Authorities in the Netherlands have arrested the co-owners of two related Internet hosting companies for operating IT infrastructure used by Russia to carry out cyberattacks, influence operations and disinformation campaigns inside the European Union. The two men were the focus of a 2025 KrebsOnSecurity story about how their hosting companies had assumed control over the technical infrastructure of Stark Industries Solutions, an Internet service provider sanctioned last year by the EU as a frequent staging ground for cyber mischief from Russia’s intelligence agencies.

The Dutch daily news outlet de Volkskrant reports that the Dutch financial crime agency FIOD on May 18 arrested a 57-year-old from Amsterdam and a 39-year-old from The Hague, charging them with violating sanctions law by directly or indirectly making economic resources available to EU-sanctioned entities.

The Dutch investigation focuses on Stark Industries, a sprawling hosting provider that materialized just two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine. As detailed in this May 2024 deep-dive, Stark quickly became the source of massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against European targets, and emerged as a top supplier of proxy and anonymity services that showed up time and again in cyberattacks linked to Russia-backed hacking groups.

That report identified two Moldovan brothers — Ivan and Yuri Neculiti and their company PQHosting — who were providing one of Stark’s two main conduits to the larger Internet. In May 2025, the EU sanctioned PQHosting and the Neculiti brothers for aiding Russia’s hybrid warfare efforts. But as KrebsOnSecurity observed in September 2025, those sanctions failed to target Stark’s remaining connection to the Internet — an Internet service provider based in the Netherlands called MIRhosting.

MIRhosting is operated by Andrey Nesterenko, a 39-year-old Russian native who runs the business out of the Netherlands.  News that PQHosting and the Neculiti brothers were about to be sanctioned by the EU leaked in the media nearly two weeks before the sanctions were announced last year. During that time, the Stark network assets were transferred from PQHosting to a new entity called the[.]hosting, under the control of the Dutch entity WorkTitans BV.

And as our September 2025 report showed, WorkTitans was controlled by Nesterenko and a 57-year-old from Amsterdam named Youssef Zinad. On top of that, WorkTitans was getting connectivity to the larger Internet solely through MIRhosting, where Zinad had worked previously.

On May 18, Dutch financial crime investigators arrested Nesterenko and Zinad, and searched three businesses in Enschede and Almere and two data centers in Dronten and Schiphol-Rijk. A statement from the Dutch authorities said they also seized laptops, telephones and more than 800 servers.

De Volkskrant said it reviewed data showing WorkTitans and MIRhosting were the most-used networks in pro-Russian attacks on Danish government bodies between November 13 and 19, 2025, the week of Denmark’s municipal elections.

The publication wrote that prior to Nesterenko’s arrest, the MIRhosting founder denied that he knew his servers had been misused by pro-Russian cybercriminals. “He said he had ended all services with the Neculiti brothers when the EU sanctions came into force in May 2025,” and the he “reserved all rights to take action against ‘harmful and incorrect publications,” de Volkskrant wrote.

MIRhosting released a statement saying it has initiated an internal investigation into the alleged facts concerning the elections in Denmark, and that it has temporarily paused services to WorkTitans as a precautionary measure while the matter is being reviewed further.

“Based on our preliminary findings, there are no indications that the services over which we exercise control were actually used to influence the Danish elections,” the statement reads. “No anomalies or spikes were observed in our network traffic during the period mentioned in the publication; had large-scale DDoS attacks occurred, such activity would have been evident. Furthermore, prior to the media publication, we had not received any complaints, abuse reports, or official requests regarding suspicious activities or misuse of our network. Meanwhile, our regular operational activities continue, and our service to our other clients remains fully intact.”

Born in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, Mr. Nesterenko grew up as a piano prodigy who performed publicly at a young age. In 2004, Nesterenko founded MIRhosting’s parent Innovation IT Solutions Corp., which has the notable distinction of being the company responsible for hosting stopgeorgia[.]ru, a hacktivist website for organizing cyberattacks against Georgia that appeared at the same time Russian forces invaded the former Soviet nation in 2008. That conflict was thought to be the first war ever fought in which a notable cyberattack and an actual military engagement happened simultaneously.

Responding to questions shared via email, Nesterenko said MIRhosting does not support cybercrime, sanctions evasion, or illegal activity, and that the allegations and arrest by Dutch authorities have been extremely harmful to him and his company.

“The transition to the.hosting was not intended to evade sanctions,” Nesterenko wrote. “The hardware and customer portfolio had already been transferred to WorkTitans before the sanctions appeared. Closing or damaging a legitimate Dutch infrastructure company will not stop cybercrime, but it will harm many people who have done nothing wrong.”

Far less is public about the 57-year-old Zinad, who reportedly has been keeping a low profile since our story last year. De Volkskrant reported that Zinad blocked access to his LinkedIn account, had gone months without responding to emails, WhatsApp messages and phone calls, and told a colleague that illness was forcing him to lead a somewhat more reclusive life.

Mr. Nesterenko claims Zinad was never an employee of MIRhosting.

“He helped me and MIRhosting with certain business tasks under a normal business-to-business arrangement between companies,” Nesterenko explained.

However, in previous emails to KrebsOnSecurity, Nesterenko carbon copied Mr. Zinad (who had a @mirhosting.com email), explaining that he was part of the company’s legal team. Also, the Dutch website stagemarkt[.]nl lists Youssef Zinad as an official contact for MIRhosting’s offices in Almere.

Mr. Zinad has never responded to requests for comment. Nor did de Volkskrant have any luck tracking him down. The publication said it repeatedly asked Mr. Zinad (referred to here as simply “Z”), but he reportedly avoided every form of contact.

“‘I am unavailable but will respond to your message as soon as possible,’ reads an automated reply on WhatsApp on 2 October 2025,” de Volkskrant reported. “It is the only response de Volkskrant would receive in months. He did not pick up his phone and did not call back. When an acquaintance asked him via LinkedIn to contact the reporter, he blocked access to his LinkedIn page. At an address in Almere where Z.’s personal limited company is registered, no one was present in April. The corner house’s blinds were drawn, and a pile of rubbish bags lay outside next to a container, as if someone had recently left. A neighbour said he knew the man but did not know where he was staying. Z. was later arrested at a residence in Amsterdam.”

Memorial Day weekend officially kicks off summer, and for millions of Americans, that means road trips, flights, cookouts, and a little online shopping for the deals. 

Unfortunately, scammers know this. They count on the fact that you’re distracted, you’re moving fast, and you’re probably connected to a network you don’t own. 

Here are five scams surging this holiday weekend, what they look like, and how to stay ahead of them.

1. Fake Travel Alerts from “Your Bank” or Hotel

You’re packing your bag when a text arrives: “Unusual activity detected on your account. Verify now to avoid suspension.”  

It looks like it’s from your bank, or maybe your hotel loyalty program. There’s a link. There’s urgency. And that’s exactly the point. 

These are brand impersonation scams, and they’re a dominant tactic year-round, but they spike around travel holidays when people are actively monitoring reservations and accounts.  

According to McAfee research, trusted brands like banks, airlines, and hotels are among the most commonly impersonated, and email scams impersonating retail and financial brands have surged up to 85% as major holidays approach. 

The message will typically ask you to click a link and “confirm your details” to secure your account or honor a reservation. That link leads to a convincing-looking fake site designed to capture your login credentials, payment info, or both. 

How to Avoid Travel Alert Scams:  

• Don’t click links in unsolicited texts or emails.  
• Go directly to the company’s app or website by typing the URL yourself.  
• Remember: pressure is a tactic, not customer service.  

McAfee’s Scam Detector can flag suspicious messages before you interact with them, whether they come via text, email, or social media. 

2. Fake Memorial Day Weekend “Deals”

Memorial Day is one of the biggest shopping weekends of the year. Scammers treat it like an open invitation. 

Fraudulent retailers flood social feeds with too-good-to-be-true deals on everything from patio furniture to electronics, often impersonating legitimate brands with copycat websites and paid ads. 

According to McAfee’s holiday shopping research, 91% of shoppers see ads from unfamiliar retailers, 37% say they might buy from a brand they don’t recognize, and a full 40% of consumers have abandoned a purchase out of fear that the deal wasn’t real. 

The most impersonated brands in McAfee’s research span luxury labels (Coach, Dior, Gucci) to mainstream favorites (Apple, Samsung, Nintendo, Disney), exactly the kind of items that show up in “blowout sale” ads. Fake storefronts have grown significantly, with technology URL scams rising nearly 50%. 

Once shoppers enter their payment details on a fraudulent site, that information goes directly to criminals. The average scam loss during the holiday shopping period runs around $840 per victim. 

How to Avoid Shopping Scams:  

• Type retailer URLs directly into your browser instead of clicking through ads or social posts.  
• Look for HTTPS and double-check the domain carefully before entering any payment info.  
• If a deal looks unbelievably good, verify it on the retailer’s official app before buying.  

McAfee’s Web Protection blocks malicious and suspicious sites before they load, including fake checkout pages. 

3. QR Code Scams at Gas Stations and Travel Stops

If you’re road-tripping this weekend, you may scan a QR code somewhere. It could be at the gas pump, a rest stop, a parking meter, or a roadside attraction. Scammers know this too. 

Criminals increasingly place fake QR codes over legitimate ones on gas station pumps, parking kiosks, and public signs. When you scan, you’re redirected to a convincing-looking payment or login page that captures your financial information. This is known as “quishing” or phishing via QR code. 

McAfee research shows just how widespread this risk has become: 68% of people scanned a QR code in the past three months, and 18% ended up on a suspicious or unsafe page after scanning. Among those who did, more than half took a risky action like entering personal information, installing an app, or connecting a digital wallet. 

How to Avoid Sketchy QR Codes:   

• Before scanning any QR code in public, look closely at the sticker or sign.  

• If it looks like it’s been placed over something else, skip it.  

• If you do scan, check the URL before proceeding.  

McAfee’s Scam Detector now includes instant QR code safety checks that assess risk before you tap, so you’re not flying blind at the gas pump. 

4. Public Wi-Fi Traps at Airports, Hotels, and Coffee Shops

Whether you’re waiting at the airport or grabbing coffee before hitting the highway, free Wi-Fi can feel like a gift. But not every “free Wi-Fi” network is what it appears to be. 

Hackers set up what are called “evil twin” networks, hotspots with names designed to look exactly like the legitimate network at the airport, hotel, or café you’re in.  

The moment you connect, they can use tools called packet sniffers to capture the data you send and receive: passwords, banking credentials, credit card numbers, email logins.  

According to McAfee’s travel research, 63% of travelers connect to public Wi-Fi, and 49% use airport Wi-Fi, making these among the riskiest behaviors travelers engage in without realizing it. 

Some of these fake networks go further, presenting a phony login screen that captures your username and password for popular services like Google or Apple before you even realize you’ve been compromised. 

How to Avoid Malicious Wi-Fi : 

• Always confirm the exact Wi-Fi network name with staff before connecting.  
• Turn off auto-join for Wi-Fi on your devices.  
• And most importantly: use a VPN.  

A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel for your internet traffic, so even if a hacker intercepts it, they’ll only see scrambled data. McAfee’s VPN is included in McAfee+ plans and automatically connects when you join public Wi-Fi, exactly the protection you want when you’re traveling and connecting everywhere.

5. Toll Road and Parking Text Scams (Expect a Surge After the Weekend)

You may have seen these already: a text that says you owe an unpaid toll or parking fee, with a link to pay before penalties kick in. These scams have been circulating for a while, and there’s a good chance Memorial Day weekend is about to make them worse. 

Scammers track news cycles and know that millions of Americans will be driving this weekend, many of them through toll roads and unfamiliar areas.  

That means they can blast out fake “unpaid toll” texts after the holiday and a significant percentage of recipients will think: “Actually, I did drive somewhere new this weekend.” That uncertainty is exactly what they’re counting on. 

These texts typically impersonate EZPass, SunPass, or state transportation departments and create urgency around a small fee to avoid larger fines. The link leads to a fake payment page designed to steal your credit card details. 

How to Avoid Toll Scams:   

• Don’t click links in unsolicited toll or parking texts.  
• If you think the charge might be legitimate, go directly to your state’s official toll authority website and look up your account there.  
• Real toll agencies will not threaten immediate penalties over text with a payment link.  
• If you receive one of these texts after this weekend, treat it as suspicious by default. 

Have a Safe Memorial Day Weekend 

Scammers don’t take holidays. If anything, long weekends are peak season. The good news: a little awareness goes a long way. Slow down before you click, verify before you scan, and protect your connection before you log on. 

McAfee+ Advanced comes with layered protection across all the moments where scams are most likely to strike, from the gas station to the hotel lobby to your inbox.  

Stay safe out there. 

