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Meta accuses NSO Group of defying spyware injunction, files contempt of court complaint

Meta said Monday that it caught a spearphishing campaign linked to spyware maker NSO Group despite a court injunction, prompting the tech giant to file a contempt-of-court complaint.

The company won a civil case last year against NSO Group barring it from targeting WhatsApp users and securing $168 million in damages, although NSO Group has been appealing the ruling.

But Meta says NSO Group, makers of the Pegasus spyware, isn’t honoring the permanent injunction.

“We successfully disrupted NSO-linked social engineering attempts, after investigating user reports,” it said in a blog post. “They tried to trick people into clicking on malicious links to drive them to external websites outside of WhatsApp, similar to previously reported 1-click phishing campaigns linked to NSO. We also caught them creating test accounts and groups on WhatsApp, which we took down.”

Meta said the campaign resembled spyware infections that hit journalists and activists in Jordan from 2019 to 2023.

NSO Group didn’t respond to requests for comment about Meta’s accusations.

One top researcher who tracks spyware said NSO Group’s actions are an argument for keeping them on the U.S. sanctions “entity” list that the company has fought to be removed from since its designation in 2021.

“NSO’s own actions make the strongest argument for why they should stay on the Entity list,” John Scott-Railton, senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, wrote on social media. “And reaffirm that the decision to put them there was the right one.”

Meta made the same argument.

“When a malicious company on the US government’s Entity List continues to defy US courts, existing restrictions must remain firmly in place,” it said in its blog post. “Easing them would undermine US national security and put American companies and billions of people worldwide who depend on secure communications at risk.”

Lawmakers have sought information on the federal government’s prospective use of NSO Group tech and other kinds of spyware, despite a blacklist, given close ties between the company’s new executive chairman and President Donald Trump.

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Google and Amnesty International teamed up to make it harder for spyware vendors to hide

Google launched a feature for Android phones Tuesday for dedicated forensic logs about intrusions from sophisticated attacks like those by spyware vendors, in what design partners at Amnesty International hailed as an important first.

The tech giant has been ramping up the new feature, Intrusion Logging, since last year, and has now begun rolling it out.

“The new intrusion logging feature promises to be a major aid to digital forensics researchers undertaking investigations into sophisticated attacks on Android devices,” Amnesty International said in a Tuesday technical briefing. “This is the first time a major device vendor has released a feature specifically to enhance the ability to forensically detect and respond to advanced digital threats.”

To date, independent investigators have relied on records and often short-lived log files that weren’t meant for forensic use, and Amnesty said surveillance groups have grown increasingly aware of those forensic efforts. Intrusion Logging, a feature of Android Advanced Protection Mode, is designed specifically to keep track of possible intrusions for forensic purposes. It keeps records of security incidents like device unlocking, physical access and spyware installation and removal.

Google’s annual security and privacy update for Android phones mentions the feature and its development with Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders and others. It also touts new protections against banking scam calls, other features for detecting suspicious activity on Android phones, additional privacy safeguards and more.

The firm has been working on the feature since announcing it last year.

“Intrusion Logging enables persistent and privacy-preserving forensics logging to allow for investigation of devices in the event of a suspected compromise,” wrote Eugene Liderman, director of Android security and privacy.

Intrusion Logging joins an expanding slate of features from tech companies to fight sophisticated attacks like those from commercial spyware, among them Apple’s Lockdown Mode and Memory Integrity Enforcement and WhatsApp’s Strict Account Settings.

Intrusion Logging “promises to help shift the balance to the advantage of defenders, providing civil society investigators with the key evidence needed to detect and expose some of the most advanced attacks facing journalists and activists,” said Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, head of the Amnesty International Security Lab, “With Intrusion Logging Google is the first major vendor to proactively address to challenge of detecting advanced attacks on device. By making more consensual forensic data available for researchers, we can make life more difficult for attackers and help civil society seek accountability when their devices are unlawfully targeted by spyware and mobile data extraction tools.”

The feature has some limitations, though, Amnesty said in its technical briefing. It requires Android 16 and is only available for now on Pixel devices; the device has to be linked to a Google account, and the logs may include sensitive information, like browser navigation history, so secure sharing of the logs is important.

