cyber espionage | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The China-linked advanced persistent threat (APT) group known as APT31 has been attributed to cyber attacks targeting the Russian information technology (IT) sector between 2024 and 2025 while staying undetected for extended periods of time. "In the period from 2024 to 2025, the Russian IT sector, especially companies working as contractors and integrators of solutions for government agencies, faced a series of targeted computer attacks," Positive Technologies researchers Daniil Grigoryan and Varvara Koloskova said in a technical report. APT31, also known as Altaire, Bronze Vinewood, Judgement Panda, PerplexedGoblin, RedBravo, Red Keres, and Violet Typhoon (formerly Zirconium), is assessed to be active since at least 2010. It has a track record of striking a wide range of sectors, including governments, financial, and aerospace and defense, high tech, construction and engineering, telecommunications, media, and insurance. The cyber espionage group is primarily focused ...

A China-nexus threat actor known as APT24 has been observed using a previously undocumented malware dubbed BADAUDIO to establish persistent remote access to compromised networks as part of a nearly three-year campaign. "While earlier operations relied on broad strategic web compromises to compromise legitimate websites, APT24 has recently pivoted to using more sophisticated vectors targeting organizations in Taiwan," Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) researchers Harsh Parashar, Tierra Duncan, and Dan Perez said . "This includes the repeated compromise of a regional digital marketing firm to execute supply chain attacks and the use of targeted phishing campaigns." APT24, also called Pitty Tiger, is the moniker assigned to a suspected Chinese hacking group that has targeted government, healthcare, construction and engineering, mining, non-profit, and telecommunications sectors in the U.S. and Taiwan. The group is also known to engage in cyber operations wh...

The threat actor known as PlushDaemon has been observed using a previously undocumented Go-based network backdoor codenamed EdgeStepper to facilitate adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) attacks. EdgeStepper "redirects all DNS queries to an external, malicious hijacking node, effectively rerouting the traffic from legitimate infrastructure used for software updates to attacker-controlled infrastructure," ESET security researcher Facundo Muñoz said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Known to be active since at least 2018, PlushDaemon is assessed to be a China-aligned group that has attacked entities in the U.S., New Zealand, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and mainland China. It was first documented by the Slovak cybersecurity company earlier this January, detailing a supply chain attack aimed at a South Korean virtual private network (VPN) provider named IPany to target a semiconductor company and an unidentified software development company in South Korea wi...

Suspected espionage-driven threat actors from Iran have been observed deploying backdoors like TWOSTROKE and DEEPROOT as part of continued attacks aimed at aerospace, aviation, and defense industries in the Middle East. The activity has been attributed by Google-owned Mandiant to a threat cluster tracked as UNC1549 (aka GalaxyGato, Nimbus Manticore, or Subtle Snail), which was first documented by the threat intelligence firm early last year. "Operating in late 2023 through 2025, UNC1549 employed sophisticated initial access vectors, including abuse of third-party relationships to gain entry (pivoting from service providers to their customers), VDI breakouts from third-parties, and highly targeted, role-relevant phishing," researchers Mohamed El-Banna, Daniel Lee, Mike Stokkel, and Josh Goddard said. The disclosure comes about two months after Swiss cybersecurity company PRODAFT tied the hacking group to a campaign targeting European telecommunications companies, succes...

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 degree – using AI not just as an advisor, but to execute the cyber attacks themselves," the AI upstart said . The activity is assessed to have manipulated Claude Code, Anthropic's AI coding tool, to attempt to break into about 30 global targets spanning large tech companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturing companies, and government agencies. A subset of these intrusions succeeded. Anthropic has since banned the relevant accounts and enforced defensive mechanisms to flag such attacks. The campaign, GTG-1002, marks the first time a threat actor has leveraged AI to conduct a "large-scale cyber attack" without major human intervention an...