The United Kingdom and United States on Thursday sanctioned seven people connected to what officials have told The Record is a single network behind the Conti and Ryuk ransomware gangs as well as the Trickbot banking trojan. The sanctions are described as the first major move of a “new campaign of concerted action” between Britain and the United States, and insiders say that further actions should be expected later this year.

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks by pro-Russian hacking groups are causing alarm in the U.S. and Denmark after several incidents affected websites of hospitals and government offices in both countries. On Tuesday, Denmark announced that it was raising its cyber risk alert level after weeks of attacks on banks and the country’s defense ministry.

The Record by Recorded Future gives exclusive, behind-the-scenes access to leaders, policymakers, researchers, and the shadows of the cyber underground.

Researchers in China claim to have reached a breakthrough in quantum computing, figuring out how they can break the RSA public-key encryption system using a quantum computer of around the power that will soon be publicly available. Breaking 2048-bit RSA — in other words finding a method to consistently and quickly discover the secret prime numbers underpinning the algorithm — would be extremely significant. Although the RSA algorithm itself has largely been replaced in consumer-facing protocols, such as Transport Layer Security, it is still widely used in older enterprise and operational technology software and in many code-signing certificates.

More than 200 local governments, schools and hospitals in the U.S. were affected by ransomware in 2022, according to research conducted by cybersecurity firm Emsisoft. The annual “State of Ransomware in the US” report found that 105 local governments; 44 universities and colleges; 45 school districts; and 25 healthcare providers operating 290 hospitals dealt with ransomware attacks last year.

The Record by Recorded Future gives exclusive, behind-the-scenes access to leaders, policymakers, researchers, and the shadows of the cyber underground.