Europe sanctions Chinese and Iranian firms for cyberattacks

The Council of the European Union sanctioned two Chinese firms (Integrity Technology Group and Anxun/i-Soon), an Iranian firm (Emennet Pasargad) and two individuals for large-scale cyberattacks and influence operations. Reported activities include the Raptor Train botnet (linked to Flax Typhoon) that infected tens to hundreds of thousands of devices, hacker-for-hire services targeting critical infrastructure, a data leak exposing internal operations and subscriber data, and misinformation campaigns such as hijacked billboards; sanctions include asset freezes, travel bans, and U.S. law enforcement rewards.