Russian hackers | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on the inner workings of the ransomware operation led by Mikhail Pavlovich Matveev, a Russian national who was  indicted by the U.S. government  earlier this year for his alleged role in launching thousands of attacks across the world. Matveev, who resides in Saint Petersburg and is known by the aliases Wazawaka, m1x, Boriselcin, Uhodiransomwar, Orange, and waza, is alleged to have played a crucial part in the development and deployment of LockBit, Babuk, and Hive ransomware variants since at least June 2020. "Wazawaka and his team members prominently exhibit an insatiable greed for ransom payments, demonstrating a significant disregard for ethical values in their cyber operations," Swiss cybersecurity firm PRODAFT  said  in a comprehensive analysis shared with The Hacker News. "Employing tactics that involve intimidation through threats to leak sensitive files, engaging in dishonest practices, and persisting in retaining...

Russian cyber espionage actors affiliated with the Federal Security Service (FSB) have been observed using a USB propagating worm called  LitterDrifter  in attacks targeting Ukrainian entities. Check Point, which  detailed  Gamaredon's (aka Aqua Blizzard, Iron Tilden, Primitive Bear, Shuckworm, and Winterflounder) latest tactics, branded the group as engaging in large-scale campaigns that are followed by "data collection efforts aimed at specific targets, whose selection is likely motivated by espionage goals." The LitterDrifter worm packs in two main features: automatically spreading the malware via connected USB drives as well as communicating with the threat actor's command-and-control (C&C) servers. It's also suspected to be an evolution of a PowerShell-based USB worm that was previously  disclosed  by Symantec in June 2023. Written in VBS, the spreader module is responsible for distributing the worm as a hidden file in a USB drive together with...

Every week seems to bring news of another data breach, and it's no surprise why: securing sensitive data has become harder than ever. And it's not just because companies are dealing with orders of magnitude more data. Data flows and user roles are constantly shifting, and data is stored across multiple technologies and cloud environments. Not to mention, compliance requirements are only getting stricter and more elaborate.  The problem is that while the data landscape has evolved rapidly, the usual strategies for securing that data are stuck in the past. Gone are the days when data lived in predictable places, with access controlled by a chosen few. Today, practically every department in the business needs to use customer data, and AI adoption means huge datasets, and a constant flux of permissions, use cases, and tools. Security teams are struggling to implement effective strategies for securing sensitive data, and a new crop of tools, called data security platforms, have appear...

Russian threat actors have been possibly linked to what's been described as the "largest cyber attack against Danish critical infrastructure," in which 22 companies associated with the operation of the country's energy sector were targeted in May 2023.  "22 simultaneous, successful cyberattacks against Danish critical infrastructure are not commonplace," Denmark's SektorCERT  said  [PDF]. "The attackers knew in advance who they were going to target and got it right every time. Not once did a shot miss the target." The agency said it found evidence connecting one or more attacks to Russia's GRU military intelligence agency, which is also tracked under the name  Sandworm  and has a track record of orchestrating disruptive cyber assaults on industrial control systems. This assessment is based on artifacts communicating with IP addresses that have been traced to the hacking crew. The unprecedented and coordinated cyber attacks took place on...

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) on Tuesday said it thwarted a cyber attack against an unnamed critical energy infrastructure facility in the country. The intrusion, per the agency, started with a phishing email containing a link to a malicious ZIP archive that activates the infection chain. "Visiting the link will download a ZIP archive containing three JPG images (decoys) and a BAT file 'weblinks.cmd' to the victim's computer," CERT-UA  said , attributing it to the Russian threat actor known as  APT28  (aka BlueDelta, Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard, or FROZENLAKE). "When a CMD file is run, several decoy web pages will be opened, .bat and .vbs files will be created, and a VBS file will be launched, which in turn will execute the BAT file." The next phase of the attack involves running the "whoami" command on the compromised host and exfiltrating the information, alongside downloading the TOR hidden service to route malicious traffic. Persiste...

An ongoing campaign targeting ministries of foreign affairs of NATO-aligned countries points to the involvement of Russian threat actors. The phishing attacks feature PDF documents with diplomatic lures, some of which are disguised as coming from Germany, to deliver a variant of a malware called  Duke , which has been attributed to  APT29  (aka BlueBravo, Cloaked Ursa, Cozy Bear, Iron Hemlock, Midnight Blizzard, and The Dukes). "The threat actor used Zulip – an open-source chat application – for command-and-control, to evade and hide its activities behind legitimate web traffic," Dutch cybersecurity company EclecticIQ  said  in an analysis last week. The infection sequence is as follows: The PDF attachment, named "Farewell to Ambassador of Germany," comes embedded with JavaScript code that initiates a multi-stage process to leave a persistent backdoor on compromised networks. APT29's use of invitation themes has been previously reported by Lab52, which...

