Security News > 2022 > February > New Wave of Cyber Attacks Target Palestine with Political Bait and Malware

Cybersecurity researchers have turned the spotlight on a new wave of offensive cyberattacks targeting Palestinian activists and entities starting around October 2021 using politically-themed phishing emails and decoy documents.

The intrusions are part of what Cisco Talos calls a longstanding espionage and information theft campaign undertaken by the Arid Viper hacking group using a Delphi-based implant called Micropsia dating all the way back to June 2017.

The threat actor's activities, also tracked under the monikers Desert Falcon and the APT-C-23, were first documented in February 2015 by Kasperksy and subsequently in 2017, when Qihoo 360 disclosed details of cross-platform backdoors developed by the group to strike Palestinian institutions.

The Russian cybersecurity company-branded Arid Viper the "First exclusively Arabic APT group."

Then in April 2021, Meta, which pointed out the group's affiliations to the cyber arm of Hamas, said it took steps to boot the adversary off its platform for distributing mobile malware against individuals associated with pro-Fatah groups, the Palestinian government organizations, military and security personnel, and student groups within Palestine.

The raft of new activity relies on the same tactics and document lures used by the group in 2017 and 2019, suggesting a "Certain level of success" despite a lack of change in their tooling.

News URL

https://thehackernews.com/2022/02/new-wave-of-cyber-attacks-target.html