The Wire - August 27, 2026

//The Wire//2100Z August 27, 2026//
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 //BLUF: CAR BOMB KILLS COLONEL IN RUSSIA. IRAN STRIKES TANKER IN HORMUZ. LARGE-SCALE CYBERATTACKS TARGET AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AGENCIES.//

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 -International Events-

Middle East: Overnight, Iran struck another tanker vessel in the Strait of Hormuz. The vessel has been identified as the M/T AL SALAM II, a Kuwaiti-owned tanker attempting to exit the Gulf.

Analyst Comment: Claims are circulating that Iran conducted this strike using underwater drones, similarly to claims that were made last week regarding Iran using underwater drones to conduct attacks. There is no way to verify this either way, but if true, this would be the second such attack on a vessel this month.

Russia: This morning an assassination was carried out in St. Petersburg, which took the form of an IED exploding inside the vehicle of a Russian Air Force Lieutenant Colonel. The man (who has not yet been identified) was killed instantly, and his wife remains in critical condition following the blast.

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Analyst Comments: Within the United States, various federal databases have been hacked by malign actors, including the systems used by high-level government agencies. The DoJ alleged that the Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Company was responsible for compromising the systems used by the Federal Reserve, three different National Laboratories, the National Institute of Health, and several other unnamed agencies. On the same day, the ATF also disclosed that systems related to their gun registries were breached. The Chinese hacking group Qilin posted the ransomware disclosure on their website, claiming to have a trove of unspecified documents that they stole from the ATF.

These confirmed cyberattacks continue the trend that has been building over the past few weeks. From the cyberattacks on water treatment facilities a couple of weeks ago, to federal agencies being hacked in undisclosed ways, the war on the cyber front is palpable. This cyberwarfare has not been confined to the United States either; at the exact same time that unknown hackers were taking out the water infrastructure in Minnesota, the United Kingdom reported that one of their power plants was hacked and taken offline for a total of four days. This afternoon, Manchester Airport Group announced that another major cyberattack has breached the data of over 8.7 million customers who traveled through three airports in the U.K.

As the United States and Iran continue their latest stage of the war, and Russia and Ukraine continue their war, these cyberattacks are probably going to get a lot worse, both in the scale of what systems are affected, but also the types of targets selected. So far, none of the groups engaging in cyberattacks have demonstrated any hesitancy to avoid targeting civilian targets...these groups on all sides will exploit any vulnerability they find, particularly to target a civilian populace. As civilian critical infrastructure around the world remains vastly more vulnerable than government networks...when those government networks themselves are constantly proven to not be safe, much softer targets are very likely to be impacted more severely as global tensions continue.

Analyst: S2A1
 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground
NomadNet: 5fa68c88be727a0e1a250a75e5e79269
Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.
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