Cybersecurity News
Research Saturday
Today we are joined by Dr. Darren Williams, Founder and CEO of BlackFog, to discuss his team's work on "Steaelite RAT Enables Double Extortion Attacks from a Single Panel." A new remote access trojan, Steaelite, is being marketed on underground forums as an all-in-one platform that combines remote access, credential theft, surveillance, and ransomware deployment through a single browser-based dashboard.
Unlike traditional cybercrime toolchains, it merges data exfiltration and ransomware capabilities into one interface, with automated credential harvesting beginning as soon as a victim is infected. The tool signals a growing shift toward streamlined “double extortion” attacks, where data theft and encryption happen within the same system—raising the stakes for defenders to stop threats before data is exfiltrated. 
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Threat Vector
Hacking Humans
This week, hosts of N2K CyberWire Maria Varmazis and Dave Bittner alongside Joe Carrigan are discussing the latest in social engineering scams, phishing schemes, and criminal exploits that are making headlines. If you thought you could escape chicken talk, you we're wrong, this week Joe shares some more updates on his chickens. Joe’s got two stories this week, one on a New Jersey man arrested while attempting to collect $800,000 in gold as part of a widespread scam targeting elderly victims, and the second is on a new Google-tracked threat group using social engineering and phishing tactics to infiltrate BPOs and steal corporate data for extortion. Maria’s story is on a conversation she had with Sean Colicchio, highlighting how trusting human instincts, slowing down, and balancing security training can help individuals and organizations better defend against social engineering attacks. Dave’s got the story on a surge in traffic violation scams now using QR codes in phishing texts to trick victims, alongside ten hard-stop rules emphasizing verification, avoiding links or inbound requests, and slowing down to prevent falling for increasingly sophisticated scams. Our Catch of the Day comes from Reddit, where a user questioned a supposed “Google Play Console partnership” email, and the community quickly flagged it as a likely scam—citing red flags. 
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