Pressure is mounting on Instructure, the company behind Canvas, as cybercriminals threaten to leak a trove of sensitive data they claim was stolen during a prolonged cyberattack on the widely used education tech platform.

Widespread outages left schools, students and teachers temporarily unable to access critical data late last week after the company took Canvas offline following additional malicious activity, including a defacement of the platform’s login page. By Friday, the company said Canvas — a central hub for K-12 and university coursework, exams, grades and communication — was back online and fully operational. 

ShinyHunters, a decentralized crew of prolific cybercriminals affiliated with The Com, claimed responsibility for the attack on its data leak site and is attempting to extort the company for an unknown ransom amount. Instructure hasn’t confirmed the existence of a ransom demand and declined to answer questions about its response.

The threat group initially set a deadline of May 6 — four days after Instructure previously said the incident was contained soon after it disclosed the attack — claiming it stole 3.65 terabytes of data spanning 275 million records across 8,809 school systems. 

When that deadline passed without payment, ShinyHunters escalated its pressure on the company by “injecting an extortion message directly into the Canvas login pages of roughly 330 institutions, and pivoted to school-by-school extortion with a current deadline of May 12,” Cynthia Kaiser, senior vice president of Halcyon’s Ransomware Research Center, told CyberScoop.

“The scope makes this one of the largest single education-sector exposures we’ve tracked,” she added.

The additional public pressure prompted Infrastructure to take Canvas offline, disrupting schoolwork and access to critical systems nationwide. 

Instructure CEO Steve Daly apologized over the weekend for the company’s inconsistent communication and deficient public response to the cyberattack. 

“Over the past few days, many of you dealt with real disruption. Stress on your teams. Missed moments in the classroom. Questions you couldn’t get answered. You deserved more consistent communication from us, and we didn’t deliver it. I’m sorry for that,” he said in a statement.

Daly acknowledged that the attack, which remains under investigation aided by CrowdStrike, exposed usernames, email addresses, course names, enrollment information and messages. He insisted that course content, submissions and credentials were not compromised.

The temporary but widespread disruption caused has spurred broad concern across the education sector as ransomware experts and threat hunters continue to track developments. The cyberattack also caught the attention of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. 

The House Homeland Security Committee on Monday published a letter to Daly seeking a briefing with him or a senior leader at Instructure by May 21. 

“The recurrence of an intrusion within days of an initial breach disclosure, and Instructure’s apparent failure to fully remediate the underlying vulnerabilities during that window, raise serious questions about the company’s incident response capabilities and its obligations to the institutions and individuals whose data it holds,” House Homeland Security Chairman Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., wrote in the letter to Daly.

The committee wants to learn more about the “circumstances of both intrusions, the the nature and volume of data accessed, the steps Instructure has taken and is taking to contain the threat and notify affected institutions, and the adequacy of the company’s coordination with federal law enforcement and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency,” he added. 

CISA did not describe the extent of its involvement in Instructure’s response. “CISA is aware of a potential cyber incident affecting Canvas. As the nation’s cyber defense agency, we provide voluntary support and cybersecurity services to organizations in responding to and recovering from incidents,” Chris Butera, the agency’s acting executive assistant director for cybersecurity, said in a statement.

Instructure’s timeline of the attack has changed and remains incomplete. The company said it first detected unauthorized activity in Canvas on April 29 and immediately revoked the attacker’s access and initiated an incident response. Researchers not directly involved with the formal investigation said ShinyHunters gained access to Canvas at least a few days earlier.

The follow-on malicious activity on May 7 — the defacement of public login pages — was tied to the same incident, the company said. 

“We have since confirmed that the unauthorized actor carried out this activity by exploiting an issue related to our Free-For-Teacher accounts. This is the same issue that led to the unauthorized access the prior week. As a result, we have made the difficult decision to temporarily shut down Free-For-Teacher accounts,” the company said in an updated post about the incident.

Instructure did not answer questions about the vulnerability or explain how attackers intruded its systems. The company said it also revoked privileged credentials and access tokens for affected systems, rotated internal keys, restricted token creation pathways, and deployed additional security controls and monitoring.

Canvas is fully operational and safe to use, the company said, adding that CrowdStrike has reviewed known indicators of compromise and “found no evidence that the threat actor currently has access to the platform.”

Access still remains spotty and unavailable for some Canvas users as school districts restore the platform in phases after conducting their own internal checks.

Halcyon published an alert about the attack Friday, including a screenshot of the message that some school staff, guardians and students encountered before Instructure took the learning management system offline.

ShinyHunters threatened Instructure and all affected schools to contact the threat group and reach a resolution by end of day Tuesday. The cybercrime group, which has a “known pattern of removing victim entries once communications and negotiations have started,” removed Instructure from its data leak site after it defaced the Canvas login pages, Halcyon said. 

ShinyHunters is a notorious data theft extortion group that previously hit major cloud platforms, including Salesforce and Snowflake, via voice phishing, credential theft and supply-chain attacks. 

“Historically, their claims of compromise typically hold up, but they often exaggerate the impact, scale, and type of data stolen,” Kaiser said.

Education is a recurring and consistent target for cybercriminals. Researchers at Halcyon tracked more than 250 ransomware attacks on education institutions globally last year. Yet, the attack on Canvas stands apart from most of these attacks because of its widespread use and downstream impact.

“This is student, parent, and staff data, including minors, which creates downstream phishing and impersonation risk that will outlast the immediate incident,” Kaiser said. 

“By compromising a shared platform used across thousands of schools, ShinyHunters hit the entire education sector in one move, which is the same playbook Clop ran against Oracle EBS customers last fall,” she added. “Among 2026 incidents against critical infrastructure, this is at or near the top for education-sector impact, and it highlights a trend of third-party software vendors now being part of an attack surface, and causing cascading effects across an entire sector.”

Cybersecurity professionals focused on ransomware and data theft extortion consistently encourage victims to not pay ransoms, but they also often acknowledge that companies have to make tough decisions based on their own interests and the security of their customers or users caught up in the aftermath.

Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit 221B, said the threat group claiming responsibility for the attack should not be trusted. 

“They are claiming they will delete the data after they are paid, and if they are not paid that they will leak the data,” she told CyberScoop. “This is in line with the past data extortion scams run by the same and related Com actors, who have made false statements to victims and to the public in the past.”

Instructure hasn’t indicated what it plans to do as part of any effort to prevent the leak of stolen data. 

Daly — a longtime security executive who was previously CEO at Ivanti — ended his mea culpa with a pledge to improve communications and provide a summary of a forensics report soon.

“Last week, we made a call to get the facts right before speaking publicly. That instinct isn’t wrong, but we got the balance wrong. We focused on fact-finding and went quiet when you needed consistent updates. You’ve been clear about that, and it’s fair feedback. We will change that moving forward,” he said. 

“Rebuilding trust takes time,” Daly added. “We’re going to earn it back through consistent action and honest communication.”

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A pair of persistent and problematic threat groups affiliated with The Com are actively targeting organizations across multiple critical infrastructure sectors for rapid data theft and extortion attacks, according to CrowdStrike.

The financially-motivated attackers, which CrowdStrike tracks as Cordial Spider and Snarky Spider, have used voice-phishing and social engineering attacks to break into victims’ identity platforms and traverse SaaS environments since at least October 2025, the company said in a report Thursday, which it shared exclusively with CyberScoop prior to release. 

Adam Meyers, senior vice president of counter adversary operations at CrowdStrike, said the subgroups composed of native English speakers primarily target U.S.-based organizations in the academic, aviation, retail, hospitality, automotive, financial services, legal and technology sectors.

This “new wave of ecrime threat actors” are closely aligned with Scattered Spider and linked to other subsets of The Com, including SLSH and ShinyHunters, Meyers said. 

Because these attacks target identity systems and can expose data in other connected services beyond the initial breach point, it’s difficult to determine how many victims have been caught up in these campaigns. 

CrowdStrike’s warning closely follows research Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 and the Retail & Hospitality Information Sharing and Analysis Center shared last week about Cordial Spider’s string of attacks targeting organizations in the retail and hospitality industry, among others. 

