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Two US Navy service members appeared in federal court Thursday accused of espionage and stealing sensitive military information for China in separate cases. According to Uncle Sam, Wei had been handing off photos, videos, and technical manuals about US Navy ships and systems since February 2022.

Chinese spies are behind the data-stealing malware injected into Barracuda's Email Security Gateway devices globally as far back as October 2022, according to Mandiant. Mandiant, who has been working with Barracuda to investigate the exploit used and the malware subsequently deployed, today identified a China-based threat group it tracks as UNC4841, and said the snoops targeted a "Subset" of Barracuda ESG appliances across several regions and sectors.

Microsoft has released security updates for 78 flaws for June's Patch Tuesday, and luckily for admins, none of these are under exploit. CVE-2023-29357, a Microsoft SharePoint Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability, is one that Redmond lists as "Exploitation more likely." This may be because it, when chained with other bugs, was used to bypass authentication during March's Pwn2Own contest.

So says Singapore-based security outfit Group-IB, which claims Dark Pink has been active since mid-2021, primarily focused on victims in the Asia-Pacific region - but that appears to be changing. Group-IB's researchers say they've identified five new Dark Pink victims since their January 2023 research on the threat group, bringing the criminals' victim list to 13.

Suspected Chinese spies have exploited a critical Fortinet bug, and used custom networking malware to steal credentials and maintain network access, according to Mandiant security researchers. "Mandiant suspected the FortiGate and FortiManager devices were compromised due to the connections to VIRTUALPITA from the Fortinet management IP addresses," the researchers observed.

Suspected Chinese cyber criminals have zeroed in on unpatched SonicWall gateways and are infecting the devices with credential-stealing malware that persists through firmware upgrades, according to Mandiant. The spyware targets the SonicWall Secure Mobile Access 100 Series - a gateway device that provides VPN access to remote users.

The FBI and the US government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency claim any foreign interference in the 2022 US midterm elections is unlikely to disrupt or prevent voting, compromise ballot integrity, or manipulate votes at scale. The agencies also took the time to explain how US election systems are secured using "a variety of technological, physical, and procedural controls to mitigate the likelihood of malicious cyber activity" that could affect "Election infrastructure systems or data that would alter votes or otherwise disrupt or prevent voting."

Cybersecurity biz Kaspersky has spotted a modified version of the Tor Browser it says collects sensitive data on Chinese users. The data collected by the browser itself includes internet history and data entered into website forms, said the threat hunter.

This included using email, OneDrive and other Microsoft cloud services accounts, as well as phony LinkedIn profiles that the criminals used to scope out employees who work for target organizations. In May, Google and Reuters attributed a hack-and-leak campaign to Coldriver, aka Seaborgium, in which the criminals leaked emails and documents reportedly stolen from high-level Brexit proponents, including former British spymaster Richard Dearlove.