The post 5 Scams to Watch for This Memorial Day Weekend appeared first on McAfee Blog.

Canadian authorities on Wednesday arrested a 23-year-old Ottawa man on suspicion of building and operating Kimwolf, a fast spreading Internet-of-Things botnet that enslaved millions of devices for use in a series of massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks over the past six months. KrebsOnSecurity publicly named the suspect in February 2026 after the accused launched a volley of DDoS, doxing and swatting campaigns against this author and a security researcher. He now faces criminal hacking charges in both Canada and the United States.

A criminal complaint unsealed today in an Alaska district court charges Jacob Butler, a.k.a. “Dort,” of Ottawa, Canada with operating the Kimwolf DDoS botnet. A statement from the Department of Justice says the complaint against Butler was unsealed following the defendant’s arrest in Canada by the Ontario Provincial Police pursuant to a U.S. extradition warrant. Butler is currently in Canadian custody awaiting an initial court hearing scheduled for early next week.

The government said Kimwolf targeted infected devices which were traditionally “firewalled” from the rest of the internet, such as digital photo frames and web cameras. The infected systems were then rented to other cybercriminals, or forced to participate in record-smashing DDoS attacks, as well as assaults that affected Internet address ranges for the Department of Defense. Consequently, the DoD’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service is investigating the case, with assistance from the FBI field office in Anchorage.

“KimWolf was tied to DDoS attacks which were measured at nearly 30 Terabits per second, a record in recorded DDoS attack volume,” the Justice Department statement reads. “These attacks resulted in financial losses which, for some victims, exceeded one million dollars. The KimWolf botnet is alleged to have issued over 25,000 attack commands.”

On March 19, U.S. authorities joined international law enforcement partners in seizing the technical infrastructure for Kimwolf and three other large DDoS botnets — named Aisuru, JackSkid and Mossad — that were all competing for the same pool of vulnerable devices.

On February 28, KrebsOnSecurity identified Butler as the Kimwolf botmaster after digging through his various email addresses, registrations on the cybercrime forums, and posts to public Telegram and Discord servers. However, Dort continued to threaten and harass researchers who helped track down his real-life identity and dramatically slow the spread of his botnet.

Dort claimed responsibility for at least two swatting attacks targeting the founder of Synthient, a security startup that helped to secure a widespread critical security weakness that Kimwolf was using to spread faster and more effectively than any other IoT botnet out there. Synthient was among many technology companies thanked by the Justice Department today, and Synthient’s founder Ben Brundage told KrebsOnSecurity he’s relieved Butler is in custody.

“Hopefully this will end the harassment,” Brundage said.

The government says investigators connected Butler to the administration of the KimWolf botnet through IP address, online account information, transaction records, and online messaging application records obtained through the issuance of legal process. The criminal complaint against Butler (PDF) shows he did little to separate his real-life and cybercriminal identities (something we demonstrated in our February unmasking of Dort).

In April, the Justice Department joined authorities across Europe in seizing domain names tied to nearly four-dozen DDoS-for-hire services, although because of a bureaucratic mix-up the list of seized domains has remain sealed until today. The DOJ said at least one of those services collaborated with Butler’s Kimwolf botnet.

A statement from the Ontario Provincial Police said a search warrant was executed on March 19 at Butler’s address in Ottawa, where they seized multiple devices. As a result of that investigation, Butler was arrested and charged this week with unauthorized user of computer; possession of device to obtain unauthorized use of computer system or to commit mischief; and mischief in relation to computer data. He is scheduled to remain in custody until a hearing on May 26.

In the United States, Butler is facing one count of aiding and abetting computer intrusion. If extradited, tried and convicted in a U.S. court, Butler could face up to 10 years in prison, although that maximum sentence would likely be heavily tempered by considerations in the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, which make allowances for mitigating factors such as youth, lack of criminal history and level of cooperation with investigators.

You’re comparing airfare on your phone, watching prices climb by the hour, when a deal pops up that feels just good enough to grab. The timer’s ticking. The price looks right. You don’t want to miss it. 

You’re comparing airfare on your phone, watching prices climb by the hour, when a deal pops up that feels just good enough to grab. The timer’s ticking. The price looks right. You don’t want to miss it. 

That moment, when you’re rushing to lock something in, is exactly where scams thrive. 

New McAfee research shows that more than 1 in 3 Americans have encountered a travel-related cyberthreat, and 41% of those impacted lost money, often exceeding $500. 

At the same time, rising travel costs and time pressure are pushing people to make faster, riskier decisions. Those are the exact conditions scammers rely on. 

That’s where protection has to show up earlier. 

McAfee’s Scam Detector lets you check suspicious links, messages, and booking sites before you click, so you can pause and verify instead of giving scammers the edge. 

Travel Scams, Red Flags, and How McAfee Protects You 

Travel Scam Type	Key Red Flags	How McAfee Helps
Fake travel deals	Prices far below market, pressure to “book now,” sites you’ve never heard of	Scam Detector flags suspicious links and explains why they’re risky, so you can avoid fake deals before you book
Fake booking confirmations	Unexpected messages about bookings you didn’t make, mismatched sender details	Scam Detector analyzes messages before you engage, helping you avoid fake confirmations
Fake airline/hotel websites	Slight URL changes, poor design, being pushed to pay immediately or off-platform	Safe Browsing helps block risky sites before you enter payment details, reducing the chance of fraud
Payment requests outside platforms	Asked to pay via wire transfer, crypto, or direct payment instead of official platforms	Scam Detector flags suspicious payment requests, helping you avoid sending money to scammers
QR code scams	QR codes posted in public with no clear source or context	Scam Detector checks QR links before they open, so you don’t land on malicious sites
Customer service impersonation	Calls or messages asking for login credentials or payment info	Scam Detector detects deepfake AI audio impersonation attempts, helping you avoid sharing sensitive information
AI-generated listings	Photos that look overly polished, details that don’t quite match up	Scam Detector identifies suspicious content patterns, helping you spot listings that aren’t real
Public Wi-Fi attacks	Open networks with no password or security prompts	VPN helps protect your data on public networks, keeping your personal information private

The Findings From Our 2026 Travel Research 

McAfee Labs found that many travel scams work because they look familiar and spread fast.  

TripAdvisor was the most commonly impersonated travel app, cloned at roughly three times the rate of other major platforms like Kayak, Expedia, and Booking.com.  

In some cases, thousands of scam detections traced back to just a handful of fake apps, showing how quickly a convincing scam can take off when travelers are racing to book. 

Top 5 Ways Rising Travel Costs Are Driving Risky Decisions 

Our 2026 travel survey shows how rising prices and last‑minute pressure are changing traveler behavior, often in ways scammers exploit. 

1. Booking faster than usual
90% feel pressure to act quickly  

2. Choosing cheaper deals without verifying
32% would book before confirming legitimacy  

3. Ignoring red flags
33% admit they’ve done it  

4. Trusting messages that look legitimate
41% trust airline/hotel messages without verifying  

5. Clicking links without checking the source
20% click first, verify later (or not at all)  

The post 1 in 3 Targeted by Travel Scams and Rising Costs are Making it Worse appeared first on McAfee Blog.

McAfee Total Protection just took first place in the latest AV-Comparatives PC Performance Test, the gold standard for measuring how much (or how little) security software slows down your computer.  

With an overall impact score of 3.3 out of a possible 100, McAfee outperformed all 19 other security products tested and earned the highest possible rating: 3 Stars ADVANCED+. 

The industry average? 12.8. McAfee came in nearly 4x lower than that. The lower the impact score, the less the software gets in your way 

What Is the AV-Comparatives PC Performance Test? 

AV-Comparatives is an independent cybersecurity testing lab that has been rigorously evaluating security software since 1999. Unlike a review written by a single journalist or a score based on a company’s own claims, AV-Comparatives tests are: 

• Independent: delivers unbiased, data‑driven evaluations of security products  
• Standardized: every product is tested under the same conditions 
• Widely trusted: regularly cited in product roundups, expert reviews, and buying guides that shape how consumers choose security software 

The PC Performance Test specifically measures how much a security product impacts your computer’s everyday speed. Testing is conducted on a real Windows 11 machine (Intel Core i3, 8GB RAM, SSD) with all default settings enabled and an active internet connection. That’s the same setup millions of everyday users have at home. 

AV-Comparatives evaluates real-world tasks including: 

• Copying and moving files 
• Installing and launching apps 
• Downloading files from the web 
• Browsing websites 

The lower the impact score, the less the software gets in your way.

What McAfee’s Score Actually Means 

McAfee Total Protection scored 3.3, the lowest impact score of all 20 products tested, and well below the industry average of 12.8. 

Here’s a simple way to think about it: if the average security product takes a measurable toll on your machine while it works in the background, McAfee barely registers. You get full, always-on protection without the sluggishness that frustrates so many users. 

This result earned McAfee the ADVANCED+ rating, the highest tier AV-Comparatives awards, reserved for products that deliver top-tier performance with minimal system impact. 

Why “Lightweight” Protection Matters More Than You Think 

There’s a common misconception that stronger protection means a heavier, slower product. McAfee’s results prove otherwise. 

When your security software is slow, you notice it: 

• Apps take longer to open 
• Downloads feel sluggish 
• Your machine lags during everyday tasks 
• You’re tempted to disable protection to get your speed back, leaving yourself exposed 

A lightweight product means protection that works quietly in the background, without making you choose between safety and performance. That’s the promise behind McAfee’s result, and it’s now independently verified. 

 

First Place, But Not for the First Time 

This isn’t a one-off result. McAfee has earned the ADVANCED+ rating consistently across multiple rounds of AV-Comparatives testing, demonstrating that this level of performance isn’t luck. It’s the result of deliberate, sustained engineering. 

Independent, repeatable results like these are what separate marketing claims from proven performance. 

With McAfee, you get award-winning protection and award-winning performance, so your devices stay secure without slowing you down. 

Which McAfee Plans Include This Protection? 

The same AI-powered threat protection validated in this test is built into every major McAfee plan: 

• McAfee+ Premium 
• McAfee+ Advanced 
• McAfee+ Ultimate 
• McAfee Total Protection 
• McAfee LiveSafe 

Whether you’re protecting one device or an entire household, you’re getting the same industry-leading, independently verified performance under the hood. 

Ready to get protection that doesn’t slow you down? Explore McAfee+ Plans → 

The post McAfee Ranks #1 in AV-Comparatives PC Performance Test — Again appeared first on McAfee Blog.

A text that looks like it came straight from a courthouse is making the rounds across the U.S. And yes, I got it too. 

First things first, that’s a scam. And to be clear: DON’T SCAN THAT QR CODE. 

It’s the same playbook as last year’s toll road scams, just dressed up with a little more authority and a lot more pressure. 

Before doing anything, our team ran it through McAfee’s Scam Detector. It immediately flagged the message as suspicious, and that’s exactly the kind of moment this tool is built for. When something feels just real enough to second guess, it gives you a clear signal before you click, scan, or spiral. 

This court notice scam has ramped up and changed shape since we first covered it in March. So let’s get into how it works: 

How the scam works 

The text claims you’ve missed a payment, violated a law, or have some kind of outstanding “case.” It then pushes you to scan a QR code or click a link to resolve it quickly. 

From there, one of two things usually happens: 

1. You’re taken to a fake payment page designed to steal your money, or 
2. You’re prompted to download something that gives scammers access to your device or data  

Either way, the goal is the same: get you to act fast before you have time to question it. 

The red flags in this message 

• Urgent, threatening language about fines, penalties, or legal action  
• Vague accusations with no real details about what you supposedly did  
• Official-looking formatting like case numbers, clerk signatures, and judge names  
• Copy-paste consistency across states: McAfee employees in New York and California received nearly identical messages with the same names  

There are reports of this scam popping up nationwide, but the rule is simple: law enforcement does not text you to demand payment or resolve legal issues. 

What to do if you scanned the QR code 

First, don’t panic. Then: 

• Do not pay anything or enter personal information  
• Do not delete apps you were told to install (this can make it harder to detect what happened)  
• Run a device scan using a trusted security tool like McAfee’s free antivirus  
• Keep an eye on your financial accounts and logins for unusual activity  

And that, my friends, is scam number one in this week’s This Week in Scams (new format, we’re experimenting a little).  

Let’s get into what else is on our radar. 

Deepfake Celebrity Ads Are Targeting Seniors on Social Media. Here’s What a New Study Found.  

If you saw our story last year about Al Roker speaking out after scammers used an AI-generated version of him to promote a fake hypertension cure, or the shocking case of a French woman who lost nearly $900,000 to fraudsters posing as Brad Pitt, you already know just how convincing celebrity deepfake scams have become. 

Now, new reporting suggests these scams are reaching older adults at enormous scale. 

