A hacking group called Blind Eagle is sending fake court and government notices in Spanish and Portuguese that can hand attackers control of a computer.
A hacking group known as Blind Eagle is back. Its new campaign sends emails that look like court or government notices to organizations in Latin America. Open the wrong one, and a hidden program can give the attackers remote control of your computer.
The emails are written in Portuguese and Spanish and are styled as judicial and administrative notices. The goal is to get someone to open them. The hidden program is called a remote access trojan, or RAT. It lets an outsider operate a computer from far away. Security researchers say this one shares its lineage with two known tools, AsyncRAT and DCRat.
The targets are organizations in Latin America. Staff who read email in Spanish or Portuguese are the likeliest to see these lures, especially in legal, finance and administration roles. Any business with employees or partners in the region should take note. A legal notice creates pressure to act fast, which is exactly what the attackers count on.
Households and companies with no ties to Latin America are not the stated targets of this campaign. Still, fake official notices are a common trick, so the habit of doubting them is worth keeping.
The alert box above lists the steps. The core idea is simple: do not trust an unexpected legal notice, and confirm it through a channel you already know is real.
The material available does not say how many organizations were hit, which countries saw the most attacks, or what the attackers did after gaining access. It also does not say how the notices reach inboxes beyond the emails themselves. More detail may emerge as researchers keep tracking the group.
Treat any unexpected court or government notice as a possible trap, and confirm it through a phone number or website you already trust.
A MediaPost scam column says business email scams hit companies hardest as AI writes fake emails that sound real, so one bad payment request can cost real money.
Read more: Business email scams hit companies hardest as AI fraud growsA MaltaToday report says financial fraud is taking a new form, with scams reaching people through phones, messages and online payments.
Read more: Financial fraud is changing, and scams are getting harder to spotApple says iCloud, Find My and Apple Account sign-ins are having problems. Email and logins may fail, and the fault is on Apple's side, not your device.
Read more: Apple confirms outage hitting iCloud, Find My and Apple Accounts
