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:
- 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 ...
- Eleethub: A Cryptocurrency Mining Botnet with Rootkit for Self-Hiding
May 18, 2020
Unit 42 researchers uncovered a new botnet campaign using Perl Shellbot, intended to mine Bitcoin, while avoiding detection using a specially crafted rootkit. The bot is propagated by sending a malicious shell script to a compromised device that then downloads other scripts. After the victim device executes the downloaded scripts, it starts waiting for commands from its ...