The unknown computer pirates last month went to the leaders of the Uyghur community exiled in a campaign involving Windows Spyware, the researchers revealed on Monday.
Citizen Lab, a digital rights research group based at the University of Toronto, detailed A espionage campaign against the members of the World Congress of Uyghur (WUC), an organization that represents the Minority Muslim group, which for years has faced repression, discrimination, surveillance and piracy of the Chinese government.
Google alerted some WUC members about the piracy campaign in mid -March, which led members to contact Citizen Lab’s journalists and researchers, according to the report.
Citizen Lab investigated and found an email of PHISHING directed sent to WUC members, which is made by reliable contact that sent a Google Drive link for a password protected compressed file that contains a malicious version of a Uyghur language text editor.
The researchers said the campaign was not particularly sophisticated and did not involve feats of zero day or mercenary spyware, but pointed out that “the delivery of malware showed a high level of social engineering, revealing the deep understanding of the attackers of the target community.”
