Cybersecurity researchers have detailed the activities of an initial access broker (IAB) dubbed ToyMaker that has been observed handing over access to double extortion ransomware gangs like CACTUS. The IAB has been assessed with medium confidence to be a financially motivated threat actor, scanning for vulnerable systems and deploying a custom malware called LAGTOY (aka…
North Korea-linked threat actors behind the Contagious Interview have set up front companies as a way to distribute malware during the fake hiring process. “In this new campaign, the threat actor group is using three front companies in the cryptocurrency consulting industry—BlockNovas LLC (blocknovas[.] com), Angeloper Agency (angeloper[.]com), and SoftGlide LLC (softglide[.]co)—to spread malware via…
At least six organizations in South Korea have been targeted by the prolific North Korea-linked Lazarus Group as part of a campaign dubbed Operation SyncHole. The activity targeted South Korea’s software, IT, financial, semiconductor manufacturing, and telecommunications industries, according to a report from Kaspersky published today. The earliest evidence of compromise was first detected in…
The Iran-nexus threat actor known as UNC2428 has been observed delivering a backdoor known as MURKYTOUR as part of a job-themed social engineering campaign aimed at Israel in October 2024. Google-owned Mandiant described UNC2428 as a threat actor aligned with Iran that engages in cyber espionage-related operations. The intrusion set is said to have distributed…
You’re looking for this article because you think long-form content works right? Or at least that’s what you’ve heard from many marketers. You might even have seen it for yourself. You’re trying to make a simple pasta dish (like aglio e olio) but you have to scroll through a piece that’s thousands of words long,…
Developers and marketers are being told to add llms.txt files to their sites to help large language models (LLMs) “understand” their content. But what exactly is llms.txt, who’s using it, and—more importantly—should you care? llmstext.org. In a nutshell, it’s a text file designed to tell LLMs where to find the good stuff: API documentation, return policies,…
Cybersecurity researchers have detailed a now-patched vulnerability in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) that could have enabled an attacker to elevate their privileges in the Cloud Composer workflow orchestration service that’s based on Apache Airflow. “This vulnerability lets attackers with edit permissions in Cloud Composer to escalate their access to the default Cloud Build service account,…
The problem is simple: all breaches start with initial access, and initial access comes down to two primary attack vectors – credentials and devices. This is not news; every report you can find on the threat landscape depicts the same picture. The solution is more complex. For this article, we’ll focus on the device threat…
The Russian state-sponsored threat actor known as APT29 has been linked to an advanced phishing campaign that’s targeting diplomatic entities across Europe with a new variant of WINELOADER and a previously unreported malware loader codenamed GRAPELOADER. “While the improved WINELOADER variant is still a modular backdoor used in later stages, GRAPELOADER is a newly observed…
ASUS has disclosed a critical security flaw impacting routers with AiCloud enabled that could permit remote attackers to perform unauthorized execution of functions on susceptible devices. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-2492, has a CVSS score of 9.2 out of a maximum of 10.0. “An improper authentication control vulnerability exists in certain ASUS router firmware series,”…
A new multi-stage attack has been observed delivering malware families like Agent Tesla variants, Remcos RAT, and XLoader. “Attackers increasingly rely on such complex delivery mechanisms to evade detection, bypass traditional sandboxes, and ensure successful payload delivery and execution,” Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researcher Saqib Khanzada said in a technical write-up of the campaign….
2025 is all about brand building. At Ahrefs, we’ve already been doing that for over a decade, but there’s never been a better time for us to ramp things up. After writing an article on 11 ways to measure brand awareness, I figured now’s also the perfect time for us to get a clearer picture…
