Key Group: another ransomware group using leaked builders

Key Group, or keygroup777, is a financially motivated ransomware group primarily targeting Russian users. The group is known for negotiating with victims on Telegram and using the Chaos ransomware builder. The first public report on Key Group's activity was released in 2023 by BI.ZONE, a...

How “professional” ransomware variants boost cybercrime groups

Introduction Cybercriminals who specialize in ransomware do not always create it themselves. They have many other ways to get their hands on ransomware samples: buying a sample on the dark web, affiliating with other groups or finding a leaked ransomware variant. This requires no extraordinary...

Phishing-kit market: what’s inside “off-the-shelf” phishing packages

What are phishing kits? One of the most common tricks scammers use in phishing attacks is to create a fake official page of a famous brand. Attackers tend to copy design elements from the real website, which is why users can find it hard to distinguish the fake pages from the official ones. Even...

Travle aka PYLOT backdoor hits Russian-speaking targets

At the end of September, Palo Alto released a report on Unit42 activity where they - among other things – talked about PYLOT malware. We have been detecting attacks that have employed the use of this backdoor since at least 2015 and refer to it as Travle. Coincidentally, KL was recently involved ...

A laughing RAT: CrystalX combines spyware, stealer, and prankware features

Introduction In March 2026, we discovered an active campaign promoting previously unknown malware in private Telegram chats. The Trojan was offered as a MaaS malware‑as‑a‑service with three subscription tiers. It caught our attention because of its extensive arsenal of capabilities. On the panel...

Arkanix Stealer: a C++ & Python infostealer

Introduction In October 2025, we discovered a series of forum posts advertising a previously unknown stealer, dubbed "Arkanix Stealer" by its authors. It operated under a MaaS malware-as-a-service model, providing users not only with the implant but also with access to a control panel featuring...

The game is over: when “free” comes at too high a price. What we know about RenEngine

We often describe cases of malware distribution under the guise of game cheats and pirated software. Sometimes such methods are used to spread complex malware that employs advanced techniques and sophisticated infection chains. In February 2026, researchers from Howler Cell announced the discover...

Following the digital trail: what happens to data stolen in a phishing attack

Introduction A typical phishing attack involves a user clicking a fraudulent link and entering their credentials on a scam website. However, the attack is far from over at that point. The moment the confidential information falls into the hands of cybercriminals, it immediately transforms into a...

The evolving landscape of email phishing attacks: how threat actors are reusing and refining established techniques

Introduction Cyberthreats are constantly evolving, and email phishing is no exception. Threat actors keep coming up with new methods to bypass security filters and circumvent user vigilance. At the same time, established – and even long-forgotten – tactics have not gone anywhere; in fact, some ar...

Using a Mythic agent to optimize penetration testing

Introduction The way threat actors use post-exploitation frameworks in their attacks is a topic we frequently discuss. It's not just about analysis of artifacts for us, though. Our company's deep expertise means we can study these tools to implement best practices in penetration testing. This hel...

Mobile malware evolution in 2024

These statistics are based on detection alerts from Kaspersky products, collected from users who consented to provide statistical data to Kaspersky Security Network. The statistics for previous years may differ from earlier publications due to a data and methodology revision implemented in 2024...

Loose-lipped neural networks and lazy scammers

One topic being actively researched in connection with the breakout of LLMs is capability uplift – when employees with limited experience or resources in some area become able to perform at a much higher level thanks to LLM technology. This is especially important in information security, where...

From 12 to 21: how we discovered connections between the Twelve and BlackJack groups

While analyzing attacks on Russian organizations, our team regularly encounters overlapping tactics, techniques, and procedures TTPs among different cybercrime groups, and sometimes even shared tools. We recently discovered one such overlap: similar tools and tactics between two hacktivist groups...

An AI gateway designed to steal your data

A significant proportion of cyberincidents are linked to supply chain attacks, and this proportion is constantly growing. Over the past year, we have seen a wide variety of methods used in such attacks, ranging from creation of malicious but seemingly legitimate open-source libraries or delayed...

Anatomy of a Cyber World Global Report 2026

Kaspersky Security Services provide a comprehensive cybersecurity ecosystem, taking enterprise threat protection to another level. Services like Kaspersky Managed Detection and Response and Compromise Assessment allow for timely detection of threats and cyberattacks. SOC Consulting provides a...

Operation ForumTroll continues: Russian political scientists targeted using plagiarism reports

Introduction In March 2025, we discovered Operation ForumTroll, a series of sophisticated cyberattacks exploiting the CVE-2025-2783 vulnerability in Google Chrome. We previously detailed the malicious implants used in the operation: the LeetAgent backdoor and the complex spyware Dante, developed ...

