During the first half of 2021, Kaspersky ICS CERT experts noticed a curious anomaly in statistics on spyware threats blocked on ICS computers. Although the malware used in these attacks belongs to well-known commodity spyware families such as Agent Tesla/Origin Logger, HawkEye and others, these attacks stand out from the mainstream due to the very limited number of targets in each attack (from a handful to a few dozen) and the very short lifetime of each malicious sample. A closer analysis of 58,586 samples of spyware blocked on ICS computers in H1 2021 revealed that around 21.2% of them were part of this new limited-scope and short-lifetime attack series.
Their lifecycle is limited to about 25 days, which is much less than the lifespan of a ‘traditional’ spyware campaign. Although each of these “anomalous” spyware samples is short-lived and not widely distributed, they account for a disproportionately large share of all spyware attacks. In Asia, for example, every sixth computer attacked with spyware was hit with one of the “anomalous” spyware samples (2.1% out of 11.9%).
Percentage of ICS computers on which spyware was blocked in H1 2021
Notably,
most of these campaigns are spread from one industrial enterprise to another
via well-crafted phishing emails. Once penetrated into the victim’s system, the
attacker uses the device as the next-attack C2 (command and control) server.
With access to the victim’s mailing list, criminals can abuse corporate email
and spread the spyware even further.
Email sent as part of an attack propagated by
abusing a victim’s contact list
According to Kaspersky ICS CERT telemetry, more than 2,000 industrial organizations worldwide have been incorporated into the malicious infrastructure and used by cybergangs to spread the attack to their contact organizations and business partners. We estimate the total number of compromised or stolen corporate accounts as a result of these attacks to be more than 7,000.
Another growing market is Spyware-as-a-Service. Since the source codes of some popular spyware programs have been made public, they have become highly available in online shops in the form of a service – developers sell not only malware as a product but also a license for a malware builder and access to infrastructure preconfigured to build the malware.
'Throughout 2021, cybercriminals extensively used spyware to attack industrial computers. Today we witness a new rapidly evolving trend in the industrial threat landscape. To avoid detection, criminals shrink the size of each attack and limit the use of each malware sample by quickly enforcing its replacement with a fresh-built one. Other tactics include the vast abuse of corporate email infrastructure to spread malware. This is different from anything we’ve observed in spyware before and we anticipate such attacks to gain traction in the year ahead,’ comments Kirill Kruglov, security expert at Kaspersky ICS CERT.
Read more about the ‘anomalous’ spyware campaigns campaign on ICS CERT.
Kaspersky is a global cybersecurity and digital privacy company founded in 1997. Kaspersky’s deep threat intelligence and security expertise is constantly transforming into innovative security solutions and services to protect businesses, critical infrastructure, governments and consumers around the globe. The company’s comprehensive security portfolio includes leading endpoint protection and a number of specialized security solutions and services to fight sophisticated and evolving digital threats. Over 400 million users are protected by Kaspersky technologies and we help 240,000 corporate clients protect what matters most to them. Learn more at www.kaspersky.com.
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