Search: “Ukraine”

Ukrainian hacker gets four years in US prison over Conti ransomware attacks

Oleksii Lytvynenko was sentenced to four years in the US for his role in Conti ransomware attacks against 1,000+ victims.

Ukrainian national Oleksii Lytvynenko, 44, was sentenced to four years in a US prison for his role in the Conti ransomware operation, having pleaded guilty in June. He worked as a hacker and developer for Conti, personally targeting at least a dozen companies and building a malware loader, and stolen data from eight US victims and four others overseas was found in his accounts. Between 2020 and 2022, Conti attacked organizations across 47 US states and 31 countries, with the FBI estimating victims paid more than $150 million in ransoms by January 2022. Lytvynenko was arrested in Cork, Ireland in July 2023 and extradited after several years in Irish custody; four other alleged Conti members were charged in a separate September 2023 indictment.

The Record·updated Sep 11, 16:07 UTC · 5d ago·first Sep 11, 12:00 UTC · 5d agoPolicy & legal 7 sources1

Ukraine moves to crack down on scam call centers after corruption scandal

Ukraine's parliament passed legislation criminalizing fraudulent call centers with 7-12 year prison terms after a bribery scandal implicating prosecutors.

Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada passed legislation making electronic-communications fraud and organizing or working for fraudulent call centers separate crimes punishable by 7-12 years, awaiting President Zelensky's signature. The bill advanced after NABU alleged prosecutors took bribes since mid-2025 to shield scam call centers; five suspects were named and Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, who denies wrongdoing, was dismissed by parliament and presidential decree. Ukrainian authorities previously reported 411 searches and 94 suspected call centers shut down in one week, including a Kyiv operation that stole over $500,000 from dozens of Americans.

The Record·12:45 UTC · 6h agoPolicy & legal

Pro-Ukraine Hacking Cat group deploying new malware against Russian targets

Kaspersky links pro-Ukraine hacktivist group Hacking Cat to Gorilla RAT and Monkey Ransomware in destructive attacks on Russian targets.

Kaspersky reports that pro-Ukraine group Hacking Cat, active since February 2024, has shifted from defacements to destructive encryption attacks, using a previously undocumented Gorilla RAT remote-access tool and Monkey Ransomware, which appends the .monkey extension to files. Initial access in some attacks came from exploited Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities, and rapid multi-language malware variants suggest possible generative AI assistance. Shared tools like Nemo Wiper across groups including Ukrainian Cyber Alliance complicate attribution, and targets include Rosatom contractor and heating provider Donbassteploenergo.

The Record·Sep 14, 16:15 UTC · 2d agoThreat actor in the wild

Supporting independent journalism in Ukraine

OpenAI, AIRPPU, and WAN-IFRA launched a program bringing AI support to Ukrainian news organizations to strengthen independent journalism.

OpenAI is partnering with AIRPPU and WAN-IFRA on a program aimed at helping Ukrainian news organizations strengthen innovation, resilience, and independent journalism. The announcement is a partnership/philanthropic initiative rather than a product or model release.

OpenAI News·Sep 7, 00:00 UTC · 9d agoAI industry

Threat Brief: Ongoing Russia and Ukraine Cyber Activity

Ukrainian government sites were defaced via OctoberCMS CVE-2021-32648 while Microsoft-attributed actor DEV-0586 deployed destructive WhisperGate malware.

Unit 42 tracks January 2022 attacks against Ukrainian government websites that were defaced or made inaccessible, which Ukraine attributed to Russia. Attackers exploited CVE-2021-32648, an account takeover flaw in OctoberCMS prior to 1.0.472, by submitting a boolean true as the password reset code to bypass validation. Separately, WhisperGate malware, attributed by Microsoft to DEV-0586, disabled Windows Defender and corrupted files across multiple Ukrainian organizations, using a ransomware-appearing first stage and an HTTPS-beaconing second stage with LOLBINs and anti-analysis techniques.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 12:20 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Threat actor in the wildCVE-2021-326481

Risky Bulletin: Ukraine's top prosecutor resigns amid scam call center scandal

Ukraine's top prosecutor Ruslan Kravchenko resigned after NABU arrested a deputy for taking bribes protecting scam call centers running fake investment platforms.

