Security News > 2020 > March > Government-backed cyber attackers increasingly targeting journalists

Since the start of the year, journalists and news outlets have become preferred targets of government-backed cyber attackers, Google's Threat Analysis Group has noticed.

Attackers impersonate a journalist to seed false stories with other reporters to spread disinformation. In other cases, attackers will send several benign emails to build a rapport with a journalist or foreign policy expert before sending a malicious attachment in a follow up email," shared Toni Gidwani, a security engineering manager at TAG. Government-backed attackers also target foreign policy experts - for their research, access to the organizations they work with, and connection to fellow researchers or policymakers for subsequent attacks - as well as government officials, dissidents and activists.

Aside from trying to deliver malware to compromise the targets' computer and/or smartphone, the attackers are also trying to compromise their online accounts - repeatedly.

The attackers haven't failed to notice the effectiveness of the protections, Gidwani says, and have slowed down their onslaught.

Google's TAG also discovers attacks and tracks attackers exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities in popular software - in 2019, they discovered zero-day vulnerabilities affecting Android, Chrome, iOS, Internet Explorer and Windows.

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