Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Email has been the backbone of business communication for decades and as such, it remains the attacker’s favorite doorway into an organization. Phishing, Business Email Compromise (BEC) and supply-chain attacks continue to rise, with adversaries leveraging AI and compromised accounts to bypass legacy defenses. This presents many challenges for CISOs, IT Directors and SOC teams alike: it seems pretty clear that threats are evolving faster than traditional email security can keep up.

Researchers at Gen warn that a phishing campaign is attempting to trick users into linking malicious devices to their WhatsApp accounts. The attack begins with an unsolicited message stating, “Hey, I just found your photo!” along with a link to a spoofed Facebook login page. Instead of trying to steal users’ Facebook credentials, however, the attackers are attempting to gain access to victims’ WhatsApp accounts.

In the early hours following reports of a U.S. military operation involving Venezuela, social media feeds were flooded with dramatic images and videos that appeared to show the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. Within minutes, AI-generated photos of Maduro being escorted by U.S. law enforcement, scenes of missiles striking Caracas, and crowds celebrating in the streets racked up millions of views across various social media channels. The problem?

Researchers at Push Security have observed a new variant of the ClickFix attack that combines “OAuth consent phishing with a ClickFix-style user prompt that leads to account compromise.” The technique, which the researchers call “ConsentFix,” tricks victims into copying and pasting a localhost URL containing an authorization token, then pasting it into a phishing page.

Over 90% of parked domains now direct users to malicious content, compared to less than 5% a decade ago, according to researchers at Infoblox. “Parking threats are fueled by lookalike domains,” Infoblox explained. “No domain is immune. When one of our researchers tried to report a crime to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), they accidentally visited ic3gov. Their phone was quickly redirected to a false “Drive Subscription Expired” page.

Zscaler has published a report on a new phishing kit dubbed “BlackForce” that uses Man-in-the-Browser (MitB) attacks to steal credentials and bypass multi-factor authentication. Notably, the kit “features a vetting system to qualify targets, after which a live operator takes over to orchestrate a guided compromise.” Additionally, the phishing kit uses mostly legitimate code in order to avoid detection by security scanners.

Eighty-one percent of small businesses suffered a security or data breach over the past year, and 38% of these businesses were forced to raise their prices as a result, a report from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) has found. The report notes that external hackers have overtaken malicious insiders as the most common root cause of these incidents. This trend is partially driven by AI-assisted social engineering attacks, which were cited as a root cause by more than 41% of victims.

“Super-app” WeChat offers a wealth of functionality—from instant messaging, text and voice messaging, and video calls to mobile payments, ride booking, ordering food deliveries, paying bills and even accessing government services. Provided by Chinese technology conglomerate Tencent, WeChat has become deeply integrated into daily life in China and usage has been spreading globally. The app now boasts over 1.4 billion active users (24.8% of total internet users).

Today, anyone can find a picture of absolutely anybody and it is also not difficult to find a sample of their voice. By combining these it is shockingly easy to create a realistic AI deepfake video of that person. The video may not be perfect, and an experienced AI deepfake enthusiast might be able to see signs of it not being real, but it will be good enough to fool 99% of people. Cybercriminals have been creating and using AI-enabled deepfake technologies since early 2024 to socially engineer people.

Mexico has taken a major step toward strengthening its digital defenses with the official unveiling of its first National Cybersecurity Plan, a landmark initiative that establishes the country’s first specialized policy framework for cybersecurity.