A recently discovered advanced persistent threat (APT) actor has been targeting government and electric power organizations in multiple countries, Kaspersky reports.

Dubbed Armored Likho, the APT engages both in financially motivated attacks against individuals and in cyber-espionage operations against organizations in Russia, Brazil, and Kazakhstan.

The threat actor’s arsenal includes modular remote access trojans (RATs) and information stealers, including the Python-based BusySnake Stealer, and tools like Go2Tunnel for remote access and network tunneling.

“This diverse malware stack enables the threat actor to maintain stealthy control of compromised hosts, exfiltrate credentials and other sensitive information, and dynamically deploy downloadable modules tailored to the victim’s profile and the tasks at hand,” Kaspersky notes.

Armored Likho mainly relies on spear-phishing for initial access. Archives attached to its emails contain executables or LNK files that, once opened, display decoys while malware is being installed in the background.

A loader injected in memory via such an executable was seen fetching archives from GitHub repositories that contain early development builds and test samples of the malware. The LNK files display a fake document while a Python 3.12 interpreter and an archive are fetched in the background.

Among other components, the archives contain a Python-based infostealer that Kaspersky tracks as BusySnake Stealer. The malware packs multiple evasion techniques and dynamically decrypts bytecode when a function is called, encrypting it immediately after, and runs in the background without a console window.

The stealer relies on multiple handlers for various functions, such as clipboard theft, file enumeration, 64-character hexadecimal key extraction, document exfiltration, screenshot capture, screenshot archiving, persistence checks, and command execution.

Based on commands received from the command-and-control (C&C) server, the malware can capture screenshots, exfiltrate logged keystroke data, decrypt stored passwords from Chromium-based and Firefox browsers, extract cookies from browsers, scrape the machine for OTP keys, find cryptocurrency wallets, harvest Telegram sessions and credentials, establish a reverse SSH tunnel, and restart RustDesk to capture users’ credentials.

Before BusySnake Stealer, Armored Likho relied on Go2Tunnel to establish a reverse SSH tunnel, but has implemented the functionality into the infostealer, which can now provide the attackers with persistent remote access and interactive control over the victim’s system.

Armored Likho’s operations appear to overlap with Eagle Werewolf activity. Previously, the hacking group was seen using the AquilaRAT RAT, which shares a similar structure and persistence mechanism with BusySnake Stealer.

Related: Russian APT Deploys ‘StockStay’ Backdoor Against Ukrainian Targets

Related: New ‘Mistic’ RAT Opens Door to Several Ransomware Families

Related: Hackers Target Global Stock Exchange in Espionage Operation

Related: Sophisticated Deep#Door Backdoor Enables Espionage, Disruption

https://www.securityweek.com/armored-likho-apt-targeting-government-electric-power-entities/

Lug 06, 2026 Giancarlo Calzetta Approfondimenti, In evidenza, News, RSS, Scenario, Scenario, Tecnologia, Tecnologia 0

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L’intelligenza artificiale sta entrando nelle aziende con una velocità che non ha precedenti, ma la sua diffusione sta facendo emergere una realtà che molti responsabili della sicurezza stanno iniziando a sperimentare direttamente: i tradizionali strumenti di difesa non sono stati progettati per proteggere sistemi che ragionano attraverso il linguaggio naturale. Firewall, Web Application Firewall e sistemi di protezione delle reti continuano a svolgere il loro ruolo, ma davanti a chatbot, agenti AI e Large Language Model si apre una superficie di attacco completamente nuova.

Secondo Gartner, entro quest’anno l’80% delle organizzazioni utilizzerà soluzioni basate sull’intelligenza artificiale, una crescita che supera in velocità perfino quella vissuta in passato da cloud computing, dispositivi mobili e Internet. Una diffusione tanto rapida quanto impegnativa dal punto di vista della cybersecurity.

Quando la conversazione diventa la superficie di attacco

L’evoluzione dell’AI segue percorsi differenti. Alcune aziende si limitano all’utilizzo di strumenti come ChatGPT, Copilot o Gemini per aumentare la produttività individuale, mentre altre stanno sviluppando chatbot interni, assistenti per il customer care oppure sistemi agentici capaci di eseguire attività autonome.

