ZeroHour

Search: “japan”

2,285 stories

MILE TEA: Cyber Espionage Campaign Targets Asia Pacific Businesses and Government Agencies

Unit 42 names MILE TEA, a cyber-espionage campaign since 2011 targeting Japanese and Taiwanese businesses and government agencies with e-ticket phishing lures and Elirks-family malware.

Unit 42 tracks the MILE TEA espionage campaign, observed as early as 2011, targeting Japanese trading, petroleum, and mobile companies, a Beijing office of a Japanese public organization, and a Taiwanese government agency. The primary infection vector is spear-phishing emails with attachments, mostly custom executable installers posing as flight e-tickets, dropping Elirks, Micrass, or Logedrut as initial bridgehead malware. Elirks and Logedrut retrieve encrypted C2 addresses from attacker-posted blog articles, decoded with Base64 and TEA or DES ciphers. The campaign's focus shifted from Taiwan to Japan around 2013.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 29d agoThreat actor in the wild

Non-Zero-Day VPN Flaw Left Japan ‘s Government Shared Network Platform Exposed: 246,000 Records at Risk

Japan's Digital Agency says attackers exploited a patchable VPN flaw to access a government shared platform, exposing records of ~246,000 employees across 23 ministries.

Japan's Digital Agency disclosed that attackers exploited a medium-severity, already-patchable vulnerability in a VPN device to access the Government Solution Service (GSS), potentially leaking personal data of roughly 246,000 government employees, officials, and contractors across 23 ministries. The intrusion was detected on June 25 and confirmed as VPN exploitation on July 9, with public disclosure 78 days after detection. Exposed data includes about 236,000 names, 231,000 email addresses, 94,000 phone numbers, and 1,000 physical addresses; no My Number, bank account, or pension numbers were included. The compromised maintenance staff account was suspended and the compromised hardware isolated, but the VPN product and flaw were not disclosed.

Banking Trojans: Ursnif Global Distribution Networks Identified

Unit 42 maps banking-trojan distribution networks: spam botnets push Shiotob downloaders and Ursnif, KINS, Tinba at Japan and European targets via compromised web servers.

Unit 42 identified the distribution networks behind banking trojan attacks against Japan, Italy, Spain, Poland, Australia, and Germany. A spam botnet delivered 75 unique Shiotob (Bebloh/URLZone) variants across 7 million spam emails, with Shiotob acting mainly as a downloader that installs Ursnif and the Pushdo spam bot from C2 commands. Over 200 malicious files were hosted on 74 compromised, mostly European small-business web servers between April 2015 and January 2017, with localized invoice and photo-themed email lures per target country.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 29d agoMalware in the wild

Japan’s Digital Agency Breach Exposes 240,000+ Users’ Personal Records to Hackers

Attackers exploited a patched VPN appliance flaw to breach Japan's Digital Agency shared government platform, exposing about 246,000 personal records.

Japan's Digital Agency disclosed on September 11 that attackers exploited a VPN appliance vulnerability to access the Government Solution Service (GSS), a shared IT platform across ministries, exposing roughly 246,000 personal records. The attacker was active since late May using a maintenance staffer's credentials, with suspicious activity detected June 25 and containment on July 9. Exposed data covers about 189,000 employees/public officials and 57,000 contractors; no My Number, bank, or pension data was included. The VPN flaw was medium severity with a patch already available, and the 78-day detection-to-disclosure gap has drawn scrutiny.

Cyber Security News · 7h agoData breach in the wild 2 sources