...

Data Broker Radaris Loses Domains in Privacy Fight

The consumer data broker Radaris.com has long had a reputation for ignoring requests to remove personal information from its vast empire of people-search services online. That reputation caught up with the company recently in a lawsuit alleging Radaris violated a New Jersey privacy law that...

Microsoft Plugs Nearly 1,000 Security Holes

Microsoft Corp. today issued updates to plug at least 974 security holes in its Windows operating systems and other software, by far its biggest single patch batch ever. Microsoft says artificial intelligence is helping to speed the discovery of vulnerabilities, but security experts warn that man...

FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses

A new identity theft service launched on the dark web this week is selling digital scans of more than 153 million drivers licenses from people in the United States and Canada. Based on interviews with individuals whose licenses are available for purchase on this service, it appears to be siphonin...

Two Alleged ‘TeamPCP’ Hackers Arrested in Australia

Authorities in Australia have arrested two men believed to be members of TeamPCP , a prolific cybercrime and data extortion group blamed for perpetrating the longest running spree of software supply chain attacks ever. In a statement released today, the Australian Federal Police AFP said two men...

Who’s Tracking You? Use This New Service to Find Out

It can be daunting to determine who's responsible for showing ads on the websites we visit, or who's harvesting data from the mobile apps we use every day. That information is already semi-public, but it is not easily parsed and traditionally much of it has remained walled away in the hands of...

Microsoft Plugs Nearly 400 Security Holes

Microsoft today released updates to remedy at least 398 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and supported software, including one weakness that is already being actively exploited and two others that were publicly detailed prior to today. Image: Shutterstock, Mallika Home...

Canadian Man Pleads Guilty in Snowflake Extortions

A 26-year-old Canadian man once described as one of the most consequential cybercrime threat actors of 2024 has pleaded guilty to computer fraud and conspiracy to hack and extort more than 165 organizations that used the cloud provider Snowflake. Connor Riley Moucka , of Kitchener, Ontario, also...

Read This Before You Buy That TV Streaming Stick

Security experts have been sounding the alarm for years about the risks of using generic TV boxes that promise unlimited content streaming for a one-time fee, warning that they secretly rent the user's Internet connection out to strangers. But a groundbreaking new analysis finds these devices als...

LG to Ban Residential Proxies from Smart TV Apps

The home appliance giant LG Electronics USA said this week it plans to suspend any apps built for its smart TVs that turn one's television into an always-on residential proxy node. The move comes less than a month after researchers found that more than 42 percent of games and other apps available...

Microsoft Patches a Record 570 Security Flaws

Microsoft Corp. today released software updates to plug at least 570 security holes in its Windows operating systems and other software, almost triple the number of vulnerabilities the software giant fixed in its record-smashing Patch Tuesday release last month. Microsoft attributed the burgeonin...

Lessons Learned from CISA’s Recent GitHub Leak

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA has issued a postmortem on a recent data leak in which a contractor published dozens of internal CISA credentials -- including AWS Govcloud keys -- in a public GitHub repository for almost six months before being notified by KrebsOnSecurit...

Felons, Fraudsters Flog Offensive Cybersecurity Startup

A cybersecurity startup dangling millions of dollars to acquire zero-day security vulnerabilities in popular software is run by a pair of far-right conspiracy theorists and convicted felons whose most recent ventures included fake intelligence companies and a now-defunct AI-based lobbying platfor...

FBI Seizes NetNut Proxy Platform, Popa Botnet

The Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI said today it worked with industry partners to seize hundreds of domains associated with NetNut , a sprawling residential proxy service operated by the publicly-traded Israeli company Alarum TechnologiesNASDAQ: ALAR. The action comes roughly two weeks after...

Scattered Spider Hackers Plead Guilty on Day 1 of Trial

Two men pleaded guilty in the United Kingdom this week to criminal charges stemming from an August 2024 cyberattack that crippled Transport for London , the entity responsible for the public transport network in the Greater London area. The duo were key members of a prolific cybercrime group know...

