State-sponsored actors, better known as the friends you don’t want

State-sponsored actors don't break in. They log in, and they use your own tools to stay invisible for months. Responding to a state-sponsored threat is nothing like responding to ransomware, and the differences can make or break the outcome. From logging and baselines to OT segmentation and suppl...

PAN-OS RCE Exploit Under Active Use Enabling Root Access and Espionage

Palo Alto Networks has disclosed that threat actors may have attempted to unsuccessfully exploit a recently disclosed critical security flaw as early as April 9, 2026. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-0300 CVSS score: 9.3/8.7, a buffer overflow vulnerability in the User-ID Authentication...

Fast16 Malware

Researchers have reverse-engineered a piece of malware named Fast16. It's almost certainly state-sponsored, probably US in origin, and was deployed against Iran years before Stuxnet: "…the Fast16 malware was designed to carry out the most subtle form of sabotage ever seen in an in-the-wild malwar...

[Podcast] It's not you, it's your printer: State-sponsored and phishing threats in 2025

!\Podcast\ It's not you, it's your printer: State-sponsored and phishing threats in 2025https://storage.ghost.io/c/af/a0/afa04ee3-414f-4481-8d23-7e7c146f192e/content/images/2026/04/YiR2025cover2x1-2-1.jpg In this episode, we unpack state-sponsored and phishing trends from the 2025 Talos Year in...

TA446 Deploys DarkSword iOS Exploit Kit in Targeted Spear-Phishing Campaign

Proofpoint has disclosed details of a targeted email campaign in which threat actors with ties to Russia are leveraging the recently disclosed DarkSword exploit kit to target iOS devices. The activity has been attributed with high confidence to the Russian state-sponsored threat group known as...

The Kill Chain Is Obsolete When Your AI Agent Is the Threat

In September 2025, Anthropic disclosed that a state-sponsored threat actor used an AI coding agent to execute an autonomous cyber espionage campaign against 30 global targets. The AI handled 80-90% of tactical operations on its own, performing reconnaissance, writing exploit code, and attempting...

How ‘Handala’ Became the Face of Iran’s Hacker Counterattacks

Amid a paralyzing breach of medical tech firm Stryker, the group has come to represent Iran's use of “hacktivism” as cover for chaotic, retaliatory state-sponsored cyberattacks...

Hackers may have breached FBI wiretap network via supply chain

Investigators are worried that a recent attack on a critical FBI system was more than just a random hit, and that another nation-state might have been involved. On February 17, the FBI flagged irregular network activity that led straight to its Digital Collection System Network. That system...

German Agencies Warn of Signal Phishing Targeting Politicians, Military, Journalists

Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution aka Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz or BfV and Federal Office for Information Security BSI have issued a joint advisory warning of a malicious cyber campaign undertaken by a likely state-sponsored threat actor that involves carrying...

APT28 Uses Microsoft Office CVE-2026-21509 in Espionage-Focused Malware Attacks

The Russia-linked state-sponsored threat actor known as APT28 aka UAC-0001 has been attributed to attacks exploiting a newly disclosed security flaw in Microsoft Office as part of a campaign codenamed Operation Neusploit. Zscaler ThreatLabz said it observed the hacking group weaponizing the...

Security strategies for safeguarding governmental data

The Deputy CISO blog series is where Microsoft Deputy Chief Information Security Officers CISOs share their thoughts on what is most important in their respective domains. In this series, you will get practical advice, tactics to start and stop deploying, forward-looking commentary on where the...

Top 10 Threat Actors: Their Tactics & Motivations

The world of cybercrime has its own cast of characters, each with a unique script. Some are patient spies, like state-sponsored groups that move silently within a network for months to gather intelligence. Others are loud and aggressive, like ransomware gangs that operate like ruthless businesses...

From the Shadows to the Headlines: A Decade of State-Sponsored Cyber Leaks

From the Shadows to the Headlines: A Decade of State-Sponsored Cyber Leaks By Ryan Slaney and Emma DeCarli · January 20, 2026 Executive summary The December 2, 2025, publication of a massive leak revealing the inner workings of the IRGC-linked Department 40 a.k.a. APT35, Charming Kitten, and Fres...

Microsoft Silently Patches Windows LNK Flaw After Years of Active Exploitation

Microsoft has silently plugged a security flaw that has been exploited by several threat actors since 2017 as part of the company's November 2025 Patch Tuesday updates, according to ACROS Security's 0patch. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-9491 CVSS score: 7.8/7.0, which has been describ...

Zero-Day Zero: The AI Attack That Just Ended the Era of the Forgiving Internet

Why the Exploit Window Has Collapsed and How CISOs Must Pivot to Survive For decades, cybersecurity was a game of time. We banked on the buffer between a vulnerability’s disclosure and its widespread exploitation. We relied on the forgiving internet, where human attackers needed days or weeks to...

AI as Cyberattacker

From Anthropic: In mid-September 2025, we detected suspicious activity that later investigation determined to be a highly sophisticated espionage campaign. The attackers used AI’s “agentic” capabilities to an unprecedented degree­--using AI not just as an advisor, but to execute the cyberattacks...

SonicWall Confirms State-Sponsored Hackers Behind September Cloud Backup Breach

SonicWall has formally implicated state-sponsored threat actors as behind the September security breach that led to the unauthorized exposure of firewall configuration backup files. "The malicious activity – carried out by a state-sponsored threat actor – was isolated to the unauthorized access o...

Analysing ClickFix: 3 Reasons Why Copy/Paste Attacks Are Driving Security Breaches

ClickFix, FileFix, fake CAPTCHA — whatever you call it, attacks where users interact with malicious scripts in their web browser are a fast-growing source of security breaches. ClickFix attacks prompt the user to solve some kind of problem or challenge in the browser — most commonly a CAPTCHA, bu...

Chinese Hackers Exploit ArcGIS Server as Backdoor for Over a Year

Threat actors with ties to China have been attributed to a novel campaign that compromised an ArcGIS system and turned it into a backdoor for more than a year. The activity, per ReliaQuest, is the handiwork of a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group called Flax Typhoon , which is also tracked as...

State-Sponsored Hackers Exploiting Libraesva Email Security Gateway Vulnerability

Libraesva has released a security update to address a vulnerability in its Email Security Gateway ESG solution that it said has been exploited by state-sponsored threat actors. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-59689 , carries a CVSS score of 6.1, indicating medium severity. "Libraesva ESG i...