Intrusions commenced with the distribution of spear-phishing emails containing a malicious ZIP file.
Engineering and educational organisations are being targeted by the Swan Vector advanced persistent threat operation.
According to GBHackers News, the businesses in Taiwan and Japan are primarily targeted in attacks that were initially discovered last month.
Intrusions commenced with the distribution of spear-phishing emails containing a malicious ZIP file containing an LNK file, which downloaded an executable that triggers the Pterois DLL implant.
An analysis from Seqrite Labs revealed that after leveraging dynamic API resolution and covertly loading appropriate library functions, Pterois then exploits Google Drive for command-and-control.
Swan Vector, which was first identified in December, was also noted by researchers to employ tactics akin to the APT10, Lazarus, and Winnti threat operations.
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Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