According to a new study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, just 30 of the most active scam advertisers on Facebook generated an estimated 215 million ad impressions over the past year. Nearly 73% of those impressions were shown to adults over 65. 

The fake ads used AI-generated versions of well-known figures including Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Harvey, and Brad Pitt to promote fake government benefits, miracle health products, and bogus financial offers. 

What McAfee’s Data Says About Celebrity Deepfake Scams 

This aligns closely with McAfee’s 2025 Most Dangerous Celebrity: Deepfake Deception List. 

Our research found that: 

• 72% of Americans have seen a fake celebrity or influencer endorsement online  
• 39% have clicked on one of these ads or posts  
• 1 in 10 lost money or personal information  
• Average losses reached $525 per victim  

The celebrities most commonly exploited in the U.S. included Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Jenna Ortega, and Sydney Sweeney, while Brad Pitt also ranked prominently on the global list.  

Why These Scams Work So Well 

Celebrity deepfake scams exploit something simple: trust. 

When a familiar face appears in your social feed, whether it is Al Roker recommending a health product or Brad Pitt asking for help, your guard naturally drops. 

And AI is making these fakes harder to detect. 

McAfee’s 2026 State of the Scamiverse found that Americans now encounter an average of three deepfakes every day, yet more than one in three say they are not confident they can identify one. 

In other words, scammers are weaponizing the faces people know best to make fraud feel familiar. 

How to Spot a Deepfake on Social Media 

Celebrity deepfakes are designed to look convincing, but there are still clues that something is off. If you see a video of Oprah Winfrey, Al Roker, or Brad Pitt promoting a miracle cure, government benefit, or investment opportunity, pause before you click. 

Here are some of the biggest red flags to watch for: 

Red Flag	What to Look For
Too-good-to-be-true offers	The video promises free grocery money, secret Medicare benefits, guaranteed investment returns, or miracle health cures.
Out-of-character endorsements	A celebrity appears to promote a random supplement, financial opportunity, or government program that seems unrelated to their normal work.
Robotic or unnatural voice	The speech sounds overly smooth, lacks natural pauses, or has strange pacing and tone.
Lip-sync issues	The celebrity’s mouth movements do not perfectly match the words being spoken.
Unnatural facial expressions	Blinking, smiling, and head movements appear stiff, overly polished, or slightly off.
Urgent language	The ad pressures you to “Act now,” “Claim your benefits today,” or “Limited spots available.”
Suspicious links	Clicking leads to a website you do not recognize or that does not match the company or organization being referenced.
No confirmation elsewhere	Trusted news outlets and the celebrity’s verified accounts do not mention the same announcement or offer.

When in doubt, go directly to the celebrity’s verified social account or search trusted news sources to confirm the information. And if something feels off, trust your instincts. In the age of AI, seeing is no longer believing. 

How McAfee Helps You Stay Ahead of These Scams 

McAfee+ Advanced gives you multiple layers working together so you’re not left figuring it out in the moment: 

• Scam Detector flags suspicious texts, emails, links, and even deepfake videos before you engage  
• Safe Browsing helps block risky sites if you do click or scan  
• Device Security helps detect and remove malicious apps or downloads  
• Identity Monitoring alerts you if your personal info shows up where it shouldn’t, so you can act fast  
• Personal Data Cleanup helps remove your information from data broker sites, making you a harder target in the first place  
• Secure VPN keeps your data private, especially on public Wi-Fi  

Safety tips to carry into next week 

• Slow down when a message creates urgency. That’s the hook  
• Don’t scan QR codes or click links from unexpected texts  
• Go directly to official websites instead of using links sent to you  
• Use tools that flag scams in real time so you don’t have to guess  
• Don’t trust celebrity endorsements posted to social media unless they come directly from a celebrity’s official page 

The reality is, these scams are designed to look normal. You shouldn’t have to be an expert to spot them. That’s why McAfee’s here to help. 

We’ll be back next week with more scams making headlines. 

The post How to Spot Fake Court Texts and Celebrity Deepfake Ads: This Week in Scams appeared first on McAfee Blog.

Authored by Harshil Patel and Sakshi Jaiswal 

McAfee Labs has recently uncovered a large scale CountLoader campaign that uses multiple layers of obfuscation and staged payload delivery to evade detection and maintain persistence in infected systems. The infection process relies on several layers of loaders, including PowerShell scripts, obfuscated JavaScript executed through mshta.exe, and in memory shellcode injection, each stage decrypting and launching the next. The attackers employ a custom encrypted communication protocol to interact with their C2 servers. By registering a backup domain used by the malware, we were able to sinkhole the traffic and observe thousands of infected machines connecting to the C2 infrastructure. Final payload deployed in this campaign is a cryptocurrency clipper, which monitors clipboard activity and replaces copied wallet addresses with attacker controlled ones to redirect cryptocurrency transactions. 

Sinkholing 

Sinkholing is a defensive technique in which researchers take control of malicious domains or infrastructure used by malware. Instead of allowing infected systems to communicate with attacker controlled C2 servers, the traffic is redirected to a researcher controlled server. This approach enables researchers to monitor infected hosts, collect telemetry, measure the scale and spread of a campaign. 

Key Findings 

• McAfee researchers identified a large-scale CountLoader campaign using multi-stage payload delivery and heavy obfuscation techniques. 
• Researchers successfully sinkholed malware communication using a backup C2 domain, enabling visibility into the campaign’s infrastructure and infected hosts. 
• The sinkhole received approximately 5,000 connections per minute from infected systems. 
• Telemetry collected during the investigation revealed around 86,000 unique infected machines. 
• The malware also spreads through USB drives, with approximately 9,000 infections attributed to removable media. 
• The final payload deployed in this campaign is cryptocurrency clipper malware that hijacks clipboard data to redirect cryptocurrency transactions. 

C2 Sinkholing and Geographical Prevalence  

As the malware contacts the C2 servers in the reverse order and only hell1-kitty[.]cc was used by attackers, we were able to register hell10-kitty[.]cc and were able to gain insights into the campaign. 

On average, around 5,000 infected clients contacted our server every minute. 

In total, we observed approximately 86,000 unique infections. 

Telemetry collected revealed that this CountLoader campaign has a broad global footprint. The highest number of infections were observed in India, followed by Indonesia, the United States, and several countries across Southeast Asia. 

Conclusion 

CountLoader is a multistage malware loader that uses obfuscated JavaScript and trusted Windows utilities to deliver additional payloads. It ensures persistence via scheduled tasks and uses multiple fallback C2 domains to maintain reliability. Malware employs in-memory execution and security bypass techniques to evade detection.  

In recent campaigns, it has been observed deploying cryptocurrency clipper malware to silently hijack transactions.  

McAfee Researchers identified a flaw in its communication mechanism and were able to exploit it to gain insights into the campaign. 

Technical Analysis 

The following diagram illustrates the complete infection chain used in this CountLoader campaign, from the initial execution to the deployment of the final payload. 

The infection begins when an EXE file is executed. This file launches a PowerShell command, which downloads and executes an obfuscated JavaScript loader known as CountLoader. The loader is executed using mshta.exe, a legitimate Windows utility often abused by malware to run scripts. 

Once executed, it performs several tasks: 

• Establishes persistence by creating a scheduled task that runs every 30 minutes. 

• Contacts multiple C2 servers, trying them in reverse order until a connection is successful. 

• Attempts to spread via USB drives by replacing files with malicious LNK shortcuts that execute the malware when opened. 

• Wait for the C2 server to issue commands to download and execute payloads. 

The payload execution chain consists of several stages: 

Launcher: A secondary JavaScript component creates another scheduled task that runs every 60 minutes, ensuring long term persistence. 

PowerShell Packer: The launcher executes an obfuscated PowerShell script that acts as a packer. This script decrypts and launches the next stage. 

Injector: The next PowerShell stage disables security mechanisms such as AMSI and injects shellcode into a legitimate process. 

Shellcode Execution: The injected shellcode unpacks the final payload directly in memory. 

Final Payload: The final payload is executed under the process systeminfo.exe. In this campaign, the deployed payload was identified as a cryptocurrency clipper malware, which monitors clipboard activity and replaces copied cryptocurrency wallet addresses with attacker controlled addresses. 

Stage 1– Exe 

The infection chain begins with the execution of a malicious EXE file, it immediately runs a PowerShell one-liner as shown in the below image. 

Stage 2 – PowerShell 

The PowerShell script fetched from the URL decodes a Base64-encoded string and executes the resulting content. It also employs an unusual obfuscation technique, where the variable names are crafted to resemble the highlighted pattern, making the script harder to read and analyze.

Multiple such variables are used to create a complete base64 string which is then decoded and executed through Invoke-Expression. 

Stage 3 – CountLoader 

The file is a HTA file with JavaScript that uses string obfuscation technique to evade detection. 

It starts by hiding the mshta window to ensure that the malicious activity runs silently in the background without alerting the user. 

The script then attempts to delete its own file in case it was executed locally. If the script determines that it is not being executed from a URL, it terminates immediately.  

Then the script tries to contact C2 servers, iterating through the list in reverse order.

A handshake process is performed to verify connectivity with the server. The client sends an encrypted “checkStatus” message, and the server responds with an encrypted “success” message if the connection is valid 

All communications between the client and the server are encrypted, with slightly different encryption schemes used for each direction: 

1. Client to Server:  text → (key+(base64encode(utf16le(xor(text, key))))) 
2. Server to Client:  text → (key+(base64encode(xor(text, key)))) 

The key is a randomly generated six digit number created for each message. 

If the handshake is successful, the corresponding domain is selected as the active C2 server, which is used for all subsequent communications. 

To maintain persistence on the infected system, the malware creates a scheduled task if one does not already exist. 

The scheduled task command line is slightly different if it detects CrowdStrike or Reason AV installed on the system, likely as an attempt to evade detection from these AVs. 

After establishing persistence, the malware gets a JWT token from the C2 server, which is used to authenticate further requests. 

The get_jwt_token function sends system information about the infected host to the server.

This includes details related to cryptocurrency usage, such as installed wallets and browser extensions, allowing the attackers to determine whether the victim is likely involved with cryptocurrency. 

Finally, the malware gets commands from the C2 server, which is then executed on the compromised system. 

Each command contains a taskType value that determines the action to be performed on the infected system. 

The table below shows the command codes and their actions. 

Code	Command
1	execute exe file
2	execute python file
3	execute dll file
4	uninstall itself
5	send domain info to C2
6	execute msi file
9	spread by infecting usb files
10	execute HTA file
11	execute powershell file

We observed two commands from the above list being sent to the malware as highlighted below: 

Spreading via USB drives (taskType – 9) 

When instructed by the C2 server to spread via USB drives, the malware replaces certain file types on all connected external drives with LNK shortcut files. These shortcuts are crafted so that when a user opens them, the malware executes while simultaneously opening the original file to avoid suspicion. 

Targeted file types are  exe , pdf , doc and docx. 

The build ID of the malware is appended with “_usb”. 

Deploying payload using powershell (taskType – 11) 

The CountLoader is capable of running many types of executable files, In this campaign, it deploys a separate execution chain that ultimately leads to a clipper malware. 

CountLoader launches the next stage using the following command line: 

Payload Launcher 

The Payload Launcher is very similar to CountLoader in terms of both functionality and obfuscation techniques. 

However, unlike CountLoader, which retrieves tasks from the C2 server, the launcher contains hard-coded task information. 

For persistence, it creates a scheduled task which executes  “mshata.exe {domain}/{name}“ every 60 minutes. 

In the task configuration: 

“url” specifies the url of the payload. 

“taskType” is set to 11, indicating that the payload should be executed as a PowerShell script. 

Powershell Packer 

The PowerShell script executed by the launcher acts as a simple packer. It is obfuscated using the same obfuscation technique mentioned earlier. Its primary function is to decrypt and execute another PowerShell script. 

Injector 

The next stage is another PowerShell script responsible for injecting shellcode into a running process. 

Before performing the injection, the script disables AMSI (Antimalware Scan Interface) using script from GitHub – S3cur3Th1sSh1t/Amsi-Bypass-Powershell.  

After disabling AMSI, the script executes code that performs shellcode injection, 

And injects in one of these legitimate processes: 

Shellcode 

The injected shellcode unpacks and loads the final payload directly into memory, 

Final Payload 

The payload observed in this campaign is a clipper malware. This type of malware changes cryptocurrency address in clipboard to that of attacker’s when user copies any address. 

It starts by fetching the C2 server address, which it gets by a technique called EtherHiding, where the C2 server address is fetched from Ethereum blockchain. 

Once the C2 server address is obtained, the malware begins reporting system activity to the server. 

It then continuously monitors the clipboard contents. 

