You're listening to the Cyber Wire Network, powered by N2K. Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my out-of-office has a forever center. An IG Private Wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at igprivatewealth.com. What's your karaoke song? Classic rock? K-pop? Norwegian disco pop? Medieval trap? Post-apocalyptic polka? Or just a cappella? Whatever you sing, it's up to you.
Just like it's up to you to ask your doctor about Wagovi. The FBI disrupts a major residential proxy service. Attackers exploit Fortinet firewalls to target UK officials. European lawmakers call for a spyware investigation. A new macOS Info Stealer masquerades as a clipboard manager. Prompt injection campaigns targeting AI agents through malicious websites and SEO poisoning. Researchers trick Claude into remote code execution. AI's strain on the power grid is complicated. We got your Monday business briefing. Our guest is Gabby Reich, VP of Product Threat Intelligence and Exposure Management at BitSite, with insights on how cybercriminal activity is shifting.
And anime and AI meet adolescent antics. It's Monday, July 6, 2026. I'm Dave Bittner, and this is your CyberWire Intel Briefing. Thanks for joining us here today. It is great as always to have you with us.
The FBI and IRS criminal investigation, with support from Google, Lumen's Black Lotus Labs, and the Shadow Server Foundation, seized domains linked to NetNut, disrupting a major residential proxy service. NetNut, owned by Israel-based Alarm Technologies, provided residential proxies that routed internet traffic through consumer devices, a service used for legitimate business purposes but also exploited by cybercriminals. Google said the network relied on at least 2 million devices, many of them Android smart TVs and streaming boxes, some of which were enrolled through pre-installed software or hidden software development kits. Researchers observed hundreds of threat clusters using NetNut infrastructure for password spraying, unauthorized access attempts, and other malicious activity. Google disabled NetNut-related infrastructure, shared threat intelligence, and updated PlayProtect to detect affected applications. Alarum said it would cooperate with investigators and warned investors that the disruption could significantly affect its business.
Researchers have also linked NetNut infrastructure to several botnet operations. A large-scale cyber campaign targeting Fortinet firewalls has exposed login credentials belonging to UK government officials, overseas foreign office staff, local authorities, and organizations supporting critical infrastructure. Researchers say attackers used previously leaked credentials to bypass security controls and gain access to sensitive networks, with stolen accounts now reportedly being sold on dark web forums. The UK's National Cybersecurity Center confirmed an ongoing brute force campaign against Fortinet devices and urged organizations to audit systems, isolate compromised devices, and change reused passwords.
While the attack has been linked to Russian-speaking hackers based on technical evidence, officials say there's no evidence of direct Russian state involvement. Security experts warn the stolen credentials could enable ransomware attacks against healthcare, government, and other essential services if organizations fail to secure affected systems. European lawmakers are calling for a new spyware investigation after researchers found that former European Parliament member Stelio Kuliglau was infected with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware while serving on the Parliament's Pega Committee, which was investigating spyware abuses. According to Citizen Lab, Kuliglau's iPhone was compromised in October 2022 and again in early 2023 using the Hone Your Home zero-click exploit, with the attacks occurring during key stages of the committee's work.
Researchers urged the European Parliament to launch an immediate investigation and expand spyware screening for members' devices. Political groups across Parliament echoed those calls, arguing that recommendations issued by the Pega Committee in 2023, including stronger oversight and tighter controls on commercial spyware, have not been fully implemented. Jamf Threat Labs has identified a new macOS info stealer, dubbed PAM stealer, disguised as the legitimate Maxi clipboard manager. Distributed as a compiled Apple script inside a disk image, the malware downloads a Rust-based second-stage payload that steals credentials, browser data, clipboard contents, and cryptocurrency wallet information while establishing persistence. Its standout feature is locally validating a victim's macOS password through the pluggable authentication modules, or PAM, framework before harvesting it, reducing detectable activity.
