An attacker can exploit the flaws to put devices into a permanent DoS condition that prevents remote restoration.

The post Vulnerabilities Allow Disruption of Phoenix Contact UPS Devices appeared first on SecurityWeek.

Suspected Iranian hackers infiltrated former national security adviser John Bolton’s email account and threatened to release sensitive materials, his indictment alleges.

The indictment on charges that Bolton mishandled classified information, released Thursday, comes after President Donald Trump’s unprecedented public call for the Justice Department to prosecute his enemies. Bolton served under Trump in his first term as national security adviser and since has become a critic.

The passage of the indictment related to the Iranian hackers seeks to demonstrate a representative of Bolton knew his personal emails included information they shouldn’t have.

In early July of 2021, according to the indictment, the Bolton representative contacted the FBI to alert the bureau about the apparent hack, and their suspicion that it was someone from Iran. The indictment states that it was “a cyber actor believed to be associated with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

The Justice Department had recently closed an investigation into whether Bolton illegally published classified information in a memoir. Later that July, the apparent hackers threatened to release Bolton’s emails, drawing comparisons to the leak of 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails.

“I do not think you would be interested in the FBI being aware of the leaked content of John’s email (some of which have been attached), especially after the recent acquittal,” the threatening note from on or about July 25 read, the indictment states. “This could be the biggest scandal since Hillary’s emails were leaked, but this time on the GOP side! Contact me before it’s too late.”

Days later — on or about July 28, the indictment states — Bolton’s representative also told the FBI that they were “[j]ust sending you the text (not the documents [the hacker] attached since there might be sensitive information in them.)”

According to the indictment, “A day later, on or about July 29, 2021, Bolton’s representative told the FBI that Bolton would be deleting the contents of his personal email account that had been hacked.”

Bolton got one more message from the apparent hackers in August. “OK John … As you want (apparently), we’ll disseminate the expurgated sections of your book by reference to your leaked email…” It’s not clear if the hackers followed through on the threat, or what they demanded of Bolton not to release the sections.

Bolton didn’t disclose to the FBI that he had used a hacked email account to share classified information with two unnamed relatives, “nor did he tell the FBI that the hackers now held this information,” the indictment reads.

A search warrant affidavit released last month contains a passage headed “Hack of Bolton AOL Account by Foreign Entity,” but the passage itself is redacted.

Bolton surrendered to authorities on Friday. The law firm of the lawyer defending did not immediately respond to an email about the indictment passages related to the alleged hack, but his attorney, Abbe Lowell, has denied Bolton committed any crimes.

“These charges stem from portions of Ambassador Bolton’s personal diaries over his 45-year career — records that are unclassified, shared only with his immediate family, and known to the FBI as far back as 2021,” Lowell said in a statement. “Like many public officials throughout history, Ambassador Bolton kept diaries — that is not a crime.”

The post John Bolton indictment says suspected Iranian hackers accessed his emails, issued threats appeared first on CyberScoop.

Fuji Electric has released patches and Japan’s JPCERT has informed organizations about the vulnerabilities. 

The post Fuji Electric HMI Configurator Flaws Expose Industrial Organizations to Hacking appeared first on SecurityWeek.

How much private and sensitive data can you get by pointing $600 worth of satellite equipment at the sky?

Quite a bit, it turns out.

Researchers from the University of Maryland and the University of California, San Diego say they were able to intercept sensitive data from the U.S. military, telecommunications firms, major businesses and organizations by passively scanning and collecting unencrypted data from the satellites responsible for beaming that information across the globe.

The satellites they focused on — geostationary satellites — provide modern high-speed communications and services to rural or remote parts of the globe, including television, IP communications, internet and in-flight Wi-Fi capabilities. They also provide backhaul internet services — the links between a core telecom or internet network and its end users — for private networks operating sensitive remote commercial and military equipment.

Using cheap, commercially available equipment, researchers scanned 39 satellites across 25 distinct longitudinal points over seven months.

The goal was to see how much sensitive data they could intercept by “passively scanning as many GEO transmissions from a single vantage point on Earth as possible.” It was also to prove that you don’t need to be a well-resourced foreign intelligence service or have deep pockets to pull it off.

What they found was unsettling: “Many organizations appear to treat satellite[s] as any other internal link in their private networks. Our study provides concrete evidence that network-layer encryption protocols like IPSec are far from standard on internal networks,” write authors Wenyi Zhang, Annie Dai, Keegan Ryan, Dave Levin, Nadia Heninger and Aaron Schulman.

They note that “severity” of their findings suggest “many organizations do not routinely monitor the security of their own satellite communication links” and that content scrambling “is surprisingly unlikely to be used for private networks using GEO satellite to backhaul IP network traffic from remote areas.”

“Given that any individual with a clear view of the sky and $600 can set up their own GEO interception station from Earth, one would expect that GEO satellite links carrying sensitive commercial and government network traffic would use standardized link and/or network layer encryption to prevent eavesdroppers,” the researchers wrote.

Wired first reported on the academic study.

Researchers reached out to major businesses and organizations that were leaking data via satellite communications to notify them and address the vulnerabilities, but said they declined to engage in any bug bounties that included a nondisclosure agreement.  

The researchers said discussions with the U.S. military, the Mexican government, T-Mobile, AT&T, IntelSat, Panasonic Avionics, WiBo and KPU all took place between December 2024 and July 2025 as the study was ongoing.

