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Introducing Unit 42 Managed XSIAM 2.0

24/7 Managed SOC Built for Tomorrow's Threats

The window for defense has collapsed, and most SOCs weren’t built for the speed of today’s attacks. According to the 2026 Unit 42® Global Incident Response Report, some end-to-end attacks now unfold in under an hour. Attacks that used to take days or weeks now happen in minutes.

Most traditional SOC models are trapped in a cycle of alert overload, fragmented tools and limited engineering capacity that slow investigations and delay response. Traditional SIEM and MDR models were designed to react to alerts. They were not designed to continuously improve detections, correlations and response with threats that move at machine speed. Over time, that gap between attacker speed and defender capability keeps widening, and it’s exactly why we built Unit 42 Managed XSIAM 2.0 (MSIAM).

Today marks the availability of the next evolution of our managed SOC offering – one that reflects how modern security operations must run in today’s threat landscape. MSIAM 2.0 is built on Cortex XSIAM®, Palo Alto Networks SOC transformation platform, and operated by Unit 42 analysts, threat hunters, responders and SOC engineers who handle the most complex incidents in the world. With this solution, Unit 42 provides organizations with a 24/7 managed SOC that delivers continuous detection, investigation and full-cycle remediation across the entire attack surface while improving operations over time.

We don’t just manage alerts. Unit 42 continuously engineers detections, correlations and response playbooks within XSIAM, refining them as attacker behavior evolves. This ongoing engineering ensures defenses improve over time, driven by real-world incidents and frontline threat intelligence, not static rules that quickly fall behind.

Why Managed XSIAM 2.0 Is Different

Elite SOC on Day One

We want SOC teams up and running as fast as possible. Experts lead onboarding, data mapping and configuration, and then your managed SOC team takes responsibility for operating and optimizing XSIAM on a day-to-day basis. The result is a SOC that improves over time without adding operational burden.

Every Threat Exposed

Unit 42 goes beyond reactive monitoring with continuous, proactive threat hunting across the entire attack surface. When a new threat is found in the wild, we produce threat impact reports that show how those techniques apply to each customer’s environment. We then translate those insights into custom detections and automated response actions, while also monitoring and investigating the correlation rules your team creates. Both the global threat intelligence and your unique use cases are backed by our 24/7 analysis, closing gaps quickly and strengthening defenses over time.

We also now support both native and third-party EDR telemetry, so organizations can benefit from Unit 42 expertise and Cortex® AI-driven analytics, regardless of the security technologies they use today. This enables customers to receive the strongest possible managed defense now, while creating a natural, low-friction path toward deeper platform consolidation as their environment evolves.

Machine-Speed Response

When incidents escalate, we don’t just hand you a ticket; we take ownership. Collaborating with your team, we establish pre-authorized workflows to execute immediate responses across your entire environment, from endpoints and firewalls to identity and cloud. We pair the platform’s native speed with expert oversight. By validating threat context and business impact, every response action is precise and safe, giving you the confidence to unleash full-cycle remediation. This allows MSIAM 2.0 to move seamlessly from detection to resolution with both velocity and precision.

And we stand behind our solution with a Breach Response Guarantee. If a complex incident strikes, you have the world’s best responders in your corner with up to 250 hours of Unit 42 Incident Response included. This built-in coverage removes the administrative hurdles of crisis response, enabling our experts to immediately transition from monitoring to deep forensic investigation and complete eradication, so you can focus on recovery. 

Proven in the Real World with the Green Bay Packers

Working with Unit 42 and the Cortex XSIAM platform, the Green Bay Packers modernized their security across a complex hybrid environment, demonstrating what Unit 42's managed services deliver in real-world operations. By consolidating telemetry and accelerating investigation and response, they reduced response times from hours to minutes, investigated 54% more alerts and saved over 120 hours of analyst time without adding headcount.

These outcomes reflect the key benefits of MSIAM: Unit 42 experts working to apply frontline intelligence as new attacker behavior emerges, translating it into reporting and tailored detections that improve response where it matters most. When a machine-speed platform is operated by experts handling real incidents every day, defenses continuously strengthen as threats evolve.

The Future of the SOC

Unit 42 MSIAM 2.0 helps your SOC operate as it should by combining AI-driven analytics and automation with expert-led operations and engineering. This combination provides teams with the confidence that their defenses are always on, always improving and ready when it matters most. That’s the SOC that security leaders need today, and the one we’re building for tomorrow.

