On February 8, during the Super Bowl in the United States, countless owners of one of the most popular smart products today got a bit of a wakeup call: Their Ring doorbells could be used to see a whole lot more than they knew.
In a commercial that was broadcast to one of most reliably enormous audiences in the country, Amazon, which owns the company Ring, promoted a new feature for its smart doorbells called “Search Party.” By scouring the footage of individual Ring cameras across a specific region, “Search Party” can implement AI-powered image recognition technology to find, as the commercial portrayed it, a lost dog. But immediately after the commercial aired, people began wondering what else their Ring cameras could be used to find.
“Ring’s Super Bowl ad exposed a scary truth: the technology in its doorbell cameras could be used to hunt down a lost pet…or a person. Amazon must discontinue its dystopian monitoring features.”
These “dystopian monitoring features” aren’t entirely new, but that’s not to say that most Ring owners knew what they were allowing when they originally bought their devices.
Bought by Amazon in 2018, Ring is the most popular manufacturer of a product that, as of 15 years ago, didn’t really exist. And while other “smart” innovations failed, smart doorbells have become a fixture of American neighborhoods, providing a mixture of convenience and security. For instance, a Ring owner away from home can verify and buzz in their mailman dropping off a package behind a gated entrance. Or, a Ring owner can see on their phone that the person knocking at their door is a salesman and choose to avoid talking to them. Or, a Ring owner can help police who are investigating a crime in their area by handing over relevant footage. Even the presence of a Ring doorbell, and its variety of motion-detecting alerts, could possibly serve as a deterrent to crime.
What has seemingly upset so many of those same owners, then, is learning exactly how their personal devices might be used for a company’s gains.
Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Matthew Guariglia, senior policy analyst at Electronic Frontier Foundation, about Ring’s long history of partnering with—and sometimes even speaking directly for—police, who can access Ring doorbell footage both inside the company and outside it, and what people really open themselves up to when purchasing a Ring device.
”There’s this impression, a myth practically, that ‘I buy a ring doorbell to put on my house, I control the footage… But there is [an] entire secondary use of this device, which is by police that you don’t really get a lot of say in.”
On February 8, during the Super Bowl in the United States, countless owners of one of the most popular smart products today got a bit of a wakeup call: Their Ring doorbells could be used to see a whole lot more than they knew.
In a commercial that was broadcast to one of most reliably enormous audiences in the country, Amazon, which owns the company Ring, promoted a new feature for its smart doorbells called “Search Party.” By scouring the footage of individual Ring cameras across a specific region, “Search Party” can implement AI-powered image recognition technology to find, as the commercial portrayed it, a lost dog. But immediately after the commercial aired, people began wondering what else their Ring cameras could be used to find.
“Ring’s Super Bowl ad exposed a scary truth: the technology in its doorbell cameras could be used to hunt down a lost pet…or a person. Amazon must discontinue its dystopian monitoring features.”
These “dystopian monitoring features” aren’t entirely new, but that’s not to say that most Ring owners knew what they were allowing when they originally bought their devices.
Bought by Amazon in 2018, Ring is the most popular manufacturer of a product that, as of 15 years ago, didn’t really exist. And while other “smart” innovations failed, smart doorbells have become a fixture of American neighborhoods, providing a mixture of convenience and security. For instance, a Ring owner away from home can verify and buzz in their mailman dropping off a package behind a gated entrance. Or, a Ring owner can see on their phone that the person knocking at their door is a salesman and choose to avoid talking to them. Or, a Ring owner can help police who are investigating a crime in their area by handing over relevant footage. Even the presence of a Ring doorbell, and its variety of motion-detecting alerts, could possibly serve as a deterrent to crime.
What has seemingly upset so many of those same owners, then, is learning exactly how their personal devices might be used for a company’s gains.
Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Matthew Guariglia, senior policy analyst at Electronic Frontier Foundation, about Ring’s long history of partnering with—and sometimes even speaking directly for—police, who can access Ring doorbell footage both inside the company and outside it, and what people really open themselves up to when purchasing a Ring device.
”There’s this impression, a myth practically, that ‘I buy a ring doorbell to put on my house, I control the footage… But there is [an] entire secondary use of this device, which is by police that you don’t really get a lot of say in.”
About a year ago, we published a post about the ClickFix technique, which was gaining popularity among attackers. The essence of attacks using ClickFix boils down to convincing the victim, under various pretexts, to run a malicious command on their computer. That is, from the cybersecurity solutions point of view, it’s run on behalf of the active user and with their privileges.
