Lucky Cat

About Lucky Cat.

A series of attacks, targeting both Indian military research and south Asian shipping organizations, demonstrate the minimum level of effort required to successfully compromise a target and steal sensitive information. The attackers use very simple malware, which required little development time or skills, in conjunction with freely available Web hosting, to implement a highly effective attack. It is a case of the attackers obtaining a maximum return on their investment. The attack shows how an intelligent attacker does not need to be particularly technically skilled in order to steal the information they are after. The attack begins, as is often the case, with an email sent to the victim. A malicious document is attached to the email, which, when loaded, activates the malware. The attackers use tailored emails to encourage the victim to open the email. For example, one email sent to an academic claimed to be a call for papers for a conference (CFP). The vast majority of the victims were based in India, with some in Malaysia. The victim industry was mostly military research and also shipping based in the Arabian and South China seas.