Nation-State | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Three distinct threat activity clusters with shared infrastructure and malware code similarities have been observed targeting telecommunications providers, government organizations, military entities, research institutions, and critical infrastructure across Latin America, Asia, and Europe over the past year. Check Point Research is tracking the clusters under the names SilentDelivery , OceanGate , and DarkWire . Although initially assumed to be independent sets of attacks, each with its own backdoors and post-exploitation tooling, they have all been linked through a malware ecosystem called Sparrow. The entity behind the Sparrow framework has been codenamed CopperDragon , and is assessed to be a digital quartermaster developing tools for China-nexus threat actors, including FamousSparrow , Earth Estries , Tropic Trooper , UAT-9244 , and UAT-8302 . "Each cluster employed a different toolset and different initial access techniques, including compromising internet-facing inf...

The Russia-aligned state-sponsored threat actor known as Turla (aka Snake) is wielding a previously undocumented cyber espionage toolset called Cereal that's used to break into victims' Microsoft Exchange servers with an aim to surreptitiously collect emails. According to an ESET report shared with The Hacker News ahead of publication, the sophisticated and modular tool is designed for long-term intelligence gathering and has been observed against two governmental entities in Kazakhstan and Romania in late 2025. "The Cereal toolset is a carefully constructed instrument for long-term, stealthy cyber espionage," the Slovakian cybersecurity company said . "It leaves little on disk, avoids external infrastructure that could be discovered and blocked, and conceals itself within legitimate Exchange processes." "The Cereal toolset demonstrates that, for Turla, Exchange servers are not just mail servers – they are durable collection points, internal e...

An October cyberattack on refrigeration controllers at about 700 French retail sites was carried out by a cyber unit of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the French government said yesterday. The attackers broke into controllers on the night of October 11 and changed their defrost settings to high temperatures. That caused food losses and, in at least 15 cases, fires. The unit is called Shahid Kaveh . It is known mainly through hacktivist personas, such as CyberAveng3rs and Cyber Isnaad Front , that publicly claim some of its attacks, France says. France's Foreign Ministry plans to summon Iran's ambassador and to ask its European partners to adopt new sanctions against Iranian organizations and individuals involved in the attack. The Paris prosecutor's office opened a judicial investigation yesterday against the unit's head, the head's two deputies and anyone else identified. It has asked for international arrest warrants. The offenses u...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Wednesday added a medium-severity security flaw impacting multiple Apple operating systems to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, following reports of active exploitation. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2024-27834 (CVSS score: 5.5), a case of improper authentication that could allow an attacker with arbitrary read and write capability to bypass Pointer Authentication. It was addressed by Apple in May 2024 with improved checks in iOS 16.7.8 and iPadOS 16.7.8, iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5, macOS Sonoma 14.5, tvOS 17.5, watchOS 10.5, and Safari 17.5. The vulnerability was demonstrated as a zero-day at the Pwn2Own Vancouver hacking contest held in March that year. The addition of CVE-2024-27834 to the KEV catalog follows a report from Sekoia that threat actors possibly linked to Russia exploited previously patched vulnerabilities in Safari and Google Chrome to deliver malware capable of harves...

The Russia-linked threat actor known as APT29 is presumed to be behind a large-scale watering hole campaign targeting iOS and Android users through compromised websites, fake domains, and a supply chain attack involving a Ukrainian web analytics service called Plerdy SEO Tracker. "The injected JavaScript code collects browser and device attributes," Sekoia researchers Amaury-Jacques Garçon and Félix Aime said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. "Then, the delivery infrastructure delivers a platform-specific N-day exploit chain targeting either iOS or Android." The end goal of the attacks is to serve payloads capable of stealing browser cookies, and in some cases, Wi-Fi passwords or full mobile device data. The activity, codenamed Poisoned Source , was discovered by the French cybersecurity company in mid-October 2026. A defining aspect of the campaign is the use of three infection vectors - Compromise of legitimate websites to inject mal...

