The use of contextually-relevant emails is one of the most common social engineering tactics employed in targeted attacks. Emails still being the primary mode of business communications are often abused to deliver exploits to penetrate a network that consequently lead to other stages of a targeted attack cycle. In one of the targeted attacks we’re…
Read MoreIn our 1Q Threat roundup report, we noted that the number of mobile malware and high-risk applications reached the two-million mark and is rapidly growing. In our monitoring of the mobile threat landscape, we have recently discovered an Android malware that is spreading fast in Taiwan, detected as ANDROIDOS_RUSMS.A. Mobile users fall victim via SMS spam attack. Users receive…
Read MoreIn the recent 2H-2013 Targeted Attack Roundup Report we noted that we have been seeing several targeted attack campaign-related attacks in Taiwan. We are currently monitoring a campaign that specifically targets government and administrative agencies in Taiwan. We are naming this specific campaign PLEAD because of the letters of the backdoor commands issued by the related…
Read MoreTargeted attacks are known to use zero-day exploits. However, old vulnerabilities are still frequently exploited. In fact, based on cases analyzed in the second half of 2013, the most exploited vulnerability in this time frame was CVE-2012-0158, a Microsoft Office vulnerability that was patched in April 2012. This shows how important applying the latest patches and security updates…
Read MoreVulnerabilities, particularly zero-days, are often used by threat actors as the starting point for targeted attacks. This was certainly the case for a (then) zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2014-1761) affecting Microsoft Word. In its security advisory released last March, Microsoft itself acknowledged that the vulnerability was being used in “limited, targeted attacks.” Microsoft has since patched this…
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