Ma in queste implementazioni più avanzate, la sicurezza cambia completamente natura. Il problema non riguarda più esclusivamente il codice o il traffico di rete, ma il modo in cui il modello interpreta, elabora e restituisce informazioni attraverso il linguaggio naturale. Una conversazione non può essere filtrata come un pacchetto IP. È questo il motivo per cui molti controlli tradizionali risultano inefficaci contro gli attacchi rivolti ai sistemi di AI.

Infatti, secondo i dati riportati da F5, il 75% dei CISO ha già registrato incidenti di sicurezza legati all’intelligenza artificiale, mentre il 91% dichiara di aver individuato tentativi di attacco contro la propria infrastruttura AI. Ancora più significativo è il fatto che il 94% considera ormai prioritario sottoporre le applicazioni AI a test di sicurezza specifici.

Dagli errori logici ai nuovi attacchi cognitivi

Le vulnerabilità che colpiscono le piattaforme di AI non sono necessariamente nuove dal punto di vista tecnico, ma assumono caratteristiche completamente differenti quando vengono inserite in sistemi basati su Large Language Model. Un errore nell’isolamento dei tenant, ad esempio, può trasformarsi nella restituzione di informazioni appartenenti ad altre organizzazioni direttamente all’interno di una conversazione naturale, rendendo molto difficile individuare il problema. Anche i classici attacchi di prompt injection possono avere conseguenze particolarmente gravi quando il modello dispone dell’autorizzazione a utilizzare strumenti esterni o ad interagire con sistemi aziendali. Se il controllo delle autorizzazioni viene affidato al modello anziché all’infrastruttura applicativa, il rischio aumenta sensibilmente.

Accanto a questi scenari stanno emergendo nuove categorie di minacce, che comprendono tecniche di jailbreak sempre più sofisticate, data poisoning durante l’addestramento e meccanismi di token compression, nei quali istruzioni malevole vengono nascoste in forme comprensibili al modello ma praticamente invisibili agli operatori umani.

Perché i test tradizionali non bastano più

Uno degli aspetti più complessi dell’AI riguarda il fatto che non ci si trova più davanti a software deterministico. Ogni conversazione può produrre risultati differenti in base al contesto, alla memoria dell’agente, ai documenti recuperati tramite retrieval oppure agli strumenti che il modello può utilizzare. Questo rende estremamente difficile applicare i normali processi di vulnerability assessment. Mentre in passato era sufficiente verificare il comportamento di un’applicazione seguendo scenari relativamente prevedibili, oggi le possibili combinazioni diventano praticamente infinite. Testarle manualmente è semplicemente irrealistico, soprattutto quando un’organizzazione gestisce decine o centinaia di chatbot o agenti AI.

Per questo diventa indispensabile strutturare un sistema di AI Red Teaming, ovvero la simulazione sistematica di attacchi contro sistemi basati sull’intelligenza artificiale per verificarne il comportamento in condizioni ostili. L’obiettivo non è soltanto individuare vulnerabilità tecniche, ma comprendere come il sistema reagisce a prompt malevoli, tentativi di manipolazione, richieste ambigue o scenari progettati per aggirare i controlli di sicurezza. Un approccio che deve produrre risultati riproducibili, permettendo agli sviluppatori di identificare esattamente quali conversazioni hanno generato il comportamento indesiderato e quali condizioni lo hanno reso possibile.

Normative e compliance spingono verso test continui

L’importanza del red teaming non nasce esclusivamente da esigenze tecnologichema anche dal quadro normativo che sta evolvendo rapidamente. L’AI Act europeo introduce esplicitamente attività di adversarial testing per determinate categorie di sistemi AI, mentre negli Stati Uniti organizzazioni come NIST e CISA stanno promuovendo procedure di verifica sempre più strutturate, soprattutto nei contesti considerati mission critical. La sicurezza dell’intelligenza artificiale diventa quindi non soltanto una misura di protezione, ma anche un requisito di conformità e governance.

Ma c’è un risvolto per alcuni versi “inatteso”. Storicamente, possiamo tutti ricordare l’avversione delle proprietà nei confronti della cybersecurity, troppo spesso vista come una spesa e addirittura un fastidio che tendeva a rallentare il business. Nel caso dell’intelligenza artificiale potrebbe invece verificarsi il contrario. Disporre di test automatizzati, evidenze documentate e verifiche continue consente infatti di portare più rapidamente in produzione nuovi casi d’uso, offrendo ai team di compliance e agli auditor elementi concreti per valutare il rischio.

