- France probes compromise of gov messaging platform after account hijack
June 9, 2026
French officials are investigating a compromise of the government’s encrypted messaging service Tchap after attackers hijacked an account and gained access to public chat rooms. The incident came to light on June 7 when France’s National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI) detected suspicious activity on Tchap, the government’s homegrown messaging service used across ministries and public sector organizations. The French ...
- CISA gives US federal agencies three days to fix a VPN bug under attack by a ransomware gang
June 9, 2026
A ransomware group is actively exploiting an unpatched flaw in security tools used across the U.S. federal government, prompting the U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA to order all civilian agencies to remediate the vulnerability by end of day Wednesday. Cybersecurity firm Check Point Software said the bug affects several of its remote access tools, firewalls, and VPNs, which act as ...
- Vibe Hacking: Two AI-Augmented Campaigns Target Government and Financial Sectors in Latin America
May 11, 2026
Threat actors using AI is an unsurprising and even long-predicted developmentopen on a new tab. In a case in point, TrendAI™ Research has identified two emerging threat campaigns that used agentic AI to drive intrusion operations against government entities and financial organizations across several countries in Latin America. Though evidence suggests that the two groups are likely ...
- Disgraced US gov software contractor found guilty of database destruction
May 8, 2026
A Virginia man, Sohaib Akhter, faces decades in prison after a jury convicted him of being involved in a scheme to delete approximately 96 databases containing US government data. The events of the case transpired around two weeks before the twin brothers allegedly involved were fired from their jobs at a software supplier to the US ...
- Muddying the Tracks: The State-Sponsored Shadow Behind Chaos Ransomware
May 6, 2026
Researchers at Rapid7 say that they have spotted what they believe was an Iranian intelligence cyber unit masquerading as the Chaos ransomware gang to hide a state-sponsored espionage operation. The intrusion was spotted earlier this year, and investigators say breadcrumbs left behind give them “medium confidence” in saying it was the work of MuddyWater, which has ...
- DOJ says ransomware gang tapped into Russian government databases
May 6, 2026
A U.S. court has sentenced Latvian hacker Deniss Zolotarjovs to more than eight years in prison following his conviction for carrying out ransomware attacks. The Justice Department accused the hacker of working for a notorious Russian ransomware gang called Karakurt, which was led by former leaders of the Akira and Conti ransomware gangs, who were sanctioned ...
- Inside Shadow-Earth-053: A China-Aligned Cyberespionage Campaign Against Government and Defense Sectors in Asia
April 30, 2026
Through ongoing analysis of ShadowPad implants targeting South and Southeast Asia, TrendAI Research has uncovered a series of new related campaigns that are tracked under a temporary intrusion set (a provisional cluster of related activity pending formal attribution) designated SHADOW-EARTH-053, which we assess to be aligned with China’s broader strategic interests. Trend Micro telemetry indicates that ...
- U.S. DOJ: Prolific Chinese state-sponsored contract hacker extradited from Italy
April 27, 2026
Xu Zewei (徐泽伟), 34, of the People’s Republic of China was extradited to the United States this weekend and appeared today in U.S. District Court in Houston on a nine-count indictment related to his involvement in computer intrusions between February 2020 and June 2021. Certain of those computer intrusions allegedly are part of the HAFNIUM computer ...
- Governments on high alert after CISA snuffs out Firestarter backdoor on fed network
April 24, 2026
A US federal agency was successfully targeted by a previously unknown backdoor malware called Firestarter, according to CISA cybersnoops and their UK counterparts – neither of which disclosed the agency’s name. Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies include NASA; Homeland Security itself (cyberworkers at CISA are part of an operational unit in Homeland Security); the FBI; the DoJ; the IRS; the ...
- France confirms data breach at government agency that manages citizens’ IDs
April 22, 2026
The French government agency that handles the issuing and management of citizens’ identity documents, including national IDs, passports, and immigration documents, confirmed Wednesday that it experienced a data breach. In an announcement, the Agence Nationale des Titres Sécurisés (ANTS) said the data stolen in the breach could include full names, dates and places of birth, mailing ...
