‘Magic Hound’ is the code name used to reference a seemingly limited series of malware distribution campaigns that were observed targeting organizations in Saudi Arabia as well as organizations with business interests in Saudi Arabia. Similar to other malware distribution campaigns that Talos has observed and documented, this series of campaigns made use of phishing emails containing links to malicious Word documents hosted on attacker controlled servers. When opened, the malicious documents display a message instructing the user to enable macros in an attempt to entice recipients to execute the attacker’s scripts and download additional malware, thus infecting their systems. Unlike some of the more sophisticated campaigns seen in the wild, in the case of ‘Magic Hound’ the attackers made use of commodity malware and tools. This included tools such as IRC bots and Metasploit Meterpreter payloads as well as an open source Remote Administration Tool (RAT).
Talos is aware of this targeted campaign and we have responded to ensure that customers remain protected from ‘Magic Hound’ as well as other similar campaigns as they are identified and change over time.
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well picked up by Talos