Spear-Phishing in the Army

On Friday, I wrote about a military test.  30% of those with military addresses fell victim to a phishing attack in a military-sponsored exercise named Bulwark Defender 08.  Initially, I thought this was a story about phishing education.  I did not realize that this was a tip to a story about espionage as dangerous as any Cold War movie thriller.

On Saturday, I found in my mailbox a huge Business Week cover story on "e-spionage" and attacks against the U.S. military using email.  What makes these messages different is that they target a receiver with content that seems familiar to them.  The attachments contain a sophisticated "digital intruder rendering traditional defenses—firewalls and updated antivirus software—virtually useless."

It is not your typical Nigerian email scam. 

Spear-phishing is a narrowly focused form of phishing, according to Business Week.  The spear-phishers "gather information about people's jobs and social networks, often from publicly available information and data stolen from other infected computers, and then trick them into opening an email."  Often, the information used is commonly available from Google searches.

The article starts off describing an email addressed to a Booz Allen Hamilton executive:

The email message addressed to a Booz Allen Hamilton executive was mundane—a shopping list sent over by the Pentagon of weaponry India wanted to buy. But the missive turned out to be a brilliant fake. Lurking beneath the description of aircraft, engines, and radar equipment was an insidious piece of computer code known as "Poison Ivy" designed to suck sensitive data out of the $4 billion consulting firm's computer network.  ...

Its authors knew enough about the "sender" and "recipient" to craft a message unlikely to arouse suspicion. Had the Booz Allen executive clicked on the attachment, his every keystroke would have been reported back to a mysterious master at the Internet address cybersyndrome.3322.org, which is registered through an obscure company headquartered on the banks of China's Yangtze River.

The U.S. government, and its sprawl of defense contractors, have been the victims of an unprecedented rash of similar cyber attacks over the last two years, say current and former U.S. government officials.

"It's espionage on a massive scale," says Paul B. Kurtz, a former high-ranking national security official. Government agencies reported 12,986 cyber security incidents to the U.S. Homeland Security Dept. last fiscal year, triple the number from two years earlier.

And later on, a more chilling discussion ....

By itself, the bid to steal digital secrets from Booz Allen might not be deeply troubling. But Poison Ivy is part of a new type of digital intruder rendering traditional defenses—firewalls and updated antivirus software—virtually useless.  (emphasis added)

Sophisticated hackers, say Pentagon officials, are developing new ways to creep into computer networks sometimes before those vulnerabilities are known. "The offense has a big advantage over the defense right now," says Colonel Ward E. Heinke, director of the Air Force Network Operations Center at Barksdale Air Force Base.

Only 11 of the top 34 antivirus software programs identified Poison Ivy when it was first tested on behalf of BusinessWeek in February. Malware-sniffing software from several top security firms found "no virus" in the India fighter-jet e-mail, the analysis showed.

Over the past two years thousands of highly customized e-mails akin to Stephen Moree's have landed in the laptops and PCs of U.S. government workers and defense contracting executives. According to sources familiar with the matter, the attacks targeted sensitive information on the networks of at least seven agencies—the Defense, State, Energy, Commerce, Health & Human Services, Agriculture, and Treasury departments—and also defense contractors Boeing (BA), Lockheed Martin, General Electric (GE), Raytheon (RTW), and General Dynamics (GD), say current and former government network security experts. Laura Keehner, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Dept., which coordinates protection of government computers, declined to comment on specific intrusions. In written responses to questions from BusinessWeek, Keehner says: "We are aware of and have defended against malicious cyber activity directed at the U.S. Government over the past few years. We take these threats seriously and continue to remain concerned that this activity is growing more sophisticated, more targeted, and more prevalent." Spokesmen for Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and General Electric declined to comment. Several cited policies of not discussing security-related matters.

How might they get us to open it?

Spear-phish tap into a cyber espionage tactic that security experts call "Net reconnaissance." In the attempted attack on Booz Allen, attackers had plenty of information about Moree: his full name, title (Northeast Asia Branch Chief), job responsibilities, and e-mail address. Net reconnaissance can be surprisingly simple, often starting with a Google (GOOG) search. (A lookup of the Air Force's Pentagon e-mail address on Apr. 9, for instance, retrieved 8,680 e-mail addresses for current or former Air Force personnel and departments.) The information is woven into a fake e-mail with a link to an infected Web site or containing an attached document. All attackers have to do is hit their send button. Once the e-mail is opened, intruders are automatically ushered inside the walled perimeter of computer networks—and malicious code such as Poison Ivy can take over.

Be careful what email you open.