Enter if You Dare.

Ringing the doorbell AND saying “trick or treat,” also counts as 2FA, just FYI.

This Year’s Cybersecurity Nightmares

We don’t like to get too spooky here at Cyber Treats, but this year had sophisticated attacks, massive breaches, and threats making headlines that rival any horror novel.

Grab your flashlight if you must, but let’s go check out those weird noises coming from the basement and explore the scariest cybersecurity stories this year so far.

AI-Conjured Deepfakes Scattered Spider weaponized AI and deepfake audio to impersonate executives. They hijacked credentials at major organizations. Traditional defenses failed against criminals who could convincingly mimic voices and bypass human verification.

28 Days Later MathWorks, developers of MATLAB, suffered an April breach that disrupted cloud services and exposed 10,476 Social Security numbers. Attackers were in the system for approximately a month.

Nightmare on Crypto Street North Korean hackers executed crypto’s largest theft in February. They stole $1.5 billion in Ethereum from Dubai-based ByBit by exploiting Safe wallet software. In the past year, they’ve stolen over $2M in crypto.

What’s that in the Shadows? Unauthorized AI tools within companies enabled undetected breaches. These attacks lasted longer and exposed more customer data than traditional attacks.

Paranormal Email Activity Attackers stole Salesforce data from large companies like Google, Adidas, Louis Vuitton, and Chanel by making phone calls pretending to be IT personnel. Consumer accounts remained secure, but the breach fueled convincing phishing attacks targeting 2.5 billion Gmail users.

The Good News? Cybersecurity Doesn’t Have to Give You Chills.

While they’re scary, these stories help inform cybersecurity plans for 2026. A few key habits and a solid security stack can prevent most attacks and breaches.

Things like MFA and industry-specific compliance controls protect your business from digital hauntings, and creating a cybersecurity awareness culture keeps everyone informed and on board with best practices.

Need cybersecurity advice? We’re here to help. Call us at (309) 689-3900 to request a consultation.