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PowerDuke: Widespread Post-Election Spear Phishing Campaigns Targeting Think Tanks and NGOs

Posted on November 11, 2016 by Dissent

Steven Adair writes:

In the wake of the 2016 United States Presidential Election, not even six hours after Donald Trump became the nation’s President-Elect, an advanced persistent threat (APT) group launched a series of coordinated and well-planned spear phishing campaigns. Volexity observed five different attack waves with a heavy focus on U.S.-based think tanks and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These e-mails came from a mix of attacker created Google Gmail accounts and what appears to be compromised e-mail accounts at Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). These e-mails were sent in large quantities to different individuals across many organizations and individuals focusing in national security, defense, international affairs, public policy, and European and Asian studies. Two of the attacks purported to be messages forwarded on from the Clinton Foundation giving  insight and perhaps a postmortem analysis into the elections. Two of the other attacks purported to be eFax links or documents pertaining to the election’s outcome being revised or rigged. The last attack claimed to be a link to a PDF download on “Why American Elections Are Flawed.” Volexity believes a group it refers to as The Dukes (also known as APT29 or Cozy Bear) is responsible for post-election attack activity.

Read more on Volexity.

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