Byer-Nichols Threat Brief for January 16-31 2026
Season: 2
Published: February 3, 2026
By: Phish Tank Digital
Ransomware stayed hot in late January, with Cl0p jumping to the top after its huge Cleo linked victim dump, while Qilin, Akira, Sinobi and The Gentlemen kept pressure on manufacturing and mid market orgs. At the same time, exploitation of vCenter, SmarterMail, Zimbra, Ivanti EPMM and Fortinet gear drove a wave of opportunistic intrusions. Threat actors like Sandworm, Konni and ShinyHunters leaned on phishing, credential theft and stealthy C2, with Sandworm remaining the most worrying due to its destructive track record.
Link: Byer-Nichols Threat Brief for January 16-31 2026
Keywords:
Episode Transcript
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(upbeat music)
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- Welcome back to The Deep Dive,
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it's Tuesday, February 3rd, 2026.
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And today, we're looking at a picture
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of the cyber landscape that is,
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honestly a little bit schizophrenic.
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- That is certainly one way to put it.
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It feels like we're looking at two different movies
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playing on the same screen.
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- No, really, think about it.
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On one hand, you have this image of cyber crime
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that's straight out of a Hollywood-high movie.
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I mean, ATMs literally spitting cash out
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onto the street corner.
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It's loud, it's messy, it's physical.
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- Exactly, you can reach out and touch the crime,
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and then on the other hand.
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- Well, on the other hand,
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you have threats that are so silent, so invisible.
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- They're hiding inside the pixel data of a company logo.
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On a website, you visit every single day.
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You don't see it, you don't hear it, but it's there.
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- It creates a fascinating contrast.
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Today, we're unpacking the buyer nickel's threat brief
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for the second half of January, 2026.
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And you're right, the theme here isn't just,
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you know, scary computer stuff.
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It's really about the evolution and the industrialization
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of how these threat actors operate.
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- Exactly, I've been going through this stack of data,
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and we're seeing everything from a major shakeup
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on the ransomware leaderboard, and yes,
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there is a leaderboard.
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- There's always a leaderboard.
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- To the rise of AI-driven malware
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that mimics human behavior, and some very heavy,
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stick-sponsored sabotage.
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And we really need to talk about who they're targeting.
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Because if you think this is only a problem for,
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like the Fortune 500 or the Big Banks,
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the data from January is gonna be very rude awakening.
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- A very rude awakening indeed.
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So let's start at the top of the food chain,
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the ransomware leaderboard.
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Who's winning the race to be the worst?
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- It's always a crowded field, but for late January,
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there's a clear king of the hill, a group called Gule VOP.
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- Gule VOP. - Yep.
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They took the top spot with almost 20%
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of all recorded attacks, 19.38% to be exact.
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That is a huge chunk of the market for just a single group.
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- That is massive.
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But looking at the report, this wasn't just them,
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grinding harder than everyone else.
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This was a strategic play, right?
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They executed a supply chain exploit.
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- Precisely.
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They targeted a platform called Clio.
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And this is a perfect example of working smarter,
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not harder in the criminal world.
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- Okay, let's unpack supply chain exploit for a second,
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because I think people hear that
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and their eyes just glaze over.
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But it's actually a pretty simple concept.
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- It is.
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Think of it this way.
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If a burglar wants to rob 50 houses in a neighborhood,
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they have two choices.
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They can run around kicking down 50 different doors,
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dealing with 50 different alarms.
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- And 50 different dogs, which takes a lot of time
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and energy. - Exactly.
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Or they can break into the property manager's office
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at the front of the gated community
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and steal the master key.
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- And Clio was the property manager.
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- In this analogy, yes.
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Clio provides file transfer software
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for thousands of companies.
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By hitting Clio, Clio P effectively stole the master key.
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- So they didn't have to hack each victim individually?
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- And at all.
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They compromised the tool that all the victims were using.
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That's why we see that huge spike in their numbers.
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It's pure efficiency.
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- Terrifying efficiency.
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But they weren't the only ones making noise.
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We saw a group called Quillin coming in second
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with about 12% and another group called the gentlemen.