Satellites are outfitted with multiple transponders to collect different kinds of telemetry, and here the research focuses on a single type — Ku-Band transponders — that are heavily used for internet and television services. Using their consumer-grade equipment, the researchers were able to tap into 411 different transponders around the globe, collecting reams of sensitive data in the process.

They observed unencrypted data for T-Mobile users, including plaintext user SMS messages, voice call contents, user internet traffic, metadata, browsing history and cellular network signaling protocols, leaking out over the skies. Over a single, nine-hour listening session, the dish picked up phone numbers and metadata for 2,711 individuals. Similar leakages were spotted for calls over Mexican telecoms TelMex and WiBo, and Alaskan telecom KPU Telecommunications.

They also picked up unencrypted and encrypted traffic coming from U.S. military sea vessels, including plaintext that included the ships’ names — something the researchers said allowed them to determine they were all “formerly privately-owned ships” that are now owned by the government. Meanwhile, unencrypted HTTP traffic leaking out through the satellites gave them details into internal applications and systems used for infrastructure, logistics and administrative management.

The researchers say that while this kind of capability isn’t novel, previous research has suggested that only foreign governments and well-resourced companies have the capabilities to conduct such widespread monitoring. Their study, which developed a new way to parse through issues around signal quality, suggests that the barrier of entry is far lower than previously thought, requiring technical knowhow and just a few hundred dollars worth of commercial tech.

“To our knowledge, our threat model of using low-cost consumer grade satellite equipment to comprehensively survey GEO satellite usage has not been explored before in the academic literature.”

The findings underscore how much governments and businesses rely on standard satellite communications today to move their data around, and the lack of security attention these critical nodes receive compared to other technologies.The federal government has designated 16 sectors of society and industry as “critical infrastructure” and prioritized these sectors for additional security investment and assistance. Space is not one of those sectors, though policymakers have pushed the idea as a means to quickly retrofit our space-based communications for security. 

The post Researchers find a startlingly cheap way to steal your secrets from space  appeared first on CyberScoop.

Sony and AMD are collaborating on new GPU technologies for the next-generation PlayStation (likely the PS6), introducing innovations like Radiance Cores for advanced ray tracing and "Universal Compression" for improved performance and efficiency. The Verge reports: Sony's next console (presumably the PS6) is coming in "a few years time," according to someone who I'd believe to make that claim. Mark Cerny, lead architect on the PS5 and PS5 Pro, joined Jack Huynh, SVP and GM of AMD's computing and graphics group, in a YouTube video wherein the pair spend nine minutes going through some very specific, co-developed advancements in graphics technology that will come to the next console. But the pair cautioned that the technologies are still in "every early days" and "only exist in simulation right now." Much of it boils down to how the companies are working to make it easier for future GPUs to handle graphics upscaling, ray tracing, and the super-intensive path tracing techniques used to make game worlds look more realistic. Cerny says "the current approach has reached its limit," so Sony is working with AMD to integrate components of its next-gen RDNA architecture in future consoles. AMD's Huynh introduced Radiance Cores (similar in theory to Nvidia's RT Cores) that are dedicated to handling ray tracing and path tracing. In addition to Sony's new consoles having the new cores, they will almost certainly be built into AMD's future desktop GPUs, too, and likely within whatever it's assisting with in its Xbox partnership.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A fast-spreading Android spyware is mushrooming across Russia, camouflaging itself as popular apps like TikTok or YouTube, researchers at Zimperium have revealed in a blog post.

The company told CyberScoop they expect the campaign is likely to expand beyond Russian borders, too.

In three months, Zimperium zLabs researchers observed more than 600 samples, the company wrote in a blog post Thursday. Once implanted, the spyware can steal text messages, call logs, device information and more, and wrest control of a phone to do things like take pictures or place phone calls.

“It’s mainly targeting Russia, but they can always adapt to other payloads, and since every inflected phone then becomes an attack vector, it’s likely to become a global campaign,” said Nico Chiaraviglio, chief scientist at Zimperium. “However, it’s not easy to know the attackers’ intentions.”

The spyware, dubbed ClayRat, has some notable tools it uses to infect victims.

“ClayRat poses a serious threat not only because of its extensive surveillance capabilities, but also because of its abuse of Android’s default SMS handler role,” the blog post reads. “This technique allows it to bypass standard runtime permission prompts and gain access to sensitive data without raising alarms.”

It’s also been evolving quickly, Zimperium said, “adding new layers of obfuscation and packing to evade detection.”

Zimperium didn’t say who was behind the spyware. The Russian government is a cyberspace power, but typically hasn’t had to rely on spyware vendors, per se, as it has its own capabilities. Often — but not always — spyware linked to or suspected to be linked to the Kremlin is turned inwards, snooping on domestic targets.

“ClayRat is distributed through a highly orchestrated mix of social engineering and web-based deception, designed to exploit user trust and convenience,” according to Zimperium. “The campaign relies heavily on Telegram channels and phishing websites that impersonate well-known services and applications.”

ClayRat’s users also rely on phishing platforms.

The post Russian spyware ClayRat is spreading, evolving quickly, according to Zimperium appeared first on CyberScoop.

Radiflow360 provides enhanced visibility, risk management, and incident response capabilities for mid-sized industrial enterprises. 

The post Radiflow Unveils New OT Security Platform appeared first on SecurityWeek.

Encryption lives on in Europe. For now.

The German government has said it will oppose a piece of European Union legislation later this month that would subject phones and other devices to mass scanning — prior to encryption — by the government for evidence of child sexual abuse material.  