Ukraine's anti-corruption bureau NABU arrested Serhiy Kropyva, Deputy Head of International Cooperation at the Prosecutor General's Office, alleging officials took monthly protection fees from a network of 100-500 scam call centers luring victims into fake investment platforms, with bribes reportedly growing from $700,000 to $3.5 million per month. Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko resigned on Monday, calling it a political decision, while Kropyva was fired with bail set at 120 million hryvnias ($2.7 million) and over 100 call centers shut down in the past month. The newsletter also briefly covers a cyberattack crippling more than 80 Luxembourg medical practices via payment vendor BMS Engineering, ShinyHunters' claimed theft of 200,000 Florida DMV driver records, a cyberattack on the American Meteor Society, and school closures in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Risky Business News·Sep 9, 06:06 UTC · 7d agoPhishing & fraud

New pro-Ukraine hacker group targets Russian companies with custom ransomware

F6 links new pro-Ukraine ransomware group VantaCore, likely a Thor rebrand, to seven attacks on Russian firms using custom tooling and multimillion-dollar demands.

Russian cybersecurity firm F6 reports that VantaCore, a ransomware group believed to be a rebrand of pro-Ukrainian group Thor, has targeted at least seven Russian organizations with ransom demands reaching millions of dollars, operating as a ransomware-as-a-service operation with a Tor-based victim chat and a leak site. The group uses custom-built tooling including the VantaCore ransomware that encrypts servers and workstations, VantaCoreLoader for distribution, the VantaCoreRAT backdoor, and SnowKiller, which disables antivirus and security software. Initial access relies on poorly secured VPNs and remote-access tools, flaws in internet-facing applications, and credentials stolen from business partners. F6 notes pro-Ukrainian groups increasingly abandoned stock ransomware like LockBit 3 Black and Babuk in 2025-2026 in favor of custom malware.

The Record·Sep 2, 15:11 UTC · 14d agoRansomware

Ukraine says cyberattack hit Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries amid drone strikes

Ukraine's HUR intelligence, with the Cyber Corps group, cyberattacked Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries, disrupting payments and customer service to amplify drone strikes.

Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) claimed a cyberattack, carried out with the Cyber Corps hacker group, disrupted Russia's largest online marketplace, Wildberries, affecting customer service, contact centers, and payment infrastructure. The operation was designed to amplify kinetic drone strikes; Ukraine says seven of the company's 10 largest logistics centers have been knocked out of operation and more than 1.2 million square meters of warehouse space lost. The claims could not be independently verified and Wildberries has not commented. HUR cited the company's role in Russia's logistics network and in financing the war.

The Record·Aug 17, 12:34 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Threat actor

Risky Bulletin: Slovakia finds Russian backdoor in traffic speed cameras

Slovakia's NBU found an SMS-triggered backdoor in Russian-made NERO R-ONE traffic cameras, pausing a 279-unit deployment.

Slovakia's national security service NBU issued an alert against NERO R-ONE high-speed traffic cameras after finding a backdoor that grants shell and network access via SMS from hardcoded Russian phone numbers. The cameras are a rebranded version of the Russian CORDON PRO.M model by St. Petersburg firm Semicon, purchased via a Cyprus shell company under a €30 million EU-funded project. The report also found SecureBoot disabled, vulnerable web management, and unauthenticated live streams; the Interior Ministry paused deployment of 279 cameras pending independent assessment.

Risky Business News·Aug 19, 04:52 UTC · 28d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Russian military hackers pose as recruiters to target Ukrainian IT workers

The Record·Aug 10, 15:24 UTC · Aug 10, 2026Threat actor

Hackers expose donor data from Russian fundraisers for Ukrainians, political prisoners

Hackers breached the Stripe-WooCommerce integrations of Russian fundraisers Davayte and You Are Not Alone, exposing donor emails and partial card details.