L’AI red teaming si sta quindi trasformando da semplice attività specialistica a componente fondamentale della sicurezza delle applicazioni AI, permettendo alle aziende di adottare chatbot, agenti e workflow intelligenti con un livello di fiducia molto superiore rispetto agli approcci tradizionali. Purtroppo, non mancano le sfide. Molte delle competenze necessarie per fare AI Red Teaming sono ancora rare, ma si spera che verranno formate in tempi ragionevolmente brevi dal settore accademico e, soprattutto, dalle stesse aziende.

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• adversarial testing, agentic AI, AI Act, AI governance, AI Red Teaming, attacchi cognitivi, chatbot sicurezza, CISO, cybersecurity, F5, GenAI, LLM security, prompt injection, sicurezza AI

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https://www.securityinfo.it/2026/07/06/ai-il-nuovo-fronte-della-sicurezza-il-red-teaming-diventa-indispensabile/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ai-il-nuovo-fronte-della-sicurezza-il-red-teaming-diventa-indispensabile

North Korean hackers are targeting open source software developers with a backdoor and an information stealer as part of a broad supply chain campaign, Socket reports.

Referred to as PolinRider, the campaign has been ongoing since December 2025, using compromised GitHub repositories injected with JavaScript loaders leading to the DEV#POPPER remote access trojan (RAT) and the OmniStealer information stealer.

Associated with the broader Contagious Interview operation, which includes tactics also seen in the DeceptiveDevelopment, Operation Dream Job, and ClickFake Interview campaigns, PolinRider is targeting developers across NPM, Packagist, Go modules, and Chrome extensions.

To date, Socket has identified 162 malicious release artifacts across 108 unique packages, with more expected to emerge as the campaign continues.

As part of the attacks, the threat actor compromises maintainer accounts to tamper with legitimate repositories and push infected packages. Additionally, the attackers rely on Git history rewriting to make the malicious changes appear older.

The compromised repositories contain obfuscated JavaScript loaders that connect to the blockchain and public remote procedure call (RPC) infrastructure to retrieve encrypted payloads.

Among the incidents associated with PolinRider, Socket identified the compromise of Xpos587, a GitHub account that maintains several repositories that were modified on June 23 during a small timeframe.

Recently, the campaign expanded to Packagist, where multiple packages under the sevenspan namespace were compromised. The attackers hid the malicious loaders in configuration files that were not identified during the cleanup operation.

“Teams that installed any affected package or extension version should treat the installation environment as potentially compromised until reviewed. Because PolinRider targets developer environments and may expose package registry, source code, cloud, and CI/CD credentials, remediation should be performed from a clean machine, not from the potentially infected host,” Socket notes.

Related: North Korean Hackers Blamed for Mastra NPM Supply Chain Attack

Related: North Korean Hackers Use AppleScript, ClickFix in Fresh macOS Attacks

Related: $290 Million Kelp DAO Crypto Heist Blamed on North Korea

Related: North Korean Hackers Target High-Profile Node.js Maintainers

https://www.securityweek.com/north-korean-hackers-target-open-source-developers-in-supply-chain-attacks/

Technical details and proof-of-concept (PoC) code targeting a recent Linux kernel vulnerability that could allow unprivileged processes to gain root privileges on desktops, servers, and Android phones are now public.

The security defect, tracked as CVE-2026-46242 (CVSS score of 7.8) and referred to as Bad Epoll, is described as a race-condition use-after-free bug in epoll, the Linux kernel’s I/O event notification facility.

Instead of asking programs to poll many file descriptors one by one, the Linux kernel maintains an epoll instance with an interest list and a ready list of file descriptors and return descriptors.

Bad Epoll is a close-vs-close race condition in epoll’s file-release path that leads to use-after-free.

If one eventpoll list of file descriptors monitors another and the two are closed simultaneously, one frees an object while the other continues to write to it.

The flaw was discovered by Jaeyoung Chung of Seoul National University’s Computer Security Lab, who reported it to Google kernelCTF as a zero-day submission.

Bad Epoll was introduced in 2023 in a commit that also introduced CVE-2026-43074, another race condition in the epoll code that was found by Anthropic’s Mythos.