Federal Minister of Justice Stefanie Hubig was one of several officials from the ruling Christian Democratic Union party to reiterate over the past 24 hours that Germany’s position hasn’t changed.

“Mass scanning of private messages must be taboo in a constitutional state,” Hubig said, according to a statement on X from the Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection Wednesday. “Germany will not agree to such proposals at the EU level.”

Another CDU member, Jens Spahn, told German journalist Phillip Eckstein of ARD-Hauptstadtstudio that those sentiments are widely held within the party.

“We, as the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, are against the random monitoring of chats,” Spahn said, according to a machine-translated transcript. “That would be like opening all letters as a precaution and checking whether there’s anything illegal in them. That’s not possible, and we won’t allow that.”

The statements came after a week where tech experts and privacy activists in Europe publicly warned that Germany — which had opposed the measure since its introduction in 2022 and operated as a key swing vote — was preparing to back the measure in an upcoming Oct. 14 vote.

The German government did not respond to requests for comment from CyberScoop earlier this week, and other parties have said efforts to communicate with German officials about their intentions were met with “silence” and “stonewalling.”

The prospect of having all digital messages — and possibly other content like audio and video — scanned before encryption would defeat the very purpose of encryption and create an untenable situation, according to Meredith Whittaker, CEO of encrypted messaging app Signal. Whittaker threatened that her organization was prepared to pull out of Europe over the proposal.

Germany’s about-face likely won’t mark the end of this dispute. Western governments in the U.S. and Europe have been seeking to place limits on encrypted communications for decades, arguing that end-to-end encryption with no means of access for law enforcement makes it harder to investigate horrific crimes like pedophilia, terrorism and cybercrime. 

Earlier this year, Apple pulled its own end-to-end encryption feature in the U.K. after British national security officials sent the company a letter demanding access to encrypted iCloud data for law enforcement and national security investigations.

There are indications that criminal suspects are increasingly turning to encrypted communications to hide evidence of their criminality. But privacy advocates have pointed out that strong encryption also protects many law-abiding citizens from potential government repression.

The post German government says it will oppose EU mass-scanning proposal appeared first on CyberScoop.

Tech experts and companies offering encrypted messaging services are warning that  pending European regulation, which would grant governments broad authority to scan messages and content on personal devices for criminal activity, could spell “the end” of privacy in Europe.

The European Union will vote Oct. 14 on a legislative proposal from the Danish Presidency known as Chat Control — a law that would require mass scanning of user devices, for abusive or illegal material. Over the weekend, Signal warned that Germany — a longtime opponent and bulwark against the proposal — may now move to vote in favor, giving the measure the support needed to pass into law.

On Monday, Signal CEO Meredith Whittaker warned that her company, which provides end-to-end encrypted communications services, could exit the European market entirely if the proposal is adopted.

“This could end private comms-[and] Signal-in the EU,” Whittaker wrote on BlueSky. “Time’s short and they’re counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.”

According to data privacy experts, Chat Control would require access to the contents of apps like Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, Threema and others before messages are encrypted. While ostensibly aimed at criminal activity, experts say such features would also undermine and jeopardize the integrity of all other users’ encrypted communications, including journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents, domestic abuse survivors and other victims who rely on the technology for legitimate means.

The pending EU vote is the latest chapter in a decades-long battle between governments and digital privacy proponents about whether, and how, law enforcement should be granted access to encrypted communications in criminal or national security cases. 

Supporters point to increasing use of encrypted communications by criminal organizations, child traffickers, and terrorist organizations, arguing that unrestricted encryption impedes law enforcement investigations, and that some means of “lawful access” to that information is technically feasible without imperiling privacy writ-large.

Privacy experts have long argued that there are no technically feasible ways to provide such services without creating a backdoor that could be abused by other bad actors, including foreign governments.

Whittaker reportedly told the German Press Agency that “given a choice between building a surveillance machine into Signal or leaving the market, we would leave the market,” while calling repeated claims from governments that such features could be implemented without weakening encryption “magical thinking that assumes you can create a backdoor that only the good guys can access.”

The Chaos Computer Club, an association of more than 7,000 European hackers, has also opposed the measure, saying its efforts to reach out to Germany’s Home Office, Justice Department and Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger for clarity on the country’s position ahead of the Chat Control vote have been met with “silence” and “stonewalling.”

The association and U.S.-based privacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have argued that the client-side scanning technology that the EU would implement is error-prone and “invasive.”

“If the government has access to one of the ‘ends’ of an end-to-end encrypted communication, that communication is no longer safe and secure,” wrote EFF’s Thorin Klowsowski.

Beyond the damage Chat Control could cause to privacy, the Chaos Computer Club worried that its adoption by the EU might embolden other countries to pursue similar rules, threatening encryption worldwide.

“If such a law on chat control is introduced, we will not only pay with the loss of our privacy,” Elina Eickstädt, spokesperson for the Chaos Computer Club, said in a statement. “We will also open the floodgates to attacks on secure communications infrastructure.”

The Danish proposal leaves open the potential to use AI technologies to scan user content, calling for such technologies “to be vetted with regard to their effectiveness, their impact on fundamental rights and risks to cybersecurity.”

Because Chat Control is publicly focused on curtailing child sexual abuse material (CSAM), the intital scanning will target both known and newly identified CSAM, focusing on images and internet links. For now, text and audio content, as well as scanning for  evidence of grooming — a more difficult crime to define — are excluded. 

Still, the Danish proposal specifies that scanning for grooming is “subject to … possible inclusion in the future through a review clause,” which would likely require even more intrusive monitoring of text, audio and video conversations. 

