Cybersecurity entered 2026 under stress to deploy AI tech while building foundations for a quantum future. Cybersecurity experts have to defend against advanced AI and hybrid attacks while facing talent scarcity, a rapidly shifting threat scenario, and rising operational challenges.
It is the first time that hackers have access to the same advanced enterprise-level tech that security experts are using to defend their digital assets.
Organizations are in need of the transformational advantage that Quantum computing promises, however, it also risks affecting the cryptographic infrastructure that protects today’s digital world. Worse, cyber attackers are getting together and outbeating experts.
Like experts, threat actors don’t mind playing the long game either, they gain initial access and stay hidden inside systems for longer periods of time. When the right opportunity arrives, they move laterally and hack important data that can affect operations, cause financial damage, and tarnish reputations.
So, what are these four key areas that businesses and users need to address or stay safe from?
As per the ICS2 2025 report, 69% respondents suffered multiple cybersecurity breaches due to skill gaps. This is due to various factors such as budget constraints, misalignment in academia, and high enterprise demand.
Hackers use GenAI to advance their attacks, scaling, and escape security experts. This reactive cycle delays response times, and gives just basic protection. What businesses need today is Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) approach that offers real-time visibility before flaws can be exploited. But the success depends on AI-based risk prioritization.
Reliability is the new attack vector. Deepfakes have plagued every digital aspect of human life. Traditional measures fail to address content due to AI, therefore AI-based protection is needed. Adaptive deepfake systems can address identity workflows and respond immediately to threats, flagging malicious activity and capturing attacks with detailed metadata for research and audit work.
Quantum computing is making strides in applicability; if sufficiently advanced, the systems can break public-key cryptographic systems in ransomware attacks such as RSA, where hackers extort millions. Hackers are already using the “harvest now, decrypt later” approach, stealing coded data with no promise of returning it.
Thus, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have advised to adopt post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and tracking quantum-vulnerable assets.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) said its digital election infrastructure faced more than 68 lakh malicious online hits on the day votes were counted for the recently concluded Assembly elections, with attempts originating from both domestic and overseas sources. According to election officials, the attacks targeted several online systems operated by the Commission, including the public election results portal, but were contained using existing cybersecurity protections.
Officials stated that despite the unusually high volume of hostile traffic, there was no disruption to counting operations or public access to election-related services.
The attacks were directed at ECINET, the Commission’s integrated election management platform that now combines over 40 separate election applications and digital portals into a unified system. The platform is used to manage multiple election-related functions, including monitoring, reporting, voter services, and administrative coordination.
On counting day, May 4, ECINET reportedly processed an average of nearly 3 crore hits every minute. Across all polling phases conducted on April 9, 23, and 29, the platform recorded a total traffic load of 98.3 crore hits, reflecting the scale at which India’s election infrastructure now operates digitally.
The Commission officially launched ECINET in January 2026 after testing its beta version during the Bihar Assembly elections in November 2025. Since then, the application has crossed 10 crore downloads, indicating rapid adoption among election officials, staff, and users accessing poll-related information and services.
Election authorities said the platform played a major operational role during the elections across five states and Union Territories, along with bypolls conducted during the same period. According to officials, ECINET enabled real-time monitoring of election activities, accelerated reporting processes, and improved administrative coordination between different election units. Authorities also said the centralized system helped increase transparency by reducing delays in communication and data sharing.
Cybersecurity analysts have repeatedly warned that election infrastructure has become an increasingly attractive target for malicious cyber activity because such systems process large amounts of real-time public information under intense public scrutiny. During counting periods, election portals often experience massive spikes in traffic as citizens, media organizations, and political workers continuously refresh result dashboards. Security researchers note that these high-traffic periods can also create opportunities for malicious actors to disguise harmful requests within normal user activity.
While the Election Commission did not disclose the technical nature of the 68 lakh malicious hits, such traffic typically includes automated bot requests, denial-of-service attempts, malicious scanning activity, or repeated unauthorized access attempts aimed at slowing systems or overwhelming servers.
The Commission also introduced a new QR code-based photo identity verification system for counting centres during the election process. On counting day alone, more than 3.2 lakh QR codes were generated through ECINET to regulate entry into counting venues. Officials said the system was introduced to ensure that only authorized personnel could enter restricted areas, reducing the possibility of unauthorized access at highly sensitive counting locations.
According to the Commission, this was the first time the QR-based access system had been deployed across all five states and Union Territories simultaneously. The ECI has now decided to adopt the system as a standard security measure for future Lok Sabha and state Assembly elections.
The increasing dependence on centralized digital infrastructure has pushed election management beyond traditional ballot security into the broader domain of cybersecurity, network resilience, identity verification, and real-time system monitoring. As more election operations move onto integrated digital platforms, experts say continuous monitoring and infrastructure hardening will become essential to maintaining uninterrupted electoral processes at national scale.
In an important ruling amid surging digital financial fraud attacks, the Bombay HC sided with the customer protection norms. It directed Bank of Baroda to return Rs. 1.24 crore to the victim private firm that lost money in a SIM-swap case. The court stressed that if a consumer reports fraud promptly in time, “zero liability” is ruled, and the bank must reimburse the losses.
The order was given by a division bench of the HC, which included Justices Manjusha Deshpande and Bharati Dangre, when private company PNP Polytex (based in Mumbai) submitted a petition. Polytex alleged that Rs.1.24 crore had been stolen from its bank accounts illegally and without knowledge.
