Is “Hackback” Official US Cybersecurity Strategy?

The 2026 US "Cyber Strategy for America" document is mostly the same thing we've seen out of the White House for over a decade, but with a more aggressive tone. But one sentence stood out: "We will unleash the private sector by creating incentives to identify and disrupt adversary networks and...

We Are At War

Rising geopolitical tensions are reflected or in some cases preceded by cyber operations, while technology itself has become politicized. Let’s admit it: we are in the middle of it. Introduction: One tech power to rule them all is a thing of the past The relative safety, peace and prosperity that...

Evaluating the Critical Risks of Amazon'S Nova Premier under the Frontier Model Safety Framework

Nova Premier is Amazon's most capable multimodal foundation model and teacher for model distillation. It processes text, images, and video with a one-million-token context window, enabling analysis of large codebases, 400-page documents, and 90-minute videos in a single prompt. We present the fir...

The Impact of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict on the Cloud Computing Risk Landscape

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has fundamentally altered the information technology IT risk landscape, particularly in cloud computing environments. This paper examines how this geopolitical conflict has accelerated data sovereignty concerns, transformed cybersecurity paradigms, and reshaped clo...

Understanding Iranian Capabilities and Hacktivist Activities

Understanding Iranian Capabilities and Hacktivist Activities By John Fokker · June 23, 2025 As geopolitical tensions flare again in the Middle East, cyber operations are increasingly becoming an extension of physical conflict. State-aligned threat actors, patriotic hackers, and ideologically...

Most of 2023’s Top Exploited Vulnerabilities Were Zero-Days

Zero-day vulnerabilities are more commonly used, according to the Five Eyes: Key Findings In 2023, malicious cyber actors exploited more zero-day vulnerabilities to compromise enterprise networks compared to 2022, allowing them to conduct cyber operations against higher-priority targets. In 2023,...

Breaking Down Earth Estries' Persistent TTPs in Prolonged Cyber Operations

Discover how Earth Estries employs a diverse set of tactics, techniques, and tools, including malware such as Zingdoor and Snappybee, for its campaigns...

Russian Cyber Offensive Shifts Focus to Ukraine’s Military Infrastructure

SSSCIP reports a strategic shift in Russian cyber operations in H1 2024. Targeting Ukraine's defence sectors, attacks doubled,…...

U.S. Agencies Warn of Iranian Hacking Group's Ongoing Ransomware Attacks

U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence agencies have called out an Iranian hacking group for breaching multiple organizations across the country and coordinating with affiliates to deliver ransomware. The activity has been linked to a threat actor dubbed Pioneer Kitten, which is also known as Fox...

UNC5174 Functions as an Initial Access Broker, Exploiting Vulnerabilities

Summary: UNC5174, a threat actor believed to be associated with China, has been identified exploiting various vulnerabilities and deploying custom tools such as SNOWLIGHT, GOHEAVY, and GOREVERSE for post-exploitation activities. These tools enable UNC5174 to carry out sophisticated cyber...

U.S. Charges 7 Chinese Nationals in Major 14-Year Cyber Espionage Operation

The U.S. Department of Justice DoJ on Monday unsealed indictments against seven Chinese nationals for their involvement in a hacking group that targeted U.S. and foreign critics, journalists, businesses, and political officials for about 14 years. The defendants include Ni Gaobin 倪高彬, Weng Ming 翁...

Gaza Cybergang’s Pierogi++ Upgrade Takes Center Stage

Summary: The Gaza Cybergang, a sophisticated threat actor, has recently intensified its attacks by deploying an advanced version of the Pierogi backdoor malware. This group focuses its cyber operations primarily on Palestinian entities and Israel, with a historical record of targeting entities...

MuddyWater Returns with a New Spear-Phishing Campaign

Threat Level Attack Report For a detailed threat advisory, download the pdf file here Summary MuddyWater, the Iranian nation-state actor, has been identified in a new spearphishing campaign targeting two Israeli entities and deploying a legitimate remote administration tool known as N-able Advanc...

Cadet Blizzard emerges as a novel and distinct Russian threat actor

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues into its second year and Microsoft continues to collaborate with global partners in response, the exposure of destructive cyber capabilities and information operations provide greater clarity into the tools and techniques used by Russian state-sponsored...

Cadet Blizzard emerges as a novel and distinct Russian threat actor

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues into its second year and Microsoft continues to collaborate with global partners in response, the exposure of destructive cyber capabilities and information operations provide greater clarity into the tools and techniques used by Russian state-sponsored...

A week in security (May 8-14)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: The rise of "Franken-ransomware," with Allan Liska: Lock and Code S04E11 Ransomware review: May 2023 Brightline breach hits at least 964,000 people, US records show Ransomware attack on MSI led to compromised Intel Boot Guard private keys Fake system update drops...

Uncovering RedStinger - Undetected APT cyber operations in Eastern Europe since 2020

This blog post was authored by Malwarebytes' Roberto Santos and Fortinet's Hossein Jazi While the official conflict between Russia and Ukraine began in February 2022, there is a long history of physical conflict between the two nations, including the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia and when t...

North Korean APT43 Group Uses Cybercrime to Fund Espionage Operations

A new North Korean nation-state cyber operator has been attributed to a series of campaigns orchestrated to gather strategic intelligence that aligns with Pyongyang's geopolitical interests since 2018. Google-owned Mandiant, which is tracking the activity cluster under the moniker APT43, said the...

ChatGPT: A tool for offensive cyber operations?! Not so fast!

ChatGPT: A tool for offensive cyber operations?! Not so fast! By Trellix · March 09, 2023 This story was also written by John Rodriguez. To ChatGPT or to not ChatGPT? That is a predominant question in the cyber landscape these days. It’s no surprise that AI bots have taken society by storm. On th...

ChatGPT: A tool for offensive cyber operations?! Not so fast!

ChatGPT: A tool for offensive cyber operations?! Not so fast! By Trellix · March 09, 2023 This story was also written by John Rodriguez. To ChatGPT or to not ChatGPT? That is a predominant question in the cyber landscape these days. It’s no surprise that AI bots have taken society by storm. On th...