Nation-state actors cracked critical Australian infrastructure to ‘cripple it at a time of their choosing’
To defuse another attack, Oz spies called foreign counterparts to tell them an op was a bust
Nation State reporting covers malware, threat actors, infrastructure, reported incidents, disruption efforts, and defensive guidance for organizations.
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Background for this topic.
Nation-state activity is cyber activity conducted, directed, or supported by a government, including espionage, disruption, or theft of sensitive information. The label can also cover suspected government-linked actors; attribution is often uncertain and may reflect intelligence assessment rather than publicly proven control.
For practitioners, reporting under this tag can indicate risks to government, critical-infrastructure, research, or strategic commercial networks, particularly through exposed systems, stolen credentials, or exploitation of unpatched vulnerabilities. Useful responses include prioritizing vulnerability remediation on internet-facing assets, enforcing strong authentication, limiting access to sensitive systems, and retaining logs that support investigation. Threat intelligence can help assess whether observed infrastructure or malware resembles activity associated with a state, but defensive decisions should rely on the technical evidence and the affected organization’s risk, not attribution alone.
Weekly headline count for the current query.
To defuse another attack, Oz spies called foreign counterparts to tell them an op was a bust
NCSC boss says China's whole-of-state cyber machine has become Britain's peer competitor in cyberspace State-sponsored cyberattacks from Chinese intelligence and military agencies display "an eye-watering level of sophistication," UK National Cyber Security Centre CEO Richard Horne is expected to say in a less-than-cheery opening speech to kick off its annual conference.…
Darksword is the second iOS exploit chain in a month A new exploit kit targeting iPhone users and stealing their sensitive data is being abused by "multiple" spyware vendors and suspected nation-state goons, security researchers said on Wednesday.…
State-sponsored attackers joined by Chinese snoops and hackers-for-hire in latest round of economic penalties The Council of the European Union sanctioned Emennet Pasargad on Monday, a company used as a front for a series of Iranian cyberattacks.…
Crims 'will do what gets them their objective easiest and fastest,' Microsoft threat intel boss tells The Reg interview AI agents allow cybercriminals and nation-state hackers to outsource the "janitorial-type work" needed to plan and carry out cyberattacks, according to Sherrod DeGrippo, Microsoft's GM of global threat intelligence. North Korea is taking advantage.…
State disputes the company's claim that its routers are made in Vietnam TP-Link is facing legal action from the state of Texas for allegedly misleading consumers with "Made in Vietnam" claims despite China-dominated manufacturing and supply chains, and for marketing its devices as secure despite reported firmware vulnerabilities exploited by Chinese state-sponsored actors.…
Breach lingered for months before stronger signature checks shut the door A state-sponsored cyber criminal compromised Notepad++'s update service in 2025, according to the project's author.…
A new theory from the agency that brought us ‘America hacked itself to blame Beijing’ China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) has alleged a nation-state entity, probably the USA, was behind a 2020 attack on a bitcoin mining operation and by doing so has gone into bat for entities that Beijing usually blasts.…
What to do when even your espresso machine needs end-to-end encryption Sponsored Feature The security landscape is getting more perilous day by day, as both nation-state groups and financially-motivated hackers ramp up their activity.…
Spies, not crooks, were behind digital heist – damage stopped at the backups, says US cybersec biz SonicWall has blamed an unnamed, state-sponsored collective for the September break-in that saw cybercriminals rifle through a cache of firewall configuration backups.…
Meanwhile, others tried to social-engineer the chatbot itself Nation-state goons and cybercrime rings are experimenting with Gemini to develop a "Thinking Robot" malware module that can rewrite its own code to avoid detection, and build an AI agent that tracks enemies' behavior, according to Google Threat Intelligence Group.…
PLUS: Cyber-exec admits selling secrets to Russia; LastPass isn't checking to see if you're dead; Nation-state backed Windows malware; and more Infosec in brief Australia’s Signals Directorate (ASD) last Friday warned that attackers are installing an implant named “BADCANDY” on unpatched Cisco IOS XE devices and can detect deletion of their wares and reinstall their malware.…
Ravin Academy confirms the intrusion on Telegram, says investigation continues Iran's school for state-sponsored cyberattackers admits it suffered a breach exposing the names and other personal information of its associates and students.…
Not to be confused with all the other reports of Chinese intruders on US networks that came to light this week RedNovember, a Chinese state-sponsored cyberspy group, targeted government and critical private-sector networks around the globe between June 2024 and July 2025, exploiting buggy internet-facing appliances to deploy a Go-based backdoor called Pantegana and other offensive security tools, including Cobalt Strike and SparkRAT.…
Secret Service seizes 300-server network allegedly tied to nation-state hackers The US Secret Service has dismantled a network of SIM farms in and around New York City it claims was behind multiple incidents targeting senior government officials and had enough power to disrupt entire cellular networks.…
Zewei Xu's family reportedly bemused at arrest as extradition tabled A man who US authorities allege is a member of Chinese state-sponsored cyberespionage outfit Silk Typhoon was arrested in Milan last week following a tipoff from the US embassy.…
Meanwhile, next-gen script kiddies are levelling up faster thanks to agentic AI Interview Iran's state-sponsored cyber operatives and hacktivists have all increased their activities since the military conflict with Israel erupted last week – but not necessarily in the way that Amazon chief information security officer CJ Moses expected.…
Pen tester on ScreenConnect bug: This one ‘terrifies’ me ConnectWise has brought in the big guns to investigate a "sophisticated nation state actor" that broke into its IT environment and then breached some of its customers.…
Michael Daniel also thinks Uncle Sam should increase help to orgs hit by ransomware INTERVIEW Uncle Sam's cybersecurity apparatus can't only focus on China and other nation-state actors, but also has to fight the much bigger damage from plain old cybercrime, says former White House advisor Michael Daniel. And the Trump administration's steep cuts to federal government staff are making that a lot harder.…
Ex-US Air Force officer says companies shouldn't wait for govt mandates Interview Former US Air Force cyber officer Sarah Cleveland worries about the threat of a major supply-chain attack from China or another adversarial nation. So she installed solar panels on her house: "Because what if the electric grid goes down?" …