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Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a previously undocumented China-aligned threat cluster known as Bronze Sandcastle that has been observed targeting organizations in Asia and Africa since mid-2025. "The most distinctive technical marker for Bronze Sandcastle is its consistent use of Sandboxie DLL sideloading," Sophos security researcher Gabor Szappanos said in a post published Tuesday. Between August 2025 and August 2026, attacks mounted by the threat actor have resulted in victims in the Philippines, Taiwan, Afghanistan, Namibia, and likely South Korea. Evidence indicates that Bronze Sandcastle is most active in the UTC+8 time zone.  DLL sideloading is a popular adversarial technique that exploits the way Windows loads DLL files, allowing an attacker to trick a legitimate program into loading a malicious DLL . When an application is launched, it needs to load various DLLs in order to function correctly. If the application does not provide the f...

Attackers took control of more than 300 Tor exit relays in early October and used them to redirect SSH connections to servers that stole login passwords, a researcher found. Exit relays are the last hop in a Tor circuit, where traffic leaves the network for its destination. Only a password login to an SSH server made through Tor between October 1 and 5, after accepting the interception server's host key, could have been captured. The Tor Project began flagging relays on October 4, and by October 5, none remained in the consensus, the list of relays that Tor clients use. At the peak on October 4, the relays carrying the attacker's exit policy made up 7.46% of Tor's exit capacity, measured by consensus weight, according to an  analysis of public Tor directory data  posted to the tor-relays mailing list. The researcher, who publishes as kaba,  scanned  all of Tor's roughly 3,000 exits on October 2 and found 333 redirecting SSH to the same 12 interception servers...

A Belarus-aligned hacktivist group spent nearly two years within the network of a Russian healthcare organization. According to a report published by Russian cybersecurity firm Solar, the activity has been attributed to a threat cluster dubbed Partisan Zmiy , which is also known as the Cyber Partisans . Known to be active since at least 2020, the group has a track record of striking industrial enterprises and government agencies in Russia and Belarus with a backdoor called Vasilek that uses Telegram for command-and-control (C2) and data exfiltration. Some of the attacks have also leveraged phishing lures to deliver an installer that simultaneously deploys the legitimate FortiClient VPN program on the system as well as an open-source program known as DNSCat2 that allows attackers to gain control of the infected host. A notable aspect of the threat actor is their ability to stage destructive attacks with a wiper referred to as Pryanik, alongside taking steps to systematical...

The iPhone of Vladan Đokić, rector of the University of Belgrade and a prominent supporter of Serbia's student protest movement, was infected with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware in 2026, the  Citizen Lab said  on October 19. The finding came six days before Serbia's October 25 snap parliamentary election. The infection used a zero-click exploit, meaning Đokić did not have to tap a link or open a file for it to work. The lab found the infection with high confidence, but its note provides no date within 2026, does not identify who was behind the attack, and notes that its investigation is ongoing. The election was  called in September  after nearly two years of protests that began when a railway station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad in November 2024, killing 16 people. The Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto, analyzed forensic artifacts from the phone at Đokić's request, working with the Serbian digital-rights group SHARE Foundation. SHARE ...

The Russia-linked state-sponsored threat actor tracked as APT28 (aka BlueDelta, Fancy Bear, and Forest Blizzard) has been attributed to attacks targeting two member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Symantec Threat Hunter Team, which is tracking the activity cluster under the moniker Swallowtail , involved the use of a backdoor called HOOKEDGE and a previously undocumented loader that is designed to decrypt and run an encrypted payload in memory by using a cryptographic key that's supplied at runtime. Targets of the activity included a law enforcement agency, a naval shipbuilder, and a manufacturer of military aircraft engines – entities that hold information that could be of use to a foreign intelligence agency, the Broadcom-owned threat intelligence unit said. "During one attack against the naval shipbuilder, operators returned to a compromised host repeatedly over the course of a week in what appeared to be hands-on-keyboard activity,...

