Deniss Zolotarjovs was mostly tasked with putting pressure on the Russia-based crew’s victims, in one case leaking hundreds of children’s health records.

National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross said execution of the strategy is “rolling forward actively.”

The social engineering campaign spiked last month and has targeted dozens of organizations since May 2025, according to ReliaQuest.

With global cyber threats escalating and budget cuts looming, CISA needs a Senate-confirmed director. It’s time to confirm Sean Plankey.

FBI cyber chief Brett Leatherman told CyberScoop the Russian GRU campaign was unique in how it could propagate from routers to beyond.

Forest Blizzard, a threat group attributed to Russia’s GRU, hijacked network traffic to steal credentials and tokens for Microsoft accounts and other services.

Proofpoint researchers say the group behind the surge, TA416, had turned away from Europe for a few years.

It echoes earlier alerts from the Netherlands and Germany, and is the latest to warn about targeting of Signal users and others.

The kit, named DarkSword, has a variety of possible implications, the research from iVerify, Lookout and Google suggests.

Sean Cairncross said the idea rather is to collaborate with the private sector in a way that helps the U.S. government take the battle to its adversaries.