McAfee Coverage 

McAfee provides extensive coverage against CountLoader:  

Trojan:Script/CountLoader4.DES
Trojan:Script/JSBackdoor.HELK!2
Trojan:Shortcut/LNKDownloader.HK
Trojan:Shortcut/Worm.HELK
Trojan:Script/ObfuPS.HELK
Trojan:Script/AMSIBypass.STS!1
Ti!5F9FF671955A
Ti!DC602CB53A9C

Indicators Of Compromise 

IOC
EXE (stage 1)	5f9ff671955a6d551595f9838aed063c496da5039be0d222fe84f96cb3e1d32a
PS url (stage 2)	https://memory-scanner[.]cc/Presentation[.]pdf
PS (stage 2)	3c278499c5e3ced3bf1a6a7287808c5267075f1dec0aa5c7be2c4c444f33f2bc
CountLoader download URLs	https://memory-scanner[.]cc/
	https://hell1-kitty[.]cc/update1_usb_usb_usb[.]VOcx4wEV8
CountLoader v3.3	c68e436d4cb984db026210806f50d0c81eec5f6e4860197dab91fab6f31ef796
CountLoader v4.1	e2faad8111e7d47349cbc549b85e62231b8678057906bc813aad7242fa95ae63
	e5e1d8ec4cd109df290752ee3d4b2cbc9de6df4360e9983548f1bc6b1d088540
CountLoader C2 Domains	hell1-kitty[.]cc
	alphazero1-endscape[.]cc
	api-microservice-us1[.]com
	bucket-aws-s1[.]com
	bucket-aws-s2[.]com
	fileless-storage-s3[.]cc
	globalsnn1-new[.]cc
	globalsnn2-new[.]cc
	globalsnn3-new[.]cc
	handle-me-sv1[.]com
	hardware-office[.]cc
	health-smooth-eu1[.]com
	health-smooth-eu2[.]com
	health-smooth-eu3[.]com
	holiday-updateservice[.]com
	memory-protection-layer1[.]cc
	memory-protection-layer2[.]cc
	microservice-update-s1-bucket[.]cc
	microservice-update-s2-bucket[.]cc
	my-smart-house1[.]com
	polystore9-servicebucket[.]cc
	s3-updatehub[.]cc
usb lnk files	10593dbe9edfde7943fdaadd7882f190216b2f6502667daf701088a6e810deaf
	0a69a9cc75d65774e5eb90a4a739bd4335d33b176dc4923acb691bd45af66bdf
	27c6a6bda2c0ef3ecb78dad9c6bb7c3abaf2e32b3ad96f372a0102c0c9c0f08d
	2cd449f1bb24f05d2e240812a74bd62f2583bbbe4d0ccc9ae5736240e29a0068
	30dcd5c71beb76d2f8df768d5fd9e9145cb8fbbfc951a63b969d26d3b64002b9
	dd4c7f5aae404816cf447b8090b620c1a1971a35c6791116aa3f871f00ae011b
	42a1fc74334c9a3b8720c79df55f84c7398bd31609eb10581e8c7155835498e3
	9c0d334aac5a6f66016dc5ce8df75c46d519a4e6d16c68cf2b1405c81189186d
	44f6313e9542c0d51937a70160fe4137012905d8c79ad27ccc0021788ecfaa4e
payload launcher url	https://hell1-kitty[.]cc/gamecenter[.]fileManager
	https://hardware-office[.]cc/foundation[.]halflife
payload launcher	cbdfb46b9265a3dfb3bc6b0aade472dde28b1660dbd3ded3b67b1530b4497cca
		packer url	http://45[.]156[.]87[.]118:3015/select
			http://45[.]156[.]87[.]62:3443/production
http://104[.]253[.]1[.]137/content
packer	4a5e1d6ee1217e1fbacf54fc6017fbf9d24a25078266b02358d56a9c7437ceb7
injector	05becb67d8bf1e49fcfccb0d346b82368a2b1c2bf07316078c364c7b020154de
shellcode	44daa1b68737b55a711963eec211c7c018bcba4cb6d68c286a4b45ea781a7d73
payload	dc602cb53a9c24abfcdaadf0ca8256b5fb5cac6d91d20ed8431bdaaf51c0cafe
payload C2	https://edr-security-bucket1[.]cc/

The post Sinkholing CountLoader: Insights into Its Recent Campaign appeared first on McAfee Blog.

If you have ever checked your child’s grades online, submitted a college paper through a school portal, downloaded homework assignments, or received messages from a teacher through a classroom app, there is a good chance you have used Canvas, a nationwide learning management system that was just in a massive data breach. 

This is exactly the moment McAfee+ Advanced was built for. With our built-in Scam Detector to flag risky links, QR codes, and deepfakes; Identity Monitoring that alerts you when your data appears where it shouldn’t; and Personal Data Cleanup that removes your information from the dark web and data brokers, McAfee+ Advanced is an all-in-one solution for protection after a data breach.

Now let’s get into what you need to know about this breach: 

Who Is Behind the Canvas Breach? 

The ransomware group ShinyHunters is claiming responsibility for the attack. The group alleges it stole roughly 275 million records tied to nearly 9,000 schools and educational institutions worldwide. 

How Did the Canvas Cyberattack Happen? 

Instructure, the company behind Canvas, confirmed a cyber incident affecting its cloud-hosted environment. The attackers later posted claims about the breach on their leak site, where ransomware groups pressure organizations into paying by threatening to release stolen data publicly. 

What Information Was Stolen in the Canvas Breach? 

The stolen data reportedly includes: 

• Student names  
• Teacher and staff names  
• Email addresses  
• Student IDs  
• Course and enrollment information  
• School-related records  

ShinyHunters claims the breach exposed roughly 275 million records and more than 231 million unique email addresses. 

How Could the Canvas Data Breach Impact Families and Students? 

Even if financial information was not exposed, this kind of data can still be extremely valuable to scammers. Criminals can use real school names, real classes, teacher names, and student information to create highly convincing phishing emails, fake school alerts, scholarship scams, tuition scams, or password reset messages. 

A scam message referencing your child’s actual school or assignment is much harder to spot as fake. 

This is a real message from Canvas from a community college professor after yours truly took an anthropology class for fun during the pandemic. It’s full of links to apply for programs and reach out to professors. It has exact details about courses I’ve taken.  

While this correspondence is real, it’s exactly the type of messaging that scammers could fake and replicate, replacing real links with fake “paid” opportunities to pursue degrees.  

Now think of the millions of messages and specific scenarios scammers have access to, to create dubious and convincing scams. That’s why protecting yourself after a breach is key.  

What To Do Right Now 

Here are some actions you can take immediately ot protect yourself after this breach:

• Change you or your child’s Canvas password immediately, and update any other accounts where they reuse that password 
• Turn on multi-factor authentication (2FA) on parent and student accounts wherever the school permits it — Instructure’s own post-incident guidance specifically called out enforcing MFA as a recommended precaution 
• Ask your school what identity protection is being offered if sensitive data was involved 
• Consider placing a credit freeze on your or your child’s file to block new accounts from being opened in their name 
• Avoid clicking links in any messages that reference the breach, go directly to the official site instead 

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And that, my friends, is issue number one in this week’s This Week in Scams. Let’s get into what else is on our radar in cybersecurity and scam news. 

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Fake Amazon Recall Texts Are Targeting Shoppers  

Your phone buzzes. It’s a text from an unknown number, but the message looks official. 

“Dear Amazon Customer, we are writing to inform you that an item from your March 2026 order has been identified for recall.” There’s an order number. A link at the top of the message. A note about quality standards and a refund waiting for you. 

It looks real. It has the Amazon logo, the branded formatting, even a reference to the “Amazon Customer Safety Team.” The only thing it doesn’t have? Any connection to Amazon at all. 

This is a fake Amazon recall scam, and it is making the rounds right now. The goal is to get you to click that link, which takes you to a site designed to harvest your login credentials, payment information, or both.  

If you get a text like this, do not click the link. Go directly to amazon.com in your browser, log in, and check your orders and messages from there. Amazon does not initiate recall or refund processes through unsolicited texts with outside links. 

What Is a Fake Amazon Recall Scam And How Does It Work? 

A fake Amazon recall scam is a text message or email in which criminals impersonate Amazon to convince you that one of your recent orders has been flagged for a product recall. The message directs you to an external link leading to a phishing site designed to steal your Amazon credentials, credit card details, or personal information. 

Red Flags To Watch For 

• The text comes from an unknown number, not a short code or verified sender 
• The link goes to a domain that is not amazon.com 
• The message asks you to complete a refund through an external link 
• Small typos or awkward phrasing appear in what looks like official communication 
• The greeting says “Dear Amazon Customer” rather than your actual name 

What To Do If You Get One 

• Do not click the link 
• Go to amazon.com directly and check your orders and account notifications 
• Report the text to Amazon at stop-spoofing@amazon.com 
• Block the number 

Where McAfee Steps In (So You Don’t Have to Guess)  

Scams today are layered.  A fake email leads to stolen credentials. A breach leads to targeted phishing. And those follow-ups are getting harder to spot.  

With McAfee+ Advanced, multiple layers work together so you’re not left figuring it out after the damage is done: 

• Identity Monitoring alerts you if your personal info shows up where it should not, so you can act fast  
• Personal Data Cleanup helps remove your information from sites selling it. 
• Scam Detector flags suspicious texts, emails, links, QR codes, and even deepfake videos before you engage  
• Safe Browsing helps block risky sites, even if you do accidentally click  
• Device Security helps detect malicious apps or downloads  
• Secure VPN keeps your data private, especially on public Wi-Fi    

McAfee Safety Tips This Week 

Our advice based on this week’s scams and stories: 

• If your child’s school uses Canvas, update their password now and enable multi-factor authentication if available 
• Consider a credit freeze for your child’s identity, especially if sensitive identifiers were part of the breach 
• Never click links in unsolicited texts about refunds, recalls, or account issues — go directly to the official site instead 
• Treat any message that references your recent orders or personal account details with extra skepticism, even if it looks legitimate 
• Use Scam Detector to check suspicious links before engaging, and stay alert in the weeks and months after a breach, not just the first few days 

And we’ll be back next week with more scams and cybersecurity news making headlines. 

The post How to Protect Yourself After the Canvas Education Data Breach + Fake Amazon Recall Texts appeared first on McAfee Blog.

An ongoing data extortion attack targeting the widely-used education technology platform Canvas disrupted classes and coursework at school districts and universities across the United States today, after a cybercrime group defaced the service’s login page with a ransom demand that threatened to leak data from 275 million students and faculty across nearly 9,000 educational institutions.

Canvas parent firm Instructure responded to today’s defacement attacks by disabling the platform, which is used by thousands of schools, universities and businesses to manage coursework and assignments, and to communicate with students.

Instructure acknowledged a data breach earlier this week, after the cybercrime group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility and said they would leak data on tens of millions of students and faculty unless paid a ransom. The stated deadline for payment was initially set at May 6, but it was later pushed back to May 12.

In a statement on May 6, Instructure said the investigation so far shows the stolen information includes “certain identifying information of users at affected institutions, such as names, email addresses, and student ID numbers, as well as as messages among users.” The company said it found no evidence the breached data included more sensitive information, such as passwords, dates of birth, government identifiers or financial information.

The May 6 update stated that Canvas was fully operational, and that Instructure was not seeing any ongoing unauthorized activity on their platform. “At this stage, we believe the incident has been contained,” Instructure wrote.

However, by mid-day on Thursday, May 7, students and faculty at dozens of schools and universities were flooding social media sites with comments saying that a ransom demand from ShinyHunters had replaced the usual Canvas login page. Instructure responded by pulling Canvas offline and replacing the portal with the message, “Canvas is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance. Check back soon.”

“We anticipate being up soon, and will provide updates as soon as possible,” reads the current message on Instructure’s status page.

While the data stolen by ShinyHunters may or may not contain particularly sensitive information (ShinyHunters claims it includes several billion private messages among students and teachers, as well as names, phone numbers and email addresses), this attack could hardly have come at a worse time for Instructure: Many of the affected schools and universities are in the middle of final exams, and a prolonged outage could be highly damaging for the company.

The extortion message that greeted countless Canvas users today advised the affected schools to negotiate their own ransom payments to prevent the publication of their data — regardless of whether Instructure decides to pay.

“ShinyHunters has breached Instructure (again),” the extortion message read. “Instead of contacting us to resolve it they ignored us and did some ‘security patches.'”

A source close to the investigation who was not authorized to speak to the press told KrebsOnSecurity that a number of universities have already approached the cybercrime group about paying. The same source also pointed out that the ShinyHunters data leak blog no longer lists Instructure among its current extortion victims, and that the samples of data stolen from Canvas customers were removed as well. Data extortion groups like ShinyHunters will typically only remove victims from their leak sites after receiving an extortion payment or after a victim agrees to negotiate.