The logs may also be deletable by attackers, Ó Cearbhaill told CyberScoop, but he said he understands there are plans to strengthen protections against that in future versions. And lots of attacks would be detectable in the logs where attackers wouldn’t necessarily have the root access needed to try to delete logs, he said.

To enable Intrusion Logging, users need to be using Android Advanced Protection Mode, and can find the feature at Settings > Security & privacy > Advanced Protection > Intrusion Logging. If users suspect some kind of security incident, they’ll need to export and share the logs with a forensic analyst.

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One House Democrat is pressing Commerce on the government’s spyware use

A House Democrat who’s been at the forefront of congressional efforts to scrutinize the federal government’s use of commercial spyware wants the Commerce Department to brief Capitol Hill amid apprehension that the Trump administration might further embrace the technology.

Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., sent a letter to the department Thursday seeking a briefing on several developments stemming from Immigration and Customs Enforcement acknowledging its use of Paragon’s Graphite spyware, as well as an American company purchasing a controlling stake in Israel’s NSO Group. The Commerce Department sanctioned NSO Group under former President Joe Biden after widespread abuse allegations, including eavesdropping on government officials, activists and journalists.

“The Trump Administration appears to be broadly receptive to using commercial spyware to infiltrate cell phones and allowing U.S. investment in sanctioned spyware companies like NSO Group,” Lee wrote in her letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, which CyberScoop is first reporting.

NSO Group’s new executive chairman, David Friedman, is a former Trump ambassador to Israel and was his bankruptcy attorney. He has said in November that he expects the administration will be “receptive” to using NSO Group tech.

“Given those close ties between NSO Group and the Trump Administration, and the serious concerns about how NSO’s technology could be used to spy on Americans, we write to request information regarding the purchase of NSO Group by an American company and the potential usage of NSO Group spyware by federal law enforcement,” wrote Lee, who sits on the Oversight and Government Reform panel and is the top Democrat on its Federal Law Enforcement Subcommittee.

Lee was one of the authors of a recent Democratic letter seeking confirmation of ICE’s use of Paragon’s Graphite, which ICE acknowledged. But they criticized the administration for not answering all their questions, in addition to being outraged.

In her latest letter, Lee asked the Commerce Department to brief Oversight and Government Reform Committee staff about internal department deliberations, Commerce communication with the White House and any outside conversations — including with Friedman — about government use of NSO Group technology or any other commercial spyware, and American investment in NSO.

NSO Group “appears to view the Trump administration as friendly to its interests in the United States, pitching itself as a vital tool for the U.S. government to safeguard national security,” Lee wrote, citing company court filings that it “is reasonably foreseeable that a law enforcement or intelligence agency of the United States will use Pegasus.”

The Biden administration sanctions, and court losses in a case against Meta, represented setbacks for NSO Group’s ambitions. And prior to the U.S. investment firm controlling stake purchase last fall, the Commerce Department under Trump rebuffed efforts to remove NSO Group from its sanctions list.

But the tens of millions of dollars worth of investment, following news that Israel had used Pegasus to track people kidnapped or murdered by Hamas, was a boon.

NSO Group maintains that its products are designed only to help law enforcement and intelligence fight terrorism and crime, and that it vets its customers in advance as well as investigates misuse. News accounts and other investigations have turned up a multitude of abuses.

There have been scattered reports of U.S. flirtation with using NSO Group technology. The FBI acknowledged it had bought a Pegasus license, but stopped short of deploying it. The Times of London reported that “it is believed” the Central Intelligence Agency used Pegasus spyware as part of a rescue mission last month for a U.S. airman downed in Iran.

You can read the full letter below.

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Surveillance campaigns use commercial surveillance tools to exploit long-known telecom vulnerabilities

Campaigns employing commercial surveillance vendors tracked targets by exploiting mobile phone network vulnerabilities in what researchers said Thursday was the first-ever linking of “real-world attack traffic to mobile operator signalling infrastructure.”

The two unknown parties behind the campaigns mimicked the identities of mobile phone operators with customized surveillance tools, and manipulated signaling protocols and steered traffic through network pathways to hide, according to research from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.

