Kaspersky Lab?has discovered?Desert Falcons, a cyber espionage group targeting multiple high profile organizations and individuals from Middle East countries.
Kaspersky Lab experts consider this to be the first known Arabic group of cyber mercenaries to develop and run full-scale cyber-espionage operations.
According to the company, the campaign has been active for at least two years.
The Desert Falcons started developing and building their operation in 2011, with their main campaign and real infection beginning in 2013. The peak of their activity was registered at the beginning of 2015. The vast majority of targets are based in Egypt, Palestine, Israel, and Jordan.
Apart from the Middle East countries focused on as initial targets, the Desert Falcons are also hunting out of the territory. In total, they have been able to attack more than 3,000 victims in more than 50 countries globally, with over one million files stolen.
The attackers utilize proprietary malicious tools for attacks on Windows PCs and Android-based devices. Kaspersky Lab experts have multiple reasons to believe that the attackers behind the Desert Falcons are native Arabic speakers.
The list of targeted victims include military and government organizations – particularly employees responsible for countering money laundering as well as health and the economy, leading media outlets, research and education institutions, energy and utilities providers, activists and political leaders, physical security companies, and other targets in possession of important geopolitical information.
Although the main focus of Desert Falcons? activity appears to be in countries such as Egypt, Palestine, Israel and Jordan, multiple victims were also found in Qatar, KSA, UAE, Algeria, Lebanon, Norway, Turkey, Sweden, France, the United States, Russia and other countries.
The main method used by the Desert Falcons to deliver the malicious payload is spear phishing via e-mails, social networking posts and chat messages.
After the successful infection of a victim, Desert Falcons would use one of two different Backdoors: the main Desert Falcons? Trojan or the DHS Backdoor, which both appear to have been developed from scratch and are in continuous development.
Kaspersky Lab experts were able to identify a total of more than 100 malware samples used by the group in their attacks.
The malicious tools used have full Backdoor functionality, including the ability to take screenshots, log keystrokes, upload/download files, collect information about all Word and Excel files on a victim?s Hard Disk or connected USB devices, steal passwords stored in the system registry (Internet Explorer and live Messenger) and make audio recordings.
Kaspersky Lab experts were also able to find traces of activity of a malware which appears to be an Android backdoor capable of stealing mobile calls and SMS logs. Using these tools the Desert Falcons launched and managed at least three different malicious campaigns targeting different set of victims in different countries.
Kaspersky Lab researchers estimate that at least 30 people, in three teams, spread across different countries, are operating the Desert Falcons malware campaigns.