It also calls for “specific safeguards applying to technologies for detection in services using end-to-end encryption” but does not specify what those safeguards would be or how they would surmount the technical challenges laid out by digital privacy experts.

The post Potential EU law sparks global concerns over end-to-end encryption for messaging apps  appeared first on CyberScoop.

A coordinated Israeli-backed network of social media accounts pushed anti-government propaganda — including deepfakes and other AI-generated content — to Iranians as real-world kinetic attacks were happening, with the goal of fomenting revolt among the country’s people, according to researchers at Citizen Lab.

In research released this week, the nonprofit — along with Clemson University disinformation researcher Darren Linvill — said the so-called PRISONBREAK campaign was primarily carried out by a network of 50-some accounts on X created in 2023, but was largely dormant until this year.

The group “routinely used” AI-generated imagery and video in their operations to try to stoke unrest among Iran’s population, mimic real news outlets to spread false content and encourage overthrow of the Iranian government.

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, launched following a coordinated attack by Hamas in October 2023, eventually expanded to include air strikes in Lebanon and Yemen.

In June, Israel Defense Forces launched an attack against Iranian nuclear facilities while also targeting senior Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists for assassination. Those strikes expanded to other Iranian targets, like oil facilities, national broadcasters and a strike on Evin Prison in Tehran.

In the early days of the conflict, the networks shared images and videos — of uncertain authenticity — claiming to show Iran in a state of chaos and instability.

One widely circulated video, likely altered with AI, depicted people standing in line at an ATM before breaking into a riot, accompanied by messages like “The Islamic Republic has failed!” and “This regime is the enemy of us, the people!”

But the bulk of Citizen Lab’s research focused on the period between June 13-24, 2023, during the “12 Day War” between Israel and Iran and social media activity during and after a real June 24 Israeli airstrike on Evin Prison. The facility is known for housing thousands of political prisoners and dissidents of the Iranian regime, and organizations like Human Rights Watch have tracked incidents of mistreatment, torture and executions.

The strike happened between 11:17 a.m. and 12:18 p.m. Iranian local time. By 11:52 a.m., accounts associated with the network began posting about the attack, and at 12:05 p.m., one posted an AI-generated video purporting to show footage of the attack, tricking several news outlets into sharing the content as genuine.

“The exact timing of the video’s posting, while the bombing on the Evin Prison was allegedly still happening, points towards the conclusion that it was part of a premeditated and well-synchronized influence operation,” wrote researchers Alberto Fittarelli, Maia Scott, Ron Deibert, Marcus Michaelsen, and Linvill.

Other accounts from the network began quickly piling on, spreading word of the explosions, and by 12:36 p.m., accounts were explicitly calling for Iranian citizens to march on the prison and free the prisoners.

Most of the posts failed to gain traction with online audiences except for one. A message calling on “kids” to storm Evin Prison to free their “loved ones” also contained a video with AI-generated imagery spliced with real footage of Iranian citizen repression.   It managed to rack up more than 46,000 views and 3,500 likes.

“This second video about the Evin Prison, which shows the hallmarks of professional editing and was posted within one hour from the end of the bombings further strongly suggests that the PRISONBREAK network’s operators had prior knowledge of the Israeli military action, and were prepared to coordinate with it,” researchers wrote.

Those posts and others by PRISONBREAK operators led researchers to believe the campaign — still active as of today — is being carried out by either an Israeli government agency or a sub-contractor working on behalf of the Israeli government. 

The press office for the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C., did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CyberScoop.

Despots — and democracies — fuel disinformation ecosystem

It’s not the first time the Israeli government has been tied to an online influence campaign related to the Gaza conflict, nor would it be the first time the country has reportedly tapped private industry to wage information warfare.

Last year, researchers at Meta, OpenAI, Digital Forensic Research Lab and independent disinformation researcher Marc Owen Jones all tracked activity from a similar network on Facebook, X and Instagram that targeted Canadian and U.S. users with posts calling for the release of Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas, criticism of U.S. campus protests against Israeli military operations and attacks against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

Meta and OpenAI both flagged STOIC, a firm based in Tel Aviv that is believed to be working on behalf of the Israeli government, as behind much of the activity.

Citizen Lab’s report identified two other Israeli firms, Team Jorge and Archimedes Group, that sell disinformation-for-hire services to government clients.

“Both companies offered their services to a wide array of clients globally, used advanced technologies to build and conduct their covert campaigns, and advertised existing or prior connections to the Israeli intelligence community,” Citizen Lab researchers wrote.

While Western threat intelligence companies and media outlets can present disinformation campaigns as mostly a tool of autocratic or authoritarian countries, researchers have warned that democratic governments and private industry are increasingly playing key roles in information warfare.

David Agranovich, Meta’s senior policy director for threat disruption, told CyberScoop last year that commercial marketing firms provide governments an additional layer of obfuscation when attempting to manipulate public opinion without leaving direct digital fingerprints.

“These services essentially democratize access to sophisticated influence or surveillance capabilities, while hiding the client who’s behind them,” Agranovich said.

The post Researchers say Israeli government likely behind AI-generated disinfo campaign in Iran appeared first on CyberScoop.

North Korean nationals who conceal their identities to infiltrate businesses as employees or contractors continue to expand their presence beyond technology companies and America’s borders. 

Nearly every industry has been duped into hiring North Koreans in violation of sanctions, as technology companies represent only half of all targeted victims, threat researchers at Okta said in a report this week.

