Collaborate Disseminate
The unattributed activity employs a sophisticated approach to steal data and monitor targets, researchers say.
The post Dark Pink, a newly discovered hacking campaign, threatens Southeast Asian military, government organizations appeared first on CyberScoop.
Chinese hackers with suspected ties to the People’s Liberation Army have been hacking into military and government organizations in Southeast Asia over the course of the last two years, according to Bitdefender research published Wednesday. The Chinese hackers, known as the Naikon group, have been conducting espionage against the organizations and stealing data from the victims since at least June of 2019, the researchers said in a blog post on the campaign. Bitdefender does not identify victims by name in its report. It’s just the latest evidence security researchers have gathered in the last several years that Naikon, which was first exposed in 2015, is still actively conducting espionage years later. Just last year Check Point revealed the suspected Chinese hackers were running a hacking campaign targeting government entities in Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Researchers have previously tied the Naikon hackers to China’s PLA, which is host to several […]
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A previously undocumented group of Chinese-speaking spies conducted a months-long campaign to infect the computers of government agencies in Vietnam and other Asian countries, researchers from the antivirus firm Kaspersky said Monday. The findings point to how alleged Chinese hacking groups overlap — and may collaborate — in their longstanding efforts to infiltrate the Southeast Asian governments with which China quarrels over territory. For example, the hackers’ techniques bear some similarities to that of a Chinese-speaking group called Cycldek that has been around eight years. But they’re also notably more advanced than Cycldek, leaving the Kaspersky researchers struggling to trace the specific origins of the group. The attackers executed code capable of taking full control of target computers, but they also stripped the code of digital clues that would make them easier to track. “One hypothesis we have is that one or several former Cycldek operators could have joined another […]
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Started as a side project by its founders, Warren is now helping regional cloud infrastructure service providers compete against Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Google and other tech giants. Based in Tallinn, Estonia, Warren’s self-service distributed cloud platform is gaining traction in Southeast Asia, one of the world’s fastest-growing cloud service markets, and Europe. It recently closed […] Continue reading Warren gets $1.4 million to help local cloud infrastructure providers compete against Amazon and other giants
Nearly five years ago, researchers unmasked a Chinese hacking group, pinpointing the unit of the People’s Liberation Army that was allegedly sponsoring it. The so-called Naikon group was key to China’s spying efforts in the South China Sea, targeting government agencies from the Philippines to Vietnam, said the report from companies ThreatConnect and Defense Group Inc. Since then, there has been relatively little public documentation of Naikon as other China-linked groups — including one targeted by a U.S. Department of Justice indictment — have taken the limelight. But on Thursday, analysts with Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point said that Naikon has been far from idle in recent months, trying to hack familiar government targets in Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian countries. The espionage campaign, which has also hit state-owned companies in the region, accelerated in the last half of 2019 and into the first quarter of 2020. Naikon […]
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Hackers with suspected links to the Vietnamese government have been using the Google Play Store to distribute malicious software for the last four years, according to Kaspersky research published Tuesday. The targeted Android campaign, which Kaspersky dubbed “PhantomLance,” affected roughly 300 devices in nearly a dozen countries including Vietnam, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran, Algeria, South Africa, Nepal, Myanmar, and Malaysia, the company said. Researchers say with “medium confidence” the espionage campaign is connected to a known hacking group, OceanLotus or APT32, previously linked to the Vietnamese government. While attackers are targeting users in several countries, they appear to be especially focused on users in Vietnam. The effort suggests hackers are running domestic as well as foreign espionage operations, according to Kaspersky. They have been distributing their campaign through applications which promise to help users locate the nearest pub in Vietnam, or providing information on nearby churches. In addition to sharing APT32’s interest in victims located in Vietnam, the PhantomLance campaign’s malware, […]
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The PhantomLance espionage campaign is targeting specific victims, mainly in Southeast Asia — and could be the work of the OceanLotus APT. Continue reading Sophisticated Android Spyware Attack Spreads via Google Play
Wavecell, a cloud-communications platform for companies in Southeast Asia, announced today that it has been acquired by 8×8 in a deal worth about $125 million. The acquisition will help San Jose, California-based 8×8 expand in Asia, where Wavecell already has offices in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Hong Kong. Wavecell’s cloud API platform, which […] Continue reading Southeast Asian cloud communications platform Wavecell acquired by 8×8 in deal worth $125 million
Malaysian authorities found two warehouses full of the most trafficked mammal in the world. Continue reading 30 Tons of Pangolin Parts Seized in Historic Trafficking Bust
When U.S. officials return from international conferences this week they can be thankful for bolstered cybersecurity alliances with two Southeast Asian countries. The government has struck separate deals with Indonesia and Singapore to strengthen bilateral cooperation on fighting international cybercrime. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Indonesia’s police chief on Monday reached an agreement to increase U.S. training of Indonesian law enforcement officials to combat cyberattacks such as ransomware and to better use digital forensics, according to Straits Times newspaper. The State Department meanwhile signed a declaration of intent with Singapore’s Cybersecurity Agency to increase training and the sharing of technical information, ZDNet reported. Both Singapore and Indonesia are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), an intergovernmental organization made up of members that increasingly have been targeted by hackers, researchers warned this year. Singapore in July said it had been victimized in its largest-ever cyberattack, in which suspected nation-state […]
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