Cordial and Snarky Spider have set lures via voice calls, text messages and emails directing targeting employees to phishing pages posing as their employer’s legitimate single sign-on page or primary identity provider, researchers said. 

These phishing pages, which capture credentials, session keys or tokens, depending on the workflow, provide attackers an entry point into systems, which they exploit for widespread access across victims’ entire SaaS ecosystems.

Attackers use these initial hooks to remove and establish multi-factor authentication devices, then delete emails and other alerts that would otherwise warn organizations of potential malicious activity, researchers said. 

The data theft for extortion campaigns share striking similarities, but CrowdStrike said the tactics, techniques and procedures for each subgroup are distinct. These variances include hours of operation, different phishing domain providers, preferred operating systems, data leak sites, and the tools or devices they used to register for multi-factor authentication. 

The domain for BlackFile, Cordial Spider’s data-leak site, was offline as of Wednesday, according to Meyers.

CrowdStrike declined to put a range on the groups’ extortion demands, but Unit 42 previously said Cordial Spider, which is also tracked as CL-CRI-1116 and UNC6671, are typically in the seven-figure range.

Some victims that didn’t pay extortion demands have been subjected to DDoS attacks, and Snarky Spider has used more aggressive follow-on harassment tactics, including the swatting of victim organizations’ employees, Meyers said. 

CrowdStrike said Cordial and Snarky Spider also use residential proxy networks — including Mullvad, Oxylabs, NetNut, 9Proxy, Infatica and NSOCKS — to evade IP-based detection and blend in with typical traffic. 

Residential proxy networks, which rely on IP addresses assigned to real home users, can serve a legitimate purpose, but researchers have been warning that unethical or outright criminal operators are abusing these networks to build and support botnets, cybercrime campaigns, espionage and other malicious activity.

Cordial and Snarky Spider haven’t achieved the impact or technical capability of Scattered Spider, but the groups share many commonalities and objectives, Meyers said. 

“They’ve kind of taken their playbook and they’re using a lot of their techniques, but we haven’t really seen the technical sophistication demonstrated by them that we saw from Scattered Spider,” he said. “It’s kind of the new generation of Scattered Spider.”

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The growth of data centers — and adversaries’ targeting of them — left lawmakers at a hearing Wednesday contemplating whether the federal government has the right setup for defending them.

Some industry witnesses and experts at the hearing of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection testified that the answer might be to give data centers their own standalone designation as a critical infrastructure sector.

The question of how to secure data centers against cyber and physical attacks coincides with artificial intelligence fuelling a boom in the building of such facilities across the United States. Last month, Iranian drones targeted two Amazon data centers in response to the U.S.-Israel bombing campaign on Iran, and a third data center in Bahrain was struck as well.

“If a major data center is attacked, disrupted, or taken offline, the consequences can reach far beyond one company or one sector,” Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., said in prepared opening remarks. “Yet our current framework does not provide a clear, unified approach to data center security. It does not clearly answer which federal agency is responsible for understanding the risk, coordinating with industry, or leading the response when this infrastructure is targeted.”

Three providers account for 63 percent of the market share of data centers: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. 

The United Kingdom already has deemed data centers as a standalone critical infrastructure sector. Reps. Vince Fong, R-Calif., and LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., asked panel witnesses Wednesday about federal protection of them.

“Given the scrutiny that is required to make sure that those data centers are secure, there would be a benefit in having them work together as a unique coordinating council,” said Robert Mayer, senior vice president for cybersecurity and innovation at USTelecom, an industry group.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Mark Montgomery suggested a sector that combines data centers and cloud providers, given the overlap in ownership. The 2024 rewrite of a White House national security memo left some experts disappointed that it didn’t designate cloud computing as a critical infrastructure sector. 

Samuel Visner, chair of the board of directors of the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center, said he agreed, given the role data centers are playing in the U.S. economy, military and other dependencies. “Finding a way to regard them as part of our critical infrastructure and protect them accordingly is sine qua non, absolutely necessary,” he said.

A fourth witness didn’t weigh in on the need for a separate critical infrastructure designation. But Scott Algeier, executive director of Information Technology Information Sharing and Analysis Center, said his organization had created a “special interest group” for data center providers.

“The data centers are integrated already into the critical infrastructure discussions,” he told the panel.

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Researchers warn that BlackFile, an extortion group likely associated with The Com, continues to impersonate IT support in voice-phishing and social engineering attacks that have impacted organizations in multiple industries, including healthcare, technology, transportation, logistics, wholesale and retail.

Attackers have been actively targeting organizations in the retail and hospitality industry since February, according to Unit 42’s latest intelligence on the campaign, which the Retail & Hospitality Information Sharing and Analysis Center (RH-ISAC) released alongside indicators of compromise Thursday.

The threat group, which is also tracked as CL-CRI-1116, UNC6671 and Cordial Spider, appears to be targeting victims opportunistically in a campaign that remains active and ongoing, Matt Brady, senior principal researcher at Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42, told CyberScoop. 

“The core objective of these threat actors is to pressure targeted organizations into paying large ransom demands, typically in the seven-figure range,” Brady said.

Unit 42 declined to say how many organizations have been impacted thus far, and RH-ISAC did not respond to a request for comment.

BlackFile’s attacks against companies in the retail and hospitality sector are part of a broader wave of voice-phishing attacks initiated by multiple cybercrime groups, which Google Threat Intelligence Group and Okta warned about in January. 

Unit 42 also noted that BlackFile’s activities overlap with an ongoing data theft and extortion campaign CrowdStrike has been tracking as Cordial Spider since at least October 2025.

Yet, the threat group’s tactics have been far from cordial. RH-ISAC said some attackers have swatted company personnel, including executives, to increase leverage and pressure victims to pay their ransom demands. 

The threat group lures victims via voice-phishing attacks and phishing pages mimicking corporate single-sign on services to steal credentials before moving into privileged accounts. 

“They scrape internal employee directories to obtain contact lists for executives,” RH-ISAC wrote in a blog post. “By compromising these senior accounts via further social engineering, they gain persistent, broad-spectrum access to the environment that mirrors legitimate executive session activity.”

The group’s unauthorized access and data theft for extortion activity spans SaaS environments, Microsoft Graph API permissions, Salesforce API access, internal repositories, SharePoint sites and datasets containing employee’s phone numbers and business records. 

BlackFile also created a data-leak site to extort victims that it claims ignored or failed to agree to its demands, according to researchers. 

Brady said Unit 42 has observed relatively consistent activity from the threat group since February. 

RH-ISAC advises organizations to manage multi-factor identity verification for callers and limit the IT support actions that can be completed in a single call without escalation to management.

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A core leader of the hacker subset of The Com responsible for a series of high-profile phishing attacks and cryptocurrency thefts from September 2021 to April 2023 pleaded guilty to federal charges, the Justice Department said Friday. 

Tyler Robert Buchanan of Dundee, Scotland, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The 24-year-old was arrested by Spanish police in Palma in 2024 as he attempted to board a charter flight to Naples, Italy. 

Buchanan has been in federal custody since April 2025 and faces up to 22 years in federal prison at his sentencing, which is scheduled for August 21. 

The British national and his co-conspirators, including Noah Michael Urban, who was sentenced to a 10-year federal prison sentence last year, harvested thousands of credentials via phishing and stole more than $8 million in cryptocurrency from U.S. residents via SIM-swapping attacks.

Victims included high net worth individuals and businesses in the entertainment, telecom, technology, business process outsourcing, IT, cloud and virtual currency sectors, officials said.

Buchanan and his co-conspirators were part of an aggressive subset of The Com coined Scattered Spider. While The Com and its offshoots don’t operate with formal leaders in the traditional sense, Buchanan played a crucial role in the operation, according to Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit 221B.

“[Buchanan] was the glue that held this gang together. His success at wiping out victims’ savings made him a target for both law enforcement and rival Com gangs,” Nixon told CyberScoop.

