Last week on Malwarebytes Labs:

• The hidden work of modernizing Malwarebytes
• X Money rollout linked to password-reset attacks
• Free streaming boxes may be routing criminal traffic through your home
• StreamRat Android malware spreads through Meta and TikTok ads
• Your phone or computer may soon ask how old you are
• Tech support scams look different now. Here’s what to watch for
• Scammers are getting smarter about where they target you
• Two critical Chrome flaws put users at risk on malicious websites
• 153M+ driver’s licenses for sale on new dark web platform
• Your AI chats could be used in court
• Fake GTA 6 leaked copy drains your crypto wallet
• TerminalFix looks like ClickFix, but delivers a very different payload
• Infostealers are hijacking Claude accounts at users’ expense
• McKesson confirms cyber incident after ShinyHunters claims patient-data theft

Stay safe!

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A TP-Link Archer AX55 vulnerability (CVE-2026-18167) risks remote code execution via EasyMesh buffer overflow. Update to build 20260527 now.

Related Posts:

• MikroTik RouterOS Vulnerability Exploited in the Wild: Patch and Defense Blueprint
• StyleSmuggler: Magento Zero-Day RCE Exploited in the Wild
• CVE-2026-75754 (CVSS 10): ASUS Control Center Root RCE

The post TP-Link Archer AX55 Flaws Expose Routers to Code Execution appeared first on Daily CyberSecurity.

This week on Uncanny Valley, we dig into the latest prediction market buzz, Flock’s AI-powered police search tool, and how tech bros don’t know how to talk about “rouge” AI agents

X says attackers may be targeting accounts because its X Money payments service is now more widely available.

The company is investigating a wave of unsolicited password-reset emails sent to users. While their arrival alongside the wider X Money rollout has fueled account-takeover concerns, X says it has found no evidence of a breach or successful account takeovers so far.

X users began reporting unexpected password-reset emails and codes on September 1. In a public post, X product engineer Mridul Singhai said:

“Attackers appear to believe that, now that @XMoney is widely available, they can gain unauthorized access to accounts.”

Singhai said X was actively investigating, apologized for the repeated emails, and added that the company had found “no evidence of any breaches.”

X Money gives eligible US users access to financial services within X, including interest-bearing accounts, a Visa debit card, and peer-to-peer payments. Cross River Bank provides the banking infrastructure behind the service.

This could make some X accounts more attractive targets, particularly accounts with payment access, high follower counts, business use, or valuable social-engineering potential.

The activity itself appears consistent with attackers submitting password-reset requests in bulk against X accounts. Requesting a password reset is not the same as resetting a password, however, and neither automatically means that an account has been taken over. X’s recovery process requires access to the email address or phone number associated with the account before someone can complete the reset.

There is no evidence that anyone has accessed X Money accounts or funds. Nor has X confirmed that X Money caused the password-reset activity. The timing is notable, but it does not prove a technical connection between the two.

Earlier this year, we saw a flood of Instagram password-reset emails, showing that similar activity can happen on platforms without payment services.

It could be a cover for something more serious. Even if an attacker cannot complete a reset, large volumes of legitimate-looking reset messages can provide useful cover for scams.

Reset flooding can also be a nuisance tactic. Repeated messages may pressure someone into changing their password unnecessarily, obscure more important security notifications, or encourage them to disable security controls in an attempt to stop the alerts.

How to stay safe

If you receive an X password-reset email that you did not request:

• Do not click links or enter codes from unexpected messages. Open the X app or type x.com into your browser yourself if you want to inspect or change account settings.
• Do not share reset codes or two-factor authentication codes. Support staff, advertisers, and “security teams” will not contact you unexpectedly to ask for them.
• Turn on password-reset protection. X says this setting requires additional account information, such as an email address or phone number, before it will send a reset link or code. It is available under Settings and privacy > Account > Security > Password reset protection.
• Use two-factor authentication, preferably an authenticator app or security key where available. This adds another verification step if someone obtains or guesses your password.
• Use a unique, strong password. If you use your X password anywhere else, change it through X’s settings, not through a link in an email.
• Watch for signs of an actual account takeover. These include unfamiliar posts, direct messages, profile changes, login alerts, or unknown apps connected to your account.
• Stay alert for phishing. The strongest immediate consumer risk may not be a flaw in X itself, but phishing that imitates the reset process. A fake message can look especially convincing when genuine reset emails are arriving around the same time.
• Use protection. An up-to-date, real-time anti-malware solution with web protection can warn you about malicious and fraudulent sites.

