Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

BlueVoyant researchers identified a new deployment method for the FireClient backdoor during investigations into Microsoft Teams-based social engineering campaigns.

Artificial Intelligence has quickly become one of the most important conversations in cybersecurity. Much of that conversation focuses on what attackers might create next: AI-generated malware, deepfakes, autonomous attacks, or entirely new categories of threats. Those risks matter, but focusing only on new attack techniques misses a much larger transformation already taking place. The real impact of AI is not only what attackers can create. It is how efficiently they can operate.

Phishing is a form of social engineering that has evolved beyond simple lures into complex, multi-stage attacks exploiting trusted software, cloud identities and business platforms to bypass traditional security. Attackers leverage these campaigns to deliver trojans capable of stealing credentials and also establishing remote code execution, which might serve as a gateway for lateral movement.

A new report commissioned by IBM has found that one in four breaches is now AI-enabled, up 56% from last year. “Most AI-driven attacks reported in the study targeted critical infrastructure sectors (62%), with financial services and energy organizations experiencing the highest concentration, raising the risk of broader systemic disruption,” the report says. “Financial services breaches were reported to cost on average $6.3 million, while energy breaches cost on average $5.2 million.

In 2021, we assessed remote Spectre attacks against Cloudflare Workers. Based on the results, we shipped a production defense called Dynamic Process Isolation (DyPrIs), which identifies maliciously looking scripts and isolates them into separate processes. Since then, newer techniques in the area of stabilizing Spectre attacks have been discovered. To understand if these techniques posed a threat to our Workers production environment, we decided to internally reassess the remote Spectre attack.

In late July 2026, over 30 municipal water systems across Minnesota were targeted in coordinated cyber attacks that disrupted the Operational Technology (OT) used to remotely monitor and control water equipment. The attacks initially unfolded on July 26 and 27, striking multiple automated control systems across the state, including those in Plymouth, Braham and South St. Paul.

In March 2025, attackers compromised a GitHub Action used in the development pipelines of more than 23,000 repositories. The malicious code exposed API keys, cloud credentials, SSH keys, and other tokens in workflow logs. Affected teams were advised to review their workflow runs and rotate any credentials the logs exposed.

Welcome to the 25th edition of Cloudflare's DDoS Threat Report. This is the first half-year edition in the series: rather than publishing separate reports for the first and second quarters of 2026, we have combined our coverage of Q1 and Q2 into a single volume covering January through June 2026.