“[Buchanan] is part of an older generation that came from certain toxic gaming servers before the pandemic. People from this generation learned hacking in order to steal vanity usernames and bully kids before using it to steal peoples’ savings,” she added.

Federal authorities filed charges against five individuals with links to the Scattered Spider cybercrime outfit in 2024. Buchanan and Urban’s alleged co-conspirators — Ahmed Hossam Eldin Elbadawy, Evans Onyeaka Osiebo and Joel Martin Evans — still face charges in the case, officials said. 

Nixon lauded law enforcement for acting decisively to arrest Buchanan during a brief window of opportunity while he was traveling internationally. 

“Com members are obsessed with private jets and foreign vacations, and the feds took that dream away with one arrest,” she said. 

The tactic, which U.S. officials also use against Russian cybercriminals, works because most countries are willing to support in the arrest of foreign criminals, thereby keeping them out of their respective jurisdictions, Nixon said. 

“As a foreigner, he was caught in a weaker legal position than if he was arrested at home, and cases following this tactic tend to have very long sentences,” she added. “The takeaway for Com members watching this case is that criminal foreigners associated with violence are the lowest class in every country. And that’s what Com members are when they travel.”

The Justice Department said Buchanan and his co-conspirators defrauded at least a dozen companies and their employees throughout the United States. A digital device police found at his residence in April 2023 contained personal data on numerous individuals and victim companies, according to his plea agreement.

It’s unclear what transpired between that search in April 2023 in Scotland and his June 2024 arrest at a resort city on the Spanish island of Mallorca. Moreover, his plea agreement doesn’t include the entirety of his alleged crimes. 

Buchanan attracted a lot of attention and successfully coordinated many attacks before a rival Com gang allegedly broke into his home and used a blowtorch on him to extract crypto keys in his possession, according to Nixon. 

Following his arrest, Spanish police said Buchanan had gained control of bitcoin worth more than $27 million at that time. 

While early leaders of Scattered Spider have been arrested or sentenced for their crimes, others have filled those roles with even more exceptional impact. 

The Com has grown to thousands of members, typically between 11 and 25 years old, splintered into three primary subsets the FBI describes as Hacker Com, In Real Life Com and Extortion Com.

Criminal acts committed by these multiple, interconnected networks include swatting, extortion and sextortion of minors, production and distribution of child sexual abuse material, violent crime and various other cybercrimes. 

You can read the indictment against Buchanan and some of his co-conspirators below.

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The online travel platform has not said how many customers’ booking information was exposed, but said the issue has been contained. 

The post Booking.com Says Hackers Accessed User Information appeared first on SecurityWeek.

Attackers could exploit these vulnerabilities in denial-of-service, information disclosure, and arbitrary code execution attacks.

The post Orthanc DICOM Vulnerabilities Lead to Crashes, RCE appeared first on SecurityWeek.

Major technology companies have joined forces in an effort to use advanced artificial intelligence to identify and address security flaws in the world’s most critical software systems, marking a significant shift in how the industry approaches cybersecurity threats.

Anthropic announced Project Glasswing on Tuesday, bringing together Amazon, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, and Palo Alto Networks. The initiative centers on Claude Mythos Preview, an unreleased AI model that Anthropic will make available exclusively to project partners and approximately 40 additional organizations responsible for critical software infrastructure.

The model has already identified thousands of previously unknown vulnerabilities in its initial testing phase, including security flaws that have existed in widely used systems for decades, according to Anthropic. Among the discoveries is a 27-year-old bug in OpenBSD, an operating system known primarily for its security focus, and a 16-year-old vulnerability in FFmpeg, a widely used video software program that automated testing tools had failed to detect despite running the affected code line five million times. The company has been in contact with the maintainers of the relevant software, and all found vulnerabilities have been patched. 

Anthropic will commit up to $100 million in usage credits for the project, along with $4 million in direct donations to open-source security organizations. The company has stated it does not plan to make Mythos Preview available to the general public, citing concerns about the model’s potential misuse.

The initiative reflects growing concerns within the technology sector about the dual-use nature of advanced AI systems. While Mythos Preview was not trained specifically for cybersecurity purposes, its coding and reasoning capabilities have proven effective at identifying subtle security flaws that have eluded human analysts and conventional automated tools.

“Although the risks from AI-augmented cyberattacks are serious, there is reason for optimism: the same capabilities that make AI models dangerous in the wrong hands make them invaluable for finding and fixing flaws in important software—and for producing new software with far fewer security bugs,” the company said in a blog post. “Project Glasswing is an important step toward giving defenders a durable advantage in the coming AI-driven era of cybersecurity.”

The project comes as the industry has predicted that similar AI capabilities will soon become more widespread. Anthropic executives have indicated that without coordinated action, such tools could eventually reach actors who might deploy them for malicious purposes rather than defensive security work.

Participating organizations will be required to share their findings with the broader industry. The project places particular emphasis on open-source software, which forms the foundation of most modern systems, including critical infrastructure, yet whose maintainers have historically lacked access to sophisticated security resources.

“Open source software constitutes the vast majority of code in modern systems, including the very systems AI agents use to write new software. By giving the maintainers of these critical open source codebases access to a new generation of AI models that can proactively identify and fix vulnerabilities at scale, Project Glasswing offers a credible path to changing that equation,” said Jim Zemlin, CEO of the Linux Foundation. “This is how AI-augmented security can become a trusted sidekick for every maintainer, not just those who can afford expensive security teams.” 

Additionally, Anthropic says it has engaged in ongoing discussions with U.S. government officials regarding Mythos Preview’s capabilities. The company has framed the project in national security terms, arguing that maintaining leadership in AI technology represents a strategic priority for the United States and its allies. Anthropic has been locked in a high-stakes dispute with the Department of Defense about the U.S. military’s use of the startup’s Claude AI model in real-world operations. 

The project’s success will depend partly on whether the collaborative approach can keep pace with rapid advances in AI capabilities. Anthropic has indicated that frontier AI systems are likely to advance substantially within months, potentially creating a dynamic environment where defensive and offensive capabilities evolve in parallel.

“Project Glasswing is a starting point,” Anthropic wrote in a blog post. “No one organization can solve these cybersecurity problems alone: frontier AI developers, other software companies, security researchers, open-source maintainers, and governments across the world all have essential roles to play. The work of defending the world’s cyber infrastructure might take years; frontier AI capabilities are likely to advance substantially over just the next few months. For cyber defenders to come out ahead, we need to act now.”

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The state-sponsored threat actor deployed kernel implants and passive backdoors enabling long-term, high-level espionage.

The post Chinese Hackers Caught Deep Within Telecom Backbone Infrastructure appeared first on SecurityWeek.

The Trump administration is plotting an interagency body to confront malign hackers, pilot programs to secure critical infrastructure across states and other steps tied to its freshly-released cyber strategy, National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross said Monday.

The “interagency cell” will bring together agencies like the Justice Department, the Department of State, the FBI and the Pentagon, which will make it clear that going on cyber offense isn’t just about attacking enemies in cyberspace, Cairncross said.

“Sure, that’s part of it, but that’s not all of it,” he said at an event hosted by USTelecom. It will include diplomatic efforts, arrests and more, he said. “As President Trump has made clear, he expects results, and he’s empowered the team under him to go get them.”

A series of pilot programs will be catered to specific critical infrastructure industries in specific states, such as water in Texas and beef in South Dakota, Cairncross said. Different sectors operate at more or less mature levels, he said.

“One of the things that we are working to do is to align those sectors and prioritize those sectors in a way that makes sense,” he said.

Cairncross said the administration wants to share information with industry better, and will be looking as well at revising regulations in some instances. One of those instances is the Securities and Exchange Commission’s 2023 incident disclosure rule, which drew some of the most vehement industry opposition under the Biden administration’s’ pursuit of cyber regulations. The idea is to make sure they “make sense for industry,” Cairncross said.

But the administration also will have things it seeks from the private sector. That will include bringing together CEOs and sending the message to them that “you need to dedicate some real resources,” he said.

