Unmasking State-Sponsored Cyber Attacks: A Comprehensive Guide.

Hello my dear hackers welcome back to my new article. I hope you all are good, happy and secure at your home.

Today’s blog we are gonna discuss about underrated topic. Most of the peoples are not going to discuss about that topic, because this is not ethical hacking or white hat hacking related topic. it’s a topic about cyber crime and black hat hacking.

As you know by title, we are going to see about state sponsored hackers and their attacks techniques.

we will see how state sponsor hackers are slightly different than ethical hackers and pentesters.

Before start writing the blog, I have such a small request to all of you, I always right articles on cyber security, ethical hacking, penetration testing. So if you didn’t follow, then follow me first and clap on this article, because that’s give me a motivation to write something new !!

If you didn’t follow me on my socials, here it is.

☛ My-Twitter
☛ My-Linkedin
☛ My-GitHub

Thank you !!!
Let’s Start !!!

✯ Introduction ✯

What Is State Sponsored Hackers ?
State sponsored hackers are basically hire & funded by government of nation to work for them. They target the enemy country’s infrastructure, websites their national sensetive database and government agencies. These threat actors are primarily driven by political, military, or economic interests.

Why The Need For State Sponsored Hackers ?
In this 21th centuries, everything is going to be digital, everyone has a samrtphone, getting connect to people is easy nowdays, even your day to day task are not possible without internet.
But on the other hand some bad peoples also take disadvantage of internet to make cyber crime, spreading terriosm, scamming, illegal business such as wepons dealing, drugs dealing etc.
At this stage country needs to make our people protect digitally, so government are recruiting cyber army in their nation to protect citizine digitally.

On the other hand some countries have their cyber army to teach the lesson to enemy country, by taking down their infrastructure and their website. Sometimes nations are used their cyber army to spy enemies and traitors of their countries. At here they are most pricious for the national security.

State-sponsored hackers are often highly sophisticated and well-resourced, and they employ a variety of cyber attack techniques to achieve their goals. Some of the commonly used types of cyber attacks by state-sponsored hackers include as follows.

1) Social Engineering Attacks :

Social engineering attack are mostly used and common attack to compramise anyone.
This involves manipulating individuals into divulging confidential information or performing actions that compromise security. State-sponsored attackers often craft convincing personas and scenarios to manipulate targets.

2) Phishing and Spear Phishing Attack :

This is ,ost common and effective social engineering attack mosstlyused by state sponsored attacker to get access of anyone’s PC and digital accounts.
These attacks involve sending deceptive emails to targets, often with malicious attachments or links. State-sponsored hackers might use highly tailored spear-phishing attacks that are personalized to the target’s interests or role, increasing the chances of success.

3) Malware Attacks :

State-sponsored attackers create custom malware to infiltrate systems, steal data, or establish persistence. Examples include Trojans, keyloggers, and remote access tools (RATs).
Here are some common malware attack which is mostly done.

1. Ransomware : Ransomware is a computer malware, which comes into your system and then it encrypt your all personal as well as confidential data, files, folders and you completely loose your access from your PC.
   If you wanna decrypt it, then you have to pay in bitcoin to attacker group. While often associated with criminal groups, state-sponsored actors have also been known to use ransomware to disrupt and extort organizations, especially if their goals align with causing economic or social chaos.
2. Remote Access Trojans (RATs) : RATs are malware programs that provide attackers with remote control over compromised systems. State-sponsored actors use RATs for surveillance, credential hacking, data exfiltration, and further attacks.
3. Spyware : This is malicious software that enters a user’s computer, gathers data from the device and user, and sends it to third parties without their consent. A commonly accepted spyware definition is a strand of malware designed to access and damage a device without the user’s consent.
4. Stuxnet-like Attacks : These attacks involve deploying highly specialized malware to target critical infrastructure, like industrial control systems. Stuxnet, for instance, was designed to sabotage Iran nuclear facilities.
5. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks : DDoS attack is most popular attack in hackers. Botnets are mostly used for this attack.These attacks involve overwhelming a target’s network or website with a flood of traffic, rendering it inaccessible. State-sponsored actors might use DDoS attacks to disrupt critical services.

State hackers always developed their own malwares. they did not depend public resourses at every time.

4) Botnet Attack :

Botnet is the network of computers which is infected by a malware under the any single attacking group. The main motive of botnets is spreading malware to multiple computers as a same time, crypto mining using their resourses, botnet use for to DDoS attack on big network.

State-sponsored hackers may use botnets for a variety of reasons, primarily because botnets offer them a range of advantages and capabilities that can further their cyber espionage, sabotage, or warfare objectives.

5) Zero-Day Attack :

These are vulnerabilities in software or systems that are unknown to the vendor and therefore unpatched. State-sponsored hackers might discover or purchase these exploits to target specific organizations or infrastructure.

