Virus Bulletin 2018: Saudi Dissident Spyware Attack Belies Bigger Threat

MONTREAL – This week, news broke that a well-known Saudi dissident has been targeted by the notorious Pegasus spyware – after he gained permanent citizen status in Canada. While this fits into pattern of ongoing attacks on “civil society” members i.e., journalists, social justice activists,...

Supply Chain Security is the Whole Enchilada, But Who’s Willing to Pay for It?

From time to time, there emerge cybersecurity stories of such potential impact that they have the effect of making all other security concerns seem minuscule and trifling by comparison. Yesterday was one of those times. Bloomberg Businessweek on Thursday published a bombshell investigation allegi...

Chinese Supply Chain Hardware Attack

Bloomberg is reporting about a Chinese espionage operating involving inserting a tiny chip into computer products made in China. I've written about alternate link this threat more generally. Supply-chain security is an insurmountably hard problem. Our IT industry is inexorably international, and...

Chinese Spying Chips Found Hidden On Servers Used By US Companies

A media report today revealed details of a significant supply chain attack which appears to be one of the largest corporate espionage and hardware hacking programs from a nation-state. According to a lengthy report published today by Bloomberg, a tiny surveillance chip, not much bigger than a gra...

Chinese Spying Chips Found Hidden On Servers Used By US Companies

A media report today revealed details of a significant supply chain attack which appears to be one of the largest corporate espionage and hardware hacking programs from a nation-state. According to a lengthy report published today by Bloomberg, a tiny surveillance chip, not much bigger than a gra...

Creating a Cyber Panic Room to Fight Off Invasions

Genghis Khan was a mastermind. A terrifyingly brilliant military strategist who altered the course of world history. He used fear to paralyze his enemies. “In one apocryphal account circulated to create anxiety among the enemy, the Mongols supposedly promised to retreat from a besieged city if th...

Powerful Android and iOS Spyware Found Deployed in 45 Countries

One of the world's most dangerous Android and iPhone spyware program has been found deployed against targets across 45 countries around the world over the last two years, a new report from Citizen Lab revealed. The infamous spyware, dubbed Pegasus, is developed by NSO Group—an Israeli company whi...

OilRig APT Continues Its Ongoing Malware Evolution

OilRig, an APT group believed to have ties to Iran, has been spotted in yet another campaign in the Middle East – this time targeting victims within an undisclosed government using an evolved variant of the BondUpdater trojan. The group, which is also called Cobalt Gypsy, Crambus, Helix Kitten or...

APT10 Targeting Japanese Corporations Using Updated TTPs

Introduction In July 2018, FireEye devices detected and blocked what appears to be APT10 Menupass activity targeting the Japanese media sector. APT10 is a Chinese cyber espionage group that FireEye has tracked since 2009, and they have a history of targeting Japanese entities. In this campaign, t...

‘Domestic Kitten’ Mobile Spyware Campaign Aims at Iranian Targets

A mobile spyware campaign against mainly Iranian citizens has been spotted – with evidence that the Iranian government might be involved. The operation is dubbed Domestic Kitten by Check Point researchers — “kitten” to follow common APT nomenclature for Iranian groups and “domestic” because they...

APT10 Under Close Scrutiny as Potentially Linked to Chinese Ministry of State Security

Researchers claim that APT10, a likely China-based threat actor, is believed directly connected to the Chinese Ministry of State Security’s MSS Tianjin bureau. The allegations come from CrowdStrike which released a report Friday that claims it has found firm ties that link APT10 or Stone Panda wi...

New Android Malware Framework Turns Apps Into Powerful Spyware

Security researchers have uncovered a new, powerful Android malware framework that is being used by cybercriminals to turn legitimate apps into spyware with extensive surveillance capabilities—as part of what seems to be a targeted espionage campaign. Legitimate Android applications when bundled...

New Android Malware Framework Turns Apps Into Powerful Spyware

Security researchers have uncovered a new, powerful Android malware framework that is being used by cybercriminals to turn legitimate apps into spyware with extensive surveillance capabilities—as part of what seems to be a targeted espionage campaign. Legitimate Android applications when bundled...

‘China’s MIT’ Linked to Espionage Campaign Against Alaska, Economic Partners

An extensive cyberespionage campaign was disclosed today, targeting high-value international and U.S. government agencies and companies and emanating from an IP address associated with Tsinghua University, colloquially known as “China’s MIT.” The actors have gone after a range of targets, includi...

Black Hat Video Exclusive: Mobile APTs Redefining Phishing Attacks

LAS VEGAS: Mike Murray, vice president of security intelligence at Lookout, talks with Threatpost’s Tom Spring to discuss the latest trends in mobile advanced persistence threats APTs. He said mobile is redefining traditional inbox phishing. On smartphones, phishing includes dangerous links insid...

Threatlist: Manufacturing, a Top Target for Espionage

When it comes to cyberattack-related reconnaissance and lateral movement activity, the manufacturing industry exhibits higher than normal rates. That’s according to Vectra’s 2018 Spotlight Report on Manufacturing, which crunched data from more than 4 million devices and workloads from customer...

IT threat evolution Q2 2018

Targeted attacks and malware campaigns Operation Parliament In April, we reported the workings of Operation Parliament, a cyber-espionage campaign aimed at high-profile legislative, executive and judicial organizations around the world – with its main focus in the MENA Middle East and North Afric...

Phishing Campaign Steals Money From Industrial Companies

Industrial production companies are the targets in a large-scale spear-phishing email campaign aimed at installing legitimate remote administration software on victims’ systems. Researchers with Kaspersky Lab said that emails purporting to be commercial offers were the conduit to enabling attacke...

Carbon Black Report: 35% of IR Pros See Espionage as Primary Motive for Attackers

Fraught Geopolitical Tensions Play Out in Cyberspace In an effort to gauge the current attack landscape and to quantify the latest attack trends seen by leading IR firms, Carbon Black has introduced its Quarterly Incident Response Threat Report QIRTR. This report aggregates both qualitative and...

Defining Counterintelligence

I've written about counterintelligence CI before, but I realized today that some of my writing, and the writing of others, may be confused as to exactly what CI means. The authoritative place to find an American definition for CI is the United States National Counterintelligence and Security...