‘Popa’ Botnet Linked to Publicly-Traded Israeli Firm

For the past four years, a sprawling Android-based botnet called Popa has forced millions of consumer TV boxes to relay Internet traffic linked to advertising fraud, account takeovers, and mass data-scraping efforts. This week, researchers from multiple security firms concluded that the Popa botn...

Who Runs the Ransomware Group ‘The Gentlemen?’

A cybercrime group known as The Gentlemen has emerged as the second most active ransomware gang by victim count, rapidly attracting a talented pool of hackers through an aggressive recruitment strategy that promises affiliates 90 percent of any ransom paid by victims. This post examines clues...

A Record-Breaking Patch Tuesday for June 2026

Microsoft today released software updates to plug nearly 200 security holes across its Windows operating systems and supported software, a record number of fixes for the company's monthly Patch Tuesday cycle. Nearly three dozen of those bugs earned Microsoft's most dire "critical" rating, and...

Hackers Used Meta’s AI Support Bot to Seize Instagram Accounts

The Instagram accounts for the Obama White House and the Chief Master Sergeant of the U.S. Space Force were briefly defaced with pro-Iranian images and messages over the weekend, after instructions began circulating on Telegram showing how to trick Meta's "AI support assistant" bot into resetting...

Netherlands Seizes 800 Servers, Arrests 2 for Aiding Cyberattacks

Authorities in the Netherlands have arrested the co-owners of two related Internet hosting companies for operating IT infrastructure used by Russia to carry out cyberattacks, influence operations and disinformation campaigns inside the European Union. The two men were the focus of a 2025...

Lawmakers Demand Answers as CISA Tries to Contain Data Leak

Lawmakers in both houses of Congress are demanding answers from the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency CISA after KrebsOnSecurity reported this week that a CISA contractor intentionally published AWS GovCloud keys and a vast trove of other agency secrets on a public GitHub accoun...

Alleged Kimwolf Botmaster ‘Dort’ Arrested, Charged in U.S. and Canada

Canadian authorities on Wednesday arrested a 23-year-old Ottawa man on suspicion of building and operating Kimwolf , a fast spreading Internet-of-Things botnet that enslaved millions of devices for use in a series of massive distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks over the past six months...

CISA Admin Leaked AWS GovCloud Keys on Github

Until this past weekend, a contractor for the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency CISA maintained a public GitHub repository that exposed credentials to several highly privileged AWS GovCloud accounts and a large number of internal CISA systems. Security experts said the public archive...

Patch Tuesday, May 2026 Edition

Artificial intelligence platforms may be just as susceptible to social engineering as human beings, but they are proving remarkably good at finding security vulnerabilities in human-made computer code. That reality is on full display this month with some of the more widely-used software makers --...

Canvas Breach Disrupts Schools & Colleges Nationwide

An ongoing data extortion attack targeting the widely-used education technology platform Canvas disrupted classes and coursework at school districts and universities across the United States today, after a cybercrime group defaced the service's login page with a ransom demand that threatened to...

Anti-DDoS Firm Heaped Attacks on Brazilian ISPs

A Brazilian tech firm that specializes in protecting networks from distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks has been enabling a botnet responsible for an extended campaign of massive DDoS attacks against other network operators in Brazil, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. The firm's chief executive...

‘Scattered Spider’ Member ‘Tylerb’ Pleads Guilty

A 24-year-old British national and senior member of the cybercrime group "Scattered Spider " has pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft. Tyler Robert Buchanan admitted his role in a series of text-message phishing attacks in the summer of 2022 that allowed the group...

Patch Tuesday, April 2026 Edition

Microsoft today pushed software updates to fix a staggering 167 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and related software, including a SharePoint Server zero-day and a publicly disclosed weakness in Windows Defender dubbed "BlueHammer." Separately, Google Chrome fixed its...

Russia Hacked Routers to Steal Microsoft Office Tokens

Hackers linked to Russia's military intelligence units are using known flaws in older Internet routers to mass harvest authentication tokens from Microsoft Office users, security experts warned today. The spying campaign allowed state-backed Russian hackers to quietly siphon authentication tokens...

