government-backed attacks

State-sponsored hackers likely behind zero-day attacks on Palo Alto firewalls

State-sponsored hackers likely behind zero-day attacks on Palo Alto firewalls 2026-05-08 at 01:14 By Zeljka Zorz Palo Alto Networks believes the in-the-wild exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2026-0300) in its firewalls is likely the work of state-sponsored threat actors. A flaw with no patch (yet) CVE-2026-0300 is a buffer overflow vulnerability in the User-ID Authentication […]

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New Cisco firewall malware can only be killed by pulling the plug

New Cisco firewall malware can only be killed by pulling the plug 2026-04-24 at 13:17 By Zeljka Zorz Suspected state-sponsored attackers are using a custom backdoor to persistently compromise Cisco security devices (firewalls), the US CISA and the UK National Cyber Security Centre warned on Thusday. “The [Firestarter] malware (…) is relevant for both Cisco

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With AI’s help, North Korean hackers stumbled into a near-undetectable attack

With AI’s help, North Korean hackers stumbled into a near-undetectable attack 2026-04-24 at 08:22 By Zeljka Zorz For many years, state-sponsored hacking was defined by human expertise in finding security holes, writing malware and exploits, pulling off social engineering and phishing attacks, and much more. Since the advent of LLM-powered AI assistants and tools, less

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Russian hackers crack into officials’ Signal and WhatsApp accounts

Russian hackers crack into officials’ Signal and WhatsApp accounts 2026-03-09 at 17:02 By Sinisa Markovic Russian state hackers are trying to break into Signal and WhatsApp accounts used by diplomats, military staff, and government officials worldwide, Dutch intelligence agencies warned. They believe journalists and other people who attract attention from Moscow may also be affected.

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State-backed phishing attacks targeting military officials and journalists on Signal

State-backed phishing attacks targeting military officials and journalists on Signal 2026-02-06 at 16:53 By Zeljka Zorz German security authorities are warning that a likely state-backed hacking group is engaged in attempts at phishing senior political figures, military officials, diplomats, and investigative journalists across Germany and Europe via Signal. The authorities also noted that while these

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Russian hackers are exploiting recently patched Microsoft Office vulnerability (CVE-2026-21509)

Russian hackers are exploiting recently patched Microsoft Office vulnerability (CVE-2026-21509) 2026-02-03 at 17:21 By Zeljka Zorz Russian state-sponsored hackers Fancy Bear (aka APT 28) are exploiting CVE-2026-21509, a Microsoft Office vulnerability for which Microsoft released an emergency fix last week. The exploitation CVE-2026-21509 allows unauthorized attackers to bypass a security feature (OLE mitigations in Microsoft

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Notepad++ supply chain attack: Researchers reveal details, IoCs, targets

Notepad++ supply chain attack: Researchers reveal details, IoCs, targets 2026-02-03 at 15:34 By Zeljka Zorz Rapid7 researchers have attributed the recent hijacking of the Notepad++ update mechanism to Lotus Blossom (aka Billbug), a Chinese state-sponsored group known for targeting organizations in Southeast Asia for espionage purposes. On Wednesday, Kaspersky researchers shared the insights they’ve gleaned

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How state-sponsored attackers hijacked Notepad++ updates

How state-sponsored attackers hijacked Notepad++ updates 2026-02-02 at 15:38 By Zeljka Zorz Suspected Chinese state-sponsored attackers hijacked the Notepad++ update mechanism by compromising the software project’s shared hosting server and intercepting and redirecting update traffic destined for notepad-plus-plus.org, the software’s maintainer Don Ho confirmed on Monday. The attack timeline In early December 2025, security researcher

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Unpatched Windows vulnerability continues to be exploited by APTs (CVE-2025-9491)

Unpatched Windows vulnerability continues to be exploited by APTs (CVE-2025-9491) 2025-10-31 at 17:09 By Zeljka Zorz A Windows vulnerability (CVE-2025-9491, aka ZDI-CAN-25373) that state-sponsored threat actors and cybercrime groups have been quietly leveraging since at least 2017 continues to be exploited for attacks. “Arctic Wolf Labs assesses with high confidence that [the campaign they detected]

