APT trends report Q1 2020

For more than two years, the Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) at Kaspersky has been publishing quarterly summaries of advanced persistent threat (APT) activity. This is our latest installment, focusing on activities that we observed during Q1 2020. Continue reading APT trends report Q1 2020

Kaspersky finds a new APT campaign targeting engineers in the Middle East

A mysterious set of hackers last year began a targeted campaign to breach industrial organizations in the Middle East, antivirus firm Kaspersky said Tuesday. Attackers have sought to breach engineers, particularly in a single, unnamed Middle Eastern country, adding to a long history of cyber operations in the region. They’re relying on a strain of malicious software that’s tailored for espionage, and does not appear to match any code the researchers have seen before. Exactly who is behind the effort remains unclear. The sensitivity of the targets, and the fact that the activity is ongoing, prompted the researchers to go public with their findings. The Moscow-based company labeled the activity an “advanced persistent threat” (APT), a loose term for well-resourced hackers often linked to government interests. Kaspersky designated the hacking campaign “WildPressure.” “Anytime the industrial sector is being targeted, it’s concerning,” said Kaspersky senior security researcher Denis Legezo. There is no indication that hackers have done anything beyond […]

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Russian hackers using stolen corporate email accounts to mask their phishing attempts

Hackers working for Russian military intelligence have long relied on zero-days and malware to target their victims, but in the last year they’ve kept it simple — using previously hacked email accounts to send a wide array of phishing attempts, according to new research from security firm Trend Micro. Since at least May of last year, the group known as Fancy Bear, APT28, or Pawn Storm, has used hacked email accounts belonging to high-profile personnel working at defense firms in the Middle East to carry out the operation, according to Feike Hacquebord, a senior threat researcher at Trend Micro. “The actor connects to a dedicated server using the OpenVPN option of a commercial VPN provider and then uses compromised email credentials to send out credential spam via a commercial email service provider,” Hacquebord writes in the research. The group, which the U.S. Department of Justice linked with Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate […]

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EnigmaSpark: Politically Themed Cyber Activity Highlights Regional Opposition to Middle East Peace Plan

In recent analysis of malicious activity likely targeting entities based in the Middle East, IBM X-Force IRIS discovered a backdoor malware strain we named “EnigmaSpark.”

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Cyber-espionage campaign in Middle East, Europe picked up speed after Soleimani killing

Iran-linked hackers have been running spearphishing email campaigns against governmental organizations in Turkey, Jordan and Iraq in recent months in a likely effort to gather intelligence, according to research published Wednesday by Dell Secureworks. Most of the targeting, which Secureworks assesses to be focused on espionage, began before the U.S. military killed Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Iran’s Quds Force, in Baghdad early January. But Alex Tilley, a senior researcher for Secureworks, told CyberScoop the spearphishing activity has increased since the killing. The research appears to align with information the FBI shared with industry in January, when it warned of an increase in Iranian “cyber reconnaissance activity.” The alert highlighted that Iranian hackers could be zeroing in on the defense industrial base, government agencies, academia and nongovernmental organizations. The campaign Secureworks’ Counter Threat Unit (CTU) has observed, with activity from mid-2019 to mid-January of 2020, has also targeted intergovernmental organizations and unknown entities in […]

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New Destructive Wiper ZeroCleare Targets Energy Sector in the Middle East

According to IBM X-Force research, the ZeroCleare wiper was used to execute a destructive attack that affected organizations in the energy and industrial sectors in the Middle East.

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