Information

Inside a Dark Adtech Empire Fed by Fake CAPTCHAs

Late last year, security researchers made a startling discovery: Kremlin-backed disinformation campaigns were bypassing moderation on social media platforms by leveraging the same malicious advertising technology that powers a sprawling ecosystem of online hucksters and website hackers. A new report on the fallout from that investigation finds this dark ad tech industry is far more resilient and incestuous than previously known. Image: Infoblox. In November 2024, researchers at the security firm Qurium published an investigation…

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Patch Tuesday, June 2025 Edition

Microsoft today released security updates to fix at least 67 vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and software. Redmond warns that one of the flaws is already under active attack, and that software blueprints showing how to exploit a pervasive Windows bug patched this month are now public. The sole zero-day flaw this month is CVE-2025-33053, a remote code execution flaw in the Windows implementation of WebDAV — an HTTP extension that lets users remotely…

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BladedFeline: Whispering in the dark

In 2024, ESET researchers discovered several malicious tools in the systems used by Kurdish and Iraqi government officials. The APT group behind the attacks is BladedFeline, an Iranian threat actor that has been active since at least 2017, when it compromised officials within the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). This group develops malware for maintaining and expanding access within organizations in Iraq and the KRG. While this is our first blogpost covering BladedFeline, we discovered the…

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Proxy Services Feast on Ukraine’s IP Address Exodus

Image: Mark Rademaker, via Shutterstock. Ukraine has seen nearly one-fifth of its Internet space come under Russian control or sold to Internet address brokers since February 2022, a new study finds. The analysis indicates large chunks of Ukrainian Internet address space are now in the hands of shadowy proxy and anonymity services that are nested at some of America’s largest Internet service providers (ISPs). The findings come in a report that examines how the Russian…

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Don’t let dormant accounts become a doorway for cybercriminals

Digital Security Do you have online accounts you haven’t used in years? If so, a bit of digital spring cleaning might be in order. Phil Muncaster 02 Jun 2025  •  , 5 min. read The longer our digital lives, the more online accounts we’re likely to accrue. Can you even remember all the services you’ve signed up to over the years? It could be that free trial you started and never cancelled. Or that app…

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This month in security with Tony Anscombe – May 2025 edition

From a flurry of attacks targeting UK retailers to campaigns corralling end-of-life routers into botnets, it’s a wrap on another month filled with impactful cybersecurity news 30 May 2025 It’s that time of month again when ESET Chief Security Evangelist Tony Anscombe offers his take on some of the most impactful cybersecurity news of the past 30 or so days. Here’s a selection of what stood out to him in May 2025: a warning from…

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U.S. Sanctions Cloud Provider ‘Funnull’ as Top Source of ‘Pig Butchering’ Scams

Image: Shutterstock, ArtHead. The U.S. government today imposed economic sanctions on Funnull Technology Inc., a Philippines-based company that provides computer infrastructure for hundreds of thousands of websites involved in virtual currency investment scams known as “pig butchering.” In January 2025, KrebsOnSecurity detailed how Funnull was being used as a content delivery network that catered to cybercriminals seeking to route their traffic through U.S.-based cloud providers. “Americans lose billions of dollars annually to these cyber scams,…

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Word to the wise: Beware of fake Docusign emails

Cybercriminals impersonate the trusted e-signature brand and send fake Docusign notifications to trick people into giving away their personal or corporate data Phil Muncaster 27 May 2025  •  , 5 min. read Remember when you used to have to print, sign, scan, email and/or even fax every time you wanted to sign and send an official document? Today, much of the hard work is done behind the scenes by cloud app providers like Docusign. But…

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Pakistan Arrests 21 in ‘Heartsender’ Malware Service

Authorities in Pakistan have arrested 21 individuals accused of operating “Heartsender,” a once popular spam and malware dissemination service that operated for more than a decade. The main clientele for HeartSender were organized crime groups that tried to trick victim companies into making payments to a third party, and its alleged proprietors were publicly identified by KrebsOnSecurity in 2021 after they inadvertently infected their computers with malware. Some of the core developers and sellers of…

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Danabot under the microscope

ESET Research has been tracking Danabot’s activity since 2018 as part of a global effort that resulted in a major disruption of the malware’s infrastructure 23 May 2025 As US authorities, along with Europol and Eurojust, have announced a global disruption operation of Danabot, ESET researchers have released their deep-dive analysis of this sprawling malware-as-a-service (MaaS) operation that according to US authorities compromised more than 300,000 computers around the world and caused at least US$50…

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