Rise in Cyber-Attacks Targeting U.S. Defense Security

In the context of a cyberattack campaign, which may be related to the act of cyber espionage itself, it is clear that cyber threats are becoming increasingly sophisticated with each passing. Threat actors are engineering the attacks to target defence contractors in the US and throughout the world.

There have been several covert campaigns against weapons contractors in Europe over the last few months, which have been detected by researchers at Securonix. The campaign has adversely affected a supplier to the US program to build the F-35 Lightning II fighter plane, which has been identified as STEEP#MAVERICK by Securonix.

According to the security vendor, the campaign is noteworthy for the overall attention the attacker has paid to operations security (OpSec) and in ensuring their malware is difficult to detect, remove, and analyse.

The report from Securonix stated, the malware stager used in these attacks used an array of tactics, persistence methodology, counter-forensics, and layers upon layers of obfuscation to hide its code.

As of late summer, it appears that the STEEP#MAVERICK campaign had started to attack two high-profile defence contractors in Europe as part of its attacks on their facilities. There is a similar trend in spear-phishing attacks that begin with an email that contains a compressed (.zip) file and a

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This article has been indexed from CySecurity News – Latest Information Security and Hacking Incidents