Invincea’s Patrick Belcher: Hackers Used Common Malware to Infiltrate White House, Anthem Data Networks

New research says Russian and Chinese hackers involved in the recent data breaches on the White House and health insurer Anthem used the same types of malware to intrude into the two organizations’ computer networks, Nextgov reported Thursday.

Aliya Sternstein writes the hackers involved in the two network intrusions used legitimate-looking phishing emails to deliver the malicious software.

“The top-notch security professionals, they failed in their jobs to not open suspicious email links,” said Patrick Belcher, a director at Invincea and co-author of the report.

Belcher used network attack assessments by Kaspersky Lab, F-Secure and ThreatConnect and a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-funded security platform for his report.