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Iranians Use 'Cute Photographer' Profile To Hack Targets In Middle East (securityledger.com)
chicksdaddy shares a report from The Security Ledger: Hackers working on behalf of the government of Iran are using alluring social media profiles featuring a young, English photographer to entice and then compromise the systems of high value targets in the oil and gas industry, according to a report by Dell Secureworks. In a report released on Thursday, Secureworks' Counter Threat Unit (CTU) said that it observed an extensive phishing campaign beginning in January and February 2017 that used a polished social media profile of a young, English woman using the name "Mia Ash" to conduct highly targeted spear-phishing and social engineering attacks against employees of Middle Eastern and North Africa firms in industries like telecommunications, government, defense, oil and financial services. The attacks are the work of an advanced persistent threat group dubbed COBALT GYPSY or "Oil Rig" that has been linked to other sophisticated attacks. The attacks, which spread across platforms including LinkedIn and Facebook, as well as email, were highly successful. In some cases, the attacks lasted months -- and long after the compromise of the employee -- with the targets engaged in a flirtation with a woman they believed was a young, attractive female photographer. The Mia Ash persona is a fake identity based loosely on a real person -- a Romanian photographer and student who has posted her work prolifically online. According to a report by Security Ledger, the persona was created specifically with the goal of performing reconnaissance on and establishing relationships with employees of targeted organizations. Victims were targeted with the PupyRAT Trojan, an open source, cross-platform remote access trojan (RAT) used to take control of a victim's system and harvest credentials like logins and passwords from victims, and lured with malware-laden documents such as "photography surveys" (really?). One target was even instructed to make sure to open the document from work because it will "work better," Secureworks said.
The internet - where the women are men and the kids are cops
now THAT is the name of our new band.
remote administration tool, you filthy animals
Just sayin'...
Go for every network all the time and then filter to try and find anything of use.
Collect it all.
What do nations do if that cant do that geographically network collection over decades globally?
East Germany went for people. People in the West with isolated gov/mil jobs that wanted friends in the West. People with jobs who had gov/mil/political party access and might talk about the stress of secret work later.
The not married secretary in Bonn on a weekend who wanted a friend to talk with.
The other East German method was to place their university graduate at the entry level of a West German company or bureaucracy.
Over a few decades that trusted East German living a normal life in West Germany might advance to middle or upper management. Not much contact with their own nation to better ensure security.
The US and UK used to have very good security to avoid such attempts. Vetting, looking back over the life of any applicant. Talking in person to their family, extended family, teachers, police, home town, university, local courts to get any idea of the politics and security risk of the applicant.
With the internet and the need for translators by the UK and USA all that has changed.
Contractors supply the USA and UK gov/mil with skilled external staff and affirm security vetting has been done.
Such staff then have social lives that are apart form what the gov/mil expects or can track given the amount of new staff now trusted.
Methods to go after gov/mil staff or smaller cults, inward looking faith communities work really well. The results are much better than watching the world all the time for 5 hops of connections back to an interesting person. Just totally watch the community the interesting person moves around in. Like what MI5, the FBI could do over decades.
The problem for the West is that has too many interesting people to watch wondering around the USA and EU.
The West cannot even trust its own trusted staff not to leak.
Other nations see all the issues and win by using their skills on average gov/mil workers, cults, contractors, faith groups.
Expect the West to copy such methods soon by finding anyone who is pretty, photogenic, has language skills been removed from very normal uniformed gov/mil work and offered online very secret chat/person work.
The US and UK want their own "cute photographer" efforts but still have to find the staff with language skills.
Cults, faith groups, interesting people will just avoid the internet more so to avoid such gov/mil online chat traps.
The really skilled faith groups and cults in the US and UK will ensure their own members get selected by the UK and USA mil as translators and then get elected for "cute photographer" missions.
Its very hard to play catch up in the West after decades of collect it all as new staff cannot be trusted.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
When you can phish the White House cyber security expert in to doxing himself, anything seems possible.
Anyone still falling for this, in this day and age, should seriously be banned from ever coming within 10 feet of any computer ever again.
Yes, that includes the ones in their car.
I heard she married the Nigerian Prince, and they moved to Russia.