Zerodium is a company who buy zero day exploits from globle hackers and sell it to, government and state sponsored hackers definetly use it, because they fully funded by their government.

Sometimes state attacker & reverse engineers find the Zero-day bug and then they exploit them.

6) CVE Attack :

CVE stands for Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures. The system provides a method for publicly sharing information on cybersecurity vulnerabilities and exposures.
state sponsered hackers take the advantage of CVE’s and they exploit the target machines. because sometimes machines are vulnerable with CVE nad people do not patch OR update their system, hence CVE attack could be hit the target in this case.

7) Credential Stuffing & OSINT :

This is an OSINT attack used by state sponsered. State-sponsored hackers may use compromised credentials from one breach to gain unauthorized access to other accounts or systems, leveraging the tendency for people to reuse passwords.
OSINT is one of the most dengerous wepon of state hackers.

If you wants to learn more about OSINT then check out my this blog.

Complete OSINT Fundamentals.

8) Supply Chain Attack :

State-sponsored hackers might compromise software supply chains, injecting malicious code into legitimate software updates. When users install these updates, they inadvertently install the malware.
State actors infiltrate trusted suppliers, inject malware into their products, and distribute compromised software or hardware to their targets. This covert method allows them to gain unauthorized access and conduct espionage or cyberattacks with minimal suspicion.

SolarWinds hack is the example of supply chain attack.

SolarWinds Issues Second Hotfix for Orion Platform Supply Chain Attack

9) Critical Infrastructure Attacks :

Some state-sponsored attacks focus on disrupting or sabotaging critical infrastructure systems, such as power grids, water supplies, communication networks and transportation networks. These attacks can have far-reaching consequences.
SCADA , ICS hacking attack and Radio Frequency (RF Hacking) as well as IOT device hacking attack are one of them.

10) Information Warfare:

Information warfare refers to the use of information and communication technologies to manipulate, influence, or disrupt the perceptions and behaviors of individuals, organizations, or governments. It often includes tactics such as propaganda, disinformation, cyberattacks, and psychological operations to achieve strategic goals.

It mostly used for following things :

1. Tacticle and strategic use of information to get down the target
2. Group of people involved. Government mostly used it to tackle enemies.
3. Countries spend millions of money to intelligence agencies.
4. Military used wepon and army power to send policy implementation.

These attacks involve spreading false information or propaganda to manipulate public opinion or create confusion. State-sponsored hackers may use social media and fake news to achieve their objectives.

11) Watering Hole Attack :

In this attack state hackers get the advantages of the client side vulnerability of websites such as CSRF, XSS, Clickjacking etc.
When users visit the compromised site, their systems can be infected with malware.

12) Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) :

There are whole meaning in APTs. Advanced (Next Level) Persistent (Permanent) Threats (Payload or Exploit)> That means, A next level FUD(Fully UnDetectable) payload, which will be permanent in victim machine and steal data for long period of time. In this cyber attack, state-sponsored hackers use APTs to gain unauthorized access to networks and exfiltrate sensitive information. targeted attacks that involve multiple stages and can persist for an extended period.

13) Cyber Espionage :

State-sponsored hackers engage in cyber espionage to gather intelligence from other nations, organizations, or individuals. This involves infiltrating networks to steal sensitive information.

Indian government ban tiktok in India in June 2020, not only tiktok, there are 500+ chinese apps has been banned in india till now.
All apps are chinese, and ministry of electronics and information technology department claimed that these all apps used for cyber espionage by chinese government and state hackers.

14) Penetration Testing :

State-sponsored hackers has good skills of penetration testing. They are well trained and know about black box, grey box and white box penetration testing. On the other hand, are hired by organizations to assess the security of their own systems for purely defensive to identify vulnerabilities to patch them to make your system secure.

15) Bonus Points :

In this topic we are gonna discuss about some intresting facts about state-sponsored hackers, there tools, tricks & techniques.
Also we are gonna see about top 5 country including the world dangerous hackers army.

1. State-sponsored attackers might use covert channels to communicate with compromised systems, evading detection and exfiltrating stolen data.
2. State hackers are create and use there own hacking, red teaming and blue teaming tools, and here we all know that “Ghidra” is a free and open source reverse engineering tool developed by the NSA (National Security Agency) of the United States. NSA release the tool at March 2019 for all over the world. We can’t rule out the possibility, that NSA and other countries state hackers and there developers wouldn’t make there own hacking tools and OS as well.
3. State hackers aren’t giveup at any cost, if they failed today, they will come tomorrow, until your organization get hacked !!!
4. State-sponsored red teamer are considered as completely black hat hackers, because they are target,attack and damage other countrie’s critical infrastructure without their permission.
5. USA has a most dengerous cyber army in the world followed by Russia, China, North Korea and United Kingdom. You can google for more.

I hope you guys love this blog.
If you like it, then don’t forget to follow, subscribe and claps.
I’ll see you with next article.