The offices of several Roman ian institutions abroad have been, during the last two years, the target of complex cyber threats designed to steal information by using infected documents, such as resumes, sales ads and invitations, the company Bitdefender has announced on Wednesday.
“The attackers have used infected documents, such as resumes, advertisements for car sales and invitations to diplomatic events sent from email addresses apparently legitimate, belonging to institutions and real people, in order to gain unauthorized access to computer systems,” a company release reads.
According to it, the threat called ‘Pacifer’ by the Bitdefender analysts was detected in computers of the Romanian institutions in Iran, the Philippines, Russia, Lithuania, Thailand, Vietnam and Hungary.
“According to the Bitdefender security specialists, the attack has improved steadily throughout its use (2014 until May 2016), as the attackers added new ways meant to avoid security solutions, and functionalities related to getting data from the targeted systems,” the communiqué reads.
The threats were hidden in various infected files such as .zip and .doc, sent apparently by legitimate e-mails, some marked as ‘urgent’, ‘important’ or ‘to be answered in a short time’.
The Bitdifender gives the example of such a virus, an invitation for the 23rd Caspian Oil & Gas International Conference, a real event that took place during June 1-4, 2016 in Baku, Azerbaijan.