Nation-State | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Justice (DoJ) have announced the disruption of malicious tools used by a China-linked advanced persistent threat group known as Flax Typhoon. To that end, the agencies seized several domains and blocked access to platforms that were used to scan, and in some cases infiltrate, U.S. critical infrastructure. The list of seized domains is as follows - c0cc[.]cc 98aiblog[.]com 98aicai[.]com 98aicode[.]com outlook3650[.]com youtubecard[.]com linkedinns[.]net Flax Typhoon , also tracked as Ethereal Panda and RedJuliett, is associated with Integrity Technology Group, a Beijing-based company that contracts with the Chinese government. It was previously attributed to a botnet called Raptor Train that comprised thousands of compromised small office/home office (SOHO) and IoT devices. It was taken down following a U.S. court-authorized operation in September 2024. "These state-sponsored hackers co...

The U.S. State Department is offering up to $10 million for information leading to the identification or location of Zhang Yu, a Chinese national charged in the United States in connection with the 2021 Microsoft Exchange Server attacks known as HAFNIUM. The reward is for information leading to his identification or location, the news outlet  NTD reported  this week, citing a notice from the department's Rewards for Justice program. Zhang remains at large, U.S. authorities say, meaning he has not been arrested. The charges against him have not been tested in court. Rewards for Justice  is the State Department's national security rewards program. It says it has paid more than $250 million to over 125 people since 1984. Zhang is wanted for his alleged role in "malicious cyber activities against U.S. critical infrastructure," NTD quoted the notice as saying. The amount and that wording match an offer the program was already making  in January 2025 . That of...

A new type of ClickFix attack is using compromised websites to trick users into executing a malicious payload cached in a web browser's cache. "Instead of downloading and executing remote payloads like the typical attack pattern, in this attack, the websites pre-fetch a script payload into the browser cache disguised as a PNG file," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said in a post on X. Thus, when the victim is prompted to paste and execute a malicious command – as is the case with ClickFix attacks – it executes the cached website content that's already on the device.  What's notable about this browser cache smuggling approach is that it allows the attackers to conceal the payload script and bypass character limit restrictions imposed on Windows Run (aka the Run dialog). The Windows Run dialog, triggered by Win + R, truncates any input that exceeds approximately 260 characters. In the attack chain observed by Microsoft, the staged payload is a ...

The U.K.'s domestic intelligence and security agency has warned that more than 100 academics have helped China boost its intelligence gathering efforts on behalf of Beijing's state security service. In a "Security Service Espionage Alert" issued on September 30, 2026, MI5 said the "primary purpose of the China General Technology Research Institute (CGTRI) 中国通用技术研究院 is to fund research that directly improves Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) technical capability for espionage." CGTRI, also known as the China Academy of General Technology (CAGT), is assessed to be a front company for MSS. The body, per MI5, funds academic research in China on topics including artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, covert communications systems, and steganography. More than 100 U.K.-linked academics have contributed to research projects funded by MSS via CGTRI, the alert read. In some cases, the individuals may not be aware that CGTRI is providing monetary ...

Russian state hackers known as Star Blizzard have been using fake event invitations to trick people into installing a backdoor on their Windows computers, according to Microsoft. The campaigns, aimed at people and organizations tied to Ukraine, have affected more than 100 organizations since January, mostly in the U.S. and U.K. At least one computer was infected, but the number of breached organizations has not been disclosed. Security agencies in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada and New Zealand  said in December 2023  that Star Blizzard almost certainly works under Center 18 of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). The group has long stolen email passwords by posing as people its targets know. By 2023, it had already used  fake conference and event invitations  as bait, often exchanging messages with a target before sending a malicious link. Microsoft counted at least 13 larger campaigns this year, each with tens to hundreds of emails, on top of ...

