Kaspersky Lab Uncovers New Cyber Hit

Kaspersky Lab Uncovers New Cyber Hit: Multinational cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab said Thursday that it’s discovered a group of “cyber-mercenaries” called “Icefog”.  Target: government and military institutions.

Most of the victims have been in South Korea and Japan.  But the Icefog campaign is coming to an American company near you, Kaspersky Lab security analysts said during the 4th Annual Billington  Cybersecurity Summit in Washington DC today.

Icefog is an advanced persistent threat, or APT in cyber security parlance. Only, they’re different than the usual APT. These skilled high tech adversaries tend to gun for high-profile victims and stealthily infiltrate computer systems to snoop or steal valuable data over a long period of time.  Such teams sometimes count tens or even hundreds of people mining terabytes or even petabytes of data.

There has been an increasing focus on attribution and pinpointing the sources of those slow burning ATP attacks, but not much is known about a new emerging trend: the smaller hit-and-run operations that are going after the supply chain and compromising targets with surgical, lightning fast precision.