Houthi-Backed Spyware Effort Targets Yemen Aid Workers

An ongoing spyware campaign is targeting attendees of Saudi government-led negotiations on Yemen, along with humanitarian and reconstruction aid workers working toward Yemeni stability on behalf of the pro-Houthi movement.

Insikt Group researchers has been monitoring the activities of threat group OilAlpha since May 2022, which they reported has been using messenger applications like WhatsApp to social engineer targets into downloading a malicious Android application. The app comes loaded with remote access Trojans (RATs) like SpyNore and SpyMax, the researchers said.

Tellingly, OilAlpha uses infrastructure that the Insikt Group traced back to the Public Telecommunication Corporation (PTC), a business owned by the government of Yemen, and under the control of Houthi-aligned officials, the report added.

“The group’s operations have reportedly included targeting persons attending Saudi Arabian government-led negotiations; coupled with the use of spoofed Android applications mimicking entities tied to the Saudi Arabian government, and a UAE humanitarian organization (among others),” the report said. “As of this writing, we suspect that the attackers targeted individuals the Houthis wanted direct access to.”

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