About court proceedings
As per the submissions to the court, the firm informed the bank soon after finding malicious transactions and asked the accounts to be frozen. The bank could only save Rs. 47.8 lakh, the remaining money was already stolen by the hackers. After this, the firm moved to HC for help.
Later, enquiry revealed that the scam was done using a SIM-swap tactic, where hackers get control of the target’s registered contact number. This lets the hackers intercept OTPs and do banking transactions without the account owner's consent and knowledge. The high court found that the scam was done by third-parties, and showed no evidence of negligence on consumer’s end.
During the proceedings, the court referred to the July 6, 2017 statement given by the RBI, which laid down the customer protection guidelines in incidents of illegal electronic banking transactions. According to the circular, the consumers are entitled to zero liability if they report fraud transactions within 72 hours (three days).
In the judgement, the high court stressed that if a customer informs the bank about a scam or fraud, it is the duty of the bank to return the disputed amount back to the victim’s account. The court also said that the burden of proving customer negligence is on the bank too.
The court rejected the bank's defenses that it had followed the due process and security measures, and the bench labelled the argument as a “lame excuse,” saying that such mechanisms become powerless when a SIM card is hacked. The court also attributed another ruling in an incident where HDFC bank was held liable under similar situations.
After revising the previously frozen funds, the High Court ordered the bank to return the remaining sum plus 6% interest within eight weeks.
Several Ubuntu users reported problems installing updates and downloading packages after parts of Canonical’s infrastructure were disrupted during a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution, confirmed that its online systems had been targeted.
In a statement released during the outage, Canonical said its web infrastructure was facing what it described as a sustained cross-border cyberattack and that teams were working to restore affected services. The company added that further updates would be shared through official channels once more information became available.
Discussions across Ubuntu community forums suggested that multiple services were affected during the incident, including Ubuntu’s security API and several Canonical-operated websites. Users also stated that software installations and system updates were temporarily unavailable or failing to complete properly.
Responsibility for the attack was later claimed by a group calling itself “The Islamic Cyber Resistance in Iraq 313 Team.” In Telegram posts attributed to the group, the attackers allegedly said they used a DDoS-for-hire platform known as “Beamed” to carry out the operation.
Beamed is described as a “booter” or “stresser” service, which are platforms that allow customers to pay for DDoS attacks. These services are often advertised as tools for testing website traffic capacity, although security researchers have repeatedly linked them to disruptive cyber operations. According to claims associated with the platform, Beamed is capable of generating attacks reaching 3.5 terabits per second, enough traffic to overwhelm major online infrastructure.
A DDoS attack works by flooding a server or network with enormous volumes of internet traffic from large numbers of connected devices at the same time. Once systems become overloaded, legitimate users may no longer be able to access websites, applications, or online services. Unlike ransomware campaigns or data breaches, the primary goal of most DDoS attacks is to interrupt availability rather than steal information directly.
To create these attack networks, threat actors typically compromise internet-connected devices using malware. Weak passwords, exposed systems, outdated software, and poorly secured smart devices are commonly targeted. Once infected, the devices become part of a botnet that can be remotely controlled through centralized management panels.
Access to these botnets is frequently sold through underground marketplaces and subscription-based services. Depending on the size and duration of the attack, prices can range from as little as $10 for lower-powered services to hundreds of dollars per month for larger and more persistent attacks.
The disruption drew attention within the open-source community because Ubuntu infrastructure is widely used across enterprise servers, development environments, cloud systems, and research institutions worldwide. Problems affecting package repositories or security update services can delay software deployments and patch management for organizations that rely on Ubuntu systems daily.
The incident also reflects how accessible DDoS-for-hire services have become over the past few years. Platforms offering attack infrastructure continue to reduce the technical barrier required to launch disruptive cyberattacks, allowing even low-skilled actors to rent large-scale attack capabilities for relatively small amounts of money.
It is a cloud based edtech company famous for its Canvas LMS which is used by education institutes to handle academic work like grading, communications, and assignments.
Recently, Instructure revealed that it was hacked; emails, users' names and private conversations were leaked.
The ShinyHunters extortion gang claimed responsibility for the attack and says it stole 280 million records for students, teachers, and staff.
The threat actors have now published a list of 8,809 school districts, universities, and educational platforms whose Canvas instances were allegedly impacted by the attack, sharing record counts per institution with BleepingComputers.
According to Bleeping Computers, “the record counts for each educational institution range from tens of thousands to several million per institution.”
The hacker claims that the data was stolen through Canvas. Instructure has not replied to Bleeping Computers’ emails, but a few universities have started releasing statements regarding the matter. “BleepingComputer is not naming specific organizations listed by the threat actor, as we have not independently verified whether they were impacted by the breach,” it said.
Bleeping Computers added that the “threat actor claims the data was stolen using Canvas data export features, including DAP queries, provisioning reports, and user APIs, and that they harvested hundreds of gigabytes of user records, messages, and enrollment data.”
The University of Colorado Boulder warned that, “CU is aware of a data breach involving Instructure, the parent company of Canvas, our learning management system. This reported data breach is a nationwide event affecting multiple institutions.”
Whereas Rutgers said it was not “notified of any direct impact to our campus. Canvas remains available and operational to Rutgers faculty, staff, and students.”
Tilburg University warned that “investigation is currently underway to determine what exactly happened and which systems were affected. It has not yet been confirmed whether data of Tilburg University students and staff has been impacted. Further questions have been submitted to the supplier to obtain more clarity”