The FIFA World Cup 2026 kicks off on June 11. Across 16 cities in the US, Canada, and Mexico, billions of people will be watching, traveling, betting, and spending. Threat actors have been watching too, and for far longer. Check Point Research and Check Point Exposure Management spent the past year tracking the cyber threat landscape building around this tournament. What emerged is a coordinated pre-positioning effort across three sectors that sit at the center of the World Cup economy: finance, travel and hospitality, and gambling. The infrastructure is already built, with most of them already live. Financial Sector: Fraud […]

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When people hear about hackers “asking an AI chatbot” to help them take over Instagram accounts, the instinctive reaction is to file it under prompt injection, jailbreaks, or “the model got tricked.”  That may be the wrong lesson.  According to reporting from 404 Media, hackers claimed they used Meta’s AI support chatbot to gain access to high-profile Instagram accounts by asking it to change the email address associated with the target account. The reported incidents coincided with several high-profile account takeovers, including accounts linked to the Obama White House, Sephora, and the Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force.    […]

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As the U.S. approaches the 2026 elections in November, the greatest threat to voting integrity will likely not be from hackers targeting voting machines or altering ballots, but from a growing war over reality itself.   Voter influence operations are increasingly focused on manipulating the information environment surrounding voters, flooding social media and search results with misleading narratives and fake content, and impersonated news sources designed to erode trust in what people see and hear online. Sophisticated operators have already cloned major media brands like Reuters, The Washington Post, and Fox News using look-alike domains that can fool even attentive readers at a glance. In this new era of AI-powered disinformation, the […]

The post The 2026 U.S. Midterms Have a Cyber Problem, But it’s Not at the Ballot Box appeared first on Check Point Blog.

At GTC Taipei during COMPUTEX 2026, NVIDIA is highlighting the growing adoption of its NVIDIA Vera BlueField-4 STX architecture and introducing new NVIDIA DOCA-powered innovations designed to secure the next generation of enterprise AI infrastructure. As organizations continue scaling AI factories, private LLM environments, distributed inference systems, and increasingly autonomous AI operations, enterprise infrastructure requirements are rapidly evolving. Modern AI environments combine high-performance compute, distributed storage systems, inference pipelines, Kubernetes clusters, APIs, GPU server farms, and sensitive enterprise data operating continuously at enormous scale. At the same time, AI-driven environments are introducing increasingly dynamic machine-to-machine interactions across infrastructure, applications, and […]

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Attackers are now agentic. AI agents run reconnaissance, test exploits, and weaponize vulnerabilities at machine speed – collapsing the mean time from CVE disclosure to confirmed exploitation from 2.3 years in 2018 to roughly 10 hours in 2026, with 72.7% of exploited CVEs in 2026 hitting as zero days, up from 16.1% in 2018.   Every year, the major breach reports tell the same story. Misconfigurations. Unpatched systems. Identity sprawl. Flat networks. The root causes barely change, and yet organizations continue to get breached, not because they lack visibility into these problems, but because closing them at scale is genuinely hard. Too many […]

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Hacktivism and ransomware targeting organizations across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland increased 124% in 2025, according to Check Point Exposure Management (based on published attacks on the web and dark web). Three distinct dynamics drove the surge, each with its own logic and its own implications for security teams in 2026.  Germany Absorbed Most of It  Germany accounted for more than 80% of regional incidents, with Switzerland at 12% and Austria at 8%. Across Europe, the DACH region represented 18% of all recorded attacks, placing Germany above France, Spain, and Italy by individual country share.  The concentration reflects Germany’s economic and […]

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Vulnerability remediation has become an execution problem. Security teams are generating more findings than ever, but too often those findings do not translate into timely risk reduction. The gap between newly introduced exposure and effective remediation continues to widen.  Addressing that gap requires more than improved scanning, better dashboards, or additional tooling. It requires a dedicated operating model. This is the role of the Vulnerability Operations Center, or VOC. As Dr. Natalie Foster Johnson, Executive Director of the CyberMINDS Research Institute, explains, “Operationalizing a VOC is a maturity step that allows organizations to address exposure concerns earlier, reducing risk before incidents occur rather than reacting afterward.”  A VOC centralizes how organizations […]

