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:
- Google says it mitigated a 2.54 Tbps DDoS attack in 2017, largest known to date
October 16, 2020
The Google Cloud team revealed today a previously undisclosed DDoS attack that targeted Google service back in September 2017 and which clocked at 2.54 Tbps, making it the largest DDoS attack recorded to date. Damian Menscher, a Security Reliability Engineer for Google Cloud, said the 2.54 Tbps peak was “the culmination of a six-month campaign” that ...
- 800,000 SonicWall VPNs vulnerable to new remote code execution bug
October 16, 2020
Almost 800,000 internet-accessible SonicWall VPN appliances will need to be updated and patched for a major new vulnerability that was disclosed on Wednesday. Discovered by the Tripwire VERT security team, CVE-2020-5135 impacts SonicOS, the operating system running on SonicWall Network Security Appliance (NSA) devices. SonicWall NSAs are used as firewalls and SSL VPN portals to filter, control, ...
- IAmTheKing and the SlothfulMedia malware family
October 15, 2020
On October 1, 2020, the DHS CISA agency released information about a malware family called SlothfulMedia, which they attribute to a sophisticated threat actor. We have been tracking this set of activity through our private reporting service, and we would like to provide the community with additional context. In June 2018, we published the first report ...
- Iranian state hacker group linked to ransomware deployments
October 15, 2020
Security researchers said they found clues linking recent attacks with the Thanos ransomware to a group of Iranian state-sponsored hackers. While investigating security incidents at several Israeli prominent organizations, security researchers from ClearSky and Profero said they linked the intrusions to MuddyWater, a known Iranian state-sponsored hacking group. The intrusions followed similar patterns, with two tactics being ...
- 20 Arrests In QQAAZZ Multi-Million Money Laundering Case
October 15, 2020
An unprecedented international law enforcement operation involving 16 countries has resulted in the arrest of 20 individuals suspected of belonging to the QQAAZZ criminal network which attempted to launder tens of millions of euros on behalf of the world’s foremost cybercriminals. Some 40 house searches were carried out in Latvia, Bulgaria, the United Kingdom, Spain and ...
- Microsoft Addresses Windows TCP/IP RCE/DoS Vulnerability
October 14, 2020
Microsoft has released a security update to address a protocol vulnerability—CVE-2020-16898—in Windows Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)/IP stack handling of Internet Control Message Protocol version 6 (ICMPv6) Router Advertisement packets. A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability to take control of an affected system or cause a denial-of-service condition. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) encourages ...