back to article EFF claims Vietnam targeted its staff with spear phishing attack

Advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has warned of an uptick in targeted malware attacks by “state-aligned actors” in Vietnam against foreign activists and journalists. In a blog post this week the group complained of a new campaign targeting its own staff – the first of its kind. A suspicious looking email …

COMMENTS

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  1. frank ly

    Protection using VMs?

    Am I right in thinking that using a Virtual Machine will give you full protection from any e-mail or website sourced malware? I'm assuming you don't do anything silly like exporting downloads and attachments to another computer or the host computer area. If all you do is read the e-mail or print it out, you should be fine.

    At the end of the day, you just delete the VM then clone a fresh one from the 'pristine' one that is never actually used. (I've been playing with Virtual Box and am having ideas.)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Protection using VMs?

      Yes and no (I think). Localised damage to the VM can be fixed by simply going back to the last snapshot, but you need to bear in mind that the VM typically (if in Bridge mode) uses DHCP to take an address on your network. I guess it depends on how secure your network is :).

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Protection using VMs?

      It also depends on whether you allow communication directly between the vm and the host. I know that VMware tools has the option to allow direct communications but I've never enabled it to see what it actually allows.

    3. Roo

      Re: Protection using VMs?

      "Am I right in thinking that using a Virtual Machine will give you full protection from any e-mail or website sourced malware?"

      No, using a Virtual Machine doesn't give you full protection at all.

      The software you are running under that VM can be compromised and leak confidential information in exactly the same way as a normal bare metal host. The main benefit of using a VM is that it's relatively trivial to restore a VM to a known good state after the damage is done. Personally I don't bother, I just wipe and restore on the bare metal.

  2. Anonymous Coward 101

    "Although the emails contain dodgy grammar and are fairly easy to spot as fake, they have clearly been crafted to appeal to their specific targets."

    So, Vietnam has lots of people able to create high quality computer viruses, but nobody to write decent English? Strange.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Although the emails contain dodgy grammar and are fairly easy to spot as fake, they have clearly been crafted to appeal to their specific targets."

      And the phishing attacks work so well and fool people because the UK education system doesn't provide the necessary tools to teach the proper use grammar or spelling. These victims don't even realise there are mistakes.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Did you mean "proper use of grammar"?

  3. Richard Jones 1
    Black Helicopters

    Give Them What they Want

    OK, not exactly what they might really want. As they really need something to run about with, set up reverse honey traps that will feed out misinformation. Accidentally tell them about meetings that have not happened, with names that sound more or less credible, their government ministers are a good source of name material, but do not make the spoofing to obvious. Clearly there must be some sense of realism, just not too much.

    1. Roo

      Re: Give Them What they Want

      "OK, not exactly what they might really want. As they really need something to run about with, set up reverse honey traps that will feed out misinformation"

      That kind of lark has a habit of hurting innocent third parties. Folks who practice entrapment have a habit of creating 'legitimate' criminals/victims where there are none. Come to think of it, I would not be surprised if the folks doing the attacks on the EFF are a result of some misdirection in the first place.

  4. channel extended
    Trollface

    TPP?

    The trans pacific pact will stop all of this obviously!

    That's what the gov't told me.

  5. Nehmo

    I'm not worried about EFF as they have some of the best security people in the world working with them. But my personal situation is not so well guarded. One in 47, huh? It looks like I need to be a malware expert just to surf.

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