Cairncross has spoken before about wanting to establish an academy to address education and training in a nation with persistent cybersecurity job openings, but there’s more attached to it, he said.

The effort, which Cairncross said the administration would release details on soon, will also include a foundry (which “will be able to scale with private capital new innovation, and deploy it more quickly”) and an accelerator (“so when there’s preceded financing on on projects to really ramp that up and be able to scale as well and overcome some of the procurement hurdles that are often based in in this space”).

Cairncross said at a second event Monday that another forthcoming step was a law enforcement pilot program to better share information with state and local governments.

“We’re looking for ways to streamline information sharing from the USG side,” Cairncross said at a Billington Cybersecurity event, using the acronym for “U.S. government.” “Often, ‘how’ we know things is extremely sensitive, ‘what’ we know is less so,” he said. The goal is “to figure out how to communicate that in a helpful, actionable way.”

Updated, 3/9/26: to include comments about law enforcement pilot program.

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President Donald Trump released his administration’s cyber strategy Friday, promoting offense operations in cyberspace, securing federal networks and critical infrastructure, streamlining regulations, leveraging emerging technologies and strengthening the cybersecurity workforce.

Trump also signed an executive order Friday directing agencies to take action to combat cybercrime and fraud.

A little more than half of the five pages of strategy text of the long-anticipated document is preamble, and two of its seven pages are title and ending pages. Administration officials have said the strategy is deliberately high-level, and the White House promised more detailed guidance in the future.

The strategy “calls for unprecedented coordination across government and the private sector to invest in the best technologies and continue world-class innovation, and to make the most of America’s cyber capabilities for both offensive and defensive missions,” the White House said in a statement accompanying its release.

Each of the six “pillars” of the strategy offer some prescriptions.

“Shaping adversary behavior” calls for using U.S. government offensive and defensive capabilities in cyberspace, as well as incentivizing the private sector to disrupt adversary networks.

It also says Trump will “counter the spread of the surveillance state and authoritarian technologies that monitor and repress citizens,” even as administration critics argue that his administration has fostered surveillance and repression against U.S. citizens.

The shortest pillar, “promote common sense regulation,” decries rules that are only “costly checklists.” The Biden administration expanded cyber regulations, spurring some industry resistance. But the Trump pillar does talk about addressing liability, a point of emphasis for the prior administration as well.

“Modernize and secure federal networks” talks about using concepts and technologies like post-quantum cryptography, artificial intelligence, zero-trust and lowering barriers for vendors to sell tech to the government to meet those goals.

To “secure critical infrastructure,” the strategy calls for fortifying not just owners and operators but also the supply chain, in part by focusing on U.S.-made rather than adversary-made products.

“We will deny our adversaries initial access, and in the event of an incident, we must be able to recover quickly,” the strategy reads. “We will galvanize the role of state, local, Tribal, and territorial authorities as a complement to— not a substitute for — our national cybersecurity efforts.” Some critics of the administration’s cybersecurity actions have contended that it has shifted the burden to state and local governments too much.

AI usage makes up the bulk of the pillar entitled “sustain superiority in critical and emerging technologies,” in addition to reflecting earlier parts of the strategy on the topics of quantum cryptography and privacy protection. That includes the protection of data centers, the subject of localized fights across the country over their location and resource costs.

The final pillar says the United States must “build talent and capability,” after a year of the administration cutting a significant number of cyber positions in the federal government. “We will eliminate roadblocks that prevent industry, academia, government, and the military from aligning incentives and building a highly skilled cyber workforce,” it states.

Some positive reviews rolled in about the strategy despite the late-Friday afternoon release, traditionally the time of week when an administration looks to publish news it hopes will garner little attention.

“As new and more sophisticated threats emerge, America needed a new national cyber strategy that captures the urgency of this moment,” USTelecom President and CEO Jonathan Spalter said in a news release. “The President’s strategy rightly recognizes that harnessing America’s unique mix of private-sector innovation with public-sector capacity is the best deterrence.”

Frank Cilluffo, Director of the McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security at Auburn University, was struck by the focus on deterrence: “This unified strategy determining a direction on offensive and defensive cyber operations and collaboration couldn’t be more timely.”

The Business Software Alliance cheered the call for streamlining cyber regulations, in particular.

A number of cyber vendors took note of the passages on AI. “Redirecting resources from paperwork to AI-powered security capabilities is the only way to keep pace with modern threats and adversaries who operate at great speed,” said Bill Wright, global head of government affairs at Elastic. “This strategy appears to recognize that fundamental truth.”

Not all the reviews were flattering, however, including from the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, Bennie Thompson, who said the strategy’s “underachieving” was the only thing impressive about it.

“What little ‘substance’ does exist in this pamphlet is a mishmash of vague platitudes, a long catalogue of ‘we will’ statements that may or may not match the Administration’s current behavior, and, mercifully, an apparent extension of some Biden-era policies,” he said. “Completely lacking is even the most basic blueprint for how the Administration will go about achieving any of its cybersecurity goals — an objective possibly hamstrung by the hemorrhage in cyber talent across all Federal agencies since Trump took office.”

The executive order Trump signed Friday coincides with the release of the strategy but there’s little overlap between the subject matter; the strategy makes one mention of cybercrime.

The order directs the attorney general to prioritize prosecution of cybercrime and fraud, orders agencies to review tools that they could use to counter international criminal organizations and  gives the Department of Homeland Security marching orders to improve training, in addition to other steps, according to a fact sheet.

“President Trump is unleashing every available tool to stop foreign-backed criminal networks that exploit vulnerable Americans through cyber-enabled fraud and extortion,” the fact sheet states.

The post The long-awaited Trump cyber strategy has arrived appeared first on CyberScoop.

Europol reports: In its first year of operation, Project Compass has delivered concrete operational results against “The Com”, a decentralised extremist network targeting minors and vulnerable individuals both online and offline. Since January 2025, Project Compass has contributed to: 4 victims safeguarded 30 perpetrators arrested 62 identified and partially identified victims 179 identified and partially...

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In early January 2026, KrebsOnSecurity revealed how a security researcher disclosed a vulnerability that was used to build Kimwolf, the world’s largest and most disruptive botnet. Since then, the person in control of Kimwolf — who goes by the handle “Dort” — has coordinated a barrage of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), doxing and email flooding attacks against the researcher and this author, and more recently caused a SWAT team to be sent to the researcher’s home. This post examines what is knowable about Dort based on public information.

A public “dox” created in 2020 asserted Dort was a teenager from Canada (DOB August 2003) who used the aliases “CPacket” and “M1ce.” A search on the username CPacket at the open source intelligence platform OSINT Industries finds a GitHub account under the names Dort and CPacket that was created in 2017 using the email address jay.miner232@gmail.com.

The cyber intelligence firm Intel 471 says jay.miner232@gmail.com was used between 2015 and 2019 to create accounts at multiple cybercrime forums, including Nulled (username “Uubuntuu”) and Cracked (user “Dorted”); Intel 471 reports that both of these accounts were created from the same Internet address at Rogers Canada (99.241.112.24).

Dort was an extremely active player in the Microsoft game Minecraft who gained notoriety for their “Dortware” software that helped players cheat. But somewhere along the way, Dort graduated from hacking Minecraft games to enabling far more serious crimes.

Dort also used the nickname DortDev, an identity that was active in March 2022 on the chat server for the prolific cybercrime group known as LAPSUS$. Dort peddled a service for registering temporary email addresses, as well as “Dortsolver,” code that could bypass various CAPTCHA services designed to prevent automated account abuse. Both of these offerings were advertised in 2022 on SIM Land, a Telegram channel dedicated to SIM-swapping and account takeover activity.

The cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint indexed 2022 posts on SIM Land by Dort that show this person developed the disposable email and CAPTCHA bypass services with the help of another hacker who went by the handle “Qoft.”

“I legit just work with Jacob,” Qoft said in 2022 in reply to another user, referring to their exclusive business partner Dort. In the same conversation, Qoft bragged that the two had stolen more than $250,000 worth of Microsoft Xbox Game Pass accounts by developing a program that mass-created Game Pass identities using stolen payment card data.

