As expected, reports of Russian intelligence services working to influence French elections have surfaced. Trend Micro says it's found "Pawn Storm" (a.k.a. APT28, a.k.a Fancy Bear, a.k.a. GRU) phishing Emmanuel Macron's campaign with tactics, techniques, and procedures essentially identical to those used against the US Democratic National Committee during 2016's US presidential election. French security agency ANSSI confirms the phishing and the resemblance to Pawn Storm, but cautiously declines a rush to attribution.
Fancy Bear may have been busy elsewhere, too. Denmark's Minister of Defense says the Russian service has "aggressively" pawed at his networks for the past two years. Bulgaria's President Rosen Plevneliev has also gone public with accusations that an unnamed threat actor based in Russia sought to interfere with Bulgaria's 2015 local elections.
Expect more cyber operations as China and the US tighten the screws on Pyongyang over North Korea's nuclear and long-range missile programs. Perennial concerns about critical infrastructure vulnerabilities are reinforced by Friday's power outages in three major US cities. The failures were accidental and not cyber related, but they do highlight the risks of local points-of-failure.
Trend Micro researchers discover "Milkydoor," a backdoor installed in some two-hundred Trojanized Android apps published to Google's PlayStore.
Security firm Webroot is in the process of fixing its widely used antivirus solution, which yesterday briefly misidentified legitimate Windows files as malicious.
Pyotr Levashov, alleged Kelihos botmaster, has been indicted by the US and faces extradition proceedings in Spain.
Criminal extortionists are again threatening Ashley Madison users with exposure.