Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), accuses Russia’s government of a longstanding cyber campaign against a range of targets, including the Bundestag. Pawn Storm and its Sofacy tool are specifically mentioned in the Bundestag investigation. Other researchers, notably at Trend Micro, remark Pawn Storm’s continuing activity against a similar array of targets—the Russian government is widely believed to be behind the Pawn Storm APT.
Russian authorities are closing some four thousand websites on the grounds that they encourage extremism or facilitate drug trafficking. Russia’s privately held news outlet, RBC, has also fired its three senior editors. It’s widely believed the firings are in response to government pressure—RBC and its editors had reported extensively on oligarchs’ appearance in the Panama Papers breach.
Twitter’s decision late last week to end the US Intelligence Community’s access to Dataminr social media analytics isn’t playing well in the media. Wired calls it "a move that left many scratching their heads," and the Wall Street Journal notes with strong disapproval that Russia Today still gets its Dataminr feeds.
US intelligence services pick up increased signs of desperation in social media from ISIS, which seems to have declared a “state-of-emergency” its self-proclaimed capital, Raqqa. Other signs point to increasing, opportunistic competition from al Qaeda, and to ISIS plans to shift its center of gravity to Libya and Tunisia.
Vietnam's Tien Phong Bank says it’s the unnamed bank that detected and stopped a SWIFT-based fraud attempt.
Kaspersky has cracked the latest CryptXXX version.