Belarus Hackers Target Foreign Diplomats With Help of Local ISPs, Researchers Say (techcrunch.com) 16
Hackers with apparent links to the Belarusian government have been targeting foreign diplomats in the country for nearly 10 years, according to security researchers. From a report: On Thursday, antivirus firm ESET published a report that details the activities of a newly discovered government hacking group that the company has dubbed MoustachedBouncer. The group has likely been hacking or at least targeting diplomats by intercepting their connections at the internet service provider (ISP) level, suggesting close collaboration with Belarus' government, according to ESET.
Since 2014, MoustachedBouncer has targeted at least four foreign embassies in Belarus: two European nations, one from South Asia, and another from Africa. "The operators were trained to find some confidential documents, but we're not sure exactly what they were looking for," ESET researcher Matthieu Faou told TechCrunch in an interview ahead of his talk at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas. "They are operating only inside Belarus against foreign diplomats. So we have never seen any attack by MustachedBouncer outside of Belarus."
Since 2014, MoustachedBouncer has targeted at least four foreign embassies in Belarus: two European nations, one from South Asia, and another from Africa. "The operators were trained to find some confidential documents, but we're not sure exactly what they were looking for," ESET researcher Matthieu Faou told TechCrunch in an interview ahead of his talk at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas. "They are operating only inside Belarus against foreign diplomats. So we have never seen any attack by MustachedBouncer outside of Belarus."
and this is surprising to whom? (Score:1)
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it's surprising that the victims (diplomats!) in this scenario didn't use VPN (or whether VPN was also broken into).
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Isn't the point of a VPN is that if someone packet captures, all they'll see is encrypted data, not even revealing the ultimate destination of the packets?
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So... (Score:2)
If they're strictly targeting diplomats within their own borders, how is this not just standard spycraft?
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Belarus has diplomatic credibility?
And in other news... (Score:2)
The UK government is no doubt planning to send a large delegation to visit Belarus resorts and pick up some pointers from that lovely country on how to (cough) "control kiddie porn" (cough).
Neocon cyber BS .. (Score:1)