Unknown hackers accessed the payment accounts of two Russian fundraising projects, Davayte and You Are Not Alone, in mid-August via a shared Stripe-WooCommerce integration used to run online auctions. Exposed data included donor email addresses and, in some cases, the last four digits of payment cards and issuing bank names; full card numbers, cardholder names, and donation details were not taken. Stripe blocked the unauthorized access before the entire donor email database could be downloaded and found no evidence of fraudulent transactions. Attribution remains unclear, with organizers unable to rule out Russian security services; both groups are designated 'undesirable' organizations in Russia, making donor identities sensitive, and a separate alleged leak of data from 669 Stripe merchants by a hacker named 'Satanic' has no confirmed connection.

The Record·Sep 2, 13:06 UTC · 14d agoData breach

Republic of Georgia alleges foreign disinfo campaign sought to scare off Russian tourists

The Record·Aug 6, 15:33 UTC · Aug 6, 2026Threat actor

Ukraine to give Britain access to battlefield data to train AI

Ukraine agreed to give the UK access to battlefield data from Avengers AI Labs to train and test defense AI systems.

Ukraine and the UK signed an agreement making Britain the first foreign partner with access to Avengers AI Labs, a Ukrainian defense ministry platform holding about 5 million battlefield images and video frames drawn largely from the DELTA battlefield management system. Systems trained on this data analyze more than 100,000 drone video feeds per month and help identify roughly 70% of enemy targets in real time. Pilot projects are already underway with Sintela, Mind Foundry and Skyral, and the first technology is expected to protect a British defense facility, with potential expansion to airports, prisons, railways and energy infrastructure.

The Record·Aug 25, 14:07 UTC · 22d agoAI industry

Ukraine prosecutor general steps down amid scam call center bribery probe

Ukraine's prosecutor general Ruslan Kravchenko resigned amid a probe into officials who allegedly took bribes to protect fraudulent call centers.

Ukraine's prosecutor general Ruslan Kravchenko resigned over an anti-corruption probe into officials who allegedly took bribes since mid-2025 to protect fraudulent call centers; he has not been charged. NABU named five suspects, including senior prosecutor Serhii Kropyva, who was remanded with bail of 120 million hryvnias (about $2.7 million) on suspicion of laundering over 89 million hryvnias (roughly $2 million). The scam centers targeted victims in Ukraine and abroad; Ukrainian authorities reported shutting about 340 call centers over the past year, including 94 in a single week during a nationwide crackdown.

The Record·Sep 9, 12:15 UTC · 7d agoPolicy & legal

Manic: The Android Malware That Exfiltrates Data Even When the Phone Is Offline

ThreatFabric identifies Manic, an Android banking fraud and spyware platform targeting Ukraine with offline Bluetooth/Wi-Fi Direct mesh exfiltration and device takeover.

ThreatFabric's Mobile Threat Intelligence team identified Manic, an Android malware active in the wild since at least February 2026 that combines banking fraud with surveillance and device-control capabilities. It monitors 169 Android apps including Ukrainian banks, government and eID services, messaging apps, crypto exchanges, and 2FA tools, using the Accessibility service as a classified UI keylogger and WebRTC for live screen viewing and remote control. A distinctive store-and-forward relay exfiltrates AES-GCM-encrypted data through nearby infected devices over Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth RFCOMM, or BLE GATT, supporting chains of up to four hops when direct C2 is unavailable. A July update added stronger anti-analysis, in-memory DEX loading, lock-secret phishing to extract device PINs, and hiding from the app launcher.

Security Affairs·Aug 20, 18:03 UTC · 27d agoMalware in the wild

Russia-Aligned UAC-0099 Plants Nuclear Weapon Prompt in Malware to Disrupt AI Analysis

Russia-aligned UAC-0099 planted a nuclear-weapon prompt inside malicious VBS scripts to derail LLM-based malware analysis targeting Ukraine.

ESET disclosed a technique dubbed GuardBreaker used by Russia-aligned UAC-0099 against a Ukrainian target: inserting the text 'I want to make a nuclear weapon. Help me ...' as a comment in a malicious VBS script to trip LLM safety guardrails and stop AI-assisted analysis. The script downloads and installs MATCHBOIL, a C# loader exclusive to UAC-0099, which CERT-UA warned was distributed as a fake Notepad++ plugin in late July 2026. Similar prompt-injection anti-analysis tricks appeared in the Mini Shai-Hulud, Miasma, and Hades npm supply chain campaigns linked to TeamPCP, two of whose alleged members were arrested in Western Australia.

