Russian hackers | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

At least six different Russia-aligned actors launched no less than 237 cyberattacks against Ukraine from February 23 to April 8, including 38 discrete destructive attacks that irrevocably destroyed files in hundreds of systems across dozens of organizations in the country. "Collectively, the cyber and kinetic actions work to disrupt or degrade Ukrainian government and military functions and undermine the public's trust in those same institutions," the company's Digital Security Unit (DSU)  said  in a special report. The major malware families that have been leveraged for destructive activity as part of Russia's relentless digital assaults include:  WhisperGate ,  HermeticWiper  ( FoxBlade  aka KillDisk),  HermeticRansom  (SonicVote),  IssacWiper  (Lasainraw),  CaddyWiper ,  DesertBlade ,  DoubleZero  (FiberLake), and  Industroyer2 . WhisperGate, HermeticWiper, IssacWiper, and CaddyWiper are all data wipers d...

The U.S. government on Tuesday  announced  up to $10 million in rewards for information on six hackers associated with the Russian military intelligence service. "These individuals participated in malicious cyber activities on behalf of the Russian government against U.S. critical infrastructure in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act," the State Department's Rewards for Justice Program  said . All the six Russian officers are members of an advanced persistent threat group called Sandworm (aka Voodoo Bear or Iron Viking), which is known to be operating since at least 2008 with a specific focus on targeting entities in Ukraine with the goal of establishing an illicit, long-term presence in order to mine highly sensitive data. The hackers, who are officers of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation ( GRU ), are as follows - Artem Valeryevich Ochichenko , who has been linked to technical reconnaissa...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

The Five Eyes nations have released a  joint cybersecurity advisory  warning of increased  malicious attacks  from Russian state-sponsored actors and criminal groups targeting critical infrastructure organizations amidst the ongoing military siege on Ukraine. "Evolving intelligence indicates that the Russian government is exploring options for potential cyberattacks," authorities from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S.  said . "Russia's invasion of Ukraine could expose organizations both within and beyond the region to increased malicious cyber activity. This activity may occur as a response to the unprecedented economic costs imposed on Russia as well as material support provided by the United States and U.S. allies and partners." The  advisory  follows  another alert  from the U.S. government cautioning of nation-state actors deploying specialized malware to maintain access to industrial control systems (ICS) and su...

Microsoft on Thursday disclosed that it obtained a court order to take control of seven domains used by APT28, a state-sponsored group operated by Russia's military intelligence service, with the goal of neutralizing its attacks on Ukraine. "We have since re-directed these domains to a sinkhole controlled by Microsoft, enabling us to mitigate Strontium's current use of these domains and enable victim notifications," Tom Burt, Microsoft's corporate vice president of customer security and trust,  said . APT28, also known by the names Sofacy, Sednit, Pawn Storm, Fancy Bear, Iron Twilight, and Strontium, is a  cyber espionage group  and an advanced persistent threat that's known to be active since 2009, striking media, governments, military, and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that often have a security focus. The tech giant noted that the sinkholed infrastructure was used by the threat actor to target Ukrainian institutions as well as gov...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced that it neutralized Cyclops Blink , a modular botnet controlled by a threat actor known as Sandworm, which has been attributed to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU). "The operation copied and removed malware from vulnerable internet-connected firewall devices that Sandworm used for command-and-control (C2) of the underlying botnet," the DoJ  said  in a statement Wednesday. In addition to disrupting its C2 infrastructure, the operation also closed the external management ports that the threat actor used to establish connections with the firewall appliances, effectively severing contact and preventing the hacking group from using the infected devices to commandeer the botnet. The March 22 court-authorized disruption of Cyclops Blink comes a little over a month after intelligence agencies in the U.K. and the U.S.  described  the botnet as a replace...

At least three different advanced persistent threat (APT) groups from across the world have launched spear-phishing campaigns in mid-March 2022 using the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war as a lure to distribute malware and steal sensitive information. The campaigns, undertaken by El Machete, Lyceum, and SideWinder, have targeted a variety of sectors, including energy, financial, and governmental sectors in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. "The attackers use decoys ranging from official-looking documents to news articles or even job postings, depending on the targets and region," Check Point Research  said  in a report. "Many of these lure documents utilize malicious macros or template injection to gain an initial foothold into the targeted organizations, and then launch malware attacks." The infection chains of  El Machete , a Spanish-speaking threat actor first documented in August 2014 by Kaspersky, involve the use of macro-laced decoy doc...

