Ravie LakshmananJul 02, 2026Network Security / Ransomware
The recently discovered financially-motivated FortiBleed campaign has been attributed to INC and Lynx ransomware operations, indicating that the verified, stolen credentials were intended for follow-on intrusions.
"An operator tied to FortiBleed's infrastructure was found actively working negotiation panels for both groups, tying mass FortiGate credential theft directly to ransomware deployment for the first time," SOCRadar said in a new report published Wednesday.
The company said it tracked scanning activity against approximately 11,250 FortiGate portals in more than 150 countries, followed by confirmed admin-level access on 409 targets and successful completion of the full attack chain on 354 of them. In all, at least 12 ransomware deployments have resulted from this access, causing hundreds of endpoints to be encrypted across affected organizations.
The large-scale credential-harvesting operation, which came to light last month, involved the threat actors systematically scanning the internet for exposed Fortinet devices, attempting to break into them using known credential combinations, and then deploying custom packet sniffers to passively gather credentials and other authentication data from network traffic.
