A series of potentially state-sponsored cyberattacks targeting government and military organisations in countries throughout Southeast Asia was uncovered in a research by Palo Alto Networks, a leader in enterprise security.

Discovered by the Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 threat intelligence team and dubbed ‘Operation Lotus Blossom,’ the attacks appear to be an attempt to gain inside information on the operation of nation-states throughout the region, said a statement.

The campaign dates as far back as three years and involves targets in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia, it said.

More than 50 separate attacks have been identified in Operation Lotus Blossom. They all use a custom-built Trojan, named ‘Elise’ to deliver highly targeted spear phishing emails and gain an initial foothold on targeted systems.

The Elise malware was developed to specifically meet the unique needs of the operation, but also is being used in other non-related attacks by the adversary, said Unit 42.

The attacks, which display the use of custom-built tools, extensive resources, and persistence across multiple years, suggest a well funded and organised team is behind them, it said.

Given these variables and the nature of the targets, Unit 42 believed the motivation for the attacks is cyber espionage and the actors behind them are associated with or sponsored by a nation-state with strong interests in the regional affairs of Southeast Asia.

Saeed Agha, general manager, Palo Alto Networks Middle East, said that the Unit 42 team discovered the Lotus Blossom campaign using the recently announced Palo Alto Networks AutoFocus service, which allowed the team’s security analysts to correlate and interrogate security events from over 6,000 WildFire subscribers and other threat intelligence sources.

These attacks are automatically prevented for all Palo Alto Networks Threat Prevention and WildFire subscribers. Others are encouraged to check their networks for signs of intrusion and add relevant indicators to their security controls, all of which are detailed in the full report, he said.

Ryan Olson, intelligence director, Unit 42, said: ”The Trojan backdoor and vulnerability exploits used in Operation Lotus Blossom aren’t cutting-edge by today’s standards, but these types of attacks can be detrimental if they are successful and give attackers access to sensitive data.

“The fact that older vulnerabilities are still being used tells us that until organisations adopt a prevention-based mindset and take steps to improve cyber hygiene, cyberattackers will continue to use legacy methods because they still work well.”

With the AutoFocus service, security practitioners gain instant access to actionable intelligence derived from billions of file analysis artifacts based on the files collected from of over 5,000 global enterprises, service providers, and government organisation routinely targeted by advanced, targeted attacks, said the statement.

By delivering context, such as the origin and uniqueness of a particular threat, or relevance to an organisation’s industry, the AutoFocus cyber threat intelligence service will be abel to expose the latest threat tactics, techniques, and procedures used by attackers; attribute attacks to specific adversaries; identify how specific threats fit into a larger campaign; and distinguish between commodity malware versus highly customised or targeted malware, it added. - TradeArabia News Service