- Hungary: Nearly 800 state logins surfaced in breach data, including defense and NATO-linked accounts
April 11, 2026
Hungary’s government has discovered the hard way that the biggest threat to national security might just be its own password choices. An investigation by Bellingcat has uncovered close to 800 Hungarian government email and password pairings circulating in breach dumps, cutting across nearly every major ministry, from defense and foreign affairs to finance. This doesn’t look ...
- Hack-for-hire group caught targeting Android devices and iCloud backups
April 8, 2026
Security researchers say they have identified a hack-for-hire group targeting journalists, activists, and government officials across the Middle East and North Africa. The hackers used phishing attacks to access targets’ iCloud backups and messaging accounts on Signal, and deployed Android spyware capable of taking over the targets’ devices. This hacking campaign highlights a growing trend of ...
- Sophisticated supply chain attack exploited TrueConf update process
April 2, 2026
Southeast Asian governments were recently targeted by a highly sophisticated supply chain attack as part of a wider cyber-espionage campaign, which experts believe is the work of the Chinese government. Security researchers Check Point detailed their findings on Operation TrueChaos, a campaign revolving around a zero-day vulnerability in TrueConf, a video conferencing and collaboration platform which ...
- Swedish government IT system hacked
March 13, 2026
A large amount of sensitive information allegedly coming from a Swedish government IT system has been posted on the darknet, according to Dagens Nyheter and Expressen. DN writes that the newspaper has taken note of the leak and that it appears to contain the source code for a digital identity management system used by several authorities. ...
- DOGE employee stole Social Security data and put it on a thumb drive
March 10, 2026
A former employee of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency reportedly stole Americans’ personal data from the U.S. Social Security Administration and stored it on a thumb drive, according to a whistleblower complaint reported by The Washington Post. The former DOGE software engineer told co-workers at his new job that he “possessed two tightly restricted databases ...
- ISA warns of increasing cyber attacks against Israeli officials
February 11, 2026
The ISA and the National Cyber Directorate announced on Wednesday that they thwarted hundreds of cyberattack attempts over the past year carried out by Iranian intelligence operatives. According to the agencies, the attacks targeted senior government and defense officials, academics, journalists, and employees in the defense industry. A joint statement said a marked escalation in hostile ...
- Malaysia: Nacsa investigating alleged cyber-espionage targeting multiple government bodies
February 7, 2026
The National Cyber Security Agency (Nacsa) is currently investigating alleged incidents of cyber-espionage activity targeting various Malaysian government entities. In a statement to StarLifestyle, a Nacsa spokesperson said the agency is aware of a report published by Unit 42, the threat research unit of US-based cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks. The Nacsa spokesperson said the agency ...
- Approaching cyclone: Vortex Werewolf attacks Russia
February 6, 2026
In December 2025 and January 2026, BI.ZONE Threat Intelligence detected malicious activity by a new cluster Vortex Werewolf (SkyCloak). The attacks targeted Russian government and defense organizations. BI.ZONE researchers findings indicate that the adversary used phishing emails to deliver malware to the target systems. Victims received messages containing a download link disguised as a Telegram file‑sharing ...
- Asia-based government spies quietly broke into critical networks across 37 countries
February 5, 2026
A state-aligned cyber group in Asia compromised government and critical infrastructure organizations across 37 countries in an ongoing espionage campaign, according to security researchers. In total, the crew compromised at least 70 organizations, and maintained access to several of these for months. “While this group might be pursuing espionage objectives, its methods, targets and scale of ...
- Data breach at govtech giant Conduent balloons, affecting millions more Americans
February 5, 2026
A data breach at government technology giant Conduent appears to affect far more people than first disclosed, with the number of victims potentially stretching to dozens of millions of people across the United States. The January 2025 ransomware attack, which knocked out Conduent’s operations for several days, is now known to affect at least 15.4 million ...