Russian-linked hackers are trying to break into the Signal and WhatsApp accounts of government officials, journalists, and military personnel globally – not by cracking encryption, but by simply tricking people into handing over the keys.
That’s the warning issued Monday by the Netherlands’ intelligence and military security agencies, the AIVD and MIVD, which say a “large-scale” Russian cyber campaign is actively targeting Signal and WhatsApp accounts. The goal isn’t to defeat the apps’ end-to-end encryption, but to take over the accounts themselves and quietly read whatever conversations are inside.
Read more…
Source: The Register News
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Cisco SD-WAN make-me-root bug under attack
June 16, 2026
Cisco today issued a fix for a Catalyst SD-WAN Manager bug that attackers have already spotted and exploited to get root privileges, according to both the networking vendor and the feds. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-20262, is in the web UI of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager, and exists because the software is not properly validating user-supplied input during ...
- Hijacking Vertex AI Model Uploads for Cross-Tenant RCE
June 16, 2026
Palo Alto Unit42 discovered a vulnerability in the Google Cloud Vertex AI software development kit (SDK) for Python, and responsibly disclosed it to Google. Before Google’s fix, the vulnerability would have allowed an attacker operating entirely from their own Google Cloud project to hijack a victim’s model upload and poison it. By exploiting this flaw ...
- Attackers used social engineering to access third-party business apps and steal patient information
June 16, 2026
Heart monitoring biz iRhythm says thieves made off with patient health information and tried to turn it into a payday. The California-based cardiac monitoring specialist offers customers a wearable device that collects data, then analyzes it to create reports about heart health. The company said it detected unauthorized activity on June 8 and launched an investigation ...
- Dozens of malicious wallpapers found on Steam Workshop
June 16, 2026
Since late 2025, malware has been spreading rapidly through the Steam Workshop, the gaming platform’s built-in service for players to create and share custom content. The attackers are primarily targeting gamers in China and Russia, aiming to hijack their accounts. To pull this off, they are exploiting Wallpaper Engine – a popular live wallpaper app ...
- Council of Europe hacked in ShinyHunters’ PeopleSoft heist
June 15, 2026
ShinyHunters claims to have breached the Council of Europe and stolen more than 297 GB of data after exploiting a zero-day flaw in Oracle PeopleSoft and abusing that hole to hack more than 100 organizations. According to a post on the extortion crew’s data-leak site, the 429,000 pilfered files contain HR and payroll records, payslips, purchase-order ...
- Public and Private Medical Community Targeted by China-Nexus Threat Actor
June 15, 2026
Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) has identified a sophisticated campaign attributed to UNC6508, a People’s Republic of China (PRC)-nexus threat actor, targeting institutions in the North American academic, medical, and military research community. While remaining undetected for over a year, the threat actor compromised externally facing web applications, deployed bespoke malware, pivoted to sensitive internal ...