Mythos likely missed it because, with CVE-2026-43074 fixed, Bad Epoll doesn’t trigger KASAN (Kernel Address Sanitizer), the Linux kernel’s dynamic memory error detector.

“Bad Epoll was hard to fix, too. The maintainers’ first patch did not fully fix the issue, and a correct patch landed only two months after the bug was first reported. That is a long time for a kernel that usually handles security issues with urgency,” the researcher notes.

Chung has published a PoC exploit that triggers Bad Epoll to leak kernel memory and hijack an indirect call to control the CPU’s instruction pointer register and obtain root privileges via a Return-Oriented Programming (ROP) chain.

Linux distributions based on kernel version 6.4 or newer are affected by the vulnerability. Bad Epoll was also confirmed on Pixel 10 devices, which are running kernel version 6.6.

https://www.securityweek.com/proof-of-concept-exploit-released-for-linux-bad-epoll-root-access-vulnerability/

Threat actors are using prompt injection attacks embedded in malicious websites and manipulated search results to trick AI agents into making payments or trusting fraudulent cryptocurrency platforms.

Zscaler says it identified two campaigns relying on indirect prompt injection, including a payment scam hiding behind API documentation, and a typosquatting operation promoting a crypto platform that impersonates DeBank.

As part of the first campaign, the threat actor has been using SEO poisoning to target AI agents searching for the Python library requests-secure-v2.

“The fraudulent website includes keyword-heavy HTML tied to the fake Python module to poison search results for package installation and dependency troubleshooting queries,” Zscaler explains.

Within the website, the attackers hid indirect prompts instructing the visiting agents to make a payment as part of the routine process of acquiring an API key. The payment was encoded in schema markup to increase the chances that the agents would follow the instructions.

A hidden <div> tag instructing AI agents to resolve an error by making the payment was also discovered on the website, as well as code to initialize a cryptocurrency transfer to a hardcoded wallet.

“The website not only attempts to target AI agents, but also human developers. When the website is rendered by a desktop browser, the same payment options via credit card or cryptocurrency are displayed to the user,” Zscaler explains.

The threat actor behind the campaign is using 10 GitHub repositories linking to multiple similar websites containing indirect prompt injections.

As part of the second campaign, a threat actor is promoting a fraudulent website typosquatting the decentralized finance portfolio tracker DeBank. The indirect prompts used in this campaign tell the AI agents that the impersonating website is the legitimate DeBank domain.

“The fraudulent website is optimized to rank for DeBank-related searches by stuffing the title and meta tags with keywords such as DeBank Login, DeFi Dashboard, and Crypto Tracker. It also includes Open Graph and X (formerly Twitter) metadata to make the link appear like an official DeBank service,” Zscaler notes.

To test the campaigns’ impact, the cybersecurity firm built an autonomous AI agent with web-browsing and payment-execution capabilities.

Of the 26 LLMs that were evaluated, four (Llama 3.3 70B Instruct, Llama 3.2 90B Vision Instruct, Gemini 3 Flash, and Gemini 2.5 Pro) were successfully manipulated into making a payment. Still, only two (Claude Sonnet 4.5 and GPT-5.4) miscategorized the fraudulent website as the trusted DeBank platform.

“As AI agents become a more common interface to the web, the content itself is going to become a larger attack surface, highlighting that AI is a double-edged sword that can streamline workflows while also introducing new avenues for abuse,” Zscaler notes.

Related: Agentic AI Used to Conduct Ransomware Attack via Langflow

Related: Critical Cursor AI Code Editor Flaws Could Lead to OS-Level Remote Code Execution

Related: How to Conduct a Successful Audit of AI-Driven Software Development

Related: ‘BioShocking’ Attack Tricks AI Browsers Into Stealing Credentials

https://www.securityweek.com/prompt-injection-attacks-trick-ai-agents-into-making-crypto-payments/

SecurityWeek’s cybersecurity news weekly roundup offers a concise overview of important developments that may not receive full standalone coverage but remain relevant to the broader threat landscape.

This curated summary highlights key stories across vulnerability disclosures, emerging attack methods, policy updates, industry reports, and other noteworthy events to help readers maintain a well-rounded awareness of the evolving cybersecurity environment.

