In its latest fight against hackers, Microsoft announced that it has suspended 18 Azure Active Directory applications used by GADOLINIUM.
The company says that its security team, Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC), discovered the threat. GADOLINIUM was using cloud services and open source tools to weaponise their malware. Then, they attempted to use it to gain command and control all the way to the server. Meanwhile, hiding their activities as well.
Microsoft said the hackers attacked via spear-phishing emails with malicious attachments. The Microsoft Defender software successfully detected and blocked the attacks. However, the security team decided to suspend the 18 Azure Active Directory applications that they determined the hackers used.
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GADOLINIUM is not a new threat actor. They have been active for over ten years and mainly target maritime and health industries. The group is regarded as a nation-state threat. Their modus-operandi is monitoring security protocols and then trying to beat them.
MSTIC says that it has found that the hacking group is now targeting victims outside of its normal scope. They now even target higher education institutions and regional government organisations. Also, because of the popularity of cloud technology, GADOLINIUM is now using many open-source toolkits to mask their activities.
This allows them create malicious infrastructure with free or PayGo accounts. They do this because they can take it down before security teams discover them and even if discovered, they can let it go. Microsoft provides more details on the hackers, GADOLINIUM, activity, history and known indicators on its security blog.
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