Unit 42 celebrates 9 years of the Cyber Threat Alliance, tracing its journey from a bold idea to a global leader in collaborative cyber defense.
The post Happy 9th Anniversary, CTA: A Celebration of Collaboration in Cyber Defense appeared first on Unit 42.
Speed is everything in today’s security landscape. From Unit 42®’s frontline experience responding to more than 500 incidents last year, we've seen that in nearly one in five incidents, attackers go from initial compromise to data exfiltration in less than an hour. It leaves almost no time to react.
The challenge is compounded by the distributed nature of the modern IT environment; cyberattacks are rarely confined to one location. In fact, 70 percent of incidents now span three or more attack surfaces, from endpoints and networks to multiple cloud environments. This complexity increases vulnerabilities, which is a key reason why 86 percent of major incidents disrupt business operations.
When a breach moves at this speed and crosses complex silos, an enterprise has two immediate, critical needs:
Recognizing customers need a faster, more comprehensive incident response strategy in the cloud, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 is expanding our partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Security Incident Response service. The collaboration introduces a no-cost Unit 42 Incident Response Retainer, which is now available to qualified customers in AWS Marketplace. Our value-added offer provides qualified customers with rapid access to Unit 42’s world-class investigative expertise and dramatically minimizes the critical time between an alert and full containment.
For qualified customers, here's what the no-cost Unit 42 Incident Response Retainer offers:
As an AWS Security Incident Response Service Ready partner, this collaboration is designed to deliver seamless, end-to-end incident response and proactive security services. By combining Unit 42’s deep experience in managing complex, legally privileged investigations with the rapid engagement of AWS Security Incident Response, organizations can resolve critical incidents faster and more comprehensively.
Unit 42 also offers preferred pricing to AWS Security Incident Response customers for proactive services through paid retainer offerings, also available in AWS Marketplace.
Hart Rossman, Vice President of Global Services Security, AWS:
When cyberattacks move at cloud speed, customers need immediate access to comprehensive expertise. By integrating Unit 42's end-to-end investigative capabilities with AWS Security Incident Response, we're delivering a unified response that helps customers contain threats faster and minimize business disruption. The no-cost retainer ensures they can activate the full scope of resources they need within minutes, not hours.
Effective response to a cloud breach demands deep technical skill and the ability to manage complexity under pressure. Unit 42 excels at managing high-stakes incidents. By coupling our expertise with AWS Security Incident Response’s capabilities to prepare, respond and recover from security incidents, Unit 42 offers customers a unified defense. Streamlining the entire process, from initial alert to final resolution, allows organizations to get back to business faster and limit operational disruption.
The collaboration is designed to solve a critical customer problem: Reduce the time and complexity of responding to incidents that span both AWS resources and the broader enterprise.
The combined offering delivers three key benefits, providing customers with a holistic and agile defense strategy:
The Unit 42 Incident Response and proactive service offerings are available in AWS Marketplace today. More information on the partnership will be shared during AWS re:Invent 2025 (December 1-5, 2025).
To learn more, visit the Unit 42 listing available in AWS Marketplace.
The post Unit 42 Incident Response Retainer for AWS Security Incident Response appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.
If you were still questioning whether iOS 26+ is for you, now is the time to make that call.
Why?
On December 12, 2025, Apple patched two WebKit zero‑day vulnerabilities linked to mercenary spyware and is now effectively pushing iPhone 11 and newer users toward iOS 26+, because that’s where the fixes and new memory protections live. These vulnerabilities were primarily used in highly targeted attacks, but such campaigns are likely to expand over time.
WebKit powers the Safari browser and many other iOS applications, so it’s a big attack surface to leave exposed and isn’t limited to “risky” behavior. These vulnerabilities allowed an attacker to execute arbitrary code on a device after exploitation via malicious web content.
Apple has confirmed that attackers are already exploiting these vulnerabilities in the wild, making installation of the update a high‑priority security task for every user. Campaigns that start with diplomats, journalists, or executives often lead to tooling and exploits leaking or being repurposed, so “I’m not a target” is not a viable safety strategy.
Due to public resistance to new features like Liquid Glass, many iPhone users have not yet upgraded to iOS 26.2. Reports suggest adoption of iOS 26 has been unusually slow. As of January 2026, only about 4.6% of active iPhones are on iOS 26.2, and roughly 16% are on any version of iOS 26, leaving the vast majority on older releases such as iOS 18.
However, Apple only ships these fixes and newer protections, such as Memory Integrity Enforcement, on iOS 26+ for supported devices. Users on older, unsupported devices won’t be able to access these protections at all.
Another important factor in the upgrade cycle is restarting the device. What many people don’t realize is that when you restart your device, any memory-resident malware is flushed—unless it has somehow gained persistence, in which case it will return. High-end spyware tools tend to avoid leaving traces needed for persistence and often rely on users not restarting their devices.
Upgrading requires a restart, which makes this a win-win: you get the latest protections, and any memory-resident malware is flushed at the same time.
