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Polish authorities, including CERT Polska, formally attributed a coordinated series of late-December 2025 cyberattacks against critical energy infrastructure to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). The attacks, which unfolded on December 29–30, 2025 , impacted more than 30 renewable energy facilities , a manufacturing firm, and a combined heat and power (CHP) plant serving nearly half a million customers. Polish officials characterized these actions as primarily destructive in nature —comparable to “digital arson”—but also highlighted their broader hybrid threat context, blending sabotage with intelligence collection and reconnaissance. :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0} Incident Overview: Scope and Targets According to a report published by CERTE Polska and national authorities, the December 2025 attacks constituted one of the most significant assaults on Poland’s critical infrastructure in recent memory. Key tar...

The FBI’s cyber news and press release section published updated warnings concerning a rise in fraudsters impersonating prosecutors and law enforcement officials . While no new Russia- or China-attributed cyber espionage cases were disclosed on that date, the update is strategically significant. It underscores how social engineering and impersonation tactics —often associated with fraud—can overlap with, or directly enable, counterintelligence and espionage operations . These advisories form part of the FBI’s broader effort to counter state-sponsored hybrid threats , where cybercrime techniques, psychological manipulation, and intelligence collection increasingly converge. Overview of the January 30 FBI Cyber Updates The January 30 updates focused on public awareness and prevention, emphasizing: Fraudsters posing as prosecutors or law enforcement officials Social engineering schemes targeting U.S. indivi...

On January 30 , a federal jury in California convicted Linwei Ding , also known as Leon Ding , a former Google software engineer, on seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets related to advanced artificial intelligence and supercomputing technologies. The conviction stems from Ding’s systematic theft of over 2,000 pages of confidential internal Google documentation between 2022 and 2023 , while he was simultaneously engaged with China-linked overseas companies . This case represents one of the most high-profile U.S. prosecutions involving AI-related intellectual property theft , underscoring how artificial intelligence has become a central battleground in great-power competition. Ding now faces up to 15 years in prison per espionage count , signaling a hardened U.S. stance against foreign-aligned theft of advanced technological capabilities. Background: Who Is Linwei Ding? ...

Cybersecurity researchers detailed an evolving campaign of intelligence operations leveraging a previously undocumented command-and-control (C2) framework dubbed PeckBirdy . First observed in 2023, PeckBirdy has since been used by multiple China-aligned advanced persistent threat (APT) clusters to target government entities and private organizations across Asia. This activity represents a growing emphasis on lightweight, script-based tooling that blends with benign system utilities – complicating detection and response. :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1} What Is PeckBirdy? PeckBirdy is a flexible, script-based C2 framework implemented primarily in JScript , an older scripting language. Despite its age, JScript’s broad compatibility allows PeckBirdy to execute across numerous environments – including web browsers, Windows scripting hosts (such as MSHTA and WScript), Classic ASP applications, Node.js, and even .NET environments...

Timeframe: Late 2025 – Early 2026 Attribution: China-linked (state-sponsored assessment) Primary Disclosure: Cisco Talos Executive Summary In late 2025, Cisco Talos disclosed an active and previously undocumented cyber-espionage campaign attributed to a China-nexus threat actor tracked as UAT-8099 . The operation focuses on the compromise of vulnerable Microsoft IIS web servers , primarily across Thailand and Vietnam , using a combination of web shells , PowerShell abuse , and the GotoHTTP remote access trojan (RAT) . The campaign emphasizes stealth and persistence rather than disruption, aligning with long-running Chinese cyber-espionage tradecraft. While the total scope of the intrusions remains unknown, the tooling maturity, operational discipline, and regional targeting support an assessment of state-sponsored activity . Threat Actor Overview: UAT-8099 UAT-8099 is a China-linked threat ...

Published: January 30, 2026 The late December 2025 cyberattack on Poland’s power grid represents a notable escalation in state-sponsored cyber operations targeting critical energy infrastructure within a NATO-aligned country. On January 28, 2026, industrial cybersecurity firm Dragos, alongside other security researchers, publicly attributed the operation with medium confidence to ELECTRUM , a Russia-linked threat cluster associated with the notorious Sandworm (APT44) group. The incident did not result in a nationwide blackout; however, it exposed systemic weaknesses in distributed energy resource (DER) environments and demonstrated how advanced threat actors can position themselves for future disruptive or destructive operations. APT Profile: Sandworm (APT44) and the ELECTRUM Cluster Sandworm, also tracked as APT44, is a Russian state-sponsored advanced persistent threat actor widely linked to Russia’s mil...

Mustang Panda — tracked by major threat intelligence teams under aliases such as HoneyMyte , Bronze President , TA416 , RedDelta , and Earth Preta — continues to evolve its cyber-espionage toolset. Recent research from Kaspersky and multiple security publications confirms that the group has deployed updated variants of the COOLCLIENT backdoor with advanced credential theft and surveillance capabilities. These campaigns, active across Asia and parts of Europe, have been ongoing throughout 2024–2026 and remain focused on government entities and diplomatic networks. APT Profile and Geopolitical Targeting Actor Overview Mustang Panda is widely assessed as a China-linked advanced persistent threat (APT) with long-standing cyber-espionage operations. The group’s objectives align with strategic intelligence gathering against geopolitical interests in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Eastern Europe. Primary targets inclu...