If you’re unsure whether a message is real, use Malwarebytes Scam Guard to check it and get advice about what to do next.

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Scammers don’t need to hack you. They just need you to click once. 

Malwarebytes Identity Theft Protection catches suspicious activity before it becomes a problem.

This week on “Uncanny Valley,” Andy Greenberg discusses sitting in on a war game simulating a cyberattack from the Chinese hacking group Volt Typhoon

Mozilla rotated the Linux GPG signing key for Firefox and Thunderbird after a subkey copy was inadvertently pushed to a private GitHub repository.

Related Posts:

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The post Mozilla Rotates Firefox and Thunderbird Linux GPG Signing Key After Private Repo Exposure appeared first on Daily CyberSecurity.

Note The July 2026 Dark Web Breach Incident Trend Report was compiled based on data breach cases posted on deep web and dark web forums. Due to the nature of some posts, it is difficult to fully verify their accuracy; some posts related to South Korea included AI-generated false data or cases where it could […]

Fake downloads of The Odyssey are spreading Lumma Stealer malware capable of stealing passwords, cookies, payment data, and cryptocurrency information.

The post Fake The Odyssey Downloads Are Hiding Password-Stealing Malware appeared first on TechRepublic.

ASEC Blog publishes Ransom & Dark Web Issues Week 1, August 2026           South Korean Automotive Parts Manufacturer’s Internal Server Access and Database Offered for Sale Data of a Turkish HR Consulting Company Offered for Sale Gunra Ransomware Attack on a South Korean Heavy Equipment Parts and Advanced Materials Manufacturer

Passkeys were supposed to make stolen passwords a thing of the past. No password to phish, no secret to reuse, and no string of characters sitting in a database waiting to be leaked.

Over time, it’s thought that passkeys will replace passwords entirely. But what happens when malware steals the master key?

Researchers have found a way for malware to hijack passkey-protected accounts through Google Password Manager, highlighting an important exception: passkeys can be very secure but the software surrounding them still has weaknesses.

What are passkeys?

Passkeys are a password replacement based on public‑key cryptography. Instead of a secret you remember and type, each account gets a key pair where the private key never leaves your devices, and the website only ever sees the public key and signed challenges. Because there’s nothing reusable to phish or reuse on another site, passkeys are marketed as “phishing‑resistant” and safer than passwords stored in a browser or password manager.

By the end of 2024 Google reportedly said that 800 million Google accounts used passkeys.

Passkeys have a major advantage over passwords: there is nothing useful for a phishing site to steal. A passkey is also tied to the website it was created for, making it much harder to trick into authenticating to the wrong domain.

The other significant difference is that if malware steals a password vault, an attacker still often needs to get past a second factor on another device, such as an authenticator app on your phone, before they fully own the account. With passkeys, many services relying on them simply trust the passkey assertion, and in some cases even trust a single “user verified” flag without confirming whether a real biometric or PIN event occurred.

Malware comes into play

The researchers, however, started with a malware infected Windows computer and came up with three possible attack scenarios to steal Google synchronized passkeys. Google Password Manager can synchronize passkeys between devices, which is convenient since you don’t want to register a new passkey every time you buy a new computer. But it also opens them up to abuse.

From bad to worse the attacks are:

• Pass‑ta‑key: malware on the victim’s computer silently asks Chrome and Google’s cloud to create a valid passkey login, no biometric or PIN prompt needed.
• Silver Pass‑ta‑key: malware abuses device re‑enrollment to register its own user‑verification key, then logs in as the victim from the attacker’s machine without touching the victim’s device.
• Golden Pass‑ta‑key: Malware extracts Google’s security domain secret (the master encryption key), decrypts all synced passkeys, and can reuse them anywhere, even after losing access to the original device.

