Russian Security Firm Kaspersky has uncovered an espionage campaign that was targeting Persian-speaking people in Iran. And information is out that the campaign could have started by a hacking group dubbed Ferocious Kitten that has been active since 2015 and was conducting spying through a highly sophisticated malware named MarkiRAT.
Why the malware spreading hackers are targeting only Persian-speaking people is yet to be revealed to the public. But the researchers have discovered that the 6-year-old surveillance program was being conducted to steal data such as photos, videos, and files and can help execute commands on the victim’s machine.
What’s more interesting about this campaign is that the developers of malware named MarkiRAT were targeting machines through various variants and one such was seen targeting machines through telegram app and the other could modify the Chrome Browser as per the likes of the hackers.
“MarkiRAT tool-set is hard to track and so went undetected for long periods”, said Mark Lechtik, Senior Security Researcher with the Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT).
Note- Usage of Kaspersky solutions has been banned in all US federal departments since 2017 as the company is believed to be funded by Russian intelligence who assigned it the task of passing on critical information to remote servers located in the Russian Federation via Kaspersky Antivirus software. However, the Eugene Kaspersky-led company has denied all these allegations and shifted some of its core operations to Switzerland to win back the trust of its western users.