Dipan Mann, founder and CEO of the security firm Cloudskope, slammed Instructure for referring to today’s outage as a “scheduled maintenance” event on its status page. Mann said Shiny Hunters first demonstrated they’d breached Instructure on May 1, prompting Instructure’s Chief Information Security Officer Steve Proud to declare the following day that the incident had been contained. But Mann said today’s attack is at least the third time in the past eight months that Instructure has been breached by ShinyHunters.

In a blog post today, Mann noted that in September 2025, ShinyHunters released thousands of internal University of Pennsylvania files — donor records, internal memos, and other confidential materials — through what the Daily Pennsylvanian and other outlets later determined was, in part, a Canvas/Instructure-mediated access path.

“Penn was the named victim,” Mann wrote. “Instructure was the mechanism. The incident was treated as a Penn-specific story by most of the national press and quietly handled by Instructure as a customer-specific matter. That framing was wrong then. It is dramatically more wrong in light of the May 2026 events, which now look like the planned escalation of an attack pattern that ShinyHunters had been working against Instructure’s environment for at least eight months prior. The September 2025 Penn breach was the proof of concept. The May 1, 2026 incident was the production run. The May 7, 2026 recompromise was ShinyHunters demonstrating publicly that the May 2 ‘containment’ did not happen.”

In February, a ShinyHunters spokesperson told The Daily Pennsylvanian that Penn failed to pay a $1 million ransom demand. On March 5, ShinyHunters published 461 megabytes worth of data stolen from Penn, including thousands of files such as donor records and internal memos.

ShinyHunters is a prolific and fluid cybercriminal group that specializes in data theft and extortion. They typically gain access to companies through voice phishing and social engineering attacks that often involve impersonating IT personnel or other trusted members of a targeted organization.

Last month, ShinyHunters relieved the home security giant ADT of personal information on 5.5 million customers. The extortion group told BleepingComputer they breached the company by compromising an employee’s Okta single sign-on account in a voice phishing attack that enabled access to ADT’s Salesforce instance. BleepingComputer says ShinyHunters recently has taken credit for a number of extortion attacks against high-profile organizations, including Medtronic, Rockstar Games, McGraw Hill, 7-Eleven and the cruise line operator Carnival.

The attack on Canvas customers is just one of several major cybercrime campaigns being launched by ShinyHunters at the moment, said Charles Carmakal, chief technology officer at the Google-owned Mandiant Consulting. Carmakal declined to comment specifically on the Canvas breach, but said “there are multiple concurrent and discrete ShinyHunters intrusion and extortion campaigns happening right now.”

Cloudskope’s Mann said what happens next depends largely on whether Instructure’s customers — the universities, K-12 districts, and education ministries paying for Canvas — choose to apply pressure or absorb the breach quietly.

“The history of education-vendor incidents suggests the path of least resistance is the second one,” he concluded.

Update, May 8, 11:05 a.m. ET: Instructure has published an incident update page that includes more information about the breach. Instructure said its Canvas portal is functioning normally again, and that the hackers exploited an issue related to Free-for-Teacher accounts.

“This is the same issue that led to the unauthorized access the prior week,” Instructure wrote. “As a result, we have made the difficult decision to temporarily shut down Free-for-Teacher accounts. These accounts have been a core part of our platform, and we’re committed to resolving the issues with these accounts.”

Instructure said affected organizations were notified on May 6.

“If your organization is affected, Instructure will contact your organization’s primary contacts directly,” the update states. “Please don’t rely on third-party lists or social media posts naming potentially affected organizations as those lists aren’t verified. Instructure will confirm validated information through direct outreach to all affected organizations.”

Update, May 11, 10:16 p.m. ET: Instructure posted an update saying they paid their extortionists in exchange for a promise to destroy the stolen data. “The data was returned to us,” the update reads. “We received digital confirmation of data destruction (shred logs). We have been informed that no Instructure customers will be extorted as a result of this incident, publicly or otherwise.”

Scam messages are getting smarter and faster. 

According to McAfee’s 2026 State of the Scamiverse report, Americans now spend 114 hours a year trying to figure out what’s real and what’s fake online. That’s nearly three full workweeks lost to second-guessing messages, alerts, and links. 

And when scams do succeed, they move quickly. The typical scam unfolds in about 38 minutes, leaving little room for hesitation. 

That creates a gap: People want to check before they act, but the tools haven’t always met them in that moment. 

ChatGPT + McAfee is designed to close that gap, bringing scam detection directly to a platform people are already using to ask questions and make decisions. 

And it’s available to anyone. You don’t have to be a McAfee subscriber. 

This isn’t just detection. It’s guidance in the exact moment you’re deciding what to do.  

Instead of guessing, you can paste a message or drop in a screenshot and get a clear explanation of what’s risky, and what to do next, powered by McAfee’s threat intelligence. 

What You Can Do with ChatGPT + McAfee 

With this integration, checking something suspicious becomes as simple as asking a question. 

Paste a message. Drop in a link. Upload a screenshot. 

McAfee analyzes it and explains what’s going on clearly and in context. 

Here’s how it works: 

Feature	What it does	How it protects you
Link safety check	Paste a suspicious URL and get a reputational analysis based on McAfee threat intelligence	Scam links are often designed to look legitimate. A quick check helps avoid phishing and malware
Message analysis	Submit texts, emails, or social messages for evaluation	Many scams now rely on urgency and tone. Analysis helps surface subtle red flags
Screenshot uploads	Upload screenshots of messages, emails, or posts for review	Scams don’t always come as clean text. This makes it easier to check what you’re actually seeing
Clear explanations	Get a breakdown of why something is flagged as risky or safe	Not just a warning—an explanation that helps you recognize patterns next time
Guided next steps	Receive recommendations on what to do next	Helps prevent escalation, especially in moments of uncertainty

It’s a quick, accessible way to get answers in the moment. But it’s just one part of a broader system designed to protect you more comprehensively. 

Add the app to your ChatGPT account here. 

Built on McAfee’s Threat Intelligence 

Behind the scenes, ChatGPT + McAfee is powered by the same intelligence that fuels McAfee’s broader scam protection ecosystem. 

When you submit something for review: 

• Links are checked against known threat signals  
• Messages are analyzed for scam patterns and language cues  
• Results are translated into clear, human-readable explanations  

The goal isn’t just to flag risk. It’s to help you understand it. 

A New Way to Stay Ahead of Scams 

Scams aren’t slowing down. If anything, they’re becoming more convincing, more personalized, and harder to detect. 

That’s where ChatGPT + McAfee comes in. But this is only one part of a much bigger system designed to protect you before, during, and after a scam attempt. 

With McAfee+ Advanced, multiple layers work together so you’re not left figuring it out after the damage is done: 

• Identity Monitoring alerts you if your personal info shows up where it should not, so you can act fast  
• Personal Data Cleanup helps remove your information from sites selling it. 
• Scam Detector flags suspicious texts, emails, links, QR codes, and even deepfake videos before you engage  
• Safe Browsing helps block risky sites, even if you do accidentally click  
• Device Security helps detect malicious apps or downloads  
• Secure VPN keeps your data private, especially on public Wi-Fi    

The ChatGPT experience gives you a fast, intuitive way to check something in the moment. 

McAfee+ Advanced makes sure you’re protected across everything else.

The post Now Available: Use ChatGPT with McAfee to Spot Scams Faster appeared first on McAfee Blog.

You’re scrolling through Facebook or TikTok and see it. 

A flash sale from a brand you recognize. A limited-time investment opportunity. A job posting that promises quick money. 

The ad has comments. The account looks polished. Maybe someone you follow even liked it. 

So you click. 

From there, things move fast. You’re pushed to act quickly, enter your information, or send payment before the “deal” disappears. And just like that, the money is gone or your account is compromised. 

This isn’t an edge case anymore. According to new FTC data, nearly 30% of people who reported losing money to a scam in 2025 said it started on social media, with total losses hitting $2.1 billion. 

That’s why McAfee+ Advanced includes comprehensive protection designed to help you spot and stop scams at every step, including McAfee’s Scam Detector, which flags suspicious links and messages and explains why they may be risky, along with identity and privacy tools that help protect your information if a scam slips through. 

How Social Media Ad Scams Work 

A social media ad scam is when scammers use paid ads, fake profiles, or hijacked accounts on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok to promote fake products, services, or investment opportunities in order to steal money or personal information. 

Step	What happens	What to do	How McAfee helps
1	You see an ad, post, or DM promoting a deal, job, or investment	Don’t engage immediately, even if it looks legitimate	Scam Detector flags suspicious links and messages before you interact
2	The ad links to a website or moves you into DMs	Avoid clicking unfamiliar links or continuing off-platform	Safe Browsing helps block risky or newly created websites
3	You’re pressured to act quickly or “secure your spot”	Slow down and verify the company independently	Scam Detector explains urgency tactics and why they’re risky
4	You’re asked to pay, share login info, or download something	Never send money or credentials based on a social media interaction	Identity Monitoring helps protect your personal data if exposed
5	The product never arrives, the investment disappears, or your account is compromised	Report the scam and secure your accounts immediately	Personal Data Cleanup and monitoring help reduce ongoing exposure

Red Flags To Watch For 

• Deals that feel unusually cheap or urgent  
• Ads linking to unfamiliar or slightly misspelled websites  
• Requests to move conversations off-platform quickly  
• Payment requests via apps, crypto, or wire transfer  
• Accounts with limited history or inconsistent engagement  

And that is the first part of This Week in Scams! This Friday we’re taking a different format to talk about this new FTC data and all that it reveals.  

Let’s keep digging in: 

FTC Report: Social Media Scams Are Now The Most Costly Fraud Channel 

New data from the FTC shows just how dominant social media has become in the scam landscape. 

• Social media scams drove $2.1 billion in reported losses in 2025  
• Losses have increased eightfold since 2020  
• Investment scams alone accounted for $1.1 billion of those losses 

Where Scams Are Happening And What’s Changing 

Category	What to know
Most common scams	Shopping scams lead, with over 40% of victims reporting purchases from social media ads that never arrived
Most costly scams	Investment scams drive the biggest losses, often starting with ads or group chats showing fake success
What’s changing	Scammers are using platform tools like ads, targeting, and profile data to reach people more precisely than ever

How Scams Play Out Across Platforms 

Platform	How scams typically start	What to watch for
Facebook	Ads, Marketplace listings, hacked accounts	Fake stores, duplicate listings, urgent purchase pressure
Instagram	Sponsored posts, influencer impersonation	“Limited drop” scams, fake brand collaborations
TikTok	Ads, stolen videos/profiles, comment links, bio links,	“Get rich quick” schemes, external link funnels, reselling via TikTok
WhatsApp	Group chats, investment communities	Fake testimonials, coordinated pressure to invest

 How McAfee Protects You from Scams and Cyber Threats 

McAfee+ Advanced gives you multiple layers working together so you are not left figuring it out after the damage is done:   

• Identity Monitoring alerts you if your personal info shows up where it should not, so you can act fast  
• Personal Data Cleanup helps remove your information from data broker sites, making you harder to target in the first place  
• Scam Detector flags suspicious texts, emails, links, and even deepfake videos before you engage  
• Safe Browsing helps block risky sites if you do click  
• Device Security helps detect malicious apps or downloads  
• Secure VPN keeps your data private, especially on public Wi-Fi    

McAfee Safety Tips This Week 

Our advice based on this week’s scams and schemes: 

• Treat social media ads like any other unknown source, not a trusted recommendation  
• Pause before clicking, especially when urgency is involved  
• Verify brands by going directly to their official website  
• Avoid sending money or personal information through social media  
• Use tools like Scam Detector to check suspicious links before engaging  

And we’ll be back next week with more scams making headlines.

The post Ad Impersonation Scams and Record-Breaking Social Media Fraud Losses: This Week in Scams appeared first on McAfee Blog.

A new scam making the rounds takes a familiar delivery trick and upgrades it with hyper‑realistic messaging and a QR code that looks safe to scan. 

But don’t be fooled. 

It’s the same delivery scam playbook scammers have relied on for years, just repackaged with better design and more convincing details. 

You get a message with a notice that looks something like this, a real message received by our team and tested against McAfee’s Scam Detector. 

 

That added layer of realism is what makes this version more dangerous. But it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. McAfee’s Scam Detector flagged both the suspicious language and the QR code in this message before any interaction. 

If you receive something like this, pause. Do not scan the code. 

You can also protect yourself with McAfee’s Scam Detector, which flags suspicious links and messages, including delivery scams and QR‑based attacks, and explains why they may be risky. 

What is the USPS QR Code Scam and How Does it Work? 

The USPS QR code scam is a phishing attempt where scammers impersonate postal services and use QR codes instead of clickable links to direct victims to malicious websites. 

Once scanned, the QR code can lead to a fake USPS page that asks for payment, login credentials, or personal information. 