In early uses of this technique, cybercriminals tried to convince victims that they need to execute a command to fix some problem or to pass a captcha, and in the vast majority of cases, the malicious command was a PowerShell script. However, since then, attackers have come up with a number of new tricks that users should be warned about, as well as a number of new variants of malicious payload delivery, which are also worth keeping an eye on.
Use of mshta.exe
Last year, Microsoft experts published a report on cyberattacks targeting hotel owners working with Booking.com. The attackers sent out fake notifications from the service, or emails pretending to be from guests drawing attention to a review. In both cases, the email contained a link to a website imitating Booking.com, which asked the victim to prove that they were not a robot by running a code via the Run menu.
There are two key differences between this attack and ClickFix. First, the user isn’t asked to copy the string (after all, a string with code sometimes arouses suspicion). It’s copied to the exchange buffer by the malicious site – probably when the user clicks on a checkbox that mimics the reCAPTCHA mechanism. Second, the malicious string calls the legitimate mshta.exe utility, which serves to run applications written in HTML. It contacts the attackers’ server and executes the malicious payload.
Video on TikTok and PowerShell with administrator privileges
BleepingComputer published an article in October 2025 about a campaign spreading malware through instructions in TikTok videos. The videos themselves imitate video tutorials on how to activate proprietary software for free. The advice they give boils down to a need to run PowerShell with administrator rights and then execute the command iex (irm {address}). Here, the irm command downloads a malicious script from a server controlled by attackers, and the iex (Invoke-Expression) command runs it. The script, in turn, downloads an infostealer malware to the victim’s computer.
Using the Finger protocol
Another unusual variant of the ClickFix attack uses the familiar captcha trick, but the malicious script uses the outdated Finger protocol. The utility of the same name allows anyone to request data about a specific user on a remote server. The protocol is rarely used nowadays, but it is still supported by Windows, macOS, and a number of Linux-based systems.
The user is persuaded to open the command line interface and use it to run a command that establishes a connection via the Finger protocol (using TCP port 79) with the attackers’ server. The protocol only transfers text information, but this is enough to download another script to the victim’s computer, which then installs the malware.
CrashFix variant
Another variant of ClickFix differs in that it uses more sophisticated social engineering. It was used in an attack on users trying to find a tool to block advertising banners, trackers, malware, and other unwanted content on web pages. When searching for a suitable extension for Google Chrome, victims found something called NexShield – Advanced Web Guardian, which was in fact a clone of real working software, but which at some point crashed the browser and displayed a fake notification about a detected security problem and the need to run a “scan” to fix the error. If the user agreed, they received instructions on how to open the Run menu and execute a command that the extension had previously copied to the clipboard.
The command copied the familiar finger.exe file to a temporary directory, renamed it ct.exe, and then launched it with the attacker’s address. The rest of the attack was the same as in the abovementioned case. In response to the Finger protocol request, a malicious script was delivered, which launched and installed a remote access Trojan (in this case, ModeloRAT).
Malware delivery via DNS lookup
The Microsoft Threat Intelligence team also shared a slightly more complex than usual ClickFix attack variant. Unfortunately, they didn’t describe the social engineering trick, but the method of delivering the malicious payload is quite interesting. Probably in order to complicate detection of the attack in a corporate environment and prolong the life of the malicious infrastructure, the attackers used an additional step: contacting a DNS server controlled by the attackers.
That is, after the victim is somehow persuaded to copy and execute a malicious command, a request is sent to the DNS server on behalf of the user via the legitimate nslookup utility, requesting data for the example.com domain. The command contained the address of a specific DNS server controlled by the attackers. It returns a response that, among other things, returned a string with malicious script, which in turn downloads the final payload (in this attack, ModeloRAT again).
Cryptocurrency bait and JavaScript as payload
The next attack variant is interesting for its multi-stage social engineering. In comments on Pastebin, attackers actively spread a message about an alleged flaw in the Swapzone.io cryptocurrency exchange service. Cryptocurrency owners were invited to visit a resource created by fraudsters, which contained full instructions on how to exploit this flaw, which can make up to $13,000 in a couple of days.
The instructions explain how the service’s flaws can be exploited to exchange cryptocurrency at a more favorable rate. To do this, a victim needs to open the service’s website in the Chrome browser, manually type “javascript:” in the address bar, and then paste the JavaScript script copied from the attackers’ website and execute it. In reality, of course, the script cannot affect exchange rates in any way; it simply replaces Bitcoin wallet addresses and, if the victim actually tries to exchange something, transfers the funds to the attackers’ accounts.
