Tropic Trooper spies on government entities in the Middle East


Tropic Trooper (also known as KeyBoy and Pirate Panda) is an APT group active since 2011. This group has traditionally targeted sectors such as government, healthcare, transportation and high-tech industries in Taiwan, the Philippines and Hong Kong.

Kaspersky recent investigation has revealed that in 2024 they conducted persistent campaigns targeting a government entity in the Middle East, starting in June 2023. Sighting this group’s TTPs in critical governmental entities in the Middle East, particularly those related to human rights studies, marks a new strategic move for them. This can help the threat intelligence community better understand the motives of this threat actor.

Read more…
Source: Kaspersky


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • Airline Credential-Theft Takes Off in Widening Campaign

    September 16, 2021

    A two-year-old espionage campaign against the airline industry is ongoing, with AsyncRAT and other commodity remote-access trojans (RATs) helping those efforts take flight. The campaign can effectively be a bird strike to the business engine, so to speak, resulting in data theft, financial fraud or follow-on attacks, researchers said, who have uncovered new details about ...

  • Ransomware encrypts South Africa’s entire Dept of Justice network

    September 15, 2021

    The justice ministry of the South African government is working on restoring its operations after a recent ransomware attack encrypted all its systems, making all electronic services unavailable both internally and to the public. As a consequence of the attack, the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development said that child maintenance payments are now on hold ...

  • Attackers Impersonate DoT in Two-Day Phishing Scam

    September 15, 2021

    Threat actors impersonated the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) in a two-day phishing campaign that used a combination of tactics – including creating new domains that mimic federal sites so as to appear to be legitimate – to evade security detections. Between Aug. 16-18, researchers at e-mail security provider INKY detected 41 phishing emails dangling the ...

  • Analyzing The ForcedEntry Zero-Click iPhone Exploit Used By Pegasus

    September 15, 2021

    Citizen Lab has released a report detailing sophisticated iPhone exploits being used against nine Bahraini activists. The activists were reportedly hacked with the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware using two zero-click iMessage exploits: Kismet, which was identified in 2020; and ForcedEntry, a new vulnerability that was identified in 2021. Zero-click attacks are labeled as sophisticated threats ...

  • Phishing Eager Travelers

    September 15, 2021

    Threat actors have always been adept at keeping abreast of worldwide trends – ranging from geopolitical to technical – and rapidly exploiting these trends for their benefit. The current pandemic is no exception. Unit 42 has previously reported on how cybercriminals have preyed on consumers during COVID-19 and on the use of COVID-19 themed phishing ...

  • The state of ransomware: national emergencies and million-dollar blackmail

    September 14, 2021

    Banks have been “disproportionately affected” by a surge in ransomware attacks, clocking a 1,318% increase year-on-year in 2021. Ransomware has become one of the most well-known and prevalent threats against the enterprise today. This year alone, we have seen high-profile cases of ransomware infection — including against Colonial Pipeline, Kaseya, and Ireland’s health service — cause ...