A U.S. court on Monday granted the U.S. government's request to detain a former OpenAI engineer accused of planting a recording device in an executive conference room at the company's San Francisco office to allegedly steal sensitive secrets. In a new court filing Sunday, prosecutors revealed that Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national, was "in frequent communications via WhatsApp with a member of the Saudi Royal Family" throughout 2025 and 2026. Alfozan is said to have communicated with the Saudi royal as recently as October 5, 2026, four days before he was arrested. "Among other things, the individual told the defendant that an artificial intelligence initiative was being launched in Saudi Arabia and wanted the defendant to join it," the filing reads. "In May 2026, the individual told the defendant, 'Saudi needs you more then [sic] the US!' to which the defendant responded '100,' indicating he agreed." The S...

The China-nexus cyber espionage group tracked as Armory Castle (previously UNC5221 or Warp Panda) exploited a newly disclosed security flaw in BeyondTrust Remote Support (formerly Bomgar) as a zero-day in late August 2026. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-102764 (CVSS score: 9.3), is a case of improper origin validation in an internal messaging component that could be exploited by a remote attacker to perform file operations on an affected appliance. "The vulnerability exists within internal components of Remote Support," BeyondTrust said in a Thursday alert. "The components did not adequately validate the origin of the messages it received. Under the right conditions, this could be used to perform file operations on the appliance." Patches for the flaw have been pushed to all Remote Support SaaS customers as of October 9, 2026. Self-hosted customers of Remote Support running versions from 24.3.1 through 26.2.3 are advised to manually update to BT26-0...

Candiru, an Israeli maker of spyware sold to governments, infected devices at the news network Al Jazeera through ordinary online ads, in attacks that needed no click or other action from the user, researchers at  the Citizen Lab  said Thursday. The hidden attack code ran the moment an ad loaded on the screen, and in some cases the ad loaded out of sight, in the background. The Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto, said this is the first public, technical confirmation that mercenary spyware, meaning hacking tools sold to governments, has reached real devices through targeted ads. The method had been described before from leaked company documents, but not shown in a live attack. The researchers recovered the spyware itself from one device, but not the exploit that breaks into the browser or app to install it. That first break-in step is described from how the attack was set up, not from captured code. How the Attack Worked The ads were placed by...

The threat actor known as Silent Lynx has been attributed to a fresh set of attacks targeting government organizations across the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The activity, observed from June 2025 through August 2026, involves four different infection chains that make use of macro-enabled documents, PS2EXE downloaders, GitHub-hosted PowerShell, and crafted WinRAR archives exploiting CVE-2025-8088 . The attacks lead to the deployment of custom reverse shells like FoalShell, Chvost, Laplas, and PickleShell that facilitate interactive remote access to compromised hosts, according to Cisco Talos and Recorded Future Insikt Group, which are tracking the campaign under the monikers UAT-6275 and TAG-193.  "UAT-6275's targeting is concentrated in Central Asia, and the wider CIS region," security researcher Ashley Shen said . "Across the reviewed campaigns, observed victims and lure themes span nine countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenist...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added five security flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, following their abuse by a China-linked threat actor known as Flax Typhoon. The vulnerabilities in question are listed below - CVE-2015-3306 (CVSS score: 10.0) - An improper access control vulnerability in ProFTPD that could allow remote attackers to read and write to arbitrary files via the site cpfr and site cpto commands. CVE-2021-3199 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A path traversal vulnerability in ONLYOFFICE Docs that can occur when JSON Web Token (JWT) is used, via a "/.." sequence in an image upload parameter and could allow for remote code execution. CVE-2023-22894 (CVSS score: 7.2) - A cleartext storage of sensitive information vulnerability in Strapi that could allow an attacker with access to the admin panel to discover sensitive user details via the query filter. CVE-2016-3081 (CVSS score: 8.1) - A...

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...

Hackers tied to a Chinese cybersecurity company stole email from government organizations, law enforcement agencies, healthcare systems, and religious institutions in Southeast Asia, the FBI and agencies in 6 other countries said on October 8. The company, Integrity Technology Group , has been sanctioned by the U.S. and the UK. The hackers scanned websites for flaws using a tool containing more than 1,300 scripts, guessed passwords for Microsoft 365 and Exchange accounts, and copied mailboxes using tools designed to collect mail. The hackers have been breaking into networks since at least mid-January 2021, according to the agencies'  joint advisory . It describes the hacking in the present tense but provides no date for any theft and does not specify how many organizations were breached. The same hackers targeted U.S. government services, critical manufacturing, healthcare, and IT organizations, along with U.S. law enforcement, education, and religious groups. Organizations ...

