APT trends report Q1 2020 (DPRK-related paragraph 1)

Kaspersky Securelist

Since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 a pandemic, this topic has received increased attention from different attackers. Many of the phishing scams we’ve seen have been launched by cybercriminals trying to cash-in on people’s fears about the virus. However, the list of attackers also includes APT threat actors such as Kimsuky, APT27, Lazarus or ViciousPanda who, according to OSINT, have used COVID-19-themed lures to target their victims. We recently discovered a suspicious infrastructure that could have been used to target health and humanitarian organizations, including the WHO. Even though the infrastructure cannot be attributed to any particular actor at the moment, and was registered before the COVID-19 crisis in June 2019, according to some private sources it might be related to the DarkHotel actor. However, we cannot confirm this information at the moment. Interestingly, some groups have used the current situation to try to soften their reputation by declaring that they would not target health organizations during the crisis.