CHOSEN BRICK is a malware family that has been used to target individuals around the world including in the UK, US and the Netherlands from at least 2025. CHOSEN BRICK enables Iranian state cyber actors to collect information on a target’s contacts, emails and social media messages, which could enable tracking of their movements.
Iran almost certainly uses cyber activity to support the repression of individuals who are seen as a threat to the regime, such as dissidents, activists and journalists. In some cases, the Iranian intelligence services have plotted to kidnap or conduct lethal operations against individuals internationally, who they perceive as enemies of the regime.
The personal details of some previous victims of CHOSEN BRICK have appeared on pro-Iranian leak sites, potentially increasing the risk to the personal safety of those affected.
Read more…
Source: U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Cyber Division
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Silent Night Banking Trojan Charges Top Dollar on the Underground
May 21, 2020
A descendant of the infamous Zeus banking trojan, dubbed Silent Night by the malware’s author, has emerged on the scene, with a host of functionalities available in a spendy malware-as-a-service (MaaS) model. Custom builds can run as much as $4,000 per month to use, which researchers say is now placing the code out of the range ...
- Critical Cisco Bug in Unified CCX Allows Remote Code Execution
May 21, 2020
Cisco has hurried out a fix out for a critical remote code-execution flaw in its customer interaction management solution, Cisco Unified Contact Center Express (CCX). Cisco’s Unified CCX software is touted as a “contact center in a box” that allows companies to deploy customer-care applications. The flaw (CVE-2020-3280), which has a CVSS score of 9.8 out ...
- NetWalker Ransomware Gang Hunts for Top-Notch Affiliates
May 20, 2020
The NetWalker ransomware – the scourge behind one of the recent Toll Group attacks – has transitioned to a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model, and its operators are placing a heavy emphasis on targeting and attracting technically advanced affiliates, according to researchers. Traditionally, “technically advanced” and RaaS don’t tend to go together – after all, one of the benefits of ...
- ‘Flight risk’ employees involved in 60% of insider cybersecurity incidents
May 20, 2020
Employees planning to leave their jobs are involved in 60% of insider cybersecurity incidents and data leaks, new research suggests. According to the Securonix 2020 Insider Threat Report, published on Wednesday, “flight risk” employees, generally deemed to be individuals on the verge of resigning or otherwise leaving a job, often change their behavioral patterns from two months ...
- Verizon’s 2020 DBIR
May 19, 2020
Verizon’s 2020 DBIR is out, you can download a copy or peruse their publication online. Kaspersky was a contributor once again, and we are happy to provide generalized incident data from our unique and objective research. We have contributed to this project and others like it for years now. This year’s ~120 page report analyses data from ...
- NXNSAttack technique can be abused for large-scale DDoS attacks
May 19, 2020
A team of academics from Israel has disclosed today details about NXNSAttack, a vulnerability in DNS servers that can be abused to launch DDoS attacks of massive proportions. According to the research team, NXNSAttack impacts recursive DNS servers and the process of DNS delegation. Recursive DNS servers are DNS systems that pass DNS queries upstream in order to ...