Hackers Use Old Lure on Web to Help Syrian Government

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/02/world/middleeast/hackers-use-old-web-lure-to-aid-assad.html

By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
FEB. 1, 2015

WASHINGTON -- To the young Syrian rebel fighter, the Skype message in 
early December 2013 appeared to come from a woman in Lebanon, named Iman 
Almasri, interested in his cause. Her picture, in a small icon alongside 
her name, showed a fair-skinned 20-something in a black head covering, 
wearing sunglasses.

They chatted online for nearly two hours, seemingly united in their 
opposition to the rule of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian leader still in 
power after a civil war that has taken more than 200,000 lives. Eventually 
saying she worked “in a programing company in Beirut,” the woman asked the 
fighter whether he was talking from his computer or his smartphone. He 
sent her a photo of himself and asked for another of her in return. She 
sent one immediately, apologizing that it was a few years old.

“Angel like,” he responded. “You drive me crazy.”

What the fighter did not know was that buried in the code of the second 
photo was a particularly potent piece of malware that copied files from 
his computer, including tactical battle plans and troves of information 
about him, his friends and fellow fighters. The woman was not a friendly 
chat partner, but a pro-Assad hacker — the photos all appear to have been 
plucked from the web.

[...]

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