A China-aligned threat actor known as SlippyNunchucks has been attributed to a Domain Name System (DNS) hijacking operation abusing insecure HTTP communications in Windows versions of Sogou Input Method as part of a surveillance campaign designed to deploy an implant called DarkVigil (aka FDMTP). The campaign, observed starting July 1, 2026, is assessed to have targeted organizations and Chinese-speaking individuals in Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan, Vietnam, Oman, and Sri Lanka, according to ESET. "DarkVigil implants are typically deployed through popular Chinese applications," ESET researcher Anh Ho said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "By abusing these applications, the SlippyNunchucks threat actor has been able to reach Chinese-speaking users across Asia and Europe." Some of the applications abused by the adversary include Sogou Input Method, QuickFox, QingTalk, MiYunChat, SoftCam, and tawk.to. Active since at least September 15, 2023, SlippyNunc...

A Russia-aligned threat actor known as Gorbag has been observed using simple information stealer malware in attacks targeting Ukrainian organizations. "Active since at least February 2025, the group has focused exclusively on Ukrainian targets, with a clear preference for law enforcement and justice entities, local administrations near the front line, and the defense sector," ESET researcher Damien Schaeffer said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The activity shares overlaps with a cluster tracked by the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) under the moniker UAC-0226 and by Trend Micro as SHADOW-EARTH-066 . Gorbag is known to be active since at least February 2025. A key tool in the threat actor's malware arsenal is GIFTEDCROOK, a C/C++ stealer that facilitates the theft of sensitive data from web browsers like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox, such as cookies, browsing history, and authentication data. Earlier this Ju...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a cyber espionage campaign targeting Israel and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq by an Iran state-aligned threat actor between August and October 2026. According to a report published by Dream Research Labs, the campaign has led to the compromise of a high-profile individual in Israel, along with additional compromises affecting a government cloud environment in the Kurdistan Region. The activity has been attributed to a threat actor known as DarkBlinders , an Iran-nexus group assessed to be active since at least September 2024 and linked to attacks aimed at aviation infrastructure and telecommunications in the U.A.E. and Iraq. It exhibits no technical overlap with other known hacking groups. Attacks mounted by the group are known to rely on spear-phishing as an initial access pathway to lure recipients into opening trojanized utilities or clicking on attacker-controlled websites that host similar tools as direct downloads. Prev...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a cyber espionage campaign specifically targeting Linux infrastructure associated with government entities and state-affiliated infrastructure. The activity, observed by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 between October 2025 and April 2026, has been tracked under the moniker CL-UNK-1211 , where "CL" refers to cluster and "UNK" stands for unknown motivation. A notable aspect of the campaign concerns the use of large language models (LLMs) and/or automated artificial intelligence (AI) agents to generate payloads and execute malicious code. "The attackers behind this cluster of activity focused on Linux environments to conduct extensive reconnaissance and maintain persistent network access to support intelligence-gathering," researchers Roey Porat and Tom Fakterman said . "The attackers attempted to dump sensitive databases and exfiltrate government mailboxes to access social media accounts." T...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has officially attributed the theft of more than $6 billion in virtual assets from Binance to TraderTraitor , a North Korea-aligned elite hacking group also tracked as Jade Sleet, Pressure Chollima, PUKCHONG, Slow Pisces, and UNC4899. The FBI, along with the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), said it observed the threat actor converting stolen assets primarily into Ethereum (ETH). "It is expected these assets will then be further laundered by converting them using DeFi and instant swap services as they prepare them for further laundering stages," the FBI said in a statement. The agency has also provided a list of wallet addresses that the attackers are said to be using to launder the stolen assets. The development comes as Binance said it has resumed phase one of withdrawals starting today between 6 and 9 a.m. UTC after they were paused in the wake of the incide...