Who is the Jacob that Qoft referred to as their business partner? The breach tracking service Constella Intelligence finds the password used by jay.miner232@gmail.com was reused by just one other email address: jacobbutler803@gmail.com. Recall that the 2020 dox of Dort said their date of birth was August 2003 (8/03).

Searching this email address at DomainTools.com reveals it was used in 2015 to register several Minecraft-themed domains, all assigned to a Jacob Butler in Ottawa, Canada and to the Ottawa phone number 613-909-9727.

Constella Intelligence finds jacobbutler803@gmail.com was used to register an account on the hacker forum Nulled in 2016, as well as the account name “M1CE” on Minecraft. Pivoting off the password used by their Nulled account shows it was shared by the email addresses j.a.y.m.iner232@gmail.com and jbutl3@ocdsb.ca, the latter being an address at a domain for the Ottawa-Carelton District School Board.

Data indexed by the breach tracking service Spycloud suggests that at one point Jacob Butler shared a computer with his mother and a sibling, which might explain why their email accounts were connected to the password “jacobsplugs.” Neither Jacob nor any of the other Butler household members responded to requests for comment.

The open source intelligence service Epieos finds jacobbutler803@gmail.com created the GitHub account “MemeClient.” Meanwhile, Flashpoint indexed a deleted anonymous Pastebin.com post from 2017 declaring that MemeClient was the creation of a user named CPacket — one of Dort’s early monikers.

Why is Dort so mad? On January 2, KrebsOnSecurity published The Kimwolf Botnet is Stalking Your Local Network, which explored research into the botnet by Benjamin Brundage, founder of the proxy tracking service Synthient. Brundage figured out that the Kimwolf botmasters were exploiting a little-known weakness in residential proxy services to infect poorly-defended devices — like TV boxes and digital photo frames — plugged into the internal, private networks of proxy endpoints.

By the time that story went live, most of the vulnerable proxy providers had been notified by Brundage and had fixed the weaknesses in their systems. That vulnerability remediation process massively slowed Kimwolf’s ability to spread, and within hours of the story’s publication Dort created a Discord server in my name that began publishing personal information about and violent threats against Brundage, Yours Truly, and others.

Last week, Dort and friends used that same Discord server (then named “Krebs’s Koinbase Kallers”) to threaten a swatting attack against Brundage, again posting his home address and personal information. Brundage told KrebsOnSecurity that local police officers subsequently visited his home in response to a swatting hoax which occurred around the same time that another member of the server posted a door emoji and taunted Brundage further.

Someone on the server then linked to a cringeworthy (and NSFW) new Soundcloud diss track recorded by the user DortDev that included a stickied message from Dort saying, “Ur dead nigga. u better watch ur fucking back. sleep with one eye open. bitch.”

“It’s a pretty hefty penny for a new front door,” the diss track intoned. “If his head doesn’t get blown off by SWAT officers. What’s it like not having a front door?”

With any luck, Dort will soon be able to tell us all exactly what it’s like.

Update, 10:29 a.m.: Jacob Butler responded to requests for comment, speaking with KrebsOnSecurity briefly via telephone. Butler said he didn’t notice earlier requests for comment because he hasn’t really been online since 2021, after his home was swatted multiple times. He acknowledged making and distributing a Minecraft cheat long ago, but said he hasn’t played the game in years and was not involved in Dortsolver or any other activity attributed to the Dort nickname after 2021.

“It was a really old cheat and I don’t remember the name of it,” Butler said of his Minecraft modification. “I’m very stressed, man. I don’t know if people are going to swat me again or what. After that, I pretty much walked away from everything, logged off and said fuck that. I don’t go online anymore. I don’t know why people would still be going after me, to be completely honest.”

When asked what he does for a living, Butler said he mostly stays home and helps his mom around the house because he struggles with autism and social interaction. He maintains that someone must have compromised one or more of his old accounts and is impersonating him online as Dort.

“Someone is actually probably impersonating me, and now I’m really worried,” Butler said. “This is making me relive everything.”

But there are issues with Butler’s timeline. For example, Jacob’s voice in our phone conversation was remarkably similar to the Jacob/Dort whose voice can be heard in this Sept. 2022 Clash of Code competition between Dort and another coder (Dort lost). At around 6 minutes and 10 seconds into the recording, Dort launches into a cursing tirade that mirrors the stream of profanity in the diss rap that Dortdev posted threatening Brundage. Dort can be heard again at around 16 minutes; at around 26:00, Dort threatens to swat his opponent.

Butler said the voice of Dort is not his, exactly, but rather that of an impersonator who had likely cloned his voice.

“I would like to clarify that was absolutely not me,” Butler said. “There must be someone using a voice changer. Or something of the sorts. Because people were cloning my voice before and sending audio clips of ‘me’ saying outrageous stuff.”

Further reading:

Jan. 8, 2026: Who Benefited from the Aisuru and Kimwolf Botnets?

Jan. 20, 2026: Kimwolf Botnet Lurking in Corporate, Govt. Networks

Jan. 26, 2026: Who Operates the Badbox 2.0 Botnet?

Feb. 11, 2026: Kimwolf Botnet Swamps Anonymity Network I2P

Mar. 19, 2026: Feds Disrupt IoT Botnets Behind Huge DDoS Attacks

A global law enforcement effort has taken root to combat The Com, a sprawling nihilistic network of thousands of minors and young adults engaged in various forms of cybercrime, including physical violence and extortion.

Project Compass, an operation coordinated by Europol with support from 28 countries, including all members of the Five Eyes, has resulted in the arrest of 30 perpetrators since the initiative got underway in January 2025, authorities said in a news release Thursday. 

Officials said sustained countermeasures have contributed to the full and partial identification of 179 perpetrators, while the operation has also safeguarded four victims and identified up to 62 victims. 

The Com is splintered into three primary subsets with different objectives the FBI describes as Hacker Com, In Real Life Com and Extortion Com. Crimes attributed to group members have grown increasingly complex, with perpetrators going to great lengths to mask identities, hide financial transactions and launder money. 

“These networks deliberately target children in the digital spaces where they feel most at ease,” Anna Sjöberg, head of Europol’s European Counter Terrorism Centre, said in a statement.

Various branches of The Com have been linked to high-profile crimes over the past few years, and law enforcement has responded with heightened activity and interest in the group’s activities. 

The Com is vast — many perpetrators remain at large and even more victims are still suffering and awaiting aid. 

This growing global effort to thwart shifting crime trends with appropriate resources has built a foundation that will foster results beyond those achieved to date, said Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit 221B.

“How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time,” she told CyberScoop. “The Com represents a major social problem impacting youth, and peoples’ expectations need to be realistic. These early numbers and ramping up effort over time is what success looks like and we need to encourage that.”

An effective police response to The Com requires a different way of thinking and retooling, “but it is more solvable than crime originating from hostile nations,” Nixon said.

Project Compass is built around an information-sharing network, which enables each of the partner nations to assist with investigations across various specialized units. Countries are also sharing advice for preventative measures and mobilizing data sprints to bring intelligence together for ongoing cases.

“Project Compass allows us to intervene earlier, safeguard victims and disrupt those who exploit vulnerability for extremist purposes,” Sjöberg said. “No country can address this threat alone — and through this cooperation, we are closing the gaps they try to hide in.”

Europol did not identify the 30 people arrested under Project Compass thus far. Yet, at least some of those cases are public. 

Authorities during the past year have arrested multiple members of a Com offshoot known as 764, which is a growing online threat to coerce vulnerable children to produce child sexual abuse material of themselves, gor material, self mutilation, sibling abuse, animal abuses and other acts of violence. 

Two alleged leaders of 764, Leonidas Varagiannis and Prasan Nepal, were arrested and charged for directing and distributing CSAM in April.

Tony Christoper Long and Alexis Aldair Chavez both pleaded guilty late last year to multiple crimes linked to their involvement with the extremist group. Other alleged 764 members have been arrested in the United States more recently, including Erik Lee Madison and Aaron Corey.