How to protect your company from ClickFix attacks
The simplest attacks using the ClickFix technique can be countered by blocking the [Win] + [R] key combination on work devices. But, as we see from the examples listed, this is far from the only type of attack in which users are asked to run malicious code themselves.
Therefore, the main advice is to raise employee cybersecurity awareness. They must clearly understand that if someone asks them to perform any unusual manipulations with the system, and/or copy and paste code somewhere, then in most cases this is a trick used by cybercriminals. Security awareness training can be organized using the Kaspersky Automated Security Awareness Platform.
In addition, to protect against such cyberattacks, we recommend:
With both spring and St. Valentine’s Day just around the corner, love is in the air — but we’re going to look at it through the lens of ultra-modern high-technology. Today, we’re diving into how technology is reshaping our romantic ideals and even the language we use to flirt. And, of course, we’ll throw in some non-obvious tips to make sure you don’t end up as a casualty of the modern-day love game.
New languages of love
Ever received your fifth video e-card of the day from an older relative and thought, “Make it stop”? Or do you feel like a period at the end of a sentence is a sign of passive aggression? In the world of messaging, different social and age groups speak their own digital dialects, and things often get lost in translation.
This is especially obvious in how Gen Z and Gen Alpha use emojis. For them, the Loudly Crying Face 😭 often doesn’t mean sadness — it means laughter, shock, or obsession. Meanwhile, the Heart Eyes emoji might be used for irony rather than romance: “Lost my wallet on the way home 😍😍😍”. Some double meanings have already become universal, like 🔥 for approval/praise, or 🍆 for… well, surely you know that by now… right?! 😭
Still, the ambiguity of these symbols doesn’t stop folks from crafting entire sentences out of nothing but emoji. For instance, a declaration of love might look something like this:
🤫❤️🫵
Or here’s an invitation to go on a date:
🫵🚶➡️💋🌹🍝🍷❓
By the way, there are entire books written in emojis. Back in 2009, enthusiasts actually translated the entirety of Moby Dick into emojis. The translators had to get creative — even paying volunteers to vote on the most accurate combinations for every single sentence. Granted it’s not exactly a literary masterpiece — the emoji language has its limits, after all — but the experiment was pretty fascinating: they actually managed to convey the general plot.
This is what Emoji Dick — the translation of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick into emoji — looks like. Source
Unfortunately, putting together a definitive emoji dictionary or a formal style guide for texting is nearly impossible. There are just too many variables: age, context, personal interests, and social circles. Still, it never hurts to ask your friends and loved ones how they express tone and emotion in their messages. Fun fact: couples who use emojis regularly generally report feeling closer to one another.
However, if you are big into emojis, keep in mind that your writing style is surprisingly easy to spoof. It’s easy for an attacker to run your messages or public posts through AI to clone your tone for social engineering attacks on your friends and family. So, if you get a frantic DM or a request for an urgent wire transfer that sounds exactly like your best friend, double-check it. Even if the vibe is spot on, stay skeptical. We took a deeper dive into spotting these deepfake scams in our post about the attack of the clones.
Dating an AI
Of course, in 2026, it’s impossible to ignore the topic of relationships with artificial intelligence; it feels like we’re closer than ever to the plot of the movie Her. Just 10 years ago, news about people dating robots sounded like sci-fi tropes or urban legends. Today, stories about teens caught up in romances with their favorite characters on Character AI, or full-blown wedding ceremonies with ChatGPT, barely elicit more than a nervous chuckle.
In 2017, the service Replika launched, allowing users to create a virtual friend or life partner powered by AI. Its founder, Eugenia Kuyda — a Russian native living in San Francisco since 2010 — built the chatbot after her friend was tragically killed by a car in 2015, leaving her with nothing but their chat logs. What started as a bot created to help her process her grief was eventually released to her friends and then the general public. It turned out that a lot of people were craving that kind of connection.
Replika lets users customize a character’s personality, interests, and appearance, after which they can text or even call them. A paid subscription unlocks the romantic relationship option, along with AI-generated photos and selfies, voice calls with roleplay, and the ability to hand-pick exactly what the character remembers from your conversations.
