A look at targeted attacks through the lense of an NGO

Abstract

We present an empirical analysis of targeted attacks against a human-rights Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) representing a minority living in China. In particular, we analyze the social engineering techniques, attack vectors, and malware employed in malicious emails received by two members of the NGO over a four-year period. We find that both the language and topic of the emails were highly tailored to the victims, and that sender impersonation was commonly used to lure them into opening malicious attachments. We also show that the majority of attacks employed malicious documents with recent but disclosed vulnerabilities that tend to evade common defenses. Finally, we find that the NGO received malware from different families and that over a quarter of the malware can be linked to entities that have been reported to engage in targeted attacks against political and industrial organizations, and Tibetan NGOs.