Chinese state-sponsored threat actors have been observed using a Go-based artificial intelligence (AI)-powered penetration testing framework called ARTEX in attacks aimed at high-value targets simultaneously. The activity has been attributed by CrowdStrike to a China-based "targeted intrusion adversary" it tracks under the moniker Vapor Panda (previously VexatiousTemper). First identified in February 2021, the hacking group overlaps with a threat cluster detailed by Trend Micro as Earth Estries . "Agentic tooling like ARTEX enables this scale of expansion at speed, allowing a small team to pursue a wider target set than manual operations would support, rather than a wholesale shift away from the adversary's established access-development mission," CrowdStrike said in a Thursday analysis. Starting October 17, 2026, Vapor Panda is said to have used the AI tool against more than 200 distinct organizations across the world, including foreign ministries in ...

Ahmad Umar Agha , a Syrian Electronic Army hacker known online as " Th3Pr0 ," has been  sentenced by a U.S. federal court  to 42 months in prison for his role in a hacking conspiracy that targeted Western news outlets. The conspiracy was organized and led by members of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's inner circle, including the commander of Syria's General Intelligence Directorate, the U.S. Justice Department said on October 29. The pro-Assad Syrian Electronic Army began its attacks in 2011. Its members sent phishing emails to steal employees' passwords, then used those passwords to deface websites, redirect web traffic, and hijack social media accounts, according to a  2014 FBI affidavit . On April 23, 2013, the group hijacked the Associated Press's Twitter account and posted a false report that President Barack Obama had been injured in two explosions at the White House. Twitter's message confirming a password reset for that account w...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Wednesday added a security flaw impacting Broadcom VMware ESX to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, after CrowdStrike revealed that it had been weaponized by a China-nexus threat actor known as Warp Panda in attacks targeting the U.S. legal sector. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-41709 (CVSS score: 2.7), an a case of insufficient logging that could permit permit a malicious actor with admin access to perform certain operations without being logged. In an advisory released in July 2026, Broadcom revealed that the issue was addressed in the following versions - VMware Cloud Foundation SXi-9.1.0.0-25370933 and ESXi-9.0.2.0100-25595025 VMware vSphere Foundation SXi-9.1.0.0-25370933 and ESXi-9.0.2.0100-25595025 VMware ESX ESXi80U3j-25429389 VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2.4 VMware Telco Cloud Platform ESXi80U3j-25429389 The development comes in response to CrowdStrike...

The China-nexus cyber espionage group known as Volt Typhoon has been attributed to a now-disrupted covert access network dubbed Silent Train that has been put to use for zero-day exploitation and strategic access. "First identified in late 2023, Silent Train uses rotating chains of compromised SOHO, IoT, and enterprise infrastructure," Lumen Technologies Black Lotus Labs said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "It employs anti-forensic techniques, compartmentalized operations, and post-operation cleanup to minimize detection and attribution." Its main purpose is to facilitate critical attack phases like vulnerability exploitation, credential access, data exfiltration, and to maintain continued access to victim environments. The activity stands out for two main reasons - It singled out entities that could provide scalable access to downstream customers, sensitive networks, or strategic programs. It targeted endpoint management platforms, network...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of what appears to be an artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted attack orchestrated by a suspected China-nexus threat actor that has leveraged the PHP2Shell vulnerabilities to breach exposed systems. The activity, which was observed on October 25, 2026, involved an attacker combining PHP2Shell with a kernel privilege escalation exploit to root 25 servers, including three systems in a U.S. government-affiliated environment. "The affected devices run specific versions of a large vendor's firewall software," cybersecurity firm Dream said . "The attacker then launched attacks against Active Directory. The recovered artifacts confirm credential extraction and directory enumeration." The name of the affected vendor was not disclosed, but the Israeli company said it notified the entity. The attack chain essentially brings together two sets of vulnerabilities impacting PHP and the Linux kernel - PHP2Shell , ...

