Numerous cyberattacks are being launched by Russian and Belarusian threat groups against Ukrainian civilians and soldiers amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, CNN reports.
Attackers have not only been impersonating independent news outfits and journalists but also conducting campaigns to remove posts of Russian critics from social media, according to Facebook parent company Meta. Suspected Belarusian state-sponsored hacking group Ghostwriter has also sought to compromise dozens of Ukrainian military members' Facebook accounts, with a handful of attacks being successful. Meta noted that nearly 200 Russia-based accounts have already been removed for repeatedly submitting false reports on violations of Facebook's hate speech and other policies. Mass reporting of critics' social media accounts has accounted for a large part of social media attacks since the invasion, said Digital Security Lab Ukraine co-founder Vadym Hudyma. The new report comes after Meta announced that it had taken down a Russian cyber operation in February.
Hamas spokesperson Hudhayfa Samir Abdallah al-Kahlut, also known as "Abu Ubaida," has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for his leadership of the group's cyber influence operations, reports The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.
TechCrunch reports that U.S. conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation was working on addressing a cyberattack against its systems last week, but investigation into whether any of its data was compromised is still underway.
Iranian state-backed threat operation MuddyWater, also known as TA450, Mango Sandstorm, and Boggy Sandstorm, has leveraged the novel DarkBeatC2 command-and-control infrastructure tool as part of its latest attack campaign, The Hacker News reports.