The Artful and Dangerous Dynamics of Watering Hole Attacks

guest · Sep 11, 2019

The Artful and Dangerous Dynamics of Watering Hole Attacks
How Visiting a Trusted Site Could Infect Your Employees
September 10, 2019
https://securingtomorrow.mcafee.com...g-a-trusted-site-could-infect-your-employees/

How Does it Work?
Bad actors are having a hard time trying to compromise your systems. But what if the weakest link is not your organization, but a third-party? That is where an “island hopping” attack can take apart your fortress.

“Island hopping” was a military strategy aimed to concentrate efforts on strategically positioned (and weaker) islands to gain access to a final main land target.
One relevant instance of “island hopping” is a watering hole attack. A watering hole attack is motivated by an attackers’ frustration.

In this type of attack, bad actors start profiling employees to find out what websites/services they usually consume. What is the most frequented news blog? Which flight company do they prefer?
[...] they will wait for an employee of the target organization to visit the site and get infected [...]
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Victims of a watering hole attack are not only the final targets but also strategic organizations that are involved during the attack chain. As an example, a watering hole attack was discovered in March 2019, targeting member states of the United Nations by compromising the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as intermediate target[1].

Because the ICAO was a website frequented by the intended targets, it got compromised by exploiting vulnerable servers. Another example from last year is a group of more than 20 news and media websites that got compromised as intermediate targets to get to specific targets in Vietnam and Cambodia[2].
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Minimalist · Mar 31, 2020

Holy water: ongoing targeted water-holing attack in Asia

On December 4, 2019, we discovered watering hole websites that were compromised to selectively trigger a drive-by download attack with fake Adobe Flash update warnings. This campaign has been active since at least May 2019, and targets an Asian religious and ethnic group.
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https://securelist.com/holy-water-ongoing-targeted-water-holing-attack-in-asia/

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