Taiwan has been a regular target of cyber espionage threat actors for a number of years. Reasons for Taiwan being targeted range from being one of the sovereign states of the disputed South China Sea region to its emerging economy and growth with Taiwan being one of the most innovative countries in the High-Tech industry
(This blog post is also available in Japanese.) In June 2016, Unit 42 published the blog post “Tracking Elirks Variants in Japan: Similarities to Previous Attacks”, in which we described the resemblance of attacks using the Elirks malware family in Japan and Taiwan. Since then, we continued tracking this threat using Palo Alto Networks AutoFocus
A recent, well-publicized attack on a Japanese business involved two malware families, PlugX and Elirks, that were found during the investigation. PlugX has been used in a number of attacks since first being discovered in 2012, and we have published several articles related to its use, including an analysis of an attack campaign targeting Japanese
Sign up to receive the latest news, cyber threat intelligence and research from Unit 42
By submitting this form, you agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge our Privacy Statement.
Recently, FireEye published a blog titled “Operation Poisoned Hurricane” which detailed the use of PlugX malware variants signed with legitimate certificates that used Google Code project pages for command and control (C2). We were able to uncover multiple additional samples exploiting the same technique as well as an additional Google Code account with multiple projects