bloomberg

Secondo Andrew Bailey, Governatore della Banca d’Inghilterra, la questione potrebbe essere rimasta “in qualche modo impantanata nelle procedure con l’Amministrazione statunitense“. A sei settimane dal primo monito, la Banca d’Inghilterra non ha ancora ottenuto gli accessi a Mythos di Anthropic, richiesti “per verificare la sicurezza dei propri sistemi contro le minacce informatiche“. Parlando con Bloomberg TV il Governatore della Banca d’Inghilterra Andrew Bailey ha affermato che Anthropic era disposta a condividere i modelli in via sperimentale. Tuttavia, sembrava esserci un ostacolo di natura politica. Sul tema Bailey ha spiegato: “Non abbiamo ancora ricevuto gli accessi. Credo che la questione sia rimasta in qualche modo impantanata nelle procedure dell’Amministrazione statunitense“. L’azienda americana, per altro, nel passato ha avuto dei confronti anche con il Governo americano riguardo alle misure di sicurezza relative all’uso militare dei suoi strumenti di AI. Timori geo-economici e di sicurezza cyber Da settimane gli esperti di cybersicurezza s’interrogano sulla potenza del modello di AI in questione, in grado di scoprire vulnerabilità come mai prima. Bailey stesso ha dichiarato che “Anthropic potrebbe aver trovato un modo per rivoluzionare il mondo dei rischi informatici”. Secondo la Reuters, diversi esperti hanno comunque relativizzato i timori per un hacking incontrollato. “Purtroppo“, ha aggiunto il Governatore, “non sono in grado di spiegarvi perché il processo sia leggermente diverso da un’azienda all’altra. Ovviamente, dal nostro punto di vista, data la nostra preoccupazione per i rischi che ciò comporta, è molto importante che vi sia l’accesso“. La scala dell’operatività Bailey – che è anche a capo del Consiglio per la stabilità finanziaria, l’organismo internazionale incaricato di definire gli standard – ha affermato che occorre un approccio globale ai rischi legati all’hacking. Questa la sua analisi: “Le ripercussioni di questo tipo di rischio informatico sono talmente vaste che non possiamo limitarci a un unico approccio nazionale. Chiunque pensasse che sia un problema di singole banche, non è così. Questo, perché sono tutte fortemente interconnesse”. Il punto, infatti, non è solo la potenza del modello, ma il cambio di scala che introduce nella cybersicurezza. Se strumenti come Mythos riescono a individuare falle complesse in tempi molto più rapidi rispetto ai team umani, il problema per le banche non diventa più soltanto scoprire le vulnerabilità. Diventa, al contrario, correggerle prima che possano essere ricostruite e sfruttate dai cyber criminali.

Secondo Bloomberg, la startup francese sta discutendo con banche europee il lancio di un modello per individuare vulnerabilità informatiche. Mensch: “Non possiamo far analizzare il codice dell’esercito francese da Mythos”. Mistral AI lavora a un modello di intelligenza artificiale dedicato alla cybersecurity, pensato come risposta europea a Mythos, il sistema di Anthropic capace di individuare vulnerabilità informatiche con velocità e scala senza precedenti. Secondo quanto riportato da Bloomberg, la startup francese sarebbe in contatto con alcune banche europee per valutare l’impiego della nuova tecnologia. Il modello non è ancora stato rilasciato e non è chiaro quando arriverà sul mercato. Ma il dossier si inserisce in un momento di forte pressione per il sistema finanziario europeo, che non ha accesso diretto a Mythos e teme di restare esposto a vulnerabilità che strumenti AI avanzati potrebbero individuare prima dei difensori. Il nodo Mythos e il rischio dipendenza La decisione di Anthropic di presentare Mythos e limitarne l’accesso a un numero ristretto di partner ha generato allarme internazionale. Il modello è stato descritto come capace di scoprire falle software con capacità molto superiori agli strumenti tradizionali e, secondo prime analisi citate da Bloomberg, sarebbe in grado di condurre attacchi autonomi. L’accesso resta però riservato a un gruppo selezionato di aziende tecnologiche, banche e società di cybersecurity. Questo ha aperto una questione strategica per l’Europa: come proteggere banche, infrastrutture critiche e apparati pubblici se le capacità AI più avanzate restano concentrate negli Stati Uniti e controllate da aziende private americane? Mistral come alternativa europea Mistral era già al lavoro con clienti bancari su soluzioni AI per individuare falle di sicurezza prima del lancio di Mythos. Ora, secondo una delle fonti citate da Bloomberg, la società starebbe sviluppando una versione più standardizzata del prodotto, pronta per una diffusione più ampia. Non è ancora chiaro come il modello di Mistral possa confrontarsi con Mythos sul piano tecnico. Tuttavia, la startup francese potrebbe presentarlo come un’alternativa europea a minore rischio, soprattutto per organizzazioni che non vogliono dipendere da modelli statunitensi per l’analisi di codice e infrastrutture sensibili. Il CEO di Mistral Arthur Mensch ha posto la questione in termini di sovranità tecnologica. Durante un’audizione all’Assemblea nazionale francese, ha dichiarato: “Dobbiamo avere il controllo di questa tecnologia. Non si può far scansionare il codice sorgente dell’esercito francese da Mythos. Questo crea una dipendenza così irreparabile che dobbiamo assolutamente trovare soluzioni”. Banche europee sotto pressione Il settore bancario è uno dei più esposti alla nuova corsa all’AI cyber. Le banche devono individuare e correggere vulnerabilità prima che vengano sfruttate da criminali o attori statali. Ma senza accesso ai modelli più avanzati, rischiano di muoversi con strumenti meno potenti rispetto ai concorrenti o ai partner statunitensi. Mistral conta già clienti finanziari importanti, tra cui HSBC e BNP Paribas. Proprio questo posizionamento potrebbe favorire l’adozione del nuovo modello in Europa, dove la domanda di strumenti cyber sovrani è in crescita. Il caso si intreccia anche con la pressione politica su Anthropic. Le istituzioni europee hanno criticato la scelta dell’azienda americana di non condividere Mythos con regolatori e agenzie del continente, alimentando il timore di un divario di sicurezza transatlantico. La corsa tra OpenAI, Anthropic e Mistral La competizione non riguarda solo Anthropic e Mistral. OpenAI ha presentato GPT-5.5-Cyber, un modello dedicato alla cybersecurity, e ha concesso l’accesso ad alcune grandi aziende europee, tra cui la banca spagnola BBVA. Il quadro che emerge è quello di una nuova corsa all’AI cyber. I principali sviluppatori di modelli stanno creando sistemi capaci di analizzare codice, individuare falle, suggerire patch e potenzialmente automatizzare parti della difesa informatica. Ma la stessa capacità può avere impieghi offensivi, trasformando questi modelli in strumenti ad alto rischio dual use. Mensch ha ridimensionato parte dell’allarme su Mythos, definendo il dibattito come una forma di allarmismo. Secondo il CEO di Mistral, anche tecnologie sviluppate da aziende francesi, americane e cinesi sono già oggi in grado di individuare vulnerabilità cyber. La differenza, però, sta nella scala, nell’autonomia e nel controllo dell’accesso.

Claude Mythos, la super arma cyber, può essere già finito nelle mani sbagliate. Indice degli argomenti Anthropic ha confermato il 21 aprile di aver avviato un’indagine su un accesso non autorizzato avvenuto in un ambiente riservato a fornitori esterni. L’ipotesi, riportata da Bloomberg, è che credenziali legate a un contractor siano state utilizzate impropriamente. L’episodio riguarderebbe un ambiente destinato a fornitori esterni. “Stiamo verificando una segnalazione relativa a un accesso non autorizzato attraverso uno dei nostri ambienti per vendor”, ha dichiarato la società, precisando di non avere evidenze di utilizzi al di fuori di quell’infrastruttura. Gli esperti temevano che sarebbe stato solo questione di tempo perché si presentasse il problema: una volta pubblicato un software con capacità straordinarie tanti vogliono metterci le mani. Alcuni, non bene intenzionati. Le prime ricostruzioni indicano che almeno uno degli accessi sia avvenuto sfruttando credenziali legate a un contractor. È una prassi diffusa nel settore: le aziende di intelligenza artificiale si appoggiano a fornitori per test, sviluppo e validazione dei modelli. Questa apertura operativa aumenta però la superficie di rischio. Non è stato reso noto quale fornitore sia coinvolto né quanti account possano essere stati utilizzati impropriamente. Ricordiamo che Mythos non è un modello pubblico, proprio per le sue straordinarie capacità di trovare vulnerabilità informatiche (scelta analoga fatta da OpenAI con 5.4 Cyber). Anthropic lo ha distribuito in anteprima attraverso il progetto Glasswing, un consorzio di circa 40 organizzazioni tra tecnologia, finanza e cybersecurity. Tra i partecipanti noti figurano Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Nvidia, Broadcom, CrowdStrike e JPMorgan Chase, oltre a The Linux Foundation. Secondo un’analisi Reuters del 20 aprile 2026, diverse grandi banche statunitensi – tra cui Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley e Citigroup – stanno testando il modello per valutare i rischi cyber. Altre banche, soprattutto europee faticano invece a ottenere accesso, il che è una questione di sovranità digitale che aumenta la nostra esposizione al rischio Il ceo di Deutsche Bank, Christian Sewing, ha dichiarato ai giornalisti che il settore è in contatto con le autorità europee per monitorare l’impatto della tecnologia. “Lo scenario che vede accessi non autorizzati a modelli come Mythos evidenzia un rischio sistemico crescente: quando strumenti avanzati per la difesa cyber finiscono fuori controllo, possono essere rapidamente riutilizzati per attacchi su larga scala”, commenta il nostro esperto cyber Pierluigi Paganini. “Ancora una volta ci si confronta con criticità nella supply chain che amplia la superficie d’attacco e rende più fragile l’intera filiera. Se un modello capace di individuare vulnerabilità in modo automatizzato viene compromesso, l’impatto sulla sicurezza di infrastrutture critiche è potenzialmente devastante”. “A rischio è la sovranità digitale e l’equilibrio geopolitico globale. Il caso dimostra che il vero problema non è solo l’accesso a questi modelli, ma la governance di ecosistemi complessi dove ogni anello può diventare un potenziale punto di compromissione”. L’episodio arriva dopo altre criticità. A marzo 2026, dettagli sul modello — incluso il nome — erano comparsi in una cache pubblica online. In quel caso, Anthropic aveva attribuito la responsabilità a un errore umano. Poche settimane dopo, parte del codice interno del sistema “Claude Code” era stata resa pubblica in un secondo incidente. Questi eventi hanno intensificato l’attenzione di autorità e istituzioni finanziarie. Il valore stimato dell’azienda, circa 380 miliardi di dollari secondo fonti di mercato, e il potenziale impatto dei suoi modelli sulla sicurezza globale rendono ogni falla un tema di interesse pubblico. La diffusione limitata di Mythos riflette una strategia prudenziale: test controllati prima di un rilascio più ampio. L’episodio solleva però dubbi sulla capacità delle aziende di proteggere tecnologie con applicazioni sensibili, soprattutto quando entrano in gioco filiere complesse e attori esterni. La gestione degli accessi, in particolare nei sistemi condivisi con partner e fornitori, resta uno dei punti più critici per l’industria dell’intelligenza artificiale. In gioco non c’è solo la proprietà intellettuale, ma la possibilità che strumenti progettati per la difesa vengano riutilizzati per attacchi su larga scala. La notizia fa il paio con un’altra: la National Security Agency americana, responsabile anni fa di intercettazioni illecite globali (svelate da Edward Snowden) potrebbe essere tra i soggetti con accesso a Mythos. Axios riferisce di conferme da due fonti interne all’agenzia, secondo cui il modello sarebbe utilizzato a livello di dipartimento. Non risultano dichiarazioni ufficiali né da parte della NSA né da Anthropic. Il dato è rilevante anche sul piano politico. Nel febbraio 2026 Anthropic aveva avuto uno scontro con l’amministrazione di Donald Trump, rifiutando un accesso illimitato ai propri modelli per uso militare e fissando limiti espliciti: no a sorveglianza di massa e no a sistemi autonomi letali. In risposta, secondo fonti stampa, la Casa Bianca aveva limitato l’uso dei prodotti Anthropic da parte delle agenzie federali. Se confermato, l’accesso della NSA indicherebbe una riapertura, almeno parziale, di quel canale. Secondo il quotidiano britannico The Telegraph, anche MI5 sarebbe tra i soggetti autorizzati a testare Mythos. Il punto centrale resta la natura del modello. Test condotti dall’AI Security Institute del governo britannico, citati in una lettera del 15 aprile 2026, indicano che Mythos è “sostanzialmente più capace nell’offesa cyber” rispetto ai modelli precedenti. Il tema è stato discusso durante gli incontri primaverili del Fondo monetario internazionale a Washington nell’aprile 2026. Autorità di vigilanza europee, tra cui la BCE, e asiatiche stanno valutando la preparazione delle istituzioni finanziarie. Il ceo di Barclays, C.S. Venkatakrishnan, ha definito Mythos una minaccia concreta per il sistema bancario globale. La capacità di individuare vulnerabilità in modo automatizzato e su larga scala incide soprattutto su infrastrutture legacy, ancora diffuse nel settore finanziario. L’episodio degli accessi non autorizzati evidenzia un punto operativo: il controllo sugli ambienti condivisi. I modelli avanzati non sono più confinati in un singolo perimetro aziendale, ma operano in ecosistemi distribuiti tra cloud, partner e istituzioni. Le norme europee, a partire dall’AI Act approvato nel 2024, prevedono obblighi su gestione del rischio, logging e controllo degli accessi per sistemi ad alto impatto. Il caso Mythos mette alla prova l’applicazione concreta di questi requisiti. La combinazione di tre fattori – accesso ristretto ma distribuito, capacità tecniche elevate e interesse di attori pubblici e privati – sposta la questione dalla sicurezza del singolo modello alla sicurezza dell’intero ecosistema che lo utilizza. In questo contesto, ogni anello della filiera diventa un possibile punto di ingresso.

Stryker says malware was involved in recent cyberattack as production lines reopen The medical device firm Stryker said it is ramping production lines back up two weeks after alleged Iranian cyber actors wiped more than 200,000 company devices. The company sought to reassure customers in a notice on Monday, sharing a letter from cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks confirming that the hackers behind the incident have been removed from Stryker systems. Stryker officials said they are in the process of rebuilding the wiped systems or restoring them from backups predating the known window of compromise to further prevent threat actors from reentering. The impacted systems that have not been restored yet are isolated from the network. Multiple updates have been sent to hospitals and healthcare facilities around the world after concerns were raised about whether the cyber intrusion extended to Stryker’s customers. In a Justice Department affidavit targeting the Iranian hackers behind the incident last week, federal prosecutors said the Stryker attack "had a direct impact on emergency medical services and hospitals within Maryland” and “prompted some hospitals to temporarily suspend connections” to the company out of fear of being affected by the wiper incident. The affidavit cites one Stryker employee stationed at a hospital in Maryland who struggled to continue working after their device had been wiped following the cyberattack. Stryker produces a variety of hospital technology, including bed sensors and hands-free communication devices that allow nurses and doctors to contact each other. Court documents said that "as a result of the disruption to [Stryker] systems… clinicians were instructed to rely on radio consultation and verbal description." “The disruption to required clinical communication systems demonstrates that the cyberattack on [Stryker] in some cases interfered with the delivery of emergency medical care in Maryland hospitals,” prosecutors wrote. Stryker recently sent out urgent notices to customers assuring them that their technology is safe to use and is not connected to the cyberattack, which was targeted at internal corporate Microsoft systems. The Iranian hackers used a native functionality within Microsoft Intune — the device wipe feature — to destroy all company data on more than 200,000 devices across Stryker’s employee base in the U.S., Ireland, India and other countries. The company said Monday that it is prioritizing the restoration of systems that directly support customers, ordering and shipping. Stryker also noted that malware was used by the attackers during the attack. Since the incident began, the company has repeatedly told the public and regulators that no ransomware or malware was involved. In Monday’s update, Stryker said Palo Alto Networks’ incident response team Unit 42 and other experts “identified that the threat actor used a malicious file to run commands which allowed them to hide their activity while in” company systems. “To be clear, this file was not capable of spreading — either inside or outside of our environment. Most importantly, at no point has our investigation identified malicious activity directed towards our customers, suppliers, vendors or partners,” Stryker said. The company shared a copy of a letter from Troy Bettencourt, vice president of incident response at Palo Alto Networks Unit 42. The letter confirms Stryker’s assessment that the incident has been contained and that there is no evidence that the hackers accessed customer, supplier, vendor and partner systems. The letter says Unit 42 helped remove “unauthorized persistence mechanisms” installed by the threat actors. “Unit 42 has found no current evidence of active, uncontained, persistent unauthorized access within the Stryker environment,” Bettencourt said, adding that they are working with Microsoft to monitor the situation going forward. Stryker said manufacturing systems are “ramping quickly as critical lines and plants are brought back online.” Global manufacturing sites “continue to stabilize" according to the company. Bloomberg reported last week that some surgeries have been cancelled because Stryker-made implants are not available due to the attack. Jonathan Greig is a Breaking News Reporter at Recorded Future News. Jonathan has worked across the globe as a journalist since 2014. Before moving back to New York City, he worked for news outlets in South Africa, Jordan and Cambodia. He previously covered cybersecurity at ZDNet and TechRepublic.