How the scam works 

Step	What happens	The red flags	What to do	How McAfee helps
1	You receive a text about a delivery issue or missed package	Urgency, you’re not tracking a package	Be skeptical of unsolicited delivery messages	Scam Detector flags suspicious messages
2	The message includes a QR code instead of a link	QR codes instead of official tracking links  is a red flag	Do not scan QR codes from unknown sources	QR scanning protection warns before opening risky destinations
3	You scan the code and land on a fake USPS page	Generic or slightly off branding on the webpage	Do not enter any information	Safe Browsing blocks known malicious sites
4	The page asks for payment or personal details	Requests for small “redelivery” or “processing” fees  are not normal	Exit immediately and do not submit anything	Scam Detector explains why the page is risky, and Identity Monitoring supports you when if your info gets out.

What To Do If You Get This Message 

• Do not scan the QR code  
• Go directly to the official USPS website to check tracking  
• Delete the message  
• Report it as spam  
• Monitor your accounts if you interacted with it  

And that, my friends, is scam number one in this week’s This Week in Scams. 

Let’s get into what else is on our radar. 

A Major Health Data Breach Exposes 500,000 Records 

A massive health data incident is raising new concerns about how sensitive information is handled and shared. 

According to reporting from the Associated Press, data tied to 500,000 participants in a major U.K. health research project was found listed for sale online. The dataset included biological and health-related information, though it did not contain direct identifiers like names or contact details. 

Access to the data had been granted to research institutions, but that access has since been revoked. Authorities say no purchases were made, and the listing has been removed. 

Still, the situation highlights a growing reality: once data is accessed or shared, control over it becomes harder to guarantee. 

What This Breach Says About Data Privacy 

Scams are no longer isolated events. They are layered. 

A data breach does not just stay a breach. It becomes fuel for future scams. Exposed information can be used to make phishing messages more convincing, personalize attacks, and build trust with targets. 

That is why detection alone is not enough anymore. Protection has to account for both incoming threats and what happens when data is already out there. 

How McAfee Protects You In A World of Scams and Data Breaches  

McAfee+ Advanced gives you multiple layers working together so you are not left figuring it out after the damage is done:  

• Identity Monitoring alerts you if your personal info shows up where it should not, so you can act fast 
• Personal Data Cleanup helps remove your information from data broker sites, making you harder to target in the first place 
• Scam Detector flags suspicious texts, emails, links, and even deepfake videos before you engage 
• Safe Browsing helps block risky sites if you do click 
• Device Security helps detect malicious apps or downloads 
• Secure VPN keeps your data private, especially on public Wi-Fi   

McAfee Safety Tips This Week  

As always, we have some best practices and safety tips for navigating life online:  

• Pause before clicking, especially when a message creates urgency   
• Go directly to websites or apps instead of using email links   
• Be skeptical of routine account alerts that push immediate action   
• Double-check sender addresses and URLs closely   
• Use tools like McAfee’s Scam Detector to flag suspicious links and messages before interacting   
• Turn on identity monitoring so you’re alerted if your data is exposed  

And we’ll be back next week with more scams making headlines.

The post Fake USPS QR Code Text Scams and a Major Health Data Breach: This Week in Scams appeared first on McAfee Blog.

Co-Authored by Luiz Parente 

Your data might be safe today. But that doesn’t mean it’s safe forever. 

A growing number of sophisticated actors are collecting encrypted data now, with the goal of decrypting it later, when more powerful technology becomes available. 

This strategy is known as Harvest Now, Decrypt Later (HNDL). And it’s not a future problem. It’s already happening, according to research from our McAfee VPN team. 

For everyday people, that means private messages, financial records, and sensitive documents could be exposed years from now if protections don’t evolve today. 

That’s why security teams, including McAfee’s VPN engineers, are already working on ways to strengthen encryption for both today and what comes next. 

What “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” Means 

At its core, HNDL is simple: Attackers collect encrypted data now, store it, and wait until they have the tools to unlock it later. 

Even though today’s encryption is incredibly strong, the strategy doesn’t rely on breaking it today. It relies on patience.  

A Simple Way to Think About It 

You put valuable belongings and documents in a safe at home that’s locked and secured. This works at preventing crimes of opportunity. But let’s say there’s a thief who steals the entire safe, knowing they have tools they can use later to access what’s inside. They wait, and once the tools are available, they break into your safe and access everything inside. 

That’s one way to think of HNDL. The safe is the encryption. The quantum computing is the tool they can use later.  

But in real life, you’d probably notice if your safe is gone. In the case of HNDL, if you’re not monitoring your data, you may not even notice encrypted information has been stolen to be decrypted.  

Key Terms Explained 

Term	What it means
Encryption	Scrambling data so others can’t read it
Quantum computing	A new type of computing that can break some encryption
HNDL	A strategy to collect encrypted data now and decrypt it later

Why This Matters Right Now 

This isn’t about whether your data is valuable today. It’s about whether it might be valuable later. 

Data with a long shelf life is especially at risk, including: 

• Financial records  
• Medical information  
• Private messages  
• Legal or identity documents  

Even something that feels low-stakes today could become sensitive in the future. 

And because the collection phase is already happening, the risk isn’t hypothetical. It’s already in motion. 

How This Affects VPNs (and what doesn’t change) 

VPNs remain one of the most effective ways to protect your data today. That hasn’t changed. 

But HNDL introduces a new layer of complexity. 

• What’s still strong: The encryption that protects your data in transit remains highly resilient.  
• Where the risk is: The “handshake” process (how a secure connection is established) is more vulnerable to future quantum attacks.  

In simple terms: Your data is well protected today, but parts of how that protection is set up may need to evolve for the future. 

What Quantum Computing Changes 

Traditional computers process information in a linear way. 

Quantum computers work differently. They can solve certain types of problems much faster, including the kinds of mathematical challenges that protect today’s encryption. 

That’s why attackers are willing to wait. 

Once quantum computing reaches a certain level, it could unlock data that was previously considered secure. 

What McAfee’s VPN Team is Working On 

McAfee’s VPN team is already preparing for this shift. 

• Evaluating quantum-safe encryption approaches  
• Exploring hybrid models that protect both now and long-term  
• Building toward a more resilient VPN experience  

This work builds on a broader privacy-by-design approach, where systems are designed to minimize risk from the start, not react after the fact. 

Because with HNDL, waiting isn’t an option. 

What You Can Do Now 

You don’t need to wait for quantum computing to take steps today. 

• Use a trusted VPN to encrypt your connection  
• Be mindful of long-term sensitive data you share online  
• Avoid unsecured public Wi-Fi when possible  
• Keep your apps and devices updated  

These steps help protect your data now while the industry builds toward future-ready security. 

How McAfee Helps Protect You 

McAfee+ Advanced gives you multiple layers working together so you are not left figuring it out after the damage is done:  

• Identity Monitoring alerts you if your personal info shows up where it should not, so you can act fast 
• Personal Data Cleanup helps remove your information from data broker sites, making you harder to target in the first place 
• Scam Detector flags suspicious texts, emails, links, and even deepfake videos before you engage 
• Safe Browsing helps block risky sites if you do click 
• Device Security helps detect malicious apps or downloads 
• Secure VPN keeps your data private, especially on public Wi-Fi   

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) 

FAQ

Q: Is my data safe right now?   A: In most cases, yes—today’s encryption is extremely strong and is designed to protect your data from current threats. If you’re using trusted security tools like a VPN, safe browsing protections, and device security, your data is actively protected while it’s in transit and in use. However, no system is risk-free. Data exposed through phishing, weak passwords, breaches, or unsecured networks may still be vulnerable. And with “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later,” even properly encrypted data could be collected today and targeted for decryption in the future.

Q: What is quantum-safe encryption?  A: Quantum-safe (or post-quantum) encryption refers to new types of cryptography designed to remain secure even against future quantum computers. Today’s encryption relies on math problems that are extremely difficult for classical computers to solve, but quantum computers could eventually solve some of them much faster. Quantum-safe approaches use different mathematical foundations that are believed to resist those capabilities. In practice, many companies are moving toward hybrid encryption, combining today’s proven methods with newer quantum-resistant techniques to protect data both now and long-term.

Q: Should I still use a VPN?  A: Yes. A VPN remains one of the most effective ways to protect your data today, especially on public or unsecured networks. It encrypts your internet traffic and helps prevent interception by hackers, internet providers, or other third parties. While VPN protocols are evolving to address future quantum risks, they still provide strong, essential protection against today’s threats.

Q: When will this become a real threat?  A: The risk unfolds in two phases. The collection phase is already happening today, where sophisticated actors gather encrypted data and store it. The decryption phase depends on when quantum computing advances far enough to break certain types of encryption, which could take years but is actively progressing. This means data with a long lifespan, such as financial records, personal communications, and sensitive documents, is most at risk because it only needs to remain valuable until those capabilities exist.

The post Why Hackers Are Collecting Data They Can’t Read Yet. And How to Stay Safe appeared first on McAfee Blog.

A 24-year-old British national and senior member of the cybercrime group “Scattered Spider” has pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft. Tyler Robert Buchanan admitted his role in a series of text-message phishing attacks in the summer of 2022 that allowed the group to hack into at least a dozen major technology companies and steal tens of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency from investors.

Buchanan’s hacker handle “Tylerb” once graced a leaderboard in the English-language criminal hacking scene that tracked the most accomplished cyber thieves. Now in U.S. custody and awaiting sentencing, the Dundee, Scotland native is facing the possibility of more than 20 years in prison.

Scattered Spider is the name given to a prolific English-speaking cybercrime group known for using social engineering tactics to break into companies and steal data for ransom, often impersonating employees or contractors to deceive IT help desks into granting access.

As part of his guilty plea, Buchanan admitted conspiring with other Scattered Spider members to launch tens of thousands of SMS-based phishing attacks in 2022 that led to intrusions at a number of technology companies, including Twilio, LastPass, DoorDash, and Mailchimp.

The group then used data stolen in those breaches to carry out SIM-swapping attacks that siphoned funds from individual cryptocurrency investors. In an unauthorized SIM-swap, crooks transfer the target’s phone number to a device they control and intercept any text messages or phone calls to the victim’s device — such as one-time passcodes for authentication and password reset links sent via SMS. The U.S. Justice Department said Buchanan admitted to stealing at least $8 million in virtual currency from individual victims throughout the United States.

FBI investigators tied Buchanan to the 2022 SMS phishing attacks after discovering the same username and email address was used to register numerous phishing domains seen in the campaign. The domain registrar NameCheap found that less than a month before the phishing spree, the account that registered those domains logged in from an Internet address in the U.K. FBI investigators said the Scottish police told them the address was leased to Buchanan throughout 2022.

As first reported by KrebsOnSecurity, Buchanan fled the United Kingdom in February 2023, after a rival cybercrime gang hired thugs to invade his home, assault his mother, and threaten to burn him with a blowtorch unless he gave up the keys to his cryptocurrency wallet. That same year, U.K. investigators found a device at Buchanan’s Scotland residence that included data stolen from SMS phishing victims and seed phrases from cryptocurrency theft victims.

Buchanan was arrested by Spanish authorities in June 2024 while trying to board a flight to Italy. He was extradited to the United States and has remained in U.S. federal custody since April 2025.

Buchanan is the second known Scattered Spider member to plead guilty. Noah Michael Urban, 21, of Palm Coast, Fla., was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison last year and ordered to pay $13 million in restitution. Three other alleged co-conspirators — Ahmed Hossam Eldin Elbadawy, 24, a.k.a. “AD,” of College Station, Texas; Evans Onyeaka Osiebo, 21, of Dallas, Texas; and Joel Martin Evans, 26, a.k.a. “joeleoli,” of Jacksonville, North Carolina – still face criminal charges.

Two other alleged Scattered Spider members will soon be tried in the United Kingdom. Owen Flowers, 18, and Thalha Jubair, 20, are facing charges related to the hacking and extortion of several large U.K. retailers, the London transit system, and healthcare providers in the United States. Both have pleaded not guilty, and their trial is slated to begin in June.

Investigators say the Scattered Spider suspects are part of a sprawling cybercriminal community online known as “The Com,” wherein hackers from different cliques boast publicly on Telegram and Discord about high-profile cyber thefts that almost invariably begin with social engineering — tricking people over the phone, email or SMS into giving away credentials that allow remote access to corporate internal networks.

One of the more popular SIM-swapping channels on Telegram has long maintained a leaderboard of the most rapacious SIM-swappers, indexed by their supposed conquests in stealing cryptocurrency. That leaderboard previously listed Buchanan’s hacker alias Tylerb at #65 (out of 100 hackers), with Urban’s moniker “Sosa” coming in at #24.

