Turla | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The Russian nation-state actor tracked as Secret Blizzard has been observed leveraging malware associated with other threat actors to deploy a known backdoor called Kazuar on target devices located in Ukraine. The new findings come from the Microsoft threat intelligence team, which said it observed the adversary leveraging the Amadey bot malware to download custom malware onto "specifically selected" systems associated with the Ukrainian military between March and April 2024. The activity is assessed to be the second time since 2022 that Secret Blizzard, also known as Turla, has latched onto a cybercrime campaign to propagate its own tools in Ukraine. "Commandeering other threat actors' access highlights Secret Blizzard's approach to diversifying its attack vectors," the company said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Some of the other known methods employed by the hacking crew include adversary-in-the-middle ( AitM ) campaigns, strategic web compro...

An unnamed European Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and its three diplomatic missions in the Middle East were targeted by two previously undocumented backdoors tracked as LunarWeb and LunarMail. ESET, which identified the activity, attributed it with medium confidence to the Russia-aligned cyberespionage group Turla (aka Iron Hunter, Pensive Ursa, Secret Blizzard, Snake, Uroburos, and Venomous Bear), citing tactical overlaps with prior campaigns identified as orchestrated by the threat actor. "LunarWeb, deployed on servers, uses HTTP(S) for its C&C [command-and-control] communications and mimics legitimate requests, while LunarMail, deployed on workstations, is persisted as an Outlook add-in and uses email messages for its C&C communications," security researcher Filip Jurčacko  said . An analysis of the Lunar artifacts shows that they may have been used in targeted attacks since early 2020, or even earlier. Turla, assessed to be affiliated with Russia's Fe...

In 2024, cyber threats targeting SaaS surged, with 7,000 password attacks blocked per second (just in Entra ID)—a 75% increase from last year—and phishing attempts up by 58%, causing $3.5 billion in losses (source: Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2024 ). SaaS attacks are increasing, with hackers often evading detection through legitimate usage patterns. The cyber threat arena saw standout players, unexpected underdogs, and relentless scorers leaving their mark on the SaaS security playing field.  As we enter 2025, security teams must prioritize SaaS security risk assessments to uncover vulnerabilities, adopt SSPM tools for continuous monitoring, and proactively defend their systems. Here are the Cyber Threat All-Stars to watch out for—the MVPs, rising stars, and master strategists who shaped the game. 1. ShinyHunters: The Most Valuable Player Playstyle: Precision Shots (Cybercriminal Organization) Biggest Wins: Snowflake, Ticketmaster and Authy Notable Drama: Exploited on...

The Russia-linked threat actor known as Turla infected several systems belonging to an unnamed European non-governmental organization (NGO) in order to deploy a backdoor called TinyTurla-NG (TTNG) . "The attackers compromised the first system, established persistence and added exclusions to antivirus products running on these endpoints as part of their preliminary post-compromise actions," Cisco Talos  said  in a new report published today. "Turla then opened additional channels of communication via Chisel for data exfiltration and to pivot to additional accessible systems in the network." There is evidence indicating that the infected systems were breached as early as October 2023, with Chisel deployed in December 2023 and data exfiltration taking place via the tool a month later, around January 12, 2024. TinyTurla-NG was  first documented  by the cybersecurity company last month after it was found to be used in connection with a cyber attack targeting a Poli...

The Russia-linked threat actor known as Turla has been observed using a new backdoor called  TinyTurla-NG  as part of a three-month-long campaign targeting Polish non-governmental organizations in December 2023. "TinyTurla-NG, just like TinyTurla, is a small 'last chance' backdoor that is left behind to be used when all other unauthorized access/backdoor mechanisms have failed or been detected on the infected systems," Cisco Talos  said  in a technical report published today. TinyTurla-NG is so named for exhibiting similarities with TinyTurla, another implant used by the adversarial collective in intrusions aimed at the U.S., Germany, and Afghanistan since at least 2020. TinyTurla was  first documented  by the cybersecurity company in September 2021. Turla, also known by the names Iron Hunter, Pensive Ursa, Secret Blizzard (formerly Krypton), Snake, Uroburos, and Venomous Bear, is a Russian state-affiliated threat actor linked to the Federal Security S...