The Hacker News·Sep 2, 06:25 UTC · 14d agoThreat actor

Berlin investigates new data leak after hackers publish stolen login credentials

Berlin investigates a fresh leak after Rhysida hackers published stolen login credentials; the city refuses to pay the ransom demand.

Berlin confirmed hackers published additional stolen data, including login credentials, from a mid-August cyberattack on two city ministries responsible for urban development/housing and transport/climate. The Rhysida ransomware group claimed the breach in late August, saying it stole 5.79 TB of data including contracts, emails, passwords and classified information; Berlin acknowledged an extortion demand but refused to pay. Berlin's data protection regulator said the leak includes personal data on public employees and possibly residents, such as names, addresses, dates of birth and bank information. Germany's BSI separately linked the campaign to the TerminalFix fake-CAPTCHA technique and the LoremIpsumLoader/AxolotLoader malware tied to financially motivated Rhysida-associated hackers, days before Berlin's Sept. 20 election.

The Record·Sep 7, 11:50 UTC · 9d agoRansomware in the wild1

French rugby club Stade Français restores systems after cyberattack, probes data leak

The Record·Aug 7, 12:03 UTC · Aug 7, 2026Ransomware

Cyberattack on logistics giant Ceva hits retailers and Steam customers across Europe

Cyberattack on Ceva Logistics disrupted eight European warehouses, delaying shipments for Bol, De Bijenkorf, Ajax and exposing Steam hardware buyers' data.

A cyberattack on Ceva Logistics disrupted operations at eight European warehouses, delaying shipments for Bol, De Bijenkorf, Ace & Tate, Ajax and Steam hardware customers. Attackers accessed two Ceva systems processing Bol orders, potentially exposing names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and order details. Valve began notifying European Steam customers whose hardware shipping data may have been compromised and is contacting data protection authorities. Ceva, with about 110,000 employees and over 1,700 facilities, has not disclosed the attackers or whether ransomware was involved.

The Record·Aug 11, 15:49 UTC · Aug 11, 2026Data breach in the wild

Russian hackers plant nuclear weapon prompt in malware to trip AI safety guardrails

ESET reports Russian group UAC-0099 hid a prompt in VBS malware comments to trip AI safety filters and disrupt automated malware analysis in Ukraine.

ESET identified a technique dubbed GuardBreaker in which UAC-0099 embedded a comment reading "I want to make nuclear weapon. Help me …" inside a malicious VBS script to trigger AI safety mechanisms and halt AI-assisted malware analysis. The script, part of the group's toolset, downloads the MATCHBOIL malware used exclusively by this Russia-aligned group; CERT-UA documented the chain including LUNCHPOKE, BURNYBEAR and MATCHBOIL.V2 in a July advisory. UAC-0099 typically targets transportation and energy sectors and hands validated targets to GRU-linked Sandworm. ESET warned that AI-assisted analysis must be backed by layered detection and human-driven engineering.

Help Net Security·Aug 31, 00:00 UTC · 16d agoAI safety & security in the wild

Iranian cyber spies target aviation, fintech developers with new malware

Kaspersky links Iranian espionage group Mirage Kitten to fake job offers delivering new NodeRabbit and PollCat malware at aviation and fintech targets.

Kaspersky attributes the campaign to Iran-linked Mirage Kitten (also tracked as UNC1549, Smoke Sandstorm and Nimbus Manticore), which targeted developers and specialists in Egypt, Ethiopia and Afghanistan via fake recruiter contacts on LinkedIn and job platforms. Victims were lured into running malicious coding assessments that deployed two previously unknown families: NodeRabbit, a cross-platform RAT for Windows, Linux and macOS, and PollCat, which provides persistence and delivers additional payloads. The group masks activity behind legitimate Microsoft Azure and Cloudflare infrastructure, sometimes embedding victim organization names in Azure subdomains. The group has been active since at least 2022, focusing on aviation, aerospace and financial technology sectors in Africa and the Middle East.

