CyberSecurityBoard
Sponsor Register Login

Microsoft: Iranian APT Impersonating Prominent Journalist in Clever Spear-Phishing Attacks

Malware hunters at Microsoft on Wednesday warned that an APT with known links to Iran's military intelligence has been impersonating a prominent journalist to trick a specific set of people into downloading malicious files.
The bespoke spear-phishing attacks, ongoing since November last year, are targeting high-profile individuals working on Middle Eastern affairs at universities and research organizations in Belgium, France, Gaza, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
In some instances of this campaign, Microsoft researchers caught the hackers using legitimate but compromised accounts to send phishing lures, and utilization of the Client for URL command to connect to its command-and-control server.
The APT has been caught masquerading as high-profile individuals, including as an unidentified journalist at a reputable news outlet.
Microsoft said the hacking team found success at certain targets that agreed to review the article or document referenced in the initial email.


This Cyber News was published on www.securityweek.com. Publication date: Wed, 17 Jan 2024 18:43:04 +0000


Cyber News related to Microsoft: Iranian APT Impersonating Prominent Journalist in Clever Spear-Phishing Attacks

Spear Phishing vs Phishing: What Are The Main Differences? - Almost half of them used phishing to obtain the passwords of users. Highly targeted phishing campaigns against specific individuals or types of individuals are known as spear phishing. It's important to be able to spot phishing in general. For ...
9 months ago Techrepublic.com
Microsoft: Iranian APT Impersonating Prominent Journalist in Clever Spear-Phishing Attacks - Malware hunters at Microsoft on Wednesday warned that an APT with known links to Iran's military intelligence has been impersonating a prominent journalist to trick a specific set of people into downloading malicious files. The bespoke spear-phishing ...
10 months ago Securityweek.com
What is an advanced persistent threat? - An advanced persistent threat is a prolonged and targeted cyber attack in which an intruder gains access to a network and remains undetected for an extended period. APT attacks are initiated to steal highly sensitive data rather than cause damage to ...
11 months ago Techtarget.com
Flipping the BEC funnel: Phishing in the age of GenAI - For years, phishing was just a numbers game: A malicious actor would slap together an extremely generic email and fire it out to thousands of recipients in the hope that a few might take the bait. Common among these new techniques was a shift towards ...
10 months ago Helpnetsecurity.com
What SOCs Need to Know About Water Dybbuk - According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, BEC costs victims more money than ransomware, with an estimated US$2.4 billion being lost to BEC in the US in 2021. Recently, BEC scammers have been using stolen accounts from legitimate Simple Mail ...
1 year ago Trendmicro.com
Phishing Campaign Exploits Open Redirection Vulnerability In 'Indeed.com' - Phishing remains one of the most prevalent challenges facing organisations, with more than three billion malicious emails estimated to be sent around the world every day. Owing to the prevalence of the problem, Verizon's 2023 Data Breach ...
8 months ago Cyberdefensemagazine.com
Combat Phishing Attacks With AI-Powered Threat Protection - According to statistics, 81% of organizations have seen an increase in phishing emails since 2020, with an estimated 3.4 billion emails sent every day. AI-generated phishing emails are a sophisticated and evolving cybersecurity threat. ...
9 months ago Gbhackers.com
Vade Releases 2023 Phishers' Favorites Report - PRESS RELEASE. SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 15, 2024 /PRNewswire/ - Vade, a global leader in threat detection and response with more than 1.4 billion mailboxes protected, today announced its annual Phishers' Favorites report for 2023. Phishers' Favorites ...
9 months ago Darkreading.com
Splunk: AI isn't making spear phishing more effective - Despite increased concerns, AI tools won't give adversaries an advantage when it comes to sending effective phishing emails, according to new research by Splunk's Surge security research team. In a blog post Thursday, Tamara Chacon, security ...
11 months ago Techtarget.com
Microsoft Incident Response lessons on preventing cloud identity compromise - Microsoft Incident Response is often engaged in cases where organizations have lost control of their Microsoft Entra ID tenant, due to a combination of misconfiguration, administrative oversight, exclusions to security policies, or insufficient ...
11 months ago Microsoft.com
Microsoft: Iranian hackers target researchers with new MediaPl malware - Microsoft says that a group of Iranian-backed state hackers are targeting high-profile employees of research organizations and universities across Europe and the United States in spearphishing attacks pushing new backdoor malware. The attackers, a ...