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Friday  moved  to add Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab to the " Covered List " of companies that pose an "unacceptable risk to the national security" of the country. The development marks the first time a Russian entity has been added to the list that's been otherwise dominated by Chinese telecommunications firms. Also added alongside Kaspersky were China Telecom (Americas) Corp and China Mobile International USA. The block list includes information security products, solutions, and services supplied, directly or indirectly, by the company or any of its predecessors, successors, parents, subsidiaries, or affiliates. The FCC said the decision was made pursuant to a Binding Operational Directive (BOD)  issued  by the Department of Homeland Security on September 11, 2017 that barred federal agencies from using Kaspersky-branded products in their information systems. The security services provider,...

A Chinese-speaking threat actor called Scarab has been linked to a custom backdoor dubbed HeaderTip as part of a campaign targeting Ukraine since Russia embarked on an invasion last month, making it the second China-based hacking group after  Mustang Panda  to capitalize on the conflict. "The malicious activity represents one of the first public examples of a Chinese threat actor targeting Ukraine since the invasion began," SentinelOne researcher Tom Hegel  said  in a report published this week. SentinelOne's analysis follows an advisory from Ukraine's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) earlier this week  outlining  a spear-phishing campaign that leads to the delivery of a RAR archive file, which comes with an executable that's designed to open a decoy file while stealthily dropping a malicious DLL called HeaderTip in the background. Scarab was  first documented  by the Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom Software, in Jan...

The U.S. government on Thursday released a cybersecurity advisory outlining multiple intrusion campaigns conducted by state-sponsored Russian cyber actors from 2011 to 2018 that targeted the energy sector in the U.S. and beyond. "The [Federal Security Service] conducted a multi-stage campaign in which they gained remote access to U.S. and international Energy Sector networks, deployed ICS-focused malware, and collected and exfiltrated enterprise and ICS-related data," the U.S. government  said , attributing the attacks to an APT actor known as  Energetic Bear . In addition, the Justice Department  charged  four Russian government employees, including three officers of the Russian Federal Security Service and a computer programmer at the Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics (TsNIIKhM), for their roles in carrying out the attacks on oil refineries, nuclear facilities, and energy companies. The four Russian nationals are Pavel Aleksandro...

A 23-year-old Russian national has been indicted in the U.S. and added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Cyber Most Wanted List for his alleged role as the administrator of Marketplace A, a cyber crime forum that sold stolen login credentials, personal information, and credit card data. Igor Dekhtyarchuk , who first appeared in hacker forums in 2013 under the alias "floraby," has been accused of charges of wire fraud, access device fraud, and aggravated identity theft, a set of offenses that could lead to up to 20 years in federal prison. According to the FBI's  Wanted poster , Dekhtyarchuk previously studied at the Ural State University in Yekaterinburg, Russia, and was last known to reside in the city of Kamensk-Uralsky. "Marketplace A specialized in the sale of unlawfully obtained access devices for compromised online payment platforms, retailers, and credit card accounts, including providing the data associated with those accounts such as na...

The U.S. government on Monday once again cautioned of potential cyber attacks from Russia in retaliation for  economic sanctions  imposed by the west on the country following its  military assault on Ukraine  last month. "It's part of Russia's playbook," U.S. President Joe Biden  said  in a  statement , citing "evolving intelligence that the Russian Government is exploring options." The development comes as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned of "possible threats" to U.S. and international satellite communication (SATCOM) networks in the wake of a cyber attack targeting  Viasat KA-SAT network , used extensively by the Ukrainian military, roughly around the time when Russian armed forces invaded Ukraine on February 24. "Successful intrusions into SATCOM networks could create risk in SATCOM network providers' customer environments," the agencies  said . T...

ASUS routers have emerged as the target of a nascent botnet called Cyclops Blink , almost a month after it was revealed the malware abused WatchGuard firewall appliances as a stepping stone to gain remote access to breached networks. According to a  new report  published by Trend Micro, the botnet's "main purpose is to build an infrastructure for further attacks on high-value targets," given that none of the infected hosts "belong to critical organizations, or those that have an evident value on economic, political, or military espionage." Intelligence agencies from the U.K. and the U.S. have  characterized  Cyclops Blink as a replacement framework for  VPNFilter , another malware that has exploited network devices, primarily small office/home office (SOHO) routers, and network-attached storage (NAS) devices. Both VPNFilter and Cyclops Blink have been attributed to a Russian state-sponsored actor tracked as Sandworm (aka Voodoo Bear), which has also been li...

In what's an act of deliberate sabotage, the developer behind the popular "node-ipc" NPM package shipped a new tampered version to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, raising concerns about security in the open-source and the  software supply chain . Affecting versions 10.1.1 and 10.1.2 of the library, the alterations introduced by its maintainer RIAEvangelist brought about undesirable behavior by targeting users with IP addresses located either in Russia or Belarus, and wiping arbitrary file contents and replacing them with a heart emoji. Node-ipc is a prominent  node module  used for local and remote inter-process communication ( IPC ) with support for Linux, macOS, and Windows. It has over 1.1 million weekly downloads. "A very clear abuse and a critical supply chain security incident will occur for any system on which this NPM package will be called upon, if that matches a geo-location of either Russia or Belarus," Synk researcher Liran Tal  said  ...

