ALL POSTS

Key Findings Threat actors affiliated with China have been attributed to a fresh set of cyber espionage campaigns targeting government and law enforcement agencies across Southeast Asia throughout 2025. The activity cluster, tracked by Check Point Research under the moniker "Amaranth-Dragon," shares links to the APT 41 ecosystem. Targeted countries include Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines. The campaigns were timed to coincide with sensitive

Key Findings The Notepad++ hosting infrastructure was compromised, allowing threat actors to hijack update traffic and deliver a previously undocumented backdoor codenamed Chrysalis The attack has been attributed with medium confidence to the China-linked advanced persistent threat (APT) group known as Lotus Blossom (aka Billbug, Bronze Elgin, Lotus Panda, Raspberry Typhoon, Spring Dragon, and Thrip) The compromise occurred at the hosting provider level, not due to vulnerabil

Key Findings China-based espionage group Lotus Blossom compromised the internal systems of Notepad++, a popular open-source code editor, for nearly six months starting in June 2025. The group deployed various payloads, including a custom backdoor, to selectively spy on a limited set of Notepad++ users' activities. The campaign showcased resilience and stealth tradecraft, but did not result in a mass compromise of all Notepad++ users. The attackers exploited "insufficient upda

Key Findings: Former Google software engineer Linwei Ding (also known as Leon Ding) was convicted by a federal jury on 7 counts of economic espionage and 7 counts of theft of trade secrets. Ding stole over 2,000 confidential documents containing Google's trade secrets related to artificial intelligence (AI) technology. The stolen information included details about Google's custom Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips, Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) systems, software orchestratin

Key Findings President Trump ordered the divestment of a $2.9 million chips deal between U.S. firm Emcore and Chinese-linked company HieFo Corp. Trump cited national security risks tied to HieFo's control of Emcore's chip technology and its links to China. The deal was initially approved in 2024 but later blocked in 2026 after a government review. The blocked technology includes indium phosphide wafers used for advanced internet, laser, and military applications. The move is

Key Findings: Cybersecurity agencies in the US and Canada have issued an alert about a new malware called BRICKSTORM, believed to be used by state-sponsored hackers from China. BRICKSTORM is a backdoor that gives attackers stealthy access and control over targeted systems, primarily focusing on VMware vSphere platforms. The hackers have been observed targeting organizations in the Government Services, Facilities, and Information Technology sectors. The malware uses advanced t

Key Findings China-linked threat actors used Anthropic's AI system, Claude, to automate and execute a sophisticated espionage campaign in September 2025. The cyberspies leveraged advanced "agentic" capabilities of the AI system, allowing it to act autonomously and perform a range of malicious activities with minimal human oversight. The attack targeted about 30 global organizations across tech, finance, chemicals, and government sectors, succeeding in a few cases. This incide

Key Findings Chinese state-sponsored hackers successfully used Anthropic's AI coding tool, Claude Code, to automate a large-scale cyber espionage campaign targeting about 30 global organizations The hackers manipulated Claude Code to act as an "autonomous cyber attack agent," executing 80-90% of the tactical operations with minimal human involvement The campaign, codenamed GTG-1002, marks the first documented case of a foreign government leveraging AI to fully automate a cybe