Cybersecurity threats surge through social engineering and HTML smuggling

Cybersecurity researchers have identified a surge in sophisticated cyberattacks that exploit trusted workflows and social engineering to bypass traditional defenses. A new report from Gen Digital indicates that scams accounted for 46% of their threat detections in the first half of 2026, with imposter scams rising by 387%. This includes a significant increase in government impersonation and family impersonation scams, the latter of which rose by 454.2% and was particularly prevalent in Western Europe.

In a separate campaign, threat actors are utilizing DCRat (Remote Access Trojan) via phishing emails. These attacks use malicious SVG files and HTML smuggling techniques to reconstruct malware archives locally within a user's browser. This method allows the payload to evade network-level inspection and secure email gateways. The campaign has targeted various corporate entities and government agencies, including the Colombian agency Caminho, providing attackers with unauthorized remote access and data exfiltration capabilities.