Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Mauritania: Recent E-mail Scam Exposes Weaknesses

Mauritania, specifically their capital Nouakchott, face numerous cyber challenges to their banking/corporate, government and personal communications due to outside dependence on network infrastructure.  A recent cyber-attack directed towards their Communication Director and his staff demonstrate this vulnerability.  Simple cyber-attacks as this, illustrate weaknesses to many developing African nations; and in reality, many developing nations.  This information is being supplied for your situational awareness.

  • Mauritania and West Africa must rely on outside network providers which present many vulnerabilities.
  • Developing nations face many basic cyber security related challenges.
  • Heightened cyber security education, training and experience is desired for many developing nations.


Publication date:                            21 October 2016

Handling requirements:                  Traffic light protocol (TLP) GREEN

Attribution/Threat Actors:              Stranded Traveler actors

Actor Type:                                     Adversary capabilities have been assessed as Tier II*

Potential Targets:                           Mauritania and neighboring West African nations

Past Reporting:                               Red Sky Alliance: DOC-4365

*Practitioners with a greater depth of experience, with the ability to develop their own tools (from publicly known vulnerabilities).

The full attribution report has been published in its entirety in the Red Sky Alliance portal.  For more information please contact the lab directly at 844-4-WAPACK, 603-606-1246, or feedback@wapacklabs.com.

About Wapack Labs

Wapack Labs, located in New Boston, NH is a Cyber Threat Analysis and Intelligence organization supporting the Red Sky Alliance, the FS-ISAC and individual organizations by offering expert level targeted intelligence analysis answering some of the hardest questions in Cyber.  Wapack Labs’ engineers, researchers and analysts use deep analysis techniques and visualization to design and deliver transformational cyber-security analysis tools that fuse open source and proprietary information.  The intelligence derived from these tools and techniques serve as the foundation of Wapack Labs’ information reporting to the cyber-security teams of its customers and industry partners located around the world.