“Our findings highlight a systemic issue at the core of global telecommunications: operator infrastructure designed to enable seamless international connectivity is being leveraged to support covert surveillance operations that are difficult to monitor, attribute, and regulate,” a report published Thursday reads.

“Despite repeated public reporting, this activity continues unabated and without consequence,” Gary Miller and Swantje Lange wrote for Citizen Lab. “The continued use of mobile networks, built on a close inter-operator trust model and relied upon by users worldwide, raises broader questions for national regulators, policymakers, and the telecom industry about accountability, oversight, and global security.”

The attackers relied on identifiers and infrastructure associated with operators around the world, including networks based in Cambodia, China, the self-governing Island of Jersey, Israel, Italy, Lesotho, Liechtenstein, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Poland, Rwanda, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Uganda and the United Kingdom.

They shifted between SS7 and Diameter protocols, the signalling protocols known for 3G and 4G/most of 5G, respectively, according to the report. While Diameter was meant to be more secure than SS7, the Federal Communications Commission in 2024 opened a probe into both its vulnerabilities and SS7’s, and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has asked for a Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency report about telecommunications vulnerabilities rooted in both protocols.

But identifying the vendors used in the two surveillance campaigns, or who was behind them, was beyond the researchers’ reach.

“The reality is that there are a number of known surveillance vendors and bad actors in this space, but given the opaque nature of telecommunications signalling protocols, those vendors are able to operate without revealing exactly who they really are,” Ron Deibert, director of Citizen Lab, wrote in his newsletter. “Much of the malicious things they are doing blend into the otherwise voluminous flow of billions of normal messages and roaming signals. They are ‘ghost operators’ within the global telecom ecosystem.”

One of the operators mentioned in Citizen Lab’s report, Israel-based 019 Mobile, wrote back that it didn’t recognize the hostnames referenced in the report as 019 Mobile’s network nodes, and couldn’t attribute the signaling activity it represents to 019 Mobile-operated infrastructure.

Another operator, Sure, said it has taken preventative measures to defend against misuse.

“Sure acknowledges that digital services can be misused, which is why we take a number of
steps to mitigate this risk,” CEO Alistair Beak said in a statement to CyberScoop. “Sure has implemented several protective measures to prevent the misuse of signalling services, including monitoring and blocking inappropriate signalling. Any evidence or valid complaint relating to the misuse of Sure’s network results in the service being immediately suspended and, where malicious or inappropriate activity is confirmed following investigation, permanently terminated.”

019 Mobile and a third operator, Tango Networks UK, didn’t respond to requests for comment from CyberScoop. The Citizen Lab report afforded some grace to the operators.

“It is important to note that the operator signalling addresses observed in the attacks do not necessarily imply direct operator involvement,” it states. “In some cases, access to the signalling ecosystem can be obtained through third-party providers, commercial leasing arrangements, or other intermediary services that allow actors to send messages using operator identifiers from legitimate networks.”

Updated 4/24/26: to include quote from Alistair Beak.

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Hack-for-hire spyware campaign targets journalists in Middle East, North Africa

An apparent hack-for-hire campaign from a group with suspected Indian government connections targeted Middle Eastern and North African journalists and activists using spyware, three collaborating organizations said in reports published Wednesday.

The attacks shared infrastructure that pointed to the advanced persistent threat group known as Bitter, which most frequently targets government, military, diplomatic and critical infrastructure sectors across South Asia, according to conclusions from researchers at Access Now, Lookout and SMEX.

Each group took on a different piece of the puzzle:

  • Access Now got calls on its helpline that led it to examine a spearphishing campaign in 2023 and 2024. It contacted Lookout for technical support about the malware it encountered.
  • Lookout attributed the malware to Bitter, concluding it was a likely hack-for-hire campaign, using the Android ProSpy spyware.
  • SMEX dived into a spearphishing campaign targeting a prominent Lebanese journalist last year, collaborating with Access Now to discover shared infrastructure between the campaigns.

One of the victims, independent Egyptian journalist Mostafa Al-A’sar, said he contacted Access Now after receiving a suspicious link from someone he’d been talking to about a job position. He was skeptical because his phone had been targeted before, when he was arrested in Egypt in 2018.