10 months ago Bleepingcomputer.com
Check Point Research Report: Shift in Cyber Warfare Tactics - Highlights: Shift in Cyber Warfare Focus: Recent developments in cyber warfare reveal a shift in the activities of Iranian hacktivist proxies. Initially concentrated on Israel, these groups are now extending their cyber operations to include targets ...
11 months ago Blog.checkpoint.com
Iranian Hackers Use New C2 Tool 'DarkBeatC2' in Recent Operation - MuddyWater, an Iranian threat actor, has used a novel command-and-control infrastructure known as DarkBeatC2 in its the most recent attack. This tool joins a list of previously used systems, including SimpleHarm, MuddyC3, PhonyC2, and MuddyC2Go. In a ...
7 months ago Cysecurity.news
The Future of Phishing Email Training for Employees in Cybersecurity - One common method they use is through phishing emails. To counter this changing threat, companies must give importance to providing phishing email training for employees on identifying and responding properly to phishing attempts. Standard training ...
6 months ago Hackread.com
Cybercriminals expand targeting of Iranian bank customers with known mobile malware - Researchers have uncovered more than 200 fake mobile apps that mimic major Iranian banks to steal information from their customers. The campaign was first discovered in July of this year, but since then, the cybercriminals have expanded their ...
11 months ago Therecord.media
Iran Ramps Up Cyberattacks on Israel Amid Hamas Conflict: Microsoft - In the context of the Israel-Hamas conflict, Iran's offensive operations against Israel were initially reactive and chaotic, but quickly ramped up and expanded in scope, Microsoft says. Immediately after October 7, Iranian threat actors were seen ...
9 months ago Securityweek.com
Star Blizzard increases sophistication and evasion in ongoing attacks - Microsoft Threat Intelligence continues to track and disrupt malicious activity attributed to a Russian state-sponsored actor we track as Star Blizzard. Star Blizzard has improved their detection evasion capabilities since 2022 while remaining ...
11 months ago Microsoft.com
Social Engineering Attacks: Tactics and Prevention - Social engineering attacks have become a significant concern in today's digital landscape, posing serious risks to the security and sensitive information of individuals and organizations. By comprehending these tactics and implementing preventive ...
9 months ago Securityzap.com
One Phish, Two Phish, Red Phish, Blue Phish - I sat down for a chat with George Skouroupathis, our phishing expert at Resonance Security. Phishing is often the first step taken by hackers in a larger scam. There are lots of different kinds of phishing attacks, but one of the most prevalent is ...
5 months ago Hackread.com
"Quishing" you a Happy Holiday Season - QR Code phishing scams - What they are and how to avoid them. Originally invented to keep track of car parts in the early 90s, QR codes have been around for decades. Quishing, or QR Code phishing, exploits smartphone users scanning the 2D barcode, ...
11 months ago Netcraft.com
Iran-Linked 'OilRig' Cyberattackers Target Israel's Critical Infrastructure, Over & Over - Prolific Iranian advanced persistent threat group OilRig has repeatedly targeted several Israeli organizations throughout 2022 in cyberattacks that were notable for leveraging a series of custom downloaders that use legitimate Microsoft cloud ...
11 months ago Darkreading.com
Russian Cyberattackers Launch Multiphase PsyOps Campaign - Russia-linked threat actors employed both PysOps and spear-phishing to target users over several months at the end of 2023 in a multiwave campaign aimed at spreading misinformation in Ukraine and stealing Microsoft 365 credentials across Europe. The ...
8 months ago Darkreading.com
Iran's Peach Sandstorm Deploy FalseFont Backdoor in Defense Sector - In its latest campaign, Iranian state-backed hackers, Peach Sandstorm, employs FalseFont backdoor for intelligence gathering on behalf of the Iranian government. Cybersecurity researchers at Microsoft Threat Intelligence Unit have uncovered the ...
10 months ago Hackread.com
Police takes down BulletProftLink large-scale phishing provider - The notorious BulletProftLink phishing-as-a-service platform that provided more than 300 phishing templates has been seized, the Royal Malaysian Police announced. The operation started in 2015 but came to researchers' radar later and became more ...
11 months ago Bleepingcomputer.com
Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Microsoft resources for security teams | Microsoft Security Blog - Help educate everyone in your organization with cybersecurity awareness resources and training curated by the security experts at Microsoft. The report found that 10.4% of phishing simulation participants clicked the email phishing link they were ...
1 month ago Microsoft.com

Latest Cyber News


Cyber Trends (last 7 days)


Trending Cyber News (last 7 days)