A phishing campaign used Google Calendar invites, trusted redirects, and fake login pages to hijack corporate Google sessions and bypass MFA protections. Material Security examines how Operation CloudFire tracked the attacks, blocked malicious messages, and helped take down nearly 900 domains used by the attackers.
Binance reveals how fake job interviews, malware and internal AI abuse enabled attackers to steal $6.34 billion. The Binance security incident on October 29 shows how a fake recruitment process can become the entry point to critical financial infrastructure. The attackers combined social engineering, compromised developer tools, stolen credentials and abuse of an internal AI application to reach the cryptocurrency exchange’s wallet signing systems. “Woah – so the Binance hack was indeed via a dodgy job interview for one of its developers who was tricked into downloading malware as part of the “interview” – costing the company >$3bn…” the popular best seller author and cybercrime expert Geoff White wrote on LinkedIn. “Worth noting: – The 2016 hack of Bangladesh Bank also attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group of hackers was via a job application – The 2022 theft of $625m from video game Axie Infinity happened via offering an employee a juicy job offer RECRUITMENT IS RISK. If you’re not educating employees on this, start now… – The 2024 heist of $1.5b from Bybit relied on tricking an employee of its supplier into downloading a dodgy share trading app onto the work machine (so not using a recruitment lure, but still deceiving a target into downloading malware)” In its initial findings and response update, published on November 3, Binance described the operation as a “sophisticated, multi-stage campaign.” The company estimates that approximately $6.34 billion in digital assets were affected. The FBI attributed the incident to the North Korea-linked APT “TraderTraitor,” also tracked as Lazarus Group and APT38. “Our current investigation indicates that this was a sophisticated, multi-stage campaign. It was not a single isolated breach or a simple phishing incident.” reads the update published by the crypto firm. “The attackers combined a range of techniques, including social engineering by fake recruitment interviews, malicious software downloads, compromised internal AI tooling, endpoint compromise, and an advanced transaction-authorisation method.” The operation began months before the theft. In June 2026, an engineer from Binance’s Wallet DevOps team downloaded a tampered Homebrew installation while searching online for a popular AI coding tool. Binance detected the suspicious activity, replaced the device and rotated the associated credentials, but information about the engineer’s role and colleagues had already been exposed. The attackers then targeted another software engineer through a legitimate job-hunting platform. In September, someone posing as a Project Director arranged two interviews: first with an HR representative, then with someone claiming to be the CEO of a fictitious company. During the first video interview, the supposed HR representative shared a social media account containing personal photos and videos to establish credibility. At the end of the second interview, the engineer was asked to download a technical assignment containing a malicious code repository onto his work computer. The malware executed during setup, replacing a legitimate development tool component with a malicious version. It used obfuscation to evade detection, executed commands and established communication with an attacker-controlled server. Binance said its endpoint security tools didn’t detect the malware at the time. “The second interview was conducted in a popular social chat app, near the end of the interview, Engineer B was instructed to download an “assignment” containing a malicious code repository onto his work computer.” states the firm. “The repository contained malicious code that executed during the setup process, initiating a series of unauthorized activities.” The compromise then moved beyond the affected workstation. On October 20, attackers used the compromised computer to abuse an internal AI tool and gain access to the systems of two other employees, including the Wallet DevOps engineer initially targeted in June. They discovered that his computer contained a token with container deployment permissions. This is one of the more significant aspects of the incident. The report doesn’t identify a vulnerability in the AI model itself. Instead, it shows how an internal application can become an attack pivot when an adversary gains access to a compromised employee’s environment and the permissions available to that user. “The attacker leveraged the compromised computer of engineer B and used an internal AI tool to gain control over the Wallet DevOps Engineer A and another Wallet Software Engineer C.” states the report. “The attacker soon discovered Wallet DevOps Engineer A had a container deployment permission token on his computer.” On October 29, the attackers used stolen credentials to access another engineer’s computer, deploy a container and execute a malicious script. This gave them access to Binance’s internal