Iranian Hackers Target Medical Personnel in US, Israel

Deviating from their typical activity, an Iranian threat actor known as TA453 has mounted a phishing campaign targeting senior medical professionals in the United States and Israel, cybersecurity firm Proofpoint reports.

Also referred to as Charming Kitten, Phosphorus, APT35, Ajax Security Team, ITG18, NewsBeef, and Newscaster, the group has been active since at least 2011, mainly targeting activists, journalists, and other entities in the Middle East, the U.K., and the U.S.

The new campaign, which Proofpoint named BadBlood due to its focus on medical personnel, targeted individuals specialized in genetic, neurology, and oncology research, in line with a broader trend in which threat actors are targeting medical research.

As part of the campaign, in December 2020, TA453 employed a Gmail account posing as a prominent Israeli physicist to send malicious emails containing a link to a fake Microsoft login page, in an attempt to harvest Outlook credentials. Once the victim would enter their credentials, a benign OneDrive document was displayed.

Up to 25 senior professionals working with various research organizations in the US and Israel were targeted in these attacks, but the targeting of Israelis might also be the result of increased geopolitical tensions in the region, Proofpoint notes.

The motivation behind the campaign is not yet clear, but it’s likely that TA453 attempted to collect medical information related to genetic, oncology, and neurology research. It is also possible that the adversary was interested in patient information or in leveraging the targeted accounts in future phishing campaigns.

“While this campaign may represent a shift in TA453 targeting overall, it is also possible it may be an outlier, reflective of a specific priority intelligence tasking given to TA453,” Proofpoint says.

During their investigation, the company’s researchers identified a multitude of artefacts that made attribution possible, including tactics, domains, infrastructure components, and lure documents, and discovered that the phishing campaign was conducted simultaneously with attacks on traditional TA453 targets.

“While targeting medical experts in genetics, neurology and oncology may not be a lasting shift in TA453 targeting, it does indicate at least a temporary change in TA453 collection priorities. BadBlood is aligned with an escalating trend globally of medical research being increasingly targeted by espionage motivated focused threat actors,” Proofpoint concludes.

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