Pro-Assad Hackers Cyber-Charm Syrian Rebels to Steal Data
Rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al Assad gave away strategic information to hackers pretending to be young interested women.
According to PC Magazine, hackers used fake Skype and Facebook profiles to lure the rebels and siphon information about battle plans, supplies and strategy. Pretending to be women who empathised with the rebels' cause of overthrowing Assad they befriended them, following which they sent malware in the guise of their photos.
"In the course of our threat research, we found the activity focused on the Syrian opposition that shows another innovative way threat groups have found to gain the advantage they seek. While we cannot positively identify who is behind these attacks, we know that they used social media to infiltrate victims' machines and steal military information that would provide an advantage to President Assad's forces on the battlefield," said Nart Villeneuve, senior threat intelligence researcher at FireEye which learnt of the hack, in a news release.
IB Times reported that the hackers managed to steal 7.7 GB of data from 64 people largely based in Syria and Turkey. While fingers were raised at the pro Assad group Syrian Electronic Army, FireEye's research revealed a Lebanon connection.
The hackers reportedly succeeded in extracting large volume information from the rebels as they got the latter to reveal the operating system and device used for chatting, The New York Times reports. This helped hackers customize malware to achieve maximum penetration.