On February 25, 2026, Gartner published its inaugural Market Guide for Guardian Agents, marking an important milestone for this emerging category. For those unfamiliar with the various Gartner report types, “a Market Guide defines a market and explains what clients can expect it to do in the short term. With the focus on early, more chaotic markets, a Market Guide does not rate or position vendors within the market, but rather more commonly outlines attributes of representative vendors that are providing offerings in the market to give further insight into the market itself.” And if Guardian Agent is an unfamiliar term, Gartner defines it quite simply. “Guardian agents supervise AI agents, helping ensure agent actions align with goals and boundaries.” Enterprise security and identity leaders can request a limited distribution copy of the Gartner Market Guide for Guardian Agents. Learning 1: Why Guardian Agent technology is important One need only to read the news- in the Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, the list goes on- to see that AI agents are a thing now. But Team8’s 2025 CISO Village Survey quantified it, finding that: Nearly 70% of enterprises already run AI agents (any system that can answer and act) in production. Another 23% are planning deployments in 2026. Two-thirds are building them in-house. However, in the market guide, Gartner asserts that this fast enterprise adoption is outpacing traditional governance controls. This raises the risk that “as AI agents become more autonomous and embedded in critical workflows, the risks of operational failure and noncompliance escalate.” We concur, having read about the recent cloud provider outages stemming from autonomous AI agent actions, which do not surprise us. What we see across early adoption is that, even more so than traditional service accounts, AI agent deployment creates more identity dark matter- the invisible and unmanaged layer of identity. It includes the local credentials authentication that may be offered. The never-expiring tokens that are easily forgotten. Full permission access is granted, regardless of the user or job. And more. Not only that, as we shared in our piece on “Lazy LLMs,” AI agents are, by design, shortcut seekers; always looking for the most efficient path to return a satisfactory outcome to each prompt. However, in doing so, they often exploit identity dark matter- orphan, dormant accounts or loose tokens, usually with local clear-text credentials and excessive privileges- that allow them to reach the “end of job,” regardless of whether they should have been allowed to do so. This is how unintended or unimaginable incidents arise. As if that weren’t enough business risk, we note that the 2026 CrowdStrike Global Threat Report goes one step further, sharing that “Adversaries are also actively exploiting AI systems themselves, injecting malicious prompts into GenAI tools at more than 90 organizations and abusing AI development platforms.” To learn more about how AI agents both expand what we call “Identity Dark Matter” and even exploit it themselves, check out our previous article in The Hacker News. Learning 2: Core capabilities of Guardian Agents So, having established the need for AI agent supervision, the next question for us becomes how, technically, to address that need. This is where, in our opinion, Gartner is extremely valuable- looking across the market and vendors to understand what is possible and winnowing it down to what’s most valuable, given the problem to be solved. The market guide outlines mandatory features in 3 core areas: AI Visibility and Traceability: Can you see and follow the actions of each AI agent? Continuous Assurance and Evaluation: How do you retain confidence that agents remain secure from compromise and compliant in action? Runtime Inspection and Enforcement: “ensure that AI agents’ actions and outputs match defined intentions, goals, and governance policies, preventing unintended behaviors.” There are 9 detailed features across these core areas detailed in the market guide. Many of these have helped shape many of the 5 principles we believe underpin secure (and productive) use of AI agents. Pair AI Agents with Human Sponsors: It is our belief that every agent should not only be identified and monitored, but also tied to an accountable human operator. Dynamic, Context-Aware Access: We believe AI agents should not hold standing, permanent privileges. Their entitlements should be time-bound, session-aware, and limited to least privilege. Visibility and Auditability: In our view, visibility isn’t just “we logged it.” You need to tie actions to data reach: what the agent accessed, what it changed, what it exported, and whether that action touched regulated or sensitive datasets. Governance at Enterprise Scale: In our minds, AI agent adoption should extend across both new and legacy systems within a single, consistent governance fabric, so that security, compliance, and infrastructure teams are not working in silos. Commitment to Good IAM Hygiene: As with all identities, authentication flows, authorization permissions, and implemented controls, strong hygiene- on the application server as well as the MCP server- is critical to keep every user within the proper bounds. Learning 3: Different vendor approaches to Guardian AI That said, even when vendors try to address the same Guardian Agent requirements, they often solve the problem using very different architectural models. Gartner outlines six emerging delivery and integration approaches, which, for adopters, matter more than they may first appear. These are not just packaging choices. They determine where control lives, how much visibility you actually get, how enforceable the policy is, and how much of your agent estate will fall outside coverage. Here is our quick take on each model: Standalone Oversight Platforms are typically the easiest place to start. They collect logs, telemetry, and events into one place and can provide meaningful posture visibility, auditability, and analysis. But many of these platforms still lean more toward observation than intervention. That is useful, but it is not the same as control. If your AI risk posture depends on stopping bad actions before they happen, visibility alone will not be enough. AI/MCP Gateways are the most intuitive model: put a control point in the middle and force agent traffic through it. That can create a powerful centralized layer for monitoring and policy enforcement across multiple agents. But it only works if traffic actually goes through that layer. In practice, gateways can become both a bottleneck and a false comfort. If teams bypass them, or if agent interactions happen outside the governed path, visibility breaks down quickly. Embedded or In-Line Run-Time Modules sit closer to execution, inside the agent platform, an AI management platform, or an LLM proxy. That makes them appealing because they are often easier to turn on and can act with more immediacy. The downside is that they are usually platform-bound. They govern the environment they live in, not the broader enterprise. For adopters, that means great local control, but weak enterprise-wide consistency if your agents span multiple stacks. Orchestration Layer Extensions are attractive in environments where orchestration already acts as the operating layer for multi-agent workflows. They can add policy, visibility, and oversight at the workflow level. But they also assume orchestration is where meaningful control should sit. That is only true if the organization actually runs its agents through a common orchestration layer. Many will not. So for adopters, this model is powerful in the right architecture and irrelevant in the wrong one. Hybrid Edge - Cloud Models are where things start to get more realistic. As Gartner notes, these are becoming more important as agent ecosystems become more endpoint-centric. This model spreads oversight between local execution environments and cloud analysis, which can reduce latency and improve runtime relevance. For adopters, the value is clear: it avoids over-centralizing everything in one choke point. But it also raises the complexity bar. Distributed governance is stronger in theory, but harder to implement well. Coordination Mechanisms standards, APIs, and hooks are less a deployment model than the connective tissue between them. And today, that tissue is immature. Gartner is explicit that integration across AI agent platforms remains difficult because standard interfaces are still lacking. That means adopters should be careful not to mistake “supports standards” for “works seamlessly in production.” The coordination layer is necessary, but it is not yet mature enough to be treated as solved. Regardless of technical approach, Gartner gives clear guidance about the need for something more than the governance of individual AI agents built into a single cloud provider, identity tool, or AI platform. Specifically, they call out the following: “A neutral, trusted guardian agent layer with multiple guardian agents performing separate but integrated oversight functions enforces routing across all providers. Thus, the guardian agent acts as the missing universal enforcement mechanism.” Learning 4: Guardian Agents Will Become an Independent Layer of Enterprise Control Perhaps the most important long-term takeaway for us from the Market Guide is that Guardian Agents will not simply be another feature embedded in AI platforms. As we read it, Gartner is quite explicit: “enterprises will require independent guardian agent layers that operate across clouds, platforms, identity systems, and data environments.” Why? Because AI agents themselves do not live in one place. Agents interact with APIs, applications, data repositories, infrastructure, and even other agents across multiple environments. A cloud provider may be able to supervise agents running inside its own ecosystem, but once those agents call tools, delegate tasks, or operate across providers, no single platform can enforce governance alone. That is why we believe Gartner argues that organizations will increasingly deploy enterprise-owned guardian agent layers that sit above individual platforms and supervise agents across the full enterprise environment. In other words, governance cannot live only inside the platforms that create or host AI agents. It needs to live above them. Put simply: the future of agent governance will not be platform-native supervision. It will be enterprise-owned oversight. And the organizations that adopt that architecture early will be far better positioned to scale agentic AI safely, without introducing a new generation of invisible automation risk across their infrastructure, data, and identities. Learning 5: There is Still Time, But Not Forever For all of the excitement about AI agents and the big brand news stories about them replacing jobs, the Guardian Agent market is still early. According to Gartner, “Today, guardian agent deployments are mainly prototypes or pilots, although advanced organizations are already using early versions of them to supervise AI agents.” But it’s coming fast. They note that “the guardian agent market — encompassing technologies for the oversight, security, and governance of autonomous AI agents — is entering a phase of accelerated growth, underpinned by the rapid adoption of agentic AI across industries.” Frankly, we would make a similar statement about the Agentic market overall. Yes, we have implemented AI agents within Orchid- the company and the product. But organizations, ourselves included, are just scratching the surface of what’s possible. Have individual employees started using their own personal AI agents? Yes. Do many technology vendors offer built-in AI agents, beyond the simple chatbot? Yes. Have some of the earliest adopters implemented a corporate standard platform to augment or replace jobs? Yes (but said with some skeptical hesitation). However, as the saying goes, it’s too late to bar the door after the horse is out of the barn. Orchid Security recommends that you ensure AI agent visibility sooner rather than later, and for sure, establish the same identity and access management guardrails and governance required for human users are indeed in place to similarly guide their AI companions, before the horse is out of the barn. The Bottom Line (We Will Say it Again) AI agents are here. They are already changing how enterprises operate. The challenge is not whether to use them, but how to govern them. Safe adoption of AI agents requires applying the same principles that identity practitioners know well, least privilege, lifecycle management, and auditability, to a new class of non-human identities that follow this protocol. If identity dark matter is the sum of what we can’t see or control, then unmanaged AI agents may become its fastest-growing source, if left unchecked. The organizations that act now to bring them into the light will be the ones who can move quickly with AI without sacrificing trust, compliance, or security. That’s why Orchid Security is building identity infrastructure to eliminate dark matter, and make Agent AI adoption safe to deploy at enterprise scale.

La banca ha già individuato la causa dell’incidente cyber e ha applicato una correzione. Sono ormai tornai pienamente operativi i servizi del Gruppo UBS, dopo un incidente cyber che ha colpito le reti di trading della banca. Sebbene il colosso finanziario non abbia ancora rilasciato alcuna dichiarazione in merito, secondo Bloomberg UBS ha individuato rapidamente la causa del problema, applicando una correzione. L’incidente si è verificato in un momento di instabilità generale, con incidenza diretta sui mercati. L’escalation in Asia Occidentale, crescenti preoccupazioni relative al credito privato e l’aumento delle frodi online finanziarie, sono tutte le cause della crescente volatilità. Finanza globale sotto pressione “Il problema di UBS“, ha sottolineato la Reuters, “non è stato episodico“. Altre istituzioni finanziarie hanno recentemente dovuto affrontare “incidenti che hanno influito sui loro servizi, portando a un esame più approfondito della solidità dei canali digitali delle banche“. Un malfunzionamento di Lloyds Banking Group ha permesso ai clienti di visualizzare online le transazioni degli altri. Questo è stato ‘solo’ l’ultimo di una serie di problemi tecnici che si verificano mentre le banche di tutto il mondo adottano i servizi digitali. Il London Metal Exchange, il mercato dei metalli industriali più antico e più grande al mondo, lunedì ha riscontrato un problema nel suo principale motore di abbinamento elettronico. In questo caso, si è riscontrata un’interruzione tecnica delle negoziazioni elettroniche. Frodi finanziarie al centro della policriminalità “Le frodi non sono più una minaccia marginale, ma sono al centro della policriminalità, intrecciandosi con la criminalità organizzata, la tratta di esseri umani e la criminalità informatica“, ha sottolineato l’Interpol. Questa è la base teorica del “Global Financial Fraud Threat Assessment – March 2026“. L’organizzazione ha aggiunto: “La frode finanziaria è oggi uno dei reati transnazionali più gravi. È in rapida evoluzione a livello mondiale, con gravi ripercussioni economiche e umane“. In alcune aree dell’Africa, hanno sottolineato gli analisti, “si è visto come i gruppi terroristici impieghino schemi fraudolenti, in particolare truffe basate su criptovalute, come fonte di finanziamento“. Quelli che un tempo erano fenomeni regionali sono oggi diventati globali. Il quadro è chiaro. I centri di truffa operano in tutto il mondo e coinvolgono centinaia di migliaia di persone, molte delle quali vittime di tratta e costrette a partecipare a frodi online.

China's National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team (CNCERT) has issued a warning about the security risks stemming from the use of OpenClaw (formerly Clawdbot and Moltbot), an open-source and self-hosted autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) agent. In a post shared on WeChat, CNCERT noted that the platform's "inherently weak default security configurations," coupled with its privileged access to the system to facilitate autonomous task execution capabilities, could be explored by bad actors to seize control of the endpoint. This includes risks arising from prompt injections, where malicious instructions embedded within a web page can cause the agent to leak sensitive information if it's tricked into accessing and consuming the content. The attack is also referred to as indirect prompt injection (IDPI) or cross-domain prompt injection (XPIA), as adversaries, instead of interacting directly with a large language model (LLM), weaponize benign AI features like web page summarization or content analysis to run manipulated instructions. This can range from evading AI-based ad review systems and influencing hiring decisions to search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning and generating biased responses by suppressing negative reviews. OpenAI, in a blog post published earlier this week, said prompt injection-style attacks are evolving beyond simply placing instructions in external content to include elements of social engineering. "AI agents are increasingly able to browse the web, retrieve information, and take actions on a user's behalf," it said. "Those capabilities are useful, but they also create new ways for attackers to try to manipulate the system." The prompt injection risks in OpenClaw are not hypothetical. Last month, researchers at PromptArmor found that the link preview feature in messaging apps like Telegram or Discord can be turned into a data exfiltration pathway when communicating with OpenClaw by means of an indirect prompt injection. The idea, at a high level, is to trick the AI agent into generating an attacker-controlled URL that, when rendered in the messaging app as a link preview, automatically causes it to transmit confidential data to that domain without having to click on the link. "This means that in agentic systems with link previews, data exfiltration can occur immediately upon the AI agent responding to the user, without the user needing to click the malicious link," the AI security company said. "In this attack, the agent is manipulated to construct a URL that uses an attacker's domain, with dynamically generated query parameters appended that contain sensitive data the model knows about the user." Besides rogue prompts, CNCERT has also highlighted three other concerns - The possibility that OpenClaw may inadvertently and irrevocably delete critical information due to its misinterpretation of user instructions. Threat actors can upload malicious skills to repositories like ClawHub that, when installed, run arbitrary commands or deploy malware. Attackers can exploit recently disclosed security vulnerabilities in OpenClaw to compromise the system and leak sensitive data. "For critical sectors – such as finance and energy – such breaches could lead to the leakage of core business data, trade secrets, and code repositories, or even result in the complete paralysis of entire business systems, causing incalculable losses," CNCERT added. To counter these risks, users and organizations are advised to strengthen network controls, prevent exposure of OpenClaw's default management port to the internet, isolate the service in a container, avoid storing credentials in plaintext, download skills only from trusted channels, disable automatic updates for skills, and keep the agent up-to-date. The development comes as Chinese authorities have moved to restrict state-run enterprises and government agencies from running OpenClaw AI apps on office computers in a bid to contain security risks, Bloomberg reported. The ban is also said to extend to the families of military personnel. The viral popularity of OpenClaw has also led threat actors to capitalize on the phenomenon to distribute malicious GitHub repositories posing as OpenClaw installers to deploy information stealers like Atomic and Vidar Stealer, and a Golang-based proxy malware known as GhostSocks using ClickFix-style instructions. "The campaign did not target a particular industry, but was broadly targeting users attempting to install OpenClaw with the malicious repositories containing download instructions for both Windows and macOS environments," Huntress said. "What made this successful was that the malware was hosted on GitHub, and the malicious repository became the top-rated suggestion in Bing’s AI search results for OpenClaw Windows."

Claude Used to Hack Mexican Government An unknown hacker used Anthropic’s LLM to hack the Mexican government: The unknown Claude user wrote Spanish-language prompts for the chatbot to act as an elite hacker, finding vulnerabilities in government networks, writing computer scripts to exploit them and determining ways to automate data theft, Israeli cybersecurity startup Gambit Security said in research published Wednesday. […] Claude initially warned the unknown user of malicious intent during their conversation about the Mexican government, but eventually complied with the attacker’s requests and executed thousands of commands on government computer networks, the researchers said. Anthropic investigated Gambit’s claims, disrupted the activity and banned the accounts involved, a representative said. The company feeds examples of malicious activity back into Claude to learn from it, and one of its latest AI models, Claude Opus 4.6, includes probes that can disrupt misuse, the representative said. Alternative link here.

