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Iran

Security

Microsoft Claims that Russia, China, and Iran Have Conducted Cyber Attacks on Presidential Campaigns

by tech_admin September 11, 2020
written by tech_admin

As Election Day approaches, Microsoft reports, hackers working for Russia , China, and Iran have just increased their attacks on the US presidential campaign.

In a blog post published Thursday, Microsoft’s vice president for consumer protection and trust, Mr Tom Burt, has just experienced a spike in hackers attacking campaigns from the company’s network security specialists.

“In recent weeks, Microsoft has detected cyberattacks targeting people and organizations involved in the upcoming Presidential election,” he wrote.

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Microsoft has extensive insight into the systems that hackers use to conduct attacks, being the organization behind the Windows operating system and Office application series.  The news is that the presidential race is already moving into the final two months, with national security agents and private firms on the brink of manipulating Russia’s elections in 2016.

Although hackers from all three countries were spotted attacking people linked to campaigns by Biden and Trump, Russia’s GRU, its military intelligence service, remains the greater threat, said John Hultquist, Mandiant ‘s director of intelligence research.

“We remain most concerned by Russian military intelligence, who we believe poses the greatest threat to the democratic process,” Hultquist text message reads.

“The GRU has carried out many of the most brash and aggressive cyber operations to ever come to light,” said Hultquist, like the hack-and-leak operations of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and French President Emmanual Macron’s 2017 campaign.

ALSO READ: Microsoft is Negotiating to Buy TikTok Social App

Russia has threatened more than 200 groups, all of which were part of the U.S. election or European politics in some way, including advisors to all major U.S. parties and think tanks, Burt said.

One recent goal was SKDKnickerbocker, a consultancy company that partners for the Biden campaign in Washington. Reuters announced Thursday that Microsoft recently warned the company that Russian intelligence has sent phishing emails to the company, which also tries to intercept login information that can provide access to private documents or networks. Microsoft declined to comment on this topic and SKDKnickerbocker did not respond to a comment request.

Though Microsoft finds no clear evidence that Chinese hackers are after more than campaign information, it has “indirectly and unsuccessfully attacked the campaign for President Joe Biden from non-campaign email addresses belonging to the campaign’s affiliates,” Burt wrote.

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Biden’s press secretary Jamal Brown noted in an email that Microsoft said the efforts were ineffective.

“We have known from the beginning of our campaign that we would be subject to such attacks and we are prepared for them,” he iterated.

Burt also wrote differently, that Iran had “unsuccessfully attempted to log into the accounts of Administration officials and Donald J. Trump for President campaign staff” in May and June.

Thea McDonald, deputy national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said in an email that it was “not surprising to see malicious activity directed at the campaign.”

“We work closely with our partners, Microsoft and others, to mitigate these threats. We take cybersecurity very seriously and do not publicly comment on our efforts,” McDonald said.

Reasons: Trump May Be the Better Technology President

Although only Russia has regularly hacked campaigns to steal information rather than merely collect intelligence, Iran targeting Trump and China targeting Biden does not necessarily imply a willingness to see those candidates fail.

In a public statement in August, the National Intelligence Director’s Office reported that each one showed a preference for manipulating operations in those countries: China and Iran primarily denigrated Trump, and Russia tried to harm Biden.

Christopher Krebs, United States owner. Protection Department for Safety and Telecommunications, said Burt ‘s statement was a warning to keep alert for the U.S.

“The announcement is consistent with earlier statements by the Intelligence Community on a range of malicious cyber activities targeting the 2020 campaign and reinforces that this is an all-of-nation effort to defend democracy,” Says Krebs  in a quote. “Everyone involved in the political process should stay alert against these sorts of attacks.”

September 11, 2020 0 comment
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Hacking

SECURITY: 40GB Training Videos of Iran-Linked Hackers Leaked by Mistake

by tech_admin July 19, 2020
written by tech_admin

IBM X-Force Incident Response Intelligence Services (IRIS) security researchers have compiled approximately 40 GB of videos and other files of the leading Iranian hacking community.

The data archive detected by IBM X-Force research teams contained about 5 hours of video training, which seems to have directly been recorded from screens of hackers operating on behalf of the government group it calls ITG18 (or APT35) associated with the targeting of pharmaceutical companies and the presidential US campaign. This is the only way to obtain information from IBM X-Force IRIS researchers.

During the threeday time period from May 2020, in a server hosting various ITG18 domains that were used in earlier 2020, IBM X-Force IRIS discovered the 40GBs of video and data files.

“It is rarely possible to understand how the operator operates behind the keyboard, and there are still more rare recordings showing its operations generated by the operator. However, that’s precisely what IRIS uncovered by X-Force on an ITG18 operator who has a unique backstage review of its methods and possibly its legacy for a broader operation that is likely to be underway, ” said Wikoff, a strategic cyber threat analyst at IBM Security.

Several of the victims used compromised accounts from a US lawmaker in the files. The Navy and a staff officer with almost two decades of service in Greece’s Hellenic Navy. It also included failed attempts at phishing against an anonymous Iranian-American Philanthropist’s personal stories and against the US. Officials of the State Department.

“Several of the videos showed the adversary accounts user, while others showed the access tester and exchanging data from previously compromised accounts,” the researchers said.

The video files that IBM X-Force IRIS found were remote recordings that ranged from 2 minutes to 2 hours using a device named Bandicam. The file timestamps suggested the videos were captured roughly one day before being uploaded to the server run by ITG18.

The user uses a Notepad file containing one credential for each platform in five of the video files called “AOL.avi,” “Aol Contact.avi,” “Gmail.avi,” “Yahoo.avi,” “Hotmail.avi,” and video-by-video copied and pasted it to the corresponding website. The operator went on to show how different databases associated with these sites, including addresses, images, and related cloud storage, could be ex-filtrated.

The operator also updated the settings within each account ‘s account protection section and added them to Zimbra, a legal platform for email collaboration that can merge multiple email accounts into one gui. With Zimbra the operator was able to simultaneously track and handle separate compromised email accounts.

Other operator accounts contained in the training videos provided a further description of people affiliated with ITG18, such as Iranian country code telephone numbers.

“Whatever the motivation, the ITG18 operator’s mistakes have enabled IBM X-Force IRIS to gain valuable insights into how this group could achieve its goals and train its operators elsewhere. IBM X-Force IRIS sees ITG18 as a potential threat group with substantial investment in its operations, “the researchers noted.

“Despite numerous public disclosures and extensive coverage of its activities, the organization has shown continuity in its operations and clear construction of new infrastructures.”

ITG18, which has been operating since at least 2013, primarily targets individuals and organizations of strategic 
interest to the Government of Iran through phishing attacks using credential harvesting and email compromise operations.

 

July 19, 2020 0 comment
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