Malware

A hacking group apparently based in Pakistan has been straddling the fence between cybercriminal activity and nation-state espionage, leveraging the same malicious infrastructure to both launch email spam campaigns and target government agencies in U.S., UK, Russia and Spain.

A spearphishing campaign targeted more than 400 industrial companies by sending highly personalized emails disguised as procurement and accounting documents.

The Alaskan borough of Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su) and City of Valdez were respectively hit with ransomware attacks which knocked both networks offline.

Wasting little time, cybercriminals began using a significantly updated version of the AZORult information stealer and downloader in an email phishing campaign, just one day after the upgrade made its debut on dark web underground forums on July 17.

A malicious actor posing as a web publisher compromised more than 10,000 WordPress websites in an elaborate malvertising campaign involving various ad resellers and at least one major ad network, according to researchers.