Here are this week’s highlights:

Anonymous-linked hacker Aubrey Cottle jailed over Texas GOP cyberattack

Aubrey Cottle, a Canadian hacker associated with the hacktivist group Anonymous, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for his involvement in a cyberattack on the Texas Republican Party’s website in September 2021. Cottle, 39, of Oshawa, Ontario, pleaded guilty to defacing the website, exfiltrating data from a Texas GOP server, and publishing the data online.

14 million impacted by KDDI data breach

Japanese telecoms provider KDDI has disclosed (PDF) a data breach likely impacting the email addresses and passwords of 14,22 million people. The incident affected five ISP operators, including BIGLOBE, Chubu Telecommunications C., JCOM Co., NIFTY Corporation, and STNet. 

Push Security targeted in poisoned tenant attack

Three years after detailing the poisoned tenant attack, Push Security was targeted using the technique via OpenAI’s organization invitation feature. Multiple employees received an OpenAI invitation to join Push Security Inc. After they would join the tenant, the attacker could spy on their activities or target them with further social engineering. 

Rust-based PamStealer targeting macOS

Jamf has detailed PamStealer, an information stealer targeting macOS that validates the harvested credentials via Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) before using them. The malware is distributed as a compiled AppleScript file impersonating the open source clipboard manager Maccy.

Russian hackers behind the 2025 Jaguar Land Rover hack

The cyberattack that severely disrupted Jaguar Land Rover’s operations in September 2025 was mounted by Russian hackers, The New York Times says. Microsoft reportedly notified the car manufacturer about the hacking group, with Mandiant, Palo Alto Networks, and US and UK law enforcement agencies also involved in the investigation. 

Pegasus spyware targeted a European Parliament member investigating it

Former member of the European Parliament Stelios Kouloglou was hacked with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware while he was investigating Pegasus abuse cases, as part of the PEGA committee, Citizen Lab discovered. The targeting has not been attributed to a specific government, and there is no evidence that the Greek Government was involved. 

Researcher drops dozens of zero-days in open source projects

A researcher known as Bikini has published proof-of-concept (PoC) code targeting dozens of zero-day vulnerabilities in multiple open source projects, including FFmpeg, Gogs, Gitea, Ghidra, 7-Zip, OpenVPN, and VLC. Nine of the security defects have been assigned a CVE identifier. The issues, the researcher says, were surfaced via LLM fuzzing. 

Pro-Russia influence operations are shifting

Four years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, pro-Russia influence operations are shifting from their single focus on Ukraine to pre-war objectives, Google says. Covert pro-Russia influence operations are targeting the US, European Union members, NATO, Russia’s neighbors, the Middle East and Africa, and internal entities. They focus on global events, elections, the war in Ukraine, and emerging geopolitical developments and events, and are increasingly relying on generative AI. 

Venezuelans sentenced in the US over ATM jackpotting

Two illegal aliens from Venezuela, Carlos Javier Padron, 36, and Arnoldo Cabrera Torrealba, 37, have been sentenced to 78 months in prison in the US for their involvement in ATM jackpotting activities. As part of a sophisticated criminal group, they built and deployed a variant of the Ploutus malware on ATMs across the US and used it to withdraw money without authorization. They were also ordered to jointly pay $1.5 million in restitution. 96 other defendants have been charged over their roles in the operation. 

Cisco and Synology patches

Cisco has released fixes for seven ClamAV vulnerabilities impacting Secure Endpoint Connector for Windows, Linux, and macOS, and Secure Endpoint Private Cloud, and for one flaw in Catalyst Center. Synology resolved three security defects in MailPlus Server, including two critical bugs that could allow attackers to read or write arbitrary files and cause DoS conditions.

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https://www.securityweek.com/in-other-news-canadian-hacker-jailed-open-source-zero-days-two-sentenced-for-atm-jackpotting/

A threat actor exploited a vulnerability in Langflow to access an organization’s instance and abuse it in an agentic ransomware attack, cloud security firm Sysdig reports.

Langflow is a Python-based, LLM-agnostic open source framework used for building LLM-driven applications and agent workflows.

As part of the attack, a threat actor tracked as JadePuffer gained access to an internet-exposed Langflow instance through the exploitation of CVE-2025-3248 (CVSS score of 9.8), a critical missing authentication vulnerability disclosed in April.

Successful exploitation of the bug allows attackers to execute arbitrary Python code on the host on which Langflow is running. CISA flagged the flaw as exploited in early May.