wallet signing service, allowing them to initiate transactions outside the normal withdrawal process. The transfers involved several blockchain networks. Five Binance hot wallets sent 233.46 million XRP to an attacker-controlled address, while other transfers involved approximately 970,500 SOL, 44.2 million OP and 18,270 BTC. The attackers also exploited Ethereum’s EIP-7702 authorization mechanism to grant a malicious smart contract partial execution rights over a Binance hot wallet. “EIP-7702 allows an account to delegate certain execution rights to a smart contract without exposing the private key. In this case, the attacker used that mechanism to give an attacker-controlled smart contract partial execution rights over a Binance hot wallet.” the company states. Suspending withdrawals wasn’t enough to stop the transfers because the malicious authorizations already existed on-chain and operated independently of Binance’s normal withdrawal infrastructure. Binance had to develop a specific procedure to revoke them. The use of Multi-Party Computation (MPC) meant there was no single private key that could immediately invalidate the unauthorized permissions. The final unauthorized transfer, involving 2,961.9 ETH, was finalized at 23:56 UTC. Binance cleared the malicious authorization at 00:10 UTC on October 30. The company estimates that approximately $6.34 billion in assets were affected, of which around $2.85 billion had been frozen or intercepted as of its November 3 update. Binance says it will absorb the financial impact and has already replenished 98% of the affected token assets, based on figures reported on October 31. The exchange has rebuilt the affected wallet infrastructure and internal AI tool, replaced compromised devices, revoked associated credentials and tokens, and strengthened endpoint monitoring and wallet-service controls. It is also engaging independent cybersecurity firms to review the incident. The attack highlights the need to treat recruitment processes, developer workstations and internal AI applications as part of the corporate attack surface. Technical assignments should run in isolated environments, deployment credentials should be short-lived and tightly restricted, and internal AI tools should never inherit unnecessary access to sensitive systems. Binance also said its security team had detected and prevented 57 suspected North Korea-linked cyber threat cases during 2026. These included fake job interviews, malicious developer tools, compromised software packages and browser extensions, fake video-conferencing applications and campaigns designed to steal credentials or deploy remote-access malware. The incident is another reminder that attackers don’t always need to break directly into critical infrastructure. Sometimes, compromising the people and tools that manage it is enough. “We are sharing this initial report because security improves when the industry learns together.” concludes the update. In September, Japan’s National Police Agency, the FBI, the US Department of Defense’s Cyber Crime Center, and intelligence agencies from Australia and Germany published a joint advisory about a group called WaterPlum, better known as Contagious Interview. The name says it all. The job interview is the infection vector. The numbers in the advisory are hard to shrug off. At least 30,000 devices infected across more than 100 countries, funds or credentials stolen from over 7,000 cryptocurrency wallets, and a total of 1.7 billion yen, roughly $10.71 million, funneled back to North Korea. The victims are almost always the same type: freelance developers and specialists in blockchain and Web3 work. Japan’s NPA and the FBI assess that both WaterPlum operators and some North Korean IT workers report to the same place, the 313 General Bureau of the Munitions Industry Department, under the Workers’ Party’s Central Committee. That’s not a loose affiliation. It’s an org chart. The trap itself is almost embarrassingly simple. WaterPlum actors pose as recruiters or hiring managers, often impersonating real AI, crypto, or NFT companies, and reach out on social media, job boards, and freelance platforms. Candidates get invited to a technical interview, then told to download a file to complete a coding test or fix a supposed bug on the video call. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, Binance)
Large language model hijacking attacks, also known as LLMjacking, are generating large fraudulent cloud charges, with some organizations losing more than $100,000 per day. Companies can record costs as high as $1 million due to fraudulent calls using stolen API keys, researchers at Google's Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) and Mandiant in analyzed incidents. Based on their observations, there are "two distinct operational clusters coordinating to compromise and monetize enterprise LLM infrastructure." The researchers identified two categories of threat actors: those who scan for publicly exposed LLM endpoints and those who steal valid API keys from unprotected machines. After gaining initial access, the attackers sell it to services known as LLM mixers, which provide their subscribers with unauthorized access to LLMs.
