Bitdefender has released its 2026 Global Scam Intelligence Report, a 12-month analysis of the global scam landscape built from trillions of URLs, billions of messages, and live ad ecosystem telemetry — finding that 14% of consumers fell victim to a scam in the past year and that finance-themed fraud now dominates every major communication channel. The report is the most data-dense scam analysis Bitdefender has published to date. Its telemetry infrastructure spans call honeypots, direct consumer submissions, and live ad ecosystem monitoring, capturing campaigns in motion rather than reconstructing them post-incident.

ShinyHunters is a financially motivated criminal extortion group that emerged on dark web forums in May 2020, offering millions of stolen user records from more than a dozen companies in a single two-week burst. Believed to have formed as early as 2019, the group operates under a pay-or-leak model: breach an organization, issue a private ransom demand, and publish or auction the stolen data if payment is refused. That model, refined over six years, has made ShinyHunters one of the most prolific data theft operations on record, with attributed breaches spanning retail, finance, aviation, education, defense contracting, telecommunications, and sovereign government infrastructure.

A working reference for the language of modern cybersecurity — organized by threat surface and defensive domain. Definitions are written for security professionals, technical managers, and informed practitioners who need precision without padding. Threat Actors and Motivation Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) A sophisticated, long-duration cyberattack campaign — typically state-sponsored — characterized by stealth, patience, and a specific high-value target. APT actors infiltrate networks and maintain persistent access for months or years before executing their objective.