‘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...

D-Link, Dasan Routers Under Attack In Yet Another Assault

Unpatched D-Link and Dasan GPON router vulnerabilities are being targeted by hackers attempting to build a botnet army, according to research published Friday by eSentire Threat Intelligence. Researchers observed on Thursday a massive uptick in exploit attempts from over 3,000 different source IP...

Chinese Hackers Mount Espionage Campaign During Trump-Putin Summit

Cyberattackers, unsurprisingly, appear to be interested in Donald Trump as an intelligence target – as evidenced by an uncharacteristic spate of strikes against IoT devices in Finland during the American president’s summit there with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. According to researchers, the uptick w...

Carbon Black Report: China, Russia & North Korea Launching Sophisticated, Espionage-Focused Cyberattacks

Even as a steady drumbeat of headlines keeps the world’s attention focused on cybercrimes, such as ransomware and cryptojacking, in the dark corners of the internet, attackers are busy refining their craft. According to the world’s top incident response IR professionals, cyberattackers are honing...

Chinese Espionage Group TEMP.Periscope Targets Cambodia Ahead of July 2018 Elections and Reveals Broad Operations Globally

Introduction FireEye has examined a range of TEMP.Periscope activity revealing extensive interest in Cambodia's politics, with active compromises of multiple Cambodian entities related to the country’s electoral system. This includes compromises of Cambodian government entities charged with...

Gaza Cybergang Returns With New Attacks On Palestinian Authority

Security researchers from Check Point Threat Intelligence Team have discovered the comeback of an APT advanced persistent threat surveillance group targeting institutions across the Middle East, specifically the Palestinian Authority. The attack, dubbed "Big Bang," begins with a phishing email se...

Excerpts from Modern Bank Heists – Nation State Threats

Carbon Black recently published a report on the latest non-malware attack methods, and how to counteract them. For more information about how Cb Defense, Carbon Black's NGAV + EDR solution, helps enterprises address their endpoint security challenges, check out our weekly Cb Defense Live Demo,...

Why VPNFilter is like a Moonlight Maze

On May 25, the FBI issued a public service announcement asking every Internet ready American to reboot their routers. The PSA specifically warned small and home office owners that they are particularly vulnerable to “foreign cyber actors” A.K.A. spies that are using malware called VPNFilter to...

Reality Winner, N.S.A. Contractor, Sentenced to 5+ Years in Leak Case

A former NSA contractor, Reality L. Winner, has plead guilty on charges of leaking classified information, regarding a report on election meddling by Russian operatives in the 2016 U.S. elections. She was charged with espionage and was sentenced to more than five years in prison and three years o...

New Malware Family Uses Custom UDP Protocol for C&C Communications

Security researchers have uncovered a new highly-targeted cyber espionage campaign, which is believed to be associated with a hacking group behind KHRAT backdoor Trojan and has been targeting organizations in South East Asia. According to researchers from Palo Alto, the hacking group, which they...