Buchanan’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for August 21, 2026. According to the Justice Department, he faces a statutory maximum sentence of 22 years in federal prison. However, any sentence the judge hands down in this case may be significantly tempered by a number of mitigating factors in the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, including the defendant’s age, criminal history, time already served in U.S. custody, and the degree to which they cooperated with federal authorities.

You open your inbox and see it: Your cloud storage is full. 

There’s a warning about photos being deleted, your account being suspended, or a renewal failing. There’s a button to “fix it now.” Or a warning to “act today.” 

It looks routine. Maybe even urgent enough to click. 

That’s exactly the point. 

Cloud storage scams are making headlines again, building on patterns we flagged earlier this year in our State of the Scamiverse research.  

These emails have circulated steadily since 2025, often impersonating trusted brands like Apple, Microsoft, and Google. Many are timed to moments when people are already thinking about storage, backups, or subscriptions. 

The safest move is simple: pause and don’t click. If there’s a real issue, go directly to your account through the official app or website. 

You can also protect yourself with McAfee’s Scam Detector, which flags suspicious links and messages, including cloud storage scams, and explains why they may be risky. 

What Is A Cloud Storage Scam And How Does It Work? 

Cloud storage scams are phishing attacks designed to trick you into believing there’s an issue with your account so you’ll click a malicious link.

They often look like this, and include 3 key red flags:  

• Messages that create urgency like “act now or lose your data”  
• Generic greetings instead of your name  
• Links that don’t match the official domain  

How the scam works (step-by-step) 

Step	What happens	What to do	How McAfee helps
1. You receive a message	Email or text claims your storage is full or your account has an issue	Don’t click links directly from the message	Scam Detector flags suspicious messages before you interact
2. Urgency is introduced	Warning that files or photos will be deleted if you don’t act	Pause. Urgency is a red flag	Scam Detector identifies pressure-based scam patterns
3. You’re pushed to a link	Link mimics a real login or billing page	Go directly to the official website instead	Safe browsing tools help block malicious sites
4. You’re asked for info	Login credentials or payment details requested	Never enter info from a link you didn’t verify	Scam Detector explains why a page or link is risky
5. Data is captured	Scammers collect your data or payment	Monitor accounts and report suspicious activity	Identity monitoring alerts you if your data is exposed

 Why This Scam Works 

• Familiar brands: Messages often appear to come from trusted platforms like Apple iCloud or Google Drive  
• Emotional pressure: The threat of losing photos or files triggers quick decisions  
• Routine context: Storage alerts feel normal, so people don’t question them  

And that, my friends, is scam number one in this week’s This Week in Scams. 

Let’s get into what else is on our radar. 

FBI Report: Over $20 Billion Lost to Scams in 2025

New data from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (ICC) shows just how large the scam economy has become. 

In 2025 alone: 

• Americans reported over $20.8 billion in losses  
• More than 1 million complaints were filed  
• That’s roughly 3,000 complaints per day  

This is where layered protection matters. It’s not just about catching one bad link. It’s about recognizing patterns across messages, platforms, and moments when something feels slightly off. 

How McAfee Protects You From Scams and Cyber Threats 

McAfee+ Advanced gives you multiple layers working together so you are not left figuring it out after the damage is done:  

• Identity Monitoring alerts you if your personal info shows up where it should not, so you can act fast 
• Personal Data Cleanup helps remove your information from data broker sites, making you harder to target in the first place 
• Scam Detector flags suspicious texts, emails, links, and even deepfake videos before you engage 
• Safe Browsing helps block risky sites if you do click 
• Device Security helps detect malicious apps or downloads 
• Secure VPN keeps your data private, especially on public Wi-Fi   

McAfee Safety Tips This Week 

As always, we have some best practices and safety tips for navigating life online: 

• Pause before clicking, especially when a message creates urgency  
• Go directly to websites or apps instead of using email links  
• Be skeptical of routine account alerts that push immediate action  
• Double-check sender addresses and URLs closely  
• Use tools like McAfee’s Scam Detector to flag suspicious links and messages before interacting  
• Turn on identity monitoring so you’re alerted if your data is exposed 

And we’ll be back next week with more scams making headlines. 

The post Cloud Storage Scam Emails and Record-Breaking Fraud Losses: This Week in Scams  appeared first on McAfee Blog.

Emails claiming to be from Social Security are making the rounds right now. 

They look official. They sound official. And they’re designed to get you to click before you think twice. 

The Social Security Administration’s Office of Inspector General is warning about a spike in messages that claim your Social Security statement is ready to download. The goal is simple. Get you to click a link or open an attachment. 

From there, things can go sideways fast. 

Before interacting with anything like this, it’s worth pausing and running it through a tool like McAfee’s Scam Detector. This is exactly the kind of message it’s built to flag. Something that looks legitimate, but feels just slightly off. 

How The Scam Works 

The email mimics official government communication, using logos, formatting, and language that feels familiar. It might say your statement is ready, your account needs attention, or you need to review a document. 

Once you click: 

• You may be sent to a fake website designed to capture your personal information  
• You may download malware without realizing it  
• Or you may be prompted to enter sensitive financial details  
• Either way, the goal is the same: get access to your identity. 

The Red Flags In These Emails 

• Messages claiming your social security statement is ready to download  
• Links or attachments labeled as official documents  
• Urgency pushing you to act quickly  
• Sender addresses that do not end in “.Gov”  

The biggest tell: Social Security does not send emails like this asking you to download statements or provide sensitive information. 

What To Do If You Get One 

• Do not click links or download attachments  
• Delete the email immediately  
• Access your account by going directly to the official SSA website  
• Report the message to the SSA Office of Inspector General  

If you already clicked: 

• Stop communication immediately  
• Contact your financial institutions  
• Monitor your accounts closely  
• Report the incident to the FTC or the FBI’s IC3  

And that, my friends, is scam number one in this week’s This Week in Scams. 

Let’s get into what else is on our radar. 

A Healthcare Data Breach That Could Lead to Follow-Up Scams 

Healthcare data breaches don’t always make headlines the same way big tech breaches do, but they can be just as serious. 

According to reporting from Fox News, CareCloud, a company that supports electronic health records for tens of thousands of providers, recently confirmed a security incident involving unauthorized access to one of its systems.  

The access lasted several hours. And while it’s still unclear whether any data was taken, that uncertainty is exactly what makes situations like this risky. 

Because even if you’ve never heard of the company, your doctor might use it. 

Why This Matters 

Healthcare data is incredibly valuable. It can include: 

• Names and social security numbers  
• Insurance details  
• Medical history  
• Billing information  

Unlike a credit card, you can’t just cancel your medical history. 

And when that kind of data is exposed or even potentially exposed, scammers often follow up with messages that feel highly specific and personal. 

What To Watch For Next 

After incidents like this, scammers often move quickly: 

• Emails or texts pretending to be your provider  
• Messages about billing issues or medical records  
• Requests to “verify” your information  
• Links to log in or update your account  

These scams work because they’re timed perfectly and feel relevant. 

This is another moment where Scam Detector can help flag suspicious links or messages before you engage, even when they reference real healthcare providers. 

How To Protect Yourself 

• Review medical bills and insurance statements for unfamiliar activity  
• Enable two-factor authentication on patient portals  
• Use strong, unique passwords  
• Avoid clicking links in unexpected healthcare-related messages  
• Consider identity monitoring to catch misuse early  

Where McAfee Steps In (So You Don’t Have to Guess) 

Scams today are layered. 

A fake email leads to stolen credentials. A breach leads to targeted phishing. And those follow-ups are getting harder to spot. 

McAfee+ Advanced gives you multiple layers working together so you are not left figuring it out after the damage is done: 

• Identity Monitoring alerts you if your personal info shows up where it should not, so you can act fast
• Personal Data Cleanup helps remove your information from data broker sites, making you harder to target in the first place
• Scam Detector flags suspicious texts, emails, links, and even deepfake videos before you engage
• Safe Browsing helps block risky sites if you do click
• Device Security helps detect malicious apps or downloads
• Secure VPN keeps your data private, especially on public Wi-Fi  

Safety Tips To Carry Into Next Week 

• Be cautious of emails that look official but create urgency  
• Never trust unsolicited messages asking for personal or financial information  
• Go directly to official websites instead of clicking links  
• Stay alert after any breach or security incident makes headlines  
• Use tools like McAfee that help you verify what’s real before you act  

Because the reality is, scams are designed to look legitimate. You shouldn’t have to figure it out on your own. We’re safer together. 

We’ll be back next week with more scams making headlines. 

The post Social Security Scam Emails and a Healthcare Data Breach: This Week in Scams appeared first on McAfee Blog.

We’re excited to share that McAfee’s Scam Detector has been named a finalist in the 2026 Webby Awards. 

Recognized in the AI Experiences & Applications – Consumer Application category and named a Webby Honoree for Best Use of AI & Machine Learning, Scam Detector is being acknowledged for its effectiveness as an AI-driven consumer tool. 

This recognition of Scam Detector validates something key in research findings. According to McAfee’s 2026 State of the Scamiverse report, Americans now spend 114 hours a year trying to decide what’s real and what’s fake online. 

Scam Detector was built with this era of uncertainty in mind, designed to help people cut through confusion and identify scams as they appear. The Webby recognition reinforces to us that McAfee’s Scam Detector is doing exactly that. 

What Are the Webby Awards? 

The Webby Awards are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences and recognize excellence across the internet, including apps, software, AI, and digital experiences. 

Each year, thousands of entries are evaluated, with finalists representing the top work in their category globally. 

In addition to judged awards, the Webby Awards include a People’s Voice Award, which is decided by public vote. 

How McAfee’s Scam Detector Uses AI to Stop Scams 

Scam Detector is designed to help people identify scams where they’re most likely to happen, always ready to help you spot what’s real and what’s not when you least expect it. 

It uses AI to analyze and flag suspicious: 

• Text messages and emails  
• Links and websites  
• QR codes  
• Social media messages  
• AI-generated and deepfake content  

Beyond detection, Scam Detector explains why something was flagged as risky. That transparency helps show how decisions are made, so people can quickly understand the risk and feel more confident trusting what’s flagged.

As scams become more personalized and harder to detect, this combination of automatic detection and clear guidance is critical to preventing financial loss and identity theft. 

Vote for McAfee’s Scam Detector 

Scam Detector is eligible for the Webby People’s Voice Award, which is decided by public vote. 

If you would like to support McAfee’s Scam Detector, you can vote here: https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/ai/ai-experiences-applications/consumer-application 

Voting is open through Thursday, April 16 at 11:59 pm PDT. 

Winners will be announced on April 21, 2026. 

And a big thank you to the McAfee teams who brought Scam Detector to life and who continuously improve how Scam Detector identifies new threats and adapts to the evolving world of AI-driven scams. 

The post McAfee’s Scam Detector Named Webby Awards Finalist for AI Innovation appeared first on McAfee Blog.

Hackers linked to Russia’s military intelligence units are using known flaws in older Internet routers to mass harvest authentication tokens from Microsoft Office users, security experts warned today. The spying campaign allowed state-backed Russian hackers to quietly siphon authentication tokens from users on more than 18,000 networks without deploying any malicious software or code.

Microsoft said in a blog post today it identified more than 200 organizations and 5,000 consumer devices that were caught up in a stealthy but remarkably simple spying network built by a Russia-backed threat actor known as “Forest Blizzard.”

Also known as APT28 and Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard is attributed to the military intelligence units within Russia’s General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). APT 28 famously compromised the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2016 in an attempt to interfere with the U.S. presidential election.

Researchers at Black Lotus Labs, a security division of the Internet backbone provider Lumen, found that at the peak of its activity in December 2025, Forest Blizzard’s surveillance dragnet ensnared more than 18,000 Internet routers that were mostly unsupported, end-of-life routers, or else far behind on security updates. A new report from Lumen says the hackers primarily targeted government agencies—including ministries of foreign affairs, law enforcement, and third-party email providers.

Black Lotus Security Engineer Ryan English said the GRU hackers did not need to install malware on the targeted routers, which were mainly older Mikrotik and TP-Link devices marketed to the Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) market. Instead, they used known vulnerabilities to modify the Domain Name System (DNS) settings of the routers to include DNS servers controlled by the hackers.

As the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) notes in a new advisory detailing how Russian cyber actors have been compromising routers, DNS is what allows individuals to reach websites by typing familiar addresses, instead of associated IP addresses. In a DNS hijacking attack, bad actors interfere with this process to covertly send users to malicious websites designed to steal login details or other sensitive information.

English said the routers attacked by Forest Blizzard were reconfigured to use DNS servers that pointed to a handful of virtual private servers controlled by the attackers. Importantly, the attackers could then propagate their malicious DNS settings to all users on the local network, and from that point forward intercept any OAuth authentication tokens transmitted by those users.

