Fresh France Sponsored Assault Operation Identified

One fresh state-sponsored targeted assault has been discovered say security researchers who noted web-links in it leading onto Babar the spyware from France that had been utilized on Syrian targets in 2014, published infosecurity-magazine.com, March 6, 2015.

As per Joan Calvet, ESET Analyst, Casper, one reconnaissance tool that's highly
developed well has many characteristics particularly designed for staying concealed from infected computers' operators and evading anti-malware software. Infosecurity-magazine.com published this.

Calvet asserted that her organization managed to examine dual 0-day exploits abusing the CVE-2014-0515 security flaw in Flash that were observed on certain website of the Syrian Ministry-of-Justice after that website harbored malware during April 2014.

It was likely that those deploying Babar along with 2 more related French malicious programs -NBOT and Bunny, developed those payloads, she stated.

While all the entities that Casper targeted were situated inside Syria, ESET could not still substantiate so.

Calvet said that ESET actually couldn't determine whether the above in reality was true. Conversely, it was quite possible that those attacked had gotten diverted onto the 0-days from a different source like from one authentic but compromised site alternatively from an e-mail web-link. Overall it was certain that the 0-days, Casper's payloads as well as the command and control element were all receiving their hosting facility from the hacked site's server, Calvet additionally stated. Securityweek.com published this, March 5, 2015.

Meanwhile, Kaspersky too has been keeping watch over the particular advanced e-threat's developers that the security company calls 'Animal Farm' while assuming the group's existence from 2009/2010.

Costin Raiu Malware Researcher at Kaspersky stated that his company had been watching the activities of Animal Farm starting 2013 while figured out that the gang had attacked military contractors, governments, activists, human rights institutions along with media organizations and journalists via advanced and long-spanned Internet-spying schemes.

Raiu believes when one large-scale campaign like the above remained active for many years utilizing 0-day exploits devoid of any finance-related results, it was clear that some nation-state was actually backing it. Motherboard.vice.com published this, March 5, 2015.

Raiu feels convinced Casper is Animal Farm's creation albeit he wouldn't specifically put the blame on France.

» SPAMfighter News - 3/14/2015