Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

In 2024, I published Feline Hackers Among Us? (A Deep Dive and Simulation of the Meow Attack), which explored the notorious Meow attack campaign that had plagued unsecured databases since 2020. That article focused on demonstrating the attack against a single MongoDB instance using a simple Python script. A proof-of-concept that illustrates how devastating misconfigurations can be.

Government administration, defense, and finance sector organizations are the primary areas Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups are targeting, according to the most recent data from the Trustwave SpiderLabs’ Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) team. The team found most attacks are launched from China, Russia, and Iran, with the primary targets residing in the US, Ukraine, and, interestingly, Russia. The groups tracked include Lapsus$, ShinyHunters, and Silk Typhoon.

The worldwide ransomware landscape saw a dramatic shift in attacks in October 2025, jumping 41% month over month, with the most prolific attacker, Qlin, more than doubling the number of attacks it launched, according to Trustwave, A LevelBlue Company, research. The US remained the primary recipient of ransomware attacks, but October saw manufacturing overtake technology as the most targeted vertical sector.

Trustwave SpiderLabs’ Cyber Threat Intelligence team is tracking the recent emergence of what appears to be the consolidation of three well-known threat groups into a “federated alliance” that offers, among its activities, Extortion-as-a-Service (EaaS). The collective comprises Scattered Spider, ShinyHunters, and LAPSUS$.

To close out Trustwave’s, A LevelBlue Company, Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2025 coverage, we will take a look at securing critical infrastructure, one of the focus areas for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). For our complete coverage, please see: Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2025: The Value of MSSPs and Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2025: 4 Steps to Build a Cyber Strong America.

With digital transformation continuing unabated, the prevalence of legacy systems, and the rising interconnectedness of complex systems and services, organizations in the public sector face a plethora of challenges and cyber risks. In this article, which is part of a series of public sector blog series that tackle ransomware trends and dark web research pertaining to government entities, the Trustwave SpiderLabs team shines a spotlight on the various threats and risks affecting government organizations.

Artificial intelligence has only been available for a relatively short period. Still, already many cyber defenders are as frightened as if Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday Addams had whipped her head around and set her dark, dangerous eyes on them. It’s not hard to see why. Machine learning, Gen AI, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) are a few of more than 20 new acronyms flooding our industry, with more being added almost every day.

Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is one of the fastest-growing areas in cybersecurity. The reason is simple: companies today simply cannot keep up with the overwhelming volume of cyber threats they face. In fact, Gartner estimates that 50 percent of organizations will be utilizing MDR services by 2025. So, what is driving this massive shift toward outsourcing core security functions?

It’s bad enough that organizations must worry about threat actors launching phishing attacks, injecting ransomware, or exploiting vulnerabilities; now, there is a new attack variant on the loose. Legal scammers. These are companies, which seem to be emerging particularly in Australia, are set up and registered as a legal cybersecurity firm, but in the end just take a company’s money without delivering any services.

In 2025, 36 years after the first ransomware attack was recorded, actors continue to zero in on the public sector, and there is no evidence they will slow down any time soon. In fact, our numbers suggest that ransomware attacks against government organizations are ramping up, causing crippling service outages, massive data loss, reputational damage, public distrust, and financial harm.