Who Benefited from the Aisuru and Kimwolf Botnets?
Our first story of 2026 revealed how a destructive new botnet called Kimwolf rapidly grew to infect 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 cybercrime services that appear to have benefitted from Kimwolf's spread.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/01/who-benefited-from-the-aisuru-and-kimwolf-botnets/
The Kimwolf Botnet is Stalking Your Local Network
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you thought you knew about the security of the internal network behind your Internet router probably is now dangerously out of date.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/01/the-kimwolf-botnet-is-stalking-your-local-network/
Happy 16th Birthday, KrebsOnSecurity.com!
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.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/12/happy-16th-birthday-krebsonsecurity-com/
Dismantling Defenses: Trump 2.0 Cyber Year in Review
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.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/12/dismantling-defenses-trump-2-0-cyber-year-in-review/
Microsoft Patch Tuesday, December 2025 Edition
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.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/12/microsoft-patch-tuesday-december-2025-edition/
SMS Phishers Pivot to Points, Taxes, Fake Retailers
China-based phishing groups blamed for non-stop scam SMS messages about a supposed wayward package or unpaid toll fee are promoting a new offering, just in time for the holiday shopping season: Phishing kits for mass-creating fake but convincing e-commerce websites that convert customer payment card data into mobile wallets from Apple and Google. Experts say these same phishing groups also are now using SMS lures that promise unclaimed tax refunds and mobile rewards points.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/12/sms-phishers-pivot-to-points-taxes-fake-retailers/
Meet Rey, the Admin of ‘Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters’
A prolific cybercriminal group that calls itself "Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters" made headlines regularly this year by stealing data from and publicly mass extorting dozens of major corporations. But the tables seem to have turned somewhat for "Rey," the moniker chosen by the technical operator and public face of the hacker group: Earlier this week, Rey confirmed his real life identity and agreed to an interview after KrebsOnSecurity tracked him down and contacted his father.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/11/meet-rey-the-admin-of-scattered-lapsus-hunters/
Mozilla Says It’s Finally Done With Two-Faced Onerep
In March 2024, Mozilla said it was winding down its collaboration with Onerep -- an identity protection service offered with the Firefox web browser that promises to remove users from hundreds of people-search sites -- after KrebsOnSecurity revealed Onerep's founder had created dozens of people-search services and was continuing to operate at least one of them. Sixteen months later, however, Mozilla is still promoting Onerep. This week, Mozilla announced their partnership with Onerep will officially end next month.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/11/mozilla-says-its-finally-done-with-two-faced-onerep/
The Cloudflare Outage May Be a Security Roadmap
An intermittent outage at Cloudflare on Tuesday briefly knocked many of the Internet's top destinations offline. Some affected Cloudflare customers were able to pivot away from the platform temporarily so that visitors could still access their websites. But security experts say doing so may have also triggered an impromptu network penetration test for organizations that have come to rely on Cloudflare to block many types of abusive and malicious traffic.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/11/the-cloudflare-outage-may-be-a-security-roadmap/
Google Sues to Disrupt Chinese SMS Phishing Triad
Google is suing more than two dozen unnamed individuals allegedly involved in peddling a popular China-based mobile phishing service that helps scammers impersonate hundreds of trusted brands, blast out text message lures, and convert phished payment card data into mobile wallets from Apple and Google.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/11/google-sues-to-disrupt-chinese-sms-phishing-triad/
Cloudflare Scrubs Aisuru Botnet from Top Domains List
For the past week, domains associated with the massive Aisuru botnet have repeatedly usurped Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft in Cloudflare's public ranking of the most frequently requested websites. Cloudflare responded by redacting Aisuru domain names from their top websites list. The chief executive at Cloudflare says Aisuru's overlords are using the botnet to boost their malicious domain rankings, while simultaneously attacking the company's domain name system (DNS) service.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/11/cloudflare-scrubs-aisuru-botnet-from-top-domains-list/
Alleged Jabber Zeus Coder ‘MrICQ’ in U.S. Custody
A Ukrainian man indicted in 2012 for conspiring with a prolific hacking group to steal tens of millions of dollars from U.S. businesses was arrested in Italy and is now in custody in the United States, KrebsOnSecurity has learned.
