Offshoring trolling. COVID-19's implications for security. Out-of-band Microsoft patch. List of bad actors.

Russian trolling has been off-shored, in part at least, to operators in Ghana and Nigeria, CNN reports. It's election-season influence, and it's very much in the Russian style: disruptive and racially themed.

The COVID-19 pandemic is generating two immediate security effects. First, it's dramatically increased the incidence of telework and this, as the Washington Post and others point out, brings with it an expanded opportunity for cyberattack and a relatively unfamiliar set of security challenges. Second, both criminals and nation-state intelligence services are exploiting public concern about the pandemic to send phishing emails. ZDNet offers a summary of Russian, Chinese, and North Korean organizations using coronavirus-themed vectors to install malware in their targets. Recorded Future reports that many criminal attacks arrive as convincing spoofs of trusted sources like the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control. And ransomware gangs are hitting public health agencies at a time when the availability of their services and information are in high demand: Mother Jones describes one such attack in Illinois.

Microsoft yesterday issued an out-of-band patch for a vulnerability hinted at but not addressed on Patch Tuesday. It fixes a server remote code execution issue in the way the Microsoft Server Message Block 3.1.1 (SMBv3) protocol handles certain requests.

Reporters Without Borders has published its selection of bad cyber actors, ranging from companies to gangs, to government agencies, to intelligence services, to semi-official political units. Infosecurity Magazine notes the announcement was made in conjunction with yesterday's World Day Against Cyber-Censorship.