ModifiedElephant

ModifiedElephant

Part of: Prelims and GS-III cybersecurity

Context: American cybersecurity firm SentinelOne has released a report on ModifiedElephant.

• It is a hacking group that allegedly planted incriminating evidence on the personal devices of Indian journalists, human rights activists, human rights defenders, academics and lawyers.

Key takeaways from the report

• According to the report, ModifiedElephant maliciously targeted specific groups and individuals, including the activists arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case of 2018. 
• It called the incident ‘one of the most serious cases of evidence tampering’ that the firm had ever encountered.
• ModifiedElephant operators have been infecting their targets using spear phishing emails with malicious file attachments over the last decade, with their techniques getting more sophisticated over time.
  • Spear phishing refers to the practice of sending emails to targets that look like they are coming from a trusted source to either reveal important information or install different kinds of malware on their computer systems.

News source: IE