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said it has detained a "hacker" who offered technical assistance to the invading Russian troops by providing mobile communication services inside the Ukrainian territory. The anonymous suspect is said to have broadcasted text messages to Ukrainian officials, including security officers and civil servants, proposing that they surrender and take the side of Russia. The individual has also been accused of routing phone calls from Russia to the mobile phones of Russian troops in Ukraine. "Up to a thousand calls were made through this hacker in one day. Many of them are from the top leadership of the enemy army," the SBU  alleged , adding it confiscated the equipment that was used to pull off the operation. Besides implicating the hacker for helping Russia make anonymous phone calls to its military forces based in Ukraine, the agency said the hacker passed commands and instructions to different groups of "Russian invaders....

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have released a joint advisory warning that Russia-backed threat actors hacked the network of an unnamed non-governmental entity by exploiting a combination of flaws. "As early as May 2021, Russian state-sponsored cyber actors took advantage of a misconfigured account set to default [multi-factor authentication] protocols at a non-governmental organization (NGO), allowing them to enroll a new device for MFA and access the victim network," the agencies  said . "The actors then exploited a critical Windows Print Spooler vulnerability, 'PrintNightmare' ( CVE-2021-34527 ) to run arbitrary code with system privileges." The attack was pulled off by gaining initial access to the victim organization via compromised credentials – obtained by means of a brute-force password guessing attack – and enrolling a new device in the organization's  Duo MFA ....

Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky on Tuesday responded to an advisory released by Germany's Federal Office of Information Security (BSI) against using the company's security solutions in the country over "doubts about the reliability of the manufacturer." Calling that the decision was made on "political grounds," the company  said  it will "continue to assure our partners and customers of the quality and integrity of our products, and we will be working with the BSI for clarification on its decision and for the means to address its and other regulators' concerns." The statement from Kaspersky follows a warning from Germany's cybersecurity authority, the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik aka BSI, which recommended "replacing applications from Kaspersky's portfolio of antivirus software with alternative products" due to risks that they could be exploited by Russia for a cyber attack. "Companies and...

Two weeks after details emerged about a second data wiper strain delivered in attacks against Ukraine, yet another destructive malware has been detected amid Russia's continuing military invasion of the country. Slovak cybersecurity company ESET dubbed the third wiper " CaddyWiper ," which it said it first observed on March 14 around 9:38 a.m. UTC. Metadata associated with the executable (" caddy.exe ") shows that the malware was compiled at 7:19 a.m. UTC, a little over two hours prior to its deployment. CaddyWiper is notable for the fact that it doesn't share any similarities with previously discovered wipers in Ukraine, including  HermeticWiper  (aka FoxBlade or KillDisk) and  IsaacWiper  (aka Lasainraw), the two of which have been deployed in systems belonging to government and commercial entities. "The ultimate goal of the attackers is the same as with IsaacWiper and HermeticWiper: make the systems unusable by erasing user data and partition i...

The Russian government has established its own TLS certificate authority ( CA ) to address issues with accessing websites that have arisen in the wake of sanctions imposed by the west following the country's unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine. According to a message posted on the  Gosuslugi  public services portal, the Ministry of Digital Development is expected to provide a domestic replacement to handle the issuance and renewal of TLS certificates should they get revoked or expired. The service is offered to all legal entities operating in Russia, with the certificates delivered to site owners upon request within 5 working days. TLS certificates are used to digitally bind a cryptographic key to an organization's details, enabling web browsers to confirm the domain's authenticity and ensure that the communication between a client computer and the target website is secure. The proposal comes as companies like DigiCert have been restricted from doing business in ...

A broad range of threat actors, including Fancy Bear, Ghostwriter, and Mustang Panda, have launched phishing campaigns against Ukraine, Poland, and other European entities amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) said it took down two Blogspot domains that were used by the nation-state group FancyBear (aka APT28) – which is attributed to Russia's GRU military intelligence – as a landing page for its social engineering attacks. The disclosure comes close on the heels of an advisory from the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA)  warning  of phishing campaigns targeting Ukr.net users that involve sending messages from compromised accounts containing links to attacker-controlled credential harvesting pages. Another cluster of threat activity concerns webmail users of Ukr.net, Yandex.ru, wp.pl, rambler.ru, meta.ua, and i.ua, who have been at the receiving end of phishing attacks by a Belarusian threat actor tracked as Ghostwrit...