Mexico has been subjected to attacks with a new variant of the Mispadu banking trojan that involved the exploitation of a high-severity Windows SmartScreen vulnerability patched by Microsoft in November, according to The Hacker News.

Increasingly prevalent abuse of commercial spyware tools around the world has prompted the U.S. to introduce a new policy that would prohibit visas for individuals profiteering from commercial spyware, developing spyware, and managing companies providing such technologies to governments, reports The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.

TechCrunch reports that mobile consumer-grade stalkerware apps Highster and PhoneSpector have seemingly ended operations following a settlement between Patrick Hinchy, whose tech firm consortium was behind both apps, and the New York Attorney General last February that involved the payment of $410,000 in fines to resolve charges of aggressive spyware promotions in New York state.

Nearly half of the 2,300 internet-exposed Redis servers compromised with the HeadCrab malware as part of an attack campaign that was initially reported in early 2023 have been infected with an updated variant of the backdoor, according to The Hacker News.

Several Java applications have been targeted by a new variant of the FritzFrog botnet, which has gained the ability to exploit the Log4Shell vulnerability, as part of the Frog4Shell attack campaign, reports The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.

Threat actors have targeted internet-exposed Docker API endpoints with the advanced Commando Cat cryptojacking campaign since the beginning of the year, The Hacker News reports.

Interpol has disclosed the disruption of 70% of 1,300 malicious command-and-control servers leveraged in malware and phishing attacks, as well as the arrests of 31 suspected threat actors as part of its Operation Synergia between September and November that involved almost 60 police agencies and private firms, according to The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.

More than 2,000 computers across Ukraine were noted by the country's Computer Emergency Response Team to have been compromised as part of a widespread attack campaign with the modular Windows botnet payload PurpleFox, also known as DirtyMoe, which could be leveraged to facilitate further payload deployment and distributed denial-of-service intrusions, BleepingComputer reports.