Latest cybersecurity reporting from selected sources.

A new two-stage malware family called RustDuck is hijacking home routers, IP cameras, Android boxes, and poorly secured servers, then stitching them into a network built to knock websites and online services offline

Authorities in Europe and North America have announced the dismantling of a criminal virtual private network (VPN) service used by criminal actors to obscure the origins of ransomware attacks, data theft, scanning, and denial-of-service attacks

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday announced the disruption of command-and-control (C2) infrastructure used by several Internet of Things (IoT) botnets like AISURU, Kimwolf, JackSkid, and Mossad as part of a court-authorized law enforcement operation

The U.S. Justice Department joined authorities in Canada and Germany in dismantling the online infrastructure behind four highly disruptive botnets that compromised more than three million hacked Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as routers and web cameras. The feds say the four botnets -- named Aisuru, Kimwolf, JackSkid and Mossad -- are responsible for a series of recent record-smashing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks capable of knocking nearly any target offline.

French postal service warns of “major network incident” just before Christmas

Initially though to be a DDoS attack, the incident was actually due to a routine change in permissions that caused widespread software failure.

The for-hire platform leverages legitimate cloud-native tools to make detection and disruption harder for defenders and SOC analysts.

Feds say Mirai-spawned botnet blasted 370K attacks before AWS and pals helped yank its servers RapperBot, a botnet-for-hire blamed for hundreds of thousands of DDoS attacks, has been yanked offline by the Feds, who also hauled in its alleged Oregon-based mastermind.…

A 22-year-old Oregon man has been arrested on suspicion of operating "Rapper Bot," a massive botnet used to power a service for launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against targets -- including a March 2025 DDoS that knocked Twitter/X offline. The Justice Department asserts the suspect and an unidentified co-conspirator rented out the botnet to online extortionists, and tried to stay off the radar of law enforcement by ensuring that their botnet was never pointed at KrebsOnSecurity.

Also: Gartner's Sydney Summit Highlights, Rising OT Security RisksIn this week's update, ISMG editors discussed X’s major DDoS outages, politically motivated cyberattacks, key takeaways from Gartner’s Security & Risk Summit in Sydney, and rising operational technology threats highlighted in recent Dragos and Gartner reports.

Experts Express Surprise Over Major Social Platform Falling Victim to DDoS AttacksOne of the world's biggest social networks continued to face intermittent outages Tuesday, apparently due to unsophisticated, distributed denial-of-service attacks. Experts said the attacks were traced to malware-infected devices - many based in the U.S. - and pro-Palestinian hacktivists.

Pro-Palestine Dark Storm Team group claims responsibility for major DDoS attacks on X

'Dark Storm Team" Takes Responsibility for 4 Major Outages on MondayRepeated outages Monday on social media platform X - formerly Twitter - are the result of a distributed denial of service attack, asserted platform owner Elon Musk in a sporadically available tweet. The social media platform experienced four significant outages.

The Dark Storm hacktivist group claims to be behind DDoS attacks causing multiple X worldwide outages on Monday, leading the company to enable DDoS protections from Cloudflare. [...]

An ongoing distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack targets Bohemia Interactive's infrastructure, preventing players of DayZ and Arma Reforger from playing the games online. [...]

A global law enforcement operation has failed 27 stresser services that were used to conduct distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and took them offline as part of a multi-year international exercise called PowerOFF

Law enforcement agencies from 15 countries have taken 27 DDoS-for-hire services offline, also known as "booters" or "stressers," arrested three administrators, and identified 300 customers of the platforms. [...]

German law enforcement authorities have announced the disruption of a criminal service called dstat[.]cc that made it possible for other threat actors to easily mount distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks

Local authority websites downed in response to renewed support for Ukraine Multiple UK councils had their websites either knocked offline or were inaccessible to residents this week after pro-Russia cyber nuisances added them to a daily target list.…

A playbook full of strategies and someone fumbles the implementation Do you have problems configuring Microsoft's Defender? You might not be alone: Microsoft admitted that whatever it's using for its defensive implementation exacerbated yesterday's Azure instability.…