Latest cybersecurity reporting from selected sources.

Chinese Hackers Hitting Unpatched Products From Microsoft, Sophos, Fortinet, IvantiChinese nation-state hackers who surreptitiously gained "broad and full" access to telecommunications networks in the U.S. and dozens of other countries have regularly exploited known flaws in their networking gear that the victims failed to patch, security experts have warned.

The US State Department has offered a $10 million reward for Guan Tianfeng, who has been accused of developing and testing a critical SQL injection flaw with a CVSS score of 9.8 used in Sophos attacks.

The U.S. government on Tuesday unsealed charges against a Chinese national for allegedly breaking into thousands of Sophos firewall devices globally in 2020

Also sanctions his employer – an outfit called Sichuan Silence linked to Ragnarok ransomware The US Departments of Treasury and Justice have named a Chinese business and one of its employees as the actors behind the 2020 exploit of a zero-day flaw in Sophos firewalls…

Tianfeng Guan Allegedly Developed Zero-Day Exploit of Sophos XG FirewallThe U.S. federal government rolled out its heavy guns Tuesday against a Chinese hacker allegedly at the center of a zero-day exploit used to hack firewalls made by Sophos, unsealing an indictment, rolling out sanctions and offering $10 million for information leading to the suspect's arrest.

In case today’s news cycle wasn’t shocking enough, here’s a gem from Sophos Fresh from a series of serious reports detailing its five-year battle with Chinese cyberattackers, Sophos has dropped a curious story about users of a popular infostealer-cum-RAT targeting a niche group of victims.…

UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has published an analysis of a Linux malware named "Pigmy Goat" created to backdoor Sophos XG firewall devices as part of recently disclosed attacks by Chinese threat actors. [...]

Sophos provided details of changing tactics by Chinese APT groups over a five-year period, involving a shift towards stealthy, targeted attacks

Sophos disclosed today a series of reports dubbed "Pacific Rim" that detail how the cybersecurity company has been sparring with Chinese threat actors for over 5 years as they increasingly targeted networking devices worldwide, including those from Sophos. [...]

Volt Typhoon, APT31, APT41 Targeted Sophos Edge DevicesFirewall maker Sophos disclosed Thursday a half-decade worth of efforts by multiple nation-state Chinese hacking groups to infiltrate its appliances, calling the admission a wake-up call for the cybersecurity industry. Targeting firewall appliances is a known nation state tactic as hackers

A trio of threat activity clusters linked to China has been observed compromising more government organizations in Southeast Asia as part of a renewed state-sponsored operation codenamed Crimson Palace, indicating an expansion in the scope of the espionage effort

Sophos said the campaign aimed to maintain prolonged network access for espionage purposes

Sophos Finds 3 Clusters of Activity Dating at Least to May 2023A government agency in a country that has repeatedly clashed with China over Beijing's territorial ambitions in the South China Sea was the subject of a prolonged cyberespionage campaign that used previously undetected backdoors and partially overlaps with known Sino state threat actors.

An unnamed high-profile government organization in Southeast Asia emerged as the target of a "complex, long-running" Chinese state-sponsored cyber espionage operation codenamed Crimson Palace

Also, Kansas Courts Say Ongoing Outage Traces to Attack; Confidential Data StolenThis week's data breach roundup: Chinese-affiliated hackers target the Philippine government; Kansas Courts confirm data theft, officials warn of exploited flaws in Sophos, Oracle and Microsoft software; AutoZone discloses a Clop ransomware attack; Optus' CEO resigns after network outage.

A China-aligned advanced persistent threat actor known as TA413 weaponized recently disclosed flaws in Sophos Firewall and Microsoft Office to deploy a never-before-seen backdoor called LOWZERO as part of an espionage campaign aimed at Tibetan entities

A sophisticated Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) actor exploited a critical security vulnerability in Sophos' firewall product that came to light earlier this year to infiltrate an unnamed South Asian target as part of a highly-targeted attack

Chinese hackers used a zero-day exploit for a critical-severity vulnerability in Sophos Firewall to compromise a company and breach cloud-hosted web servers operated by the victim. [...]