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The FIFA World Cup 2026 is one of the most anticipated sporting events in history, and cyber criminals are already capitalizing on excitement. As matches kick off across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, threat actors are flooding the internet with fake merchandise stores, fraudulent betting platforms, and phishing domains designed to steal your money and personal data. This report breaks down the latest threat landscape so fans can stay safe while enjoying the beautiful game.  As the host countries of the FIFA World Cup 2026, the United States, Canada, and Mexico all recorded an increase in the weekly average number of cyber-attacks per organization in April 2026 compared to both […]

The post Before the First Whistle: How Cyber Criminals Are Targeting World Cup 2026 appeared first on Check Point Blog.

Key Findings  The Gentlemen RaaS has 400+ public victims and is the #2 most active ransomware group globally in 2026   Their internal systems were breached in May 2026, exposing their full operational structure   The group is run by approximately nine named operators organized around a single administrator (zeta88 / hastalamuerte), who not only manages the platform but personally participates in encryption events  That administrator has been identified as a former affiliate of the Qilin ransomware program — a career criminal who learned the trade under an established operation before building a competing one  Initial access is almost exclusively via unpatched edge devices or purchased credentials   Data stolen from one […]

The post When the Ransomware Gang Gets Hacked: What the Gentlemen Leak Reveals About Modern Ransomware Risk appeared first on Check Point Blog.

Every Region Recorded Higher Attack Volumes in April In April 2026, global cyber-attack activity rebounded sharply following the brief moderation observed in March. Organizations experienced an average of 2,201 weekly cyber-attacks, representing a 10% increase month over month and an 8% increase year over year. This reversal underscores the volatility of today’s threat landscape. After three consecutive months of gradual decline, April’s data confirms that the earlier easing was temporary rather than structural. Attackers continue to leverage automation, expanded digital footprints, and exposed cloud and GenAI environments to sustain elevated pressure across industries and regions. Check Point Research data shows […]

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Ransomware activity remained elevated in Q1 2026, continuing the trend established over the past year. According to the State of Ransomware Q1 2026 report from Check Point Research, overall attack volume stayed near historic highs. At the same time, the structure of the ransomware ecosystem changed materially. After two years of increasing fragmentation, activity is consolidating around a smaller number of dominant groups. For organizations, this shift reduces the number of active actors but increases the potential impact of individual incidents.  Key Findings: 2,122 organizations were listed on ransomware data leak sites in Q1 2026, making it the second-highest Q1 on record The top […]

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As we recognize World Password Day in 2026, the traditional advice to “use a complex password with numbers and symbols” feels hopelessly outdated. Today, a 16-character password is useless if an infostealer malware extracts it directly from a browser cache, or if an employee willingly pastes it into an unmanaged AI chatbot. Welcome to the real World Password Day 2026. Not the one where we remind you to add an exclamation mark to “Password123.” The one where we pull back the curtain on the global industrial marketplace that has quietly been built on the back of our collective password failures — a […]

The post World Password Day 2026: Why “Strong Passwords” Can’t Save You from AI, Infostealers, and the Telegram Underground appeared first on Check Point Blog.

Cyber security and operational resilience go hand-in-hand. Organizations have invested heavily in defending against breaches, ransomware, and service disruptions, building layered defenses designed to keep attackers out and systems running. But recent geopolitical developments are forcing a broader and more uncomfortable realization – the next major disruption may originate in the physical world rather than in code. As cloud infrastructure becomes more deeply embedded in the fabric of global economies and national systems, it is no longer just a platform for operations, but an extension of the attack surface. And it is this shift that introduces an entirely new category […]

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A new generation of frontier AI models is fundamentally changing how cyber attacks are created and executed, introducing a level of speed, scale, and accessibility the industry has not faced before. Early testing of advanced models, including Claude’s Mythos model, shows that they can identify vulnerabilities in code, connect them into viable attack paths, and generate working exploits with minimal effort. What once required deep expertise and significant time can now be executed rapidly, and at scale, across a wide range of environments. These are not simply AI-assisted attacks, they are attacks powered by frontier AI models. The new models […]

