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Security Companies Collaborate to Mitigate Threat Posed by Hidden Lynx


Securityweek.com reported on 15th October, 2014 stating that a joint effort by security firms has struck a serious blow against malicious software (tools) employed by Hidden Lynx which is a cyber-espionage gang.

It is believed that Hidden Lynx is based in China and has been associated with attacks against American military contractors and other enterprises all over the world. Researchers of several companies joined forces in collaboration dubbed 'Operation SMN' targeting the Hikit backdoor and other various other malicious programs used by the criminal group.

Symantec, one of the companies of the group said "Hidden Lynx used Hikit while compromising reliable file-signing infrastructure of Bit9 in 2012. This attack was then exploited to organize VOHO operation in July 2012 with the help of malware signed by Bit9. The final target of this operation was US enterprises whose PCs were Bit9 protected and again Hitkit played an important role in this campaign.

Symantec added that Hidden Lynx is considered as one of the pioneers of the 'watering-hole' attack method and it seems to have early access to zero-day vulnerabilities.

Hidden Lynx is considering to employ 50 to 100 people and it is suspected to offer hacking -as-a-service and selecting a varied range of targets as per the demand of its funders.

The Chinese group added more backdoors as Gresim and Fexel to their arsenal in 2013 which were used in association with Hitkit. Symantec wrote that Gresim was not known before the collaboration of security companies.

The companies namely FirEye, Cisco, iSIGHT Partners, F-Secure, Microsoft, ThreatConnect, Tenable, ThreatTrack Security, Novetta, Volexity and Symantec are the members of the coalition of security companies.

Novetta refers the group (Hidden Lynx) as Axiom which has similarities with other groups and many security vendors name cyberattacks as Voho, Elderwood, DeputyDog, ShellCrew and Ephemeral Hydra.

Scmagazineuk.com published news on 15th October, 2014 quoting the confirmation news of collaborative effort of Stephen Doherty, Security Expert of Symantec as "This is the first time a significant effort has been made to disrupt the activities of an APT and we are excited to involve in this. We will try to ensure better protection for target organization through this effective collaboration in future."

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