Lebanese cyberespionage campaign hits defense, telecom, media firms worldwide

For the past two years, a cyberespionage group that likely operates from Lebanon has hacked into hundreds of defense contractors, telecommunications operators, media groups and educational organizations from at least 10 countries.

The still-active attack campaign was uncovered and analyzed recently by security researchers from Check Point Software Technologies, who dubbed it Volatile Cedar. The company’s researchers found evidence that the attackers started their operation in late 2012, but have managed to fly under the radar until now by carefully adapting their tools to avoid being detected by antivirus programs.

Unlike most cyberespionage groups, the Volatile Cedar attackers do not use spear phishing or drive-by downloads to gain a foothold into their victims’ networks. Instead they target Web servers and use them as initial entry points.

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