MSIAM is now delivered through two service tiers, Pro and Premium. Organizations can start where they are and grow at their own pace. Pro provides AI-driven managed SOC operations with continuous detection, investigation and response. Premium extends into full-lifecycle SOC engineering, with designated experts and customized detections, automation and tailored response playbooks as your security maturity grows.

To learn more about Managed XSIAM 2.0, join us at Symphony 2026, a Palo Alto Networks premier virtual SOC event, where Unit 42 and Cortex® experts will share frontline threat intelligence from the new 2026 Unit 42 Incident Response Report alongside real-world SOC transformation insights from organizations operating at machine speed.

The post Introducing Unit 42 Managed XSIAM 2.0 appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

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The Human Element: Turning Threat Actor OPSEC Fails into Investigative Breakthroughs

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The Human Element: Turning Threat Actor OPSEC Fails into Investigative Breakthroughs

In this post, we explore how the psychological traps of operational security can unmask even the most sophisticated actors.

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February 13, 2026
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The threat intelligence landscape is often dominated with talks of sophisticated TTPs (tactics, tools, and procedures), zero-day vulnerabilities, and ransomware. While these technical threats are formidable, they are still managed by human beings, and it is the human element that often provides the most critical breakthroughs in attributing these attacks and de-anonymizing the threat actors behind them.

In our latest webinar, “OPSEC Fails: The Secret Weapon for People-Centric OSINT”,  Flashpoint was joined by Joshua Richards, founder of OSINT Praxis. Josh shared an intriguing case study where an attacker’s digital breadcrumbs led to a life-saving intervention. 

Here is how OSINT techniques, leveraged by Flashpoint’s expansive data capabilities, can dismantle illegal threat actor campaigns by turning a technical investigation into a human one.

Leveraging OPSEC as a Mindset

In a technical context, OPSEC is a risk management process that identifies seemingly innocuous pieces of information that, when gathered by an adversary, could be pieced together to reveal a larger, sensitive picture.

In the webinar, we break down the OPSEC mindset into three core pillars that every practitioner, and threat actor, must navigate. When these pillars fail, the investigation begins.

  • Analyzing the Signature: Every human has a digital signature, such as the way they type (stylometry), the times they are active, and the tools they prefer.
  • Identity Masking & Persona Management: This involves ensuring that your investigative identity has zero overlap with your real life. A common failure includes using the same browser for personal use and investigative research, which allows cookies to bridge the two identities.
  • Traffic Obfuscation: Even with a VPN, certain behaviors such as posting on a dark web forum and then using that same connection to check personal banking can expose an IP address, linking it to a practitioner or threat actor.

“Effective OPSEC isn’t about the tools you use; it’s about what breadcrumbs you are leaving behind that hackers, investigation subjects, or literally anyone could find about you.”

Joshua Richards, founder of Osint Praxis

Leveraging the Mindset for CTI

Understanding the OPSEC mindset allows security teams to think like the target. When we know the psychological traps attackers fall in, we know exactly where to look for their mistakes.

AssumptionThe Mindset TrapThe Investigative Reality
Insignificant“I’m not a high-value target; no one is looking for me.”Automated Aggression: Hackers use scripts to scan millions of accounts. You aren’t “chosen”; you are “discovered” via automation.
Invisible“I don’t have a LinkedIn or X account, so I don’t have a footprint.”Shadow Data: Public birth records, property taxes, and historical data breaches create a footprint you didn’t even build yourself.
Invincible“I have 2FA and complex passwords; I’m unhackable.”Session Hijacking: Infostealer malware steals “session tokens” (cookies). This allows an actor to be you in a browser without ever needing your 2FA code.

During the webinar, Joshua shares a masterclass in how leveraging these concepts can turn a vague dark web threat into a real-world arrest. Check out the on-demand webinar to see exactly how the investigation started on Torum, a dark web forum, and ended with an arrest that saved the lives of two individuals.

Turn the Tables Using Flashpoint

The insights shared in this session powerfully illustrate that even the most dangerous threat actors are rarely as anonymous as they believe. Their downfall isn’t usually a failure of their technical prowess, but a failure of their mindset. By understanding these OSINT techniques, intelligence practitioners can transform a sea of digital noise into a clear path toward attribution.