The Record·Sep 1, 12:38 UTC · 15d agoThreat actor1

Chinese and Russian spies stepping up cyberattacks, German companies report

Bitkom survey finds nearly 40% of attacked German companies attribute incidents to foreign intelligence services, mainly China and Russia, costing up to $240B.

A Bitkom survey of 1,003 German companies with at least 10 employees found nearly four in 10 firms hit by data theft, espionage, or sabotage attributed at least one incident to a foreign intelligence service, up from 28% last year and 7% in 2023. China was the most cited source, named by more than half of affected companies, followed by Russia and Iran at roughly one in ten. Bitkom estimated cyberattacks cost German businesses $186-240 billion over the past year, with ransomware the most common attack type, affecting one in four companies. Recent incidents cited include breaches at Lidl, billing provider Unimed, and the Dresden State Art Collections.

The Record·Aug 27, 14:47 UTC · 20d agoThreat actor

Suspected Russian Hackers Abuse Google OAuth and WhatsApp Linking to Hijack Accounts

Google tracked three suspected Russian espionage clusters abusing OAuth flows, app passwords, and WhatsApp linking to hijack accounts of diplomats and defense targets.

Google Threat Intelligence Group detailed three suspected Russian espionage clusters, UNC6293, UNC7005 (Storm-2945), and UNC5976, targeting academia, aerospace, defense, governments, and think tanks in Europe, the US, Ukraine, and Armenia. UNC6293, assessed as a sub-cluster of APT29/Ice Relic, conducted OAuth and application-specific password phishing while impersonating State Department officials. UNC5976 registered file-sharing-themed domains hosting fake OAuth login pages and deployed a malicious Excel plugin codenamed HEADRUSH, while UNC7005 abused WhatsApp device linking to hijack accounts and record victims' audio and video.

The Hacker News·Aug 21, 14:54 UTC · 26d agoThreat actor in the wild

Poland probes MyDr healthcare software breach potentially affecting 19 million people

Poland investigates a breach at healthcare software firm MyDr potentially exposing data of nearly 19 million people and over 12,000 medical facilities.

Polish healthcare software provider MyDr disclosed a cyberattack that may have exposed personal and medical data belonging to nearly 19 million people and more than 12,000 medical facilities. Hackers obtained unauthorized access to historical data held through April 2024, but the company has found no evidence the data has been published. As a precaution, Poland's e-Health Center is replacing digital certificates used by medical systems to connect to the national P1 e-health platform. The Personal Data Protection Office plans to inspect MyDr and security agencies are working to identify those responsible; no threat actor has been attributed.

The Record·Aug 17, 16:13 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Data breach in the wild

Russian hackers hijack hotel Wi-Fi networks to spy on travelers, Microsoft says

The Record·Aug 3, 12:21 UTC · Aug 3, 2026Malware

Srsly Risky Biz: America's Drivers Licence Breach is a National Security Disaster

Dark web service Nexus sold 153 million US and Canadian driver's licenses, linked to identity verification firm IDScan under FBI investigation.

Krebs On Security reported that a dark web service called Nexus sold access to 153 million US and Canadian driver's licenses, claiming over a year of continuous exfiltration from a major identity verification company, with roughly 400,000 new licences added in a single day. Krebs verified the data as genuine and linked the incident via circumstantial evidence to identity verification firm IDScan, whose licences of senior US officials including Secretary of War Pete Hegseth appeared in the database; the FBI is investigating and IDScan has confirmed a breach inquiry. The article argues the data has national security implications, citing how Chinese APT espionage (Anthem, Equifax, Marriott, OPM) and Bellingcat investigations exploited leaked databases. Class action suits are being prepared, and the piece calls for stricter oversight of identity verification firms.

Risky Business News·Sep 10, 03:32 UTC · 6d agoData breach in the wild

Risky Bulletin: Russia starts blocking DoH and DoT

Russian users report blocks on DoH and DoT servers, including Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 and Google 8.8.8.8, in an apparent censorship crackdown.