Because those tokens are typically transmitted only after the user has successfully logged in and gone through multi-factor authentication, the attackers could gain direct access to victim accounts without ever having to phish each user’s credentials and/or one-time codes.

“Everyone is looking for some sophisticated malware to drop something on your mobile devices or something,” English said. “These guys didn’t use malware. They did this in an old-school, graybeard way that isn’t really sexy but it gets the job done.”

Microsoft refers to the Forest Blizzard activity as using DNS hijacking “to support post-compromise adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) attacks on Transport Layer Security (TLS) connections against Microsoft Outlook on the web domains.” The software giant said while targeting SOHO devices isn’t a new tactic, this is the first time Microsoft has seen Forest Blizzard using “DNS hijacking at scale to support AiTM of TLS connections after exploiting edge devices.”

Black Lotus Labs engineer Danny Adamitis said it will be interesting to see how Forest Blizzard reacts to today’s flurry of attention to their espionage operation, noting that the group immediately switched up its tactics in response to a similar NCSC report (PDF) in August 2025. At the time, Forest Blizzard was using malware to control a far more targeted and smaller group of compromised routers. But Adamitis said the day after the NCSC report, the group quickly ditched the malware approach in favor of mass-altering the DNS settings on thousands of vulnerable routers.

“Before the last NCSC report came out they used this capability in very limited instances,” Adamitis told KrebsOnSecurity. “After the report was released they implemented the capability in a more systemic fashion and used it to target everything that was vulnerable.”

TP-Link was among the router makers facing a complete ban in the United States. But on March 23, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took a much broader approach, announcing it would no longer certify consumer-grade Internet routers that are produced outside of the United States.

The FCC warned that foreign-made routers had become an untenable national security threat, and that poorly-secured routers present “a severe cybersecurity risk that could be leveraged to immediately and severely disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure and directly harm U.S. persons.”

Experts have countered that few new consumer-grade routers would be available for purchase under this new FCC policy (besides maybe Musk’s Starlink satellite Internet routers, which are produced in Texas). The FCC says router makers can apply for a special “conditional approval” from the Department of War or Department of Homeland Security, and that the new policy does not affect any previously-purchased consumer-grade routers.

An elusive hacker who went by the handle “UNKN” and ran the early Russian ransomware groups GandCrab and REvil now has a name and a face. Authorities in Germany say 31-year-old Russian Daniil Maksimovich Shchukin headed both cybercrime gangs and helped carry out at least 130 acts of computer sabotage and extortion against victims across the country between 2019 and 2021.

Shchukin was named as UNKN (a.k.a. UNKNOWN) in an advisory published by the German Federal Criminal Police (the “Bundeskriminalamt” or BKA for short). The BKA said Shchukin and another Russian — 43-year-old Anatoly Sergeevitsch Kravchuk — extorted nearly $2 million euros across two dozen cyberattacks that caused more than 35 million euros in total economic damage.

Germany’s BKA said Shchukin acted as the head of one of the largest worldwide operating ransomware groups GandCrab and REvil, which pioneered the practice of double extortion — charging victims once for a key needed to unlock hacked systems, and a separate payment in exchange for a promise not to publish stolen data.

Shchukin’s name appeared in a Feb. 2023 filing (PDF) from the U.S. Justice Department seeking the seizure of various cryptocurrency accounts associated with proceeds from the REvil ransomware gang’s activities. The government said the digital wallet tied to Shchukin contained more than $317,000 in ill-gotten cryptocurrency.

The GandCrab ransomware affiliate program first surfaced in January 2018, and paid enterprising hackers huge shares of the profits just for hacking into user accounts at major corporations. The GandCrab team would then try to expand that access, often siphoning vast amounts of sensitive and internal documents in the process. The malware’s curators shipped five major revisions to the GandCrab code, each corresponding with sneaky new features and bug fixes aimed at thwarting the efforts of computer security firms to stymie the spread of the malware.

On May 31, 2019, the GandCrab team announced the group was shutting down after extorting more than $2 billion from victims. “We are a living proof that you can do evil and get off scot-free,” GandCrab’s farewell address famously quipped. “We have proved that one can make a lifetime of money in one year. We have proved that you can become number one by general admission, not in your own conceit.”

The REvil ransomware affiliate program materialized around the same as GandCrab’s demise, fronted by a user named UNKNOWN who announced on a Russian cybercrime forum that he’d deposited $1 million in the forum’s escrow to show he meant business. By this time, many cybersecurity experts had concluded REvil was little more than a reorganization of GandCrab.

UNKNOWN also gave an interview to Dmitry Smilyanets, a former malicious hacker hired by Recorded Future, wherein UNKNOWN described a rags-to-riches tale unencumbered by ethics and morals.

“As a child, I scrounged through the trash heaps and smoked cigarette butts,” UNKNOWN told Recorded Future. “I walked 10 km one way to the school. I wore the same clothes for six months. In my youth, in a communal apartment, I didn’t eat for two or even three days. Now I am a millionaire.”

As described in The Ransomware Hunting Team by Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden, UNKNOWN and REvil reinvested significant earnings into improving their success and mirroring practices of legitimate businesses. The authors wrote:

“Just as a real-world manufacturer might hire other companies to handle logistics or web design, ransomware developers increasingly outsourced tasks beyond their purview, focusing instead on improving the quality of their ransomware. The higher quality ransomware—which, in many cases, the Hunting Team could not break—resulted in more and higher pay-outs from victims. The monumental payments enabled gangs to reinvest in their enterprises. They hired more specialists, and their success accelerated.”

“Criminals raced to join the booming ransomware economy. Underworld ancillary service providers sprouted or pivoted from other criminal work to meet developers’ demand for customized support. Partnering with gangs like GandCrab, ‘cryptor’ providers ensured ransomware could not be detected by standard anti-malware scanners. ‘Initial access brokerages’ specialized in stealing credentials and finding vulnerabilities in target networks, selling that access to ransomware operators and affiliates. Bitcoin “tumblers” offered discounts to gangs that used them as a preferred vendor for laundering ransom payments. Some contractors were open to working with any gang, while others entered exclusive partnerships.”

REvil would evolve into a feared “big-game-hunting” machine capable of extracting hefty extortion payments from victims, largely going after organizations with more than $100 million in annual revenues and fat new cyber insurance policies that were known to pay out.

Over the July 4, 2021 weekend in the United States, REvil hacked into and extorted Kaseya, a company that handled IT operations for more than 1,500 businesses, nonprofits and government agencies. The FBI would later announce they’d infiltrated the ransomware group’s servers prior to the Kaseya hack but couldn’t tip their hand at the time. REvil never recovered from that core compromise, or from the FBI’s release of a free decryption key for REvil victims who couldn’t or didn’t pay.

Shchukin is from Krasnodar, Russia and is thought to reside there, the BKA said.

“Based on the investigations so far, it is assumed that the wanted person is abroad, presumably in Russia,” the BKA advised. “Travel behaviour cannot be ruled out.”

There is little that connects Shchukin to UNKNOWN’s various accounts on the Russian crime forums. But a review of the Russian crime forums indexed by the cyber intelligence firm Intel 471 shows there is plenty connecting Shchukin to a hacker identity called “Ger0in” who operated large botnets and sold “installs” — allowing other cybercriminals to rapidly deploy malware of their choice to thousands of PCs in one go. However, Ger0in was only active between 2010 and 2011, well before UNKNOWN’s appearance as the REvil front man.

A review of the mugshots released by the BKA at the image comparison site Pimeyes found a match on this birthday celebration from 2023, which features a young man named Daniel wearing the same fancy watch as in the BKA photos.

Update, April 6, 12:06 p.m. ET: A reader forwarded this English-dubbed audio recording from a ccc.de (37C3) conference talk in Germany from 2023 that previously outed Shchukin as the REvil leader (Shchuckin is mentioned at around 24:25).

A tax system breach in Oklahoma is putting highly sensitive personal information at risk. And unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of situation scammers love to exploit. 

Hackers reportedly accessed W-2 and 1099 files through Oklahoma’s online tax portal, according to state officials, exposing the kind of information that can open the door to tax fraud, identity theft, and highly targeted phishing attempts. 

Before the follow-up scams start rolling in, this is the kind of moment where layered protection matters. McAfee+ Advanced includes identity monitoring and data cleansup that can help alert you if your personal information starts circulating where it shouldn’t, and Scam Detector can flag suspicious messages if scammers try to use this breach as a hook. 

What Happened in Oklahoma 

According to a statement by the Oklahoma Tax Commission and reported by KOCO News 5, a local ABC affiliate, suspicious activity inside the state’s Oklahoma Taxpayer Access Point system was identified in December 2025. The agency says impacted individuals have been notified directly by mail, and complimentary credit monitoring and fraud assistance are being offered. 

When W-2s, 1099s, Social Security numbers, and tax-related records are exposed, scammers can use that information to: 

• File fraudulent tax returns  
• Try to open new accounts  
• Build phishing emails or texts that feel unusually real  

Either way, the goal is the same: use real information to make the next scam more believable. 

Red Flags of a Scam After a Breach Like This 

The breach itself is real. But what often follows is a second wave of scams pretending to help. 

Watch For: 

• Emails or texts about your “tax account” that create urgency  
• Messages asking you to verify personal information  
• Fake alerts about refunds, filings, or suspicious activity  
• Links telling you to log in and “secure” your account  

That’s where people can get hit twice: once by the breach, and again by the scam that follows it. 

What To Do If You’re Impacted 

First, don’t panic. Then: 

• Take advantage of any free credit monitoring or fraud assistance being offered  
• Monitor your bank accounts, tax records, and credit reports closely  
• Consider placing a fraud alert or credit freeze if needed  
• Be extra careful with any message referencing taxes, refunds, or account access 
• Go directly to official sites instead of clicking links in emails or texts  

And that, my friends, is scam number one in this week’s This Week in Scams. 

Let’s get into what else is on our radar. 

The FBI Impersonation Scam Showing Up Across the U.S. 

Scammers pretending to be federal agents are making the rounds across the country, and this one is built to make people panic fast. 

Field offices, including Chicago and Houston, are warning the public about fraudsters posing as FBI agents in calls, texts, and emails. In some cases, the scammers claim you’re connected to an investigation. In others, they say you’re a victim of fraud and need to act immediately to protect yourself. 

Sometimes they do not stop there. They may also pretend to be bank employees working alongside the FBI, all to make the story feel more convincing and get access to your money or personal information. 

Why This Scam Works

This scam plays on the same pressure tactics we’ve seen over and over again: authority, urgency, and confusion. 

If someone claims to be a federal agent, many people freeze up and assume they need to cooperate immediately. That’s exactly what scammers are counting on. 

The FBI has been clear about this: federal law enforcement will not ask you for money or sensitive personal information over the phone, by text, or by email. 

The Red Flags in This Message

• Unsolicited outreach from someone claiming to be federal law enforcement  
• Pressure to act immediately  
• Requests for money, gift cards, prepaid cards, or personal information  
• Instructions to keep the conversation secret  
• Stories involving a bank “working with” the FBI  

If it feels dramatic, high-pressure, and just a little off, trust that instinct. 

What To Do if You Get One Of These Messages

• Do not respond  
• Do not send money or share personal information  
• Contact the agency directly using publicly listed contact information  
• Save the message for your records  
• Report it to the FBI: 1-800-CALL-FBI (225-5324), or online at tips.fbi.gov.

This is also exactly the kind of message McAfee’s Scam Detector is built to flag before you get pulled in. 

How McAfee Helps You Stay Ahead of Scams and Breaches 

McAfee+ Advanced gives you multiple layers working together so you are not left figuring it out after the damage is done: 

• Identity Monitoring alerts you if your personal info shows up where it should not, so you can act fast
• Personal Data Cleanup helps remove your information from data broker sites, making you harder to target in the first place
• Scam Detector flags suspicious texts, emails, links, and even deepfake videos before you engage
• Safe Browsing helps block risky sites if you do click
• Device Security helps detect malicious apps or downloads
• Secure VPN keeps your data private, especially on public Wi-Fi  

This kind of layered protection is critical in cases like ghost student scams, where the first sign of fraud often comes after financial damage has already happened. 

Safety tips to carry into next week 

• Be extra cautious after any real breach makes headlines  
• Do not trust unsolicited messages just because they reference real institutions  
• Never send money to someone claiming to be law enforcement  
• Go directly to official websites instead of clicking links  
• Use tools that flag suspicious messages in real time so you do not have to guess 

The reality is, scams are getting better at looking official. 

You should not have to be an expert to spot them. That’s why McAfee is here to help. We’re Safer Together.

We’ll be back next week with more scams making headlines. 

The post Oklahoma Tax Breach and FBI Impersonation Scam: This Week in Scams appeared first on McAfee Blog.