Did hackers lead warplanes to Syrian hospital after targeting British surgeon’s computer?
BBC Newsnight broadcast phone number of surgeons working in war-torn Aleppo… and then the hospital was bombed.
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Al Jazeera makes a game out of Syrian cyber warfare – Alphr
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Al Jazeera makes a game out of Syrian cyber warfare
Alphr #HACKED gives insight into both a particular case of cyber warfare and the general processes of modern investigative journalism. The hope is that by playing through a scenario, a person develops a greater sense of emotional and intellectual involvement … |
Syrian rebels lured into malware honeypot sites through “sexy” online chats
Hacking for “signals intelligence” doesn’t take NSA-level resources; it doesn’t even require very sophisticated exploit tools. Using a combination of Windows and Android malware and some very simple social engineering, a group aligned with the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad have raked in a wealth of intelligence on Syrian opposition groups. And they did it by pretending to be women and flirting with their victims.
Over the past two years, using a combination of fake social media and Skype accounts associated with fictional female supporters of Syrian rebel groups, the group—apparently operating from Lebanon—fooled rebel soldiers and others providing aid to them into downloading malware to their computers and Android smartphones. As revealed in a report published today by FireEye (PDF), the group (which may have been associated with Hezbollah) was able to harvest not just personal information on their targets, but also battle plans and other intelligence information that could have been used by Hezbollah and the Syrian government’s troops to counter the opposition.
FireEye discovered the operation during a malware investigation, uncovering a cache of 7.7 gigabytes of stolen data on a German server. The data contains Skype databases including chat logs and contacts, as well as documents and images.
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Hackers tapped into Syrian opposition’s battle plans
Syrian opposition leaders lost gigabytes of secret communications and battlefield plans to hackers who baited them into downloading malware during flirtatious Skype chats, according to a report released Sunday.
Last fall, FireEye stumbled across a server containing the documents and files while researching PDF-based malware, said Laura Galante, manager of threat intelligence at the computer security firm.
The cache of documents included annotated satellite images, weapons records, Skype chats and personal information on those who have sought to topple President Bashar al-Assad in the four-year civil war. It was unclear if Assad’s regime was behind the campaign.
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