Hackers eye financial institutes, govt data centre
The research team at bangladesh Computer Council has identified attack variants and malware campaigns aimed at Bangladeshi infrastructure
Major banks, financial institutions and basic data storage infrastructure in Bangladesh are at risk of massive cyber-attacks, Bangladesh Computer Council's research division has warned.
The cyber threat research wing of the Bangladesh Computer Council's e-Government Computer Incident Response Team (e-Gov CIRT) on Wednesday sent out a warning of cyber-attack on a massive scale by an international hacker group known as Kasablanka.
The team recently observed and identified the ongoing development of attack variants and dedicated malware campaigns aimed at Bangladeshi infrastructure specifically.
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Project Director Tarique M Barkatullah at e-Gov CIRT said a specific type of malware is targeting users or consumers of different financial and government institutions in the country.
"Brac Bank, bKash, the Bangladesh Bank and the government's website on Covid-19 information are the major targets of the hacker group," he said.
Tarique also said the data thieves are collecting information through recruitment, promotional and suggestive emails.
The group sends emails to the members of the police for collecting important data. It is also stealing data from the BTRC's International Mobile Equipment Identity database.
"We have already informed and warned the government infrastructure concerned," he added.
The hacker group might have an intention of massive cyber-attack after collecting such data, Tarique said.
In a handout from e-Gov CIRT, it was said that the group Kasablanka is working to spread their botnets within the Bangladesh network to tweak for espionage rather than breach accounts for financial gains.
This specific campaign utilises a type of RAT (Remote Access Trojan) known as LodaRAT to infiltrate Windows and Android systems.
A recent phishing campaign by Kasablanka tried to allure people interested in vaccination into using a fake web portal at corona-bd.com/apply like the legitimate Covid-19 vaccine programme associated website corona.gov.bd.
E-Gov CIRT urged financial and government institutions at risk to ensure proper information and cybersecurity awareness training among all employees, customers and consumers and to properly educate customers and consumers about using applications such as mobile banking services.
They also made a request to report or inform e-Gov CIRT about any incident of a breach at https://www.cirt.gov.bd/incident-reporting.