The Russia-aligned threat actor known as UAC-0099 has been attributed to a previously undocumented .NET infostealer and remote access trojan (RAT) codenamed ASHVEIN . According to TrendAI, the malware has been put to use in attacks targeting Ukrainian government personnel. The cybersecurity company is tracking the cluster under the name Earth Sirrush (previously SHADOW-EARTH-065). ASHVEIN, which its developers internally refer to as "TelemetryBrowser," brings together credential theft, surveillance, and remote-control capabilities. Its functionality includes credential theft from Chrome and Firefox, GDI-based screenshot capture, file enumeration and retrieval, PowerShell remote shell execution, system fingerprinting, and encrypted command-and-control (C2) communications. "ASHVEIN also hides tasking inside invisible HTML elements," TrendAI said . "Some variants use a GitHub-based dead drop resolver as a fallback mechanism, while delivery methods inclu...

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...

Linux backdoors targeting telecom and network appliances in South Korea and Taiwan have been disguising their traffic as email services and seemingly legitimate processes to blend in and evade detection. Threat actors are known to name their malicious software after a legitimate operating system component or a process as a defense evasion measure. By borrowing the name of a real binary, it may make it appear less conspicuous among other Windows processes, lend it a false sense of trust, or be overlooked by an analyst during casual inspection. However, the backdoors examined by Rapid7 have been found to go beyond imitating file names by assuming the identities of email security products like SpamSniper and ShareTech that are widely used in enterprise environments in South Korea and Taiwan. According to vendor Jiran Group, SpamSniper is advertised as "Korea's leading email security solution" that defends organizations against spam, malware, and server attacks. T...

A new China-nexus cyber espionage group known as TA419 has been attributed to multiple credential phishing campaigns targeting artificial intelligence (AI) experts working for U.S. think tanks, universities, and legal sector organizations. The campaigns have impersonated prominent economists and AI policymakers, as well as a prominent Anthropic employee, to single out an AI policy expert at a U.S. think tank in February 2026. The phishing email carried the subject line "Request for Feedback on Military Integration of Claude." "This activity likely supports wider Chinese intelligence objectives to better understand ongoing developments within the U.S. AI policy and regulatory landscape and occurs amid intense strategic competition, accusations of model distillation, and export controls involving the U.S. and China," Proofpoint said in an analysis published this week. The enterprise security company has described TA419 as a China-aligned and espionage-motivat...

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 ...

Government and policy organizations across Asia have become the target of a new campaign orchestrated by a China-nexus threat actor. The activity, which has targeted government and policy organizations in Taiwan, India, the Philippines, Cambodia, Pakistan, Thailand, and Myanmar, involves the deployment of a previously undocumented backdoor codenamed Antino. Cisco Talos is tracking the cluster under the moniker UAT-11587 . The threat actor was first detected in September 2025 in connection with a spear-phishing campaign directed against Taiwan's academic, think tank, and civil society policy community. Since then, attacks linked to the intrusion set have expanded to target 16 entities across eight Asian countries. "Antino is a Rust-compiled Windows backdoor that supports host reconnaissance, shell and PowerShell execution, file transfer, in-memory shellcode loading and persistence," security researcher Ashley Shen said . "Its native command-and-control channel ...

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 ...

The threat actor known as SideCopy has been observed using spear-phishing lures to target academic institutions in India, expanding their strategic focus beyond government entities. "SideCopy campaign operations typically initiate through spear-phishing campaigns that leverage the abuse of mshta.exe to execute malicious scripts and circumvent standard security protocols," Trellix researchers Boggavarapu R S S Srinivas Gupta and Ravishankar N C said in a technical report. "This delivery mechanism facilitates the deployment of a remote access trojan (RAT), which serves as the central pillar of their offensive infrastructure." Active since at least 2019, SideCopy (aka TAG-140) is an advanced persistent threat (APT) group that originates from Pakistan, and shares overlaps with the Transparent Tribe cluster. Historically, the threat actor has primarily targeted Indian defense forces and government officials. In a report published in June 2026, Seqrite Labs a...