After gaining code execution, JadePuffer used the LLM for reconnaissance and swept the system for secrets, including API keys, cloud credentials, cryptocurrency wallets, configuration files, and database credentials.

Next, the threat actor dumped Langflow’s Postgres database to harvest the secrets in it, scanned the reachable internal address space and named services, probed for MinIO addresses for further credential extraction, and deployed a cron job for persistent access to the Langflow server.

Throughout this initial phase, the LLM was observed adapting its actions in real time to complete tasks, extract credentials from different file types, and log into discovered endpoints.

During the second phase of the attack, JadePuffer used the LLM to pivot to a production server hosting a MySQL database and an Alibaba Naming and Configuration Service (Nacos) configuration platform.

Widely used in Alibaba microservice architectures, Nacos has been plagued by various security bypasses and uses a well-known default JWT signing key that allows for easy token forgery.

Lateral movement and encryption

JadePuffer connected to this server using a payload that contained root credentials for the MySQL port and abused the LLM to target the Nacos service through multiple vectors.

“That includes exploiting the auth-bypass family (CVE-2021-29441), forging a valid JWT using Nacos’s well-known default signing key, and, with root database access, injecting a backdoor administrator directly into the Nacos backing database,” Sysdig explains.

During the attack, the LLM adjusted the payload to pass login verification, checked for User Defined Functions (UDF), which can lead to OS command execution, and issued a completion marker before ransomware deployment.

Next, it encrypted 1,342 Nacos service configuration items and created an extortion table containing the ransom demand, a payment address, and a contact email address. The encryption key was randomly generated but never persisted or transmitted, essentially preventing data recovery.

“Captured payloads show the LLM escalating from row-level deletion to dropping entire database schemas, narrating its own targeting rationale,” Sysdig notes.

The payloads analyzed by the cybersecurity firm contained natural-language commentary on each action, indicative of LLM-generated code. Furthermore, they showed how the LLM corrected its actions to address failures and provide accurate diagnoses.

“During the operation, the LLM parsed free-text context presented by the target and took an action that only makes sense if that text was read and understood, rather than pattern-matched by a scanner. This behavior recurred across sessions weeks apart,” Sysdig notes.

According to the company, this attack shows that LLM agents significantly lower the barrier for malicious operations, which now require a capable model rather than a capable human. The AI combined known techniques in a successful attack against neglected infrastructure, with close to zero cost to the attacker.

“Defenders should expect the volume and breadth of such campaigns to rise as agentic tooling matures, and they should treat exposed application servers, unhardened configuration stores, and internet-facing database admin accounts as the first surfaces that will be attacked,” Sysdig notes.

Learn More at the AI Risk Summit | Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay

Related: Critical Cursor AI Code Editor Flaws Could Lead to OS-Level Remote Code Execution

Related: ‘BioShocking’ Attack Tricks AI Browsers Into Stealing Credentials

Related: Frontier AI: Six Questions Every Enterprise Should Ask Security Vendors

Related: The AI Token Costs That Can Break Cybersecurity

https://www.securityweek.com/agentic-ai-used-to-conduct-ransomware-attack-via-langflow/

Medical technology giant Medtronic is notifying more than 3.8 million individuals that their personal and medical information was compromised in a recent data breach.

The incident occurred in April 2026, when the infamous extortion group ShinyHunters accessed the company’s corporate IT systems.

Medtronic confirmed the attack in late April, noting that its products and manufacturing and distribution operations were not affected.

ShinyHunters had added the company to its Tor-based leak site on April 17, claiming the theft of over 9 million records of personal information, and terabytes of corporate data.

The group has since removed Medtronic from the website, which suggests that the company might have paid a ransom to recover the stolen information.

This week, the medical technology titan started sending written notification letters to the affected individuals, confirming that the hackers stole patients’ personal and medical information, including names, contact details, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and health-related details.

“We have no evidence that any of that information was posted publicly or exposed on the internet,” reads a copy of the company’s notification letter (PDF) submitted to the California Attorney General’s Office.

Medtronic told the Indiana Attorney General’s Office that 3,834,294 individuals were affected by the incident.

The company is providing them with 24 months of free credit monitoring, dark web monitoring, and identity theft restoration services.

“Medtronic has implemented additional safeguards and continues to work with third-party cybersecurity experts to identify opportunities to further strengthen the security of its systems. Medtronic has also worked with law enforcement and is notifying relevant regulatory authorities,” the company said.

