Author Archives: Emin Baylarov

Welcome to the realm of hacktivism, where technology meets activism. Verifying and investigating hacktivist claims is often a challenging, time-consuming task. The sheer volume of assertions made by various hacktivist groups and individuals can be overwhelming, especially when multiple events unfold simultaneously. This environment can strain resources needed for thorough fact-checking. Hacktivist activities often include […]

After monitoring the cybercrime threat landscape daily for over four years, it’s rare for something to truly surprise me. However, the recent trend of a suspected English-speaking cybercriminal group—referred to as Scattered Spider by CrowdStrike or 0ktapus by Group-IB—partnering with the Russian-speaking ransomware group BlackCat (also known as ALPHV) has certainly piqued my interest.Background on […]

The dozens of cybercriminals that made up the Conti group continue to launch campaigns unabated. Previously in 2022, I blogged about how following the Conti Leaks, the operators of Conti continued on via multiple rebranded ransomware campaigns, such as Royal, BlackBasta, and Quantum, among others.  Since my last two blogs on the Conti/TrickBot gang, multiple members have been […]

iSOON (also known as Anxun Information), a contractor for the Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS) specializing in network penetration research and related services, has had its data exposed on GitHub. The leak has been deemed highly credible due to the detailed nature of the information, including chat logs, vast data volumes, and corroborating indicators […]

What happened? On 8 November 2023, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) was attacked by the LockBit ransomware group. The ICBC is one of the world’s largest banks and is a Chinese state-owned asset. Financial media sources, such as the Financial Times and Bloomberg reported that the wider financial system was impacted as certain trades on the US Treasury market were […]