A hacking group known as OilAlpha, suspected to have ties to Yemen’s Houthi movement, has conducted a cyber espionage campaign targeting organizations in the Arabian peninsula.
Using encrypted chat messengers like WhatsApp and URL link shorteners, OilAlpha employed social engineering tactics to launch attacks primarily against Arabic-language speakers using Android devices.
Recorded Future, a cybersecurity company, assigned the name OilAlpha to the group, previously known as TAG-41 and TAG-62. The infrastructure used in the attacks is closely associated with Yemeni telecom service provider Public Telecommunication Corporation (PTC), which is under Houthi’s control, indicating the group’s alignment with the Houthi movement.
The campaign also involved the use of malicious Android applications to surveil delegates involved in Saudi Arabian government-led negotiations. These apps masqueraded as entities related to the Saudi Arabian government and a humanitarian organization in the United Arab Emirates. Potential targets, including political representatives, media personalities, and journalists, received the apps via WhatsApp accounts with Saudi Arabian telephone numbers.
Once installed, the apps delivered a remote access trojan called SpyNote, capable of capturing sensitive information from infected devices. The high prevalence of Android devices in the Arabian Peninsula region made them a prime focus for OilAlpha’s attacks.
Recorded Future observed communication between njRAT samples and command-and-control servers associated with OilAlpha, indicating the group’s use of desktop malware alongside Android-based techniques.
While it is theorized that OilAlpha operates at the behest of the Houthi movement, there is insufficient evidence to attribute the threat activity solely to Yemeni operatives.
External threat actors such as Lebanese or Iraqi Hezbollah, or Iranian operators supporting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), could also be involved in leading these attacks.
