Global Military Officials and Defense Targeted by New Series of Cyber-Attacks

Threat Actors Hack Email and Steal Sensitive Data from United States and Allies, According to New Trend Micro Report

Dubai, United Arab Emirates: Global military officials and defense contractors are being targeted by a series of cyber-attacks, according to a new research paper by Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global provider of security solutions.

The Trend Micro research paper “Operation Pawn Storm: Using Decoys to Evade Detection,” unravels the economic and political espionage attacks instigated by a group of threat actors primarily targeting military, embassy, and defense contractor personnel from the United States and its allies.

Opposing factions to and dissidents of the Russian government, international media, and even the national security department of a U.S. ally were also targeted.

“The operation highlights the robust strategies of infiltration leveraged by elite hacker crews,” said Tom Kellermann, Chief Cybersecurity Officer, Trend Micro. “The evasion techniques employed by these adversaries is reminiscent of the hunt for Red October. In 2014, geopolitics are harbingers of cyber campaigns.”

Threat actors, dubbed Operation Pawn Storm, used three attack vectors – spear-phishing emails with malicious attachments, an advanced network of phishing websites, and exploits injected into legitimate conference and media websites.

The threat actors used a mix of spear-phishing emails and specially crafted webmail service phishing websites to gain access to victims' inboxes in hopes of getting better footholds inside target organizations. So as not to raise suspicion, attackers used events and conferences as social engineering bait.

Apart from effective phishing tactics, the threat actors used a combination of proven targeted attack staples to compromise systems and get in to target networks – exploits and data-stealing malware.

Individuals and their respective organizations, meanwhile, should use solutions that can help protect against the various attack vectors that the threat actors behind Operation Pawn Storm used.

For overall protection against targeted attacks, Trend Micro Deep Discovery can help protect potential targets by sandboxing and analysing suspicious attachments to identify phishing emails.

Messaging solutions such as Trend Micro InterScan Messaging Security and the ScanMail Suite for Microsoft Exchange can analyze email attachments to protect from threats, while OfficeScan for endpoints and InterScan Web Security Virtual Appliance for gateways can block access to known phishing sites.