Web browsers are among the top targets for today's cybercriminals, playing a role in nearly half of all security incidents, new research reveals. According to Palo Alto Networks' 2026 Global Incident Response report, an analysis of 750 major cyber incidents recorded last year across 50 countries found that, in total, 48% of cybercrime events involved browser activity. Individuals trying to connect to the web, including business employees, are exposed to cyberthreats on a daily basis.
The cybersecurity company said it identified the PeckBirdy script framework in 2023 after it observed multiple Chinese gambling websites being injected with malicious scripts, which are designed to download and execute the primary payload in order to facilitate the remote delivery and execution of JavaScript. The end goal of this routine is to serve fake software update web pages for Google Chrome so as to trick users into downloading and running bogus update files, thereby infecting the machines with malware in the process.
Cisco Talos, which is tracking the activity under the name UAT-8837, assessed it to be a China-nexus advanced persistent threat (APT) actor with medium confidence based on tactical overlaps with other campaigns mounted by threat actors from the region. The cybersecurity company noted that the threat actor is "primarily tasked with obtaining initial access to high-value organizations," based on the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and post-compromise activity observed.
Russian police arrested "three young IT specialists" suspected of developing and selling the Meduza credential-harvesting malware. Authorities from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, together with police investigators, charged the men with developing and supplying the information-stealing malware, and tied it to an attack that breached and stole data from a government institution in the country's southern Astrakhan region in May, said a ministry spokeswoman in a Russian-language post to Telegram.
