Kaspersky Lab says Chinese hackers attack Russian state projs in Q3

MOSCOW, Nov 17 (PRIME) -- Antivirus software maker Kaspersky Lab registered higher activity of Chinese-speaking hackers who targeted, among others Russian state projects with Asian countries in July–September, Kaspersky Lab said on Friday.

Chinese-speaking perpetrators used such popular software as Netsarang and CCleaner, in which malware was embedded.

“The trend of infecting organizations via a chain of suppliers, in this case via software makers, is becoming stronger,” Yury Namestnikov, head of the Russian research center at Kaspersky Lab, said.

“Perpetrators understand the advantage of such tactics that equip them with a wide range of targets and allow them to stay in the shadow. We think they will actively use this mechanism in the future, meaning that many organizations should revise their protection against attacks.”

The company has investigated 24 incidents that were viewed as target attacks and cyber espionage campaigns, including 10 incidents that were organized by Chinese-speaking hacker groups. Attacks aimed at developers of popular software and state entities, as well as critically important enterprises of a number of countries.

Russia was one of the main targets. In July, Kaspersky Lab detected an IronHusky attack against aviation companies of Russia and Mongolia. Power companies of Russia and India were also attacked.

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