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L’offensiva militare congiunta di Stati Uniti e Israele contro l’Iran si è accompagnata ad attacchi cyber di livello mai visto, secondo le prime analisi. L’osservatorio Internet NetBlocks ha osservato un improvviso calo della connettività Internet iraniana in un arco di tempo che coincide con l’inizio degli attacchi missilistici, anche se non sono chiari dettagli e responsabilità. E non è finita: adesso molti temono una rappresaglia cyber dall’Iran ed è tema che interessa direttamente le nostre aziende, che potrebbero finire nel mirino. L’Iran è nota per le sue competenze cyber (sviluppate dopo il caso Stuxnet); ricordiamo che già la Russia ha attaccato l’Occidente (tuttora lo fa) e l’Italia dopo il nostro supporto all’Ucraina. Diversi player di threat intelligence vedono segnali di attivazione di attori pro-Iran e preparativi per una risposta cyber, con tattiche che vanno dalla propaganda ai wiper, fino a DDoS e agli “hack-and-leak”. Indice degli argomenti Secondo Reuters, nelle ore dell’attacco USA-Israele si è registrata “una ondata di operazioni cyber” con il defacement di più siti di news e la compromissione di BadeSaba, un’app calendario/di preghiera con oltre 5 milioni di download: sui dispositivi sono comparsi messaggi di tono politico (“It’s time for reckoning”) e inviti rivolti alle forze armate a deporre le armi e unirsi ai civili. La componente più difficile da leggere è l’impatto sulla connettività. Reuters riporta che il traffico Internet iraniano è crollato bruscamente in due momenti (07:06 e 11:47 UTC), secondo Doug Madory (Kentik). Da notare che una riduzione del traffico può essere l’effetto di un’azione offensiva su infrastrutture di telecomunicazione, oppure l’esito di misure restrittive interne (spegnimenti selettivi, filtri, instradamenti forzati) attivate dallo Stato per contenere disordine o limitare la circolazione di informazioni. NetBlocks e altre fonti di monitoraggio hanno parlato di un blackout quasi totale, con la connettività nazionale scesa fino al 4% dei livelli ordinari in corrispondenza dell’inizio delle operazioni militari. Un aggiornamento diffuso dallo stesso NetBlocks nelle ore successive indica un ulteriore peggioramento, con valori vicini all’1% e un isolamento prolungato. Ma l’Iran ha una storia documentata di shutdown e restrizioni “a comando” in momenti di crisi interna. Anche se l’offensiva occidentale avesse colpito nodi e servizi, una parte del buio digitale potrebbe essere stata “completata” o irrigidita dalle autorità iraniane. Se Teheran valuta le opzioni, cresce la probabilità che agiscano gruppi proxy e hacktivisti, con azioni contro obiettivi israeliani e statunitensi, inclusi target civili e commerciali. Tra gli scenari citati: ripubblicazione di vecchi data breach spacciati per nuovi, tentativi “grezzi” contro sistemi industriali esposti e offensive cyber dirette. Sul piano dei segnali già visibili, CrowdStrike osserva attività coerenti con ricognizione e avvio di DDoS da parte di attori allineati all’Iran, mentre Anomali parla di wiper già in azione contro target israeliani. L’elemento che spesso viene sottovalutato è la “resilienza operativa” di questi attori: un blackout domestico non equivale a incapacità di colpire all’estero. BankInfoSecurity (ISMG) cita l’ipotesi di operazioni pre-posizionate e di operatori basati fuori dall’Iran o legati a proxy, in grado di muoversi anche se l’infrastruttura interna è degradata. Per capire perché, in uno scontro di questo tipo, il cyber venga attivato quasi “per default”, bisogna tornare al caso Stuxnet. Già nel 2010 l’episodio di Natanz ha mostrato che un malware può produrre effetti fisici su infrastrutture critiche; analisi dell’Institute for Science and International Security collegavano l’incidente alla sostituzione di circa 1.000 centrifughe in un arco temporale compatibile con l’operazione. L’attribuzione politica di Stuxnet è rimasta senza ammissioni ufficiali, ma reportage di grandi testate statunitensi hanno indicato un coinvolgimento di Stati Uniti e Israele nell’ambito dell’operazione “Olympic Games”. Da allora l’uso del cyber come leva di sabotaggio, pressione e “segnalazione” strategica è entrato nella grammatica dello scontro regionale. L’Iran viene spesso descritto come meno “tecnologico” di Russia e Cina, ma la storia delle sue operazioni indica una capacità pragmatica: colpire dove costa poco, dove è difficile attribuire e dove l’impatto psicologico è alto. Nel 2012 l’attacco con Shamoon contro Saudi Aramco è stato considerato uno degli esempi più distruttivi contro una singola azienda. Cancellazione dei dischi di migliaia di macchine e la diffusione rapida in rete interna, con Aramco che dichiarò di non aver subito impatti sui sistemi operativi industriali. Tra 2011 e 2013 la campagna di DDoS contro il settore finanziario USA (spesso associata a “Operation Ababil”) ha avuto una codifica giudiziaria: nel 2016 il Dipartimento di Giustizia e l’FBI hanno annunciato incriminazioni contro cittadini iraniani legati a società che lavoravano per il governo iraniano/IRGC, descrivendo una campagna prolungata contro decine di istituzioni e persino l’accesso a sistemi di controllo di una diga nello stato di New York. Nel 2014 un attacco distruttivo ha colpito Las Vegas Sands: Reuters riportò che malware “wipe” aveva compromesso migliaia di server, sulla base di una ricostruzione di Bloomberg. Nel 2022, infine, il caso Albania ha mostrato un mix di sabotaggio e messaggistica politica: documenti e report pubblici (tra cui materiali governativi locali che riprendono una cybersecurity advisory congiunta) descrivono una sequenza ransomware + wiper (ZeroCleare) attribuita ad attori iraniani che si presentavano come “HomeLand Justice”. Questi precedenti servono per una lettura sobria dell’attualità: se Teheran decide di colpire, non è detto che scelga il colpo “più sofisticato”. Spesso sceglie quello più utile sul piano politico e più sostenibile sul piano del rischio. Due fattori aumentano l’esposizione delle organizzazioni fuori dall’area di guerra. Il primo è la selezione dei settori: Microsoft, in un report del 2024, descrive l’attività di Peach Sandstorm (APT33) contro oil & gas, comunicazioni, apparati satellitari e target governativi anche in Stati Uniti ed Emirati. Check Point, nel 2025, ha documentato campagne di spear-phishing di Nimbus Manticore contro difesa, telecom e aerospazio in Europa. Il secondo è l’uso di “coperture” e catene di fornitura: quando un attore vuole amplificare l’impatto senza esporsi, la supply chain (fornitori IT, consulenti, MSP) resta una strada appetibile. Qui il rischio, per l’Italia, riguarda anche aziende che lavorano con partner statunitensi o israeliani o che operano su infrastrutture energetiche, logistiche e portuali. Per i team SOC e per chi gestisce infrastrutture esposte, l’obiettivo realistico è ridurre superficie e tempi di reazione, non “prevedere” l’attacco perfetto. Primo: alzare la guardia su DDoS e defacement (anche solo per gestione reputazionale) e verificare che i canali di comunicazione d’emergenza non dipendano da un singolo provider. Secondo: trattare i wiper come scenario concreto. Significa testare ripristini, proteggere backup offline/immutabili e verificare che l’accesso privilegiato sia tracciato e protetto (mfa, segmentazione, controllo delle credenziali). Terzo: mettere sotto osservazione l’ot dove esiste, ma senza farsi trascinare dall’allarmismo. Gli esperti citati da Reuters parlano anche di tentativi “poco sofisticati” contro sistemi industriali esposti: proprio per questo, l’igiene di base (inventario, esposizione su Internet, accessi remoti) diventa la difesa più efficace. La dimensione cyber di questa guerra ha già mostrato due tratti: pressione psicologica sul fronte interno (BadeSaba) e possibile degradazione della capacità di coordinamento (blackout e servizi colpiti). La risposta iraniana, se arriverà, potrebbe privilegiare l’asimmetria: molti bersagli “facili” e un numero limitato di operazioni distruttive ad alto impatto, magari schermate da sigle di comodo.

L’utente Claude, sconosciuto, ha scritto dei prompt in lingua spagnola affinché il chatbot AI agisse come un hacker d’élite, individuando le vulnerabilità nelle reti governative messicane. In Messico un ignoto hacker criminale ha sfruttato Claude, il chatboat AI di Anthropic, per colpire diverse agenzie governative. Un colpo notevole, che ha rilanciato gli interrogativi sui livelli di sicurezza cyber del Paese centroamericano. L’utente ha scritto comandi in lingua spagnola affinché il chatbot agisse come “un hacker d’élite“, individuando vulnerabilità nelle reti governative e costruendo modalità automatiche per i furti. “L’operazione“, ha spiegato Bloomberg, “è cominciata lo scorso dicembre ed è andata avanti per circa un mese“. In poche settimane, il protagonista della vicenda è riuscito ad accedere a 150 Gigabyte di dati sensibili. Tra questi, quelli relativi a 195 milioni di registrazioni fiscali, registrazioni elettorali, credenziali dei dipendenti pubblici e file dell’anagrafe. L’ordine degli attacchi In attesa di un’eventuale rivendicazione, mancano delle indicazioni precise. Nel frattempo, però, è stato ricostruito il quadro completo dei vari illeciti. Il cyber criminale ha violato l’Autorità fiscale federale messicana e l’Istituto Nazionale Elettorale. Ci sarebbe inoltre stata la compromissione di alcuni Governi statali, Jalisco, Michoacán e Tamaulipas, oltre al registro civile di Città del Messico e all’ente idrico di Monterrey. La particolarità dell’azione è stata la capacità, da parte dell’autore, di manipolare il chatboat. Claude avrebbe infatti anche inizialmente lasciato trapelare le cattive intenzioni dell’utente sconosciuto, salvo poi esser piegato dallo stesso. L’AI, alla fine, ha assecondato le richieste dell’attaccante, “eseguendo migliaia di comandi sulle reti informatiche governative“. Nonostante tutte le misure di sicurezza, l’hacker criminale avrebbe testato ripetutamente Claude finché non è riuscito a fargli aggirare le protezioni integrate, ha spiegato il portavoce. Tuttavia, anche durante la campagna criminale, Claude avrebbe in alcuni casi rifiutato le richieste dell’attaccante. Nel frattempo, la società statunitense sta indagando e ha bloccato i profili evidentemente coinvolti. Le attenzioni degli analisti Molte delle agenzie governative messicane hanno continuato a negare il coinvolgimento in questi attacchi. Al contrario, gli esperti cyber hanno identificato almeno una ventina di istituzioni colpite. Vari gli esempi nel merito. In mancanza di una spiegazione ufficiale e definitiva, l’autorità fiscale messicana ha dichiarato di aver esaminato i propri registri di accesso senza trovare prove di una violazione. L’Istituto Nazionale Elettorale ha affermato di non aver individuato accessi non autorizzati o violazioni negli ultimi mesi e di aver rafforzato la propria strategia di cybersecurity. Anche il Governo statale di Jalisco ha negato di aver subìto delle violazioni, sostenendo che le violazioni avrebbero interessato solo reti federali. Dubbi sulle potenzialità ostilità estere Sempre tenendo presente lo scenario reputazionale, l’agenzia digitale nazionale del Messico non ha voluto commentare le presunte violazioni. Ha tuttavia ribadito: “Per noi la cybersicurezza è una priorità“. Anche un portavoce dei Servizi Idrici e Fognari di Monterrey ha dichiarato che l’ente non ha rilevato intrusioni né vulnerabilità significative nella seconda metà del 2025. Tra gli esperti ci si interroga se dietro all’hacker criminale ci fossero dei Governi stranieri. Dunque, se l’attacco al Messico non rientri in un caso di cyberspionaggio internazionale. Quello che più ha stupito è stata soprattutto la mole di dati elettorali e finanziari rubati.

Two former Google engineers and one of their husbands have been indicted in the U.S. for allegedly committing trade secret theft from the search giant and other tech firms and transferring the information to unauthorized locations, including Iran. Samaneh Ghandali, 41, and her husband Mohammadjavad Khosravi (aka Mohammad Khosravi), 40, along with her sister Soroor Ghandali, 32, have been accused of conspiring to commit trade secret theft from Google and other leading technology companies, theft and attempted theft of trade secrets, and obstruction of justice. The three defendants, all Iranian nationals and residing in San Jose, were arrested on Thursday and made their initial appearances in federal district court in the California city. According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), the Ghandali sisters worked at Google before joining another technology company identified as Company 3. Khosravi is said to have been employed at a different company (named Company 2). All three of them landed jobs in the area of mobile computer processors. While the names of Company 2 and Company 3 were not disclosed, The Hacker News found that Soroor Ghandali worked as a hardware engineer intern at Google before joining Intel. Khosravi, on the other hand, was employed at Qualcomm as an ASIC design engineer. "As part of the alleged scheme to commit trade secret theft, the defendants used their employment to obtain access to confidential and sensitive information," the DoJ said in a press release. "The defendants then exfiltrated confidential and sensitive documents, including trade secrets related to processor security and cryptography and other technologies, from Google and other technology companies to unauthorized third-party and personal locations, including to work devices associated with each other's employers, and to Iran." In a statement shared with Bloomberg, a Google spokesperson said the company has enhanced safeguards to protect its confidential information and immediately alerted law enforcement after discovering the incident. The trade secrets pertained to the company's Tensor processor for Pixel phones. Samaneh Ghandali, per the department, transferred hundreds of files, including Google trade secrets, to a third-party communications platform, specifically to channels that had each of the defendant's first names. Soroor Ghandali is also alleged to have exfiltrated numerous Google-related files, which contained trade secrets, to the same channels while working for the company. The trade secret files were subsequently copied to different personal devices, as well as a work device belonging to Khosravi and a work device issued to Soroor Ghandali by Company 3. The defendants then concealed their actions by submitting false, signed affidavits; destroyed the exfiltrated files from electronic devices; and manually took photographs of screens containing the documents’ contents instead of transferring the documents using the messaging app. "After Google's internal security systems detected Samaneh Ghandali's activity and Google revoked her access to company resources in August 2023, Samaneh Ghandali allegedly executed a signed affidavit claiming she had not shared Google's confidential information with anyone outside the company," the DoJ added. Furthermore, Samaneh Ghandali and Khosravi performed searches online and visited websites about deleting communications and other data. This included queries related to the duration for which a cellular service provider kept "messages to print out for court." In the meantime, the couple is alleged to have continued accessing Google trade secrets stored on their personal devices for purposes of manually photographing hundreds of computer screens of both Google's and Company 2's sensitive information for an unspecified duration that stretched for months. Samaneh Ghandali also allegedly manually captured with her mobile phone about 24 photographs of Khosravi's work computer screen containing Company 2 trade secret information on the night before the pair traveled to Iran in December 2023. These photographs were then accessed from a personal device associated with Samaneh Ghandali in Iran. If convicted, each defendant faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each count of trade secret theft charges and a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the count of obstruction of justice. The development comes less than a month after another ex-Google engineer, Linwei Ding, was convicted in the U.S. for stealing thousands of the company's confidential documents to build a startup in China.

Starlink restrictions hit Russian forces as Moscow seeks workarounds Ukrainian citizens began receiving unexpected text messages this month from the country’s security service, warning that Russia was trying to recruit locals to help restore access to blocked Starlink satellite internet terminals. “Such assistance is a criminal offense!” the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said in the messages, urging people to report any attempts by Russian operatives to persuade them to register terminals on Moscow’s behalf. The warning follows Ukraine’s rollout of a new national verification system for Starlink terminals earlier this month. Under the new rules, only registered and verified devices can operate in Ukrainian-controlled territory, with all others automatically disconnected. Kyiv says the move was necessary after confirming that Russian forces had begun installing Starlink technology on attack drones, allowing them to operate in real time via satellite connections — making the unmanned aerial vehicles harder to jam, track or shoot down. Disruptions on the frontline Ukrainian officials claim the crackdown is already affecting Russian operations. Vladyslav Voloshyn, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Southern Defense Forces, said Russian troops had reduced the number of kamikaze drone attacks in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region after the shutdown. “There have been fewer kamikaze drone strikes,” he said. “After the disconnection, the enemy experienced certain problems with communication and coordinating infantry assaults.” Russian military bloggers also reported losing access to Starlink connections, warning that the outages could weaken Moscow’s drone warfare capabilities and hinder coordination between units. Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX — the company that operates Starlink — appeared to confirm that the action had some effect. “Looks like the steps we took to stop the unauthorized use of Starlink by Russia have worked,” Musk wrote on X, without providing further details. Moscow has not publicly acknowledged any operational disruptions. However, according to Bloomberg, Russian diplomats recently argued at a United Nations meeting that SpaceX may be violating international space law by failing to account for the interests of other space actors. Moscow has also called for international negotiations to limit the number of new satellites and clarify the military use of satellite frequencies registered for commercial purposes. Seeking workarounds With no domestic satellite internet alternative comparable in speed and portability to Starlink, Russian forces appear to be seeking illicit ways to regain access, Ukrainian officials say. Serhiy Beskrestnov, an adviser to Ukraine’s defense minister, said Russian operatives are offering cash to civilians in Ukrainian-controlled territory in exchange for registering Starlink terminals in their names. According to Beskrestnov, the schemes include registering devices at government service centers, using shell companies or attempting to reconnect terminals removed from drones. “My advice to traitors: don’t even try,” he said, adding that authorities anticipated such tactics and would block any newly activated terminals linked to Russian use. Ukraine’s state agency responsible for prisoners of war said Russian operatives have also pressured the families of captured Ukrainian soldiers to register terminals on Russia’s behalf — a claim that could not be independently verified. “Cooperating with the enemy is extremely dangerous,” the agency said, noting that official registration requires identity verification, making participants easily identifiable. Cyber countermeasures Ukrainian hackers said they have turned Russia’s dependence on Starlink into an intelligence opportunity. Last week, a group calling itself the 256th Cyber Assault Division said it had tricked Russian soldiers into revealing their positions and sending money by posing as a service that could restore disconnected terminals. The group said it instructed Russian servicemen to submit identifying information and the coordinates of their devices under the pretense that the terminals would be reactivated through Ukrainian administrative service centers. It said it collected 2,420 data packets related to Russian-used terminals and passed them to Ukrainian law enforcement and defense agencies. The group also said it received $5,870 from Russian soldiers seeking to restore connectivity, which it plans to donate to fundraising efforts for Ukrainian drones. The hackers’ claims could not be independently verified. Daryna Antoniuk is a reporter for Recorded Future News based in Ukraine. She writes about cybersecurity startups, cyberattacks in Eastern Europe and the state of the cyberwar between Ukraine and Russia. She previously was a tech reporter for Forbes Ukraine. Her work has also been published at Sifted, The Kyiv Independent and The Kyiv Post.

