Frauds Worth Billions: People in Scam Centers Working Against Their Will

An international operation led to the arrest of hundreds of people and the disruption of scam centers that were behind cryptocurrency frauds worth millions of dollars. Attackers used known schemes such as pig butchering, in which they build trust with victims over a long period. A crucial finding, however, is that in some cases people working in these centers ended up in the system through fraud or coercion, which shows the link between cybercrime and human trafficking.

Threatening messages to soldiers and psychological attacks

The group Handala, linked to Iranian interests, sent threatening messages to American soldiers in the Persian Gulf region. The campaign also included the publication of data on thousands of service members. Experts warn that such operations often combine older data leaks with publicly available information and that their main goal is primarily a psychological effect, not necessarily a technical breakthrough.

Social media scams break records

According to the American Federal Trade Commission, people lost more than $2.1 billion in 2025 to scams that originated on social media. That's an eightfold increase compared to 2020. Investment scams make up the largest share, but fake e-shops and romantic scam campaigns are also widespread. Social networks thus today represent the main entry point for online scams.

Facebook and Instagram under pressure over children

The European Commission has preliminarily found that Meta cannot adequately prevent children under 13 from accessing Facebook and Instagram. According to the Commission, children can easily bypass the ban by entering a false date of birth, and reporting of these accounts is also problematic. If the breach of rules is confirmed, the company faces a fine of up to 6% of global turnover.

Trellix confirmed incident involving source code

Security company Trellix announced a breach of its repository, to which an unauthorized party gained access. The firm stated that there is so far no evidence of the source code being abused or of any compromise of its distribution. The incident is still being investigated in cooperation with forensic experts and has been reported to the relevant authorities.

Critical Linux vulnerability is being actively exploited

The agency CISA has added the vulnerability CVE-2026-31431 to the list of actively exploited flaws. It is a privilege escalation vulnerability that can allow attackers to gain root access to a system. The issue affects the Linux kernel and poses a risk especially to cloud and container environments. Organizations are advised to apply available updates as quickly as possible.

Cybersecurity increasingly overlaps with the real world – and sometimes reveals stories that go far beyond the technologies themselves.