Okta Threat Intelligence found evidence confirming North Korean nationals have targeted and sought roles at any organization recruiting remote talent. The North Korean regime will pursue any opportunity to collect and launder payment if the application, interview process and work can be performed remotely, researchers said. 

North Koreans are no longer limiting themselves to IT and software engineering positions. According to Okta’s research, more North Koreans are now applying for remote finance positions, such as payments processors, and engineering roles.

While technology firms attract the highest volume of applications and job interviews, other verticals including finance and insurance, health care, manufacturing, public administration and professional services appeared often in Okta’s analysis. 

Researchers based the study on more than 130 identities used by facilitators and workers participating in the scheme, and linked those personas to more than 6,500 job interviews spread across about 5,000 companies over a four-year period through mid-2025.

Okta acknowledges this only reflects a small sample of North Korea’s scheme, but said it highlights the extent to which IT worker units are targeting more industries in more countries. 

“It’s possible that increased awareness of this threat — as well as government and private sector collaborative efforts to identify and disrupt their operations — may be an additional driver for them to increasingly target roles outside of the US and IT industries,” Okta threat researchers said in the report.

Indeed, threat intelligence firms and officials have consistently warned about the growing pervasiveness of North Korea’s scheme. In April, Mandiant said hundreds of Fortune 500 organizations have unwittingly hired North Korean IT workers. 

CrowdStrike, in August, said it observed a 220% year-over-year increase in North Korean IT worker activity, amounting to 320 incident response cases in the past year. The Justice and Treasury Departments have seized cryptocurrency, issued indictments and sanctioned people and entities allegedly involved in the yearslong scheme.

Okta analysis revealed a global expansion of the North Korea IT worker operation, with 27% of targeted roles based outside of the United States. Researchers observed North Korean operatives targeting roles in the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany, with each country accounting for about 150 to 250 roles. 

Other top targeted countries include India, Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, Japan, France and Poland.

Okta cautioned that non-U.S.-based companies are likely less skilled and concerned with finding North Korean job applicants because the scheme was largely viewed as a U.S. technology industry problem. This creates an elevated problem in newly targeted countries, researchers said. 

“Years of sustained activity against a broad range of U.S. industries have allowed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea-aligned facilitators and workers to refine their infiltration methods,” Okta said in the report. “Consequently, they are entering new markets with a mature, well-adapted workforce capable of bypassing basic screening controls and exploiting hiring pipelines more effectively.”

The post North Korea IT worker scheme swells beyond US companies appeared first on CyberScoop.

ENISA has published its 2025 Threat Landscape report, highlighting some of the attacks aimed at OT systems.

The post Many Attacks Aimed at EU Targeted OT, Says Cybersecurity Agency appeared first on SecurityWeek.

NIST Special Publication 1334 focuses on reducing cybersecurity risks associated with the use of removable media devices in OT environments.

The post NIST Publishes Guide for Protecting ICS Against USB-Borne Threats appeared first on SecurityWeek.

An elusive, persistent, newly confirmed China espionage group has hit almost 10 victims of geopolitical importance in the Middle East, Africa and Asia using specific tactics and extreme stealth to avoid detection, according to Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42. 

Phantom Taurus uses tools and a distinct homegrown set of malware and backdoors that sets them apart from other China threat groups, said Assaf Dahan, who’s led an investigation into the group since 2022 as director of threat research at Palo Alto Networks’ Cortex unit. 

The discovery of an undocumented threat group conducting long-term intelligence-gathering operations aligned with Beijing’s interests underscores the spread of China’s offensive espionage operations globally. Roughly 3 in 4 nation-state threats originate from or are operating on behalf of the Chinese government’s interests, Dahan told CyberScoop.

Unit 42 did not name Phantom Taurus’ victims but said the group has infiltrated networks operated by ministries of foreign affairs, embassies, diplomats and telecom networks to steal sensitive and timely data around major summits between government leaders or political and economic events.

Phantom Taurus seeks sustained access to highly targeted networks so it can periodically and opportunistically steal data they want at any time. Unit 42 researchers responded to one case involving access going back almost two years, Dahan said. 

The threat group remains active and has expanded its scope over time by targeting more organizations. “The latest activity was just a couple of months ago when we saw them highly active in at least two regions of the world,” Dahan said.

Unit 42 expects more victims to be identified as a result of its report, which includes details about the group’s specialized malware, indicators of compromise and tactics, techniques and procedures. 

Phantom Taurus uses multiple pieces of malware, including the newly identified NET-STAR malware suite, which consists of three distinct web-based backdoors. These backdoors support in-memory execution of command-line arguments, arbitrary commands and payloads, and the loading and execution of .NET payloads with evasive capabilities designed to avoid detection in more heavily monitored environments, according to Unit 42.

“These pieces of malware are designed for extreme stealth, allowing them to operate clandestinely, under the radar, and infiltrate into really sensitive organizations,” Dahan said. While Phantom Taurus uses some infrastructure and tools that are commonly shared among multiple Chinese espionage groups, Unit 42 isn’t aware of any other groups using the suite of specialized malware.

The group most often breaks into networks by locating internet-facing devices that can be exploited via known vulnerabilities, Dahan said. “The level of sophistication that we’ve seen from this group is really off the charts. But when it comes to how they actually put a foot in the door, it’s as basic as exploiting an unpatched server most of the time,” he added.

Phantom Taurus’ tools, capabilities, targets and other fingerprints left behind by its activities gives Unit 42 confidence the group is unique and does not overlap with a group previously identified by other research firms. 

