From cause to cash: a cross-border look at hacktivist activity


While tracking the activities of 4BID Kaspersky researchers uncovered a new string of campaigns that appear to be the work of several interconnected actors. While politically motivated groups generally limit their scope to specific nations – for 4BID and its peers, primarily Russian and occasionally Belarusian organizations – the latest findings reveal a shift. The actual geographic footprint of these attacks became broader than expected, striking companies across Kazakhstan, the UAE, Syria, and Egypt.

What triggered Kaspersky’s investigation was spotting a cluster of indicators of compromise within a breached Russian organization’s infrastructure. The researchers used these footprints to successfully track down other environments hit by the same threat actors and piece together the bigger picture.

Read more…
Source:  Kaspersky


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • Bit-and-Piece DDoS Method Emerges to Torment ISPs

    January 24, 2019

    Perpetrators are using smaller, bit-and-piece methods to inject junk into legitimate traffic, causing attacks to bypass detection rather than sounding alarms with large, obvious attack spikes. A pioneering distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack pattern has emerged, targeting internet service providers (ISPs) with something researchers have dubbed the bit-and-piece “Mongol” attack. The approach involves spreading out junk traffic across ...

  • Trojans lead siege on businesses for second year running

    January 23, 2019

    Security software firm Malwarebytes has released its annual ‘State of Malware 2019‘ report which analyses the prevalence of different forms of malware and shows how each type is being used to attack businesses and consumers. Following its quarterly report released in October, Malwarebytes report that for the second year in a row, Trojans are leading the siege on ...

  • U.S. Gov Issues Urgent Warning of DNS Hijacking Attacks

    January 23, 2019

    An emergency directive from the Department of Homeland Security provides “required actions” for U.S. government agencies to prevent widespread DNS hijacking attacks. The Department of Homeland Security is ordering all federal agencies to urgently audit Domain Name System (DNS) security for their domains in the next 10 business days. The department’s rare “emergency directive,” issued Tuesday, warned ...

  • Critical RCE Flaw in Linux APT Allows Remote Attackers to Hack Systems

    January 22, 2019

    Just in time… Some cybersecurity experts this week arguing over Twitter in favor of not using HTTPS and suggesting software developers to only rely on signature-based package verification, just because APT on Linux also does the same. Ironically, a security researcher just today revealed details of a new critical remote code execution flaw in the apt-get utility that can be exploited by ...

  • New Phobos ransomware exploits weak security to hit targets around the world

    January 21, 2019

    A prolific cybercrime gang behind a series of ransomware attacks is distributing a new form of the file-encrypting malware which combines two well known and successful variants in a series of attacks against businesses around the world. Dubbed Phobos by its creators, the ransomware first emerged in December and researchers at CoveWare have detailed how it shares a number of ...

  • DarkHydrus abuses Google Drive to spread RogueRobin Trojan

    January 21, 2019

    The DarkHydrus advanced persistent threat (APT) group is back and this time is not only using Windows vulnerabilities to infect victims but is also abusing Google Drive as an alternative communications channel. Last week, researchers from the 360 Threat Intelligence Center (360TIC) said the hackers have a new campaign underway which is focusing on targets in the Middle ...