CURRENT AFFAIRS

Get the most updated and recent current affair content on Padhaikaro.com

CATEGORIES

Modified Elephant – a hacking group

  • IAS NEXT, Lucknow
  • 17, Feb 2022
Image Not Found

Reference News:-

It was recently found by an American Agency that Modified Elephant, a hacking group, had allegedly planted incriminating evidence on the personal devices of Indian journalists, human rights activists, human rights defenders, academics and lawyers.

What is Modified Elephant? What’s the issue?

ModifiedElephant operators have been infecting their targets using spearphishing emails with malicious file attachments.

  • Spearphishing refers to the practice of sending emails to targets that look like they are coming from a trusted source to either reveal important information or install different kinds of malware on their computer systems.

How does it work?

Through mail, the group delivers malware to their targets.

  • NetWire and DarkComet, two publicly-available remote access trojans (RATs), were the primary malware families deployed by ModifiedElephant.
  • It also sent android malware to its victims.

What’s the Difference Between Malware, Trojan, Virus, and Worm?

Malware is defined as a software designed to perform an unwanted illegal act via the computer network. It could be also defined as software with malicious intent.

Malware can be classified based on how they get executed, how they spread, and/or what they do. Some of them are discussed below.

  1. Virus: A program that can infect other programs by modifying them to include a possible evolved copy of itself.
  2. Worms: Disseminated through computer networks, unlike viruses, computer worms are malicious programs that copy themselves from system to system, rather than infiltrating legitimate files.
  3. Trojans: Trojan or trojan horse is a program that generally impairs the security of a system. Trojans are used to create back-doors (a program that allows outside access into a secure network) on computers belonging to a secure network so that a hacker can have access to the secure network.
  4. Hoax: An e-mail that warns the user of a certain system that is harming the computer. The message thereafter instructs the user to run a procedure (most often in the form of a download) to correct the harming system. When this program is run, it invades the system and deletes an important file.
  5. Spyware: Invades a computer and, as its name implies, monitors a user’s activities without consent. Spywares are usually forwarded through unsuspecting e-mails with bonafide e-mail i.ds. Spyware continues to infect millions of computers globally.