Google, Meta e altre compagnie hanno ricevuto numerosi administrative subpoena per rispondere di profili con contenuti anti-ICE. I social media e le Big Tech, negli Usa, sono sempre più nel mirino del Dipartimento della Sicurezza Interna, deciso a contenere le proteste anti-ICE. Negli ultimi mesi, Google, Reddit, Discord e Meta (che possiede Facebook e Instagram), hanno ricevuto centinaia di mandati amministrativi (administrative subpoena) dal Dipartimento. L’invio di queste richieste è funzionale ad un unico grande obiettivo. Quello, come ha scritto il New York Times, “di ottenere nomi, indirizzi e-mail, numeri di telefono e altri dati identificativi relativi ai profili social che monitorano o criticano l’ICE“. Da qui, l’idea di avere un quadro più completo di tutte le forme di protesta nei confronti della United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Il fulcro delle richieste Tra le compagnie Google, Meta e Reddit, per esempio, avrebbero ottemperato ad alcune delle richieste. Nelle citazioni in giudizio, il Dipartimento ha chiesto “di identificare i dettagli degli account che non riportano il nome di una persona reale e che hanno criticato l’ICE“. O ancora, che “abbiano segnalato la posizione degli agenti“. Le aziende tecnologiche possono scegliere se fornire o meno le informazioni. Da parte loro, comunque, è arrivata la conferma univoca di aver esaminato ciascuna richiesta prima di dare un seguito. Alcune delle aziende hanno informato le persone di cui il Governo aveva richiesto i dati e hanno concesso loro da 10 a 14 giorni di tempo per contestare la citazione in tribunale. Bloomberg, nel merito, aveva descritto un esempio concreto di questa “nuova politica“. Il Dipartimento della Sicurezza Nazionale ha cercato di identificare un profilo Instagram anonimo chiamato @montocowatch. L’obiettivo della pagina è quello “di condividere risorse per aiutare a proteggere i diritti degli immigrati e il giusto processo in tutta la contea di Montgomery, in Pennsylvania“. Il dibattito sugli administrative subpoena Ultimamente è aumentato il ricorso ai mandati di comparizione amministrativi (administrative subpoena). L’impiego di tali mandati da parte delle agenzie federali – senza previa supervisione giudiziaria – per richiedere informazioni politicamente sensibili, moltiplica le polemiche. Formalmente, infatti, gli administrative subpoena non permettono di accedere alle comunicazioni private. Tuttavia, consentono di raccogliere una vasta gamma di informazioni sugli utenti. Tra questi, si trovano orari e luoghi di accesso ai profili , dispositivi utilizzati e dati identificativi come indirizzi email. “Il Governo si sta prendendo più libertà rispetto al passato”, ha affermato al New York Times Steve Loney, avvocato supervisore senior dell’American Civil Liberties Union della Pennsylvania. “Si tratta di un livello completamente diverso di frequenza e mancanza di responsabilità”. Negli ultimi sei mesi, Loney ha presenziato a diversi casi in rappresentanza di persone le cui informazioni relative agli account sui social media sono state richieste dal Dipartimento della Sicurezza Nazionale.

Dating-app giants investigate incidents after cybercriminals claim to steal data Dating app companies Bumble and Match Group recently responded to cybersecurity incidents that have been claimed by a well-known cybercrime group. Bumble said it contacted law enforcement after a contractor’s account was compromised in a phishing attack, resulting in what it described as brief unauthorized access to a small portion of its network. The company’s spokesperson told Bloomberg that the access had since been terminated and did not affect its member database, user accounts, the Bumble application, private messages or dating profiles. Match confirmed to Bloomberg earlier this week that it had experienced a cybersecurity incident involving a limited amount of user data and said it was notifying affected customers. A company spokesperson said there was no indication that login credentials, financial information or private communications were accessed. Bumble and Match did not respond to requests for comment from Recorded Future News. The ShinyHunters cybercrime group reportedly leaked thousands of internal Bumble documents, including files marked restricted or confidential, which they said were sourced primarily from Google Drive and Slack. ShinyHunters also claimed to have accessed 10 million records belonging to Match, which operates dating services including Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid. The group posted the claims on its dark web leak site. Researchers at Cybernews said they reviewed data samples attached to ShinyHunters’ post and found they included personal customer information, some employee details and internal corporate data. One sample linked to the Hinge dating app contained documents listing matches, along with roughly 100 records of matched users’ profile information, including names and biographical descriptions, the researchers said. Other files included lists of dating profiles and logs of profile changes, though some records did not clearly identify which app they belonged to and contained duplicated or test data. ShinyHunters is a financially motivated threat actor known for high-impact campaigns targeting major companies in the insurance, retail and aviation sectors. Earlier in September, the FBI warned that hackers linked to ShinyHunters were extorting organizations for large ransoms after stealing data from cloud software provider Salesforce. The group has also recently claimed an attack on data analytics firm Mixpanel, which it said allowed access to platforms such as Pornhub. Dating apps have increasingly become targets for cybercriminals due to the sensitive personal data they hold. In July, Tea — an app that allows women to anonymously review dates — said hackers accessed about 72,000 user images, including selfies submitted for identity verification. In September, Brazilian dating app Sapphos shut down after users discovered a flaw that reportedly exposed sensitive personal data. Daryna Antoniuk is a reporter for Recorded Future News based in Ukraine. She writes about cybersecurity startups, cyberattacks in Eastern Europe and the state of the cyberwar between Ukraine and Russia. She previously was a tech reporter for Forbes Ukraine. Her work has also been published at Sifted, The Kyiv Independent and The Kyiv Post.

L’inchiesta di Bloomberg sul sabotaggio di “Fantastic”, il traghetto bloccato nel porto di Sète, avrebbe evidenziato il ruolo dell’intelligence militare della Russia. Da qui, le verifiche avviate dalle autorità francesi e italiane che hanno portato al fermo di due membri dell’equipaggio. Uno dei due è stato successivamente arrestato. S’infittiscono le trame della spy story con protagonista “Fantastic”, il traghetto del gruppo italiano Grandi Navi Veloci rimasto fermo per ore, tra venerdì e sabato scorso, nel porto di Sète (Francia del Sud). Dietro l’operazione, per Bloomberg, ci sarebbe stata “l’ombra dei servizi di intelligence russi“. La nave, diretta in Algeria, è comunque potuta ripartire ma solo “dopo il via libera dell’autorità giudiziaria francese“. Immediate le indagini. La prima ipotesi degli inquirenti verteva sul fatto che “soggetti non autorizzati fossero riusciti ad accedere ad alcune aree ad accesso riservato della nave“. Il tutto, collegando “in due momenti distinti dispositivi malevoli, noti come Raspberry, ai computer di bordo“. I Raspberry sono dispositivi contenenti un malware di tipo RAT (Remote Access Tool). Dalle informazioni raccolte è poi emerso che “le verifiche avviate dalle autorità francesi e italiane riguardano una possibile operazione di spionaggio riconducibile alla GRU, l’intelligence militare di Mosca“. Un’ipotesi, quest’ultima, che ha ripreso e approfondito Le Parisien. Un malware per il controllo remoto Durante la sosta forzata, ovviamente, sono arrivati tutti i controlli del caso, sotto l’egida della Direction générale de la Sécurité intérieure (DGSI). Dalle ispezioni si è proceduto al fermo di due membri dell’equipaggio – un cittadino bulgaro e un estone – anche grazie ad un’informativa urgente dei servizi italiani alle autorità transalpine. Entrambi erano infatti in possesso di un dispositivo contenente un malware di tipo RAT (Remote Access Tool), un software in grado di consentire il controllo remoto dei sistemi, inclusi quelli di navigazione. I dispositivi noti come Raspberry, ha spiegato Bloomberg, “sono mini-computer a basso costo, di dimensioni ridotte“. I quali, “se collegati ad una comune SIM per la rete mobile, possono consentire accessi remoti ai sistemi a cui sono connessi“. Una spy story internazionle? Le Parisien ha aggiunto che le indagini francesi hanno portato “al rilascio del cittadino bulgaro, mentre il marittimo lettone, dopo due giorni di fermo, è stato trasferito a Parigi“. In questa sede la Procura ha formalizzato accuse pesanti. Nel merito, “associazione a delinquere finalizzata agli interessi di una potenza straniera, tentata intrusione nei sistemi informatici“. Insieme a questi capi d’imputazione, si è aggiunta anche “la detenzione ingiustificata di dispositivi idonei a interferire con i sistemi automatici di navigazione“. Rimane da capire, eventualmente, quale apporto avrebbero dato gli hacker militari russi, così come le motivazioni nel violare i sistemi informatici della nave. Le finalità di un malware RAT a bordo di una nave possono essere infatti essere molteplici. Secondo gli esperti, potrebbe allora essersi trattato di “un’operazione di intelligence per accedere a dati sensibili di eventuali obiettivi presenti a bordo“. Oppure, “di un vero e proprio tentativo di prendere il controllo remoto della navigazione del traghetto, con la possibilità di dirottarlo o usarlo come ostaggio“. Copertina: Bloomberg Credits

Virginia brothers charged with hacking, deleting federal databases holding FOIA info Twin brothers from Virginia previously convicted of cybercrimes have been arrested for allegedly hacking into U.S. government databases and deleting troves of information. Muneeb and Sohaib Akhter, both 34, are facing years in prison after allegedly abusing their roles as federal contractors to delete about 96 databases storing U.S. government information in February. The Department of Justice said they were arrested on Wednesday. According to an indictment filed on November 13, the two were fired from their jobs on February 18 and sought to harm their employer by deleting databases containing “records and documents related to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) matters administered by federal government departments and agencies, as well as sensitive investigative files of federal government components.” Muneeb Akhter is facing charges of aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit computer fraud and to destroy records, theft of U.S. government records and other charges, amounting to a maximum penalty of 45 years in prison. Sohaib Akhter is facing a maximum penalty of six years in prison after being charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and to destroy records, and computer fraud. The brothers’ employer is not named in the indictment but prosecutors said it is based in Washington, D.C., and provides software services to more than 45 U.S. federal agencies — including the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Department of Homeland Security and the Internal Revenue Service. Bloomberg reported in May that the contractor is a software company named Opexus. The news outlet published a lengthy story about the two men, writing that they both had access to eCASE, a system used for government agency audits and FOIAXpress, which tracks public records requests. Bloomberg noted that it was told all FOIA requests between February 14 and February 18 at certain agencies were permanently lost. Another agency lost FOIA request records from February 18 to March 18. Federal prosecutors said that between February 18 and 25, Muneeb Akhter deleted several databases, and one minute after deleting a Department of Homeland Security database, he asked an artificial intelligence tool how to clear system logs following the deletion of databases. The two wiped their laptops before returning them to the unnamed federal contractor they previously worked for and were caught by law enforcement discussing ways they could clean out their house in advance of a police search, prosecutors said. “On February 18, 2025, at approximately 5:14 p.m., SOHAIB AKHTER stated aloud, ‘they’re gonna probably raid this place,’ to which MUNEEB AKHTER replied, ‘Til clean this shit up.’ SOHAIB AKHTER responded, ‘We also gotta clean stuff up from the other house, man,’” according to the indictment. Among the documents stolen, prosecutors said Muneeb Akhter took information from the EEOC and copies of IRS information stored on a virtual machine on about 450 people. “These defendants abused their positions as federal contractors to attack government databases and steal sensitive government information,” said acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Galeotti. “Their actions jeopardized the security of government systems and disrupted agencies’ ability to serve the American people.” Long hacking history Prosecutors noted that both brothers were previously convicted of hacking charges in the 2010s. Several of the incidents occurred while they were either directly employed by federal agencies or working through contractors for the federal government. A 2015 case that involved both brothers and another man initially revolved around stolen credit card information from about 40 people used to purchase airline tickets and hotel bookings from Expedia, U.S. Airways, and more than 15 other companies. Prosecutors alleged that Muneeb Akhter was trying to join an unnamed hacking collective and attempted to prove his skill by conducting cybercrimes. The case eventually expanded beyond stolen credit card numbers when prosecutors found that Muneeb Akhter illegally accessed federal data held by a company he was working for in 2013. In 2014, Muneeb Akhter was hired in an IT role at the Department of Homeland Security and Sohaib Akhter was hired through a contractor for work at the State Department. The two then used their access to download troves of sensitive information from DHS and the State Department. The men "engaged in a series of computer intrusions and attempted computer intrusions against the State Department to obtain sensitive passport and visa information and other related and valuable information about State Department computer systems." Muneeb Akhter pleaded guilty to the charges in that case and was sentenced to about three years in prison but served more time for repeatedly violating the terms of his supervised release. Sohaib Akhter also served years in prison for that case before he was released. Jonathan Greig is a Breaking News Reporter at Recorded Future News. Jonathan has worked across the globe as a journalist since 2014. Before moving back to New York City, he worked for news outlets in South Africa, Jordan and Cambodia. He previously covered cybersecurity at ZDNet and TechRepublic.

Cassa Depositi e Prestiti starebbe studiando la creazione di un polo nazionale in grado di raggruppare e coordinare alcune delle aziende più strategiche del settore tramite acquisizioni mirate o l’ingresso con quote di minoranza. L’obiettivo? La nascita di un’unica entità pubblica dedicata alla cybersicurezza. In un contesto in cui le minacce cyber e ibride crescono senza sosta, l’Italia sembra avviarsi verso una ristrutturazione profonda della propria sicurezza nazionale. Secondo un’indiscrezione di Bloomberg, Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (Cdp) starebbe studiando la creazione di un hub nazionale in grado di raggruppare e coordinare alcune delle aziende più strategiche del settore della cybersecurity. CDP e l’hub nazionale per la cybersecurity: l’obiettivo? La nascita di un’unica entità pubblica dedicata alla cybersicurezza Un progetto ancora in fase preliminare, che potrebbe includere acquisizioni mirate o l’ingresso con quote di minoranza in realtà sensibili per la difesa cyber del Paese. L’obiettivo sarebbe la nascita di un’unica entità pubblica dedicata alla cybersicurezza, pensata per rafforzare la protezione delle infrastrutture critiche e mettere ordine in un ecosistema oggi frammentato. Secondo l’Agenzia di stampa internazionale, Cdp sta valutando le modalità per centralizzare capacità e tecnologie oggi distribuite tra diversi operatori, così da poter coordinare l’iniziativa qualora il governo decidesse di procedere. ACN: quasi 2.000 alert e 600 attacchi confermati nel 2024, con incidenti quasi raddoppiati rispetto al 2023 Una scelta che rientra nella strategia della premier Giorgia Meloni di aumentare il controllo statale sulla sicurezza digitale, in un contesto in cui gli attacchi informatici sono in forte crescita. Quasi 2.000 alert e 600 attacchi confermati nel 2024, con incidenti quasi raddoppiati rispetto al 2023, secondo l’Agenzia per la cybersicurezza nazionale. I settori più colpiti restano servizi pubblici, infrastrutture locali e reti di telecomunicazioni. Il polo nazionale ipotizzato da Bloomberg andrebbe a operare in un settore dove esistono già attori chiave come Telsy, Leonardo e Tinexta: realità strategiche, ma ancora scollegate tra loro, con competenze spesso sovrapposte e poco integrate. Il progetto Cdp punterebbe proprio a superare questa frammentazione, creando un hub unico capace di coordinare e razionalizzare capacità oggi disperse. Una Difesa più moderna contro minacce ibride e droni. La nuova Strategia di Crosetto In questo quadro si inserisce l’allarme lanciato due settimane fa dal Ministro della Difesa Guido Crosetto, che ha parlato alla Camera di “una minaccia ibrida che è una guerra continua, giorno e notte, contro infrastrutture critiche, servizi essenziali, industrie strategiche e istituzioni democratiche”. Crosetto ha criticato l’approccio finora adottato, definendolo “attendista” e basato su reazioni tardive, ribadendo che l’Italia si trova di fronte a un’aggressione costante che non conosce tregua. Per questo la risposta, secondo il Ministro, non può essere solo nazionale, ma “sinergica e multilaterale”, insieme agli alleati. Il non-paper e la nascita dell’Arma Cyber Nazionale: “A breve partirà con i primi 1500 civili e militari: h24” Il Ministro ha presentato anche un non-paper con linee operative e normative per modernizzare la difesa: riconoscere il dominio cyber come spazio di difesa nazionale, creare un’arma cyber con 1.200-1.500 operatori, istituire un centro per la guerra ibrida contro le campagne cognitive e informative, aggiornare il quadro normativo per consentire posture più rapide. Tutte misure che confluiranno in un nuovo disegno di legge di riordino complessivo della Difesa. Il possibile polo cyber guidato da Cdp e la strategia annunciata da Crosetto puntano nella stessa direzione: dotare il Paese di un sistema di difesa più integrato, coordinato e reattivo, superando la frammentazione storica tra pubblico, privato e comparto militare.

