Cybercrime & Digital Threats

Over the years, Trend Micro researchers have published articles and research papers that detail different criminal underground communities around the world. Read about their motives, ecosystems, business models, and techniques to anticipate and proactively counter threats before they strike.

Our research examines how AI coding assistants can hallucinate plausible but non-existent package names—therefore enabling slopsquatting attacks—while also providing practical defense strategies that organizations can implement to secure their development pipelines

This research discusses how residential proxies help cybercriminals bypass antifraud and IT security systems, and how vulnerabilities in the IoT supply chain are exploited where Android-based devices are shipped pre-infected.

Our research examines vulnerabilities that affect Large Language Model (LLM) powered agents with code execution, document upload, and internet access capabilities. This is the second part of a series diving into the critical vulnerabilities in AI agents.

We dive into one of the most sophisticated and impactful ecosystems within the global cybercrime landscape. Our research looks at tools and techniques, specialized forums, popular services, plus a deeply ingrained culture of secrecy and collaboration.

Stolen certificates and private keys could be weaponized by cybercriminals to penetrate a company’s system. Our research investigates how these scenarios would play out, how they affect the organizations, and how to prevent such attacks.

Social engineering is a tactic that, at its core, creates a false narrative to exploit a victim’s credulity, greed, curiosity, or any other very human characteristics. Attackers continue to enhance existing social engineering and use new technologies.

In 2022, Trend Micro conducted extensive research to understand potential cyber threats to the metaverse amid significant global changes and a growing focus on AI technologies. The release of Apple's Apple Vision Pro headset a year later provided an opportunity to evaluate these predictions, highlighting both advancements and persistent challenges in areas such as data privacy, biometric security, and multi-vendor interoperability.

Hacktivist groups are driven by a political or ideological agenda. In the past, their actions were likened to symbolic, digital graffiti. Nowadays, hacktivist groups resemble urban gangs. Previously composed of low-skilled individuals, these groups have evolved into medium- to high-skill teams, often smaller in size but far more capable.