An APT syndicate known as Blackhand commonly target large companies/organization to push their ideology as well as fund their operations: Information Technology Assignment, SIM, Singapore

An APT syndicate known as Blackhand commonly target large companies/organization to push their ideology as well as fund their operations. Due to MediaCorp’s influence in the media in Singapore, and recent projects that made it known overseas, Blackhand has taken interest in the company and started a campaign to use it as a tool to spread its ideology.

Leveraging their skills in phishing, Blackhand launched multiple targeted spear phishing attacks to gain initial access to MediaCorp’s critical systems. Unknown to the company at that time, 2 of the 16 targeted employees ran the malicious file content and triggered a silent download of additional tools for the attackers to conduct lateral movement and privilege escalation.