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:

  • Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Open to IoT Attacks

    December 14, 2018

    Flaws could allow an attacker to stop or start a home charging station, or even change the current in order to start a fire. Given that creating proof-of-concept (PoC) cyberattacks for the Internet of Things (IoT) is essentially like shooting fish in a barrel these days, perhaps it’s not exactly surprising that a new niche category ...

  • LCG Kit: Sophisticated builder for Malicious Microsoft Office Documents

    December 13, 2018

    Proofpoint researchers discovered “LCG Kit,” a weaponized document builder service, in March 2018.  Since we began tracking LCG Kit, we have observed it using the Microsoft Equation Editor CVE-2017-11882 , which has been used used in limited email campaigns. ...

  • Tildeb: Analyzing the 18-year-old Implant from the Shadow Brokers’ Leak

    December 13, 2018

    On April 14, 2017, The Shadow Brokers (TSB) leaked a bevy of hacking tools named “Lost in Translation.” This leak is notorious for having multiple zero-day remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities targeting critical protocols such as Server Message Block (SMB) and Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and applications like collaboration and web server-based software. The exploit toolkit includes EternalBlue, ...

  • Supply Chain Security: Managing a Complex Risk Profile

    December 12, 2018

    Experts sound off on how companies can work with their third-party suppliers and partners to secure the end-to-end supply chain. NYC — From Delta Airlines to Best Buy, a number of big-name companies were involved this year in data breaches – but even though their names made headlines, the actual security incidents occurred due to flaws in third-party partners. Across ...

  • Operation Sharpshooter Uses Fileless Malware to Attack Global Infrastructure

    December 12, 2018

    The McAfee Advanced Threat Research team detected a malware campaign dubbed Operation Sharpshooter which attacked nuclear, defense, energy, and financial targets from all over the world. As detailed by McAfee’s research team, the campaign dubbed “Operation Sharpshooter” makes use of an in-memory essential to download and execute a second stage payload named Rising Sun. Moreover, the Rising Sun implant ...

  • New Variant of Shamoon Malware Uploaded to VirusTotal

    December 12, 2018

    A new variant of the destructive Shamoon malware was uploaded to VirusTotal this week, but security researchers haven’t linked it to a specific attack yet. Also referred to as DistTrack, the sophisticated malware was initially observed in attacks against Saudi Arabian and other oil companies in 2012, when it destroyed data on over 30,000 systems. An updated ...