Star Blizzard’s new spear-phishing campaign, while novel in that it uses and targets WhatsApp for the first time, exhibits familiar spear-phishing TTPs for Star Blizzard, with the threat actor initiating email contact with their targets, to engage them, before sending them a second message containing a malicious link.
The sender address used by the threat actor in this campaign impersonates a US government official, continuing Star Blizzard’s practice of impersonating known political/diplomatic figures, to further ensure target engagement. The initial email sent to targets contains a quick response (QR) code purporting to direct users to join a WhatsApp group on “the latest non-governmental initiatives aimed at supporting Ukraine NGOs.”
Read more…
Source: Microsoft
Related:
- New Rowhammer attack exploits the design of ever-shrinking and more dense DRAM chips
May 26, 2021
Google has detailed its work discovering a new Rowhammer vulnerability dubbed “Half-Double”, which evolves the style of attack on DRAM memory first reported in 2014 and suggests the Rowhammer problem won’t go away soon. The Rowhammer attack is unusual because it aims to cause “bit flips” by rapidly and repeatedly accessing data in one memory row ...
- Evolution of JSWorm ransomware
May 25, 2021
Over the past few years, the ransomware threat landscape has been gradually changing. We have been witness to a paradigm shift. From the massive outbreaks of 2017, such as WannaCry, NotPetya, and Bad Rabbit, a lot of ransomware actors have moved to the covert but highly profitable tactic of “big-game hunting”. News of ransomware causing ...
- Crimes of Opportunity: Increasing Frequency of Low Sophistication Operational Technology Compromises
May 25, 2021
Attacks on control processes supported by operational technology (OT) are often perceived as necessarily complex. This is because disrupting or modifying a control process to cause a predictable effect is often quite difficult and can require a lot of time and resources. However, Mandiant Threat Intelligence has observed simpler attacks, where actors with varying levels ...
- Russian dark web marketplace Hydra cryptocurrency transactions reached $1.37bn in 2020
May 25, 2021
An investigation into the Hydra marketplace has revealed surging transaction volumes and a thriving — albeit illicit — cryptocurrency ecosystem. On Tuesday, Flashpoint and Chainalysis jointly released a report into Hydra, a marketplace in the dark web. At its inception in 2015, Hydra was well-known for the sale of narcotics, but as time has gone on, the ...
- VMware warns of critical bug affecting all vCenter Server installs
May 25, 2021
VMware urges customers to patch a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in the Virtual SAN Health Check plug-in and impacting all vCenter Server deployments. “These updates fix a critical security vulnerability, and it needs to be considered at once,” said Bob Plankers, Technical Marketing Architect at VMware. Read more… Source: Bleeping Computer
- Iranian hacking group targets Israel with wiper disguised as ransomware
May 25, 2021
An Iranian hacking group has been observed camouflaging destructive attacks against Israeli targets as ransomware attacks while maintaining access to victims’ networks for months in what looks like an extensive espionage campaign. The threat actor, tracked as Agrius by SentinelLabs researchers, has targeted Israel starting with December 2020. “Initially engaged in espionage activity, Agrius deployed a set ...