The cyber security watchdog of the government, BGD e-Gov Computer Incident Response Team (CIRT) has detected a ‘phishing campaign’ targeting Bangladesh ahead of the polls. A hacker group named ‘Sidewinder’ is spreading various harmful and misleading phishing links. This group is also known as ‘Rattlesnake’, ‘Razor Tiger’, ‘APT-C-17’, ‘T-APT-04’ (‘Rattlesnake, RAZOR TIGER, APT-C-17, T-APT-04’).
On Thursday, January 4, the organization called for caution in accessing the link of any site with a warning message. CIRT said its Threat Intelligence Unit has identified a hacker group called ‘Sidewinder’, which is carrying out cyberattacks through phishing campaigns on various organizations in South and East Asia. Cyber infrastructures of government and military organizations are prime targets of these cyberattacks. Similar phishing domains of different Bangladeshi organizations are being used in the phishing campaign to spread confusion.
These sites include BGD e-Gov CIRT, Bangladesh Armed Forces Department and several law enforcement agencies. According to the press release, one of the goals of the hacker group is to collect sensitive, and confidential information of infrastructures and cyber espionage.
To avoid such phishing attacks, CIRT requested to be especially aware of any suspicious links or email attachments received from strangers.
CIRT also said that, apart from Bangladesh, the targets of this hacker group are Afghanistan, Armenia, China, Belarus, Bhutan, India, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Moldova, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
Appropriate steps can be taken by following the guidelines published on the e-Gov CIRT website to counter ongoing phishing campaigns.