Detecting DLL hijacking with machine learning: real-world cases

Introduction Our colleagues from the AI expertise center recently developed a machine-learning model that detects DLL-hijacking attacks. We then integrated this model into the Kaspersky Unified Monitoring and Analysis Platform SIEM system. In a separate article, our colleagues shared how the mode...

Shiny tools, shallow checks: how the AI hype opens the door to malicious MCP servers

Introduction In this article, we explore how the Model Context Protocol MCP — the new "plug-in bus" for AI assistants — can be weaponized as a supply chain foothold. We start with a primer on MCP, map out protocol-level and supply chain attack paths, then walk through a hands-on proof of concept:...

Financial cyberthreats in 2024

As more and more financial transactions are conducted in digital form each year, financial threats comprise a large piece of the global cyberthreat landscape. That's why Kaspersky researchers analyze the trends related to these threats and share an annual report highlighting the main dangers to...

One policy to rule them all

Windows group policies are a powerful management tool that allows administrators to define and control user and computer settings within a domain environment in a centralized manner. While group policies offer functionality and utility, they are unfortunately a prime target for attackers. In...

Scammer Black Friday offers: Online shopping threats and dark web sales

Intro The e-commerce market continues to grow every year. According to FTI consulting, in Q1 2024, online retail comprised 57% of total sales in the US, and it is expected to increase by 9.8% over 2023 by the end of this year. In Europe, 72% of those aged 16–74 buy online, their share growing by...

Armored Likho expands its cyber-espionage toolkit

In May 2026, we discovered a new cyber-espionage campaign by the Armored Likho group, also known as Eagle Werewolf, that targets private individuals and organizations across various industries in Russia, including major corporations, the public sector, IT, and education. The attackers used a fake...

Financial cyberthreats in 2025 and the outlook for 2026

In 2025, the financial cyberthreat landscape continued to evolve. While traditional PC banking malware declined in relative prevalence, this shift was offset by the rapid growth of credential theft by infostealers. Attackers increasingly relied on aggregation and reuse of stolen data, rather than...

SEO spam and hidden links: how to protect your website and your reputation

When analyzing the content of websites in an attempt to determine what category it belongs to, we sometimes get an utterly unexpected result. It could be the official page of a metal structures manufacturer or online flower shop, or, say, a law firm website, with completely neutral content, but o...

Signal in the noise: what hashtags reveal about hacktivism in 2025

What do hacktivist campaigns look like in 2025? To answer this question, we analyzed more than 11,000 posts produced by over 120 hacktivist groups circulating across both the surface web and the dark web, with a particular focus on groups targeting MENA countries. The primary goal of our research...

Forensic journey: hunting evil within AmCache

Introduction When it comes to digital forensics, AmCache plays a vital role in identifying malicious activities in Windows systems. This artifact allows the identification of the execution of both benign and malicious software on a machine. It is managed by the operating system, and at the time o...

Attackers distributing a miner and the ClipBanker Trojan via SourceForge

Recently, we noticed a rather unique scheme for distributing malware that exploits SourceForge, a popular website providing software hosting, comparison, and distribution services. The site hosts numerous software projects, and anyone can upload theirs. One such project, officepackage , on the ma...

DCRat backdoor returns

Since the beginning of the year, we've been tracking in our telemetry a new wave of DCRat distribution, with paid access to the backdoor provided under the Malware-as-a-Service MaaS model. The cybercriminal group behind it also offers support for the malware and infrastructure setup for hosting t...

IT threat evolution in Q2 2026. Non-mobile statistics

IT threat evolution in Q2 2026. Non-mobile statistics IT threat evolution in Q2 2026. Mobile statistics The statistics in this report are based on detection verdicts returned by Kaspersky products unless otherwise stated. The information was provided by Kaspersky users who consented to sharing...

Free real estate: GoPix, the banking Trojan living off your memory

Introduction GoPix is an advanced persistent threat targeting Brazilian financial institutions' customers and cryptocurrency users. It represents an evolved threat targeting internet banking users through memory-only implants and obfuscated PowerShell scripts. It evolved from the RAT and Automate...

To buy or not to buy: How cybercriminals capitalize on Black Friday

The global e‑commerce market is accelerating faster than ever before, driven by expanding online retail, and rising consumer adoption worldwide. According to McKinsey Global Institute, global e‑commerce is projected to grow by 7–9% annually through 2040. At Kaspersky, we track how this surge in...

Post-exploitation framework now also delivered via npm

Incident description The first version of the AdaptixC2 post-exploitation framework, which can be considered an alternative to the well-known Cobalt Strike, was made publicly available in early 2025. In spring of 2025, the framework was first observed being used for malicious means. In October...

