Israel subjected to Charming Kitten attacks

Israel had its technology, logistics, and transportation industries targeted by Iranian advanced persistent threat operation Charming Kitten, also known as APT35 and Imperial Kitten, last month amid its ongoing war with Palestinian militant group Hamas, according to The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. Aside from job-related lures and strategic web compromise techniques to obtain browser data and IP addresses, malicious Excel files have also been used by Charming Kitten to facilitate the deployment of various malware strains, most of which were part of the IMAPLoader family, in its attacks, a report from CrowdStrike's Counter Adversary Operations revealed. Despite heavy media attention on Iranian cyberattacks against Israel over the past month, Iran has been noted by Microsoft researchers to have been "reactive" and overstating the impact of its operations. "...[T]he data shows that, in the case of a ransomware attack, Iranian actors claims of impact and precision targeting were almost certainly fabricated," said Microsoft.