The North Korea-linked Lazarus Group has been attributed to a cyber espionage campaign dubbed Operation FlashHole targeting at least three organizations in South Korea spanning the construction, software, and wire-communication equipment manufacturing sectors. According to Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky, the campaign has been active since at least July 2025. It's assessed to pick up from where Operation SyncHole left off. "The group targeted victims more selectively, sending spear‑phishing emails with links to fabricated but relevant sites, such as portfolio and résumé pages tailored to each target," Sojun Ryu, senior security researcher at Kaspersky GReAT, said in an exhaustive analysis. Operation SyncHole was first documented by Kaspersky in April 2025, detailing the state-sponsored adversary's targeting of South Korea's software, IT, financial, semiconductor manufacturing, and telecommunications industries since November 2024 to deliver malwa...

In an update, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said it's retracting its earlier assessment that the post-compromise activity targeting the European government agency involved the exploitation of the PHP2Shell flaws. "What researchers saw was an attack against a European government agency executed in the context of a vulnerable PHP application," a spokesperson for the company told The Hacker News via email. "This led us to believe that it was exploitation of those vulnerabilities. We are unable to confirm that initial access is associated with the specific PHP2Shell CVEs." The original story follows. Threat actors have been observed using agentic artificial intelligence (AI) platforms for post-exploitation activity following the abuse of the PHP2Shell vulnerabilities tracked as CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619. "In one case, the attackers targeted a government entity in Europe and within two hours of the initial exploitation they had successfully acce...

Diplomatic organizations in Central Asia have been targeted by a sophisticated new Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) bootkit called BlackX . The activity, which singled out diplomatic entities in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan in early 2026, is suspected to be orchestrated by a China-linked state-sponsored hacking group known as APT41 , Kaspersky said in a technical report published this week. The primary objective behind deploying the malware is to undermine Microsoft Windows startup defenses, along with third-party security solutions, while maintaining long-term, covert access to compromised devices. Notably, BlackX is assessed to be an updated version of BlackLotus , a notorious bootkit that was first observed being advertised on cybercrime forums in late 2022, before its existence was officially confirmed by ESET in March 2023. BlackLotus is designed to exploit a now-patched Secure Boot bypass vulnerability tracked as CVE-2022-21894 (CVSS score: 4.4...

The Russian state-sponsored hacking group Sandworm teamed up with another threat actor to carry out a destructive wiping attack targeting a Ukrainian logistics company last year. According to ESET , the attack involved UAC-0099 (aka Earth Sirrush) obtaining initial access to the target on July 16, 2025, via a spear-phishing email bearing a malware-laced attachment that led to the deployment of the MATCHWOK backdoor through a downloader called MATCHBOIL. The activity ultimately concluded with the threat actor handing off access to Sandworm, which then conducted a data-wiping attack on September 17, 2025, more than two months after it obtained a foothold. What makes the attack stand out is UAC-0099's use of a previously undocumented backdoor called MythicRatatoskr that communicates with a command-and-control (C2) server hosted inside the Yggdrasil mesh network. The backdoor was deployed a day after MATCHWOK was executed. There are indications that development on the back...

Microsoft on Wednesday disclosed that a China state-aligned actor dubbed Storm-0940 was behind the recent supply chain compromise of the ConnectWise Cloud Backup application. During the incident, Storm-0940 used ARTEX , a Go-based agentic AI penetration testing framework that was made closed-source in the wake of its abuse in cyber attacks targeting South Korean financial institutions, to speed up scanning and reconnaissance, password spraying, and OAuth application abuse at downstream victims. The tech giant said the threat actor used the AI tool at "machine speed" to automate attacks targeting hundreds of organizations across the world spanning a broad range of sectors since September 2026. Targets include aerospace and defense, automotive, chemicals, energy, financial services, government, legal, manufacturing, media, military, semiconductor, software, technology, and think tanks and non-profits. "Storm-0940's use of ARTEX accelerated the speed of comprom...