How to stay safe

The researchers urge services to stop blindly trusting the user verification flag and to properly validate that a real User Verified event occurred before granting access. Google, in turn, is encouraged to harden device registration and recovery, and verify that new devices and keys are backed by genuine hardware rather than accepting them at face value.

For end users, passkeys still offer strong protection against classic phishing websites and credential stuffing attacks based on reused passwords. The weak point highlighted here is not so much the concept of passkeys, but the way they’re implemented, synchronized, and trusted without enough verification on the server side.

Until vendors close these gaps, basic anti‑malware hygiene remains critical. The best ways to prevent malware from using your passkeys are:

• Keep on top of updates: make sure your systems and software are patched as soon as you can.
• Use up-to-date real-time anti-malware protection.
• Treat unexpected attachments or links as suspicious until proven innocent.

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From reporting threats to removing them.

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Explore how passkey implementation gaps undermine security when relying parties fail to validate the User Verified flag, reducing MFA to a single factor.

The post Pass the Passkey: A Novel Attack Surface in Passwordless Authentication appeared first on Unit 42.

EY confirmed the theft of client tax documents from its third-party support platform. ShinyHunters claims responsibility and is threatening to publish the data.

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs:

• Don’t get fooled by TikTok resin art scams
• Call of Duty Mobile scam uses fake free points to steal player accounts
• OpenAI’s agent escaped its sandbox during a security test
• Google wants to store a selfie video of your face
• Beyond the Play Store: How Android threats really spread
• Millions of cars could be tracked and unlocked by a hidden security flaw
• WhatsApp Web chats exposed by Adobe’s Acrobat extension flaw
• Chick-fil-A loyalty accounts hijacked using stolen passwords
• Paidwork breach exposes data of 23 million users: Check if you’re affected
• What happens if you visit a WordPress site hacked through wp2shell?
• New ClickLock Stealer locks your Mac until you hand over your password
• Don’t trust that “FBI agent” in your DMs
• AI nudify apps spark legal scrutiny of Apple and Google’s profits
• The Odyssey piracy scams appear within hours of the movie’s release
• Healthcare giant Abbott probes two cyber incidents amid extortion claims
• Fake games spread stealers with RenPy Loader, MSBuild and EtherHiding

Stay safe!

---

Scammers know more about you than you think. 

Malwarebytes Mobile Security protects you from phishing, scam texts, malicious sites, and more. With real-time AI-powered Scam Guard built right in. 

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Ernst & Young (EY) disclosed a data breach after attackers compromised a third-party IT support system containing client documents and tax information.

Ernst & Young (EY) is disclosed a data breach linked to a compromised third-party support ticket system used by its IT teams. The platform stored support requests that may have included documents containing client tax information.

“EY uses a third-party information technology service management platform to help EY information technology personnel provide support to EY teams performing tax-related work for clients. Support tickets submitted through the platform may include documents containing client tax information. On April 23, 2026, EY identified anomalous activity within that platform.” reads the data breach notification. ” “EY’s Information Security team immediately initiated its incident response procedure to determine the nature and scope of the incident, contain it, and begin remediation and recovery efforts. EY has worked with an independent cybersecurity firm to investigate the incident and confirm that the unauthorized access has been stopped, and our systems are now secure. Based on EY’s investigation and available evidence, between March 28, 2026, and April 12, 2026, an unauthorized third party accessed the platform referenced above and downloaded documents pertaining to a number of EY clients.”

Ernst & Young is one of the world’s Big Four professional services firms, providing audit, tax, consulting, cybersecurity, and transaction advisory services. The company operates in more than 150 countries, with around 406,000 employees and global revenues of approximately $53.2 billion in fiscal year 2025. Its access to sensitive client data makes it a high-value target.

Ernst & Young revealed that it detected anomalous activity on its networks on April 23 and launched an investigation into the security breach with the help of external cybersecurity experts.

The company determined that an unauthorized third party had accessed the said platform between March 28 and April 12 and downloaded multiple documents.

The compromised information included certain personal and financial data contained in or used to prepare tax filings.