For iOS and iPadOS users, you can check if you’re using the latest software version, go to Settings > General > Software Update. It’s also worth turning on Automatic Updates if you haven’t already. You can do that on the same screen.
The most important fix—however painful you may find it—is to upgrade to iOS 26.2. Not doing means missing an accumulating list of security fixes, leaving your device vulnerable to more and more newly found vulnerabilities.
But here are some other useful tips:
We don’t just report on phone security—we provide it
Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your mobile devices by downloading Malwarebytes for iOS, and Malwarebytes for Android today.
Cybersecurity thrives on diverse skills, not just coding and engineering. From writers to designers, there’s a place for you in this field.
The post Who Does Cybersecurity Need? You! appeared first on Unit 42.
We discuss the CVSS 10.0-rated RCE vulnerability in the Flight protocol used by React Server Components. This is tracked as CVE-2025-55182.
The post Exploitation of Critical Vulnerability in React Server Components (Updated December 12) appeared first on Unit 42.
This article was written to provide readers with an overview of a selection of our pentest results from the last 15 months. This data was gathered toward the end of September 2025. Shockingly, the data does not differ much from our prior analyses conducted at the end of 2022 or 2023.
The post Why You Got Hacked – 2025 Super Edition appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..
Unit 42 outlines a Howling Scorpius attack delivering Akira ransomware that originated from a fake CAPTCHA and led to a 42-day compromise.
The post Anatomy of an Akira Ransomware Attack: When a Fake CAPTCHA Led to 42 Days of Compromise appeared first on Unit 42.
While DLL hijacking attacks can take on many different forms, this blog post will explore a specific type of attack called DLL proxying, providing insights into how it works, the potential risks it poses, and briefly the methodology for discovering these vulnerable DLLs, which led to the discovery of several zero-day vulnerable DLLs that Microsoft has acknowledged but opted to not fix at this time.
The post Proxying Your Way to Code Execution – A Different Take on DLL Hijacking appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..
Patterson Cake // In PART 1 of “Wrangling the M365 UAL,” we talked about the value of the Unified Audit Log (UAL), some of the challenges associated with acquisition, parsing, […]
The post Wrangling the M365 UAL with SOF-ELK on EC2 (Part 2 of 3) appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..
Derek Banks // Living Off the Land Binaries, Scripts, and Libraries, known as LOLBins or LOLBAS, are legitimate components of an operating system that threat actors can use to achieve […]
The post Ssh… Don’t Tell Them I Am Not HTTPS: How Attackers Use SSH.exe as a Backdoor Into Your Network appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..
Ean Meyer // This post is for attendees of Wild West Hackin’ Fest: Deadwood 2022 POGs? Yes, POGs! If you aren’t familiar with POGs, this game started decades ago, reaching […]
The post POGS at Wild West Hackin’ Fest! appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..
Mike Felch // The Hunt for Initial Access With the default disablement of VBA macros originating from the internet, Microsoft may be pitching a curveball to threat actors and red […]
The post Rogue RDP – Revisiting Initial Access Methods appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..
Jordan Drysdale // tl;dr BHIS made some interesting discoveries while working with a customer to audit their Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure. At the time of the discovery, we found […]
The post Securing the Cloud: A Story of Research, Discovery, and Disclosure appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..
Brian Fehrman // Many of you have likely heard of Domain Fronting. Domain Fronting is a technique that can allow your C2 traffic to blend in with a target’s traffic […]
The post Using CloudFront to Relay Cobalt Strike Traffic appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..
Timecode links take you to YouTube: 4:11 – Infrastructure & Background8:28 – Overview & Breakdown of Attack Methodology and Plans11:35 – Start of Attack (Gaining Access), Password Spraying Toolkit15:24 – […]
The post Webcast: Attack Tactics 5 – Zero to Hero Attack appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..
Joff Thyer// In this webcast, we talk about the 2020 End of Life for Python2. We address what the short and medium term impacts will likely be. Key language differences […]
The post BHIS Webcast: Py2k20 – Transitioning from Python2 to Python3 appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..
Do your PowerShell scripts keep getting caught? Tired of dealing with EDRs & Windows Defender every time you need to pop a box? In this one-hour podcast, originally recorded as […]
The post BHIS PODCAST: Endpoint Security Got You Down? No PowerShell? No Problem. appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..
Carrie Roberts //* (Updated 2/12/2020) ADVISORY: The techniques and tools referenced within this blog post may be outdated and do not apply to current situations. However, there is still potential […]
The post Getting PowerShell Empire Past Windows Defender appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..
Carrie Roberts //* SSHazam is a method of running any C2 tool of your choice inside a standard SSH tunnel to avoid network detections. The examples here involve running PowerShell […]
The post SSHazam: Hide Your C2 Inside of SSH appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..
Darin Roberts // In previous blogs, I have shown how to get various C2 sessions. In this blog, I will be showing how to do C2 over ICMP. First, what […]
The post How To: C2 Over ICMP appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..
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