However, these interactions aren’t always harmless. In 2021, a Replika chatbot actually encouraged a user in his plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II. The man eventually attempted to break into Windsor Castle — an “adventure” that ended in 2023 with a nine-year prison sentence. Following the scandal, the company had to overhaul its algorithms to stop the AI from egging on illegal behavior. The downside? According to many Replika devotees, the AI model lost its spark and became indifferent to users. After thousands of users revolted against the updated version, Replika was forced to cave and give longtime customers the option to roll back to the legacy chatbot version.
But sometimes, just chatting with a bot isn’t enough. There are entire online communities of people who actually marry their AI. Even professional wedding planners are getting in on the action. Last year, Yurina Noguchi, 32, “married” Klaus, an AI persona she’d been chatting with on ChatGPT. The wedding featured a full ceremony with guests, the reading of vows, and even a photoshoot of the “happy newlyweds”.
Yurina Noguchi, 32, “married” Klaus, an AI character created by ChatGPT. Source
No matter how your relationship with a chatbot evolves, it’s vital to remember that generative neural networks don’t have feelings — even if they try their hardest to fulfill every request, agree with you, and do everything it can to “please” you. What’s more, AI isn’t capable of independent thought (at least not yet). It’s simply calculating the most statistically probable and acceptable sequence of words to serve up in response to your prompt.
Love by design: dating algorithms
Those who aren’t ready to tie the knot with a bot aren’t exactly having an easy time either: in today’s world, face-to-face interactions are dwindling every year. Modern love requires modern tech! And while you’ve definitely heard the usual grumbling, “Back in the day, people fell in love for real. These days it’s all about swiping left or right!” Statistics tell a different story. Roughly 16% of couples worldwide say they met online, and in some countries that number climbs to as high as 51%.
That said, dating apps like Tinder spark some seriously mixed emotions. The internet is practically overflowing with articles and videos claiming these apps are killing romance and making everyone lonely. But what does the research say?
In 2025, scientists conducted a meta-analysis of studies investigating how dating apps impact users’ wellbeing, body image, and mental health. Half of the studies focused exclusively on men, while the other half included both men and women. Here are the results: 86% of respondents linked negative body image to their use of dating apps! The analysis also showed that in nearly one out of every two cases, dating app usage correlated with a decline in mental health and overall wellbeing.
Other researchers noted that depression levels are lower among those who steer clear of dating apps. Meanwhile, users who already struggled with loneliness or anxiety often develop a dependency on online dating; they don’t just log on for potential relationships, but for the hits of dopamine from likes, matches, and the endless scroll of profiles.
However, the issue might not just be the algorithms — it could be our expectations. Many are convinced that “sparks” must fly on the very first date, and that everyone has a “soulmate” waiting for them somewhere out there. In reality, these romanticized ideals only surfaced during the Romantic era as a rebuttal to Enlightenment rationalism, where marriages of convenience were the norm.
It’s also worth noting that the romantic view of love didn’t just appear out of thin air: the Romantics, much like many of our contemporaries, were skeptical of rapid technological progress, industrialization, and urbanization. To them, “true love” seemed fundamentally incompatible with cold machinery and smog-choked cities. It’s no coincidence, after all, that Anna Karenina meets her end under the wheels of a train.
Fast forward to today, and many feel like algorithms are increasingly pulling the strings of our decision-making. However, that doesn’t mean online dating is a lost cause; researchers have yet to reach a consensus on exactly how long-lasting or successful internet-born relationships really are. The bottom line: don’t panic, just make sure your digital networking stays safe!
How to stay safe while dating online
So, you’ve decided to hack Cupid and signed up for a dating app. What could possibly go wrong?
Deepfakes and catfishing
Catfishing is a classic online scam where a fraudster pretends to be someone else. It used to be that catfishers just stole photos and life stories from real people, but nowadays they’re increasingly pivoting to generative models. Some AIs can churn out incredibly realistic photos of people who don’t even exist, and whipping up a backstory is a piece of cake — or should we say, a piece of prompt. By the way, that “verified account” checkmark isn’t a silver bullet; sometimes AI manages to trick identity verification systems too.
To verify that you’re talking to a real human, try asking for a video call or doing a reverse image search on their photos. If you want to level up your detection skills, check out our three posts on how to spot fakes: from photos and audio recordings to real-time deepfake video — like the kind used in live video chats.
Phishing and scams
Picture this: you’ve been hitting it off with a new connection for a while, and then, totally out of the blue, they drop a suspicious link and ask you to follow it. Maybe they want you to “help pick out seats” or “buy movie tickets”. Even if you feel like you’ve built up a real bond, there’s a chance your match is a scammer (or just a bot), and the link is malicious.