The lesson for journalists and civil society groups is that cybersecurity “is not a luxury,” he said.

“I feel like I’m threatened,” Al-A’sar said, and even though he was living in exile, he feels like “they are still following me. I also felt worried about my family, about my friends, about my sources.”

The combined research found a wider campaign than just the original victims.

“Our joint findings expose an espionage campaign that has been operational since at least 2022 until present day primarily targeting civil society members and potentially government officials in the Middle East,” Lookout wrote. “The operation features a combination of targeted spearphishing delivered through fake social media accounts and messaging applications leveraging persistent social engineering efforts, which may result in the delivery of Android spyware depending on the target’s device.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the campaign.

“Spying on journalists is often the first step in a broader pattern of intimidation, threats, and attacks,” said the group’s regional director, Sara Qudah. “These actions endanger not only journalists’ personal safety, but also their sources and their ability to do their work. Authorities in the region must stop weaponizing technology and financial resources to surveil journalists.”

Access Now said it didn’t have enough information to attribute who was behind the attacks it identified.

ESET first published research on the ProSpy malware last year, after finding it targeting residents of the United Arab Emirates.

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pcTattleTale stalkerware maker sentence includes fine, supervised release

A federal judge has sentenced the maker of stalkerware pcTattleTale, which went out of business after a data breach, to supervised release and a $5,000 fine.

Bryan Fleming pleaded guilty in January to a charge of intentionally manufacturing, possessing or selling a device with the knowledge that it would be primarily used for surreptitious interception of communications. On Friday, a judge handed down Fleming’s sentence.

It was the first stalkerware conviction since 2014, when the maker of StealthGenie, pled guilty and also didn’t serve prison time, instead receiving a $500,000 fine from the court.

According to Fleming’s plea agreement, his incriminating activity began as early as 2017, as the owner of Fleming Technologies LLC.

“Defendant’s software enabled buyers to covertly and remotely monitor a victim’s cellular telephone and computer activities, including, texts, emails, phone calls, geo-location, and web browsing,” the agreement states. “Defendant began directly advertising his spying software to persons wanting to spy on spouses or partners without their knowledge.”

It continued: “Defendant’s spying software covertly created a video every time a victim’s device was used, which captured any and all activity occurring on the device. The person monitoring the device could log into a remote dashboard and monitor the activity on the victim’s device.”

An undercover agent from Homeland Security Investigations, a division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, posed as a marketing affiliate and customer to communicate with Fleming, according to a 2022 indictment.

pcTattletale went out of business in 2024 after suffering a data breach. Researchers have found that stalkerware apps often fail to protect personal information collected during their use.

An attorney for Fleming didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Monday morning.

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DarkSword’s GitHub leak threatens to turn elite iPhone hacking into a tool for the masses

Leaked iOS spyware has some cybersecurity professionals raising urgent alarms about potential mass iPhone compromises, a development that pairs ominously with the recent discovery of two sophisticated iOS exploit kits.

At the same time, some other experts say Apple’s defensive features for iPhones remain elite. But several factors have created unprecedented circumstances: the public accessibility of a version of DarkSword, shortly after the discovery of the original version of DarkSword and the earlier discovery of a similar kit known as  Coruna, and a  growing market for iPhone exploits driven by their high value as targets.

Allan Liska, field chief information security officer at Recorded Future, said he was worried about what the leaked DarkSword version could do to “democratize” iPhone exploits.

“Right now, iPhone exploitations are among the most expensive to research/implement so they have been, largely, the realm of nation-states,” he said. “If anyone can exploit an iPhone, suddenly something that has managed to be relatively secure now is a much bigger attack surface.”

Google, iVerify and Lookout released research last week on DarkSword’s discovery, centered on Ukraine. Google also said it saw targeting in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Malaysia. And that was before a version turned up on GitHub, a development TechCrunch first reported and Google and iVerify have analyzed. (The week before, iVerify and Google uncovered Coruna. Google declined to comment further for this story.)

“It’s extremely alarming that this leaked out on GitHub,” said Rocky Cole, co-founder of iVerify. “I would assume that it’s being used all around the world, and including here in the United States.”

