Digital freight platform vulnerabilities are being exploited by maverick malware hackers who use a Trojan tactic to infiltrate software systems where dormancy over time adds to their cover before bugs become active, a Californian cyber security firm has found.
According to Paloalto Network from Santa Clara, shipping and transport software appears to be particularly targeted.
It added that the malware showed distinct comparisons with similar slow-creep sleeper attacks that sowed disruption last year.
Paloalto’s most recent alarm was sounded after it uncovered a “malicious binary, named inetinfo.sys, installed in a system at an organisation with the transport and shipping sector of Kuwait”, according to a British supply chain portal.
Inetinfo, it said, showed significant similarities with malware that had affected systems in Kuwait between July and December 2018.
Cyber security executives have since warned shipping lines and transport concerns, eager to roll out digital transformations in the race to optimise online efficiencies, against leaving possible cyber flash “unpatched” – the term by software designers denoting impenetrability.
Armed with evidence of a certain hacker using signatures such as “Hunter x Hunter”, Paloalto said its investigations had led it to believe that the malware from last year’s Kuwaiti attacks had come from the same source as the most recent infiltrations. – Eugene Goddard