Cookies and how to bake them: what they are for, associated risks, and what session hijacking has to do with it

When you visit almost any website, you'll see a pop-up asking you to accept, decline, or customize the cookies it collects. Sometimes, it just tells you that cookies are in use by default. We randomly checked 647 websites, and 563 of them displayed cookie notifications. Most of the time, users...

Scammers mass-mailing the Efimer Trojan to steal crypto

Introduction In June, we encountered a mass mailing campaign impersonating lawyers from a major company. These emails falsely claimed the recipient's domain name infringed on the sender's rights. The messages contained the Efimer malicious script, designed to steal cryptocurrency. This script als...

SparkKitty, SparkCat’s little brother: A new Trojan spy found in the App Store and Google Play

Update 25.06.2025: Apple removed the malicious app from the App Store. In January 2025, we uncovered the SparkCat spyware campaign, which was aimed at gaining access to victims' crypto wallets. The threat actor distributed apps containing a malicious SDK/framework. This component would wait for a...

Threat landscape for industrial automation systems. Q2 2026

All threats In Q2 2026, the percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked continued to decrease, falling to 19.15%, its lowest level since 2022. Percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked, Q3 2023–Q2 2026 Regionally, the percentages ranged from 8.1% ...

Coruna: the framework used in Operation Triangulation

Introduction On March 4, 2026, Google and iVerify published reports about a highly sophisticated exploit kit targeting Apple iPhone devices. According to Google, the exploit kit was first discovered in targeted attacks conducted by a customer of an unnamed surveillance vendor. It was later used b...

The king is dead, long live the king! Windows 10 EOL and Windows 11 forensic artifacts

Introduction Windows 11 was released a few years ago, yet it has seen relatively weak enterprise adoption. According to statistics from our Global Emergency Response Team GERT investigations, as recently as early 2025, we found that Windows 7, which reached end of support in 2020, was encountered...

Blockchain and Node.js abused by Tsundere: an emerging botnet

Introduction Tsundere is a new botnet, discovered by our Kaspersky GReAT around mid-2025. We have correlated this threat with previous reports from October 2024 that reveal code similarities, as well as the use of the same C2 retrieval method and wallet. In that instance, the threat actor created...

How attackers adapt to built-in macOS protection

If a system is popular with users, you can bet it's just as popular with cybercriminals. Although Windows still dominates, second place belongs to macOS. And this makes it a viable target for attackers. With various built-in protection mechanisms, macOS generally provides a pretty much end-to-end...

Code highlighting with Cursor AI for $500,000

Attacks that leverage malicious open-source packages are becoming a major and growing threat. This type of attacks currently seems commonplace, with reports of infected packages in repositories like PyPI or npm appearing almost daily. It would seem that increased scrutiny from researchers on thes...

Inside the dark web job market

In 2022, we published our research examining how IT specialists look for work on the dark web. Since then, the job market has shifted, along with the expectations and requirements placed on professionals. However, recruitment and headhunting on the dark web remain active. So, what does this job...

Modern vehicle cybersecurity trends

Modern vehicles are transforming into full-fledged digital devices that offer a multitude of features, from common smartphone-like conveniences to complex intelligent systems and services designed to keep everyone on the road safe. However, this digitalization, while aimed at improving comfort an...

ValleyRAT masquerading as adware

Attackers typically try to pass off malware as legitimate applications or as potentially unwanted programs that users deliberately search for and download, such as cheats or cracks. They often rely on ad and affiliate networks to deliver their creations to victims' devices. This post examines a...

PassiveNeuron: a sophisticated campaign targeting servers of high-profile organizations

Introduction Back in 2024, we gave a brief description of a complex cyberespionage campaign that we dubbed "PassiveNeuron". This campaign involved compromising the servers of government organizations with previously unknown APT implants, named "Neursite" and "NeuralExecutor". However, since its...

How we trained an ML model to detect DLL hijacking

DLL hijacking is a common technique in which attackers replace a library called by a legitimate process with a malicious one. It is used by both creators of mass-impact malware, like stealers and banking Trojans, and by APT and cybercrime groups behind targeted attacks. In recent years, the numbe...

Exploits and vulnerabilities in Q2 2026

The vulnerability landscape shifted significantly in Q2 2026. First, the number of registered CVEs reached an unprecedented level. This is driven primarily by the widespread adoption of AI, both for application development and search for security flaws. This resulted in entire new classes of...

Shai Hulud 2.0, now with a wiper flavor

In September, a new breed of malware distributed via compromised Node Package Manager npm packages made headlines. It was dubbed "Shai-Hulud", and we published an in-depth analysis of it in another post. Recently, a new version was discovered. Shai Hulud 2.0 is a type of two-stage worm-like malwa...