PAM Steeler also masquerades as Finder, encrypts communications with its command and control server, and uses social engineering to prompt victims for full disk access. Researchers say the malware employs environment checks, regional exclusions, anti-analysis techniques, and native macOS APIs to evade detection, highlighting the continued evolution of stealthier macOS-focused credential stealers. Researchers at Zscaler identified two prompt injection campaigns targeting AI agents through malicious websites and search engine optimization poisoning. One campaign tricks AI agents into making cryptocurrency payments by embedding hidden instructions within fake API documentation, while another uses a typo-squatted website to impersonate the DeBank cryptocurrency platform. Testing showed several leading large language models followed the malicious payment instructions or misidentified the fake site as legitimate.
Zscaler warns that as AI agents become more capable of browsing and completing tasks, web content itself is emerging as a significant new attack surface. Researchers at Pantera Labs demonstrated how compromising a developer's email account could allow attackers to hijack Anthropic's Claude desktop and achieve remote code execution. By modifying the victim's synchronized Claude preferences with a hidden prompt, the researchers caused the AI assistant to silently check for command execution tools and run attacker-controlled commands. If those tools were unavailable, Claude instead displayed convincing fake error messages that tricked users into installing software that enabled code execution.
Once compromised, the AI assistant effectively became a persistent command and control channel capable of executing commands and exfiltrating data. Anthropic said the attack requires an already compromised clawed account and reflects intended functionality rather than a software vulnerability, while researchers urged organizations to treat AI desktop applications as privileged software and closely monitor their configurations. A new report from the IEEE Spectrum says the rapid growth of AI infrastructure is creating new challenges for electrical grids that extend beyond rising energy consumption. While attention has focused on the amount of electricity required by hyperscale data centers, researchers argue that AI workloads introduce highly dynamic and unpredictable demand patterns that differ from traditional industrial loads. AI training and inference can cause abrupt changes in power consumption, placing additional strain on grid balancing, frequency control, transmission systems, and local infrastructure.
These effects are amplified in regions with dense concentrations of data centers where synchronized compute and cooling demands can create localized reliability and power quality issues. Utilities and grid operators are exploring demand response programs, battery storage, and updated planning modules, but electrical infrastructure expands far more slowly than AI computing capacity. The article concludes that future grid planning must account not only for total energy use, but also for demand volatility, workload synchronization, and geographic concentration as AI infrastructure continues to scale. Turning to our Monday business briefing, cybersecurity and AI companies announced several major funding rounds and acquisitions last week. Quantifind raised $200 million in growth funding, bringing its total funding to $320 million to expand its AI-powered risk intelligence platform internationally. Agentic AI security startup Striker secured $64 million to accelerate product development, threat research, and global expansion, while AI governance platform RunLayer raised $30 million to grow its engineering and go-to-market teams.
Contextual security company Nebulok closed a $25 million Series A, and security architecture automation startup Dongard added $3.3 million to support product development and international growth. On the acquisition front, F5 acquired AI governance firm SurePath AI to strengthen its enterprise AI security platform. Identity verification company Encode acquired Identic to enhance fraud detection. And Belgian IT firm Sajika acquired cybersecurity specialist 3Point to expand its capabilities supporting defense, intelligence, and critical infrastructure organizations. Be sure to check out our business briefing on the CyberWire website. That is part of CyberWire Pro.
Coming up after the break, my conversation with Gabby Rice from BitSight. We're discussing how cybercriminal activity is shifting, and anime and AI meet adolescent antics. Stick around. That's two minutes for holding. But you're holding two times the chicken with BOGO Box Meals from KFC. Order in and focus on the ice, not what's for dinner. Get game day deals on Uber Eats all season long, like BOGO Box Meals from KFC. Hockey is for the hungry. Uber Eats. Order now. Terms apply. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.
