GCHQ used fake LinkedIn and Slashdot to hack GRX providers and OPEC

The GCHQ (British Government Communications Headquarters) used fake LinkedIn and Slashdot to hack Belgacom, OPEC & others GRX providers.

According to the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel the British signals intelligence spy agency has again adopted a “quantum insert” technique to target employees of two companies that are GRX (Global Roaming Exchange) providers. The companies attacked by intelligence agents are Comfone and Mach, this second one was recently acquired over by Syniverse, consider that the number of GRX providers globally is nearly two dozen.

A GPRS roaming exchange (GRX) operates as a hub for GPRS connections from roaming users, it was mainly designed to facilitate a more efficient way for operators to interconnect networks while users roam around the globe.

There are only around two dozen such GRX providers globally. This new attack specifically targeted administrators and engineers of Comfone and Mach (which was acquired over the summer by Syniverse), two GRX providers.

The revelation was made by the journalist Laura Poitras accredited as one of the professionals that have access to the documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, intelligence experts do not exclude a link to the attack against another GRX provider, the Belgacom International Carrier Services that is a subsidiary of Belgacom.

The German magazine Der Spiegel reported in September the responsibility of  GCHQ for the malware based attack against the major Belgian Telco, the new magazine cited top secret documents from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) that explicitly refers the operation codenamed “Operation Socialist”.

 

 

The British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) used spoofed versions of LinkedIn and Slashdot pages to serve malware and infect victims, a similar attack was conducted against nine employees of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Just a few days ago I remarked the strategic importance of social media for intelligence analysis and to arrange targeted attacks.

Similarly to NSA, also GCHQ may have compromised Internet Infrastructure relying on secret partnerships with European telecoms companies.
Last June The Guardian revealed the name of a surveillance program conducted by GCHQ. Operation Tempora is the massive tapping program conducted by Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

Operation Tempora has been going on for at least 18 months, British intelligence adopted “intercept probes” to intercept a huge volume of data from transatlantic fiber-optic cables

“The GCHQ mass tapping operation has been built up over five years by attaching intercept probes to transatlantic fibre-optic cables where they land on British shores carrying data to western Europe from telephone exchanges and internet servers in north America.”

To better understand how it is possible to exploit the vulnerabilities of GRX give a look to the following presentation made by Phillippe Langlois, the founder of P1 Security.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – GCHQ, Surveillance)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.

Recent Posts

American fast-fashion firm Hot Topic hit by credential stuffing attacks

Hot Topic suffered credential stuffing attacks that exposed customers' personal information and partial payment data.…

3 hours ago

Cisco addressed high-severity flaws in IOS and IOS XE software

Cisco addressed multiple vulnerabilities in IOS and IOS XE software that can be exploited to…

17 hours ago

Google: China dominates government exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities in 2023

Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) and Mandiant reported a surge in the number of actively…

24 hours ago

Google addressed 2 Chrome zero-days demonstrated at Pwn2Own 2024

Google addressed two zero-day vulnerabilities in the Chrome web browser that have been demonstrated during…

1 day ago

INC Ransom stole 3TB of data from the National Health Service (NHS) of Scotland

The INC Ransom extortion group hacked the National Health Service (NHS) of Scotland and is threatening…

2 days ago

CISA adds Microsoft SharePoint bug disclosed at Pwn2Own to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) adds a Microsoft SharePoint vulnerability disclosed at the…

2 days ago

This website uses cookies.