“Their entire playbook seems distinct and quite apart from other Chinese threat actors,” Dahan said. “It’s not something that you can mistake for another group.”

The post Palo Alto Networks spots new China espionage group showcasing advanced skills appeared first on CyberScoop.

Agencies in several countries have created guidance titled ‘Creating and Maintaining a Definitive View of Your OT Architecture’.

The post New Guidance Calls on OT Operators to Create Continually Updated System Inventory appeared first on SecurityWeek.

The United Nations is making a push to more directly influence global policy on artificial intelligence, including the promotion of policymaking and technical standards around “safe, secure and trustworthy” AI. 

Last month, the world body finalized plans to create a new expert panel focused on developing scientific, technical and policy standards for the emerging technology. The Independent Scientific Panel on AI will be staffed by 40 international experts serving three-year terms and will be drawn from “balanced geographic representation to promote scientific understanding” around the risks and impacts.

The same resolution also created the Global Dialogue on AI Governance, which will aim to bring together governments, businesses and experts together to “discuss international cooperation, share best practices and lessons learned, and to facilitate open, transparent and inclusive discussions on artificial intelligence governance.” The first task listed for the dialogue is “ the development of safe, secure and trustworthy artificial intelligence.”

On Thursday, Secretary-General António Guterres said the actions will help the UN move “from principles to practice” and help further promote the organization as a global forum for shaping AI policy and standards. 

It will also be an opportunity to build international consensus on a range of thorny issues, including AI system energy consumption, the technology’s impact on the human workforce, and the best ways to prevent its misuse for malicious ends or repression of citizens. 

The UN’s work “will complement existing efforts around the world – including at the OECD, the G7, and regional organizations – and provide an inclusive, stable home for AI governance coordination efforts,” he said. “In short, this is about creating a space where governments, industry and civil society can advance common solutions together.”

Guterres wielded lofty rhetoric to argue that the technology was destined to become integral to the lives of billions of people and fundamentally restructure life on Earth (computer scientists and AI experts have more mixed opinions around this).

“The question is no longer whether AI will transform our world – it already is,” said Guterres. “The question is whether we will govern this transformation together – or let it govern us.”

The UN’s push on safety, security and trust in AI systems comes as high spending, high-adoption countries like the United States, the UK and Europe have either moved away from emphasizing those same concerns, or leaned more heavily into arguing for deregulation to help their industries compete with China. 

International tech experts told CyberScoop that this may leave an opening for the UN or another credible body to have a larger voice shaping discussions around safe and responsible AI. But they were also realistic about the UN’s limited authority to do much more than encourage good policy.

Pavlina Pavova, a cyber policy expert at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna, Austria, told CyberScoop that the United Nations has been building a foundation to have more substantive discussions around AI and remains “the most inclusive forum for international dialogue” around the technology. 

However, she added: “The newly established formats are consultative and lack enforcement authority, playing a confidence-building role at best.”

James Lewis, a senior adviser at the Center for European Policy Analysis, echoed some of those sentiments, saying the UN’s efforts will have “a limited impact.” But he also said it’s clear that the AI industry is “completely incapable of judging risk” and that putting policymakers with real “skin in the game” in charge of developing solutions could help counter that dynamic.

That mirrors an approach taken by organizers of the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium, who filled their commission with influential lawmakers and policy experts in order to get buy-in around concrete proposals. It worked: the commission estimates that 75% of its final recommendations have since been adopted into law. 

“The most important thing they can do is have a strong chair, because a strong chair can make sure that the end product is useful,” Lewis said.

Another challenge Lewis pointed to: AI adoption and investment tends to be highest in the US, UK and European Union, all governments that will likely seek to blaze their own trail on AI policies. Those governments may wind up balking at recommendations from a panel staffed by experts from countries with lower AI adoption rates, something Lewis likened to passengers “telling you how to drive the bus.”

For Tiffany Saade, a technology expert and AI policy consultant to the Lebanese government and an adjunct adviser at the Institute for Security and Technology, the inclusion of those nontraditional perspectives is the point, giving them an opportunity to shape policy for a technology that is going to impact their lives very soon. 

Saade, who attended UN discussions in New York City this week around AI, told CyberScoop that trust was a major theme, particularly for countries with lesser technological and financial resources.

But any good ideas that come out of the UN’s process will need to have real incentives built in to nudge countries and companies into adopting preferred policies.

“We have to figure out structures around that to incentivize leading governments and frontier labs to comply with [the recommendations] without compromising innovation,” she said. 

The post UN seeks to build consensus on ‘safe, secure and trustworthy’ AI appeared first on CyberScoop.

Cognex is advising customers to transition to newer versions of its machine vision products.

The post No Patches for Vulnerabilities Allowing Cognex Industrial Camera Hacking appeared first on SecurityWeek.

Ambitious, suspected Chinese hackers with a slew of goals — stealing intellectual property, mining intelligence on national security and trade, developing avenues for future advanced cyberattacks — have been setting up shop inside U.S. target networks for exceptionally long stretches of time, in a breach that the researchers who uncovered it said could present problems for years to come.

Mandiant and Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) researchers described the campaign as exceptionally sophisticated, stealthy and complex, calling those behind it a “next-level threat.” But they don’t yet have a full handle on who the hackers are behind the malware they’ve dubbed Brickstorm, or how far it stretches. A blog post the company posted Wednesday sheds light on the group.