L’instabilità del Mar Rosso rischia di rallentare i grandi progetti basati sui cavi sottomarini di Google e Meta. “I grandi progetti di cavi sottomarini Blue-Raman e 2Africa di Google e Meta potrebbero subire ritardi a causa delle crescenti minacce alla sicurezza nel Mar Rosso“, ha scritto Bloomberg. L’eventuale conferma, con annessa revisione dei piani, sarebbe certamente l’indizio di una decisione critica. Queste infrastrutture sono cruciali per il traffico Internet globale e la loro interruzione avrebbe conseguenze significative per i servizi digitali e il cloud computing in Europa. Le principali preoccupazioni riguardano le azioni degli Houthi, finalizzate a mettere sotto pressione Israele e in generale l’Occidente, affinché interrompano le operazioni militari nella Striscia di Gaza. A più riprese, tuttavia, il gruppo yemenita ha negato di aver attaccato queste infrastrutture in passato. Di Spazio, Difesa, Space Economy e sicurezza delle informazioni si parlerà nel corso della 2^ edizione di Space & Underwater, la conferenza internazionale organizzata e promossa da Cybersecurity Italia il prossimo 3 dicembre, che si terrà presso la Caserma “Salvo d’Acquisto” a Roma. Tra Asia, Africa ed Europa Il Mar Rosso connette il Mar Mediterraneo (Europa e Africa) con l’Indo-Pacifico. Non solo per le merci, ma ovviamente anche per i dati e le informazioni, transitando qui più del 20% del traffico Internet mondiale. Quello dell’Indo-Pacifico è un quadrante in cui tantissimi Paesi, come ha scritto l’ISPI, “hanno adottato il concetto di digitalizzazione come priorità strategica”. Entro il 2030, lo stesso Istituto ha stimato che “l’economia di quest’area dell’Asia raggiungerà i 1000miliardi di dollari, trainata da una base di consumatori e imprese web in rapida espansione“. L’anno scorso, sempre nell’area del Mar Rosso, diversi cavi furono tranciati, compromettendo i traffici tra Asia ed Europa. Un settore in grande espansione Quello dei cavi sottomarini è un settore strategico (trasportano più del 99% del traffico dati intercontinentale), nonché un mercato in grande espansione. Dalle stime più recenti, infatti, dovrebbe crescere fino ad un valore economico da 59,3 miliardi di dollari entro il 2032. Il valore dei cavi ha creato una nuova competizione economica, con tutte le grandi compagnie – Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft – direttamente impegnate. Il Comitato internazionale per la protezione dei cavi ha spiegato che ci sono circa 1,7milioni di chilometri di cavi sottomarini. Dall’altro lato, però, ha anche aggiunto che si verificano tra i 150 e i 200 incidenti all’anno. Eppure, gli investimenti in nuovi progetti potrebbero raggiungere a livello mondiale circa 13miliardi di dollari già tra il 2025 e il 2027. Dalle analisi di TeleGeography, è emerso come tale voce di spesa raddoppierà rispetto al biennio 2022-2024. Il sostegno all’espansione del settore è dovuto alla domanda di infrastrutture subacquee in crescita. Il tutto, grazie dell’accelerazione nello sviluppo di nuovi modelli di intelligenza artificiale (AI) ad alta intensità di calcolo e di nuova connettività legata ai data center. L’importanza della sicurezza Queste infrastrutture sottomarine possono essere oggetto di sabotaggi, ma anche di incidenti frutto semplicemente di negligenza. In molti casi, infatti, basta il lancio di un’ancora da una nave per colpirle. Le riparazioni possono richiedere settimane, poiché le navi e gli equipaggi di tecnici devono posizionarsi precisamente sopra il cavo danneggiato. Viste le stime di crescita del settore, dovranno allora anche aumentare gli investimenti per il mantenimento della sua sicurezza. Ogni interruzione dei cavi sottomarini può causare blackout parziali, rallentamenti globali e conseguenze economiche pesanti. E’ perciò doveroso intervenire tempestivamente, quantomeno per limitare i danni. Tra i nuovi sistemi implementati in materia, ci sono degli strumenti avanzati di monitoraggio e manutenzione predittiva, fondamentali per prevenire i guasti e gli attacchi.

Internet security nonprofit Shadowserver Foundation has found more than 266,000 F5 BIG-IP instances exposed online after the security breach disclosed by cybersecurity company F5 this week. The company revealed on Wednesday that nation-state hackers breached its network and stole source code and information on undisclosed BIG-IP security flaws, but found no evidence that the attackers had leaked or exploited the undisclosed vulnerabilities in attacks. The same day, F5 also issued patches to address 44 vulnerabilities (including the ones stolen in the cyberattack) and urged customers to update their devices as soon as possible. "Updates for BIG-IP, F5OS, BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes, BIG-IQ, and APM clients are available now," the company said. "Though we have no knowledge of undisclosed critical or remote code execution vulnerabilities, we strongly advise updating your BIG-IP software as soon as possible,". While it has yet to confirm it publicly, F5 has also linked the attack to China in private advisories shared with customers, according to a Thursday Bloomberg report, F5 has also been sharing a threat-hunting guide with its customers that mentions the Brickstorm malware, a Go-based backdoor first spotted by Google in April 2024 during an investigation into attacks orchestrated by the UNC5291 China-nexus threat group. F5 also told customers that the threat actors were active in the company's network for at least a year. UNC5291 was previously linked to exploiting Ivanti zero-days in attacks targeting government agencies, using custom malware such as Zipline and Spawnant. The Shadowserver Internet watchdog group is now tracking 266,978 IP addresses with an F5 BIG-IP fingerprint, nearly half of them (over 142,000) in the United States and another 100,000 in Europe and Asia. However, there is no information on how many of them have already been secured against attacks that could potentially exploit the BIG-IP vulnerabilities disclosed this week. This week, CISA also issued an emergency directive, mandating U.S. federal agencies to secure F5OS, BIG-IP TMOS, BIG-IQ, and BNK/CNF products by installing the latest F5 security patches by October 22, while for all other F5 hardware and software appliances on their networks, it extended the deadline to October 31. CISA also ordered them to disconnect and decommission all Internet-exposed F5 devices that have reached end-of-support, as they will no longer receive patches and can be easily compromised in attacks. "CISA is directing Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to inventory F5 BIG-IP products, evaluate if the networked management interfaces are accessible from the public internet, and apply updates from F5," the cybersecurity agency said. In recent years, both nation-state and cybercrime threat groups have been targeting BIG-IP vulnerabilities to map internal servers, hijack devices on victims' networks, breach corporate networks, steal sensitive files, and deploy data-wiping malware. Compromised F5 BIG-IP appliances can also allow threat actors to steal credentials and Application Programming Interface (API) keys, move laterally within targets' networks, and establish persistence. F5 is a Fortune 500 tech giant that provides cybersecurity, application delivery networking (ADN), and services to over 23,000 customers worldwide, including 48 of the Fortune 50 companies. Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply. The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments. Get the report

Salesforce has confirmed that it will not negotiate with or pay a ransom to the threat actors behind a massive wave of data theft attacks that impacted the company's customers this year. As first reported by Bloomberg, Salesforce emailed customers on Tuesday to say they would not be paying a ransom and warned that "credible threat intelligence" indicates the threat actors were planning to leak the stolen data. "I can confirm Salesforce will not engage, negotiate with, or pay any extortion demand," Salesforce also confirmed to BleepingComputer. This statement follows the launch of a data leak site by threat actors known as "Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters," who are attempting to extort 39 companies whose data was stolen from Salesforce. The website was located on the breachforums[.]hn domain, which is named after the notorious BreachForums website, a hacking forum known for selling and leaking stolen data. The companies being extorted on the data leak site included well-known brands and organizations, including FedEx, Disney/Hulu, Home Depot, Marriott, Google, Cisco, Toyota, Gap, Kering, McDonald's, Walgreens, Instacart, Cartier, Adidas, Sake Fifth Avenue, Air France & KLM, Transunion, HBO MAX, UPS, Chanel, and IKEA. In total, the threat actors claimed to have stolen nearly 1 billion data records, which would be publicly released if an extortion demand was paid by individual companies or as a single payment from Salesforce that would cover all the impacted customers listed on the site. This data was stolen from Salesforce instances in two separate campaigns that occurred in 2025. The first data theft campaign began at the end of 2024, when threat actors started conducting social engineering attacks impersonating IT support staff to trick employees into connecting a malicious OAuth application to their company's Salesforce instance. Once linked, the threat actors used the connection to download and steal the databases, which were then used to extort the company through email. These social engineering attacks impacted Google, Cisco, Qantas, Adidas, Allianz Life, Farmers Insurance, Workday, Kering, and LVMH subsidiaries, such as Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Tiffany & Co. A second Salesforce data-theft campaign began in early August 2025, when the threat actors used stolen SalesLoft Drift OAuth tokens to pivot to customers' CRM environments and exfiltrate data. The Salesloft data-theft attacks primarily focused on stealing support ticket data to scan for credentials, API tokens, authentication tokens, and other sensitive information that would enable the attackers to breach the company's infrastructure and cloud services. One of the threat actors behind the Salesloft attacks, known as ShinyHunters, told BleepingComputer that they stole approximately 1.5 billion data records for over 760 companies during this campaign. Many companies have already confirmed they were impacted by the Salesloft supply-chain attack, including Google, Cloudflare, Zscaler, Tenable, CyberArk, Elastic, BeyondTrust, Proofpoint, JFrog, Nutanix, Qualys, Rubrik, Cato Networks, Palo Alto Networks, and many more. The recently launched data leak site was used primarily to extort customers in the original social engineering attacks, with the threat actors stating they would begin publicly extorting those impacted by the Salesloft attacks after October 10th. However, the data leak site is now shut down, with the domain now using nameservers of surina.ns.cloudflare.com and hans.ns.cloudflare.com, which have both been used by the FBI in the past when seizing domains. BleepingComputer contacted the FBI about whether they seized the domain but has not received a response at this time. Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply. The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments. Get the report

Oracle customers targeted with emails claiming E-Business Suite breach, data theft Unknown attackers claiming affiliation with the Cl0p extortion gang are hitting business and IT executives at various companies with emails claiming that they have exfiltrated sensitive data from the firms’ Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS). The email campaign According to Google, this high-volume email campaign has been launched from hundreds of compromised accounts in late September 2025. “Our initial analysis confirms that at least one of these accounts has been previously associated with activity from FIN11, a long-running financially motivated threat group known for deploying ransomware and engaging in extortion,” says Charles Carmakal, CTO at Mandiant – Google Cloud. The threat actor is claiming to be affiliated with the Cl0p extortion group, and the emails contain two contact addresses publicly listed on the Cl0p data leak site (DLS). But whether the claims of a data breach or Cl0p involvement are true is currently unknown. “[Google Threat Intelligence Group] does not currently have sufficient evidence to definitively assess the veracity of these claims,” Carmakal added. “Attribution in the financially motivated cybercrime space is often complex, and actors frequently mimic established groups like Clop to increase leverage and pressure on victims.” Citing security firm Halcyon, Bloomberg says the ransom demands are huge, reaching seven and eight figures, and that the attackers shared screenshots and file trees as proof of compromise. (The “proof” has not been independently validated.) The extortion email (Source: Mandiant) The Cl0p ransomware / extortion operation surfaced in 2019 and initially targeted victims with ransomware. But for the last five years, its name has become well known due to attacks exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities in enterprise file transfer solutions such as Accellion FTA and MOVEit. Cl0p attackers abused these flaws to exfiltrate corporate data and demanded that victim organizations pay to prevent the data from being publicly released or sold. What should targeted organizations do? Oracle has not yet commented on the situation. Carmakal advised targeted organizations to investigate their environments for evidence of threat actor activity. “Alongside our industry partners, we have not yet been able to validate whether the claims made by the threat actor are accurate,” Richard Berkahn, a partner at Atmos First Response Australia & New Zealand, shared on LinkedIn, and noted there have previously been instances of fraudsters impersonating the Cl0p gang. “There is every possibility that this is a hoax, although we are treating it as an unvalidated threat at this stage. We are not aware of any validated data exfiltration by entities involved,” he added, and advised organisations that use the Oracle E-Business Suite to check their email filter for any extortion emails that may have been quarantined. “While the email addresses of the threat actor vary, you can also search for ‘pubstorm.com/pubstorm.net’ which should pick up the contents of the email from the threat actor (if you have received them),” he noted. “While this may be another impersonation event, we are advising organisations who have received any emails from the threat actor to prepare as if the threat actor’s claims are legitimate and mobilise their response team (including cyber insurance support if available), to be on the ready to respond as more information becomes known.” UPDATE (October 3, 2025, 07:50 a.m. ET): “Oracle is aware that some Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) customers have received extortion emails. Our ongoing investigation has found the potential use of previously identified vulnerabilities that are addressed in the July 2025 Critical Patch Update,” Rob Duhart, Chief Security Officer at Oracle Security, has confirmed. “Oracle reaffirms its strong recommendation that customers apply the latest Critical Patch Updates.” UPDATE (October 6, 2025, 07:40 a.m. ET): Cl0p involvement has been confirmed, as well as the fact that they exploited a previously unknown Oracle ESB vulnerability (CVE-2025-61882) in these attacks. Subscribe to our breaking news e-mail alert to never miss out on the latest breaches, vulnerabilities and cybersecurity threats. Subscribe here!

Betti RHC, la prima graphic novel al mondo dedicata alla cybersecurity awareness, ha finalmente il suo sito ufficiale. Uno spazio tutto suo dove scoprire il progetto, sfogliare le copertine degli episodi e immergersi nel mondo di Betti: la giovane laureanda in informatica che, dopo la morte misteriosa del padre, si trasforma nell'hacker più potente del mondo. Una storia avvincente che, episodio dopo episodio, affronta una minaccia digitale diversa — dal phishing al ransomware, fino al cyberbullismo — e insegna a riconoscerla e a difendersi, senza che sembri mai una lezione. Sul sito trovate tutto ciò che rende Betti un progetto diverso dal solito: la sua filosofia, le anteprime delle tavole e il racconto di come nasce ogni volume. Perché dietro Betti RHC c'è solo lavoro umano: ogni tavola è disegnata interamente a mano dagli artisti del Gruppo Arte di Red Hot Cyber, senza alcun uso di intelligenza artificiale. E a garantire che ogni storia sia realistica e tecnicamente corretta c'è la supervisione degli hacker etici del gruppo HackerHood, che mantengono il racconto fedele al mondo reale della sicurezza informatica. C'è spazio anche per le aziende, che possono usare Betti come strumento di awareness diverso dai soliti corsi: acquistare i volumi, personalizzarli con il proprio brand o sponsorizzare nuovi episodi. E come primo regalo, l'episodio "Byte the Silence", dedicato al cyberbullismo, è scaricabile gratuitamente per uso personale. Perché la miglior difesa, in fondo, è una bella storia. 👉 Scopri tutto su https://betti.redhotcyber.com/

U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order approving a plan to restructure TikTok operations in the country to address national security concerns. TikTok is a massively popular short-form video platform owned by Chinese firm ByteDance. The social media service has a strong presence in the U.S., counting more than 170 million users, according to statistics published at the beginning of the month. The platform isn’t just for entertainment, as many creators in the country depend on it for income, and businesses use it to advertise and promote brands and products. The risk of user data being accessed by the Chinese government, as well as that of the platform being used to influence and distribute propaganda, sparked increasingly larger concerns in the United States, which resulted in a short-lived ban on January 19. The next day, President Trump issued an executive order postponing the enforcement, followed by several similar actions until a divestiture plan could be formulated, approved, and agreed upon. The latest White House announcement confirms that the involved parties have now agreed on a plan for TikTok to continue to be available to U.S. users, by separating the platform from ByteDance and sold to a U.S. owner. The approved framework agreement suggests the following key points: A new U.S.-based joint venture will run TikTok in the United States The divestiture also covers Lemon8, CapCut, and related apps/websites That entity will be majority-owned and controlled by U.S. persons ByteDance and its affiliates will now own less than 20% of this new entity U.S. entities will fully control algorithms, code, and content moderation U.S. user data must be stored in an American-run cloud environment Security partners will monitor software, algorithms, and data flows ByteDance will be excluded from the company’s security committee Oracle, which has been working with TikTok in the U.S. since 2020, hosting user data from the region, will now take an expanded and more formalized role. Along with other American investors, reportedly Andreessen Horowitz and private equity firm Silver Lake Management, the company will manage TikTok's operations and algorithm. The American software and cloud services giant will serve as a security provider for TikTok’s U.S. operations, safeguarding user data and auditing algorithm and moderation practices. TikTok’s algorithms and content recommendation models will now be retrained using only U.S.-approved data, ensuring that there will be no foreign influence. This retraining process will be inspected, validated, and continually overseen by the designated security partners, including Oracle. According to Bloomberg, users in the U.S. will also have to transition to a new app that will replicate the original algorithm for content recommendations based on U.S. user data. This doesn’t affect non U.S.-based TikTok users, who may continue to use the global platform, which remains under ByteDance’s complete control. Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply. The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments. Get the report

