Qatar targeted by Chinese hackers amid Middle East conflict | brief

Multiple China-nexus threat operations have launched cyberattacks against Qatar amid escalating tensions in the Middle East, according to HackRead .

Intrusions by Chinese advanced persistent threat operation Camaro Dragon that commenced on Mar. 1, just a day after the joint U.S.-Israel military strikes against Ukraine, involved the delivery of a file with photos showing the aftermath of an Iranian missile strike against a Bahrain-based U.S. military base, which triggered a DLL hijacking attack leading to the injection of the PlugX backdoor, a report from Check Point Research showed.

Another China-linked attack campaign aimed at Qatar's oil and gas sector entailed the distribution of a password-protected ZIP file detailing strikes against Gulf oil and gas facilities. Threat actors had concealed malicious code within a component of the legitimate open-source screen reader NVDA to deploy Cobalt Strike. Such a development comes after Iranian APT group MuddyWater was reported to have compromised U.S. organizations with the DinDoor malware .