Telling you to “never click a malicious link” is pretty useless advice — it’s not like they come with a warning label. Instead, try this: to make sure your browsing stays safe, use a Kaspersky Premium that automatically blocks phishing attempts and keeps you off sketchy sites.
Keep in mind that there’s an even more sophisticated scheme out there known as “Pig Butchering”. In these cases, the scammer might chat with the victim for weeks or even months. Sadly, it ends badly: after lulling the victim into a false sense of security through friendly or romantic banter, the scammer casually nudges them toward a “can’t-miss crypto investment” — and then vanishes along with the “invested” funds.
Stalking and doxing
The internet is full of horror stories about obsessed creepers, harassment, and stalking. That’s exactly why posting photos that reveal where you live or work — or telling strangers about your favorite local hangouts — is a bad move. We’ve previously covered how to avoid becoming a victim of doxing (the gathering and public release of your personal info without your consent). Your first step is to lock down the privacy settings on all your social media and apps using our free Privacy Checker tool.
We also recommend stripping metadata from your photos and videos before you post or send them; many sites and apps don’t do this for you. Metadata can allow anyone who downloads your photo to pinpoint the exact coordinates of where it was taken.
Finally, don’t forget about your physical safety. Before heading out on a date, it’s a smart move to share your live geolocation, and set up a safe word or a code phrase with a trusted friend to signal if things start feeling off.
Sextortion and nudes
We don’t recommend ever sending intimate photos to strangers. Honestly, we don’t even recommend sending them to people you do know — you never know how things might go sideways down the road. But if a conversation has already headed in that direction, suggest moving it to an app with end-to-end encryption that supports self-destructing messages (like “delete after viewing”). Telegram’s Secret Chats are great for this (plus — they block screenshots!), as are other secure messengers. If you do find yourself in a bad spot, check out our posts on what to do if you’re a victim of sextortion and how to get leaked nudes removed from the internet.
This scenario simultaneously tests identity confirmation tooling (SSPR, MFA, Conditional Access), how users act under pressure, and the organization's ability to detect and follow-up on social engineering attacks.
Unit 42 breaks down a payroll attack fueled by social engineering. Learn how the breach happened and how to protect your organization from similar threats.
As part of our commitment to sharing interesting hunts, we are launching these 'Flash Hunting Findings' to highlight active threats. Our latest investigation tracks an operation active between January 11 and January 15, 2026, which uses consistent ZIP file structures and a unique behash ("4acaac53c8340a8c236c91e68244e6cb") for identification. The campaign relies on a trusted executable to trick the operating system into loading a malicious payload, leading to the execution of secondary-stage infostealers.
Findings
The primary samples identified are ZIP files that mostly reference the MalwareBytes company and software using the filename malwarebytes-windows-github-io-X.X.X.zip. A notable feature for identification is that all of them share the same behash.
behash:"4acaac53c8340a8c236c91e68244e6cb"
The initial instance of these samples was identified on January 11, 2026, with the most recent occurrence recorded on January 14.
All of these ZIP archives share a nearly identical internal structure, containing the same set of files across the different versions identified. Of particular importance is the DLL file, which serves as the initial malicious payload, and a specific TXT file found in each archive. This text file has been observed on VirusTotal under two distinct filenames: gitconfig.com.txt and Agreement_About.txt.
The content of the TXT file holds no significant importance for the intrusion itself, as it merely contains a single string consisting of a GitHub URL.
However, this TXT is particularly valuable for pivoting and infrastructure mapping. By examining its "execution parents," analysts can identify additional ZIP archives that are likely linked to the same malicious campaign. These related files can be efficiently retrieved for further investigation using the following VirusTotal API v3 endpoint:
The primary payload of this campaign is contained within a malicious DLL named CoreMessaging.dll. Threat actors are utilizing a technique known as DLL Sideloading to execute this code. This involves placing the malicious DLL in the same directory as a legitimate, trusted executable (EXE) also found within the distributed ZIP file. When an analyst or user runs the legitimate EXE, the operating system is tricked into loading the malicious CoreMessaging.dll.
