Hackers Attacking Institutions Inside Israel; Trend Micro

Trend Micro the security software company that unearthed 2 different hacking campaigns says that a hacker gang speaking Arabic language has been attacking Israeli organizations with the aim to gain admission into confidential documents, reported techworld.com.au in news on February 17, 2015.

Named as "Operation Arid Viper," one of the campaigns involves spear phishing electronic mails sent to Israeli targets for stealing their data. The malicious software used in the attack is unusual, according to Trend Micro because it contains one porn material so as to reduce the speed of incident response initiatives whilst the attackers carry out data exfiltration. Trend's security investigators saw that Arid Viper miscreants favored dispatching malevolent .RAR attachments that when potential victims received they encountered 2 more files planted onto their computers.

The first file was certain porn video of .MPG or .FLV type, while the second was one binary file pertaining to Windows and which had the icon hosted via Skype the popular online communication program.

Strangely, Trend Micro noticed that an identical command-and-control structure was shared between Arid Viper attackers as well as the other campaigners named Advtravel attackers, albeit both their assaults involved extremely different styles.

It was when a server linked to Advtravel operation remained active online that Trend Micro became knowledgeable of the Advtravel campaign.

It (Security Company) was therefore also able to take down replicas of the campaign's full content for examination prior to the locking down of the server by its just realized controllers.

Importantly, the attackers of Advtravel campaign contaminated over 500 PCs belonging to Arabs mostly, who lived in Egypt. Their aim was to filch graphics from victims' PCs, a large number of which happened to be Facebook profiles' screenshots, so they could possibly identify all the victims.

According to Trend, the above maybe an indication that the attackers were seeking to compromise picture files to blackmail victims, which shows the attackers aren't enough skilled for carrying out espionage or making financial gains.

Comparatively, the Advtravel hackers are pretty low skilled from Arid Viper hackers suggesting they're a conventional gang of debutant attackers at their careers' beginning.

» SPAMfighter News - 2/24/2015