Sources close to the investigation say Yuriy Igorevich Rybtsov, a 41-year-old from the Russia-controlled city of Donetsk, Ukraine, was previously referenced in U.S. federal charging documents only by his online handle "MrICQ." According to a 13-year-old indictment filed by prosecutors in Nebraska, MrICQ was a developer for a cybercrime group known as "Jabber Zeus."
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/11/alleged-jabber-zeus-coder-mricq-in-u-s-custody/
Aisuru Botnet Shifts from DDoS to Residential Proxies
Aisuru, the botnet responsible for a series of record-smashing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks this year, recently was overhauled to support a more low-key, lucrative and sustainable business: Renting hundreds of thousands of infected Internet of Things (IoT) devices to proxy services that help cybercriminals anonymize their traffic. Experts says a glut of proxies from Aisuru and other sources is fueling large-scale data harvesting efforts tied to various artificial intelligence (AI) projects, helping content scrapers evade detection by routing their traffic through residential connections that appear to be regular Internet users.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/10/aisuru-botnet-shifts-from-ddos-to-residential-proxies/
Canada Fines Cybercrime Friendly Cryptomus $176M
Financial regulators in Canada this week levied $176 million in fines against Cryptomus, a digital payments platform that supports dozens of Russian cryptocurrency exchanges and websites hawking cybercrime services. The penalties for violating Canada's anti money-laundering laws come ten months after KrebsOnSecurity noted that Cryptomus's Vancouver street address was home to dozens of foreign currency dealers, money transfer businesses, and cryptocurrency exchanges — none of which were physically located there.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/10/canada-fines-cybercrime-friendly-cryptomus-176m/
Email Bombs Exploit Lax Authentication in Zendesk
Cybercriminals are abusing a widespread lack of authentication in the customer service platform Zendesk to flood targeted email inboxes with menacing messages that come from hundreds of Zendesk corporate customers simultaneously.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/10/email-bombs-exploit-lax-authentication-in-zendesk/
Patch Tuesday, October 2025 ‘End of 10’ Edition
Microsoft today released software updates to plug a whopping 172 security holes in its Windows operating systems, including at least three vulnerabilities that are already being actively exploited. October's Patch Tuesday also marks the final month that Microsoft will ship security updates for Windows 10 systems. If you're running a Windows 10 PC and you're unable or unwilling to migrate to Windows 11, read on for other options.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/10/patch-tuesday-october-2025-end-of-10-edition/
DDoS Botnet Aisuru Blankets US ISPs in Record DDoS
The world's largest and most disruptive botnet is now drawing a majority of its firepower from compromised Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices hosted on U.S. Internet providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, new evidence suggests. Experts say the heavy concentration of infected devices at U.S. providers is complicating efforts to limit collateral damage from the botnet's attacks, which shattered previous records this week with a brief traffic flood that clocked in at nearly 30 trillion bits of data per second.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/10/ddos-botnet-aisuru-blankets-us-isps-in-record-ddos/
ShinyHunters Wage Broad Corporate Extortion Spree
A cybercriminal group that used voice phishing attacks to siphon more than a billion records from Salesforce customers earlier this year has launched a website that threatens to publish data stolen from dozens of Fortune 500 firms if they refuse to pay a ransom. The group also claimed responsibility for a recent breach involving Discord user data, and for stealing terabytes of sensitive files from thousands of customers of the enterprise software maker Red Hat.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/10/shinyhunters-wage-broad-corporate-extortion-spree/
Self-Replicating Worm Hits 180+ Software Packages
At least 187 code packages made available through the JavaScript repository NPM have been infected with a self-replicating worm that steals credentials from developers and publishes those secrets on GitHub, experts warn. The malware, which briefly infected multiple code packages from the security vendor CrowdStrike, steals and publishes even more credentials every time an infected package is installed.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/09/self-replicating-worm-hits-180-software-packages/
Bulletproof Host Stark Industries Evades EU Sanctions
In May 2025, the European Union levied financial sanctions on the owners of Stark Industries Solutions Ltd., a bulletproof hosting provider that materialized two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine and quickly became a top source of Kremlin-linked cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns. But new data shows those sanctions have done little to stop Stark from simply rebranding and transferring their assets to other corporate entities controlled by its original hosting providers.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/09/bulletproof-host-stark-industries-evades-eu-sanctions/