At this time, it is unclear how many customers were impacted by the incident.

EY announced it has secured its systems, removed unauthorized access, and notified federal authorities. The company pointed out that it has no evidence of misuse of the exposed files or targeted attacks against specific individuals.

“At this time, we are not aware of any misuse or further exposure of your personal information as a result of this incident. Further, we do not have any indication your personal information was specifically targeted.” continues the notification. “Nevertheless, we are providing information about steps you can take to further secure your personal information.”

To support affected clients, EY is offering 24 months of identity monitoring and restoration services through Experian.

At this time, no ransomware group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, EY)

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued a postmortem on a recent data leak in which a contractor published dozens of internal CISA credentials — including AWS Govcloud keys — in a public GitHub repository for almost six months before being notified by KrebsOnSecurity. Experts say the gaps identified in the agency’s initial response provide important lessons that all security teams should absorb.

On May 15, 2026, the security firm GitGuardian asked for help in notifying CISA about the existence of a public GitHub repository called “Private CISA” that included 844 MB of sensitive CISA-related data. One of the exposed files, titled “importantAWStokens,” included the administrative credentials to three Amazon AWS GovCloud servers. Another file — “AWS-Workspace-Firefox-Passwords.csv” — listed plaintext usernames and passwords for dozens of internal CISA systems.

CISA quickly acknowledged our initial alert, but took more than 48 hours to invalidate the AWS keys and many other important secrets leaked in the GitHub repo. In its report on the data leak, CISA said the complexities of the agency’s systems and interconnections with federal and industry partners caused its key rotation to take longer than anticipated.

“Drawing on this experience, CISA encourages others to maintain mature and well-tested key management capabilities,” the report notes.

CISA also admitted it can do better when it comes to responding to security incident notifications from external parties. The postmortem stresses that clear and distinct reporting channels are essential to ensure that incidents affecting the organization itself are handled differently from those involving its products or customers.

“In CISA’s case, these channels were not well defined, leading the security researcher to try multiple avenues – including emailing the contractor, submitting through CISA’s vulnerability disclosure platform (which is intended for vulnerabilities impacting the broader cybersecurity community), and ultimately involving a reporter,” reads the analysis written by Preston Werntz and Brad Libbey, the acting chief information officer and acting chief information security officer at CISA, respectively.

CISA said it is refining its reporting channels to make them easier and faster for researchers. “Additionally, while many researchers rely on the security.txt file, organizations can ensure clarity by publishing reporting instructions in multiple prominent locations,” the CISA authors wrote.

Guillaume Valadon, the GitGuardian researcher who first contacted KrebsOnSecurity about the exposed CISA credentials, said CISA ignored nine automated alerts about the exposed credentials prior to our notification on May 15. Valadon’s company constantly scans public code repositories at GitHub and elsewhere for exposed secrets, automatically alerting the offending accounts of any apparent sensitive data exposures.

“Letting nine notification emails go unanswered is how a one-day incident becomes a six-month exposure,” Valadon wrote in an analysis of CISA’s report. “Make it trivial to report a leak about you, not just about your products. The person reporting a leak to you is not the threat. Publish a security.txt, but do not stop there. Put reporting instructions in several prominent places, and make sure a report about your own infrastructure does not land in a product-bug queue.”

The report’s authors also emphasized the importance of continuously scanning public code repositories like GitHub for exposed secrets, and said CISA has since rotated all secrets and created an action plan to improve management of developer secrets and to better monitor for them going forward.

The report notes that while CISA had developed a playbook for responding to cybersecurity incidents, that playbook somehow didn’t include what to do in situations involving GitHub or other cloud services. Valadon said the report validates the need to scan continuously — not just quarterly — for exposed secrets.

“The Private-CISA repository sat public for six months,” Valadon wrote. “Continuous monitoring of public GitHub surfaced it. Comprehensive internal scanning could have caught the plaintext passwords and committed backups long before they left the building.”

CISA gave itself passing grades on several areas of security preparedness that it said helped the agency gauge the scope and impact of the exposed secrets, including enhanced logging capabilities, and the adoption of zero-trust principles in both its production and development systems. CISA said those detailed logs allowed it to show that no customer or mission data was exposed, and that the leaked credentials were not used outside of CISA’s environments. The agency said the contractor who exposed the secrets had their system access revoked.