The defense sector in Ukraine and Eastern Europe has been targeted by a novel .NET-based backdoor called  DeliveryCheck  (aka CAPIBAR or GAMEDAY) that's capable of delivering next-stage payloads. The Microsoft threat intelligence team, in  collaboration  with the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA), attributed the attacks to a Russian nation-state actor known as  Turla , which is also tracked under the names Iron Hunter, Secret Blizzard (formerly Krypton), Uroburos, Venomous Bear, and Waterbug. It's linked to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). "DeliveryCheck is distributed via email as documents with malicious macros," the company  said  in a series of tweets. "It persists via a scheduled task that downloads and launches it in memory. It also contacts a C2 server to retrieve tasks, which can include the launch of arbitrary payloads embedded in XSLT stylesheets." Successful initial access is also accompanied in some cases by...

A Russian national has been charged and indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) for launching ransomware attacks against "thousands of victims" in the country and across the world. Mikhail Pavlovich Matveev  (aka  Wazawaka , m1x, Boriselcin, and Uhodiransomwar), the 30-year-old individual in question, is alleged to be a "central figure" in the development and deployment of  LockBit ,  Babuk , and  Hive  ransomware variants since at least June 2020. "These victims include law enforcement and other government agencies, hospitals, and schools," DoJ  said . "Total ransom demands allegedly made by the members of these three global ransomware campaigns to their victims amount to as much as $400 million, while total victim ransom payments amount to as much as $200 million." LockBit, Babuk, and Hive operate alike, leveraging unlawfully obtained access to exfiltrate valuable data and deploy ransomware on compromised networks. The threat actor...

The Russian-speaking threat actor behind a backdoor known as Tomiris is primarily focused on gathering intelligence in Central Asia, fresh findings from Kaspersky reveal. "Tomiris's endgame consistently appears to be the regular theft of internal documents," security researchers Pierre Delcher and Ivan Kwiatkowski  said  in an analysis published today. "The threat actor targets government and diplomatic entities in the CIS." The Russian cybersecurity firm's latest assessment is based on three new attack campaigns mounted by the hacking crew between 2021 and 2023. Tomiris first came to light in September 2021 when Kaspersky  highlighted  its potential connections to  Nobelium  (aka APT29, Cozy Bear, or Midnight Blizzard), the Russian nation-state group behind the SolarWinds supply chain attack. Similarities have also been unearthed between the backdoor and another malware strain dubbed  Kazuar , which is attributed to the Turla group (aka Krypton,...

Elite hackers associated with  Russia's military intelligence service  have been linked to large-volume phishing campaigns aimed at hundreds of users in Ukraine to extract intelligence and influence public discourse related to the war. Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG), which is  monitoring  the activities of the actor under the name  FROZENLAKE , said the  attacks   continue  the "group's 2022 focus on targeting webmail users in Eastern Europe." The state-sponsored cyber actor, also tracked as APT28, Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard, Iron Twilight, Sednit, and Sofacy, is both highly prolific and proficient. It has been active since at least 2009, targeting media, governments, and military entities for espionage. The latest intrusion set, starting in early February 2023, involved the use of reflected cross-site scripting ( XSS ) attacks on various Ukrainian government websites to redirect users to phishing domains and capture their credentials. ...

The Russia-linked  APT29  (aka Cozy Bear) threat actor has been attributed to an ongoing cyber espionage campaign targeting foreign ministries and diplomatic entities located in NATO member states, the European Union, and Africa. According to Poland's Military Counterintelligence Service and the CERT Polska team, the observed activity shares tactical overlaps with a cluster tracked by Microsoft as  Nobelium , which is known for its high-profile  attack on SolarWinds  in 2020. Nobelium's operations have been attributed to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service ( SVR ), an organization that's tasked with protecting "individuals, society, and the state from foreign threats." That said, the campaign represents an evolution of the Kremlin-backed hacking group's tactics, indicating  persistent attempts  at improving its cyber weaponry to infiltrate victim systems for intelligence gathering. "New tools were used at the same time and independently of eac...

