IN THE NEWS

Chinese-language online black markets have become one of the biggest drivers of cybercrime in history, processing tens of billions of dollars of illicit finance every year. Helping the trade in stolen data, money-laundering services, and even at times electrified shackles, these underground marketplaces have fueled scam operations and human trafficking around the world. Now, officials in the United Kingdom have dealt one $20 billion cryptocurrency marketplace a potentially punishing blow.

Artificial intelligence has become the defining force reshaping cybersecurity. As organisations across the Middle East and Africa accelerate digital transformation, expand cloud adoption, and integrate AI into business operations, the attack surface has grown dramatically. At the same time, adversaries are weaponising AI to automate reconnaissance, craft hyper‑realistic phishing campaigns, generate polymorphic malware, and exploit vulnerabilities at machine speed.

The headquarters of the scam economy have always been elusive, shifting between countries, towns and cities like a shadow. Western Africa, once heralded as a hotbed for digital fraud operations, has now been superseded by Southeast Asia, where hundreds of major scam centres are scattered.

New research from Infoblox Threat Intel and Confiant reveals that cybercriminals are abusing Keitaro, a widely used ad tracker, to hide (“cloak”) scams and malware behind ordinary web traffic; with many posing specifically as AI investment opportunities.

NIST’s refreshed DNS security guidance is now the benchmark for companies — and Infoblox helped write the blueprint.

As AI agents sweep the tech scene, organizations are clamoring to weave them into their workflows—and rightfully so. Those who get left behind in the race to adopt AI technology are on a fast track to losing their edge to competitors or even becoming obsolete. However, the task of agentifying business processes is much easier said than done, particularly when it comes to agentifying IT.

Authorities seized infrastructure powering four botnets that hijacked a combined three million devices and launched more than 300,000 DDoS attacks collectively, the Justice Department said Thursday.

The message arrived on a Tuesday morning, a wrong number, apparently, followed by an apology and then a brief, friendly exchange. The person on the other end seemed harmless, interesting even. They mentioned travel, asked thoughtful questions, and remembered details from one conversation to the next. Months passed, and a trust was built – this was of the kind that takes time. Then came the mention, almost as an afterthought, of a trading platform that had been performing quietly and reliably for years.

Researchers at Infoblox uncovered a 14,000-device botnet dubbed Mikro Typo, hijacking MikroTik routers as email proxies. Exploiting misconfigured SPF DNS records, the botnet relays spam and phishing campaigns that bypass authentication checks — a stealthy, service-oriented operation that went undetected for months.

Cybersecurity leaders gathered for the second annual Women in Cyber Security Summit at Australian Parliament House on 12 March, bringing together senior figures from government, industry, education and advocacy to address one of the sector’s most pressing challenges: improving diversity in the cyber workforce.