Nigerian agency warns citizens of new email-based attacks

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has warned about a new cyber threat that involves email-based attacks by a notorious Russian hacking group called Nobelium.

This was disclosed in a statement on Sunday by the agency’s Head of Corporate Affairs and External Relations, Mrs. Hadiza Umar, titled ‘NITDA cautions Nigerians on new email-based attack from SolarWind hackers.’

Microsoft had also warned about the new cyber-attacks, which were said to originate from the state-backed Russian hackers SolarWind, hacking against the United States and foreign government agencies.

According to NITDA, about 3,000 email accounts at over 150 organisations were targeted, especially organisations involving international development, humanitarian, and human rights work.

The statement read, “According to information available as obtained by the National Information Technology Development Agency, Microsoft, a world-renowned multinational technology company has uncovered a widespread malicious email campaign undertaken by the hacking group- NOBELIUM.

Read also: Hackers’ group, #Anonymous, backs #EndSARS, allegedly hacks police website, Buhari’s system

“The cybercriminals leveraged the legitimate mass-mailing service, to masquerade as a US-based development organisation and distribute malicious URLs to a wide variety of organisations especially government organisations, non-government organizations (NGOs), think-tanks, military, IT service providers, health technology and research, and telecommunications providers.

“Their antics involve the use of emails claiming to be an alert from USAID about new documents published by former President Donald Trump about ‘election fraud.’

“Once users click the link in the email, the URL would direct them to the legitimate Constant Contact Service and then redirect to Nobelium-controlled infrastructure through a URL that delivers a malicious ISO file.

“This, in turn, enables the criminals to execute further malicious objectives, such as lateral movement, data exfiltration and delivery of additional malware.”

By Victor Uzoho…

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