How Pirated Software Turns Helpful Employees Into Malware Delivery Agents

This collection of SecurityWeek headlines highlights multiple active and emerging risks: pirated “cracked” software is being used to deliver credential-stealing malware, cryptominers and ransomware via unsuspecting employees; LastPass users are being targeted by a new phishing campaign impersonating unauthorized-access/master-password alerts; and critical vulnerabilities have been disclosed and/or exploited in the wild — notably CVE-2026-22719 (VMware Aria Operations) enabling unauthenticated RCE, and a separate critical FreeScout flaw whose patch was bypassed and can lead to zero-click full‑r