Russia steps up disinformation efforts to sway Moldova’s parliamentary vote Russia is ramping up disinformation campaigns and covert influence operations ahead of Moldova’s parliamentary election in an attempt to block its path to the European Union, according to Western researchers, leaked documents and Moldovan officials. Moldovans will elect a new parliament on September 28 when President Maia Sandu’s ruling Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) faces off against a coalition of pro-Russian opposition forces. Sandu won reelection in November 2024 in a runoff against former Moldovan Prosecutor General Alexandr Stoianoglo despite attempts by Russia-linked entities to sway the vote. According to a report by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) earlier in September, the Kremlin is again trying to interfere in the 2025 parliamentary elections to prevent the ruling party from retaining its majority. “These election influence campaigns are part of Moscow’s overall efforts to achieve its long-held strategic objective of preventing Moldova from integrating with the West,” researchers said. Fake news network The BBC reported over the weekend that a Russian-funded network was recruiting Moldovans to post propaganda on TikTok and Facebook, paying them about 3,000 lei ($170) each month via sanctioned Russian Promsvyazbank. Recruits were instructed to use artificial intelligence to generate content attacking Sandu and the PAS with unfounded claims — including that the government planned to rig the vote, that EU entry required citizens to change their sexual orientation and that Sandu was linked to child trafficking. The BBC linked the network to fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. and the U.K. for enabling Kremlin influence operations. It identified at least 90 TikTok accounts that produced thousands of videos with more than 23 million views this year. Since April, Russia has also been intensifying its Matryoshka and Overload disinformation campaigns designed to spread fake pro-Russian narratives and overwhelm fact-checkers with fabricated content, according to the ISW. These operations are part of Russia’s larger Doppelganger campaign, which aims to “clone” legitimate websites of media outlets and public institutions to spread propaganda. Moldovan law enforcement is conducting searches targeting individuals suspected of involvement in pro-Russian influence operations. Last week, authorities seized about $302,000 in raids on what they described as Russian-backed money-laundering schemes and shut down a media outlet accused of spreading propaganda linked to Shor. On Monday, local police detained dozens of people as part of an investigation into an alleged Russia-backed plot to incite mass unrest. Police said raids targeted more than 100 individuals in multiple localities. Kremlin playbook According to a Bloomberg report on Monday citing leaked Kremlin documents, Moscow drew up a strategy to weaken Sandu in the parliamentary vote and ultimately remove her from power. The plan, exposed in leaked documents, outlined efforts to mobilize Moldovan diaspora voters, stage street protests and launch coordinated disinformation campaigns on TikTok, Telegram, and Facebook. While Bloomberg could not confirm the plan was being implemented, two European officials familiar with the matter said it was “almost certain” Russia intended to follow through on most of it. The ISW said Russia appears to be learning from its interference in the 2024 Romanian presidential election, particularly in the extensive use of TikTok, which was previously exploited by pro-Russian ultranationalist Calin Georgescu — who won the first round of an annulled vote — to promote his campaign. Researchers said the primary objective of Russia’s influence campaigns is to secure a Kremlin-friendly majority in Moldova’s parliament. “A Kremlin-friendly government in both Chisinau and Tiraspol [the self-proclaimed capital of Transnistria, a pro-Russian enclave inside Moldova] would simultaneously allow the Kremlin to threaten NATO to Moldova’s west and Ukraine to its east,” the ISW added. Daryna Antoniuk is a reporter for Recorded Future News based in Ukraine. She writes about cybersecurity startups, cyberattacks in Eastern Europe and the state of the cyberwar between Ukraine and Russia. She previously was a tech reporter for Forbes Ukraine. Her work has also been published at Sifted, The Kyiv Independent and The Kyiv Post.

A 20-year-old member of the notorious cybercrime gang known as Scattered Spider has been sentenced to ten years in prison in the U.S. in connection with a series of major hacks and cryptocurrency thefts. Noah Michael Urban pleaded guilty to charges related to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft back in April 2025. News of Urban's sentencing was reported by Bloomberg and Jacksonville news outlet News4JAX. In addition to 120 months in federal prison, Urban faces an additional three years of supervised release and has been ordered to pay $13 million in restitution to victims. In a statement shared with security journalist Brian Krebs, Urban called the sentence unjust. Urban, who also went by the aliases Sosa, Elijah, King Bob, Gustavo Fring, and Anthony Ramirez, was arrested by U.S. authorities in Florida in January 2024 for committing wire fraud and aggravated identity theft between August 2022 and March 2023. These incidents led to the theft of at least $800,000 from at least five different victims, per the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ). Prosecutors said Urban and his co-conspirators engaged in SIM swapping attacks to hijack victims' cryptocurrency accounts and plunder the digital assets. Later that November, the DoJ unsealed criminal charges against Urban and four other members of Scattered Spider for using social engineering techniques to target employees of companies across the U.S. and to break into corporate networks and steal proprietary data and to siphon millions of dollars in cryptocurrency. Tyler Robert Buchanan, who is among those indicted, was extradited from Spain to the U.S. in April following his arrest in the European nation last June. The development comes as Scattered Spider has joined forces with other threat groups ShinyHunters and LAPSUS$ to form a new cybercrime alliance. The group, associated with a broader English-speaking cybercriminal collective called The Com, has a history of conducting social engineering, credential theft, and SIM swapping, initial access, ransomware deployment, data theft, and extortion attacks. "Scattered Spider has historically leaned on tactics that generate urgency, drive media and industry attention, create fear of exposure, and help force victims to payout quicker," Adam Darrah, vice president of intelligence at ZeroFox, told The Hacker News in a statement. "Timed leaks, countdown threats, and taunts directed at security firms are all part of their playbook. They have ties to a wider network of like-minded actors, which has given them access to more tools, data, and infrastructure, multiplying their effectiveness. We regularly see groups team up when there is an increase in external pressures, like law enforcement crackdowns. To survive, these groups need to consolidate. And the result is often a more versatile and potentially dangerous combined operation." Cybersecurity firm Flashpoint, which published a profile of Scattered Spider last week, said the financially-motivated hacking group adopts a wave-like approach by choosing a specific sector and attacking as many organizations within that vertical over a short span of time. "The tactics employed by Scattered Spider demonstrate their ability to exploit weaknesses in security programs by targeting people rather than strictly systems or technical vulnerabilities," it said. "Their use of social engineering, via vishing, smishing, and MFA fatigue attacks, proves that even the most advanced technical defenses can be circumvented through human deception."

Columbia University says hacker stole SSNs and other data of nearly 900,000 A cyberattack in June on Columbia University allowed hackers to access the sensitive personal information of more than 860,000 people. The university filed breach notification documents with regulators in Maine and California, warning that the incident exposed Social Security numbers and any information submitted as part of college applications or collected while in attendance at the school. Contact details, demographic information, academic history, financial aid information, health insurance information and more were accessed by the hackers. Columbia said 868,969 people were affected. The incident was discovered on June 24 when the university had a tech outage that disrupted significant parts of its IT systems. An investigation discovered that the hackers breached systems on May 16 and were able to siphon data from the school. No patient records were taken from Columbia University Irving Medical Center, according to the breach letters. The university is offering those affected two years of free credit monitoring services. The incident caused widespread issues for Columbia students, who could not access email accounts and platforms for assignments. Some took to social media to share images of digital signs on campus that were taken over and defaced with images of President Donald Trump. Two weeks after the hack, Columbia said a hacktivist with a “political agenda” broke into the school’s IT systems and stole “targeted” student data. “Our investigation has indicated the hackers are highly sophisticated and were very targeted in their theft of documents,” the university official said on July 2. “They broke in and stole student data with the apparent goal of furthering their political agenda.” The hacker — who also has allegedly breached systems at New York University and the University of Minnesota — has claimed the attacks are in response to the Supreme Court decision in 2023 striking down affirmative action and said his goal is to prove that schools are not abiding by the ruling by continuing to admit any Black and Latino students. After the Columbia incident, the hacker reportedly provided tranches of the data to Bloomberg News and The New York Times — both of which ran controversial stories based on the stolen information. Jonathan Greig is a Breaking News Reporter at Recorded Future News. Jonathan has worked across the globe as a journalist since 2014. Before moving back to New York City, he worked for news outlets in South Africa, Jordan and Cambodia. He previously covered cybersecurity at ZDNet and TechRepublic.