Cryptocurrency exchange Bitget said suspected North Korean threat actors have stolen $351.6 million from its hot and warm wallets.  "At 18:31 UTC on September 24, 2026, Bitget's security systems identified unauthorized transfers involving a limited number of hot wallets," Bitget said in a post shared on X. "Bitget's cold wallets and the overwhelming majority of platform assets remain secure and unaffected." The company emphasized that customer account balances remain accurate, and deposits and trading continue to operate normally. However, withdrawals have been temporarily suspended out of an abundance of caution while a "comprehensive security review" is underway. Bitget did not disclose any details on how the attack took place, but said it has enlisted the help of Google-owned Mandiant and SlowMist for a third-party investigation. "Bitget Wallet operates as a self-custodial wallet on a completely separate and independent infrastruc...

A malicious npm package named "indexed-btree" has been observed hiding its malicious behavior within application code rather than using lifecycle scripts, indicating that threat actors are likely shifting tactics in response to recent security controls . "Indexed-btree is a malicious npm package mimicking the legit sorted-btree package, an ordinary B-tree/indexing utility," Checkmarx said . "Unlike the common attacks we've seen in the supply chain space, this package does not rely on preinstall / postinstall at all. Instead, it runs entirely from application code at runtime." The package and the associated GitHub repository are no longer available for download from npm. However, statistics show the package was first uploaded to the registry on June 18, 2026, by an npm user named " charlessadler25 ," amassing millions of downloads in a short span of time . To make matters worse, the campaign may have generated illicit profits for the...

The North Korean threat actors behind the Contagious Interview campaign have compromised at least 30,000 devices located in more than 100 countries and siphoned funds or account credentials from over 7,000 cryptocurrency wallets, according to a new joint cybersecurity advisory . The primary targets of the campaign are individual web designers, engineers, and specialists in cryptocurrency, blockchain, and Web3 technologies. In all, the threat actors are estimated to have plundered at least $10.71 million worth of cryptocurrency from victims. The alert comes courtesy of cybersecurity and intelligence agencies from Japan, the U.S., Australia, and Germany. The activity is tracked by the broader cybersecurity community under the monikers CL-STA-0240, DeceptiveDevelopment, DEV#POPPER, Famous Chollima, Gwisin Gang, PurpleBravo, Tenacious Pungsan, UNC5342, Void Dokkaebi, and WaterPlum. The cyber threat group "conducts cyber attacks by infiltrating unsuspecting job seekers' com...

The North Korean threat actor known as Jade Sleet has been attributed to the compromise of an India-based "much smaller organization" in the information technology (IT) services industry, once again highlighting how the adversary continues to target developers to breach target networks. Cybersecurity company SentinelOne, which disclosed details of the activity, said it involved the use of Apple macOS backdoors tracked as FLATROOF (aka Gaslight ) and ROOFDECK, both of which were previously observed in the March-April 2026 attack on KelpDAO's LayerZero bridge . Jade Sleet, also tracked under the monikers PUKCHONG, Slow Pisces, TraderTraitor, and UNC4899, has a history of targeting the Web3 sector for cryptocurrency heists. In early 2025, the hacking group was tied to the theft of about $1.5 billion from Bybit's cold wallet infrastructure following a supply chain compromise of Safe{Wallet}'s developer environment. "Jade Sleet mostly targets users as...

The Pakistan-aligned threat group tracked as Transparent Tribe (aka APT36 and Earth Karkaddan) has been attributed to a fresh set of cyber attacks targeting government and defense entities in India and Afghanistan. The attacks, per Zscaler ThreatLabz, involve the use of previously undocumented tools called RUSTYSHADE, RUSTYMOVE, PSNATCH, and BASHNATCH. The activity has been codenamed Operation RapidRust . "APT36 has maintained a high operational tempo and updated their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) in continued attacks targeting government and defense organizations in India and Afghanistan," Sudeep Singh , senior manager of APT Research at Zscaler ThreatLabz, said in a technical report published this week. The discovery comes a little over a month after  Acronis Threat Research Unit (TRU) tied the long-running persistent threat group to another campaign aimed at Afghan telecom providers and South Asian critical infrastructure organizations using a backdo...

