Operation North Star Overview

Over the last few months, we have seen attackers take advantage of the pandemic as a cover to launch cyberattacks. One such example is a campaign that McAfee.com/activate Advanced Threat Research (ATR) observed as an increase in malicious cyber activity targeting the Aerospace & Defense industry. In this campaign, McAfee.com/activate ATR discovered a series of malicious documents containing job postings taken from leading defense contractors to be used as lures, in a very targeted fashion. This type of campaign has appeared before, in 2017 and 2019 using similar techniques, but the 2020 campaign has some distinct differences in implants, infrastructure, and spear-phishing lures. For a more detailed analysis of this campaign please see the Mcafee.com/activate ATR blog.

This blog is focused on how to build an adaptable security architecture to increase your resilience against these types of attacks and specifically, how McAfee’s portfolio delivers the capability to prevent, detect and respond against the tactics and techniques used in the Operation North Star campaign.