Valadon reckons the biggest takeaway is the CISA postmortem itself, and praised the agency for being transparent about what worked and what didn’t.

“To my knowledge, it is also the first time a national cybersecurity agency has publicly advocated for secrets scanning and for simplifying relations with security researchers,” Valadon wrote. “That is exactly the incident communication we should expect from every organization.”

Operation Endgame has dealt another blow to cybercriminal operations after international law enforcement agencies and private sector partners dismantled infrastructure supporting the SocGholish, Amadey, and StealC malware families. The coordinated operation resulted in the seizure of more than EUR 41 million in criminal cryptocurrency assets, the recovery of 27 million stolen login credentials, and the disruption of hundreds of servers and domains used to distribute malware.

Led by Europol and Eurojust, the operation brought together authorities from Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, Microsoft, and several cybersecurity organizations. Officials said the objective was to disrupt the infrastructure cybercriminals rely on to launch ransomware attacks, financial fraud, and attacks against critical infrastructure.

Operation Endgame Targets Cybercrime Infrastructure

During the coordinated action, authorities targeted the infrastructure supporting malware delivery rather than focusing on a single malware family.

Law enforcement and industry partners took action against 326 servers and 142 domains, significantly disrupting malware distribution channels. Investigators also identified and restricted criminal cryptocurrency assets currently valued at more than EUR 41 million (USD 47 million) while recovering approximately 27 million stolen login credentials.

According to Europol, the operation aimed to disrupt the "assembly line" used by cybercriminals to gain initial access to victim systems before deploying ransomware or stealing sensitive information.

[caption id="attachment_112936" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Image Soure: Europol[/caption] [caption id="attachment_112937" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Image Source: Europol[/caption]

SocGholish, Amadey and StealC Malware Played Different Roles

The operation focused on three malware families that are commonly offered under the cybercrime-as-a-service model.

• SocGholish functioned as a malware loader that distributed fake browser updates through compromised WordPress websites. Users who installed these fake updates unknowingly infected their systems, allowing attackers to gain initial access and later deploy ransomware or other malicious tools.
• StealC malware primarily targeted sensitive information stored on infected devices, including passwords, authentication data, and digital identities. The stolen information was later used for fraud or traded within cybercriminal marketplaces.
• Amadey was mainly distributed through phishing campaigns. It provided attackers with initial access to compromised systems while also offering information-stealing capabilities that enabled the theft of sensitive user data.

Microsoft reported that during the first two weeks of May 2026 alone, Amadey and StealC malware were linked to more than 140,000 infected computers worldwide.

Thousands of Infected WordPress Sites Cleaned

One of the largest actions under Operation Endgame targeted SocGholish, also known as FakeUpdates.

Authorities remediated 14,971 infected WordPress websites, including websites belonging to restaurants, automotive repair businesses, and other organizations. Investigators also disabled the SocGholish botnet by taking control of domains and shutting down supporting servers.

Website owners whose credentials had been exposed were notified through platforms including Have I Been Pwned, DIVD, Spamhaus, CheckjeHack, NoMoreLeaks, Shadowserver, and NL-NCSC.

The Dutch Police urged WordPress administrators to change passwords, enable multi-factor authentication, remove unknown administrator accounts, and keep their websites updated to reduce future compromise risks.

SocGholish Linked to Evil Corp

Authorities said SocGholish has been linked to Evil Corp, a Russian cybercriminal group previously associated with the Zeus and Dridex malware families, as well as multiple ransomware and money laundering operations.

Rather than targeting only malware operators, investigators focused on disrupting the broader infrastructure supporting cybercriminal activity. Europol said this strategy increases operational costs for threat actors and makes large-scale cyberattacks more difficult to execute.

Europol Coordinates Global Cyber Operation

Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) coordinated operational intelligence sharing through SIENA while providing analytical, technical, and cryptocurrency tracing support throughout the investigation.