Hundreds of millions of iPhones running iOS 18 could be vulnerable to DarkSword.

“I think that the top line issues here are pretty clear: people who have devices that are vulnerable should upgrade ASAP,” said Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “It is very likely that these vulnerabilities are being used right now to exploit vulnerable devices at scale, which is unusual for Apple products.”

The propagation problem

Coruna was concerning enough for Apple that it took the rare step of backporting security updates to still older versions of iOS, Cole said. The fear, he said, was that it might be wormable — capable of spreading from one device via text message to everyone in a phone’s contact list.

But Cole said Apple hasn’t released similar security-focused updates to iOS 18, for reasons he doesn’t know.

Apple has emphasized the patches it has issued, urged users to update their phones and touted Lockdown Mode as a defense against spyware.

“Apple devices are designed with multiple layers of security in order to protect against a wide range of potential threats, and every day Apple’s security teams around the world work tirelessly to protect users’ devices and data,” said Apple spokesperson Sarah O’Rourke. “Keeping your software up to date is the single most important thing you can do to maintain the security of your Apple products, and devices with updated software were not at risk from these reported attacks.”

IPhones’ widespread use makes them high-value targets, fueling a thriving market for exploits. Coruna and DarkSword are indicators of this growing demand. 

“It’s time for organizations to start thinking of mobile security the way they think about desktop security, which is to say everyone knows how to secure their laptop,” Cole said. And for iPhone exploit hunting in particular, “you’re starting to see people do it at a mass level.” Furthermore, the resale market is such that exploits that once were exclusive are no longer, and AI makes it even easier to customize them in the code, he said. 

DarkSword has drawn federal attention: The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency this week added vulnerabilities that DarkSword exploits to the list that federal agencies must patch.

The number of people still using iOS 18 is large, up to 25% of all iPhones. Cole said several factors are contributing to that, such as users being leery of iOS 26’s onboard artificial intelligence or the Liquid Glass interface.

Said Galperin: “There are many reasons why people do not keep their devices up to date, so when I tell people ‘just patch your stuff’ I think it is important to realize that there are circumstances under which this is easier said than done.”

Proven defenses despite expanding risks

Despite the concerns, Cole credited iPhone for its high security standards, in particular for its app store.

For Natalia Krapiva, senior tech-legal counsel at Access Now, a key takeaway is the worrisome proliferation of commercial spyware and cyber intrusion capabilities.

“This is exactly what human rights activists and digital security researchers have been warning governments and companies about: In the absence of effective regulation for the industry, these exploits will get out and end up in the hands of adversaries like Russia, China, Iran, or, as in the case of DarkSword, leaked online for any criminal to use,” she said.

On the other hand, Apple’s Lockdown Mode and Memory Integrity Enforcement are top-notch defensive measures, Krapiva said. We’ve yet to see a Lockdown Mode-enabled iPhone being infected with spyware, she said.

“I think we’ll keep seeing more attempts to exploit both Apple and Android devices as they improve their software and hardware security,” she said. “It’s the old cat-and-mouse game.”

Adam Boynton, senior enterprise strategy manager at Jamf, said what’s happened with Coruna and DarkSword is evidence of Apple’s success.

“What’s encouraging here is that Apple’s security model works,” he said. “Coruna skips devices running the latest iOS versions and avoids those with Lockdown Mode enabled entirely. That’s a strong validation of the defences Apple has built.

“DarkSword reinforces the same principle,” he continued. “Where Coruna targeted older iOS versions, DarkSword demonstrates that even relatively current releases can be targeted by determined actors. Apple moved quickly to patch the vulnerabilities involved, and devices running the latest iOS are protected.”

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Second iOS exploit kit now in use by suspected Russian hackers

Researchers have discovered a second instance of suspected Russian hackers using iOS exploits, pointing to what they say are several foreboding trends.

iVerify, Lookout and Google collaborated on the research published Wednesday, a follow-up to earlier revelations about a similar exploit kit, Coruna. While the second kit — dubbed DarkSword — also targeted users in Ukraine, the scale is significant: iVerify estimated up to 270 million iPhone users could be susceptible, while Lookout told CyberScoop roughly 15% of all iOS devices currently in use are running iOS 18 or earlier versions and could be vulnerable to the exploit kit.

