Chinese Hackers Use Anthropic's AI to Launch Automated Cyber Espionage Campaign

State-sponsored threat actors from China used artificial intelligence AI technology developed by Anthropic to orchestrate automated cyber attacks as part of a "highly sophisticated espionage campaign" in mid-September 2025. "The attackers used AI's 'agentic' capabilities to an unprecedented degre...

Secret Blizzard Deploys Malware in ISP-Level AitM Attacks on Moscow Embassies

The Russian nation-state threat actor known as Secret Blizzard has been observed orchestrating a new cyber espionage campaign targeting foreign embassies located in Moscow by means of an adversary-in-the-middle AitM attack at the Internet Service Provider ISP level and delivering a custom malware...

Frozen in transit: Secret Blizzard’s AiTM campaign against diplomats

Microsoft Threat Intelligence has uncovered a cyberespionage campaign by the Russian state actor we track as Secret Blizzard that has been targeting embassies located in Moscow using an adversary-in-the-middle AiTM position to deploy their custom ApolloShadow malware. ApolloShadow has the...

HoneySat: a Network-Based Satellite Honeypot Framework

Satellites are the backbone of several mission-critical services, such as GPS that enable our modern society to function. For many years, satellites were assumed to be secure because of their indecipherable architectures and the reliance on security by obscurity. However, technological advancemen...

Russia-Linked Hackers Target Kazakhstan in Espionage Campaign with HATVIBE Malware

Russia-linked threat actors have been attributed to an ongoing cyber espionage campaign targeting Kazakhstan as part of the Kremlin's efforts to gather economic and political intelligence in Central Asia. The campaign has been assessed to be the work of an intrusion set dubbed UAC-0063 , which...

Secret Blizzard Deploys Kazuar Backdoor in Ukraine Using Amadey Malware-as-a-Service

The Russian nation-state actor tracked as Secret Blizzard has been observed leveraging malware associated with other threat actors to deploy a known backdoor called Kazuar on target devices located in Ukraine. The new findings come from the Microsoft threat intelligence team, which said it observ...

RedJuliett Cyber Espionage Campaign Hits 75 Taiwanese Organizations

A likely China-linked state-sponsored threat actor has been linked to a cyber espionage campaign targeting government, academic, technology, and diplomatic organizations in Taiwan between November 2023 and April 2024. Recorded Future's Insikt Group is tracking the activity under the name...

Inside Operation Diplomatic Specter: Chinese APT Group's Stealthy Tactics Exposed

Governmental entities in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia are the target of a Chinese advanced persistent threat APT group as part of an ongoing cyber espionage campaign dubbed Operation Diplomatic Specter since at least late 2022. "An analysis of this threat actor's activity reveals long-term...

APT29 Targets German Political Parties with New WINELOADER

Summary: APT29, linked to Russias SVR, targeted German political parties in late February 2024 using a new backdoor variant named WINELOADER, signaling a shift in operational focus beyond diplomatic missions. This marks a broader threat to European and Western political entities, driven by the SV...

Pro-Palestinian TA402 APT Using IronWind Malware in New Attack

By Deeba Ahmed As per cybersecurity researchers at Proofpoint, the APT group TA402 operates in support of Palestinian espionage objectives, with a primary focus on intelligence collection. This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Pro-Palestinian TA402 APT Using IronWind Malware in...

Peach Sandstorm password spray campaigns enable intelligence collection at high-value targets

Since February 2023, Microsoft has observed password spray activity against thousands of organizations carried out by an actor we track as Peach Sandstorm HOLMIUM. Peach Sandstorm is an Iranian nation-state threat actor who has recently pursued organizations in the satellite, defense, and...

Peach Sandstorm password spray campaigns enable intelligence collection at high-value targets

Since February 2023, Microsoft has observed password spray activity against thousands of organizations carried out by an actor we track as Peach Sandstorm HOLMIUM. Peach Sandstorm is an Iranian nation-state threat actor who has recently pursued organizations in the satellite, defense, and...

North Korean Kimsuky Hackers Strike Again with Advanced Reconnaissance Malware

The North Korean advanced persistent threat APT group known as Kimsuky has been observed using a piece of custom malware called RandomQuery as part of a reconnaissance and information exfiltration operation. "Lately, Kimsuky has been consistently distributing custom malware as part of...

Hunting Russian Intelligence “Snake” Malware

SUMMARY The Snake implant is considered the most sophisticated cyber espionage tool designed and used by Center 16 of Russia’s Federal Security Service FSB for long-term intelligence collection on sensitive targets. To conduct operations using this tool, the FSB created a covert peer-to-peer P2P...

Another Chinese Hacking Group Spotted Targeting Ukraine Amid Russia Invasion

A Chinese-speaking threat actor called Scarab has been linked to a custom backdoor dubbed HeaderTip as part of a campaign targeting Ukraine since Russia embarked on an invasion last month, making it the second China-based hacking group after Mustang Panda to capitalize on the conflict. "The...

A New Software Supply‑Chain Attack Targeted Millions With Spyware

Cybersecurity researchers today disclosed a new supply chain attack targeting online gamers by compromising the update mechanism of NoxPlayer, a free Android emulator for PCs and Macs. Dubbed "Operation NightScout" by Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET, the highly-targeted surveillance campaign...

Hostintel - A Modular Python Application To Collect Intelligence For Malicious Hosts

This tool is used to collect various intelligence sources for hosts. Hostintel is written in a modular fashion so new intelligence sources can be easily added. Hosts are identified by FQDN host name, Domain, or IP address. This tool only supports IPv4 at the moment. The output is in CSV format an...

New Data Shows FBI Issued More Than 19k National Security Letters in 2013

The United States federal government issued more than 19,000 National Security Letters–perhaps its most powerful tool for domestic intelligence collection–in 2013, and those NSLs contained more than 38,000 individual requests for information. The new data was released by the Office of the Directo...

Metadata Program 'Not Uniquely Valuable'

In a mostly friendly and non-confrontational hearing on Tuesday, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee spent a couple of hours talking to members of the White House-appointed NSA review board about the extent of the agency’s surveillance and the panel’s recommendations for reform. The hearing...

Obama Administration to Review NSA Capabilities

President Barack Obama has initiated a review of the procedures and methods that the NSA uses to collect intelligence at home and overseas to ensure that the agency isn’t overstepping its bounds in phone and Internet data collection. The review comes at a time when Congress is set to consider...