Interesting "New" Hacking Tools

 Hello,

I came across this article in my google feed this past week and it caught my eye. It was about a tool that was used to hack "air-gapped" devices. Granted I wasn't familiar with that term until I read this article and then proceeded to look it up in more detail. The tools have been attributed to a group being called "GoldenJackle". The tools involved in the hack included a backdoor under the name "JackalControl", a file collector and exfiltrator, and then a worm facilitates other parts of the attack on the external drive.

The attack is described by article as:

"The basic flow of the attack is, first, infecting an Internet-connected device through a means ESET and Kaspersky have been unable to determine. Next, the infected computer infects any external drives that get inserted. When the infected drive is plugged into an air-gapped system, it collects and stores data of interest. Last, when the drive is inserted into the Internet-connected device, the data is transferred to an attacker-controlled server."

Source: Two never-before-seen tools, from same group, infect air-gapped devices

I found this to be very interesting as I had never really explored the kinds of strategies that would need to be adopted in order to hack a machine that isn't part of the network. I would have probably thought such a machine was nearly unhackable in all honesty. It really goes to show just how creative hackers can be when it comes to penetrating systems that we want to protect.

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