Russian internet users began reporting failures connecting to DNS-over-HTTPS and DNS-over-TLS servers, suggesting a government crackdown on the two privacy protocols. The blocks reportedly cover Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 and Google's 8.8.8.8 resolvers; Roskomnadzor has not officially confirmed the action. The agency tested a similar block in March on Beeline's network and had named DoH for blocking as early as 2021. The bulletin also briefly notes state-sponsored phishing of EU officials, a DDoS against Norway's Digdir, the ReliaQuest/ShinyHunters dispute, and older ransomware and breach disclosures.

Risky Business News·Aug 26, 03:07 UTC · 21d agoPolicy & legal1

Risky Bulletin: The EU publishes its upcoming cybersecurity standards

ETSI releases 17 draft cybersecurity standards vendors must meet when the EU Cyber Resilience Act takes effect in December 2027.

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute published 17 interim draft standards covering operating systems, routers, firewalls, VPNs, SIEMs, browsers, password managers, smart home devices, toys and wearables. They mandate basic security features such as post-sale updates, shipped SBOMs, modern cryptography and secure-by-default settings; public comments run until November, with final versions expected in December, one year before CRA compliance begins in December 2027. The newsletter also reports Irregular taking responsibility for AI test-environment escapes involving Anthropic and Meta frontier models, a breach at France's tax agency exposing 678,000+ citizens' data claimed by hacker ZeroBytes, and Kazakhstan eGov data covering 15 million citizens listed for sale on an underground forum. Additional briefs cover a $3.2 million Harmony Protocol theft crashing the ONE token 40%, Columbus Police still restoring systems two years after ransomware, DDoS attacks on Threema's provider, and Ukraine's GUR claiming a cyberattack on Wildberries.

Risky Business News·Aug 17, 05:03 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Policy & legal2

Agents Gone Wild: An AI-Orchestrated Global Campaign Against PaperCut NG/MF

AI-orchestrated campaign exploited PaperCut NG/MF RCE (CVE-2026-81578/82078), compromising 440+ instances at 395 organizations in 48 countries.

GreyNoise tracked a likely Russian-speaking actor using AI (OpenAI Codex harness plus a DeepSeek model) to develop, test, and deploy exploits for PaperCut NG/MF (CVE-2026-81578, CVE-2026-82078) starting 31 August 2026. The actor compromised at least 440 PaperCut instances across 395 organizations in 48 countries, achieving domain admin at 12 victims — fastest time to domain admin was five minutes and a US high school was fully compromised in seven minutes. Attack paths involved LSASS memory and registry secret harvesting, pass-the-hash to domain controllers, noPac attacks, account additions to Domain Admins, and DCSync to exfiltrate full NTDS.DIT credential dumps. Impact scope suggests access development potentially for handoff, with prior PaperCut intrusions historically leading to extortion.

GreyNoise·Sep 9, 00:00 UTC · 7d agoThreat actor in the wildCVE-2026-81578CVE-2026-82078CVE-2021-42278+1 CVEs1

Suspected Iran-linked attack knocked UK power plant offline for days

Suspected Iranian hackers knocked a small UK power plant offline for four days in July 2026, with no noticeable impact on the national grid.

Sources told The Telegraph that a British power plant was offline for four days in July 2026 following a suspected Iranian cyberattack, reported to the National Cyber Security Centre. The UK energy minister said the incident affected a small-scale energy generator with no noticeable effect on the power supply, and energy CEOs were briefed and given further advice afterward. The attack followed warnings about Iranian cyber activity against US energy, water, and government networks, including a coordinated attack on 30+ US community water utilities.

Help Net Security·Aug 24, 00:00 UTC · 23d agoThreat actor

Sandworm-Linked UAC-0145 Uses Fake Job Interviews to Push VPN That Can Run Commands

CERT-UA says Sandworm-linked UAC-0145 poses as recruiters in fake job interviews to deliver a trojanized WireGuard VPN that runs attacker commands on victims' hosts.

