Technology

Citizen Lab says exiled Uyghur leaders targeted with Windows spyware

Unknown hackers last month targeted leaders of the exiled Uyghur community in a campaign involving Windows spyware, researchers revealed Monday. 

Citizen Lab, a digital rights research group based at the University of Toronto, detailed an espionage campaign against members of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), an organization that represents the Muslim-minority group, which has for years faced repression, discrimination, surveillance, and hacking from China’s government. 

Google alerted some WUC members to the hacking campaign in mid-March, prompting the members to contact journalists and Citizen Lab’s researchers, the report said.

Citizen Lab investigated and found a targeted phishing email sent to members of WUC, impersonating a trusted contact who sent a Google Drive link for a password-protected compressed file containing a malicious version of a Uyghur language text editor. 

The researchers said the campaign wasn’t particularly sophisticated and didn’t involve zero-day exploits or mercenary spyware, but noted that “the delivery of the malware showed a high level of social engineering, revealing the attackers’ deep understanding of the target community.”

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on Google News too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.

If you want to read more like this article, you can visit our Technology category.

Source

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button
Close

Please allow ads on our site

Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker!