Users often question security of online “friends”

The U.S. Treasury Department was confirmed to have its computers and documents compromised by Chinese state-backed advanced persistent threat hackers in an attack targeted at its BeyondTrust Remote Support software-as-a-service instance just over a week after the BeyondTrust breach was initially reported, reports BleepingComputer.

Nine U.S. telecommunications firms were confirmed by U.S. officials to have been compromised by Chinese state-backed threat group Salt Typhoon as part of its sweeping cyberespionage operation, with the newly-added unnamed entity's networks breached to facilitate geolocating activities for millions of individuals, Reuters reports.

Security Affairs reports that numerous Italian websites — including those of the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Turin Transport Group, and the Linate and Malpensa airports — have been compromised as part of a distributed denial-of-service attack by pro-Russian hacktivist operation NoName057, which noted the intrusions to have been launched in retaliation of "Italian Russophobes."