Gabby Reich is VP for Product Threat Intelligence and Exposure Management at BitSight. We recently got together to discuss how cybercriminal activity is shifting. The report, it's an annual report that we generate, which is based on our ability to cover a lot of insights and lots of intelligence that we're collecting from multiple sources, especially sources related to the dark web. And what we've done in this report is we're collecting insights and information related to trends that we're seeing year over year as related to threat activity, related to ransomware trends, different cyber attacks, for example, hacktivism, what we're seeing in the world of vulnerabilities.
the emergence of AI and how AI is contributing to the threat landscape and other areas like that. Well, one of the provocative things that you presented in the report is this notion that the threat landscape isn't getting quieter, it's reorganizing. What does that mean in practical terms? Yeah, so I think that what's interesting is that threat actors, what we've seen from the report, are becoming more specialized maybe and more geopolitically aligned. When we say specialized, these days you can identify specific trends where specific threat actors are focused on specific industries and sectors and the same thing related to geopolitical. So if in the past threat actors were very opportunistic, spray and pray and activities, these days it's a lot more deliberate targeting based on industry.
geography and strategic value that we'll gain on that. So the landscape may be more fragmented, more geopolitically driven, more harder to track on one hand, but on the other side, we also see specific trends related to specialization. And the last thing here that I'm sure that we'll talk a lot about is also AI coming into the threat landscape also. Well, before we get to that, one of the things that the report highlights is what you all have been tracking when it comes to ransomware. Can you share some of that information with us? Ransomware, the market dynamics, to some extent, have shifted. What I think is different is that it's more distributed. As I said, I also said before, it's more geopolitically motivated.
it's sometimes less about the payment, it's more about the leverage. So there's a couple of things that we've seen. There are about top five groups that are accounting for over 40% of all attacks. Many of them are Russian-linked or Russian-speaking. We see that there are different numbers, but the median payment has jumped to about almost more than 300% today, where it's interesting, on one hand, many times victims are getting better at refusing to pay.
But on the other hand, what we're seeing is that attackers are, I would like to say, calibrating their operational ways of actually gaining more leverage in what they're doing. Another thing that maybe is worth mentioning related to ransomware, what we're seeing is that there's a shift on the threat actors that are shifting the pressure from ransomware demands to payment related to operational disruption, reputational damage, and legal leverage. So the shift is, and on one hand, payments are questionable. Sometimes we saw that. The total payments fell to about 60% and 66%, which tells that VIX terms are pushing back. But the operational disruption pressure is growing with new ways of new mechanics that the threat actors are looking at. Well, AI has become part of nearly every cybersecurity conversation these days. What are some of the issues that you and your colleagues are tracking when it comes to that? I think that the way we look at AI is that AI is not theoretical anymore. We're looking at the threats, mainstream AI tools.
So it's not about novel AI-related attacks, but the main aspect that we're seeing is that mainstream AI tools, everything from cursor to chat GPT, cloud, whatever, are used and becoming embedded in underground conversations tied to malware development, planning attacks, reconnaissance. So what we're seeing is that the threat actors are using the most traditional classic AI tools that each one of us is using, but they're using it for malicious activities, as I mentioned before, from development to planning. We see in the report, we mentioned that The underground forms are flooded with AI-rated discussions on how to use different tools. And we gave some numbers. There's about 5.1 million Gemini mentions of usage of Gemini and so on and so on. And it's just one example. So this adoption pattern is interesting. So attackers are not using AI to write novel malware. They're using it to everything around the actual attack. And they're using it for the research, to understanding technology stacks, to analyze vulnerabilities. And this is a super interesting aspect there. The main thing that I would like to say about that is that this...
The AI technology isn't just about scaling the attackers and helping the attackers. It should also be scaling us, the defenders. I strongly believe, and many like me in the industry believe, that this is a fight that we can win with the technology. So the usage of the AI technology is not only in the hands of the attackers, it's also in the hands of defenders. And we should be using the same tools and better to be able to defend ourselves, protect ourselves against it. Well, broadly speaking, based on the information that you and your colleagues have gathered, what are your recommendations for the defenders in our audience?