The operation forms part of Operation Endgame, described by Europol as the largest international initiative to disrupt ransomware enablers worldwide.

Officials said the latest disruption reflects a growing international strategy of targeting the infrastructure that enables cybercrime operations, rather than responding only after attacks have occurred.

Europol and Microsoft disrupted malware infrastructure linked to 27 million stolen login credentials and 140,000 infected computers in a global cybercrime network.

The post Europol, Microsoft Hit Malware Network Behind 27M Stolen Logins, 140,000 Infected Computers appeared first on TechRepublic.

Operation Endgame disrupted malware services like StealC and Amadey that enable ransomware, fraud, and attacks on critical infrastructure.

Between June 15 and 19, 2026, Europol coordinated a two-week law enforcement operation involving agencies from Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US, alongside private firms like Microsoft, Bitdefender, IBM X-Force, Proofpoint, Infoblox, Shadowserver, Orange Cyberdefense, and a dozen other private partners.

The operation targeted the infrastructure behind three malware families, SocGholish, Amadey, and StealC, that together form the opening stages of the cybercrime attack chain.

“The main common goal was to disrupt the “assembly lines” cybercriminals use to launch ransomware, financial fraud, and attacks on critical infrastructure.” reads the report published by EUROPOL. “Crypto assets of criminal origin currently valued at over EUR 41 million (USD 47 million) were identified, flagged, and thereby restricted from use. “

The numbers from the action are substantial. Law enforcement and private partners actioned 326 servers and 142 domains, recovered 27 million stolen login credentials, and identified, flagged, and restricted over €41 million in criminal cryptocurrency assets.

During the SocGholish portion of the operation, 14,971 infected websites were remediated, including restaurants, auto repair shops, and other everyday businesses whose WordPress installations had been quietly compromised and turned into malware distribution points. The Dutch Police removed vulnerabilities from infected sites and notified owners directly.

SocGholish works by injecting fake browser update prompts into legitimate websites. A visitor clicks what looks like a routine update, and the malware installs.

“This approach, which has caused countless victims, is primarily done by hacking websites built with WordPress and infecting them with malware.” continues the report.” The unauthorised access was then exploited for further crimes, such as installing ransomware for the purpose of digital extortion.”

SocGholish is linked to Evil Corp, the Russian cybercriminal group previously responsible for Zeus and Dridex, and associated with multiple large-scale ransomware and money-laundering operations.

Amadey has been running since October 2018 as a paid dropper service, spreading primarily through phishing campaigns. It gains initial access, delivers additional malware, and also has credential and clipboard stealing capabilities. StealC, which surfaced in January 2023, is the harvesting layer: it pulls passwords, stored credentials, digital identities, and sensitive data from compromised machines and makes them available for resale and fraud.

“Amadey gains initial access to devices, while StealC extracts passwords and sensitive data.” states the report. “Together, they form a critical link in the cybercrime supply chain.”

Microsoft linked both families to over 140,000 infected computers worldwide in just the first two weeks of May 2026.

The operational logic behind targeting these three families simultaneously is what makes this phase of Operation Endgame strategically significant. Rather than focusing on the ransomware payload at the end of the chain, the operation hit the tools that make every subsequent stage possible.

“Operation Endgame targets the initial access malware used to infect devices. Cybercriminals use this malware as a gateway to silently infiltrate victims’ systems and steal sensitive data.” reads the press release published by EuroJust. “By fighting the initial stage of the attack chain, the operation strikes at the heart of the entire ‘cybercrime-as-a-service’ ecosystem.”

Take out the loader, and the ransomware operator has no foothold to monetize.

Victim notifications went out through HaveIBeenPwned, DIVD, Spamhaus, CheckjeHack, NoMoreLeaks, Shadowserver, and the Dutch National Cyber Security Centre. WordPress site owners whose credentials were leaked have been urged to change login credentials, enable multi-factor authentication, delete any unknown admin accounts, and keep their installations updated. For ordinary users, the advice on SocGholish is the same it’s always been and apparently still needs repeating: genuine software updates come from official sources through system settings or app stores, not from browser pop-ups that scream for immediate action.

