How ‘honey trap’ hackers stole Syrian rebel war plans

thenational.ae

23 points·dave446··8 comments

There is a slightly better version of this story on NYTimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/02/world/middleeast/hackers-u...

And the original report by FireEye:

https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2015/02/behind_...

The internet has become just another weapon in war, with offensive and defensive tactics constantly improving over time in reaction to each other. If you have cavalry and I have tanks you are going to be dissapointed.

>>Then the hackers would send the target a photo of themselves loaded with malware that penetrated their personal files and stole information.

The mainstream public is going to freak out over this line. What I assume this means, is that they sent a malware destined URL claiming it was a photo... or an email attachment like MyPicture.jpg.exe/vacationPhotos.zip.exe to the target and triggered some code execution.

This is amazing! Sounds so much like a Hollywood movie.

Though this is most probably true, I worked at an ISP in North Iraq. The amount of ignorant high profile Internet users causes us lots of trouble.

Yes, when I saw "rebels" and "plans" I immediately thought of Star Wars.

But, unlike in cinema, there are many real lives at stake.

"posing as female supporters". This adds a new spin on the words 'honey trap'.

I think this is actually the original definition of honey trap.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clandestine_HUMINT_asset_recrui...

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