Since from 2021, the hacking groups, affiliated with China, Iran, Turkey and North Korea have been targeting journalists and forcing them to become a spy and spread malware as part of phishing campaigns.
Behind these attacks on journalists, the hackers need to know all about the inner workings of the government, company and other state-designated imports. Consequently, the hackers used various tools to target journalists, including sending fake emails to gain access to the reporter’s work emails, social media accounts and networks.
Two of the Chinese hacking groups, called Zirconium and TA459 has targeted media journalist with fraud emails containing weaponized documents. Accordingly, these documents were used to collect the sensitive information and then infect it with Chinoxy malware. Similarly, the North Korean hacking group known as Lazarus Group attacked a US-based media organization with a fake job offer campaign. Also, the hacking group in Turkey known as TA482, assaulted US-based journalists and media organizations to leak their sensitive information.
Because the journalists and media entities have access to the unique information in the world. Hence, the phishing campaigns mainly targeted journalists for gathering intelligence data. An attack on the journalist’s email account leads to obtaining various sensitive, stories and source names from the hackers. The hackers could utilise this data to disinform the information to influence the people socially and politically.