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- Oh, I love that name.
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- It's a fantastic branding choice for a criminal enterprise,
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right?
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They came in third.
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- The gentlemen are interesting
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because their methodology sort of matches their name.
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They rely heavily on tailored fishing.
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Very polite, very convincing emails,
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trying to get you to open the door yourself.
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- And Quillin.
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- Quillin is more brute force.
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They're heavily targeting the manufacturing sector.
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- Okay, so speaking of targets,
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this is where I need to drop the stat of the week.
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Because I was reading through the victim demographics
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in this report and my jaw just hit the floor.
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- I think I know which one you're looking at.
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The size breakdown.
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- Exactly.
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We always hear about the big hacks, right?
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The massive tech companies, the pipelines, the hospitals.
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But when you look at the actual breakdown
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of victims by size for late January.
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- Oh, that's the other number.
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- 84%, 84.00% of the victims were small businesses.
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Companies with 500 employees or less.
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- And that is the aha moment for this entire deep dive.
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- But help me understand the logic here.
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Why are they hammering the little guys?
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Surely a small printing shop has less money
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to pay a ransom than say a multinational bank.
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- They do have less money,
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but they are also much, much easier to rob.
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- So it's a volume game.
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- It's entirely a volume game.
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Large enterprises have security operation centers.
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They have teams of people watching screens 24/7.
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They have multi-million dollar budgets.
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A small business with 50 employees.
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They might have one IT person.
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- Right, who also fixes the coffee machine
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in order of the toner.
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- So the attackers aren't big game hunting anymore.
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- They're trawling, casting a wide net
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and seeing what they catch.
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The report notes a trend toward faster, more surgical campaigns.
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- Meaning they want to get in and get out quickly.
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- Exactly.
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They get in, encrypt your data,
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demand a ransom that is painful, but payable.
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Maybe $50,000 instead of five million.
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And then they get out.
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- And for a small business, that 50 grand
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might be the difference between making payroll
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or closing their doors forever.
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- The criminals know this.
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They know the small business owner has to pay to survive.
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- That is incredibly cynical, but the math makes sense.
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And geographically, it looks like the US
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is taking most of the heat on this.
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- Yes, the US accounted for nearly 44% of the victims
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than the UK and Canada.
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So if you are running a small business in North America,
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you effectively have a target on your back.
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- Okay, so we know who they're hitting and why.
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Now let's talk about how they're getting in.
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The report calls it a nasty mix of edge and core.
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- Right, and this is the part
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where business owners really need to listen up.
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- We have a list of specific culprits here.
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VMware V Center, Smart or Mail, Zimbra, Yvonne T, Fortinet.
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To the average listener, that just sounds like
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a bunch of tech soup.
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What's the common thread?
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- The common thread is internet facing management.
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- Okay, translate that.
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- Imagine your house has a front door, right?
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That's where guests come in, that's your public website.
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But you also have utility box with all the circuit breakers
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and the alarm codes.
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- Sure, usually that's locked away in the basement
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or a secure closet.
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- Exactly, but what we're seeing here is companies
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taking that utility box, their management dashboards,
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and installing it on the outside wall of the house,
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facing the street.
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- That sounds like a terrible design choice.
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- It is, but in the digital world,
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it's convenient for remote management.
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But if you leave these dashboards exposed
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to the open internet without proper protection,
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anyone walking by on the digital street
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can just rattle the handle.
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- And if the handle turns?
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- If you haven't applied the latest security patch,
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or if you don't have multi-factor authentication,
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MFA turned on, it's like leaving the key
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right there in the lock.
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- And that's their initial access.
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- That's how they get in the door.
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- And once they're in, they can start
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with the report calls, lateral movement,
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which if I understand it means once they're in the lobby,
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they can start trying doors to the other rooms.
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- Precisely.
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They move from the mail server to the finance database,
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to the HR records, they establish a beach head,
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and then spread out.
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- So what's the takeaway here?
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If I'm a business owner, do I just unplug the internet?
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- You don't have to go that far.
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But you need to lock the doors that face the street.