The post Project Compass is Europol’s new playbook for taking on The Com appeared first on CyberScoop.

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 idea about that.

Our first story of 2026, The Kimwolf Botnet is Stalking Your Local Network, detailed the unique and highly invasive methods Kimwolf uses to spread. The story warned that the vast majority of Kimwolf infected systems were unofficial Android TV boxes that are typically marketed as a way to watch unlimited (pirated) movie and TV streaming services for a one-time fee.

Our January 8 story, Who Benefitted from the Aisuru and Kimwolf Botnets?, cited multiple sources saying the current administrators of Kimwolf went by the nicknames “Dort” and “Snow.” Earlier this month, a close former associate of Dort and Snow shared what they said was a screenshot the Kimwolf botmasters had taken while logged in to the Badbox 2.0 botnet control panel.

That screenshot, a portion of which is shown below, shows seven authorized users of the control panel, including one that doesn’t quite match the others: According to my source, the account “ABCD” (the one that is logged in and listed in the top right of the screenshot) belongs to Dort, who somehow figured out how to add their email address as a valid user of the Badbox 2.0 botnet.

Badbox has a storied history that well predates Kimwolf’s rise in October 2025. In July 2025, Google filed a “John Doe” lawsuit (PDF) against 25 unidentified defendants accused of operating Badbox 2.0, which Google described as a botnet of over ten million unsanctioned Android streaming devices engaged in advertising fraud. Google said Badbox 2.0, in addition to compromising multiple types of devices prior to purchase, also can infect devices by requiring the download of malicious apps from unofficial marketplaces.

Google’s lawsuit came on the heels of a June 2025 advisory from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which warned that cyber criminals were gaining unauthorized access to home networks by either configuring the products with malware prior to the user’s purchase, or infecting the device as it downloads required applications that contain backdoors — usually during the set-up process.

The FBI said Badbox 2.0 was discovered after the original Badbox campaign was disrupted in 2024. The original Badbox was identified in 2023, and primarily consisted of Android operating system devices (TV boxes) that were compromised with backdoor malware prior to purchase.

KrebsOnSecurity was initially skeptical of the claim that the Kimwolf botmasters had hacked the Badbox 2.0 botnet. That is, until we began digging into the history of the qq.com email addresses in the screenshot above.

CATHEAD

An online search for the address 34557257@qq.com (pictured in the screenshot above as the user “Chen“) shows it is listed as a point of contact for a number of China-based technology companies, including:

–Beijing Hong Dake Wang Science & Technology Co Ltd.
–Beijing Hengchuang Vision Mobile Media Technology Co. Ltd.
–Moxin Beijing Science and Technology Co. Ltd.

The website for Beijing Hong Dake Wang Science is asmeisvip[.]net, a domain that was flagged in a March 2025 report by HUMAN Security as one of several dozen sites tied to the distribution and management of the Badbox 2.0 botnet. Ditto for moyix[.]com, a domain associated with Beijing Hengchuang Vision Mobile.

A search at the breach tracking service Constella Intelligence finds 34557257@qq.com at one point used the password “cdh76111.” Pivoting on that password in Constella shows it is known to have been used by just two other email accounts: daihaic@gmail.com and cathead@gmail.com.

Constella found cathead@gmail.com registered an account at jd.com (China’s largest online retailer) in 2021 under the name “陈代海,” which translates to “Chen Daihai.” According to DomainTools.com, the name Chen Daihai is present in the original registration records (2008) for moyix[.]com, along with the email address cathead@astrolink[.]cn.

Incidentally, astrolink[.]cn also is among the Badbox 2.0 domains identified in HUMAN Security’s 2025 report. DomainTools finds cathead@astrolink[.]cn was used to register more than a dozen domains, including vmud[.]net, yet another Badbox 2.0 domain tagged by HUMAN Security.

XAVIER

A cached copy of astrolink[.]cn preserved at archive.org shows the website belongs to a mobile app development company whose full name is Beijing Astrolink Wireless Digital Technology Co. Ltd. The archived website reveals a “Contact Us” page that lists a Chen Daihai as part of the company’s technology department. The other person featured on that contact page is Zhu Zhiyu, and their email address is listed as xavier@astrolink[.]cn.

Astute readers will notice that the user Mr.Zhu in the Badbox 2.0 panel used the email address xavierzhu@qq.com. Searching this address in Constella reveals a jd.com account registered in the name of Zhu Zhiyu. A rather unique password used by this account matches the password used by the address xavierzhu@gmail.com, which DomainTools finds was the original registrant of astrolink[.]cn.

ADMIN

The very first account listed in the Badbox 2.0 panel — “admin,” registered in November 2020 — used the email address 189308024@qq.com. DomainTools shows this email is found in the 2022 registration records for the domain guilincloud[.]cn, which includes the registrant name “Huang Guilin.”

Constella finds 189308024@qq.com is associated with the China phone number 18681627767. The open-source intelligence platform osint.industries reveals this phone number is connected to a Microsoft profile created in 2014 under the name Guilin Huang (桂林 黄). The cyber intelligence platform Spycloud says that phone number was used in 2017 to create an account at the Chinese social media platform Weibo under the username “h_guilin.”

The remaining three users and corresponding qq.com email addresses were all connected to individuals in China. However, none of them (nor Mr. Huang) had any apparent connection to the entities created and operated by Chen Daihai and Zhu Zhiyu — or to any corporate entities for that matter. Also, none of these individuals responded to requests for comment.

The mind map below includes search pivots on the email addresses, company names and phone numbers that suggest a connection between Chen Daihai, Zhu Zhiyu, and Badbox 2.0.

UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS

The idea that the Kimwolf botmasters could have direct access to the Badbox 2.0 botnet is a big deal, but explaining exactly why that is requires some background on how Kimwolf spreads to new devices. The botmasters figured out they could trick residential proxy services into relaying malicious commands to vulnerable devices behind the firewall on the unsuspecting user’s local network.

The vulnerable systems sought out by Kimwolf are primarily Internet of Things (IoT) devices like unsanctioned Android TV boxes and digital photo frames that have no discernible security or authentication built-in. Put simply, if you can communicate with these devices, you can compromise them with a single command.

Our January 2 story featured research from the proxy-tracking firm Synthient, which alerted 11 different residential proxy providers that their proxy endpoints were vulnerable to being abused for this kind of local network probing and exploitation.

Most of those vulnerable proxy providers have since taken steps to prevent customers from going upstream into the local networks of residential proxy endpoints, and it appeared that Kimwolf would no longer be able to quickly spread to millions of devices simply by exploiting some residential proxy provider.

However, the source of that Badbox 2.0 screenshot said the Kimwolf botmasters had an ace up their sleeve the whole time: Secret access to the Badbox 2.0 botnet control panel.

“Dort has gotten unauthorized access,” the source said. “So, what happened is normal proxy providers patched this. But Badbox doesn’t sell proxies by itself, so it’s not patched. And as long as Dort has access to Badbox, they would be able to load” the Kimwolf malware directly onto TV boxes associated with Badbox 2.0.

The source said it isn’t clear how Dort gained access to the Badbox botnet panel. But it’s unlikely that Dort’s existing account will persist for much longer: All of our notifications to the qq.com email addresses listed in the control panel screenshot received a copy of that image, as well as questions about the apparently rogue ABCD account.

A 23-year-old New York man allegedly affiliated with 764 was arrested and charged with receiving child sexual abuse material. Aaron Corey of Albany, N.Y., faces up to 20 years in prison for trafficking CSAM during a three-month period ending in December.

Corey, also known as “Baggeth,” is accused of running multiple 764-related chats, seeking CSAM from other people affiliated with the nihilistic violent extremist collective. Investigators said they found multiple images and videos of children, some as young as 2 years old, depicting child sexual abuse on Corey’s mobile device, according to a court records.