Russia's cyber attacks against Ukraine surged by 250% in 2022 when compared to two years ago, Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) and Mandiant disclosed in a new joint report. The targeting, which  coincided  and has  since persisted  following the country's military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, focused heavily on the Ukrainian government and military entities, alongside critical infrastructure, utilities, public services, and media sectors. Mandiant  said  it observed, "more destructive cyber attacks in Ukraine during the first four months of 2022 than in the previous eight years with attacks peaking around the start of the invasion." As many as six unique wiper strains – including WhisperGate, HermeticWiper, IsaacWiper, CaddyWiper, Industroyer2, and SDelete – have been deployed against Ukrainian networks, suggesting a willingness on the part of Russian threat actors to forgo persistent access. Phishing attacks aimed at NATO countries witnes...

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has  issued  an alert warning of cyber attacks against state authorities in the country that deploy a legitimate remote access software named Remcos. The mass phishing campaign has been attributed to a threat actor it tracks as  UAC-0050 , with the agency describing the activity as likely motivated by espionage given the toolset employed. The bogus emails that kick-start the infection sequence claim to be from Ukrainian telecom company Ukrtelecom and come bearing a decoy RAR archive. Of the two files present in the file, one is a password-protected RAR archive that's over 600MB and the other is a text file containing the password to open the RAR file. Embedded within the second RAR archive is an executable that leads to the installation of the Remcos remote access software, granting the attacker full access to commandeer compromised computers. Remcos , short for remote control and surveillance software, is of...

The Russian cyberespionage group known as Turla has been observed piggybacking on attack infrastructure used by a decade-old malware to deliver its own reconnaissance and backdoor tools to targets in Ukraine. Google-owned Mandiant, which is tracking the operation under the uncategorized cluster moniker  UNC4210 , said the hijacked servers correspond to a variant of a commodity malware called  ANDROMEDA  (aka Gamarue) that was uploaded to VirusTotal in 2013. "UNC4210 re-registered at least three expired ANDROMEDA command-and-control (C2) domains and began profiling victims to selectively deploy KOPILUWAK and QUIETCANARY in September 2022," Mandiant researchers  said  in an analysis published last week. Turla, also known by the names Iron Hunter, Krypton, Uroburos, Venomous Bear, and Waterbug, is an elite nation-state outfit that primarily targets government, diplomatic, and military organizations using a large set of custom malware. Since the onset of Russi...

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) this week  disclosed  that users of the Delta situational awareness program received phishing emails from a compromised email account belonging to the Ministry of Defense. The attacks, which have been attributed to a threat cluster dubbed UAC-0142, aimed to infect systems with two pieces of data-stealing malware referred to as  FateGrab and StealDeal . Delta  is a cloud-based operational situation display system developed by Aerorozvidka that allows real-time monitoring of troops on the battlefield, making it a lucrative target for threat actors. The lure messages, which come with fake warnings to update root certificates in the Delta software, carry PDF documents containing links to archive files hosted on a fraudulent Delta domain, ultimately dropping the malware on compromised systems. While FateGrab is mainly designed to exfiltrate files with specific extensions through File Transfer Protocol ( FTP ...

The Russia-linked Gamaredon group attempted to unsuccessfully break into a large petroleum refining company within a NATO member state earlier this year amid the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. The attack, which took place on August 30, 2022, is just one of multiple intrusions orchestrated by the advanced persistent threat (APT) that's attributed to Russia's Federal Security Service ( FSB ). Gamaredon , also known by the monikers Actinium, Armageddon, Iron Tilden, Primitive Bear, Shuckworm, Trident Ursa, and Winterflounder, has a history of primarily going after Ukrainian entities and, to a lesser extent, NATO allies to harvest sensitive data. "As the conflict has continued on the ground and in cyberspace, Trident Ursa has been operating as a dedicated access creator and intelligence gatherer," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Trident Ursa remains one of the most pervasive, intrusive, continuously active and focused AP...

Government entities in Ukraine have been breached as part of a new campaign that leveraged trojanized versions of Windows 10 installer files to conduct post-exploitation activities. Mandiant, which discovered the "socially engineered supply chain" attack around mid-July 2022, said the malicious ISO files were distributed via Ukrainian- and Russian-language Torrent websites. It's tracking the threat cluster as  UNC4166 . "Upon installation of the compromised software, the malware gathers information on the compromised system and exfiltrates it," the cybersecurity company  said  in a technical deep dive published Thursday. Although the adversarial collective's provenance is unknown, the intrusions are said to have targeted organizations that were previously victims of disruptive wiper attacks attributed to  APT28 , a  Russian state-sponsored actor . The ISO file, per the Google-owned threat intelligence firm, was designed to disable the transmission of te...