The primary targets are legal services organizations and tech companies that provide security services, the researchers said. But the hackers aren’t limiting their interest to the primary targets, since they’ve used that access to infiltrate “downstream” customers. The researchers declined to describe those downstream customers, or say whether U.S. federal agencies are among those targeted. A great many of them don’t know yet that they’re victims, they said.

By stealing intellectual property from security-as-a-service (SaaS) firms, the hackers aim to find future zero-day vulnerabilities, a kind of vulnerability that is previously unknown and unpatched and thus highly prized, in order to enable more attacks down the line, the researchers from Mandiant and its parent company Google said.

The researchers declined to comment on possible Chinese government agency connections. But they see overlap with Chinese hacking groups like the one they’ve labeled UNC5221 — perhaps best known for exploiting Ivanti flaws, and a group that Mandiant and GTIIG described as the “most prevalent” Chinese-centered threat group right now — and the one Microsoft calls Silk Typhoon, which researchers warned recently has been ramping up its attacks this year, with targets including IT supply chains and the cloud. Silk Typhoon is believed to be Chinese government-sponsored. 

The company has also developed a tool for potential victims to discover if they’ve been affected by Brickstorm activity, which Google experts indicated is a distinct possibility that could impact scores of organizations over the coming weeks.

“We have no doubt that organizations will use our tools to hunt for this adversary, and they will find evidence of compromise in their environments,” Charles Carmakal, chief technology officer at Mandiant Consulting, told reporters briefed on the blog post. “And it may be active compromises, it might be historic compromises, but many of our organizations are going to discover that they were dealing with this adversary.” 

Sneaky, sneaky

The campaign’s average “dwell time” is 400 days, they said, compared to dwell times more commonly measured in days or weeks. 

Several features obscure Brickstorm activity. “It’s very hard to detect them and to investigate them,” said Austin Larsen, principal threat analyst at GTIG.

The hackers target systems that don’t support defenses for finding and tracking threats on endpoints, such as laptops or cell phones. Examples of target systems that don’t support that kind of endpoint detection and response (EDR) include email security gateways or vulnerability scanners. They consistently target VMware vCenter and ESXi hosts, according to the blog post.

The researchers also never see overlap between the internet protocols of the attackers between victims, Larsen said, or another way of identifying attackers: “The hashes when they land on this are different for essentially every system.”

Brickstorm attackers also “clean up after themselves” at times, Carmakal said. “Brickstorm may not exist in a victim environment today, but it could have been there for a year and a half. It might have been deleted back in April this year, back in January this year,” he said.

What they want

Brickstorm also isn’t just about one goal. “It’s an intelligence operation, but not just an intelligence operation,” said John Hultquist, chief analyst at GTIG. “This is a long-term play.”

The hackers are primarily compromising victims through zero-days, but they’re aiming to uncover new ones, too, by going through companies’ proprietary source code. That gives them multiple ways to penetrate new victim networks.

The Brickstorm hackers “hit the SaaS providers, who either hold data for people, or they have some connectivity to downstream,” Hultquist said. Or he said the group can “get a hold of the technology source code and leverage that source code information to gain access or to build out exploits in that technology, which would then give [them] basically a skeleton key to that technology.”

But its victims can be even more precise than that. “As part of this campaign, we observed in some organizations — including some legal organizations — we observed the actor searching the emails of very specific individuals,” Larsen said. The hackers have focused on collecting espionage on international trade and national security from those organizations.

Google has been tracking Brickstorm for a while now. This spring, Belgian cybersecurity company NVISO also shined the spotlight on Brickstorm variants spying on European businesses. Google’s latest blog post identifies Brickstorm activity as far more extensive than previously described.

The response

Mandiant and GTIG have notified U.S. federal agencies and international governments about the campaign.

The tool is a scanner script that can be used on Unix systems, even if YARA (a common security tool used to find and identify malware) isn’t installed. This script is designed to do the same type of search as a specific YARA rule by looking for certain words and patterns that are unique to the Brickstorm backdoor.

“The most important thing here is, if you find Brickstorm, you really need to do a very thorough enterprise investigation, because the adversary that’s dropping this is a very, very advanced adversary that is known for stealing intellectual property from organizations,” Carmakal said. “It’s known for using access from victim companies to get into downstream customer environments.”

It’s all a “very, very significant threat campaign [that’s] very, very hard to defend against in tech,” Carmakal said.

Updated 9/24/25: with additional information about past Brickstorm reporting.

The post Brickstorm malware powering ‘next-level’ Chinese cyberespionage campaign appeared first on CyberScoop.

Researchers say a Russian group sanctioned by the European Union and wanted by the U.S. government is behind an influence operation targeting upcoming elections in Moldova.

In a report released Tuesday, researchers at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab said that REST Media — an online news outlet launched in June whose posts have quickly amassed millions of views on social media — is actually the work of Rybar, a known Russian disinformation outfit connected to other documented influence campaigns against Western countries and Russian-foes like Ukraine.

REST’s content — spread through its website and social media sites like Telegram, X and TikTok — often hammered Moldova’s pro-EU party, the Party of Action and Solidarity, with claims of electoral corruption, vote selling and other forms of misconduct. The site also sought to explicitly cast Moldova’s anti-disinformation efforts as a form of government censorship.

While REST publishes anonymously-bylined articles on its website meant to mimic news reporting, most of its reach has come from TikTok, which accounts for the overwhelming majority of the 3.1 million views its content has received online.

“The actual scope and reach of REST’s campaign likely extends beyond what is documented in this investigation,” wrote researchers Jakub Kubś and Eto Buziashvili.