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The report explicitly advises fast tracking patches
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for these specific technologies,
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and more importantly, segment these services.
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- Won't just leave them out in the open.
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- Right, put them behind a VPN.
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- Yeah.
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- For IT, admin, log into the secure network,
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before they can even see the login screen
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for the mail server.
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- Simple advice, but crucial.
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Now, I wanna pivot to the spy movie section
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of the report, the malware spotlight,
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because the creativity here is just, it's off the charts.
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- It really is a showcase of different techniques.
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- Let's start with something called GhostPoster.
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This thing infected 840,000 users,
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and it did it using, wait for it, stegonography.
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- Stegonography.
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- It's a fancy word for a concept that's,
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I mean, it's ancient.
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Effectively means covered writing.
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- But in 2026, we're not talking about
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invisible ink on parchment.
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We're talking about hiding code inside pictures.
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- Exactly, so you visit a website,
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you see logo in the corner.
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To your eye, it's just a PNG or JPEG file,
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it looks totally normal.
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But buried inside the binary data of that image,
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literally in the bits that define the color of the pixels,
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is malicious JavaScript.
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- That is wildly sneaky, so the browser downloads
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the image to display it, and in doing so,
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it inadvertently brings the malware on board.
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- Exactly, the malware just unpacks itself
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from the image data.
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- And what does GhostPoster actually do
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once it's active?
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- It's a parasite.
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Infects your browser Chrome, Firefox, Edge,
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and it starts hijacking your activity for ad fraud.
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- So if I click a link to buy something.
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- It swaps in its own affiliate code,
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so the attackers get the commission.
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Or it injects invisible ads,
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iframes that you can't see,
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but your computer's loading them
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and clicking them in the background.
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- It's turning your browser into a silent,
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money printing machine for someone else.
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- That's it, and because it hides inside a browser extension
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and uses these innocent looking images
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to deliver its payload,
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it flies right under the radar
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of a lot of antivirus software.
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- Speaking of hidden processes,
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let's talk about Android.Click.415.
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This one was found in modified games and pirated apps,
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especially on Xiaomi's GAT app store.
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- And this is where artificial intelligence
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enters the chat.
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- Of course, it's 2026, AI's everywhere,
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but we've seen click bots before.
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What makes this one so special?
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- The mimicry.
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Old school click bots were dumb.
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They just click and add every 0.5 seconds
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like a metronome.
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It was very easy pattern for fraud detection systems to spot.
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- So how does the AI change the game?
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- This malware uses AI-driven automation
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to mimic real human behavior.
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It varies the timing, it will scroll a bit, pause,
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maybe highlight some text,
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and then it clicks the ad.
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- It's pretending to be a bored human surfing the web.
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- And it does all of this completely in the background
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while your phone is in your pocket.
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- And these are just things, man, my battery's terrible today.
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- Right, doesn't steal your credit card number,
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it steals your device's performance,
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it drains your battery, slows down your phone,
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all to generate fraudulent ad revenue.
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- Okay, so we've covered the invisible stuff.
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Now let's go back to the loud and dramatic.
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We have to talk about plautists.
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- Plautists, named after the Greek God of Wealth.
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- Very appropriate.
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- Because this malware is for jackpotting ATMs.
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- This is the physical crime we mentioned right at the top.
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Plautists is a piece of code that,
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when you inject it into an ATM,
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it just overrides the dispensing logic.
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- And forces the machine to empty all its cash.
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- Literally spewing money onto the floor.
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- Yes.
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- And the report links this specifically
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to the trend at Oragua gang.
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- That's a transnational criminal organization, right?
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- Correct, and we've actually seen news
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about the US deporting Venezuelan nationals
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involved in these schemes.
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It's this fascinating blend of old school bank robbery
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and modern coding.
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- They don't need dynamite anymore, just a USB stick.
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- Just a USB stick with plautists on it.
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- It's wild, but.
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And there's always a but.
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There's a darker side to this report.
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We move from criminals who want money
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to actors who just wanna cause destruction.
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- This is the most concerning part of the brief for me,
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the rise of destructive intent.
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- We're talking about sandworm.