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Sanctions won’t stop cyberattacks, but they can still “bite”

Sanctions won’t stop cyberattacks, but they can still “bite” 2025-10-29 at 16:58 By Zeljka Zorz Sanctions are one of the tools Western governments use when they want to hit back at state-sponsored cyber threat actors. But do they actually work? That’s the question a group of current and former cybersecurity officials, analysts, and researchers tackled

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China-linked Salt Typhoon hackers attempt to infiltrate European telco

China-linked Salt Typhoon hackers attempt to infiltrate European telco 2025-10-20 at 18:42 By Zeljka Zorz Salt Typhoon, the China-linked APT group that has a penchant for targeting telecommunications companies, has been spotted trying to sneak into yet another one. The intrusion “Darktrace observed activity in a European telecommunications organisation consistent with Salt Typhoon’s known tactics,

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Too many Cisco ASA firewalls still unsecure despite zero-day attack alerts

Too many Cisco ASA firewalls still unsecure despite zero-day attack alerts 2025-10-01 at 13:36 By Zeljka Zorz Despite Cisco and various cybersecurity agencies warning about attackers actively exploting zero-day vulnerabilities (CVE-2025-20333 and CVE-2025-20362) in Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) for months, there are still around 48,000 vulnerable appliances out there. The number is provided by

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Cisco ASA zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in sophisticated attacks

Cisco ASA zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in sophisticated attacks 2025-09-26 at 14:19 By Zeljka Zorz A widespread campaign aimed at breaching organizations via zero-day vulnerabilities in Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) has been revealed by the US, UK, Canadian and Australian cybersecurity agencies. The suspected state-sponsored threat actor behind it is believed to be the one

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Libraesva ESG zero-day vulnerability exploited by attackers (CVE-2025-59689)

Libraesva ESG zero-day vulnerability exploited by attackers (CVE-2025-59689) 2025-09-24 at 15:17 By Zeljka Zorz Suspected state-sponsored attackers have exploited a zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2025-59689) in the Libraesva Email Security Gateway (ESG), the Italian email security company has confirmed. About CVE-2025-59689 CVE-2025-59689 is a command injection vulnerability caused by improper sanitization when removing active code from files

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iOS zero-click attacks used to deliver Graphite spyware (CVE-2025-43200)

iOS zero-click attacks used to deliver Graphite spyware (CVE-2025-43200) 2025-06-13 at 15:22 By Zeljka Zorz A zero-click attack leveraging a freshly disclosed Messages vulnerability (CVE-2025-43200) has infected the iPhones of two European journalists with Paragon’s Graphite mercenary spyware, Citizen Lab researchers have revealed on Thursday. The attacks happened in January and early February 2025. “We

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Attackers breached ConnectWise, compromised customer ScreenConnect instances

Attackers breached ConnectWise, compromised customer ScreenConnect instances 2025-06-02 at 20:19 By Zeljka Zorz A suspected “sophisticated nation state actor” has compromised ScreenConnect cloud instances of a “very small number” of ConnectWise customers, the company has revealed on Wednesday. “We have not observed any additional suspicious activity in ScreenConnect cloud instances since the patch was released

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Chinese cyber spies are using Ivanti EPMM flaws to breach EU, US organizations

Chinese cyber spies are using Ivanti EPMM flaws to breach EU, US organizations 2025-05-23 at 17:21 By Zeljka Zorz CVE-2025-4427 and CVE-2025-4428 – the two Ivanti Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) vulnerabilities that have been exploited in the wild as zero-days and patched by Ivanti last week – are being leveraged by a Chinese cyber espionage

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44% of the zero-days exploited in 2024 were in enterprise solutions

44% of the zero-days exploited in 2024 were in enterprise solutions 2025-04-29 at 21:18 By Zeljka Zorz In 2024, threat actors exploited 75 zero-days – i.e., vulnerabilities previously unknown to vendors, thus without a readily available patch – in a wide variety of attacks. Of these, 33 vulnerabilities (44%) affected enterprise solutions, which is up

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