Cybersecurity Brief – 2026-01-31

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Major Incidents or Breaches

CERT Polska reported coordinated cyber attacks on over 30 wind and solar farms, as well as a private manufacturing company, in Poland. Related reporting attributes a Russia-linked threat actor (Sandworm/Electrum) as responsible for these intrusions, which resulted in bricked ICS devices at 30 sites affecting communication and control systems in the Polish power grid.
ShinyHunters ransomware group claimed breaches of Match Group dating platforms (Match, Hinge, OkCupid) and Panera Bread, allegedly stealing millions of user records.
Illegal cryptocurrency flows reached $158 billion in 2025, marking a record high after several years of decline.
Researchers identified malicious Google Chrome extensions capable of hijacking affiliate links, stealing data, and collecting OpenAI ChatGPT authentication tokens.
Android users were targeted with a remote access trojan (RAT) delivered via malicious applications hosted on Hugging Face repositories.
Over 175,000 exposed Ollama AI model hosts were identified, with 23,000 persistently active, posing risks of LLM abuse.

Ivanti released patches for critical-severity, actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities in its Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) product, which allowed unauthenticated remote code execution.
Microsoft fixed a bug in Microsoft 365 Outlook that prevented users from accessing encrypted emails in classic Outlook.
The Windows 11 KB5074105 update addressed multiple issues, including boot, sign-in, and activation failures.

China-linked threat actor UAT-8099 was observed targeting IIS servers in Asia with the BadIIS SEO malware campaign between late 2025 and early 2026. The campaign focused on search engine manipulation through server compromise.
Sandworm/Electrum, a Russia-linked group, was attributed to the bricking of ICS devices during coordinated attacks on Polish energy infrastructure.

Agentic AI and autonomous AI assistants such as OpenClaw (ClawdBot, MoltBot) are increasingly present in business environments, raising concerns about privileged, autonomous control and the expanding attack surface.
Security researchers noted increased abuse of Google Presentations for phishing campaigns targeting webmail users.
The Tenable One AI Exposure add-on was introduced to discover unsanctioned AI use within organizations and enforce compliance with approved AI tools.
Aisy launched an AI-assisted vulnerability management platform after emerging from stealth with $2.3 million in seed funding.

Microsoft announced plans to disable the legacy NTLM authentication protocol by default in future Windows releases, citing security vulnerabilities.
The White House revoked two Biden-era memorandums related to software security rules, although some associated resources remain available for government use.
TikTok updated its privacy policy to explicitly reference immigration status in user data, drawing public attention and scrutiny.

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Match Group, the parent company of Tinder, OkCupid, Hinge, and Match.com, confirmed a cybersecurity incident resulting in the compromise of user data across multiple platforms.
Marquis Software Solutions reported that a ransomware attack in August 2025 affecting dozens of U.S. banks and credit unions was due to a breach of SonicWall cloud backups.
An AI chat toy company, Bondu, exposed over 50,000 logs of conversations between children and its AI-enabled toys due to an unsecured web console.
The French national unemployment agency was fined €5 million for a breach that resulted in the theft of job seekers’ personal information.
eScan antivirus suffered a supply chain attack, with malicious updates detected and distributed through its update mechanism.
Google, in collaboration with industry partners, disrupted the IPIDEA residential proxy network, which had been leveraged by threat actors via malware-infected devices.

Ivanti released security updates for two zero-day remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities in Ivanti Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM), CVE-2026-1281 and CVE-2026-1340, both of which have been actively exploited.
SolarWinds patched four critical vulnerabilities in its Web Help Desk product, including unauthenticated RCE and authentication bypass flaws.
Multiple critical vulnerabilities were identified in the n8n automation platform, allowing unauthenticated remote code execution and server hijacking via sandbox and AST sanitization flaws.
Microsoft issued an emergency patch for a Microsoft Office zero-day that allowed malicious documents to bypass security checks.
Researchers found 175,000 publicly exposed Ollama AI servers across 130 countries, creating a significant attack surface for exploitation.
Android theft protection features were updated by Google to strengthen device authentication and recovery.

A new Android malware campaign abused the Hugging Face platform to distribute thousands of APK payload variants targeting financial and payment credentials.
Chinese APT groups deployed advanced malware against organisations in Asia, indicating ongoing high-end cyber-espionage operations.
The Aisuru (Kimwolf) botnet executed a record-setting DDoS attack in December 2025, peaking at 31.4 Tbps and 200 million requests per second.
Flare researchers highlighted how infostealer malware is being distributed via malicious Roblox game mods, enabling lateral movement from home PCs to corporate environments.
An operation dubbed “Bizarre Bazaar” targeted exposed large language models (LLMs) and managed control panels (MCPs) for commercial monetization.
The Clawdbot malware rebranded as Moltbot, sparking impersonation and supply chain risk campaigns.

SentinelOne and Censys reported a widespread issue of unmanaged, publicly accessible AI deployments, specifically Ollama servers, posing risks to data privacy and security.
The use of “semantic chaining” in prompt engineering was shown to bypass content controls in LLMs such as Gemini Nano Banana and Grok 4 by splitting malicious prompts into discrete segments.
The IPIDEA proxy network relied on SDKs embedded in mobile and desktop applications to enroll compromised devices into its proxy service.
The Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2026 and industry commentary emphasize the need for improved vulnerability management, preparation for quantum threats, and responsible AI deployment.
A survey of over 100 energy sector OT systems revealed pervasive cybersecurity gaps in substations, power plants, and control centers.
Microsoft Teams will introduce a feature to report suspicious calls as potential scams or phishing attempts by mid-March 2026.

The Trump administration rescinded Biden-era guidance requiring U.S. federal agencies to solicit software bills of materials (SBOMs) and compliance attestations with NIST’s Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF) from vendors.
The French data protection authority imposed a €5 million fine on the national unemployment agency for inadequate security measures leading to a data breach.