Security News
Out-of-control scalper bots have created havoc in Israel by registering public service appointments for various government services and then offering to sell them to disgruntled citizens. The bot's operators attempted to sell appointments for a range of government agencies for over $100, including passport renewal, the Israeli Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Transport, National Insurance, Israel Post, and the Israeli state Electricity Company.
Israel's Ministry of Defense has dramatically restricted the number of countries to which cybersecurity firms in the country are allowed to sell offensive hacking and surveillance tools to, cutting off 65 nations from the export list. In curtailing the exports, the move effectively makes it harder for local cybersecurity firms to market their software to countries with totalitarian regimes or with a track record of perpetrating human abuses.
Apple has sued NSO Group and its parent company Q Cyber Technologies in a U.S. federal court holding it accountable for illegally targeting users with its Pegasus surveillance tool, marking yet another setback for the Israeli spyware vendor. "State-sponsored actors like the NSO Group spend millions of dollars on sophisticated surveillance technologies without effective accountability. That needs to change," said Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering in a statement.
Israeli spyware vendor Candiru, which was added to an economic blocklist by the U.S. government this month, is said to have reportedly waged "Watering hole" attacks against high-profile entities in the U.K. and the Middle East, new findings reveal. The strategic web compromises are believed to have occurred in two waves, the first commencing as early as March 2020 before ending in August 2020, and the second string of attacks beginning in January 2021 and lasting until early August 2021, when the targeted websites were stripped clean off the malicious scripts.
A state-sponsored threat actor allegedly affiliated with Iran has been linked to a series of targeted attacks aimed at internet service providers and telecommunication operators in Israel, Morocco, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia, as well as a ministry of foreign affairs in Africa, new findings reveal. The intrusions, staged by a group tracked as Lyceum, are believed to have occurred between July and October 2021, researchers from Accenture Cyber Threat Intelligence group and Prevailion's Adversarial Counterintelligence Team said in a technical report.
A set of seemingly innocuous Android apps have been infecting Israeli users with spyware since 2018, and the campaign continues to this day. The spyware-laden apps were discovered by researchers at Qihoo 360 who found various apps disguised as social applications, Threema, Al-Aqsa Radio, Al-Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem Guide, PDF viewer, Wire, and other applications.
Security vendor FireEye says it has spotted a Chinese espionage group that successfully compromised targets within Israel, and that trying to make its efforts look like the work of Iranian actors is part of the group's modus operandi. A FireEye blog post states the Chinese activity has been ongoing since 2019, when a group it names "UNC215" used the Microsoft SharePoint vulnerability CVE-2019-0604 "To install web shells and FOCUSFJORD payloads at targets in the Middle East and Central Asia".
A Chinese cyber espionage group has been linked to a string of intrusion activities targeting Israeli government institutions, IT providers, and telecommunications companies at least since 2019, with the hackers masquerading themselves as Iranian actors to mislead forensic analysis. FireEye's Mandiant threat intelligence arm attributed the campaign to an operator it tracks as "UNC215", a Chinese espionage operation that's believed to have singled out organizations around the world dating back as far as 2014, linking the group with "Low confidence" to an advanced persistent threat widely known as APT27, Emissary Panda, or Iron Tiger.
A Chinese cyber espionage group has been linked to a string of intrusion activities targeting Israeli government institutions, IT providers, and telecommunications companies at least since 2019. FireEye's Mandiant threat intelligence arm attributed the campaign to an operator it tracks as "UNC215", a Chinese espionage operation that's believed to have singled out organizations around the world dating back as far as 2014, linking the group with "Low confidence" to an advanced persistent threat widely known as APT27, Emissary Panda, or Iron Tiger.
Private Israeli firm NSO Group has denied media reports its Pegasus software is linked to the mass surveillance of journalists and rights defenders, and insisted that all sales of its technology are approved by Israel's defence ministry. NSO spokesman Oded Hershkovitz told Israel's Army Radio the list of phone numbers was "Not connected" to NSO, but rather to other companies and open-source software.