The research reveals a range of new details, as well as interesting patterns:

  • Whereas Russian and Chinese hackers used Coruna with financial gain in mind, there are signs DarkSword could serve both financial and surveillance purposes, and/or could be used to inflict harm.
  • Lookout observed that someone used a large language model to customize both Coruna and DarkSword.
  • The discovery of DarkSword reinforces earlier concerns about a secondary exploit market, Lookout and iVerify said.
  • DarkSword is the second “mass” iOS campaign discovered this month, with the first known one to be Coruna.
  • Both kits suggest cyberattacks are migrating toward mobile phones as they make up a bigger portion of internet traffic, Rocky Cole, iVerify’s co-founder and chief operating officer, told CyberScoop.
  • Google also found that DarkSword was used against targets in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Malaysia

DarkSword can exfiltrate saved passwords, crypto wallets, text messages and more, researchers found. Attackers are leveraging the exploit kit by first compromising Apple’s WebKit and then using WebGPU as a pivot point for sandbox escapes, according to Justin Albrecht, Lookout’s global director for mobile threat intelligence.

What’s less clear is who, exactly, is behind the exploit kit, other than the links to Russia. Cole said DarkSword is hosted on the same command and control infrastructure as Coruna, but is an entirely separate kit made by entirely separate people. Google has attributed the campaigns to a group it tracks as UNC6353, which it describes as a Russian-backed espionage group, as well as UNC6748 and Turkish commercial surveillance vendor PARS Defense. 

The attackers’ motives are also a bit opaque, mixing what appears to be both espionage and financial objectives. Albrecht noted there is precedent for this: Russian threat groups have targeted cryptocurrency in Ukraine before, notably with Infamous Chisel, an Android exploit kit deployed by Sandworm

“They’re probably well-funded, probably well-connected, but it’s confirmed that they’re stealing crypto. There is definitely a financial motivation,” Albrecht told CyberScoop. “Now, I think the big question is, depending on who the group is, is the financial motivation in this just to do damage to Ukrainians, or is it to steal crypto?”

Russia has been under heavy sanctions for a long time and is starting to have budget problems due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, he noted. “Why not start to fund their operations with stolen funds? It wouldn’t be outside the norm, although it would be a potential shift in their TTPs for Russian APTs in general,” Albrecht said. 

The kit could be handy for someone trying to do a “pattern of life” analysis, Cole said, and thus useful for surveillance and intelligence purposes.

He said a commercial spyware vendor might have made the kit with no target audience in mind, thus the “Swiss Army knife”-like quality of it. The major concern for Cole is that there’s apparently a growing market for these kinds of tools, and people may be lulled into a false sense of security about iPhones not being vulnerable.

Despite the sophistication of the exploits themselves, the threat actors behind DarkSword may not be particularly experienced, Albrecht said. None of the JavaScript or HTML code was obfuscated in any way, and the server-side component was labeled “Dark sword file receiver” — poor operational security for a seasoned Russian threat actor.

“Your experienced Russian threat actors, your APT29’s of the world, I would expect them to have better OPSEC,” Albrecht said.

One of the more unusual findings in the research is the clear presence of large language model-generated code. The server-side component of DarkSword, for instance, includes telltale signs of AI-generated code, complete with detailed notes and comments characteristic of LLM output.  It’s a development that effectively lowers the barrier to entry for deploying advanced mobile exploits, even among state-sponsored actors, Albrecht said.

All three research teams have been in contact with Apple about the findings, according to Albrecht, with Google likely in closest contact since they began investigating the threat in late 2025. In its blog, Google said it reported the vulnerabilities used in DarkSword to Apple in late 2025, and all vulnerabilities were patched with the release of iOS 26.3, although most were patched prior.

CLARIFICATION 3/18/26: Clarified the suspected origins of the DarkSword exploit kit and any links to tools developed for the U.S. government.

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That One Time My Parents Were Hacked

Heather Doerges // My mom called the other day. It started out, “Honestly, your father.” Which, isn’t a strange way for her to start a conversation about my dad. “What […]

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