Officials also found evidence on Corey’s computer also, including a search for “parks near me for kids” and multiple visited URLs about relationships with minors. An FBI agent investigating Corey said his online moniker was potentially derived from his attempts to get girls to place bags over their heads, according to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York. 

“The 764 network is a depraved criminal group that exploits vulnerable children and revels in their abuse,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. “The very serious crimes alleged in this indictment will be aggressively prosecuted until justice is served, as the Justice Department and federal partners continue efforts to take down this violent extremist network.”

Authorities have arrested multiple members of 764 during the past year, reflecting heightened law enforcement activity targeting the violent extremist collective and other offshoots affiliated with The Com. The FBI has long been investigating the group’s use of cybercriminal tactics to carry out their crimes.

The sprawling nihilistic network of thousands of people, typically between 11 and 25 years old, engages in a growing online threat to coerce vulnerable children to produce CSAM of themselves, gore material, self mutilation, sibling abuse, animal abuse and other acts of violence. 

Two alleged leaders of 764, Leonidas Varagiannis and Prasan Nepal, were arrested and charged for directing and distributing CSAM in April. The two men are accused of exploiting at least eight minor victims, some as young as 13 years old, and face charges that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Tony Christopher Long, of California, pleaded not guilty in November to multiple charges carrying a maximum penalty up to 69 years in prison related to his alleged involvement in the nihilistic violent extremist group. 

Erik Lee Madison, of Maryland, was arrested in November and is accused of victimizing at least five children this fall, including one as young as 13 at the time. His alleged criminality dates back to 2020 when he was a minor.

Alexis Aldair Chavez, of San Antonio, pleaded guilty in December to multiple crimes involving the sexual exploitation of children while acting as an administrator and leader of 8884, a splinter group of 764. He faces up to 60 years in prison.

“Preying on our nation’s children, who are among the most vulnerable members of society, is beyond comprehension,” Christopher Raia, co-deputy director of the FBI, said in a statement.

Corey was arrested Monday, appeared in federal court Tuesday and is being detained pending his next court appearance. You can read the full criminal complaint below.

The post Alleged 764 member arrested, charged with CSAM possession in New York appeared first on CyberScoop.

A 19-year-old man from San Antonio pleaded guilty Friday to multiple crimes involving the sexual exploitation of children while acting as an administrator and leader of 8884, a splinter group of the violent extremist collective known as 764. 

Alexis Aldair Chavez faces up to 60 years in prison for racketeering, distribution and possession of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). He was arrested and has been detained without bail since October 2024.

Chavez began associating with 764 as a minor in 2022 when a co-conspirator introduced him to 7997, one of many 764 offshoots affiliated with The Com. Authorities describe The Com as a sprawling nihilistic violent extremist network of thousands of people, typically between 11 and 25 years old, engaged in a growing online threat to coerce vulnerable children to produce CSAM of themselves, gore material, self mutilation, sibling abuse, animal abuse and other acts of violence.

“Chavez led a group of online predators whose ultimate purpose is to destroy our society,” Sue Bai, principal deputy assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement. “They tried to achieve that heinous goal by desensitizing innocent children to violence — coercing them to perform gruesome and harmful acts against themselves and animals — with the hope of encouraging further violence and spreading chaos.”

Prosecutors said Chavez “earned the right” to participate in 7997 chat rooms by killing his cat and posting a video of the crime for others to view. He later groomed multiple victims to blackmail and coerce additional victims, all to increase reputation within the group’s ranks, according to federal court records.

Chavez attempted to coerce a girl to commit suicide and blackmailed another girl into self-mutiliation, animal torture and illicit content production in late 2023. He later worked with multiple co-conspirators and blackmailed some of his victims to coerce other girls to degrade themselves on camera and produce CSAM.

The indictment filed against Chavez in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas details a series of horrifying crimes he committed with co-conspirators and some of his victims. 

Separately, Chavez coerced multiple minors to harm themselves or engage in various acts of depravity on video chats in the 8884 channel.

“The depraved acts described in the indictment are very normal for these people,” Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit 221B, told CyberScoop. 

Nixon, who has studied domestic and English-speaking cybercrime and tracked its rise for more than a decade, said 764 is a “very important tar pit for certain rare, risky personalities” that is likely worthy of scientific study. 

“8884 and 7997 are part of a homogenous 764 copycat soup. All of these groups start to blend together,” she said. “Most of these actors are motivated by attention seeking, and their culture is based on competing to be the worst. Ironically, they all end up being the same.”

When the FBI executed a search warrant at Chavez’s residence in July 2024, prosecutors said he came out the backdoor and threw his phone over a neighbor’s fence in an attempt to hide evidence.

Chavez’s guilty plea follows a year of heightened law enforcement activity, which has netted arrests of multiple alleged 764 leaders and members.

Two alleged leaders of 764, Leonidas Varagiannis and Prasan Nepal, were arrested and charged for directing and distributing CSAM in April. The two men are accused of exploiting at least eight minor victims, some as young as 13 years old, and face charges that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Baron Cain Martin, of Tucson, Arizona, allegedly joined the child sextortion ring as early as 2019, eventually acting as a leader until his arrest late last year. Martin faces 29 charges and, if convicted, up to life in prison.

Tony Christopher Long, of California, pleaded not guilty last month to multiple charges carrying a maximum penalty up to 69 years in prison related to his alleged involvement in the nihilistic violent extremist group. 

Erik Lee Madison, of Maryland, was arrested in November and is accused of victimizing at least five children this fall, including one as young as 13 at the time. His alleged criminality dates back to 2020 when he was a minor.

“All of the 764 cases I’ve seen presented by law enforcement have been high quality and successful, and I hope this work can continue,” Nixon said.

Chavez’s sentencing is set for March 25, 2026. You can read the full indictment below.

The post Leader of 764 offshoot pleads guilty, faces up to 60 years in jail appeared first on CyberScoop.

A 20-year-old Maryland man allegedly associated with violent extremist group 764 is in federal custody, facing charges for sexual exploitation of children, online coercement and enticement, and cyberstalking. 

Erik Lee Madison, of Halethorpe, Maryland, is accused of victimizing at least five children this fall, including one as young as 13 at the time. His alleged criminality dates back to 2020 when he was a minor.

Madison’s alleged association with 764, an offshoot of The Com, and the crimes he’s accused of follow a common thread of nihilistic violent extremism. Members of the loose-knit collective and associated groups, which spans thousands of people, typically between 11 and 25 years old, commit financially motivated, sexual and violent crimes, according to the FBI.

Prosecutors accuse Madison of targeting, stalking and coercing his victims on Discord, Roblox, Instagram, Snapchat and Telegram. Authorities have warned that 764 members use these services to target minors. Some of these platforms sent tips to authorities to report on Madison’s alleged crimes. 

Investigators found multiple pieces of evidence linking Madison to these alleged crimes on his iCloud accounts. The FBI, pursuant to a warrant, searched Madison’s residence Nov. 6 and found multiple accounts and files on his phone linking him to his alleged crimes, according to an affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. 

Madison’s mother provided authorities with the password to his phone. Prosecutors accuse Madison of coercing his victims to create child sexual abuse material and commit self harm and animal torture under threat of harm to the victims, their families and friends. 

Madison’s arrest comes amid a heightened period of law enforcement activity targeting alleged 764 members and leaders.

Baron Cain Martin, 21, of Tucson, Arizona, allegedly joined the child sextortion ring as early as 2019, eventually acting as a leader until his arrest late last year. Martin faces 29 charges and, if convicted, up to life in prison.

Tony Christopher Long, a 19-year-old California man, pleaded not guilty last month to multiple charges carrying a maximum penalty up to 69 years in prison related to his alleged involvement in the nihilistic violent extremist group. 

Two alleged leaders of 764, Leonidas Varagiannis and Prasan Nepal, were arrested and charged for directing and distributing CSAM in April. The two men are accused of exploiting at least eight minor victims, some as young as 13 years old, and face charges that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.

“We are now seeing the fruits of the government recognizing this as a priority,” Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit 221B, told CyberScoop. “Law enforcement has learned a lot in the past few years about these emerging groups and what to look for. The nature of law enforcement will always be reactive, but they are reacting.”

