Turla—a Russian hacker group that has previously attacked government sites, firms, diplomats and embassies—targeted Brittany Spears’ Instagram account earlier this year. A study by Czechoslovakian IT company ESET Security found, hidden in the 7,000 comments on a photo of Spears, a code designed to link up with malware disguised as a Firefox security extension. The link allows the malware to connect to its control centre and send it information about the compromised system, ESET says. The URL produced by the comment, ESET notes, has been used in the past for “watering hole,” attacks by Turla. ESET says this kind of attack was previously used by hacker groups like the MiniDuke attackers who targeted NATO in 2013.

Source: National Post June 08, 2017 16:07 UTC