The researchers provide technical evidence that they say shows unavoidable connection and overlap between the online and cloud-based infrastructure hosting REST and online assets from previously known Rybar operations.

For instance, the site shares “identical” server configurations, file transfer protocol settings and control panel software as Rybar’s mapping platform, while a forensic review of REST’s asset metadata found a number of file paths that explicitly reference Rybar.

“These operational security lapses appear to indicate that at least some REST content follows the same production workflow as Rybar,” Kubś and Buziashvili wrote.

Analysis of the domain for REST’s website found it was registered June 20 “through a chain of privacy-focused services that collectively create multiple layers of anonymization.” The registration was processed out by Sarek Oy, a Finland-based domain registrar company with a history of involvement with pirated websites that was denied formal accreditation by international bodies like ICANN.

The listed domain registrant for REST’s website, 1337 (or “LEET”) Services LLC, appears to be a play on common hacker slang, and DFIRLab said the company is tied to a notorious VPN service based in St. Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean that is known for helping clients hide their identities.

Efforts to reach the site’s operators were not successful. REST’s website, which is still active, contains no information about the identities of editorial staff, regularly publishes stories with anonymous bylines and does not appear to provide any means for readers to contact the publication, though there is a section for readers to leak sensitive documents and apply for employment.

Kubś and Buziashvili said the new research demonstrates that REST “is more than just another clone in Russian’s information operations ecosystem.”

“It provides granular detail on how actors, such as Rybar, adapt, regenerate, and cloak themselves to continue their efforts to influence,” the authors wrote. “From shared FTP configurations to sloppy metadata, the evidence points to REST being part of a broader strategy to outlast sanctions through proxy brands and technical obfuscation.”

It also underscores “that such influence efforts” from Russia are not siloed “but cross-pollinated across regions, platforms, and political contexts, seeding disinformation that resonates well beyond Moldovan borders.”

No REST from influence campaigns

REST is the latest in a string of information operations targeting Moldova’s elections that have been traced back to the Russian government over the past year, according to Western governments and independent researchers who track state-backed disinformation campaigns.

A risk assessment from the Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Information Sharing and Analysis Center on Sept. 9 identifies what it described as “persistent Russian-led hybrid threats, including information warfare, illicit financing, cyberattacks, and proxy mobilisation, aimed at undermining the Moldovan government’s pro-EU agenda and boosting pro-Russian actors.”

The assessment pointed to Moldova’s fragmented media landscape — “where banned pro-Russian outlets evade restrictions via mirror websites, apps, and social media platforms such as Telegram and TikTok” — as a vulnerability that is being exploited by Russian actors, alongside the country’s limited regulatory resources and gaps in online political ad regulation. Russian-directed influence activities in Moldova have “evolved significantly” from funding real-life protests and other forms of paid mobilization to “increasingly technology driven operations,” including social media and newer technologies like artificial intelligence.

But such mobilization may still be part of Russia’s plans. Earlier this week, Moldovan authorities carried out 250 raids and detained dozens of individuals that they claimed were part of a Russian-orchestrated plot to incite riots and destabilize the country ahead of next week’s elections.

The goal is to create a society that feels besieged from all sides — facing not only external pressure from Russia abroad but also internal political strife that can prevent a unified front.

“This intersection of external manipulation and internal fragmentation heightens political polarisation, risks disengaging the traditionally pro-European diaspora, and fosters growing public apathy and disillusionment, outcomes that directly threaten electoral integrity and democratic resilience,” the assessment concluded.

It also comes as the U.S. federal government has — often loudly and proudly — moved away from any systemic effort to fight or limit the spread of disinformation domestically and abroad.

The State Department under Secretary Marco Rubio earlier this year shut down the Global Engagement Center, which was created by Congress and functioned as the federal government’s primary diplomatic arm for engaging with other countries on disinformation issues.

In a Sept. 17 statement, State Department principal deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott confirmed that the department had “ceased all Frameworks to Counter Foreign State Information Manipulation and any associated instruments implemented by the former administration.” 

Pigott added that the decision to shutter the office, which focused mostly on foreign disinformation campaigns waged by autocrats abroad, aligns with an executive order on free speech and freedom of expression issued shortly after Trump took office.

“Through free speech, the United States will counter genuine malign propaganda from adversaries that threaten our national security, while protecting Americans’ right to exchange ideas,” Pigott said.

In addition to the State Department, the Trump administration has shut down the foreign influence task force at the FBI and fired officials and eliminated disinformation research at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

The Foreign Malign Influence Center, a key office housed within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, was responsible for piecing together intelligence around burgeoning foreign influence operations targeting U.S. elections and notifying policymakers and the public. According to sources familiar with the matter, the center’s work has largely ground to a halt under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who is planning to eliminate the center as part of a larger intelligence reorganization plan.

Lindsay Gorman, a former White House official under the Biden administration, told CyberScoop earlier this year that the U.S. needs a way to coordinate with democratic allies and provide effective interventions when their elections and digital infrastructure are being targeted by intelligence services in Russia, China and other adversarial nations.

One way to fight back, Gorman said, is to have “eyes and ears on the ground” on those countries and “to expose covert campaigns for what they are,” something that outfits like the State Department’s Global Engagement Center were explicitly designed to do.

The post Researchers say media outlet targeting Moldova is a Russian cutout appeared first on CyberScoop.

Novakon HMIs are affected by remote code execution and information exposure vulnerabilities. 

The post Unpatched Vulnerabilities Expose Novakon HMIs to Remote Hacking appeared first on SecurityWeek.