The most effective way to dismantle threats is to bridge the gap between technical indicators and human behavior. Whether your teams are conducting high-stakes OSINT or protecting your own organization’s digital footprint, every breadcrumb counts. By leveraging Flashpoint’s expansive threat intelligence collections and real-time data, you can stay one step ahead of adversaries. Request a demo to learn more.

Request a demo today.

The post The Human Element: Turning Threat Actor OPSEC Fails into Investigative Breakthroughs appeared first on Flashpoint.

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When the SOC Goes to Deadwood: A Night to Remember 

Hear a tale about the time the BHIS SOC team conducted a 14-hour overnight incident response... from the Wild West Hackin' Fest conference in Deadwood, South Dakota.

The post When the SOC Goes to Deadwood: A Night to Remember  appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

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Fake apps, NFC skimming attacks, and other Android issues in 2026 | Kaspersky official blog

The year 2025 saw a record-breaking number of attacks on Android devices. Scammers are currently riding a few major waves: the hype surrounding AI apps, the urge to bypass site blocks or age checks, the hunt for a bargain on a new smartphone, the ubiquity of mobile banking, and, of course, the popularity of NFC. Let’s break down the primary threats of 2025–2026, and figure out how to keep your Android device safe in this new landscape.

Sideloading

Malicious installation packages (APK files) have always been the Final Boss among Android threats, despite Google’s multi-year efforts to fortify the OS. By using sideloading — installing an app via an APK file instead of grabbing it from the official store — users can install pretty much anything, including straight-up malware. And neither the rollout of Google Play Protect, nor the various permission restrictions for shady apps have managed to put a dent in the scale of the problem.

According to preliminary data from Kaspersky for 2025, the number of detected Android threats grew almost by half. In the third quarter alone, detections jumped by 38% compared to the second. In certain niches, like Trojan bankers, the growth was even more aggressive. In Russia alone, the notorious Mamont banker attacked 36 times more users than it did the previous year, while globally this entire category saw a nearly fourfold increase.

Today, bad actors primarily distribute malware via messaging apps by sliding malicious files into DMs and group chats. The installation file usually sports an enticing name (think “party_pics.jpg.apk” or “clearance_sale_catalog.apk”), accompanied by a message “helpfully” explaining how to install the package while bypassing the OS restrictions and security warnings.

Once a new device is infected, the malware often spams itself to everyone in the victim’s contact list.

Search engine spam and email campaigns are also trending, luring users to sites that look exactly like an official app store. There, they’re prompted to download the “latest helpful app”, such as an AI assistant. In reality, instead of an installation from an official app store, the user ends up downloading an APK package. A prime example of these tactics is the ClayRat Android Trojan, which uses a mix of all these techniques to target Russian users. It spreads through groups and fake websites, blasts itself to the victim’s contacts via SMS, and then proceeds to steal the victim’s chat logs and call history; it even goes as far as snapping photos of the owner using the front-facing camera. In just three months, over 600 distinct ClayRat builds have surfaced.

The scale of the disaster is so massive that Google even announced an upcoming ban on distributing apps from unknown developers starting in 2026. However, after a couple of months of pushback from the dev community, the company pivoted to a softer approach: unsigned apps will likely only be installable via some kind of superuser mode. As a result, we can expect scammers to simply update their how-to guides with instructions on how to toggle that mode on.

Kaspersky for Android will help you protect yourself from counterfeit and trojanized APK files. Unfortunately, due to Google’s decision, our Android security apps are currently unavailable on Google Play. We’ve previously provided detailed information on how to install our Android apps with a 100% guarantee of authenticity.

NFC relay attacks

Once an Android device is compromised, hackers can skip the middleman to steal the victim’s money directly thanks to the massive popularity of mobile payments. In the third quarter of 2025 alone, over 44 000 of these attacks were detected in Russia alone — a 50% jump from the previous quarter.

There are two main scams currently in play: direct and reverse NFC exploits.

Direct NFC relay is when a scammer contacts the victim via a messaging app and convinces them to download an app — supposedly to “verify their identity” with their bank. If the victim bites and installs it, they’re asked to tap their physical bank card against the back of their phone and enter their PIN. And just like that the card data is handed over to the criminals, who can then drain the account or go on a shopping spree.

