Cyber thieves piggyback off Stratfor breach, target feds

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20120215_5840.php

By Aliya Sternstein
Nextgov
02/15/2012

Hackers posing as officials from the geopolitical analysis publisher 
Stratfor are emailing infected links to government subscribers whose 
email addresses were stolen during an earlier raid on the company's 
computers, Microsoft researchers say.

To expose the ruse, Stratfor has instituted a temporary no-link policy 
for all official emails, according to a notice on the company's website. 
The policy is fallout from the Christmas Day 2011 data breach, when 
hacker collective Anonymous claimed responsibility for exposing the 
credit card data and email addresses of federal personnel. Potentially 
more than 860,000 public and private sector subscribers to Stratfor's 
online analysis were affected.

Now, cyber crooks are taking financial advantage of the addresses, 
according to Microsoft research published Monday. The bad guys are 
employing social engineering to trick Stratfor subscribers into visiting 
malicious websites. Their messages, which were written on apparent 
Stratfor letterhead and captured by Microsoft, state, "we strongly 
discourage you to open emails and attachments from doubtful senders" and 
"we also warn you about the distribution of harmful software through our 
website." The messages then direct readers to download software that 
will infect their computers.

In reality, if wary subscribers ignore the messages and go to the 
company's website they will see alerts discrediting the senders of these 
messages.

[...]


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