The identified DLLs exhibit distinctive metadata characteristics that are highly effective for pivoting and uncovering additional variants within the same campaign. Security analysts can utilize specific hunting queries to track down other malicious DLLs belonging to this activity. For instance, analysts can search for samples sharing the following unique signature strings found in the file metadata:
Furthermore, the exported functions within these DLLs contains unusual alphanumeric strings. These exports serve as reliable indicators for identifying related malicious components across different stages of the campaign:
Finally, another observation for behavioral analysis can be found in the relations tab of the ZIP files. These files document the full infection chain observed during sandbox execution, where the sandbox extracts the ZIP, runs the legitimate EXE, and subsequently triggers the loading of the malicious DLL. Within the Payload Files section, additional payloads are visible. These represent secondary stages dropped during the initial DLL execution, which act as the final malware samples. These final payloads are primarily identified as infostealers, designed to exfiltrate sensitive data.
Analysis of all the ZIP files behavioral relations reveals a recurring payload file consistently flagged as an infostealer. This malicious component is identified by various YARA rules, including those specifically designed to detect signatures associated with stealing cryptocurrency wallet browser extension IDs among others.
To identify and pivot through the various secondary-stage payloads dropped during this campaign, analysts can utilize a specific behash identifier. These files represent the final infection stage and are primarily designed to exfiltrate credentials and crypto-wallet information. The following behash provides a reliable pivot point for uncovering additional variants.
behash:5ddb604194329c1f182d7ba74f6f5946
IOCs
We have created a public VirusTotal Collection to share all the IOCs in an easy and free way. Below you can find the main IOCs related to the ZIP files and DLLs too.
import "pe"
rule win_dll_sideload_eosinophil_infostealer_jan26
{
meta:
author = "VirusTotal"
description = "Detects malicious DLLs (CoreMessaging.dll) from an infostealer campaign impersonating Malwarebytes, Logitech, and others via DLL sideloading."
reference = "https://blog.virustotal.com/2026/01/malicious-infostealer-january-26.html"
date = "2026-01-16"
behash = "4acaac53c8340a8c236c91e68244e6cb"
target_entity = "file"
hash = "606baa263e87d32a64a9b191fc7e96ca066708b2f003bde35391908d3311a463"
condition:
(uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and uint32(uint32(0x3C)) == 0x00004550 and pe.is_dll()) and
pe.exports("15Mmm95ml1RbfjH1VUyelYFCf") and pe.exports("2dlSKEtPzvo1mHDN4FYgv")
}
This article was originally published in the second edition of the InfoSec Survival Guide. Find it free online HERE or order your $1 physical copy on the Spearphish General Store. […]
This blog is part of a series where we highlight new or fast-evolving threats in consumer security. This one focuses on how AI is being used to design more realistic campaigns, accelerate social engineering, and how AI agents can be used to target individuals.
Most cybercriminals stick with what works. But once a new method proves effective, it spreads quickly—and new trends and types of campaigns follow.
In 2025, the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its use in cybercrime went hand in hand. In general, AI allows criminals to improve the scale, speed, and personalization of social engineering through realistic text, voice, and video. Victims face not only financial loss, but erosion of trust in digital communication and institutions.
Social engineering
Voice cloning
One of the main areas where AI improved was in the area of voice-cloning, which was immediately picked up by scammers. In the past, they would mostly stick to impersonating friends and relatives. In 2025, they went as far as impersonating senior US officials. The targets were predominantly current or former US federal or state government officials and their contacts.
In the course of these campaigns, cybercriminals used test messages as well as AI-generated voice messages. At the same time, they did not abandon the distressed-family angle. A woman in Florida was tricked into handing over thousands of dollars to a scammer after her daughter’s voice was AI-cloned and used in a scam.
AI agents
Agentic AI is the term used for individualized AI agents designed to carry out tasks autonomously. One such task could be to search for publicly available or stolen information about an individual and use that information to compose a very convincing phishing lure.
These agents could also be used to extort victims by matching stolen data with publicly known email addresses or social media accounts, composing messages and sustaining conversations with people who believe a human attacker has direct access to their Social Security number, physical address, credit card details, and more.
Another use we see frequently is AI-assisted vulnerability discovery. These tools are in use by both attackers and defenders. For example, Google uses a project called Big Sleep, which has found several vulnerabilities in the Chrome browser.
Social media
As mentioned in the section on AI agents, combining data posted on social media with data stolen during breaches is a common tactic. Such freely provided data is also a rich harvesting ground for romance scams, sextortion, and holiday scams.
And then there are the vulnerabilities in public AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and many others. Researchers and criminals alike are still exploring ways to bypass the safeguards intended to limit misuse.
