Multistage social engineering attacks targeting help desk teams

The FBI has issued an alert about two cybercriminal groups, UNC6040 and UNC6395, targeting Salesforce platforms for data theft and extortion. UNC6395 exploited compromised OAuth tokens for the Salesloft Drift application, while UNC6040 used vishing campaigns and modified Salesforce tools to breach Salesforce instances. Both groups have been active since at least October 2024, impacting multiple organizations. UNC6040 has been linked to extortion activities, with Google attributing these to a separate cluster, UNC6240, which has claimed to be the ShinyHunters group. The ShinyHunters group, along with Scattered Spider and LAPSUS$, recently announced they are going dark, but experts warn that the threat persists. UNC6040 impersonated corporate IT support personnel to gain access to Salesforce environments and used modified versions of Salesforce's Data Loader to exfiltrate data. Salesforce re-enabled integrations with Salesloft technologies, except for the Drift app, which remains disabled.

Chinese state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actors, specifically the Salt Typhoon group, are conducting a sustained campaign to gain long-term access to critical infrastructure networks worldwide. These actors exploit vulnerabilities in routers and other edge network devices used by telecommunications providers, ISPs, and other infrastructure operators. The campaign targets telecommunications, transportation, lodging, government, and military networks. The actors employ tactics to evade detection and maintain persistent access, posing a significant threat to national and economic security. The advisory provides actionable guidance to help organizations strengthen their defenses and protect critical systems. The campaign has targeted at least 600 organizations across 80 countries, including 200 in the U.S. The advisory details how state-backed threat actors, including Salt Typhoon, penetrate networks around the world and how defenders can protect their own environments. The advisory tracks this cluster of activity to multiple advanced persistent threats (APTs), though it partially overlaps with Salt Typhoon. The advisory notes that the actors have had considerable success exploiting publicly known vulnerabilities, including Ivanti Connect Secure, Ivanti Policy Secure, Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS, and Cisco IOS XE vulnerabilities. The advisory suspects that the APT actors may target other devices, including Fortinet firewalls, Juniper firewalls, Microsoft Exchange, Nokia routers and switches, Sierra Wireless devices, and Sonicwall firewalls. The actors use multiple tactics to maintain persistence, including modifying Access Control Lists (ACLs), opening standard and non-standard ports, enabling SSH servers, and creating tunnels over protocols. The actors target protocols and infrastructure involved in authentication, such as Terminal Access Controller Access Control System Plus (TACACS+), to facilitate lateral movement across network devices. The advisory provides extensive recommendations for mitigating these threats, including monitoring network device configuration changes, auditing network services and tunnels, and checking logs for integrity. The advisory highlights a critical shift from Chinese state-sponsored activity from being purely espionage to gaining long-term access for potential disruption. 45 previously unreported domains associated with Salt Typhoon and UNC4841 have been discovered, dating back to May 2020. The oldest domain identified is onlineeylity[.]com, registered on May 19, 2020. The domains were registered using Proton Mail email addresses and fake personas. The domains point to high-density and low-density IP addresses, with the earliest activity traced back to October 2021. The domains are linked to Chinese cyber espionage campaigns, with potential overlaps between Salt Typhoon and UNC4841.

APT36, a Pakistani threat actor also known as Transparent Tribe, is exploiting Linux .desktop files to install malware in attacks targeting government and defense entities in India. The campaign, active since August 1, 2025, aims at data exfiltration and maintaining persistent access. The attacks use phishing emails to deliver ZIP archives containing malicious .desktop files disguised as PDFs. The malware, a Go-based ELF executable, establishes persistence and communicates via a WebSocket channel for command and control. The campaign also targets Windows and BOSS Linux systems, using decoy PDFs and anti-debugging techniques to evade detection.

Murky Panda, also known as Silk Typhoon, Genesis Panda, and Glacial Panda, three China-nexus cyber espionage groups, have escalated their activities targeting cloud and telecom sectors. Murky Panda exploits trusted cloud relationships and zero-day vulnerabilities to breach enterprise networks. Genesis Panda targets cloud service providers to expand access and establish persistence. Glacial Panda targets telecommunications organizations to exfiltrate call detail records and related communications telemetry. The groups leverage various TTPs, including exploiting internet-facing appliances, known vulnerabilities, and living-off-the-land techniques. Their operations are driven by intelligence gathering and maintaining stealth and persistence. Murky Panda has been observed exploiting the CVE-2025-0282 vulnerability in Ivanti Pulse Connect VPN, zero-day vulnerabilities in SaaS providers' cloud environments, and delegated administrative privileges (DAP) in Microsoft cloud solution providers to gain Global Administrator rights across all downstream tenants. The group uses compromised SOHO devices as proxy servers to blend malicious traffic with normal traffic and deploys web shells like Neo-reGeorg and China Chopper to establish persistence.

Researchers from Guardio Labs have demonstrated a new prompt injection technique called PromptFix. This exploit tricks generative AI (GenAI) models into executing malicious instructions embedded within fake CAPTCHA checks on web pages. The attack targets AI-driven browsers like Perplexity's Comet, which automate tasks such as shopping and email management. The exploit misleads AI models into interacting with phishing pages or fraudulent sites without user intervention, leading to potential data breaches and financial losses. The technique, dubbed Scamlexity, represents a new era of scams where AI convenience collides with invisible scam surfaces, making humans collateral damage. The exploit can trick AI models into purchasing items on fake websites, entering credentials on phishing pages, or downloading malicious payloads. The findings underscore the need for robust defenses in AI systems to anticipate, detect, and neutralize such attacks. Microsoft Edge is embedding agentic browsing features through a Copilot integration, and OpenAI is developing an agentic AI browser platform codenamed 'Aura'. Comet is quickly penetrating the mainstream consumer market. Agentic AI browsers were released with inadequate security safeguards against known and novel attacks. Guardio advises against assigning sensitive tasks to agentic AI browsers until their security matures. AI browser agents from major AI firms failed to reliably detect the signs of a phishing site. Comet often added items to a shopping cart, filled out credit-card details, and clicked the buy button on a fake Walmart site. AI browsers with access to email will read and act on prompts embedded in the messages. AI companies need stronger sanitation and guardrails against these attacks. Nearly all companies (96%) claim to want to expand their use of AI agents in the next year, but most are not prepared for the new risks posed by AI agents in a business environment. A fundamental issue is how to discern actions taken through a browser by a user versus those taken by an agent. AI agents need to be experts at not just getting things done, but at sussing out and blocking potential security threats to workers and company data. Companies should move from "trust, but verify" to "doubt, and double verify"—essentially hobbling automation until an AI agent has shown it can always complete a workflow properly. Defective AI operations continue to be a major problem, and security represents another layer on top of those issues. Companies should hold off on putting AI agents into any business process that requires reliability until AI-agent makers offer better visibility, control, and security. Companies that intend to push their use of AI into agent-based workflows should focus on a comprehensive strategy, including inventorying all AI services used by employees and creating an AI usage policy. Employees need to understand the basics of AI safety and what it means to give these bots information or privileges to do things on their behalf.