Nation States Will Weaponize Social and Recruit Bad Guys with Benefits in 2022

McAfee Enterprise and FireEye recently released its 2022 Threat Predictions. In this blog, we take a deeper dive into the continuingly aggressive role Nation States will play in 2022.


Prediction: Lazarus Wants to Add You as a Friend


By Raj Samani


We love our social media. From beefs between popstars and professional pundits, to an open channel to the best jobs in the industry.


But guess what?


The threat actors know this, and our appetite toward accepting connections from people we have never met are all part of our relentless pursuit of the next 1,000 followers.


A result of this has seen the targeting of executives with promises of job offers from specific threat groups; and why not? After all, it is the most efficient method to bypass traditional security controls and directly communicate with targets at companies that are of interest to threat groups. Equally, direct messages have been used by groups to take control over influencer accounts to promote messaging of their own.


While this approach is not new, it is nearly as ubiquitous as alternate channels. After all, it does demand a level of research to “hook” the target into interactions and establishing fake profiles are more work than simply finding an open relay somewhere on the internet. That being said, targeting individuals has proven a very successful channel, and we predict the use of this vector could grow not only through espionage groups, but other threat actors looking to infiltrate organizations for their own criminal gain.


Potential Impacts & Implications
The potential impacts and implications for an executive or company that had their social media channels targeted by threat actors are endless. We began to see some nation state groups using platforms like ..

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