Prompt injection is the general term for when someone inserts carefully crafted input, in the form of an ordinary conversation or data, to nudge or force an AI into doing something it wasn’t meant to do.
Malware campaigns
In some cases, attackers have used AI platforms to write and spread malware. Researchers have documented campaign where attackers leveraged Claude AI to automate the entire attack lifecycle, from initial system compromise through to ransom note generation, targeting sectors such as government, healthcare, and emergency services.
AI is amplifying the capabilities of both defenders and attackers. Security teams can use it to automate detection, spot patterns faster, and scale protection. Cybercriminals, meanwhile, are using it to sharpen social engineering, discover vulnerabilities more quickly, and build end-to-end campaigns with minimal effort.
Looking toward 2026, the biggest shift may not be technical but psychological. As AI-generated content becomes harder to distinguish from the real thing, verifying voices, messages, and identities will matter more than ever.
We don’t just report on threats—we remove them
Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your devices by downloading Malwarebytes today.
You might not know it, given the many headlines focused on new questions about copyright and Generative AI, but the year’s biggest copyright case concerned an old-for-the-internet question: do ISPs have to be copyright cops? After years of litigation, that question is now squarely before the Supreme Court. And if the Supreme Court doesn’t reverse a lower court’s ruling, ISPs could be forced to terminate people’s internet access based on nothing more than mere accusations of copyright infringement. This would threaten innocent users who rely on broadband for essential aspects of daily life.
The Stakes: Turning ISPs into Copyright Police
This issue turns on what courts call “secondary liability,” which is the legal idea that someone can be held responsible not for what they did directly, but for what someone else did using their product or service. The case began when music companies sued Cox Communications, arguing that the ISP should be held liable for copyright infringement committed by some of its subscribers. The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit agreed, adopting a “material contribution” standard for contributory copyright liability (a rule for when service providers can be held liable for the actions of users). Under that standard, providing a service that could be used for infringement is enough to create liability when a customer infringes.
The Fourth Circuit’s rule would have devastating consequences for the public. Given copyright law’s draconian penalties, ISP would be under enormous pressure to terminate accounts whenever they get an infringement notice, whether or not the actual accountholder has infringed anything: entire households, schools, libraries, or businesses that share an internet connection. These would include:
Public libraries, which provide internet access to millions of Americans who lack it at home, could lose essential service.
Universities, hospitals, and local governments could see internet access for whole communities disrupted.
Households—especially in low-income and communities of color, which disproportionately share broadband connections with other people—would face collective punishment for the alleged actions of a single user.
And with more than a third of Americans having only one or no broadband provider, many users would have no way to reconnect.
EFF—along with the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and Re:Create—filed an amicus brief urging the Court to reverse the Fourth Circuit’s decision, taking guidance from patent law. In the Patent Act, where Congress has explicitly defined secondary liability, there’s a different test: contributory infringement exists only where a product is incapable of substantial non-infringing use. Internet access, of course, is overwhelmingly used for lawful purposes, making it the very definition of a “staple article of commerce” that can’t be liable under the patent framework.
The Supreme Court held a hearing in the case on December 1, and a majority of the justices seemed troubled by the implications of the Fourth Circuit’s ruling. One exchange was particularly telling: asked what should happen when the notices of infringement target a university account upon which thousands of people rely, Sony’s counsel suggested the university could resolve the issue by essentially slowing internet speeds so infringement might be less appealing. It’s hard to imagine the university community would agree that research, teaching, artmaking, library services, and the myriad other activities that rely on internet access should be throttled because of the actions of a few students. Hopefully the Supreme Court won’t either.
We expect a ruling in the case in the next few months. Fingers crossed that the Court rejects the Fourth Circuit’s draconian rule.
This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2025.
The Infostealer Gateway: Uncovering the Latest Methods in Defense Evasion
In this post, we analyze the evolving bypass tactics threat actors are using to neutralize traditional security perimeters and fuel the global surge in infostealer infections.
Infostealer-driven credential theft in 2025 has surged, with Flashpoint observing a staggering 800% increase since the start of the year. With over 1.8 billion corporate and personal accounts compromised, the threat landscape finds itself in a paradox: while technical defenses have never been more advanced, the human attack surface has never been more vulnerable.
Information-stealing malware has become the most scalable entry point for enterprise breaches, but to truly defend against them, organizations must look beyond the malware itself. As teams move into 2026 security planning, it is critical to understand the deceptive initial access vectors—the latest tactics Flashpoint is seeing in the wild—that threat actors are using to manipulate users and bypass modern security perimeters.
