Category Archives: religious groups

Public disclosure didn’t stop suspected Chinese hackers from targeting the Vatican

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Hackers with suspected ties to the Chinese government kept up their operations in the weeks after they were caught targeting the Vatican, according to Recorded Future findings published Tuesday. Recorded Future researchers first called out the hacking group’s focus on the Vatican and Hong Kong’s Catholic Diocese in July, after which the hackers appeared to briefly pause their activity, in a likely effort to evade detection. But within two weeks, the hackers, known as RedDelta, had resumed their activities, aiming to infiltrate mail servers of the Vatican and the Hong Kong Catholic Diocese, researchers said. “This is indicative of RedDelta’s persistence in maintaining access to these environments for gathering intelligence, in addition to the group’s aforementioned high risk tolerance,” the researchers write in a blog post on the matter. China has long had an interest in collecting intelligence on religious groups in the region, and in particular on Catholics, ever since the Vatican […]

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Religious, political leaders in Togo allegedly targeted with NSO Group spyware

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The list of people allegedly targeted by NSO Group surveillance software is growing by the day. Religious and political opposition leaders in Togo were targeted last year with spyware developed by Israeli software surveillance firm NSO Group, according to security researchers at University of Toronto Munk School’s Citizen Lab. Like many of the company’s past actions, the alleged NSO surveillance in Togo used Facebook’s WhatsApp to target religious clergy and politicians, Citizen Lab researchers said. The effort was part of a broader hacking campaign that targeted thousands of WhatsApp users with NSO Group spyware in 2019, according to Citizen Lab. NSO Group has repeatedly said that its software is only sold to law enforcement or intelligence agencies in order to target terrorists and criminals. But the revelations about surveillance in Togo are just the latest allegations that NSO Group spyware has enabled surveillance of political opponents and other perceived government […]

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Suspected Chinese hackers targeting Vatican in advance of Beijing negotiations

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Over the course of the last three months, hackers with suspected linked to the Chinese government have been targeting the Vatican, according to research from security firm Recorded Future. The targeting, which was delivered in a series of spearphishing emails with malware-laden documents imitating legitimate Vatican correspondence and news about Hong Kong’s national security law, appears to have begun in May of this year, Recorded Future researchers said. The suspected Chinese government hackers have also targeted mail servers of other Catholic entities, including an international missionary center in Italy and the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong. The hacking group appears to be linked with the China-based hacking group Mustang Panda, given several overlaps in techniques, infrastructure, and tooling, including a method for delivering malware that both groups employ as well as a method for obfuscating their attacks, the researchers said in a blog. However, given several different encryption mechanisms used […]

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Religious groups find their calling in threat sharing

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When it comes to protecting faith-based organizations from hackers, divine intervention will only get you so far. Congregations, like any other collection of people, can benefit from trading threat intelligence to mitigate the spread of malware. With that in mind, religious groups recently became the latest sector to create a threat-sharing hub by setting up the Faith-Based Information Sharing and Analysis Organization (FB-ISAO). Citing growing threats to donor data and religious websites, the FB-ISAO’s backers said it will fill a void by working with technology vendors to offer faith-based groups threat analysis and make them more resilient to attacks. The organization, founded in June but publicized on Monday, is open to American citizens of all faiths. Among the FB-ISAO’s services, promoted on its website, is a “simple, sensor-informed system and an intuitive user interface that integrates threat intelligence directly with your network. You won’t have to purchase high-cost equipment or software.” Many faith-based groups collect information […]

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