Related: Aflac Japan Data Breach Impacts 4.38 Million

Related: Nissan Employee Data Breached in Oracle PeopleSoft Hack

Related: More Klue Breach Victims Identified as Hackers Get Hacked

Related: Xsolis Data Breach Affects 1.4 Million Individuals

https://www.securityweek.com/medtronic-data-breach-impacts-3-8-million-people/

A dual US-Estonian citizen was extradited to the US to face charges for his alleged involvement in the activities of the infamous hacking group Scattered Spider.

The individual, Peter Stokes, 19, also known as ‘Bouquet’, was arrested in Finland in April while boarding a flight to Japan. He was indicted with counts of conspiracy, computer intrusion, and fraud.

In May 2025, together with other co-conspirators, Stokes allegedly hacked a luxury jewelry retailer’s computer system, stole data from it, and demanded an $8 million ransom in cryptocurrency from the victim.

While the retailer managed to evict the hackers from its network and no ransom was paid, the attack led to business disruption, which, together with the investigation and mitigation actions, caused at least $2 million in losses.

Also tracked as 0ktapus, Muddled Libra, Octo Tempest, Starfraud, Scatter Swine, and UNC3944, Scattered Spider is believed to have hacked at least 100 organizations and to have received over $100 million in ransom payments from its victims.

The group is known for its widespread 2025 Salesforce hacking campaign and for the 0ktapus campaign, which hit over 130 organizations in 2022.

Over the past several years, authorities charged, arrested, and sentenced multiple alleged members of the hacking group. In April this year, UK national Tyler Robert Buchanan pleaded guilty in the US for his role in the Scattered Spider operations.

In September last year, after making the headlines for high-profile attacks against the retail, insurance, and aviation industries, Scattered Spider announced its retirement.

Related: Third DraftKings Hacker Sentenced to 18 Months in Prison

Related: Admins of Bulletproof Hosting Service Used by Russian Hackers Arrested in Netherlands

Related: Canadian Man Arrested for Operating Kimwolf Botnet

Related: Karakurt Ransomware Negotiator Sentenced to Prison

https://www.securityweek.com/alleged-scattered-spider-hacker-extradited-to-us/

Google, the FBI, and other organizations coordinated in a joint effort to dismantle NetNut, a massive residential proxy network.

Also known as Popa, NetNut is believed to consist of more than 2 million Android devices such as smart TVs and streaming boxes, that have been infected through trojanized applications and malware such as Badbox 2.0.

The network’s operator, linked to the publicly-traded Israeli firm Alarum Technologies Ltd, rented the residential proxies to various threat actors, including cybercriminal and espionage groups.

In a single week in June, Google observed 316 distinct threat clusters using NetNut to hide their locations in password-spray attacks and to access victim environments.

“We believe our coordinated actions have caused significant degradation to NetNut’s proxy network and its business operations, reducing the available pool of devices for the proxy operator by millions,” Google said.

As part of the operation, the internet giant disabled Google accounts and associated services used for command-and-control (C&C), dismantling the botnet’s backend infrastructure.

Additionally, it disabled the infected applications via Google Play Protect and automatically warned victims of the threat. Google also shared threat intelligence with industry partners and law enforcement.

According to Google, NetNut is not only selling access to the residential proxy network under its own brand, but also operates a reseller program, allowing other popular brands to whitelabel the NetNut botnet.

The NetNut takedown follows the January disruption of IPIDEA, and is expected to have a ripple effect across the ecosystem.

“What we have observed is that when faced with the degradation of their own botnet, proxy operators begin buying capacity from their competitors, effectively becoming a reseller. We recognize that creating a lasting disruption in this fluid ecosystem means we must scale our efforts to target the infrastructure of several interconnected providers,” Google says.

Related: Google Sues Operators of 10-Million-Device Badbox 2.0 Botnet

Related: 15,000 WordPress Websites Cleaned Up in SocGholish Botnet Takedown

Related: Dutch Police Dismantle Massive 17-Million-Device Botnet

Related: GlassWorm Botnet Disrupted

Related: Aisuru and Kimwolf DDoS Botnets Disrupted in International Operation

https://www.securityweek.com/google-fbi-disrupt-netnut-residential-proxy-network-powered-by-millions-of-devices/