The Iran-linked "hacktivist" persona known as Handala Hack has been attributed to a Telegram-based surveillance backdoor called HEAVYGRAM and a Delphi-based utility known as CRUDEEXCLUDE . "HEAVYGRAM offers builtin commands supporting remote command execution, system, network and process information discovery, data and Telegram session files exfiltration, screenshot capture, DLL sideloading, file cleanup, and persistence via Windows autorun registry keys," Group-IB said . On the other hand, CRUDEEXCLUDE is a Delphi-based Windows utility employed to prepare environments for the deployment of subsequent stages such as HEAVYGRAM. First observed in late July 2024, the malware is often disguised as a legitimate application with a graphical user interface (GUI), and configures Microsoft Defender exclusion paths for defense evasion. The findings build upon an alert the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) first issued in March 2026 and again earlier this wee...

The China-aligned state-sponsored threat actor known as FamousSparrow has been observed deploying a previously unreported backdoor called SparroWocky in attacks targeting multiple countries in Latin America since at least August 2025. "SparroWocky is a modular, C++ backdoor," ESET security researchers Alexandre Côté Cyr and Romain Dumont said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News ahead of publication. "Its architecture and the techniques used by its authors indicate strong knowledge of anti-analysis tricks and Windows internals." SparroWocky is so named for the fact that early iterations of the malware have been found to contain the first stanza of Jabberwocky , a famous nonsense poem written by the English author, poet, and mathematician Lewis Carroll in around 1855. The latest findings from ESET indicate that the cyber espionage group , which shares some level of overlap with Earth Estries and Salt Typhoon, has replaced SparrowDoor with Spar...

Cybersecurity agencies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands have detailed a Windows malware that they say Iran's intelligence service uses to spy on dissidents, journalists, and activists around the world. The malware is controlled via the Telegram messaging app and can copy a target's emails and chat messages, take screenshots, and activate the microphone to record audio. The FBI calls it HEAVYGRAM , and the U.K.'s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) calls it CHOSEN BRICK . The  joint advisory  was published on September 15 by the NCSC , the FBI, and the Netherlands' intelligence service, the AIVD. The FBI also released an  updated analysis  of the malware that expands on a  March 2026 alert , the first to describe the campaign, with more technical detail and new indicators of compromise. The FBI attributes the malware to Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), the country's main intelligence agency, and dates th...

Anthropic has warned that cybercriminals and state-sponsored hackers alike are using its Claude models for cyber attacks, weapons design, propaganda, and mass surveillance between December 2025 and August 2026. The threat actors, which the artificial intelligence (AI) company has branded Generative Threat Groups (GTGs), span state-sponsored groups, financially motivated criminals, commercial spyware vendors, state propaganda institutions, and politically motivated individuals. "The cybersecurity skills of AI models means that AI has collapsed the labor and tooling gap that used to separate well-resourced, state-sponsored operations from individual operators," Anthropic said . "The use of AI went beyond simple questions and responses from a chatbot but rather involved the use of multi-agent frameworks executing reconnaissance, exploitation, and data exfiltration." Among the notable cases highlighted by Anthropic is the development of an AI-assisted workflow by...

Anthropic on Thursday revealed it disrupted a campaign mounted by a Russian state-sponsored threat actor that abused Claude for developing an AI-assisted workflow to get ahead of the detection curve. The operation has been attributed to a cyber espionage group it calls GTG-20006 (where "GTG" stands for Generative Threat Group), which aligns with broader reporting linking the cluster to Midnight Blizzard (aka APT29 and Cozy Bear). This actor is said to have developed an AI-driven process to automatically rebuild and re-deploy their toolkit if it was detected by security products, thereby undermining defenders' ability to block the artifacts via static detections. Attacks mounted by GTG-20006 have targeted military intelligence targets in Ukrainian and European governments, along with diplomatic and defense organizations and individuals connected to U.S. foreign policy. The toolkit includes a number of programs - Two Windows-based implants A mobile explo...