Madison was known to authorities for years and had multiple run-ins with law enforcement while he was a minor. 

Baltimore County Police investigated Madison in May 2020, acting on a tip from Instagram. Madison admitted to a detective that he sent an image depicting child sexual abuse material to another user. The case was closed after the detective explained laws, appropriate internet behavior and proper supervision of teenagers online, according to court records.

In February 2022, the FBI got involved after one of his alleged victim’s parents reported to law enforcement that Madison possessed CSAM and was stalking their child. When an FBI agent interviewed Madison at his residence with his mother’s consent, he admitted to communicating with the girl on Instagram and Snapchat.

The FBI agent, at the time, advised Madison to cease all communications with the child and informed him about the legal consequences of his actions.

A few months later, in June 2022, Madison posted a video of himself sexually abusing his dog, according to court records. When law enforcement seized his phone and conducted forensics, investigators found CSAM. Madison was charged as a minor with animal abuse and possession of CSAM. 

Madison’s alleged yearslong criminality underscores the persistent cycle of hate and violent crime that 764 engenders among its members. The FBI previously said members of 764 and related groups are driven by a range of personal motives, including notoriety, sexual gratification or a sense of belonging. 

Martin wasn’t prominent in 764, but many members blend together in their attempt to achieve infamy, according to Nixon. 

“The problem is complicated by how many of them start before 18. When both sides in an incident are underage, it falls on law enforcement to exercise discretion,” she said. “His 2020 and 2022 interactions with law enforcement had red flags showing it wasn’t a normal teenager relationship.”

Knowledge of 764 wasn’t widespread at that time. “I think if a detective in 2025 was working the same set of facts, they would have reacted more forcefully,” Nixon said. 

She also questioned what resources or type of rehabilitation program could help in cases linked to 764. 

“I don’t think a good program exists that can break the intense human relationships that bond members of violent internet street gangs,” Nixon said. “It’s a huge factor in reoffending.”

You can read the full affidavit below.

The post Maryland man faces federal charges for crimes allegedly linked to 764 appeared first on CyberScoop.

Federal law enforcement said a leader of 764, a violent extremist group, has been in federal custody since he was arrested in December and faces 29 charges for running a loose-knit collective involved in child exploitation, cyberstalking, kidnapping, animal torture, wire fraud and murder.

Baron Cain Martin, 21, of Tucson, Arizona, allegedly joined the child sextortion ring as early as 2019, eventually acting as a leader until his arrest late last year, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona.

Martin is charged with providing material support to terrorists, producing and distributing child sexual abuse material (CSAM), coercing minors to engage in sexual activity, cyberstalking, animal crushing and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He faces up to life in prison, many times over.

“This man’s alleged crimes are unthinkably depraved and reflect the horrific danger of 764 — if convicted, he will face severe consequences as we work to dismantle this evil network,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “I urge parents to remain vigilant about the threats their children face online.”

Martin’s arrest and indictment comes amid a flurry of law enforcement activity targeting 764 and its alleged members.

Federal authorities announced Martin’s arrest and unsealed charges filed against him shortly after another alleged 764 member, Tony Christopher Long, a 19-year-old California man, pleaded not guilty to multiple charges carrying a maximum penalty up to 69 years in prison related to his alleged involvement in the nihilistic violent extremist group.

Two alleged leaders of 764 were arrested and charged for directing and distributing CSAM in April. The two men, Leonidas Varagiannis and Prasan Nepal, are accused of exploiting at least eight minor victims, some as young as 13 years old, and face charges that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.

“Law enforcement is dogpiling these people and I think that’s great,” Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit221B, told CyberScoop.

“They don’t stop until they are physically ripped off the computer,” she said. “The enormous amount of charges isn’t surprising.”

764 is an offshoot of The Com, a global collective of loosely associated groups spanning thousands of people, typically between 11 and 25 years old, that commit financially motivated, sexual and violent crimes. The FBI previously said members of 764 and related groups are driven by a range of personal motives, including notoriety, sexual gratification or a sense of belonging. 

“[Martin’s] actions as a leader of this criminal network were so atrocious and extreme that he is charged with supporting terrorism,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement. “It’s alleged that Martin not only committed these crimes but wrote and posted a guide for others to use to identify, groom, and extort their own victims.”

Nixon, who has tracked the rise of English-speaking cybercrime for more than a decade, said she found the grooming guide Martin allegedly produced and distributed online. The guide included details about how to identify, groom and extort vulnerable children and advised readers to target victims struggling with mental health, officials said.

Other federal law enforcement officials described Martin’s alleged crimes as “so depraved they defy comprehension,” “an assault on the basic foundations of human decency,” and “promoting some of the sickest forms of human depravity.”

Martin, also known by the online moniker “Convict” among many others, allegedly provided assistance as personnel, service and expert advice to carry out a conspiracy to kill or main a person in a foreign country, according to authorities. He is also accused of conspiring with others to coerce a victim living outside the United States to self-harm, self-main and self-kill, officials said. 

“He was respected in these communities because of his acts and was influential,” Nixon said. “I would agree he was a leader, and his friends will be reading his court documents with admiration.”

Martin is charged with five counts of producing CSAM, 11 counts of distributing CSAM and three counts of coercing minors to engage in sexual activity. He is accused of victimizing at least nine victims, eight of which were between the ages of 11 and 15 years old at the time.

“The FBI will not stop until we find those who perpetrate these horrific crimes that prey on the most vulnerable members of our communities,” Patel said.

You can read the full indictment below.

The post Alleged 764 leader arrested in Arizona, faces life in prison appeared first on CyberScoop.

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.

Zendesk is an automated help desk service designed to make it simple for people to contact companies for customer support issues. Earlier this week, KrebsOnSecurity started receiving thousands of ticket creation notification messages through Zendesk in rapid succession, each bearing the name of different Zendesk customers, such as CapCom, CompTIA, Discord, GMAC, NordVPN, The Washington Post, and Tinder.

The abusive missives sent via Zendesk’s platform can include any subject line chosen by the abusers. In my case, the messages variously warned about a supposed law enforcement investigation involving KrebsOnSecurity.com, or else contained personal insults.

Moreover, the automated messages that are sent out from this type of abuse all come from customer domain names — not from Zendesk. In the example below, replying to any of the junk customer support responses from The Washington Post’s Zendesk installation shows the reply-to address is help@washpost.com.

Notified about the mass abuse of their platform, Zendesk said the emails were ticket creation notifications from customer accounts that configured their Zendesk instance to allow anyone to submit support requests — including anonymous users.

“These types of support tickets can be part of a customer’s workflow, where a prior verification is not required to allow them to engage and make use of the Support capabilities,” said Carolyn Camoens, communications director at Zendesk. “Although we recommend our customers to permit only verified users to submit tickets, some Zendesk customers prefer to use an anonymous environment to allow for tickets to be created due to various business reasons.”

Camoens said requests that can be submitted in an anonymous manner can also make use of an email address of the submitter’s choice.

“However, this method can also be used for spam requests to be created on behalf of third party email addresses,” Camoens said. “If an account has enabled the auto-responder trigger based on ticket creation, then this allows for the ticket notification email to be sent from our customer’s accounts to these third parties. The notification will also include the Subject added by the creator of these tickets.”

Zendesk claims it uses rate limits to prevent a high volume of requests from being created at once, but those limits did not stop Zendesk customers from flooding my inbox with thousands of messages in just a few hours.

“We recognize that our systems were leveraged against you in a distributed, many-against-one manner,” Camoens said. “We are actively investigating additional preventive measures. We are also advising customers experiencing this type of activity to follow our general security best practices and configure an authenticated ticket creation workflow.”

In all of the cases above, the messaging abuse would not have been possible if Zendesk customers validated support request email addresses prior to sending responses. Failing to do so may make it easier for Zendesk clients to handle customer support requests, but it also allows ne’er-do-wells to sully the sender’s brand in service of disruptive and malicious email floods.