UAE firms targeted by cyber spying

2 June 2015 06:50 am

List of targets includes media organisations, construction and education companies

GULF NEWS: Companies in the UAE are among those recently targeted by hackers which managed to steal about 10,000 files from small-to-medium sized organisations (SMBs),  gravely endangering thousands of email, social media and bank accounts.

Kaspersky Lab announced on Sunday that  the cyber-spying campaign dubbed Grabit, which attacked organisations mostly in Thailand, India and the United States, has also affected the UAE, Germany, Canada, France, Austria, Sri Lanka, Chile and Belgium.

The list of targets includes media organisations, construction companies, as well as those operating in the education, chemicals, nanotechnology and agriculture industries.

It is believed that at least 2,887 passwords, 1,053 emails, 3,023 usernames from bank accounts, Outlook, Facebook, Skype, Google mail, Pinterest, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Twitter and many other hosts have already been stolen.

Kaspersky said the recent attacks show that hackers are not only out to steal sensitive information from huge organisations and private corporations, but small-and-medium sized companies as well.

“In the cyber world, every single organisation, whether it possesses money, information or political influence, could be of potential interest to one or other malicious actor,” the company said.

Kaspersky warned that the cyber-spying campaign is still active and it works by sending an attachment that looks like a Microsoft Office Word (.doc) file. Once the unsuspecting user clicks to download the attachment, a spying programme is delivered to the computer from a remote server that has been infiltrated by the hackers to serve as a malware hub.