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- Sandworm, a Russia-linked threat group.
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And the report identifies them
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as the most worrying adversary right now.
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- Why?
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What makes them different from Colby OP?
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- Well, Colopy wants your money.
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If you pay them, they give you your data back.
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It's a transaction, it's a business model.
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Sandworm.
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They don't want your money, they just want
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to break your infrastructure.
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- And the report details their weapon,
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something called dino-wiper.
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- Yes.
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This was used in a failed attack
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on Poland's energy sector back in December.
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The keyword there is wiper.
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It doesn't encrypt your files for ransom.
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It overwrites them.
00:11:59 - 00:12:00
- So there's no undo button.
00:12:00 - 00:12:02
- There is no recovery path.
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The goal is to turn the computer into a brick.
00:12:04 - 00:12:07
And when you target an energy sector with a wiper,
00:12:07 - 00:12:09
you aren't trying to steal data.
00:12:09 - 00:12:10
You're trying to turn off the lights.
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- It's pure sabotage.
00:12:11 - 00:12:12
- Poo-in-sample.
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- That's chilling.
00:12:13 - 00:12:15
And it fits into this broader list of
00:12:15 - 00:12:17
trending adversaries in the report.
00:12:17 - 00:12:20
We see groups like Connie and shiny hunters active as well.
00:12:20 - 00:12:22
- And Connie is an interesting one to watch.
00:12:22 - 00:12:23
They are specifically targeting
00:12:23 - 00:12:25
blockchain engineers.
00:12:25 - 00:12:27
And they're using malware that was built by AI.
00:12:27 - 00:12:28
- So it's an arms race.
00:12:28 - 00:12:29
The defenders use AI.
00:12:29 - 00:12:31
The attackers use AI.
00:12:31 - 00:12:32
- It absolutely is.
00:12:32 - 00:12:35
Which makes sense given another news item in this brief.
00:12:35 - 00:12:37
- Oh, you mean the illicit crypto stats?
00:12:37 - 00:12:38
- Yes.
00:12:38 - 00:12:40
Illicit funds flowing to crypto wallets
00:12:40 - 00:12:44
hit a record $158 billion last year.
00:12:44 - 00:12:46
- $158 billion with a B.
00:12:46 - 00:12:49
That's larger than the GDP of many countries.
00:12:49 - 00:12:51
- It's a massive underground economy.
00:12:51 - 00:12:53
And where there is that much money,
00:12:53 - 00:12:54
you will find groups like Connie
00:12:54 - 00:12:57
invested in advanced tools to steal it.
00:12:57 - 00:12:59
- Let's hit a few more news items before we wrap up
00:12:59 - 00:13:01
because the news roundup section here
00:13:01 - 00:13:03
really points to a specific trend.
00:13:03 - 00:13:05
The commercialization of crime.
00:13:05 - 00:13:07
- That's the perfect way to frame it.
00:13:07 - 00:13:09
- The one that really caught my eye is Stanley.
00:13:09 - 00:13:10
- Ah, yes.
00:13:10 - 00:13:11
- Stanley.
00:13:11 - 00:13:13
- It sounds like a helpful butler.
00:13:13 - 00:13:14
- Yeah.
00:13:14 - 00:13:16
- But it's a malware service.
00:13:16 - 00:13:18
- It represents the service model of hacking.
00:13:18 - 00:13:20
Stanley is a new service that guarantees
00:13:20 - 00:13:21
it can get your fishing extensions
00:13:21 - 00:13:23
onto the official Chrome web store.
00:13:23 - 00:13:25
- Wait, so if I'm a bad guy,
00:13:25 - 00:13:26
I don't even have to know how to hack
00:13:26 - 00:13:28
the Chrome store's security checks.
00:13:28 - 00:13:30
- Nope, you just hire Stanley.
00:13:30 - 00:13:32
You write your malicious code, you pay them a fee,
00:13:32 - 00:13:33
and they handle the distribution
00:13:33 - 00:13:36
and bypassing Google's checks.
00:13:36 - 00:13:39
The barrier to entry is just, it's cratering.
