Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Threat actors continue to rely on social engineering as AI is incorporated into their attacks, according to ESET’s Threat Report for the first half of 2026. ESET’s Director of Threat Prevention Labs, Jiří Kropáč, stated, “Rather than relying on entirely new methods and tools, attackers are quickly adapting established techniques to new platforms, technologies, and user behaviors.

Scammers can use AI tools to find your location in photos you post to social media, according to researchers at McAfee. This information can then be used in targeted social engineering attacks. The researchers found that free AI models can correctly identify a photo’s location with around 90% accuracy.

The ClickFix social engineering technique is now the top malware delivery method, according to a new report from ReliaQuest. These attacks trick users into copying a malicious command, then pasting it into a terminal and running it on their computers. “ClickFix remained the dominant delivery method this period and, for the first time, we observed it expand to macOS, delivering infostealers onto a platform many organizations still monitor less closely than Windows,” the researchers write.

Threat actors continue to use AI tools to automate their attack flows and increase efficiency, according to researchers at ReliaQuest.

An initial access broker associated with the Payouts King ransomware group is using Microsoft Teams phishing to deploy a malicious Microsoft Edge web browser extension, according to researchers at Zscaler. Once the hackers have a foothold within an organization, they sell the access to the ransomware gang to conduct follow-on attacks.

Security must evolve from a static training program into dynamic, AI-powered human and AI risk orchestration embedded across the organization. The traditional model of security awareness aimed to get a message into people’s heads and hope it stayed there long enough to stop insecure actions. Organizations trained, tested, reported a completion rate to the auditor, and moved on.

A phishing campaign is targeting small businesses across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the United States with emails that impersonate Interpol’s cybercrime investigation unit, researchers at Bitdefender report.

Boxers will often say, the punches that hurt the most aren’t the ones which are thrown with the most force, but the ones they didn’t see coming. I think the same is true in cybersecurity. It’s not the most advanced technically efficient, 0-day utilizing attacks that have the biggest impact, but rather those quiet ones. With no malware or suspicious login at three in the morning from an IP address in a country your company has never done business with. No alert fires.

Threat actors are abusing Shop, a legitimate app developed by Shopify, to launch phishing attacks, according to researchers at Gen Digital. Shop is used for making purchases and tracking orders, but threat actors are exploiting the platform to generate in-app notifications for phony invoices.