Table-ized A.I.
the Deep State sanctions against North Korea, Russia and Iran, that saw Congress vote as a SOVIET- style monolithic bloc (which is usually only seen when Congress is voting to support Israel's holocaust of one group or another 'sub-Humans') means Slashdot will triple its efforts to find daily stories demonisiing Russia and Iran. N Korea is a FAKE enemy, of course, since America acts to keep Korea split to serve the local geo-political interests of fading Japan.
Slashdot is Animal Farm or 1984 brought to life.
Dribblers will go "but aren't these stories mostly true?". No- actually they are not, but it wouldn't matter if they were. In Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the limited news slots on the radio or in newspapers were reserved for propaganda- like anti-jew reports. And these reports were better if mostly true, so they stood up to simple minded challenges. But the point is if all the sheeple here's about in their news is that jews are 'bad'- they'll start to think there must be some greater significance behind this.
Media outlets, like Slashdot, carefully pick their promoted headlines out of the thousands of possible ones. And it is this SELECTION that allows even 'true' headlines to represent a greater falsehood. To craft a fasle perception in order to demonise a group or nation- to enable public support for hurt to be done to that group or nation.
What slashdot owners do is pure evil. But even if you are racist enough to believe in 'the cause', enlightened self interest should warn you about earning the 'success of the nazis'. America is winning today, but has everything to lose. Nazi Germany could have taken its early victories and called it a day- using its astonishing technological skills to produce a most advanced PEACEFUL society. Today America is in the same place.
Bashing Iran and Russia is about creating the roads to war. You yanks have a choice to make.
“In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.”
#DeleteFacebook
Everybody and their grandma which do social engeeniring will tells you, you use social weakness to bypass the securities. Since men compose most of security teams, use of actractive women (real or just photo) makes so much sense, Do you think the US or Russia are using buff men to crack in security , using social engineering, of a mostly hetero sexual male population ? Heck I can remember an article of a woman doing security penetration testing. Her weapons ? Deep decoltée , big breast, and pumps with a hidden compartment with USB sticks, and lockpicks. I would bet it works perfectely.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
So, if I'm reading this correctly - the real girl is on DeviantArt, while the fake girl is on Facebook.
I didn't think anyone under 35 even knew DeviantArt existed...
#DeleteChrome
The author of the article links to a Deviantart photo as the "work prolifically online posted". Even the most cursory examination should have detected the "Cristina Matei - Selfportrait" below the photo. No "Mia Ash" here. I agree Cristina is cute though ;)
I think Slashdot should consider banning TFA (in this context "The Fucking Author") Chicksdaddy from posting articles to Slashdot. It would improve the quality of the site.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I've pretty much been conditioned to impulsively dismiss ANYTHING that is prefaced with a pretty face or body. There have been too many times where a pretty woman said hello to me only to give me a sales pitch or a SJW pitch. Too many ads in magazines and on TV use a pretty woman to pitch their products. I was a victim of a dating scam - fake FB account with pretty pictures and all the social engineering tricks. I was married to a materialistic gold digger who only got married for the entitlements. The "pretty face" social engineering tricks are evident in all the clickbait ads on news websites.
Marketers know that pretty faces sell a product - not anymore. Show me a picture of a pretty face, and I'll gloss right past it. Pay a pretty woman to pitch a product to my face, and I'll turn and walk away. I am so tired of being manipulated.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Where I disagree is "Do you think the US or Russia are using buff men to crack in security" as sarcasm, because the answer is yes. If the targets are female, you bet they use guys who are buff to crack security. While we may not discuss a woman's promiscuity as much as men publicly, women are just as vulnerable as men in terms of exploitable sexuality and are just as likely to be promiscuous.
The number of exploitable women just happens to be smaller than men.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
"Secureworks' Counter Threat Unit (CTU) said that it observed an extensive phishing campaign beginning in January and February 2017 that used a polished social media profile"
Would any of these phishing attacks if the clients were using anything other than Microsoft Windows.
Pics or it didn't happen.
Crazy anti-Iranian conspiracy theories. 9-11 was a Jew job. ae911truth dot org
Otherwise it might have cut short your rant if you had quoted the whole sentence : "of a mostly hetero sexual male population ". Sure they may be using buff men but in absence of knowing gender, the sure bet is big breasted woman.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org