Yeah. So another, we're talking about AI into your question. There's all kinds of new AI models that are helping us on one hand, but also bringing a lot of concern with these frontier AI models. And the question, what's changing right now in the vulnerabilities and exploitation of these vulnerabilities is the velocity and the scales of these attacks. And what it means to us, I think the key thing to me is, and for any security leader that is listening to us, I think.
to this conversation. So any security leader listening to the conversation is that prioritization. Threat-informed prioritization is the most important thing right now. It's not about having a good vulnerability management program. It's about more than that. It's having good intelligence, good insights, and to be able to prioritize what matters. It's not about having the better tools. It's not about having more people, faster patching cycles. It's all, and I will repeat again, it's about prioritization. And here's why. Because in the world of AI, with the velocity of AI and the scales of...
AI-driven attacks, you can't patch everything. You can't monitor everything. You can't block everything. The volume is just too large. So what you can do is understand what are the vulnerabilities that matter most to your organization, which threat actors actually could target you, which vendors that you're working with in your supply chain have the more exposure that could cascade to you. And as a result of that, how do you take the action on the issues that matter? When talking about risk, it's about what should I decide that I want to fix? And what are the things that I am...
accepting as risk. I'll give you just one example. Klopp, the ransomware group, decided to attack specific organizations a year ago. And Klopp as a ransomware group didn't breach organizations for the sake of breaching specific organizations. So what they did was they leveraged a specific software, MoveIt. And what they did was they went through a shared platform. Once you're exposed, there was cascading the impact. So my point is that you need to be able to prioritize what is important to you. And every organization is different. Understanding your threat context, what sector, what industry you're in.
What are your geopolitical risks? How does your attack surface look? What are the places in your organization from an attack surface which is more important to your business? And based on that, taking the right decisions and understanding how to prioritize accordingly. That's Gabby Reich, VP of Product Threat Intelligence and Exposure Management at BitSight.
In 2002, Ryan Wedding was an Olympic snowboarder at the top of his game. Ryan's style is really gun it and go. And in less than a minute, it slipped away. But he continued to chase the high. Ryan James Wedding. He controls one of the most violent drug trafficking organizations in this world. I'm Michelle Shepard and from CBC Podcasts and the Toronto Star, The Most Wanted Olympian. The Most Wanted Olympian. Available now on Spotify.
Should you grow a playoff beard? What about a playoff mustache? A playoff soul patch? Braided playoff mutton chops? Or maybe just playoff stubble? Whatever you grow, it's up to you. Just like it's up to you to ask your doctor about Wigovi. Feel like you know enough to start your own podcast? We get it. Feel like you don't know enough to start investing yet? We got you. Cooperators. Get investments, insurance, and advice from someone who gets you. Terms and conditions apply.
And finally, a 15-year-old student from Japan's Sayatama Prefecture has been arrested for allegedly launching a cyberattack that disrupted Bandai Channel, an anime streaming service operated by Bandai Namco Filmworks. Police say the teenager used a program he developed with assistance from ChatGPT to exploit a vulnerability in the company's systems, sending false data that led to the unauthorized cancellation of over 46,000 subscription accounts. The attack temporarily disrupted operations, with full service not restored until months later. Investigators believe the student uncovered the flaw himself and used it to access account information. He reportedly admitted to the incident, explaining that he had been teaching himself computers since elementary school and bore no ill will toward the company. It's a reminder that just because you've watched every episode of Ghost in the Shell doesn't mean you're supposed to recreate the plot. Sometimes the most powerful move is logging off before your origin story turns into a police report. And that's The Cyber Wire. For links to all of today's stories, check out our daily briefing at thecyberwire.com.
We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing world of cybersecurity. If you like our show, please share a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to cyberwire at n2k.com. N2K's lead producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Trey Hester with original music and sound design by Elliot Peltzman. Our contributing host is Maria Vermazis. Our executive producer is Jennifer Ivan. Peter Kilpie is our publisher, and I'm Dave Fittner. Thanks for listening. We'll see you back here tomorrow.