Latest cybersecurity reporting from selected sources.

FSB claims large-scale snoop op compromised phones of senior officials, but gives no technical evidence to back allegations

200 orgs and 5,000 devices compromised so far in Vlad's latest intelligence grab, Microsoft reckons The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has issued a fresh warning about Russia's ongoing targeting of routers to steal passwords and other secrets.…

PLUS: US takes down Iranian propaganda sites; Marketing company asks 'Why Do We Have Your Information?' And more! Infosec In Brief Russian intelligence-affiliated parties are posing as customer support services on commercial messaging applications such as Signal to compromise accounts and conduct phishing attacks, the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned last Friday.…

Follows suggestions iPhone-pwning toolset bears hallmarks of zero-days that targeted Russian diplomats Russian cybersecurity outfit Kaspersky is waving away claims that an iPhone exploit kit recently uncovered by Google was developed by the same people who were behind a group of zero-days that allegedly compromised thousands of Russian diplomats in a 2023 campaign.…

Off-the-shelf tools helped Russian-speaking cybercrime group run riot Cybercriminals armed with off-the-shelf generative AI tools compromised more than 600 internet-exposed FortiGate firewalls across 55 countries in just over a month, according to a new incident report from AWS.…

Cyber sleuths believe Sandworm up to its old tricks with a brand-new sabotage toy Russia was probably behind the failed attempts to compromise the systems of Poland's power companies in December, cybersecurity researchers claim.…

'Sustained focus on Western critical infrastructure' Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) is behind a years-long campaign targeting energy, telecommunications, and tech providers, stealing credentials and compromising misconfigured devices hosted on AWS to give the Kremlin's snoops persistent access to sensitive networks, according to Amazon's security boss.…

Curly COMrades strike again Russia's Curly COMrades is abusing Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor in compromised Windows machines to create a hidden Alpine Linux-based virtual machine that bypasses endpoint security tools, giving the spies long-term network access to snoop and deploy malware.…

Russia's top airline cancels 49 flights, delays affect many more Russia's largest airline, Aeroflot, canceled numerous flights on Monday morning following what it says was a failure in its IT systems - something hacktivists are claiming responsiblity for.…

Fancy Bear can't keep its claws out of Outlook inboxes The UK government is warning that Russia's APT28 (also known as Fancy Bear or Forest Blizzard) has been deploying previously unknown malware to harvest Microsoft email credentials and steal access to compromised accounts.…

FYI: What NOT to search after committing a crime The US Army soldier accused of compromising AT&T and bragging about getting his hands on President Trump's call logs allegedly tried to sell stolen information to a foreign intel agent.…

FSB cyberspies venture into a new app for espionage, Microsoft says Star Blizzard, a prolific phishing crew backed by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), conducted a new campaign aiming to compromise WhatsApp accounts and gain access to their messages and data, according to Microsoft.…

Plus: Microsoft seizes phishing domains; Helldown finds new targets; Illegal streaming with Jupyter, and more Infosec in brief Not to make you paranoid, but that business across the street could, under certain conditions, serve as a launching point for Russian cyber spies to compromise your network.…

Those national security threat claims? 'No evidence,' VP tells The Reg Exclusive Despite the Feds' determination to ban Kaspersky's security software in the US, the Russian business continues to push its proposal to open up its data and products to independent third-party review – and prove to Uncle Sam that its code hasn't been and won't be compromised by Kremlin spies.…

Putin's pals use 'GooseEgg' malware to launch attacks you can defeat with patches or deletion Russian spies are exploiting a years-old Windows print spooler vulnerability and using a custom tool called GooseEgg to elevate privileges and steal credentials across compromised networks, according to Microsoft Threat Intelligence.…

Still "no evidence" of any compromised customer-facing systems, we're told Microsoft has now confirmed that the Russian cyberspies who broke into its executives' email accounts stole source code and gained access to internal systems. The Redmond giant has characterized the intrusion as "ongoing."…

Non-techies told to master firmware upgrades and firewall rules. For the infosec hardheads: have some IOCs Authorities from eleven nations have delivered a sequel to the January takedown of a botnet run by Russia on compromised Ubiquiti Edge OS routers – in the form of a warning that Russia may try again, so owners of the devices should take precautions.…

Step one, actually turn on MFA Microsoft, a week after disclosing that Kremlin-backed spies broke into its network and stole internal emails and files from its executives and staff, has now confirmed the compromised corporate account used in the genesis of the heist didn't even have multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled. …

Cozy Bear may have had access to the green rectangular email and SharePoint cloud for six months HPE has become the latest tech giant to admit it has been compromised by Russian operatives.…

Report suggests Sellafield compromised since 2015, response seems worryingly ignorant of Stuxnet The government of the United Kingdom has issued a strongly worded denial of a report that the Sellafield nuclear complex has been compromised by malware for years.…