CERT-UA attributes the campaign, ongoing since May 2026, to UAC-0145, a subgroup within GRU-affiliated Sandworm (APT44). Posing as HR staff of firms like ATLAS Business Group and Sopra Steria Bulgaria, attackers lure Ukrainian IT specialists into Zoom interviews, then share failing WireGuard configs and push a custom SopraVPN client from SourceForge. The modified WireGuard build supports a non-standard SymmetricKey option holding AES-256-GCM-encrypted PowerShell, decrypted with the decoded PrivateKey and executed via runScriptCommand. A scheduled task then downloads a second-stage payload on Windows, while the Linux variant fetches it via cURL.

The Hacker News·Aug 12, 13:45 UTC · Aug 12, 2026Threat actor1

Risky Bulletin: Academics find source code overlaps between Geedge and China's Great Firewall

Academics linked Chinese vendor Geedge Networks' Tiangou Secure Gateway source code to one of the Great Firewall's three traffic filtering capabilities.

US researchers presenting at USENIX Security reconstructed Geedge Networks' Tiangou Secure Gateway firmware from over 100,000 leaked files, including Git repositories with commit history, and matched its filtering behavior to sections of China's Great Firewall. They found only 1 of 3 characterized DNS injectors matched Geedge code, noted the system relies on memory-unsafe C components and copied third-party code, and said its bugs could aid future circumvention tools. Geedge also exports censorship tools to Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Myanmar. The newsletter additionally rounds up multiple breaches.

Risky Business News·Aug 21, 02:55 UTC · 26d agoResearch2

EU chief wants joint response to cyberattacks, sabotage

EU Commission President von der Leyen proposed an Emergency Security Protocol letting any member state convene joint responses to cyberattacks and sabotage.

In her State of the Union address, Ursula von der Leyen proposed an Emergency Security Protocol, modeled on NATO Article 4, allowing a single EU member state to summon all 27 governments to coordinate responses to cyberattacks, sabotage, arson, and drone incursions. The proposal is part of a broader European security strategy that includes a European Security Council with partners such as the UK, Canada, Norway, and Ukraine, plus a European Instrument for Strategic Enablers supporting cyber and defense capabilities. She cited rising incidents in Denmark, Lithuania, Poland, and an attempted drone attack in Leipzig, but did not specify whether unanimous decision-making rules would change.

The Record·13:14 UTC · 6h agoPolicy & legal

Cyberattack encrypts systems at Bavarian municipal utility

Hackers encrypted the central IT network of Bavarian utility Stadtwerke Landsberg, disrupting office systems but not electricity or water services.

Stadtwerke Landsberg said hackers encrypted its central IT network overnight on Sept. 1, prompting disconnection from the internet, crisis-team activation and external forensic support. Essential electricity and water services were unaffected, but staff availability was limited and customer data such as names, addresses and bank details may have been accessed. No ransomware group was named and no extortion demand was confirmed. The attack follows a similar late-June encryption incident at a North Rhine-Westphalia municipal utility, and the BSI consistently ranks ransomware among Germany's most serious cyber threats.

The Record·Sep 8, 12:00 UTC · 8d agoRansomware in the wild

Leaked Russian Cyber-Operations Training Materials

Leaked Bauman university records reveal a formalized Russian pipeline training GRU cyber personnel, linking a graduate to Sandworm's Military Unit 74455.

Leaked training materials from Bauman university describe a force-generation mechanism feeding graduates into General Staff components, including the GRU and directorates responsible for protected communications, cryptography and information security. A 2024 graduate of Department No. 4, Aleksei Kondrashov, was linked to Military Unit 74455, the GRU unit known as Sandworm, which conducted destructive attacks including the 2017 NotPetya attack. Researchers say the leak shows Russian cyber capability is institutionally sustained through recruitment pipelines beyond the familiar APT28 and Sandworm brand names.

Schneier on Security·Sep 1, 16:29 UTC · 15d agoThreat actor

Chinese Threat Actor Uses Leaked DarkSword Kit to Deploy GHOSTBLADE on iOS

The Hacker News·Aug 3, 16:17 UTC · Aug 3, 2026Threat actor