- The BadPilot campaign: Seashell Blizzard subgroup conducts multiyear global access operation
February 12, 2025
Microsoft is publishing for the first time their research into a subgroup within the Russian state actor Seashell Blizzard and its multiyear initial access operation, tracked by Microsoft Threat Intelligence as the “BadPilot campaign”. This subgroup has conducted globally diverse compromises of Internet-facing infrastructure to enable Seashell Blizzard to persist on high-value targets and support tailored ...
- Scammers target Italian tycoons using defense minister’s AI-generated voice
February 10, 2025
Scammers target Italian tycoons using defense minister’s AI-generated voice on OpenAI Voice Engine Scammers used AI-generated voice of Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto in an atempts to steal millions of dollars from Italian business tycoons, according to reports. Crosetto said last Thursday on X that someone was using his name and his artificially generated voice to ...
- Trump ends Biden’s security clearances, intelligence briefings
February 7, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said he was revoking former President Joe Biden’s security clearances and stopping his daily intelligence briefings as there was no need for his predecessor to receive classified information. In a post on Truth Social, Trump referenced a report by Special Counsel Robert Hur that described Biden last year as a ...
- U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts
February 7, 2025
Security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a back door allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post. The British government’s undisclosed order, issued last month, requires blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not ...
- Spyware maker Paragon confirms US government is a customer
February 4, 2025
Israeli spyware maker Paragon Solutions confirmed to TechCrunch that it sells its products to the U.S. government and other unspecified allied countries. Paragon’s executive chairman John Fleming said in a statement to TechCrunch on Tuesday that “Paragon licenses its technology to a select group of global democracies — principally, the United States and its allies.” Fleming ...
- Funksec Ransomware Teams Up with Another Ransomware Group to Double Down on Targets
February 3, 2025
FunkSec is a relatively new but highly active ransomware group that, as of this writing, has targeted several dozen victims across industries like government, banking, communications, and education. In a recent blog post, the group announced a partnership with another ransomware outfit, FSociety, aiming to carry out attacks more efficiently. This week, SonicWall Capture Labs research ...
- USAID security leaders removed after refusing Elon Musk’s DOGE employees access to secure systems
February 2, 2025
The U.S. Agency for International Development’s director of security and his deputy were placed on administrative leave Saturday after they tried to prevent employees from the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing secure USAID systems, five sources familiar with the events told NBC News. The USAID systems the DOGE team tried to access included personnel files ...
- CL-STA-0048: An Espionage Operation Against High-Value Targets in South Asia
January 29, 2025
We identified a cluster of activity that we track as CL-STA-0048. This cluster targeted high-value targets in South Asia, including a telecommunications organization. This activity cluster used rare tools and techniques including the technique we call Hex Staging, in which the attackers deliver payloads in chunks. Their activity also includes exfiltration over DNS using ping, and ...
- UK: Whitehall is at risk from hackers due to poor cyber defences
January 29, 2025
Whitehall departments are at growing risk of being hacked because anti-cyber attack defences are ‘lower’ than thought, an alarming report has found. The inquiry by the National Audit Office (NAO) was branded a ‘wake-up call’ for officials to step-up defences against hostile actors.It identified a shortage of cyber skills within departments and risks posed by outdated ...
- Trump administration fires members of cybersecurity review board in ‘horribly shortsighted’ decision
January 22, 2025
On Tuesday, a day after Donald Trump’s inauguration as the new U.S. president, the Department of Homeland Security told members of several advisory committees that they were effectively fired. Among the committees impacted is the Cyber Safety Review Board, or CSRB, according to sources familiar with the board who spoke to TechCrunch, as well as reporting ...
- Conduent confirms outage was due to a cybersecurity incident
January 22, 2025
U.S. government contractor Conduent, which provides technology to support services such as child support and food assistance, has confirmed that a recent outage was caused by a cybersecurity incident. Conduent confirmed the disruption, which left some U.S. residents without access to support payments, to TechCrunch on Tuesday but declined to say whether the outage was related ...
- New Star Blizzard spear-phishing campaign targets WhatsApp accounts
January 16, 2025
Star Blizzard’s new spear-phishing campaign, while novel in that it uses and targets WhatsApp for the first time, exhibits familiar spear-phishing TTPs for Star Blizzard, with the threat actor initiating email contact with their targets, to engage them, before sending them a second message containing a malicious link. The sender address used by the threat actor ...
- Japan links Chinese hacker MirrorFace to dozens of cyberattacks targeting security and tech data
January 8, 2025
Japan on Wednesday linked more than 200 cyberattacks over the past five years targeting the country’s national security and high technology data to a Chinese hacking group, MirrorFace, detailing their tactics and calling on government agencies and businesses to reinforce preventive measures. MirrorFace sent emails with attachments containing malware to targeted organizations and individuals to view ...
- US state sues T-Mobile over 2021 data breach which leaked data of millions
January 7, 2025
As part of Washington’s lawsuit, the state claims T-Mobile failed to ‘adequately secure sensitive personal information of more than 2 million Washingtonians’. This failure, the state claims, left those consumers vulnerable to fraud and identity theft. The suit claims that the breach was ‘entirely avoidable’ and explains T-Mobile had years to fix key vulnerabilities in its ...
- U.S. Treasury Department Says Systems Hacked by China-Backed Actor
December 30, 2024
The Treasury Department told lawmakers Monday that a state-sponsored actor in China hacked its systems, accessing several user workstations and certain unclassified documents. The treasury was informed on Dec. 8 by a third-party software service provider, BeyondTrust, that a threat actor used a stolen key to remotely access certain workstations and unclassified documents, according to a ...
- U.S. Army Soldier Arrested in AT&T, Verizon Extortions
December 30, 2024
Federal authorities have arrested and indicted a 20-year-old U.S. Army soldier on suspicion of being Kiberphant0m, a cybercriminal who has been selling and leaking sensitive customer call records stolen earlier this year from AT&T and Verizon. As first reported by KrebsOnSecurity last month, the accused is a communications specialist who was recently stationed in South Korea. ...
- Cyber attack on Italy’s Foreign Ministry, airports claimed by pro-Russian hacker group
December 28, 2024
Hackers targeted around ten official websites in Italy on Saturday, including the websites of the Foreign Ministry and Milan’s two airports, putting them out of action temporarily, the country’s cyber security agency said. The pro-Russian hacker group Noname057(16) claimed the cyber attack on Telegram, saying Italy’s “Russophobes get a well deserved cyber response”. Read more… Source: MSN News Sign ...
- Data breach at IDHS compromises 1M customers
December 26, 2024
On April 25, the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) experienced a privacy breach. An outside entity, through a phishing campaign, gained access to multiple employee accounts, and files associated with the accounts. The files included the Social Security numbers (SSNs) of 4,701 customers and three employees. Separately, public assistance account information (name, public assistance account ...
- Ukraine Hit By Massive Cyber Attack
December 20, 2024
Ukraine government databases, described as critically important infrastructure, have been hit by a cyber attack that’s being blamed on Russia. Deputy prime minister Olha Stefanishyna said it was the largest external cyber attack on the state registers of Ukraine in recent times. “As a result of a targeted attack, the work of the Unified and State Registers, ...
- Ireland: Loss of papers and devices among the Department of Justice’s 482 data breaches
December 15, 2024
The Department of Justice has recorded more than 480 data breaches over the past three years, including the loss of sensitive papers, encrypted devices, and unauthorised access to social media. The breaches occurred across the department including key areas such as international protection, the response to the Ukraine refugee crisis, and in citizenship applications. A log ...