15.9.21

BladeHawk group: Android espionage against Kurdish ethnic group

ESET researchers have investigated a targeted mobile espionage campaign against the Kurdish ethnic group. This campaign has been active since at least March 2020, distributing (via dedicated Facebook profiles) two Android backdoors known as 888 RAT and SpyNote, disguised as legitimate apps. These profiles appeared to be providing Android news in Kurdish, and news for the Kurds’ supporters. Some of the profiles deliberately spread additional spying apps to Facebook public groups with pro-Kurd content. Data from a download site indicates at least 1,481 downloads from URLs promoted in just a few Facebook posts. The newly discovered Android 888 RAT has been used by the Kasablanka group and by BladeHawk. Both of them used alternative names to refer to the same Android RAT - LodaRAT and Gaza007 respectively.

BladeHawk Android espionage The espionage activity reported here is directly connected to two publicly disclosed cases published in 2020. QiAnXin Threat Intelligence Center named the group behind these attacks BladeHawk, which we have adopted. Both campaigns were distributed via Facebook, using malware that was built with commercial, automated tools (888 RAT and SpyNote), with all samples of the malware using the same C&C servers.

Distribution

We identified six Facebook profiles as part of this BladeHawk campaign, sharing these Android spying apps. We reported these profiles to Facebook and they have all been taken down. Two of the profiles were aimed at tech users while the other four posed as Kurd supporters. All these profiles were created in 2020 and shortly after creation they started posting these fake apps. These accounts, except for one, have not posted any other content besides Android RATs masquerading as legitimate apps.

These profiles are also responsible for sharing espionage apps to Facebook public groups, most of which were supporters of Masoud Barzani, former President of the Kurdistan Region; an example can be seen in Figure 1. Altogether, the targeted groups have over 11,000 followers.

Read full article on www.welivesecurity.com