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A prolific data ransom gang that calls itself Scattered Lapsus ShinyHunters (SLSH) has a distinctive playbook when it seeks to extort payment from victim firms: Harassing, threatening and even swatting executives and their families, all while notifying journalists and regulators about the extent of the intrusion. Some victims reportedly are paying — perhaps as much to contain the stolen data as to stop the escalating personal attacks. But a top SLSH expert warns that engaging at all beyond...

The cybercriminals in control of Kimwolf — a disruptive botnet that has infected more than 2 million devices — recently shared a screenshot indicating they’d compromised the control panel for Badbox 2.0 , a vast China-based botnet powered by malicious software that comes pre-installed on many Android TV streaming boxes. Both the FBI and Google say they are hunting for the people behind Badbox 2.0, and thanks to bragging by the Kimwolf botmasters we may now have a much clearer i...

A new Internet-of-Things (IoT) botnet called Kimwolf has spread to more than 2 million devices, forcing infected systems to participate in massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and to relay other malicious and abusive Internet traffic. Kimwolf’s ability to scan the local networks of compromised systems for other IoT devices to infect makes it a sobering threat to organizations, and new research reveals Kimwolf is surprisingly prevalent in government and corporate networks. I...

Microsoft today issued patches to plug at least 113 security holes in its various Windows operating systems and supported software. Eight of the vulnerabilities earned Microsoft’s most-dire “critical” rating, and the company warns that attackers are already exploiting one of the bugs fixed today. January’s Microsoft zero-day flaw — CVE-2026-20805 — is brought to us by a flaw in the Desktop Window Manager (DWM), a key component of Windows that organizes windows...

Our first story of 2026 revealed how a destructive new botnet called Kimwolf has infected more than two million devices by mass-compromising a vast number of unofficial Android TV streaming boxes . Today, we’ll dig through digital clues left behind by the hackers, network operators and services that appear to have benefitted from Kimwolf’s spread. On Dec. 17, 2025, the Chinese security firm XLab published a deep dive on Kimwolf , which forces infected devices to participate in distri...

The story you are reading is a series of scoops nestled inside a far more urgent Internet-wide security advisory. The vulnerability at issue has been exploited for months already, and it’s time for a broader awareness of the threat. The short version is that everything you thought you knew about the security of the internal network behind your Internet router probably is now dangerously out of date. The security company Synthient currently sees more than 2 million infected Kimwolf devices ...

KrebsOnSecurity.com celebrates its 16th anniversary today! A huge “thank you” to all of our readers — newcomers, long-timers and drive-by critics alike. Your engagement this past year here has been tremendous and truly a salve on a handful of dark days. Happily, comeuppance was a strong theme running through our coverage in 2025, with a primary focus on entities that enabled complex and globally-dispersed cybercrime services. Image: Shutterstock, Younes Stiller Kraske. In May 2...

The Trump administration has pursued a staggering range of policy pivots this past year that threaten to weaken the nation’s ability and willingness to address a broad spectrum of technology challenges, from cybersecurity and privacy to countering disinformation, fraud and corruption. These shifts, along with the president’s efforts to restrict free speech and freedom of the press, have come at such a rapid clip that many readers probably aren’t even aware of them all. FREE SPE...

Direct navigation — the act of visiting a website by manually typing a domain name in a web browser — has never been riskier: A new study finds the vast majority of “parked” domains — mostly expired or dormant domain names, or common misspellings of popular websites — are now configured to redirect visitors to sites that foist scams and malware. A lookalike domain to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center website, returned a non-threatening parking page (left...

Microsoft today pushed updates to fix at least 56 security flaws in its Windows operating systems and supported software. This final Patch Tuesday of 2025 tackles one zero-day bug that is already being exploited, as well as two publicly disclosed vulnerabilities. Despite releasing a lower-than-normal number of security updates these past few months, Microsoft patched a whopping 1,129 vulnerabilities in 2025, an 11.9% increase from 2024. According to Satnam Narang at Tenable , this year marks the...