Facebook Suspends Accounts Used by Iranian Hackers to Target US Military Personnel

Facebook on Thursday disclosed it dismantled a "sophisticated" online cyber espionage campaign conducted by Iranian hackers targeting about 200 military personnel and companies in the defense and aerospace sectors in the U.S., U.K., and Europe using fake online personas on its platform. The socia...

Trickbot Malware Rebounds with Virtual-Desktop Espionage Module

The Trickbot trojan is in resurgence mode, with its operators filling out infrastructure globally and releasing an updated version of its “vncDll” module, used for monitoring and intelligence gathering, researchers said. According to an analysis this week from Bitdefender, there has been “a...

‘Charming Kitten’ APT Siphons Intel From Mid-East Scholars

An Iran-linked advanced persistent threat APT group has taken a scholarly bent with its latest phishing campaign, which involves lengthy chats with professors, think tank higher-ups and journalists focused on Middle Eastern affairs. The threat actor is Charming Kitten – aka a number of names,...

Oil & Gas Targeted in Year-Long Espionage Campaign

A sophisticated campaign targeting large international companies in the oil and gas sector has been underway for more than a year, researchers said, spreading common remote access trojans RATs for cyber-espionage purposes. According to Intezer analysis, spear-phishing emails with malicious...

Experts Uncover Malware Attacks Targeting Corporate Networks in Latin America

Cybersecurity researchers on Thursday took the wraps off a new, ongoing espionage campaign targeting corporate networks in Spanish-speaking countries, specifically Venezuela, to spy on its victims. Dubbed "Bandidos" by ESET owing to the use of an upgraded variant of Bandook malware, the primary...

SideCopy Hackers Target Indian Government Officials With New Malware

A cyber-espionage group has been observed increasingly targeting Indian government personnel as part of a broad campaign to infect victims with as many as four new custom remote access trojans RATs, signaling a "boost in their development operations." Attributed to a group tracked as SideCopy, th...

Ongoing Spearphishing Campaign Targets Afghan Gov’t

Chinese-speaking cyberespionage actors have targeted the Afghan government, using Dropbox for command-and-control C2 communications and going so far as to impersonate the Office of the President to infiltrate the Afghan National Security Council NSC, researchers have found. According to a report...

IndigoZebra APT Hacking Campaign Targets the Afghan Government

Cybersecurity researchers are warning of ongoing attacks coordinated by a suspected Chinese-speaking threat actor targeting the Afghanistan government as part of an espionage campaign that may have had its provenance as far back as 2014. Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point Research attributed...

Atomic research institute breached via VPN vulnerability

Remember when we told you to patch your VPNs already? I hate to say "I told you so", but I informed you thusly. According to South Korean officials a North Korean cyber-espionage group managed to infiltrate the network of South Koreas state-run nuclear research institute last month. The crime: ti...

North Korea Exploited VPN Flaw to Hack South's Nuclear Research Institute

South Korea's state-run Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute KAERI on Friday disclosed that its internal network was infiltrated by suspected attackers operating out of its northern counterpart. The intrusion is said to have taken place on May 14 through a vulnerability in an unnamed virtual...

Cyber espionage by Chinese hackers in neighbouring nations is on the rise

A string of cyber espionage campaigns dating all the way back to 2014 and likely focused on gathering defense information from neighbouring countries have been linked to a Chinese military-intelligence apparatus. In a wide-ranging report published by Massachusetts-headquartered Recorded Future th...

Molerats Hackers Return With New Attacks Targeting Middle Eastern Governments

A Middle Eastern advanced persistent threat APT group has resurfaced after a two-month hiatus to target government institutions in the Middle East and global government entities associated with geopolitics in the region in a rash of new campaigns observed earlier this month. Sunnyvale-based...

IKEA Fined $1.2M for Elaborate ‘Spying System’

IKEA’s French subsidiary was just hit with a $1.2 million fine after it was found guilty of a creepy systematic snooping scheme targeting customers, employees and even prospective hires. Prosecutors said in all, the company illegally surveilled about 400 people in total, according to the BBC. IKE...

Ferocious Kitten: 6 years of covert surveillance in Iran

Ferocious Kitten is an APT group that since at least 2015 has been targeting Persian-speaking individuals who appear to be based in Iran. Although it has been active for a long time, the group has mostly operated under the radar and has not been covered by security researchers to the best of our...

NoxPlayer Supply-Chain Attack is Likely the Work of Gelsemium Hackers

A new cyber espionage group named Gelsemium has been linked to a supply chain attack targeting the NoxPlayer Android emulator that was disclosed earlier this year. The findings come from a systematic analysis of multiple campaigns undertaken by the APT crew, with evidence of the earliest attack...

Novel ‘Victory’ Backdoor Spotted in Chinese APT Campaign

An ongoing surveillance operation has been uncovered that targets a Southeast Asian government, researchers said – using a previously unknown espionage malware. According to Check Point Research, the attack involves spear-phishing emails with malicious Word documents to gain initial access, along...

Experts Uncover Yet Another Chinese Spying Campaign Aimed at Southeast Asia

An ongoing cyber-espionage operation with suspected ties to China has been found targeting a Southeast Asian government to deploy spyware on Windows systems while staying under the radar for more than three years. "In this campaign, the attackers utilized the set of Microsoft Office exploits and...

Researchers Uncover Hacking Operations Targeting Government Entities in South Korea

A North Korean threat actor active since 2012 has been behind a new espionage campaign targeting high-profile government officials associated with its southern counterpart to install an Android and Windows backdoor for collecting sensitive information. Cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes attributed t...

US Seizes Domains Used by SolarWinds Hackers in Cyber Espionage Attacks

Days after Microsoft, Secureworks, and Volexity shed light on a new spear-phishing activity unleashed by the Russian hackers who breached SolarWinds IT management software, the U.S. Department of Justice DoJ Tuesday said it intervened to take control of two command-and-control C2 and malware...

Kimsuky APT continues to target South Korean government using AppleSeed backdoor

This blog post was authored by Hossein Jazi. The Kimsuky APT—also known as Thallium, Black Banshee, and Velvet Chollima—is a North Korean threat actor that has been active since 2012. The group conducts cyber espionage operations to target government entities mainly in South Korea. On December...