Investigations into the prevalence and impact of digital espionage operations against civil society groups.
In this research note, we analyze a malware campaign targeting Hong Kong democracy activists. Two new malware families are used in the campaign that we name UP007 and SLServer. Previous reports have shown overlap in the tactics, tools, and procedures used in this campaign in other operations targeting groups in Burma, Hong Kong, and the Tibetan community.
This report describes the latest iteration in a long-running espionage campaign against the Tibetan community. We describe how the attackers continuously adapt their campaigns to their targets, shifting tactics from document-based malware to conventional phishing
This report describes an extensive malware, phishing, and disinformation campaign active in several Latin American countries, including Ecuador, Argentina, Venezuela, and Brazil. The nature and geographic spread of the targets seems to point to a sponsor, or sponsors, with regional, political interests. The attackers, whom we have named Packrat, have shown a keen and systematic interest in the political opposition and the independent press in so-called ALBA countries (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas), and their recently allied regimes.
This report analyzes a campaign of targeted attacks against an NGO working on environmental issues in Southeast Asia. Our analysis reveals connections between these attacks, recent strategic web compromises against Burmese government websites, and previous campaigns targeting groups in the Tibetan community.
This post describes the results of Internet scanning we recently conducted to identify the users of FinFisher, a sophisticated and user-friendly spyware suite sold exclusively to governments. We devise a method for querying FinFisher’s “anonymizing proxies” to unmask the true location of the spyware’s master servers. Since the master servers are installed on the premises of FinFisher customers, tracing the servers allows us to identify which governments are likely using FinFisher. In some cases, we can trace the servers to specific entities inside a government by correlating our scan results with publicly available sources.
این گزارش به کمپین رو به رشد حملات فیشینگ علیه کاربران در گستره ایران و حداقل یک حمله به یک فعال غربی می‌پردازد. این حمله‌ها تلاش دارند تا امنیت مضاعفی که از طریق رمز عبور دو مرحله‌ای در گوگل فراهم شده است را دور بزنند و به شکل گسترده‌ای مبتنی بر تماس‌های تلفنی و تلاش برای ورود در زمان حقیقی از سوی مهاجم است. جالب اینجاست که این حمله‌ها عموما با یک تماس تلفنی از کشور انگلستان شروع می‌شده و هکرها به یکی از دو زبان فارسی و یا انگلیسی ارتباط برقرار می‌کرده‌اند.
This report describes an elaborate phishing campaign using two-factor authentication against targets in Iran’s diaspora, and at least one Western activist.
This research note outlines what we know about the use of Hacking Team’s Remote Control System (RCS) by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS). The note synthesizes information found in publicly leaked materials, as well as our own research.
This post analyzes targeted malware attacks against groups in the Tibetan diaspora and Hong Kong that leverage the CVE-2014-4114 vulnerability
Hundreds of members of the Tibetan community are being targeted by email-based malware attacks that leverage the March 10 Tibetan Uprising anniversary as a theme. This report analyzes two March 10 related attacks. One using a new malware family we call MsAttacker , and another using the ShadowNet malware family and command and control infrastructure related to previous campaigns that targeted the Tibetan community.
