Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts

Image by yusuf kazancı from Pixabay

What’s Old is New

Here’s another attack fresh from the pages of Homer’s Iliad. You know the story of the ten-year conflict between early Greek kingdoms and the Anatolian city of Troy. Troy counted on the win when the Greeks headed back to their home. From the Trojans’ perspective, the proof was a giant wooden horse left as a tribute gift for Athena. They rolled it into the city — big mistake.

Late in the night, the wooden horse disgorged several Greek soldiers who opened the defending city gates, allowing the Greek army to launch a fatal campaign. This story has been repeated often as lessons related to attacks in modern-day cyberspace, identified as trojan horse software — something innocuous on the surface containing a deadly payload. The old tricks are the best!

Modern Application

Fast forward a couple of millennia, and attackers are sending smartwatches as gifts to U.S. military personnel to test their knowledge of history. Article on CNN: https://amp-cnn-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/06/23/politics/navy-smartwatches-malware/index.html

The review appears to suggest the attackers baked in nasty computer viruses to access remotely to compromise an individual’s smartphone, aka the…