Some risks don’t breach the perimeter—they arrive through signed software, clean resumes, or sanctioned vendors still hiding in plain sight. This week, the clearest threats weren’t the loudest—they were the most legitimate-looking. In an environment where identity, trust, and tooling are all interlinked, the strongest attack path is often the one that looks like it belongs. Security teams are now challenged to defend systems not just from intrusions—but from trust itself being turned into a weapon. ⚡ Threat of the Week Microsoft SharePoint Attacks Traced to China — The fallout from an attack spree targeting defects in on-premises Microsoft SharePoint servers continues to spread a week after the discovery of the zero-day exploits, with more than 400 organizations globally compromised. The attacks have been attributed to two known Chinese hacking groups tracked as Linen Typhoon (aka APT27), Violet Typhoon (aka APT31), and a suspected China-based threat actor codenamed Storm-2603 that has leveraged the access to deploy Warlock ransomware. The attacks leverage CVE-2025-49706, a spoofing flaw, and CVE-2025-49704, a remote code execution bug, collectively called ToolShell. Bloomberg reported that Microsoft is investigating whether a leak from Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP), which provides early access to vulnerability information to security software providers, may have led to the zero-day exploitation. China has denied allegations it was behind the campaign. Flare Customers Saw 321% ROI, Says Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) Study A new Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Flare shows how Flare’s threat exposure management platform delivered 321% ROI, cut manual work by 75%, and paid for itself in under 6 months for a composite organization representative of interviewed customers. Get the full business case. Read the Study ➝ 🔔 Top News U.S. Treasury Sanctions N. Korean Company for IT Worker Scheme — The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned a North Korean front company and three associated individuals for their involvement in the fraudulent remote information technology (IT) worker scheme designed to generate illicit revenues for Pyongyang. In a related move, Christina Marie Chapman, a laptop farmer in Arizona responsible for facilitating the scheme, was sentenced to jail for eight-and-a-half years, after raising $17 million in illicit funds for the regime. In these schemes, IT workers from North Korea use well-crafted, carefully curated portfolios, complete with full social media profiles, AI-enhanced photos and deepfakes, and stolen identities to pass background checks and land jobs at various U.S. companies. Once hired, they take the help of facilitators to receive company-issued laptops and other equipment, which they can then connect to remotely, thereby giving the impression that they are within the country where the company is located. The ongoing efforts operate with the twin goals of generating revenue for the Hermit Kingdom's nuclear program and other efforts via regular salaries, as well as gaining a foothold inside corporate networks for the purpose of planting malware for stealing secrets and extorting their employers. "DPRK's cyber operations challenge the traditional nation-state playbook – merging cryptocurrency theft, espionage, and nuclear ambition within a self-funded system driven by profit, loyalty, and survival," said Sue Gordon, a member of DTEX's Advisory Board and former principal deputy director of U.S. National Intelligence. "Recognizing it as a family-run mafia syndicate unblurs the lines between cybercrime and statecraft. This report pulls back the curtain on their inner workings and psychology, revealing how deeply embedded they already are within our workforce – providing the context needed to anticipate their next move." Soco404 and Koske Target Misconfigured Cloud Instances to Drop Miners — Two different malware campaigns have targeted vulnerabilities and misconfigurations across cloud environments to deliver cryptocurrency miners. These activity clusters have been codenamed Soco404 and Koske. While Soco404 targets both Linux and Windows systems to deploy platform-specific malware, Koske is a Linux-focused threat. There is also evidence to suggest that Koske has been developed using a large language model (LLM), given the presence of well-structured comments, best-practice logic flow with defensive scripting habits, and synthetic panda-related imagery to host the miner payload. XSS Forum Taken Down and Suspected Admin Arrested — Law enforcement notched a significant victory against the cybercrime economy with the disruption of the notorious forum XSS and the arrest of its suspected administrator. That said, it's important to note that takedowns of similar forums have proved short-lived, and threat actors often move to new platforms or other alternatives, such as Telegram channels. The development comes as LeakZone, a self-styled "leaking and cracking forum" where users advertise and share breached databases, stolen credentials, and pirated software, was caught leaking the IP addresses of its logged-in users to the open web. Coyote Trojan Exploits Windows UI Automation — The Windows banking trojan known as Coyote has become the first known malware strain to exploit the Windows accessibility framework called UI Automation (UIA) to harvest sensitive information. Coyote, which is known to target Brazilian users, comes with capabilities to log keystrokes, capture screenshots, and serve overlays on top of login pages associated with financial enterprises. Akamai's analysis found that the malware invokes the GetForegroundWindow() Windows API in order to extract the active window's title and compare it against a hard-coded list of web addresses belonging to targeted banks and cryptocurrency exchanges. "If no match is found Coyote will then use UIA to parse through the UI child elements of the window in an attempt to identify browser tabs or address bars," Akamai said. "The content of these UI elements will then be cross-referenced with the same list of addresses from the first comparison." Cisco Confirms Active Exploits Targeting ISE — Cisco has warned that a set of security flaws in Identity Services Engine (ISE) and ISE Passive Identity Connector (ISE-PIC) have come under active exploitation in the wild. The flaws, CVE-2025-20281, CVE-2025-20337, and CVE-2025-20282, allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the underlying operating system as root or upload arbitrary files to an affected device and then execute those files on the underlying operating system as root. The network equipment vendor did not disclose which vulnerabilities have been weaponized in real-world attacks, the identity of the threat actors exploiting them, or the scale of the activity. ️🔥 Trending CVEs Hackers are quick to jump on newly discovered software flaws – sometimes within hours. Whether it’s a missed update or a hidden bug, even one unpatched CVE can open the door to serious damage. Below are this week’s high-risk vulnerabilities making waves. Review the list, patch fast, and stay a step ahead. This week's list includes — CVE-2025-54068 (Laravel Livewire Framework), CVE-2025-34300 (Lighthouse Studio), CVE-2025-6704, CVE-2025-7624 (Sophos Firewall), CVE-2025-40599 (SonicWall SMA 100 Series), CVE-2025-49656, CVE-2025-50151 (Apache Jena), CVE-2025-22230, CVE-2025-22247 (Broadcom VMware Tools), CVE-2025-7783 (form-data), CVE-2025-34140, CVE-2025-34141, CVE-2025-34142, CVE-2025-34143 (Hexagon ETQ Reliance), CVE-2025-8069 (AWS Client VPN for Windows), CVE-2025-7723, CVE-2025-7724 (TP-Link VIGI NVR), CVE-2025-7742 (LG Innotek LNV5110R), CVE-2025-24000 (Post SMTP), CVE-2025-52449, CVE-2025-52452, CVE-2025-52453, CVE-2025-52454, CVE-2025-52455 (Salesforce Tableau Server), and CVE-2025-6241 (SysTrack). 📰 Around the Cyber World Google Removes 1000s of YouTube Channels Tied to Influence Ops — Google removed nearly 11,000 YouTube channels and other accounts tied to state-linked propaganda campaigns from China, Russia and more in the second quarter of 2025. It removed over 2,000 removed channels linked to Russia, including 20 YouTube channels, 4 Ads accounts, and 1 Blogger blog associated with RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet. The takedown also included more than 7,700 YouTube channels linked to China, which shared content in Chinese and English that promoted the People’s Republic of China, supported President Xi Jinping and commented on U.S. foreign affairs. Surveillance Company Bypasses SS7 Safeguards — An unnamed surveillance company has been using a new attack technique to bypass the Signaling System 7 (SS7) protocol's protections and trick telecommunications companies into disclosing the location of their users. The attack method, likely used since the fourth quarter of 2024, hinges on Transaction Capabilities Application Part (TCAP) manipulation through SS7 commands that have been encoded in such a manner that their contents are not parsed by the protection systems or firewalls at the target network. "We don't have any information on how successful this attack method has been worldwide, as its success is vendor/software specific, rather than being a general protocol vulnerability, but its use as part of a suite indicates that it has had some value," Enea researchers Cathal Mc Daid and Martin Gallagher said. Number of Phishing Sites Aimed at Telegram Spikes — A new report has found that the number of phishing sites aimed at Telegram users increased to 12,500 in the second quarter of 2025. In one variant of the scheme, fraudsters create a phishing page that simulates the login page associated with Telegram or Fragment, a platform on the TON blockchain that allows users to buy and sell unique Telegram usernames and virtual phone numbers. Should victims enter their credentials and the confirmation codes, the accounts are hijacked by the attackers. The second scenario entails the attacker approaching a victim to purchase a rare digital gift from them in Telegram for a large amount. "As payment, the fraudster sends fake tokens," BI.ZONE said. "At first glance, they are indistinguishable from the real ones, but they have no real value. After the transfer, the victim is left without a gift and with a fake digital currency." In a related report, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said it identified 54,446 domains hosting phishing sites in a campaign impersonating Telegram dubbed telegram_acc_hijack. "These pages collect Telegram login credentials submitted and real-time one-time passcodes (OTPs) to hijack user accounts," the company added. Former NCA Employee Sentenced to 5.5 Years in Prison — A former officer with the U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison after stealing a chunk of the Bitcoin seized by the agency as part of a law enforcement operation targeting the now-defunct illicit dark web marketplace Silk Road. Paul Chowles, 42, was identified as the culprit after authorities recovered his iPhone, which linked him to an account used to transfer Bitcoin as well as relevant browser search history relating to a cryptocurrency exchange service. "Within the NCA, Paul Chowles was regarded as someone who was competent, technically minded and very aware of the dark web and cryptocurrencies," Alex Johnson, Specialist Prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service's Special Crime Division, said. "He took advantage of his position working on this investigation by lining his own pockets while devising a plan that he believed would ensure that suspicion would never fall upon him. Once he had stolen the cryptocurrency, Paul Chowles sought to muddy the waters and cover his tracks by transferring the Bitcoin into mixing services to help hide the trail of money." U.K. Sanctions 3 Russian GRU Units for Sustained Cyber Attacks — The U.K. sanctioned three units of the Russian military intelligence agency (GRU) and 18 military intelligence officers for "conducting a sustained campaign of malicious cyber activity over many years" with an aim to "sow chaos, division and disorder in Ukraine and across the world." The sanctions cover Unit 26165 (linked to APT28), Unit 29155 (linked to Cadet Blizzard), and Unit 74455 (linked to Sandworm), as well as African Initiative, a "social media content mill established and funded by Russia and employing Russian intelligence officers to conduct information operations in West Africa." U.K. Floats Ransomware Payments Ban for Public Bodies — The U.K. government has proposed new legislation that would ban public sector organizations and critical national infrastructure from paying criminal operators behind ransomware attacks, as well as enforce mandatory reporting requirements for all victims to inform law enforcement of attacks. "Public sector bodies and operators of critical national infrastructure, including the NHS, local councils and schools, would be banned from paying ransom demands to criminals under the measure," the government said. "The ban would target the business model that fuels cyber criminals' activities and makes the vital services the public rely on a less attractive target for ransomware groups." Businesses that do not fall under the ambit of the law would be required to notify the government of any intent to pay a ransom. A failure to download patches to address widely exploited vulnerabilities could lead to daily fines of £100,000 or 10 percent of turnover should a digital break-in occur. Thought Lumma Was Out of Commission? Think Again! — The Lumma Stealer operations have recovered following a law enforcement takedown of its infrastructure earlier this year, with the malware being distributed through more discreet channels and stealthier evasion tactics. "Lumma's infrastructure began ramping up again within weeks of the takedown," Trend Micro said. "This rapid recovery highlights the group's resilience and adaptability in the face of disruption." A notable shift is the reduction in volume of domains using Cloudflare's services to obfuscate their malicious domains and make detection more challenging, instead shifting to Russian alternatives like Selectel. "This strategic pivot suggests a move towards providers that might be perceived as less responsive to law enforcement requests, further complicating efforts to track and disrupt their activities," the company added. Lumma Stealer is known for its diverse and evolving delivery methods, leveraging social media posts, GitHub, ClickFix, and fake sites distributing cracks and key generators, as initial access methods. The resurgence of Lumma is par for the course with modern cybercriminal operations that often can quickly resume activity even after significant law enforcement disruptions. In a statement shared with The Hacker News, ESET confirmed the resurgence of Lumma Stealer and that the current activity has approached levels similar to those before the law enforcement action. "Lumma Stealer operators continue to register dozens of new domains weekly – activity that didn’t stop even after the disruption – but switched to primarily resolving them at nameservers located in Russia," Jakub Tománek, ESET malware analyst, said. "The codebase itself has shown minimal changes since the takedown attempt. This indicates the group’s primary focus has been on restoring operations rather than innovating their 'product' and introducing new features." U.S. Government Warns of Interlock Ransomware — The U.S. government has warned of Interlock ransomware attacks targeting businesses, critical infrastructure, and other organizations in North America and Europe since late September 2024. The attacks, designed to target both Windows and Linux systems, employ drive-by downloads from compromised legitimate websites or ClickFix- and FileFix-style lures to drop payloads for initial access. "Actors then use various methods for discovery, credential access, and lateral movement to spread to other systems on the network," the U.S. government said. "Interlock actors employ a double extortion model in which actors encrypt systems after exfiltrating data, which increases pressure on victims to pay the ransom to both get their data decrypted and prevent it from being leaked." Also part of the threat actor's tooling are Cobalt Strike and a custom remote access trojan called NodeSnake RAT, and information stealers like Lumma Stealer and Berserk Stealer to harvest credentials for lateral movement and privilege escalation. Apple Notifies Iranians of Spyware Attacks — Apple notified more than a dozen Iranians in recent months that their iPhones had been targeted with government spyware, according to a digital rights and security organization called Miaan Group. This included individuals who have a long history of political activism. Also notified by Apple were dissidents and a technology worker. It's unclear which spyware maker is behind these attacks. The attacks mark the first known example of advanced mercenary tools being used both inside Iran and against Iranians living abroad. Linux Servers Targeted by SVF Bot — Poorly managed Linux servers are being targeted by a campaign that delivers a Python-based malware called SVF Bot that enlists infected machines in a botnet that can conduct distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. "When the SVF Bot is executed, it can authenticate with the Discord server using the following Bot Token and then operate according to the threat actor's commands," ASEC said. "Most of the supported commands are for DDoS attacks, with L7 HTTP Flood and L4 UDP Flood being the main types supported." Turkish Companies Targeted by Snake Keylogger — Turkish organizations are the target of a new phishing campaign that delivers an information stealer called Snake Keylogger. The activity, primarily singling out defense and aerospace sectors, involves distributing bogus email messages that impersonate Turkish Aerospace Industries (TUSAŞ) in an attempt to trick victims into opening malicious files under the guise of contractual documents. "Once executed, the malware employs advanced persistence mechanisms – including PowerShell commands to evade Windows Defender and scheduled tasks for auto-execution – to harvest sensitive data, such as credentials, cookies, and financial information, from a wide range of browsers and email clients," Malwation said. Former Engineer Pleads Guilty to Trade Theft — A Santa Clara County man and former engineer at a Southern California company pleaded guilty to stealing trade secret technologies developed for use by the U.S. government to detect nuclear missile launches, track ballistic and hypersonic missiles, and to allow U.S. fighter planes to detect and evade heat-seeking missiles. Chenguang Gong, 59, of San Jose, pleaded guilty to one count of theft of trade secrets. He remains free on a $1.75 million bond. Gong – a dual citizen of the United States and China – transferred more than 3,600 files from a Los Angeles-area research and development company where he worked to personal storage devices during his brief tenure with the company last year. The victim company hired Gong in January 2023 as an application-specific integrated circuit design manager. He was terminated three months later. Gong, who was arrested and charged in February, is scheduled for sentencing on September 29, 2025. He faces up to 10 years in prison. FBI Issues Warning About The Com — The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is warning the public about an online group called In Real Life (IRL) Com that provides violence-as-a-service (VaaS), including shootings, kidnappings, armed robbery, stabbings, physical assault, and bricking. "Services are posted online with a price breakdown for each act of violence," the FBI said. "Groups offering VaaS advertise contracts on social media platforms to solicit individuals willing to conduct the act of violence for monetary compensation." The threat group is also said to advertise swat-for-hire services via communication applications and social media platforms. IRL Com is assessed to be one of three subsets of The Com (short for The Community), a growing online collective comprising primarily of thousands of English-speaking individuals, many of whom are minors, and engage in a wide range of criminal endeavors. The other two offshoots are Hacker Com, which is linked to DDoS and ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) groups, and Extortion Com, which primarily involves the exploitation of children. Notably, the Com encompasses threat clusters tracked as LAPSUS$ and Scattered Spider. A similar warning was issued by the U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) earlier this March, calling attention to The Com's trend of recruiting teenage boys to commit a range of criminal acts, from cyber fraud and ransomware to child sexual abuse. Organized Crime Group Behind Large-Scale Fraud Disrupted — A highly organised criminal group involved in large-scale fraud in Western Europe was dismantled in a coordinated operation led by authorities from Romania and the United Kingdom. "The gang had travelled from Romania to several Western European countries, mainly the UK, and withdrew large sums of money from ATM machines," Europol said. "They later laundered the proceeds by investing in real estate, companies, vacations, and luxury products, including cars and jewelry." The operation has led to two arrests, 18 house searches, and the seizure of real estate, luxury cars, electronic devices, and cash. The attackers committed what has been described as Transaction Reversal Fraud (TRF), in which the screen of an ATM is removed and a bank card is inserted to request funds. The transactions were canceled (or reversed) before the funds were dispensed, allowing them to reach inside the ATM and take the cash before it was retracted. The gang is estimated to have plundered about €580,000 (about $681,000) using this method. "The perpetrators were also involved in other criminal activities, including skimming, forging electronic means of payment and transport cards, and conducting bin attacks — a type of card fraud carried out using software designed to identify card numbers and generate illicit income through fraudulent payments," Europol added. The development came as a 21-year-old U.K. student, Ollie Holman, who designed and distributed 1,052 phishing kits linked to £100 million (approximately $134 million) worth of fraud, was jailed for seven years. It is estimated that Holman received £300,000 from selling the kits between 2021 and 2023. The phishing kits were sold via Telegram. Holman previously pleaded guilty to seven counts, including encouraging or assisting the commission of an offence, making or supplying articles for use in fraud, and transferring, acquiring, and possessing criminal property, per the Crown Prosecution Service. Endgame Gear Acknowledges Supply Chain Attack — Gaming peripheral manufacturer Endgame Gear confirmed that unidentified threat actors compromised its official software distribution system to spread dangerous Xred malware to unsuspecting customers for nearly two weeks via the OP1w 4k v2 product page. The security breach occurred between June 26 and July 9, 2025. The company stated that "access to our file servers was not compromised, and no customer data was accessible or affected on our servers at any time," and that "This issue was isolated to the OP1w 4k v2 product page download only." New Campaign Targeted Crypto Users Since March 2024 — A new sophisticated and evasive malware campaign has managed to stay unnoticed and target cryptocurrency users globally since March 2024. Dubbed WEEVILPROXY, the activity leverages Facebook advertisement campaigns masquerading as well-known cryptocurrency-related software and platforms, such as Binance, Bybit, Kraken, Revolut, TradingView, and others, to trick users into downloading fake installers that ultimately drop information stealers and cryptocurrency drainers. "We have also observed the threat actor propagate ads through Google Display Network since April-May 2025, which are displayed throughout the internet in the form of images/videos," WithSecure said. "These ads appear geographically bound as well, for instance, we have observed such ads specifically targeting the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Pakistan." VMDetector Loader Delivers Formbook Malware — A new variant of the VMDetector Loader malware has been found embedded within the "pixel data" of a seemingly benign JPG image that's delivered via phishing emails to ultimately deploy an information stealer called Formbook. The JPG image is retrieved from archive.org by means of Visual Basic Scripts present within zipped archives that are sent as attachments to the email messages. Threat Actors Use mount Binary in Hikvision Attacks — Attacks in the wild exploiting CVE-2021-36260, a command injection bug affecting Hikvision cameras, have been uncovered, leveraging the flaw to mount a remote NFS share and execute a file off of it. "The attacker tells mount to make the remote NFS share, /srv/nfs/shared, on 87.121.84[.]34 available locally as the directory ./b," VulnCheck said. How Windows Drivers Can Be Weaponized? — In a new detailed analysis, Security Joes has highlighted the threat posed by kernel-mode attacks and how attacks abusing vulnerable drivers, called the Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) technique, can be used by attackers to exploit signed-but-flawed drivers to bypass kernel protections. "Because drivers run in kernel mode, they possess high privileges and unrestricted access to system resources," the company said. "This makes them a high-value target for attackers aiming to escalate privileges, disable security mechanisms such as EDR callbacks, and achieve full control over the system." Organizations' Attack Surface Increases — Organizations have created more entry points for attackers. That's according to a report from ReliaQuest, which found a 27% increase in exposed ports between the second half of 2024 and the first half of 2025, a 35% increase in exposed operational technology (OT), and a surge in vulnerabilities in public-facing systems, such as PHP and WordPress. "Vulnerabilities in public-facing assets more than doubled, rising from 3 per organization in the second half of 2024 to 7 in the first half of 2025," the company said. "From late 2024 to early 2025, the number of exposed access keys for organizations in our customer base doubled, creating twice the opportunity for attackers to slip in unnoticed." Iranian Bank Pasargad Targeted During June Conflict — The Iranian bank known as Pasargad was targeted as part of a cyber attack during the Iran-Israel war in June 2025, impacting access to crucial services. A suspected Israeli operation called Predatory Sparrow claimed responsibility for the attack on another Iranian bank Sepah and the country's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Nobitex. CrowdStrike Outage Impacted Over 750 U.S. Hospitals — A new study undertaken by a group of academics from the University of California, San Diego, found that 759 U.S. hospitals experienced IT outages last July due to a faulty CrowdStrike update. "A total of 1098 distinct network services with outages were identified, of which 631 (57.5%) were unable to be classified, 239 (21.8%) were direct patient-facing services, 169 (15.4%) were operationally relevant services, and 58 (5.3%) were research-related services," the study said. North Korean Actors Employ NVIDIA Lures — The North Korean threat actors behind the Contagious Interview (aka DeceptiveDevelopment) campaign are leveraging ClickFix-style lures to trick unsuspecting job seekers into downloading a supposed NVIDIA-related update to address camera or microphone issues when attempting to provide a video assessment. The attack leads to the execution of a Visual Basic Script that launches a Python payload called PylangGhost that steals credentials and enables remote access via MeshAgent. ACRStealer Variant Distributed in New Attacks — Threat actors are propagating a new variant of ACRStealer that incorporates new features aimed at detection evasion and analysis obstruction. "The modified ACRStealer uses the Heaven's Gate to disrupt detection and analysis," AhnLab said. "Heaven's Gate is a technique used to execute x64 code in WoW64 processes and is widely used for analysis evasion and detection avoidance." The new version has been rebranded as Amatera Stealer, per Proofpoint. It's offered for sale for $199 per month to $1,499 per year. Aeza Group Shifts Infrastructure After U.S. Sanctions — Earlier this month, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions against Russia-based bulletproof hosting (BPH) service provider Aeza Group for assisting threat actors in their malicious activities, such as ransomware, data theft, and darknet drug trafficking. Silent Push, in a new analysis, said IP ranges from Aeza's AS210644 began migrating to AS211522, a new autonomous system operated by Hypercore Ltd., starting July 20, 2025, in an attempt to evade sanctions enforcement and operate under new infrastructure. Request for Quote Scams Demonstrate Sophistication — Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a widespread Request for Quote (RFQ) scam that employs common Net financing options (Net 15, 30, 45) to steal a variety of high-value electronics and goods. "In RFQ campaigns, the actor reaches out to a business to ask for quotes for various products or services," Proofpoint said. "The quotes they receive can be used to make very convincing lures to send malware, phishing links, and even additional business email compromise (BEC) and social engineering fraud." Besides using vendor-supplied financing and stolen identities of real employees to steal physical goods, these scams utilize email and legitimate online quote request forms to reach potential victims. Fake Games Distribute Stealer Malware — A new malware campaign is distributing fake installers for indie game titles such as Baruda Quest, Warstorm Fire, and Dire Talon, promoting them via fraudulent websites, YouTube channels, and Discord, to trick unwitting users into infecting their machines with stealers like Leet Stealer, RMC Stealer (a modified version of Leet Stealer), and Sniffer Stealer. The origins of Leet and RMC malware families can be traced back to Fewer Stealer, suggesting a shared lineage. It's believed that the campaign originally targeted Brazil, before expanding worldwide. U.S. FCC Wants to Ban Companies from Using Chinese Equipment When Laying Submarine Cables — The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said it plans to issue new rules that would ban Chinese technology from U.S. submarine cables in order to protect underwater telecommunications infrastructure from foreign adversary threats. "We have seen submarine cable infrastructure threatened in recent years by foreign adversaries, like China," FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said. "We are therefore taking action here to guard our submarine cables against foreign adversary ownership, and access as well as cyber and physical threats." In a recent report, Recorded Future said the risk environment for submarine cables has "escalated" and that the "threat of state-sponsored malicious activity targeting submarine cable infrastructure is likely to rise further amid heightened geopolitical tensions." The cybersecurity company also cited a lack of redundancy, a lack of diversity of cable routes, and limited repair capacity as some of the key factors that raise the risk of severe impact caused by damage to submarine cables. China Warns Citizens of Backdoored Devices and Supply Chain Threats — China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) has issued an advisory, warning of backdoors in devices and supply chain attacks on software. The security agency said such threats not only risk personal privacy and theft of corporate secrets, but also affect national security. "Potential technical backdoor security risks can also be reduced by strengthening technical protection measures, such as formulating patch strategies, regularly updating operating systems, regularly checking device logs, and monitoring abnormal traffic," MSS said, urging organizations to avoid foreign software and instead adopt domestic operating systems. In a separate bulletin, the MSS also alleged that overseas spy intelligence agencies may set up backdoors in its ocean observation sensors to steal data. NyashTeam Hacking Group Infrastructure Disrupted — Russia-based cybersecurity company F6 said it dismantled a network of domains operated by a relatively unknown hacking crew known as NyashTeam, which sells two different remote access trojans known as DCRat (DarkCrystal RAT) and WebRAT through Telegram bots and websites under the malware-as-a-service (MaaS) model. The malware is distributed using YouTube and GitHub by passing them off as game cheats or pirated software. The group is also believed to provide hosting services for cybercriminal infrastructure and support customers through plugins, guides, and data processing tools, appealing to both novice hackers and experienced cybercriminals alike. RenderShock Attack Technique Detailed — Cybersecurity researchers have detailed a zero-click attack strategy called RenderShock that leverages trusted operating system behaviors to conduct reconnaissance and deliver payloads without requiring any user interaction. "By embedding malicious logic in metadata, preview triggers, and document formats, RenderShock capitalizes on system convenience as an unguarded attack vector," CYFIRMA said. "Modern enterprise systems are built for convenience, automatically previewing, indexing, synchronizing, and rendering files across endpoints, cloud platforms, and productivity suites. These systems often process files without explicit user action, trusting that the rendering process is safe. RenderShock exploits these passive execution surfaces: trusted components that parse untrusted files silently in the background." 🎥 Cybersecurity Webinars AI Is Breaking Trust—Here’s How to Save It Before It’s Too Late — Discover how customers are reacting to AI-driven digital experiences in 2025. The Auth0 CIAM Trends Report reveals rising identity threats, new trust expectations, and the hidden costs of broken logins. Join this webinar to learn how AI can be your biggest asset—or your biggest risk. Python Devs: Your Pip Install Could Be a Malware Bomb — In 2025, Python’s supply chain is under siege — from typosquats to hijacked AI libraries. One wrong pip install could inject malware straight into production. This session shows how to secure your builds with tools like Sigstore, SLSA, and hardened containers. Stop hoping your packages are clean — start verifying. 🔧 Cybersecurity Tools Vendetect - It is an open-source tool designed to detect copied or vendored code across repositories — even when the code has been modified. Built for real-world security and compliance needs, it uses semantic fingerprinting and version control analysis to identify where code was copied from, including the exact source commit. Unlike academic plagiarism tools, Vendetect is optimized for software engineering environments: it catches renamed functions, stripped comments, and altered formatting, and helps trace untracked dependencies, license violations, and inherited vulnerabilities often found during security assessments. Telegram Channel Scraper - It is a Python-based tool designed for advanced monitoring and data collection from public Telegram channels. It uses the Telethon library to scrape messages and media, storing everything in optimized SQLite databases. Built for efficiency and scale, it supports real-time scraping, parallel media downloads, and batch data exports. This makes it useful for researchers, analysts, and security teams who need structured access to Telegram content for investigation or archiving — without depending on manual scraping or third-party platforms. Disclaimer: These newly released tools are for educational use only and haven’t been fully audited. Use at your own risk—review the code, test safely, and apply proper safeguards. 🔒 Tip of the Week Don’t Trust Your Browser Blindly — Most people think of their browser as just a tool to get online — but in reality, it’s one of the most exposed parts of your device. Behind the scenes, your browser quietly stores names, emails, companies, and sometimes even payment info. This data often lives in plain, unencrypted files that are easy to extract if someone gains local access — even briefly. For example, in Chrome or Edge, personal autofill details are stored in a file called Web Data, which is a basic SQLite database anyone with access can read. This means that if your machine is compromised — even by a simple script — your personal or even work identity can be quietly stolen. Red teamers and attackers love this kind of recon gold. It doesn’t stop there. Browsers also keep session cookies, local storage, and site databases that often don’t get wiped, even after logout. This data can allow attackers to hijack your logged-in sessions or extract sensitive info stored by web apps — including company tools. Even browser extensions, if malicious or hijacked, can quietly spy on your activity or inject bad code into pages you trust. Another weak spot? Browser extensions. Even legitimate-looking add-ons can have wide permissions — letting them read what you type, track your browsing, or inject scripts. If a trusted extension gets compromised in an update, it can silently become a data theft tool. This happens more often than people think. Here’s how to reduce the risk: Clear autofill, cookies, and site data regularly Disable autofill entirely on workstations Limit extensions — audit them using tools like CRXcavator or Extension Police Use DB Browser for SQLite to inspect stored files (Web Data, Cookies) Use tools like BleachBit to securely wipe traces Browsers are essentially lightweight application platforms. If you’re not auditing how they store data and who can access it, you’re leaving a major gap open — especially on shared or endpoint-exposed machines. Conclusion This week’s signals are less a conclusion and more a provocation: What else might we be misclassifying? What familiar data could become meaningful under a different lens? If the adversary thinks in systems, not symptoms, our defenses must evolve accordingly. Sometimes, the best response isn’t a patch—it’s a perspective shift. There’s value in looking twice where others have stopped looking altogether.

