DeadLock ransomware made headlines for moving its command-and-control infrastructure onto the Polygon blockchain — a technique that makes law enforcement takedowns nearly impossible. Microsoft Threat Intelligence published a detailed technical breakdown on August 10, 2026, describing the group’s Rust-based encryptor, its mathematically sound per-file ephemeral key design, and the decentralized ecosystem it built around smart […]
The Attack: Disguise, Deploy, Encrypt The Play ransomware group has adopted a clever evasion tactic: they use a custom binary named PSexesvc.exe that mimics Microsoft’s legitimate PsExec administration tool. This masquerading technique (MITRE ATT&CK T1036) allows them to blend malicious activity into normal Windows administration workflows, making detection difficult for signature-based security tools. Picus Security’s […]
The AV-TEST Institute logs over 450,000 new malware variants every single day. Most of them arrive the same way they have for two decades: through email. Malicious attachments. Links to weaponized sites. Password-protected archives that bypass scanning. HTML smuggling. QR codes. AI-generated social engineering that references real projects and actual colleagues. The delivery methods evolve. […]
DARK PROJECT ransomware affiliates posted three new victims on August 4, 2026: Reid Electric Service (energy sector), TSC Logistics (transportation), and Long-Lewis Automotive Group. The attack pattern is textbook mid-market opportunistic targeting — unpatched edge devices, exploited remote access tools, and a 5–14 day dwell time from initial access to encryption. Security Arsenal’s analysis identifies […]
799 Attacks in One Month — And the Same Vulnerability Ransomware attacks jumped nearly 20 percent in July 2026, with 799 incidents recorded by Comparitech. The most-hit sectors were finance (up 71%), tech (up 62%), pharma and medical billing (up 46%), and education (up 44%). The United States saw 322 of those attacks. Two gangs […]
Kaspersky recently documented a series of ransomware attacks targeting companies in Colombia and Mexico where attackers skipped the custom malware entirely and just weaponized BitLocker — Microsoft Windows’ legitimate disk encryption feature. The attacks succeeded because the evildoers understood something important: if you can get inside a network and activate BitLocker with your own recovery […]
The Signature Update Problem Kaspersky’s 2025 detection systems identified an average of 500,000 new malicious files per day—a 7% increase over the previous year. The same report documented a 59% surge in password-stealer detections and a 51% spike in spyware. Every one of those half-million daily files represents a new piece of code that antivirus […]
Microsoft issued a warning last week about CaptiveCrunch, a Russian campaign targeting corporate travelers on hotel and conference WiFi networks. The attack, attributed to Storm-2945 (a sub-cluster of Russia’s Midnight Blizzard), delivers a remote access trojan called CornFlake by compromising guest network captive portals and presenting fake Windows update prompts to unsuspecting users. CornFlake is […]
The Attack: Ransomware Plus Data Theft On June 16, 2026, attackers compromised River Financial Corporation’s network, deployed ransomware across their server environment, and exfiltrated an unknown amount of data. The company took systems offline, disabled compromised admin accounts, and brought in forensic investigators. Weeks later, they’re still trying to determine what data was stolen. They’ve […]
The Attack That Triggered Federal Investigation In 2021, the Xing Team ransomware gang struck OSF Healthcare System, encrypting protected health information and exposing systemic security failures. The HHS Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation that culminated in a 2026 settlement — not just for the ransomware attack itself, but for the underlying HIPAA Security […]