Trump / Kim Summit Attracts A Heavy Wave of Cyber Attacks
The number of cyberattacks targeting Singapore skyrocketed from June 11 to June 12, during the meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean President Kim Jong-un in a Singapore hotel, and most of these attacks originated from Russia.
Russia has long been said to keep the United States under a continuous barrage of cyberattacks, and even attracted a series of sanctions following the hacking aimed at the 2016 presidential election, which was supposedly the doing of state-sponsored Russian threat actors.
It’s no wonder the Trump-Kim summit was targeted as well, but the number of assaults coming from Russia is indeed impressive: 88% of the total number of observed cyber-attacks came from this country. Furthermore, 97% of all the attacks that originated from Russian during the timeframe targeted Singapore, data from F5 Labs and Loryka reveals.
“We cannot prove they were nation-state sponsored attacks, however the attacks coincide with the day President Donald Trump met with North Korean President Kim Jong-un in a Singapore hotel. The attacks targeted VoIP phones and IoT devices, which appears to be more than a mere coincidence,” F5 says.
The flurry of attacks, the security firm reveals, started out of Brazil by targeting port SIP 5060, the single most attacked port in the timeframe. IP phones use this port to send and receive communications in clear text.
This initial phase, which lasted for only a couple of hours, was followed by reconnaissance scans from the Russian IP address 188.246.234.60, an IP owned by ASN 49505, operated by Selectel, targeting a variety of ports.
The attacks observed on June 11 and June 12 also targeted the Telnet port, which is normally assaulted in IoT incidents. Other targeted ports include SQL database port 1433, web traffic ports 81 and 8080, port 7541 (used by Mirai and Annie to target ISP-managed routers), and port 8291 (previously targeted by Hajime).
During a period of 21 hours, starting at 11:00 p.m. on June 11 through 8:00 p.m. June 12, local time, a total of 40,000 attacks were launched on Singapore. Of these, 92% were reconnaissance scans looking for vulnerable devices, while the remaining 8% were exploit attacks.
“Thirty-four percent of the attacks originated from Russian IP addresses. China, US, France, and Italy round-out the top 5 attackers in this period, all of which launched between 2.5 to 3 times fewer attacks than Russia. Brazil, in the sixth position, was the only other country we detected launching SIP attacks alongside Russia,” F5 reveals.
During the period, Singapore became the top destination of cyberattacks by a large margin, receiving 4.5 times more attacks than the US or Canada. Typically, Singapore is not a top attack destination, and the anomaly coincides with President Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong-un.
While Russia was the main source of attacks, accounting for 88% of them, Brazil was the second largest attacker, launching 8% of the assaults. Germany rounded up top three attackers, with 2%.
The security researchers also note that there was no attempt made to conceal the attacks launched from Russia and that none of the attacks originating from this country carried malware.
The SIP port 5060 received 25 times more attacks than Telnet port 23, which was the second most targeted. Although attacks on port 5060 are unusual, chances are that the attackers were attempting to gain access to insecure phones or perhaps the VoIP server. The attacks on Telnet were likely trying to compromise IoT devices to spy on communications and collect data.
“We do not have evidence directly tying this attacking activity to nation-state-sponsored attacks, however it is common knowledge that the Russian government has many contractors within Russia doing their bidding, and that a successful attack on a target of interest would make its way through to the Kremlin,” F5 concludes.
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