In April 2026, Kaspersky GERT responded to an incident at a Middle East manufacturing organization where the actor gained domain admin-equivalent control of Active Directory. The actor created and linked a malicious GPO named PAYLOAD at the domain root. It pushed ransom notes, a wallpaper and lock screen, a logon banner and a local admini…
Huntress reports that manufacturing accounted for about 17% of cyber attacks in 2025, up from 9% in 2024, citing its own cyber threat report. The article is a vendor trends piece rather than an incident report. It argues that ransomware operators now target production uptime and operational technology (OT), not just data, because manufact…
A Chinese-speaking attacker has reportedly compromised hundreds of websites worldwide by abusing Cairn, an AI-driven penetration-testing tool, to automate the attacks. Reported victims include large industrial and consumer brands such as John Deere, SharkNinja and engine manufacturer Cummins, from which the attacker is said to have looted…
A Chinese-speaking threat actor used AI agents coordinated through the open-source Cairn platform to attempt intrusions against more than 1,200 websites, reportedly compromising sites of over 100 companies, including Deere, SharkNinja and Cummins. Researcher Snorre Fagerland of NorForge found the activity while monitoring internet-exposed…
A Chinese-speaking operator used the open-source AI agent framework Cairn to run autonomous attacks against more than 1,200 sites, reaching websites of over 100 companies, including Deere, SharkNinja and Cummins. Researcher Snorre Fagerland of NorForge found the operation around 2 October 2026 by scanning for about two dozen exposed Cairn…
A Chinese-speaking operator used autonomous AI agents on the open-source Cairn platform to compromise the websites of more than 100 companies. NorForge tracks the most active campaign as AIA0001: over 1,100 attack projects across 14 dashboards, and more than 1,200 break-in attempts overall. Targets were e-commerce businesses in the United…
A court in Zurich sentenced an unnamed 52-year-old Ukrainian man to 12 years and nine months in prison and banned him from Switzerland for ten years. The court found him to be the lead developer of the LockerGoga, MegaCortex and Nefilim ransomware families. Victims include Norsk Hydro, Stadler Rail (500 GB stolen in 2020, reported US $6 m…
A 28-year-old Russian man, identified by German media only as "Vladimir K", has been arrested in Germany on suspicion of being a key member of the Qilin ransomware gang. He was first detained in Japan in May while on holiday and was extradited to Germany earlier this month. German investigators are examining possible links between him and…
GreyNoise reports that a single malicious cyber actor, tracked since 7 May 2026, is a suspected Chinese speaker working in UTC+8 and is the same as or related to Red Heron (reported by Acronis), based on the shared C2 domain, malware family, Gitea exploitation and other TTPs. The actor exploited the wp2shell WordPress chain (CVE-2026-6303…
Threat actors are abusing the open source AI platform Cairn, an agent-coordination engine usable as an autonomous penetration testing tool, to automate attacks on hundreds of websites worldwide. AI security firm Norforge found the activity after threat actors left their Cairn panels exposed, following a Gambit Security report on attackers…
A Cisco blog post by Renato Morais compares past landmark threats with the emerging risk from autonomous AI agents, then presents Cisco's agentic security reference architecture. It recounts the ILOVEYOU worm (2000), a social-engineering email worm, and WannaCry (2017), a ransomware worm using EternalBlue against unpatched Windows systems…
Symantec reports that the Russia-linked APT28 (aka BlueDelta, Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard), tracked by Symantec as Swallowtail, targeted entities in two NATO member states. Victims include a law enforcement agency, a naval shipbuilder and a manufacturer of military aircraft engines. In the shipbuilder intrusion in late July 2026, operator…
ESET documented the evolution of MATCHBOIL, a custom C downloader used by the Russia-aligned cyberespionage group UAC-0099. Samples span April 2024 to April 2026, although CERT-UA first documented the malware in August 2025. Each iteration became more sophisticated, with new obfuscation, sandbox checks and persistence methods. All victims…
Multiple ransomware groups, including Qilin and INC, are exploiting CVE-2026-0257, an authentication bypass in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS GlobalProtect portals and gateways. Unit 42 has been investigating intrusions since early June across many sectors, including finance, healthcare and manufacturing. The flaw was patched on May 13 and ini…
The FBI, CISA, DC3, NSA, USSS and the Republic of Korea's KNPA issued joint advisory AA26-222A on Gunra ransomware. Gunra appeared in April 2025 as a double-extortion variant derived from the leaked Conti source code. It launched a structured RaaS affiliate program in January 2026, also operating under the alias Golden Community, and recr…