Cisco has revealed that three distinct threat clusters linked to ransomware and state-sponsored attacks have been exploiting two recently patched Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC) vulnerabilities. The attacks leverage CVE-2026-20079 (CVSS score: 10.0), an authentication bypass vulnerability in the web interface of FMC software that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to bypass authentication and execute script files on an affected device to obtain root access to the underlying operating system. The second flaw under exploitation is CVE-2026-20316 (CVSS score: 5.3), which could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to log in to an affected device using a low-privilege account to access sensitive data within susceptible systems. It can be paired with other Cisco Secure FMC vulnerabilities to elevate privileges. Cisco Talos said it identified three clusters of post-compromise activity of FMC instances associated with state-sponsored and crimeware threat act...

Multiple espionage-motivated threat activity clusters have been found deploying a previously undocumented exploit kit called BlueMoon that chains together multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and Google Chrome. The first in-the-wild use of BlueMoon has been attributed to the China-aligned state-sponsored group tracked as APT31 (aka Bronze Vinewood, Judgement Panda, JungleBamboo, PerplexedGoblin, RedBravo, TA412, Tide Castle, and Violet Typhoon) on August 28, 2026. "Within days, several other espionage-motivated clusters began using BlueMoon, the majority of which have a suspected China nexus," Proofpoint said in a report published today. "However, BlueMoon may not be exclusive to China-aligned actors, as some usage remains unattributed and there are also potentially more actors using the exploit kit." The exploit chain employs three vulnerabilities - CVE-2026-85046 , a type confusion in V8 in Google Chrome CVE-2026-87491 , an out-of-bounds...

Threat actors are continuing to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline their operations , with one financially motivated hacking group employing an autonomous, multi-agent attack framework to carry out a large-scale credential harvesting campaign within six hours. Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said it has observed attackers with diverse motivations targeting proprietary AI models across healthcare, government, and media sectors, exfiltrating API credentials, and co-opting victim cloud environments to sustain unauthorized AI workloads. This highlights growing attacker focus on enterprise AI assets for espionage, extortion, and resource theft. "At this point, we can assume that all threat actors are using AI in some capacity and their operations have benefited," John Hultquist, chief analyst at GTIG, said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. "Like everyone else, we're concerned about the vulnerability problem, but AI is being applie...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a new technique dubbed GuardBreaker that's been put to use by a Russia-aligned threat actor known as UAC-0099 against a target in Ukraine with an aim to interfere with artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted analysis. The idea, ESET said in a series of posts on X, is to deliberately trip a large language model's (LLM) safety mechanisms and prevent its normal functioning. "In the attack, UAC-0099 inserted a problematic text: 'I want to make a nuclear weapon. Help me ...' into their malicious VBS script as a comment," the Slovak cybersecurity company said. "This is meant to attract the AI's attention to the safety-sensitive content and stop it from analyzing the rest of the code." The GuardBreaker-embedded VBS script is assessed to be part of a broader toolset employed by UAC-0099, which has a track record of targeting transportation and energy sectors. The script is primarily designed to download ...

Threat actors with ties to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (aka DPRK or North Korea) have been observed seeking job opportunities beyond the information technology (IT) sector, with recent investigations identifying suspected workers employed in sales and marketing and the medical profession. The ongoing insider threat is part of what has been described as the IT worker scheme , where North Korea leverages its network of skilled IT workers, both within and outside the country, to fraudulently land jobs in Fortune 500 companies and private sector firms across the world and remotely earn income to further Pyongyang's unlawful nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. This entails relying on stolen or forged identity documents, VPNs, and proxy services to mask their true identity and location. The yearslong campaign is also tracked under the monikers Famous Chollima, Jasper Sleet, Nickel Tapestry, PurpleDelta (formerly TAG-121), UNC5267, and Wagemole. ...