Germany Doxes “UNKN,” Head of RU Ransomware Gangs REvil, GandCrab

An elusive hacker who went by the handle "UNKN " and ran the early Russian ransomware groups GandCrab and REvil now has a name and a face. Authorities in Germany say 31-year-old Russian Daniil Maksimovich Shchukin headed both cybercrime gangs and helped carry out at least 130 acts of computer...

‘CanisterWorm’ Springs Wiper Attack Targeting Iran

A financially motivated data theft and extortion group is attempting to inject itself into the Iran war, unleashing a worm that spreads through poorly secured cloud services and wipes data on infected systems that use Iran's time zone or have Farsi set as the default language. Experts say the wip...

Feds Disrupt IoT Botnets Behind Huge DDoS Attacks

The U.S. Justice Department joined authorities in Canada and Germany in dismantling the online infrastructure behind four highly disruptive botnets that compromised more than three million Internet of Things IoT devices, such as routers and web cameras. The feds say the four botnets -- named Aisu...

Iran-Backed Hackers Claim Wiper Attack on Medtech Firm Stryker

A hacktivist group with links to Iran's intelligence agencies is claiming responsibility for a data-wiping attack against Stryker , a global medical technology company based in Michigan. News reports out of Ireland, Stryker's largest hub outside of the United States, said the company sent home mo...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, March 2026 Edition

Microsoft Corp. today pushed security updates to fix at least 77 vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and other software. There are no pressing "zero-day" flaws this month compared to February's five zero-day treat, but as usual some patches may deserve more rapid attention from...

How AI Assistants are Moving the Security Goalposts

AI-based assistants or "agents" -- autonomous programs that have access to the user's computer, files, online services and can automate virtually any task -- are growing in popularity with developers and IT workers. But as so many eyebrow-raising headlines over the past few weeks have shown, thes...

Who is the Kimwolf Botmaster “Dort”?

In early January 2026, KrebsOnSecurity revealed how a security researcher disclosed a vulnerability that was used to build Kimwolf , the world's largest and most disruptive botnet. Since then, the person in control of Kimwolf -- who goes by the handle "Dort " -- has coordinated a barrage of...

‘Starkiller’ Phishing Service Proxies Real Login Pages, MFA

Most phishing websites are little more than static copies of login pages for popular online destinations, and they are often quickly taken down by anti-abuse activists and security firms. But a stealthy new phishing-as-a-service offering lets customers sidestep both of these pitfalls: It uses...

Kimwolf Botnet Swamps Anonymity Network I2P

For the past week, the massive "Internet of Things" IoT botnet known as Kimwolf has been disrupting The Invisible Internet Project I2P, a decentralized, encrypted communications network designed to anonymize and secure online communications. I2P users started reporting disruptions in the network...

Patch Tuesday, February 2026 Edition

Microsoft today released updates to fix more than 50 security holes in its Windows operating systems and other software, including patches for a whopping six "zero-day" vulnerabilities that attackers are already exploiting in the wild. Zero-day 1 this month is CVE-2026-21510, a security feature...

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...

Who Operates the Badbox 2.0 Botnet?

The cybercriminals in control of Kimwolf -- a disruptive botnet that has infected more than 2 million devices -- recently shared a screenshot indicating they'd compromised the control panel for Badbox 2.0 , a vast China-based botnet powered by malicious software that comes pre-installed on many...

Kimwolf Botnet Lurking in Corporate, Govt. Networks

A new Internet-of-Things IoT botnet called Kimwolf has spread to more than 2 million devices, forcing infected systems to participate in massive distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks and to relay other malicious and abusive Internet traffic. Kimwolf's ability to scan the local networks of...

Patch Tuesday, January 2026 Edition

Microsoft today issued patches to plug at least 113 security holes in its various Windows operating systems and supported software. Eight of the vulnerabilities earned Microsoft's most-dire "critical" rating, and the company warns that attackers are already exploiting one of the bugs fixed today...