Experts says battles between cybercriminal groups may give rise to `APT wars`

London: This is a classic spy vs. spy story where one cybercriminal is attacking another and experts believe that this could mark the emergence of a new trend in criminal cyberactivity: the APT wars.

According to Kaspersky Lab, Hellsing, a small and technically unremarkable cyberespionage group targeting mostly government and diplomatic organizations in Asia, was subjected to a spear-phishing attack by another threat actor in 2014 and decided to strike back.

The discovery was made by Kaspersky Lab experts during research into the activity of Naikon, a cyberespionage group also targeting organizations in the Asia-Pacific region. The experts noticed that one of Naikon's targets had spotted the attempt to infect its systems with a spear-phishing email carrying a malicious attachment.