On 12 June 2025, dozens of anonymous X (formerly Twitter) accounts advocating Scottish independence abruptly went silent. Many had posted hundreds of times per week, often using pro-independence slogans, anti-UK messaging, and identity cues like “NHS nurse” or “Glaswegian socialist.”
Their sudden disappearance coincided with a major Israeli airstrike campaign against Iranian military and cyber infrastructure. Within days, Iran had suffered severe power outages, fuel shortages, and an internet blackout affecting 95 percent of national connectivity.
What appeared at first glance to be a curious coincidence has since emerged as the most visible rupture to date in a long-running foreign influence operation.
Hackers have tried to break into the email accounts of a select number of Washington Post journalists, according to an internal Washington Post memo obtained by CNN.
The Post discovered the “possible targeted” hack of its email system last Thursday, prompting the newspaper to reset login credentials for all its employees on Friday, Washington Post Executive Editor Matt Murray said in a memo Sunday to employees.
“Although our investigation is ongoing, we believe the incident affected a limited number of Post journalists accounts, and we have contacted those whose accounts have been impacted,” Murray said.
“We do not believe this unauthorized intrusion impacted any additional Post systems or has had any impact for our customers,” he added.
It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the hack. Journalists are regular targets for both state-backed spies, who are interested in tracking their reporting before it becomes public, and cybercriminals, who are interested in extorting news organizations.
A spokesperson for The Post declined to comment when asked who might be responsible for the hack.
SentinelLABS has observed an active phishing campaign targeting high-profile X accounts to hijack and exploit them for fraudulent activity.
A detailed blog on Analysis of the Global Malware Trend: Exploiting Undocumented OAuth2 Functionality to Regenerate Google Service Cookies Regardless of IP or Password Reset.
In recent years, cybercriminals have become increasingly professional — fraudsters have consistently been improving their skills, making less crucial mistakes, and creating various “as-a-service” businesses to help lower-skilled threat actors launch scams and attacks, allowing the latter to run full cybercrime operations.
There are different types of cybercrime services that exist today, including malware-as-a-service, where cybercriminals develop and sell malware services to other malicious actors; the service also includes creating and spreading malware types such as ransomware on compromised hosts. Meanwhile, other services require the use of multiple social media accounts to be successfully carried out, such as misinformation, spamming, and malware propagation. Indeed, it’s not uncommon for cybercriminals to send thousands of spam messages using thousands of accounts on social media platforms. But how do they manage to automate all of it?
PayPal has alerted over 35,000 customers of a data breach revealing that their accounts were hacked between December 6th and 8th, 2022.