Microsoft says Warlock ransomware deployed in SharePoint attacks as governments scramble Chinese hackers are exploiting a new vulnerability in Microsoft SharePoint products to deploy ransomware, increasing the pressure on governments around the world as they race to assess any damage done to their systems. In an update on Wednesday night, Microsoft said a China-based actor it identifies as Storm-2603 is now deploying Warlock ransomware after exploiting CVE-2025-49706. The ransomware has only been around since June after advertisements for it — which were titled “if you want a lamborghini, please call me” — emerged on Russian cybercrime forum RAMP. Recorded Future ransomware expert Allan Liska said the group behind Warlock is a ransomware-as-a-service operation with at least 11 victims so far. Storm-2603 has no ties to the other Chinese state-backed groups Microsoft previously said were targeting unpatched on-premises SharePoint systems exposed to the internet. The tech giant explained that it had previously seen Storm-2603 use the Warlock ransomware and at times deploy the LockBit ransomware strain. The group began using ransomware during this campaign on July 18 and investigators saw the threat actors take a number of actions after gaining initial access — including disabling Microsoft Defender protections. Compromised environments are then encrypted with the Warlock ransomware. While the group is based in China, Microsoft previously said it is “unable to confidently assess the threat actor’s objectives.” The two other Chinese groups identified with the so-called “ToolShell” campaign — Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon — are confirmed state-backed actors known for more than a decade of espionage and intellectual property theft. Federal compromises The concerns raised by the cybersecurity community about CVE-2025-49706 and its related vulnerabilities were realized this week when prominent victims were notified. Netherlands-based cybersecurity firm Eye Security told Reuters and Bloomberg that hackers have successfully breached at least 400 governments and businesses around the world. A Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) official told Recorded Future News that it is aware of federal agencies as well as state entities that may be affected by the campaign. Image: ESET CISA Acting Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity Chris Butera said they are working with Microsoft and other federal partners to address the ToolShell campaign. Butera added that the Muli-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) has been instrumental in helping them notify potentially impacted state and local partners. “We are still early in the incident response and we are continually assessing the scope and impact,” he told Recorded Future News. Bloomberg first reported on Tuesday that the National Nuclear Security Administration was breached through the vulnerability. It is in charge of running the U.S. nuclear weapons supply. A spokesperson confirmed that “the Department of Energy, including the NNSA” was breached on July 18. “The Department was minimally impacted due to its widespread use of the Microsoft M365 cloud and very capable cybersecurity systems,” the spokesperson said. “A very small number of systems were impacted. NNSA is taking the appropriate action to mitigate risk and transition to other offerings as appropriate.” The spokesperson added that they do not know of any sensitive or classified information that was compromised. By Wednesday, the Washington Post obtained a letter saying the National Institutes of Health was breached through the vulnerability and NextGov reported that the Department of Homeland Security was impacted as well. A DHS official said their investigation into potential exposure remains ongoing. “However, there is no evidence of data exfiltration at DHS or any of its components at this time,” a spokesperson claimed. DHS explained that CISA has been “working around the clock with Microsoft, impacted agencies, and critical infrastructure partners to share actionable information, apply mitigation efforts, implement protective measures, and assess preventative measures to shield from future attacks.” The State Department told Recorded Future News that it is working with CISA and other federal agencies to investigate its exposure. Experts at ESET said of all the active ToolShell exploitations across the world, the U.S. accounted for 13% of attacks and was the most targeted country, according to their data. The company first saw exploitation in Germany on July 17 before seeing another on July 18 in Italy. ESET researchers confirmed Microsoft’s assessment that Chinese government-backed groups are seizing on the bug and the company’s telemetry showed “the victims of the ToolShell attacks include several high-value government organizations that have been long-standing targets of these groups.” Jonathan Greig is a Breaking News Reporter at Recorded Future News. Jonathan has worked across the globe as a journalist since 2014. Before moving back to New York City, he worked for news outlets in South Africa, Jordan and Cambodia. He previously covered cybersecurity at ZDNet and TechRepublic.

A Chinese-based threat actor has been observed using the flaws in Microsoft SharePoint to deploy ransomware on compromised systems. In an incident update on July 23, Microsoft revealed that a group tracked as Storm-2603 is distributing Warlock ransomware on exploited SharePoint on-prem servers. As a result, the tech giant has advised potentially affected organizations to expand their mitigation efforts to include protection against ransomware. Storm-2603 is one of three groups observed to be exploiting on-prem SharePoint vulnerabilities, CVE-2025-53770 and CVE-2025-53771. It has been assessed with moderate confidence that Storm-2603 is a China-based threat actor. The group has been known to deploy Warlock and LockBit ransomware. Microsoft said it is currently unable to confidently assess the threat actor’s objectives. The other two actors known to be exploiting the SharePoint vulnerabilities are Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon – two known Chinese nation-state groups primarily focused on collecting sensitive data from sectors such as government, defense, technology and human rights organizations. The chained exploitation of the two bugs has been dubbed ‘ToolShell’ by the cybersecurity community. The attack chain appears to be sophisticated, with the threat actors bypassing identity controls and gaining privileged access in compromised systems. Attackers Maximizing Impact Kevin Robertson, CTO of Acumen Cyber, said the deployment of ransomware demonstrates that once inside a victim’s network, they will often look to take advantage in multiple ways. “The attackers turning to ransomware are clearly taking advantage of CVE 2025-53770 to gain further access to environments, encrypting sensitive information, before executing ransomware hoping to get a big pay check,” he noted. Chinese state-sponsored actors, not typically motivated by financial gain, could also be using the opportunity to deploy ransomware. “They could be conducting reconnaissance on networks and then when they have what they need, dropping ransomware to cause further chaos for victims,” Robertson added. SharePoint Victim Count Now Tops 400 Microsoft has told its on-prem SharePoint customers to assume compromise, even if they have fully patched the two vulnerabilities. Organizations have been advised to urgently take mitigations such as rotating cryptographic material, engaging professional incident response and even disconnecting SharePoint from the internet. Cybersecurity vendor Eye Security reported on July 23 that over 400 SharePoint systems have been actively compromised so far. These exploits took place over four confirmed waves of attack on July 17, 18, 19 and 21. Multiple waves took place on and after July 21 following a public proof-of-concept CVE-2025-53770/CVE-2025-53771 exploit script was released on GitHub, Eye Security added. It has been reported that several high-profile US government agencies are among the victims of the SharePoint campaign. Bloomberg reported on July 23 that on-prem SharePoint servers used by the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Education were compromised, while the Washington Post reported that the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) had been hit. NextGov said that it had been informed by people familiar with the matter that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was also among the victims of the Chinese hackers.

Unknown threat actors have breached the National Nuclear Security Administration's network in attacks exploiting a recently patched Microsoft SharePoint zero-day vulnerability chain. NNSA is a semi-autonomous U.S. government agency part of the Department of Energy that maintains the country's nuclear weapons stockpile and is also tasked with responding to nuclear and radiological emergencies within the United States and abroad. A Department of Energy spokesperson confirmed in a statement that hackers gained access to NNSA networks last week. "On Friday, July 18th, the exploitation of a Microsoft SharePoint zero-day vulnerability began affecting the Department of Energy, including the NNSA," Department of Energy Press Secretary Ben Dietderich told BleepingComputer. "The Department was minimally impacted due to its widespread use of the Microsoft M365 cloud and very capable cybersecurity systems." Dietderich added that only "a very small number of systems were impacted" and that "all impacted systems are being restored." As first reported by Bloomberg, sources within the agency also noted that there's no evidence of sensitive or classified information compromised in the breach. Additionally, the attackers have breached systems at the US Department of Education, Florida’s Department of Revenue, and the Rhode Island General Assembly, as well as networks of national governments in Europe and the Middle East, Bloomberg reported previously. The APT29 Russian state-sponsored threat group, the hacking division of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), also breached the U.S. nuclear weapons agency in 2019 using a trojanized SolarWinds Orion update. Attacks linked to Chinese state hackers, over 400 servers breached On Tuesday, Microsoft and Google linked the widespread attacks targeting a Microsoft SharePoint zero-day vulnerability chain (known as ToolShell) to Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups. "Microsoft has observed two named Chinese nation-state actors, Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon exploiting these vulnerabilities targeting internet-facing SharePoint servers," Microsoft said. "In addition, we have observed another China-based threat actor, tracked as Storm-2603, exploiting these vulnerabilities. Investigations into other actors also using these exploits are still ongoing." Dutch cybersecurity firm Eye Security first detected the zero-day attacks on Friday, stating that at least 54 organizations had already been compromised, including national government entities and multinational companies. Cybersecurity firm Check Point later revealed that it had spotted signs of exploitation going back to July 7th targeting dozens of government, telecommunications, and technology organizations in North America and Western Europe. Since then, Eye Security CTO Piet Kerkhofs told BleepingComputer that the number of compromised entities, "most of them already compromised for some time already," is much larger. According to the cybersecurity company's statistics, the threat actors behind these attacks have already infected at least 400 servers with malware and breached 148 organizations worldwide. CISA also added the CVE-2025-53770 remote code execution flaw, part of the ToolShell exploit chain, to its catalog of exploited vulnerabilities, ordering U.S. federal agencies to secure their systems within a day. Update July 23, 12:18 EDT: Added Energy Department statement. Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply. The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments. Get the report

Apple ha avvisato una dozzina di iraniani che i loro iPhone potrebbero aver subito degli attacchi spyware, con la responsabilità diretta del Governo di Teheran. Il monito di Apple Apple ha avvisato diversi cittadini iraniani di possibili attacchi spyware sugli iPhone. Secondo TechCrunch, alcuni ricercatori nel campo della sicurezza avrebbero poi ricollegato la provenienza di questi spyware, puntando il dito direttamente sul Governo di Teheran. Il tema non sarebbe una novità. Oltre ad averne scritto Bloomberg, di questo si è occupato il Miaan Group, un’organizzazione per i diritti digitali che studia Iran. Inoltre Hamid Kashfi (un ricercatore iraniano nel campo della sicurezza informatica che vive in Svezia) ha affermato di aver parlato con diversi iraniani che hanno ricevuto notifiche simili nell’ultimo anno. Più in generale, alla luce delle attuali complessità di quel quadrante geografico, in Iran comunicare attraverso il cellulare e le applicazioni di messaggistica è spesso complesso. Le responsabilità di Teheran Martedì scorso, il Miaan Group ha pubblicato un rapporto sullo stato della sicurezza informatica della società civile iraniana. Gli estensori dello studio avrebbero identificato tre casi di attacchi spyware governativi contro cittadini iraniani. Di questi, due in Iran e uno in Europa, che sono stati avvisati nell’Aprile di quest’anno. Amir Rashidi, direttore dei diritti digitali e della sicurezza del Miaan Group ha detto a TechCrunch: “Credo che ci siano state tre ondate di attacchi. Abbiamo visto solo la punta dell’iceberg”. Sempre secondo Rashidi, nonostante la necessità di ulteriori indagini, il ruolo di Teheran è evidente. “Non vedo alcun motivo per cui i membri della società civile debbano essere presi di mira da qualcuno che non sia l’Iran”, ha affermato. La difficoltà delle indagini Al netto di quello che da più parti si è interpretato come un clima ‘politico’ ben definito, gli scenari sono molto più complessi. Non è chiaro infatti quale produttore di spyware sia responsabile di questi attacchi. Negli ultimi anni, infatti, Apple ha inviato diverse serie di notifiche alle persone che ritiene siano state prese di mira da spyware governativi. Tra i vari casi, anche Pegasus di NSO Group o Graphite di Paragon. Questo tipo di malware è noto anche come spyware “mercenario” o “commerciale”. Nella sua pagina di supporto, Apple ha dedicato un capitolo a quelle che l’azienda definisce “notifiche di minaccia”, aggiornata l’ultima volta ad Aprile. Il gigante tecnologico ha affermato che dal 2021 ha inviato notifiche di merito agli utenti in “oltre 150 paesi”. Questo aspetto ha dimostrato quanto sia diffuso l’uso di spyware governativi. Tuttavia, Apple non ha rivelato i nomi dei Paesi né il numero totale di persone a cui ha inviato la notifica.