Reverse NFC relay is a more elaborate scheme. The scammer sends a malicious APK and convinces the victim to set this new app as their primary contactless payment method. The app generates an NFC signal that ATMs recognize as the scammer’s card. The victim is then talked into going to an ATM with their infected phone to deposit cash into a “secure account”. In reality, those funds go straight into the scammer’s pocket.

We break both of these methods down in detail in our post, NFC skimming attacks.

NFC is also being leveraged to cash out cards after their details have been siphoned off through phishing websites. In this scenario, attackers attempt to link the stolen card to a mobile wallet on their own smartphone — a scheme we covered extensively in NFC carders hide behind Apple Pay and Google Wallet.

The stir over VPNs

In many parts of the world, getting onto certain websites isn’t as simple as it used to be. Some sites are blocked by local internet regulators or ISPs via court orders; others require users to pass an age verification check by showing ID and personal info. In some cases, sites block users from specific countries entirely just to avoid the headache of complying with local laws. Users are constantly trying to bypass these restrictions —and they often end up paying for it with their data or cash.

Many popular tools for bypassing blocks — especially free ones — effectively spy on their users. A recent audit revealed that over 20 popular services with a combined total of more than 700 million downloads actively track user location. They also tend to use sketchy encryption at best, which essentially leaves all user data out in the open for third parties to intercept.

Moreover, according to Google data from November 2025, there was a sharp spike in cases where malicious apps are being disguised as legitimate VPN services to trick unsuspecting users.

The permissions that this category of apps actually requires are a perfect match for intercepting data and manipulating website traffic. It’s also much easier for scammers to convince a victim to grant administrative privileges to an app responsible for internet access than it is for, say, a game or a music player. We should expect this scheme to only grow in popularity.

Trojan in a box

Even cautious users can fall victim to an infection if they succumb to the urge to save some cash. Throughout 2025, cases were reported worldwide where devices were already carrying a Trojan the moment they were unboxed. Typically, these were either smartphones from obscure manufacturers or knock-offs of famous brands purchased on online marketplaces. But the threat wasn’t limited to just phones; TV boxes, tablets, smart TVs, and even digital photo frames were all found to be at risk.

It’s still not entirely clear whether the infection happens right on the factory floor or somewhere along the supply chain between the factory and the buyer’s doorstep, but the device is already infected before the first time it’s turned on. Usually, it’s a sophisticated piece of malware called Triada, first identified by Kaspersky analysts back in 2016. It’s capable of injecting itself into every running app to intercept information: stealing access tokens and passwords for popular messaging apps and social media, hijacking SMS messages (confirmation codes: ouch!), redirecting users to ad-heavy sites, and even running a proxy directly on the phone so attackers can browse the web using the victim’s identity.

Technically, the Trojan is embedded right into the smartphone’s firmware, and the only way to kill it is to reflash the device with a clean OS. Usually, once you dig into the system, you’ll find that the device has far less RAM or storage than advertised — meaning the firmware is literally lying to the owner to sell a cheap hardware config as something more premium.

Another common pre-installed menace is the BADBOX 2.0 botnet, which also pulls double duty as a proxy and an ad-fraud engine. This one specializes in TV boxes and similar hardware.

How to go on using Android without losing your mind

Despite the growing list of threats, you can still use your Android smartphone safely! You just have to stick to some strict mobile hygiene rules.

  • Install a comprehensive security solution on all your smartphones. We recommend Kaspersky for Android to protect against malware and phishing.
  • Avoid sideloading apps via APKs whenever you can use an app store instead. A known app store — even a smaller one — is always a better bet than a random APK from some random website. If you have no other choice, download APK files only from official company websites, and double-check the URL of the page you’re on. If you aren’t 100% sure what the official site is, don’t just rely on a search engine; check official business directories or at least Wikipedia to verify the correct address.
  • Read OS warnings carefully during installation. Don’t grant permissions if the requested rights or actions seem illogical or excessive for the app you’re installing.
  • Under no circumstances should you install apps from links or attachments in chats, emails, or similar communication channels.
  • Never tap your physical bank card against your phone. There is absolutely no legitimate scenario where doing this would be for your own benefit.
  • Do not enter your card’s PIN into any app on your phone. A PIN should only ever be requested by an ATM or a physical payment terminal.
  • When choosing a VPN, stick to paid ones from reputable companies.
  • Buy smartphones and other electronics from official retailers, and steer clear of brands you’ve never heard of. Remember: if a deal seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is.

Other major Android threats from 2025:

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