UK Charges Four in ‘Scattered Spider’ Ransom Group
Authorities in the United Kingdom this week arrested four alleged members of "Scattered Spider," a prolific data theft and extortion group whose recent victims include multiple airlines and the U.K. retail chain Marks & Spencer.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/07/uk-charges-four-in-scattered-spider-ransom-group/
DOGE Worker’s Code Supports NLRB Whistleblower
A whistleblower at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleged last week that denizens of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) siphoned gigabytes of data from the agency's sensitive case files in early March. The whistleblower said accounts created for DOGE at the NLRB downloaded three code repositories from GitHub. Further investigation into one of those code bundles shows it is remarkably similar to a program published in January 2025 by Marko Elez, a 25-year-old DOGE employee who has worked at a number of Musk's companies.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/04/doge-workers-code-supports-nlrb-whistleblower/
Funding Expires for Key Cyber Vulnerability Database
A critical resource that cybersecurity professionals worldwide rely on to identify, mitigate and fix security vulnerabilities in software and hardware is in danger of breaking down. The federally funded, non-profit research and development organization MITRE warned today that its contract to maintain the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program -- which is traditionally funded each year by the Department of Homeland Security -- expires on April 16.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/04/funding-expires-for-key-cyber-vulnerability-database/
Trump Revenge Tour Targets Cyber Leaders, Elections
President Trump last week revoked security clearances for Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) who was fired by Trump after declaring the 2020 election the most secure in U.S. history. The White House memo, which also suspended clearances for other security professionals at Krebs's employer SentinelOne, comes as CISA is facing huge funding and staffing cuts.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/04/trump-revenge-tour-targets-cyber-leaders-elections/
How Each Pillar of the 1st Amendment is Under Attack
In an address to Congress this month, President Trump claimed he had "brought free speech back to America." But barely two months into his second term, the president has waged an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment rights of journalists, students, universities, government workers, lawyers and judges.
This story explores a slew of recent actions by the Trump administration that threaten to undermine all five pillars of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedoms concerning speech, religion, the media, the right to assembly, and the right to petition the government and seek redress for wrongs.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/03/how-each-pillar-of-the-1st-amendment-is-under-attack/
DOGE to Fired CISA Staff: Email Us Your Personal Data
A message posted on Monday to the homepage of the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is the latest exhibit in the Trump administration's continued disregard for basic cybersecurity protections. The message instructed recently-fired CISA employees to get in touch so they can be rehired and then immediately placed on leave, asking employees to send their Social Security number or date of birth in a password-protected email attachment -- presumably with the password needed to view the file included in the body of the email.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/03/doge-to-fired-cisa-staff-email-us-your-personal-data/
Teen on Musk’s DOGE Team Graduated from ‘The Com’
Wired reported this week that a 19-year-old working for Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was given access to sensitive US government systems even though his past association with cybercrime communities should have precluded him from gaining the necessary security clearances to do so. As today's story explores, the DOGE teen is a former denizen of 'The Com,' an archipelago of Discord and Telegram chat channels that function as a kind of distributed cybercriminal social network for facilitating instant collaboration.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/teen-on-musks-doge-team-graduated-from-the-com/
Experts Flag Security, Privacy Risks in DeepSeek AI App
New mobile apps from the Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepSeek have remained among the top three "free" downloads for Apple and Google devices since their debut on Jan. 25, 2025. But experts caution that many of DeepSeek's design choices -- such as using hard-coded encryption keys, and sending unencrypted user and device data to Chinese companies -- introduce a number of glaring security and privacy risks.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/experts-flag-security-privacy-risks-in-deepseek-ai-app/