Here are the latest methods threat actors are leveraging to facilitate infections:
1. Neutralizing Mark of the Web (MotW) via Drag-and-Drop Lures
Mark of the Web (MotW) is a critical Windows defense feature that tags files downloaded from the internet as “untrusted” by adding a hidden NTFS Alternate Data Stream (ADS) to the file. This tag triggers “Protected View” in Microsoft Office programs and prompts Windows SmartScreen warnings when a user attempts to execute an unknown file.
Flashpoint has observed a new social engineering method to bypass these protections through a simple drag-and-drop lure. Instead of asking a user to open a suspicious attachment directly, which would trigger an immediate MotW warning, threat actors are instead instructing the victim to drag the malicious image or file from a document onto their desktop to view it. This manual interaction is highly effective for two reasons:
Contextual Evasion: By dragging the file out of the document and onto the desktop, the file is executed outside the scope of the Protected View sandbox.
Metadata Stripping: In many instances, the act of dragging and dropping an embedded object from a parent document can cause the operating system to treat the newly created file as a local creation, rather than an internet download. This effectively strips the MotW tag and allows malicious code to run without any security alerts.
2. Executing Payloads via Vulnerabilities and Trusted Processes
Flashpoint analysts uncovered an illicit thread detailing a proof of concept for a client-side remote code execution (RCE) in the Google Web Designer for Windows, which was first discovered by security researcher Bálint Magyar.
Google Web Designer is an application used for creating dynamic ads for the Google Ads platform. Leveraging this vulnerability, attackers would be able to perform remote code execution through an internal API using CSS injection by targeting a configuration file related to ads documents.
Within this thread, threat actors were specifically interested in the execution of the payload using the chrome.exe process. This is because using chrome.exe to fetch and execute a file is likely to bypass several security restrictions as Chrome is already a trusted process. By utilizing specific command-line arguments, such as the –headless flag, threat actors showed how to force a browser to initiate a remote connection in the background without spawning a visible window. This can be used in conjunction with other malicious scripts to silently download additional payloads onto a victim’s systems.
3. Targeting Alternative Softwares as a Path of Least Resistance
As widely-used software becomes more hardened and secure, threat actors are instead pivoting to targeting lesser-known alternatives. These tools often lack robust macro-protections. By targeting vulnerabilities in secondary PDF viewers or Office alternatives, attackers are seeking to trick users into making remote server connections that would otherwise be flagged as suspicious.
Understanding the Identity Attack Surface
Social engineering is one of the driving factors behind the infostealer lifecycle. Once an initial access vector is successful, the malware immediately begins harvesting the logs that fuel today’s identity-based digital attacks.
As detailed in The Proactive Defender’s Guide to Infostealers, the end goal is not just a password. Instead, attackers are prioritizing session cookies, which allow them to perform session hijacking. By importing these stolen cookies into anti-detect browsers, they bypass Multi-Factor Authentication and step directly into corporate environments, appearing as a legitimate, authenticated user.
Understanding how threat actors weaponize stolen data is the first step toward a proactive defense. For a deep dive into the most prolific stealer strains and strategies for managing the identity attack surface, download The Proactive Defender’s Guide to Infostealers today.
Keeping websites and applications secure starts with knowing which vulnerabilities exist, how severe they are, and whether they affect your stack. That’s exactly where the CVE program shines. Below, we’ll cover some CVE fundamentals, including what they are, how to search and understand the data, and how to translate this information into actionable steps.
Introduction to the CVE database
So, what is CVE?
CVE stands for Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures, a community-driven program that assigns unique identifiers to publicly known vulnerabilities.
Social engineering is the manipulation of individuals into divulging confidential information, granting unauthorized access, or performing actions that benefit the attacker, all without the victim realizing they are being tricked.
British defence firms have reportedly warned staff not to connect their phones to Chinese-made EVs
Mobile phones and desktop computers are longstanding targets for cyber spies – but how vulnerable are electric cars?
On Monday the i newspaper claimed that British defence firms working for the UK government have warned staff against connecting or pairing their phones with Chinese-made electric cars, due to fears that Beijing could extract sensitive data from the devices.
GoPhish provides a nice platform for creating and running phishing campaigns. This blog will guide you through installing GoPhish and creating a campaign.
by moth Hard-coded cryptographic secrets? In my commercially purchased, closed-source software? It’s more likely than you think. Like, a lot more likely. This blog post details a true story of […]
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