#blog

A 22-year-old Oregon man has been arrested on suspicion of operating "Rapper Bot," a massive botnet used to power a service for launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against targets -- including a March 2025 DDoS that knocked Twitter/X offline. The Justice Department asserts the suspect and an unidentified co-conspirator rented out the botnet to online extortionists, and tried to stay off the radar of law enforcement by ensuring that their botnet was never pointed at KrebsOnSecurity.

Statistics on 2024 trending vulnerabilities were featured in the OIC-CERT annual report. 🎉 🔹 The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is the largest and most influential official intergovernmental Muslim international organization. It currently unites 57 countries with a population of about 2 billion people. Russia is also a member of the OIC as an observer. […]

Cybercriminal groups peddling sophisticated phishing kits that convert stolen card data into mobile wallets have recently shifted their focus to targeting customers of brokerage services, new research shows. Undeterred by security controls at these trading platforms that block users from wiring funds directly out of accounts, the phishers have pivoted to using multiple compromised brokerage accounts in unison to manipulate the prices of foreign stocks.

August Microsoft Patch Tuesday. A total of 132 vulnerabilities, 20 fewer than in July. Of these, 25 were added between the July and August MSPT. Three are actively exploited, including two related to the trending SharePoint “ToolShell” flaw, exploited since July 17. 🔻 RCE – Microsoft SharePoint Server (CVE-2025-53770)🔻 Spoofing – Microsoft SharePoint Server (CVE-2025-53771) […]

Microsoft today released updates to fix more than 100 security flaws in its Windows operating systems and other software. At least 13 of the bugs received Microsoft's most-dire "critical" rating, meaning they could be abused by malware or malcontents to gain remote access to a Windows system with little or no help from users.

August “In the Trend of VM” (#18): vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and SharePoint. A traditional monthly roundup – this time, it’s extremely short. 🗞 Post on Habr (rus)🗒 Digest on the PT website (rus) Only two trending vulnerabilities: 🔻 Remote Code Execution – Microsoft SharePoint Server “ToolShell” (CVE-2025-53770). The vulnerability is being widely exploited; attackers […]

A new documentary series about cybercrime airing next month on HBO Max features interviews with Yours Truly. The four-part series follows the exploits of Julius Kivimäki, a prolific Finnish hacker recently convicted of leaking tens of thousands of patient records from an online psychotherapy practice while attempting to extort the clinic and its patients.

About Elevation of Privilege – Windows Update Service (CVE-2025-48799) vulnerability. This vulnerability is from the July Microsoft Patch Tuesday. Improper link resolution before file access (‘link following’) in the Windows Update Service allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges to “NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM”. 🛠 An exploit for this vulnerability was published by researcher Filip Dragović (Wh04m1001) […]

On July 22, 2025, the European police agency Europol said a long-running investigation led by the French Police resulted in the arrest of a 38-year-old administrator of XSS, a Russian-language cybercrime forum with more than 50,000 members. The action has triggered an ongoing frenzy of speculation and panic among XSS denizens about the identity of the unnamed suspect, but the consensus is that he is a pivotal figure in the crime forum scene who goes by the hacker handle "Toha." Here's a deep dive on what's knowable about Toha, and a short stab at who got nabbed.

Qualys has introduced Agentic AI, a solution for autonomous cyber risk management. As part of this solution, Qualys provides ready-to-use Cyber Risk Agents that operate autonomously and act as an additional skilled digital workforce. Agentic AI not only detects issues and provides analytics but also autonomously identifies critical risks, prioritizes them, and launches targeted remediation […]