Social Engineering Tactics Targeting Healthcare & Public Health Entities and Providers


Access to employees’ email accounts, and then pivoted to specifically target login information related to the processing of reimbursement payments to insurance companies, medicare, or similar entities.

To gain initial access to victim networks, the threat actor acquired credentials through social engineering or phishing. In some observed instances, the threat actor called an organization’s IT Help Desk posing as an employee of the organization, and triggered a password reset for the targeted employee’s organizational account [T1566.004]. In some instances, by manipulating the IT Help Desk employees, the threat actor was able to bypass multifactor authentication (MFA) [T1556.006]. In another instance, the threat actors registered a phishing domain [T1556.001] that varied by one character from the target organization’s true domain, and targeted the organization’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) [TA1656].

Read more…
Source: U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Cyber Division


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • ‘[F]Unicorn’ Ransomware Impersonates Legit COVID-19 Contact-Tracing App

    May 27, 2020

    A fresh ransomware strain known as “Unicorn” has emerged, first seen this week targeting users by pretending to be an official government COVID-19 contact tracing app. According to an advisory from the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) from the Agency for Digital Italy (AgID), the malware family is taking advantage of the rollout of “Immuni” – ...

  • Tropic Trooper’s Back: USBferry Attack Targets Air-gapped Environments

    May 12, 2020

    Tropic Trooper, a threat actor group that targets government, military, healthcare, transportation, and high-tech industries in Taiwan, the Philippines, and Hong Kong, has been active since 2011. The group was reportedly using spear-phishing emails with weaponized attachments to exploit known vulnerabilities. Primarily motivated by information theft and espionage, the group has also been seen adopting different strategies such ...

  • DDoS attacks in Q1 2020

    May 6, 2020

    Since the beginning of 2020, due to the COVID-2019 pandemic, life has shifted almost entirely to the Web — people worldwide are now working, studying, shopping, and having fun online like never before. This is reflected in the goals of recent DDoS attacks, with the most targeted resources in Q1 being websites of medical organizations, ...

  • Coronavirus: GCHQ gets access to NHS data to beef up security

    April 29, 2020

    Health secretary Matt Hancock has used emergency powers under the NHS Act of 2006 to give GCHQ special dispensation to access data on the NHS’s cyber security and other IT systems in order to better protect the health service from cyber attack during the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. Documents released by the government, which can be viewed ...

  • Academics demand answers from NHS over potential data timebomb ticking inside new UK contact-tracing app

    April 29, 2020

    A group of nearly 175 UK academics has criticised the NHS’s planned COVID-19 contact-tracing app for a design choice they say could endanger users by creating a centralised store of sensitive health and travel data about them. In the open letter published this afternoon, the 173 scholars called on NHSX, the state-run health service’s app-developing and ...

  • Studying How Cybercriminals Prey on the COVID-19 Pandemic

    April 22, 2020

    With the spread of the coronavirus worldwide, interest is high in related topics. Accordingly, Unit 42 researchers found an immense increase in coronavirus-related Google searches and URLs viewed since the beginning of February. Cybercriminals are looking to profit from such trending topics, disregarding ethical concerns, and in this particular case preying on the misfortunes of ...