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We’re proud to announce that Check Point has earned GovRAMP Authorization for the Check Point Infinity Platform for Government. This is a big milestone for the company and is a reflection of our unparalleled prevention-first capabilities, which were recently ranked #1 for the fourth consecutive year in Miercom’s 2026 Hybrid Mesh Network Security Assessment (Check Point achieved the top overall security effectiveness score of 99.8%, with 100% phishing detection and 99.9% AI-powered malware prevention versus leading competitors).  Combined with FedRAMP Authorization achieved in 2025, this means Check Point now delivers security-vetted protection across federal, state, local, and tribal governments, providing a consistent, trusted cyber security framework across all levels of U.S. public sector operations.  This […]

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Do not pay the ransom. VECT permanently destroys large files rather than locking them. Even the attackers cannot recover them. Payment will not restore your data  VECT partnered with TeamPCP and BreachForums to build one of the largest ransomware affiliate networks ever assembled, giving them a ready-made pipeline to thousands of potential victims  The encryption flaw exists across all versions. Windows, Linux, and ESXi variants are all affected. The bug has been present since before the public 2.0 release and has never been fixed  Advertised features don’t work. Encryption speed modes, anti-analysis protections, and other capabilities are either unimplemented or broken  Check Point Threat Emulation and Harmony Endpoint provide full protection against all known […]

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AI is changing how software works. Applications no longer just process requests. They reason, make decisions, and take action. AI agents now retrieve data, invoke tools, and execute workflows across systems in real time. That shift introduces a new kind of risk. Because in an agentic world, security is no longer just about who has access. It’s about what AI is allowed to do. A new control point for agentic systems in Google Cloud Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform provides a centralized control point for agentic systems enabling identity, access, policy enforcement, and observability across how agents operate. This […]

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Today’s enterprises demand Zero Trust security, everywhere. Cloud security teams require high-performance protection without the burden of managing firewalls at scale. For this reason, organizations are seeking managed network security solutions that reduce operational overhead while improving consistency, visibility, and prevention across complex multi-cloud environments. Responding to that demand, Check Point is continuing rollout of an AI-powered cloud firewall as a service now available for preview on Google Cloud, as well as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.  There will be demos of the new firewall service at the Check Point Booth #3101 in the Google Next Solution Expo.  Check Point Cloud Firewall as a Service eliminates the complex overhead of managing firewall software infrastructure, giving busy DevOps and Security teams time to focus on policy management, compliance, and other strategic initiatives.   Continued Evolution of Cloud Firewalls  Cloud Firewall as a Service on Google Cloud marketplace delivers the power of Cloud Firewall (formerly Guard Network Security) with advanced threat prevention, AI-driven security intelligence, automated policy […]

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Anthropic’s reported development of Claude Mythos signals a shift: AI is compressing attack timelines by accelerating vulnerability discovery, exploit development, and multi-step attack planning. More broadly, AI is increasing the speed and scale of attacks across malware, phishing, and vulnerabilities. Attackers can now run these vectors in parallel, reducing time to compromise and increasing exposure. AI also enables more targeted phishing, faster malware iteration, and rapid vulnerability discovery, exposing gaps in detection and exposure management earlier and requiring prevention-first controls and real-time detection. To see how these challenges translate into real-world performance, and how leading security vendors handle them under […]

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The global manufacturing sector entered 2025 facing one of the most aggressive cyber threat environments in its history. Digital transformation, smart factories, and interconnected supply chains have expanded operational efficiency to places 50 years ago we wouldn’t have thought possible. But, this comes with unprecedented cyber risk. According to the Manufacturing Threat Landscape 2025 report, cyber incidents targeting manufacturing increased sharply year over year, placing the industry at the center of global ransomware activity. Manufacturing Becomes the Primary Ransomware Target In 2025, global ransomware incidents reached 7,419 documented cases, representing a 32 percent increase year over year. Manufacturing was the […]

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