Operation Endgame is described by Europol as the largest international operation ever undertaken to tackle ransomware enablers worldwide. More than 30 public and private parties support its actions on an ongoing basis.

The operation has an active suspect portal. The message from every law enforcement statement is consistent: each takedown raises costs, degrades operations, and generates intelligence for the next one.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Operation Endgame)

Operation Endgame disrupts StealC malware infrastructure, seizing millions of stolen credentials and targeting servers used in global cybercrime campaigns.

💾

Sunil Varkey has been appointed as Executive Vice President (EVP) and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Hexaware Technologies, where he will lead the company's information security strategy, governance, risk management, and enterprise resilience initiatives. The appointment marks the latest leadership role for the cybersecurity veteran, who brings more than three decades of experience across global enterprises and multiple industry sectors. Based in Chennai, India, and operating in a hybrid work model, Varkey will be responsible for strengthening enterprise cybersecurity governance, risk management frameworks, and overall security strategy at Hexaware Technologies. His appointment was announced in June 2026.

Sunil Varkey to Lead Cybersecurity Strategy at Hexaware Technologies

In his new role, Sunil Varkey will oversee key areas including information security governance, enterprise risk management, and resilience initiatives. His responsibilities align with Hexaware Technologies' broader technology and growth objectives as the company continues to support large-scale digital transformation programs for clients worldwide. Hexaware Technologies delivers technology-led services across application development, cloud services, automation, data analytics, and enterprise IT operations. The company serves organizations across multiple industries and supports digital modernization initiatives at scale. Varkey's appointment comes as organizations continue to focus on strengthening cybersecurity programs and managing digital risks across increasingly complex technology environments.

More Than 30 Years of Cybersecurity Leadership Experience

Varkey brings over 30 years of experience in cybersecurity leadership spanning banking, telecommunications, IT services, manufacturing, and enterprise technology sectors. His professional experience extends across India, the Middle East, and the United States. His areas of expertise include cybersecurity governance, risk and compliance (GRC), security architecture, incident response, DevSecOps, cloud security, privacy management, cyber defense, business continuity management, security operations, and AI security. Prior to joining Hexaware Technologies, Varkey served as Cyber Security Consultant and Advisor at TAHAKOM in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from June 2023 to March 2025. In that role, he worked alongside the organization's CISO to enhance cybersecurity resilience and strengthen security posture. Before TAHAKOM, he held the position of Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for EMEA and APJ at Forescout Technologies Inc. between April 2021 and November 2022. Based in Dubai, he focused on IT/OT security strategy, enterprise cybersecurity advisory services, and product positioning across global markets.

Leadership Roles Across Global Organizations

Between March 2020 and January 2021, Varkey served as Managing Director and Global Head of Cyber Security Assessments and Testing at HSBC in Hyderabad. He led a team of approximately 300 professionals responsible for penetration testing, threat modeling, vulnerability management, and third-party security risk assessments. Earlier, from December 2018 to February 2020, he worked as CTO and Security Strategist for the Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe region at Symantec. His responsibilities included developing cybersecurity strategies for enterprise, government, industrial, and financial sector organizations. His career also includes senior leadership positions such as Global CISO at Wipro, CISO for Security and Privacy at Idea Cellular, and Vice President of Security Engineering at Barclays. Additionally, he held global security leadership roles at GE Capital, Genpact, Paramount Computer Systems, and other multinational organizations.

Focus on Governance, Risk Management, and Enterprise Resilience

Throughout his career, Varkey has overseen cybersecurity functions covering governance, compliance, strategy, security engineering, incident response, privacy, cloud security, cyber defense, and enterprise resilience. His experience includes leading security programs for organizations with large-scale user bases and complex operational environments. At Wipro, he served as Global CISO for a technology company supporting more than 200,000 end users. At Idea Cellular, he led security and privacy initiatives for a telecom operator with approximately 120 million subscribers. With his appointment, Hexaware Technologies adds a cybersecurity leader with extensive experience in building and scaling security programs across global enterprises. The move underscores the company's continued focus on strengthening cybersecurity operations, governance frameworks, and digital risk management capabilities as part of its ongoing technology initiatives.