Russian military intelligence is recruiting young people online to carry out arson and other acts of sabotage across Europe. In this week's issue, Joshua Yaffa reports on the Kremlin's secret campaign to undermine the West's support for Ukraine-and breaks down how "single-use agents" are being deployed across the Continent. Some of their missions are small-putting up posters, or picking up a package-while others involve physical attacks, for example setting off explosives and starting fires.
Israel claimed on Wednesday to have killed a third senior Iranian figure in 24 hours, stating that its forces had eliminated Tehran's intelligence minister, Esmail Khatib, in an overnight strike. If confirmed, his death would follow those of Ali Larijani, the head of the supreme national security apparatus, and the commander of the Basij militia, Gholamreza Soleimani.
Over the past year, waves of federal layoffs have left thousands of government employees and contractor clients suddenly out of work. For foreign intelligence services, that disruption has opened new opportunities. With more former U.S. officials seeking employment or freelance work - often in specialized national security fields - adversaries, namely China, have stepped in, posing as consulting firms, research groups and recruiters.
In its annual Red Report, a body of research that analyzes real-world attacker techniques using large-scale attack simulation data, Picus Labs warns cybersecurity professionals that threat actors are rapidly shifting away from ransomware encryption to parasitic "sleeperware" extortion as their means to loot organizations for millions of dollars per attack. Released today and now in its sixth year, the 278-page Red Report gets its name from Picus-organized cybersecurity exercises that take the perspective of the attacker's team, otherwise known as the "red team."
