Another firm sheds light on espionage group hitting energy sector

Symantec has released its own analysis of a cyber espionage group targeting industrial organizations in Europe and North America.

This week, the security firm confirmed with SCMagazine.com that the attack group, dubbed “Dragonfly,” was the same perpetrator discussed at length by F-Secure earlier this month. At the time, F-Secure said that data-stealing malware called “Havex” was used against the energy sector this spring and delivered via watering hole tactics – where industrial control system (ICS) vendor websites were compromised.

Symantec's new findings revealed that 24 percent of malware infections struck U.S. organizations, and that one of the compromised sites led to 250 unique downloads of malicious software. The second vendor site hosted trojanized software for at least six weeks in June and July of last year, Symantec found, while the third targeted site hosted malware for ten days in April of this year.