New Star Blizzard spear-phishing campaign targets WhatsApp accounts


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


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • Ransomware hits e-commerce platform X-Cart

    November 9, 2020

    E-commerce software vendor X-Cart suffered a ransomware attack at the end of October that brought down customer stores hosted on the company’s hosting platform. The incident is believed to have taken place after attackers exploited a vulnerability in a third-party software to gain access to X-Cart’s store hosting systems. “We have identified what we believed to have ...

  • Gitpaste-12 malware wants to add your Linux servers and IoT devices to its botnet

    November 9, 2020

    A new form of malware is targeting Linux servers and Internet of Things (IoT) devices and adding them to a botnet in what appears to be the first stage of a hacking campaign targeting cloud computing infrastructure – although the purpose of the attacks remains unclear. Uncovered by cybersecurity researchers at Juniper Threat Labs, the malicious ...

  • New Slipstream NAT bypass attacks to be blocked by browsers

    November 9, 2020

    Web browser vendors are planning to block a new attack technique that would allow attackers to bypass a victim’s NAT, firewall, or router to gain access to any TCP/UDP service hosted on their devices. The attack method, dubbed NAT Slipstreaming, was discovered by security researcher Samy Kamkar and it requires the victims to visit the threat ...

  • FBI: Hackers stole source code from US government agencies and private companies

    November 7, 2020

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation has sent out a security alert warning that threat actors are abusing misconfigured SonarQube applications to access and steal source code repositories from US government agencies and private businesses. Intrusions have taken place since at least April 2020, the FBI said in an alert sent out last month and made public ...

  • When Threat Actors Fly Under the Radar: Vatet, PyXie and Defray777

    November 6, 2020

    As security practitioners, Palo Alto Unit 42 researchers spend a lot of time focusing on the threat actors and malware families that leverage the most impactful exploits or affect the highest number of victims. But what happens when a threat actor goes “low and slow” to fly under the radar? One could argue that, in ...

  • RansomEXX Trojan attacks Linux systems

    November 6, 2020

    Kaspersky researchers have recently discovered a new file-encrypting Trojan built as an ELF executable and intended to encrypt data on machines controlled by Linux-based operating systems. After the initial analysis we noticed similarities in the code of the Trojan, the text of the ransom notes and the general approach to extortion, which suggested that we had ...