Kaspersky has detected a rapidly escalating malicious campaign that has targeted over 1,100 corporate users since June 2025. The attackers pose as a legal firm and in their emails threaten recipients with lawsuits over alleged domain name patent violations, aiming to deploy malware.

Victims who opened and launched the attached files – that mimicked legal documents – had a Trojan installed on their devices, and the attackers could spy on the content of their screens. Organisations across healthcare, finance, and education sectors have been targeted.

The campaign began with 95 emails on June 11 and has since continued to escalate. Apart from claiming that the recipient’s domain name violates patented combinations of a major brand and threatening litigation, in the email the fake legal bureau also expresses the patent holders’ interest in acquiring the domain and offers getting acquainted with the details of the alleged violations by opening the attached archive with “documents”.

It is worth noting that the attackers, likely to avoid detection, attach an archive that is not password protected, and inside it includes another archive that is password protected and a file containing the password along with it.

After the user entered the archive password and clicked on the alleged legal document inside, a Trojan was installed on the device. The user saw a message displayed that read, “This document cannot be opened on this device. Try opening it on another windows device,” and simultaneously the Tor Browser was covertly downloaded and installed in the background.

Through it, the malware regularly sent snapshots of the user’s screen to the attackers over the Tor network. The malware also autostarts whenever the computer is restarted.

“This campaign is a sophisticated blend of psychological manipulation and technical deception, leveraging fear of legal action to coerce businesses into executing harmful files hidden in attached archives. Its rapid growth since June 11 underscores the urgency for organisations to bolster defenses.

Victims face the risk of losing their private data. Robust email security, employee training, and swift incident reporting are essential to counter this evolving threat,” comments Anna Lazaricheva, spam analyst at Kaspersky.

In a sobering revelation of the evolving threat landscape facing the digital asset ecosystem, blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs has disclosed that over $2.1 billion worth of cryptocurrency was stolen in the first half of 2025 alone, spanning at least 75 high-profile hacks and exploits.

This staggering figure marks a 10 per cent surge over the previous first-half record set in 2022 and nearly eclipses the total stolen in all of 2024.

But beyond the monetary scale, the report reveals a deeper concern: a growing trend of state-sponsored cyber aggression weaponising  crypto assets for strategic and geopolitical purposes.

The most devastating breach to date occurred in February when Dubai-based exchange Bybit lost $1.5 billion—the largest  crypto heist in history.

TRM Labs attributes the attack to North Korean state actors, noting that the incident alone accounted for nearly 70 percent of total losses during the period and doubled the average hack size to $30 million.

“The Bybit hack redefined the threat landscape,” the report stated.

“It exemplifies how digital asset theft has transcended criminal opportunism and morphed into a tool of statecraft.”

Indeed, North Korea-linked entities were responsible for an estimated $1.6 billion of the total stolen, further entrenching Pyongyang’s status as the most prolific nation-state threat actor in the crypto sphere.

Yet the menace is diversifying. On June 18, Iranian crypto exchange Nobitex was breached for over $90 million by a group reportedly linked to Israel, Gonjeshke Darande (Predatory Sparrow).

Unusually, the stolen funds were routed to unusable vanity addresses, underscoring symbolic and political motives rather than financial gain.

TRM Labs flagged this as a “disturbing shift,” with digital asset theft increasingly deployed as a weapon in asymmetric geopolitical conflict.

The report also found that more than 80 percent of losses stemmed from infrastructure breaches, including private key theft, seed phrase leaks, and front-end compromises— attacks typically ten times costlier than other vectors.

Meanwhile, DeFi exploits such as flash loan manipulations accounted for 12 percent of losses, reflecting persistent smart contract vulnerabilities despite years of scrutiny.

As digital currencies become enmeshed in global rivalries, TRM Labs warns that conventional cybersecurity approaches are now inadequate.

“Massive breaches, often tied to nation-state operations, require a new defence paradigm,” the firm asserted, urging industrywide adoption of advanced safeguards and cross-border collaboration among regulators and law enforcement.

Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has inaugurated the pilot take-off of its new Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered registration portal.

A statement issued by the commission explained that Malam Hussaini Magaji, registrar-general of the CAC, made the announcement during the 2025 Stakeholders Forum in Port Harcourt.

According to him, “the initiative is a major milestone in Nigeria’s business facilitation drive.”

The Registrar further explained that the upgraded portal marks a complete overhaul of the Company Registration Portal (CRP), saying that it comes with advanced features designed to simplify and speed up business registration.

The new system, according to him, allows for instant name reservation approvals, likening the ease to creating an email account, and stressing that the AI-powered platform could suggest available alternatives to business names and approve them immediately.

Another innovation, he stated, is the ability to register a business using only the National Identification Number (NIN) of a director or proprietor, pointing out that there is an ambitious target of completing business registration and certificate generation within 30 minutes, subject to real-time NIN validation.