Phl among victimized by cyber-espionage group

MANILA — The Philippines is included among the countries victimized by a highly sophisticated cyber- espionage group recently exposed by Russian firm Kaspersky Labs.

In a report, Kaspersky said the Philippines is among the 30 countries where the cyber-espionage ring called The Equation Group has reported victims. The most number of infections, however, were in Iran followed by Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen, and Algeria.

Kaspersky said the Equation Group is the most sophisticated "threat actor" they have come across, using highly sophisticated methods to burrow their spying software into various hard drives across different brands and retrieve data undetected.

"It is only now that Kaspersky Lab's experts can confirm they have discovered a threat actor that surpasses anything known in terms of complexity and sophistication of techniques, and that has been active for almost two decades," Kaspersky said.

"The group is unique almost in every aspect of their activities: they use tools that are very complicated and expensive to develop, in order to infect victims, retrieve data and hide activity in an outstandingly professional way, and utilize spying techniques to deliver malicious payloads to the victims," Kaspersky added.

The company did not exactly pinpoint where The Equation Group is based, but said "there are solid links indicating that it has interacted with other powerful groups such as the Stuxnet and Flame operators."

Stuxnet has been said to be cyberweapon connected to the US National Security Agency.

Kaspersky said the group uses "a powerful arsenal of implants" or Trojans to infect hard drives including, but not limited to, the following: EquationLaser, EquationDrug, DoubleFantasy, TripleFantasy, Fanny and Grayfish. ( Interaksyon News Online)