Infostealer-driven credential theft in 2025 has surged, with Flashpoint observing a staggering 800% increase since the start of the year. With over 1.8 billion corporate and personal accounts compromised, the threat landscape finds itself in a paradox: while technical defenses have never been more advanced, the human attack surface has never been more vulnerable.

Information-stealing malware has become the most scalable entry point for enterprise breaches, but to truly defend against them, organizations must look beyond the malware itself. As teams move into 2026 security planning, it is critical to understand the deceptive initial access vectors—the latest tactics Flashpoint is seeing in the wild—that threat actors are using to manipulate users and bypass modern security perimeters.

Here are the latest methods threat actors are leveraging to facilitate infections:

1. Neutralizing Mark of the Web (MotW) via Drag-and-Drop Lures

Mark of the Web (MotW) is a critical Windows defense feature that tags files downloaded from the internet as “untrusted” by adding a hidden NTFS Alternate Data Stream (ADS) to the file. This tag triggers “Protected View” in Microsoft Office programs and prompts Windows SmartScreen warnings when a user attempts to execute an unknown file.

Flashpoint has observed a new social engineering method to bypass these protections through a simple drag-and-drop lure. Instead of asking a user to open a suspicious attachment directly, which would trigger an immediate MotW warning, threat actors are instead instructing the victim to drag the malicious image or file from a document onto their desktop to view it. This manual interaction is highly effective for two reasons:

1. Contextual Evasion: By dragging the file out of the document and onto the desktop, the file is executed outside the scope of the Protected View sandbox.
2. Metadata Stripping: In many instances, the act of dragging and dropping an embedded object from a parent document can cause the operating system to treat the newly created file as a local creation, rather than an internet download. This effectively strips the MotW tag and allows malicious code to run without any security alerts.

2. Executing Payloads via Vulnerabilities and Trusted Processes

Flashpoint analysts uncovered an illicit thread detailing a proof of concept for a client-side remote code execution (RCE) in the Google Web Designer for Windows, which was first discovered by security researcher Bálint Magyar.

Google Web Designer is an application used for creating dynamic ads for the Google Ads platform. Leveraging this vulnerability, attackers would be able to perform remote code execution through an internal API using CSS injection by targeting a configuration file related to ads documents.

Within this thread, threat actors were specifically interested in the execution of the payload using the chrome.exe process. This is because using chrome.exe to fetch and execute a file is likely to bypass several security restrictions as Chrome is already a trusted process. By utilizing specific command-line arguments, such as the –headless flag, threat actors showed how to force a browser to initiate a remote connection in the background without spawning a visible window. This can be used in conjunction with other malicious scripts to silently download additional payloads onto a victim’s systems.

3. Targeting Alternative Softwares as a Path of Least Resistance

As widely-used software becomes more hardened and secure, threat actors are instead pivoting to targeting lesser-known alternatives. These tools often lack robust macro-protections. By targeting vulnerabilities in secondary PDF viewers or Office alternatives, attackers are seeking to trick users into making remote server connections that would otherwise be flagged as suspicious.

Understanding the Identity Attack Surface

Social engineering is one of the driving factors behind the infostealer lifecycle. Once an initial access vector is successful, the malware immediately begins harvesting the logs that fuel today’s identity-based digital attacks.

As detailed in The Proactive Defender’s Guide to Infostealers, the end goal is not just a password. Instead, attackers are prioritizing session cookies, which allow them to perform session hijacking. By importing these stolen cookies into anti-detect browsers, they bypass Multi-Factor Authentication and step directly into corporate environments, appearing as a legitimate, authenticated user.

Understanding how threat actors weaponize stolen data is the first step toward a proactive defense. For a deep dive into the most prolific stealer strains and strategies for managing the identity attack surface, download The Proactive Defender’s Guide to Infostealers today.