00:13:39 - 00:13:41
- So you don't need to be a coding genius
00:13:41 - 00:13:42
to be a cyber criminal anymore?
00:13:42 - 00:13:45
No, you just need a credit card and knowledge
00:13:45 - 00:13:47
of which service to hire.
00:13:47 - 00:13:48
It's hacking as a service.
00:13:48 - 00:13:49
- That's a terrifying thought.
00:13:49 - 00:13:52
It democratizes the ability to do harm.
00:13:52 - 00:13:53
- It does.
00:13:53 - 00:13:54
- So let's try to pull this all together.
00:13:54 - 00:13:55
We've covered a lot.
00:13:55 - 00:13:59
We have the automated nuisances, like the AI ad clickers.
00:13:59 - 00:14:01
We have the financial predators,
00:14:01 - 00:14:05
the ransomware gangs, hammering small businesses.
00:14:05 - 00:14:08
And then we have the geopolitical destroyers,
00:14:08 - 00:14:11
Sanworm trying to wipe out power grids.
00:14:11 - 00:14:13
- It's a three tiered threat landscape.
00:14:13 - 00:14:16
The noise, the thieves, and the saboteurs.
00:14:16 - 00:14:17
- And the common denominator
00:14:17 - 00:14:19
in almost all of this seems to be us.
00:14:19 - 00:14:20
- In many ways, yes.
00:14:20 - 00:14:23
Whether it's clicking a fishing link from the gentleman,
00:14:23 - 00:14:25
installing a sketchy browser extension
00:14:25 - 00:14:26
that Stanley put there,
00:14:26 - 00:14:28
or leaving a server exposed
00:14:28 - 00:14:30
because it's just more convenient.
00:14:30 - 00:14:31
- The technology is complex.
00:14:31 - 00:14:33
Stagnography, AI, wipers,
00:14:33 - 00:14:36
but the entry point is almost always a human decision.
00:14:36 - 00:14:38
- Vigilance, patching, skepticism.
00:14:38 - 00:14:41
- Skepticism, it's about not trusting that logo
00:14:41 - 00:14:42
just because it looks like a logo.
00:14:42 - 00:14:44
- Skepticism is your best firewall.
00:14:44 - 00:14:45
- I like that.
00:14:45 - 00:14:47
Skepticism is your best firewall.
00:14:47 - 00:14:48
- It really is.
00:14:48 - 00:14:50
- I wanna leave our listeners with a thought today.
00:14:50 - 00:14:52
We spend so much time worrying about the genius hacker
00:14:52 - 00:14:54
in a hoodie, you know,
00:14:54 - 00:14:56
breaking through complex encryption.
00:14:56 - 00:14:58
But when I look at GhostPoster hiding in a logo
00:14:58 - 00:15:02
or Stanley putting malware right into the official web store.
00:15:02 - 00:15:03
- It makes you wonder.
00:15:03 - 00:15:04
- It does.
00:15:04 - 00:15:06
If the malware is hiding in a browser extension
00:15:06 - 00:15:07
that we willingly install
00:15:07 - 00:15:11
because we wanted a cool dark mode or a coupon finder,
00:15:11 - 00:15:15
are we becoming the vulnerability that can't be patched?
00:15:15 - 00:15:17
- That is the uncomfortable question.
00:15:17 - 00:15:18
We can patch software,
00:15:18 - 00:15:20
but you can't really patch human curiosity.
00:15:20 - 00:15:22
- How do we secure our own curiosity?
00:15:22 - 00:15:24
That's the question for 2026.
00:15:24 - 00:15:25
Thank you for listening to The Deep Dive,
00:15:25 - 00:15:27
stay safe, stay skeptical,
00:15:27 - 00:15:28
and we'll catch you on the next one.
00:15:28 - 00:15:31
- Reach out to us at jbuyer.com for comments and questions.
00:15:31 - 00:15:33
Follow us at buyer company on social media.
00:15:33 - 00:15:35
And if you'd be so kind,
00:15:35 - 00:15:37
please rate and review us in your podcast app.
00:15:37 - 00:15:39
[Music]