Synology warns of ransomware attacks exploiting a 2024 flaw in outdated NAS devices, urging users to update DSM immediately. A security fix released in 2024 is now at the centre of ransomware attacks against Synology NAS devices. The company has found attackers targeting systems that still run outdated versions of DiskStation Manager (DSM), putting files stored on these network storage devices at risk of encryption and extortion. Synology disclosed the attacks on October 29, 2026. Its investigation found that threat actors are taking advantage of a vulnerability that the vendor had already addressed in December 2024. “These attacks aim to encrypt data and extort ransom.” The warning highlights how devices left without security updates can remain exposed long after vendors have released a fix. The company hasn’t identified the exact vulnerability used in the attacks. Instead, it refers customers to Synology-SA-24:20, a security advisory published on November 5, 2024, which documents three flaws affecting DSM. The advisory was updated as fixes became available across different software branches, with the DSM 6.2 update released on December 5. The three vulnerabilities have different security implications. CVE-2024-10441 is the most severe, with a CVSS score of 9.8. It affects the system plugin daemon and could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable device. CVE-2024-50629 has a CVSS score of 5.3 and affects the DSM webapi component. It could allow remote attackers to read limited files. The third issue, CVE-2024-10445, is rated 4.3 and concerns improper certificate validation in the update functionality. It could allow an attacker in an adjacent network position to write limited files. Synology hasn’t confirmed which of these vulnerabilities attackers are exploiting. The three flaws should therefore be considered part of the security advisory, not three confirmed entry points in the current ransomware campaign. The vendor has released corrected builds for all the affected DSM branches. Users should check the full version number installed on their NAS and compare it with the minimum fixed releases listed in the advisory: DSM 7.2.2: 7.2.2-72806-1 or later. DSM 7.2.1: 7.2.1-69057-6 or later. DSM 7.2: 7.2-64570-4 or later. DSM 7.1: 7.1.1-42962-7 or later. DSM 6.2: 6.2.4-25556-8 or later. The impact of a ransomware infection on a NAS can extend well beyond the storage device itself. Businesses often use these systems to keep shared documents, operational files and backup copies in one place. If attackers encrypt that data, employees may lose access to essential information, while recovery can become much harder if the NAS also holds the backups needed to restore other systems. Updating DSM is therefore an immediate priority for administrators and home users alike. Synology is also advising customers to enable automatic updates so that future security fixes don’t depend entirely on someone checking for them manually. “Synology also recommends enabling automatic updates to keep DSM up to date at all times.” concludes the advisory. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, NAS)
A 3AM ransomware affiliate targeted a school estate in the UK and successfully encrypted around 37 of nearly 50 machines reached from an unmanaged host. Researchers at cybersecurity company Bitdefender believe the threat actor may have used AI-generated commands and an automated agentic loop to carry out the operation. The conclusion is based on a sequence of repeated commands that were slightly modified at each attempt and issued at roughly regular intervals of 40 to 100 seconds. "We were not able to access the machine the attacker worked from, so we cannot document anything about the language model itself: which model it was, whether it ran locally or remotely, or even whether a person was copying and pasting instructions and results between the implant and the model," Bitdefender explains.
Google has expanded its Cloud Vulnerability Reward Program (VRP) with a new top-tier reward for high-impact architectural security flaws. Starting this month, researchers can earn $250,000 for Root-in-Cloud bugs, including tenant-isolation bypasses and complex cross-service logic flaws that let attackers gain full administrative control over arbitrary Google Cloud organizations. "To earn this premier reward, you must demonstrate full administrative control, the equivalent of 'roles/owner' or complete IAM control, over arbitrary Google Cloud organizations or projects with no prior access or special project setup," said Chris Betz, Google Cloud's Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). "Additionally, valid vulnerability reports demonstrating remote code execution (RCE) in underlying Google production infrastructure (Borg) or achieving root-in-prod will automatically be evaluated by the Google Cloud VRP panel for root-in-cloud eligibility."
Binance on Tuesday said the record-setting theft of $6.43 billion in assets from the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange was the culmination of a "sophisticated, multi-stage campaign" that involved the use of a tampered Homebrew installation and recruitment-themed social engineering attack targeting two of its engineers. "It was not a single isolated breach or a simple phishing incident,"
Google on Monday warned that threat actors are hijacking enterprise access to Large Language Models (LLMs) to fraudulently leverage expensive computing resources and AI services. The tactic is called LLMjacking, a form of resource hijacking adapted for the LLM era, where an attacker obtains an API key through phishing, source code leaks, misconfigured environments, or exposed client-side code
Synology is urging customers to update the DiskStation Manager (DSM) software powering its Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices following ransomware attacks. The Taiwanese vendor said it observed threat actors exploiting a vulnerability patched in December 2024 to target devices running outdated versions of DSM. "These attacks aim to encrypt data and extort ransom," it said in a statement
Financial technology company Abrigo has restored its Sageworks risk management application, except for borrower-facing capabilities, following an outage triggered by "irregular activity" in its environment. On October 30, the company began emergency maintenance and took the Sageworks application offline to investigate suspicious activity detected earlier that day, with the outage continuing through the weekend. Abrigo provides cloud-based software and analytics solutions for community banks and credit unions across the United States. According to the company, it serves more than 2,400 entities. Its Sageworks product is a software platform that helps lenders process loan applications, analyze borrowers’ finances, assess creditworthiness, and monitor loan portfolios. Due to its nature, Sageworks handles sensitive information, including banking customer details.
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