Hilary Kneber Crew Spoofs US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) In Spear Phishing Attack
United States Strategic Command is one of 10 unified commands whose mission is to “deter attacks on U.S. vital interests, to ensure U.S. freedom of action in space and cyberspace, to deliver integrated kinetic and non-kinetic effects to include nuclear and information operations in support of U.S. Joint Force Commander operations, to synchronize global missile defense plans and operations, to synchronize regional combating of weapons of mass destruction
plans, to provide integrated surveillance and reconnaissance allocation recommendations to the SECDEF, and to advocate for capabilities as assigned.”
On June 6, 2010 I wrote a blog post announcing that my book “Inside Cyber Warfare: Mapping the Cyber Underworld” had been selected by General Kevin Chilton, Commander, US Strategic Command for his 2010 Commander’s Reading List. Ten days later, a spear phishing email was sent from a spoofed stratcom.mil email address with its entire text pulled from the Commander’s Reading List web page along with the blurb of my book.
The best part of all this was that the email went out one day before I was scheduled to brief MG Abraham Turner, Chief of Staff USSTRATCOM. I had the malware analyzed that night and prepared a slide with our findings for General Turner the next morning who, by the way, not only had a copy of my book next to him but was very complimentary about its contents and GreyLogic’s work in this area.
For all the members of the Hilary Kneber crew that orchestrated this – Good timing, guys!
