Ukraine | 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...

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has warned of a new set of cyber attacks that it said were aimed at defense companies in the country as well as its security and defense forces. The phishing attacks have been attributed to a Russia-linked threat actor called UAC-0185 (aka UNC4221), which has been active since at least 2022. "The phishing emails mimicked official messages from the Ukrainian League of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs," CERT-UA said . "The emails advertised a conference held on December 5th in Kyiv, aimed at aligning the products of domestic defense industry companies with NATO standards." The email messages come embedded with a malicious URL that urges the recipients to click on it to view "important information" related to their participation in the conference. But in reality, doing so results in the download of a Windows shortcut file that, upon opening, is designed to execute an HTML Application, which, in t...

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...

Ukraine has restricted the use of the Telegram messaging app by government officials, military personnel, and other defense and critical infrastructure workers, citing national security concerns. The ban was announced by the National Coordination Centre for Cybersecurity (NCCC) in a post shared on Facebook. "I have always advocated and advocate for freedom of speech, but the issue of Telegram is not a question of freedom of speech, it is a matter of national security," Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine's GUR military intelligence agency, said . Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) said that Telegram is "actively used by the enemy" to launch cyber attacks, spread phishing messages and malicious software, track users' whereabouts, and gather intelligence to help the Russian military target Ukraine's facilities with drones and missiles. To that end, the use of Telegram has been proscribed on official devices of employees of state ...

The U.S. government and a coalition of international partners have officially attributed a Russian hacking group tracked as Cadet Blizzard to the General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) 161st Specialist Training Center ( Unit 29155 ). "These cyber actors are responsible for computer network operations against global targets for the purposes of espionage, sabotage, and reputational harm since at least 2020," the agencies said . "Since early 2022, the primary focus of the cyber actors appears to be targeting and disrupting efforts to provide aid to Ukraine." Targets of the attacks have focused on critical infrastructure and key resource sectors, including the government services, financial services, transportation systems, energy, and healthcare sectors of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members, the European Union, Central American, and Asian countries. The joint advisory, released last week as part of a coordinated exercise dubbed Operatio...

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has alerted of a spear-phishing campaign that targeted a scientific research institution in the country with malware known as HATVIBE and CHERRYSPY. The agency attributed the attack to a threat actor it tracks under the name UAC-0063 , which was previously observed targeting various government entities to gather sensitive information using keyloggers and backdoors. The attack is characterized by the use of a compromised email account belonging to an employee of the organization to send phishing messages to "dozens" of recipients containing a macro-laced Microsoft Word (DOCX) attachment. Opening the document and enabling macros results in the execution of an encoded HTML Application (HTA) named HATVIBE, which sets up persistence on the host using a scheduled task and paves the way for a Python backdoor codenamed CHERRYSPY, which is capable of running commands issued by a remote server. CERT-UA said it detected ...

In the past 2 years, we have observed a significant surge in hacktivism activity due to ongoing wars and geopolitical conflicts in various regions. Since the war against Ukraine began, we have witnessed a notable mobilization of non-state and state-backed actors alike, forming new groups or joining existing hacker collectives.  We understand hacktivism as a form of computer hacking that is done to further the goals of political or social  activism 1 . While  activism  describes a normal, non-disruptive use of the Internet in order to support a specific cause (online petitions, fundraising, coordinating activities),  hacktivism  includes operations that use hacking techniques with the intent to disrupt but not to cause serious harm (e.g., data theft, website defacements, redirects, Denial-of-Service attacks). Cyber operations that inherit a willingness or intent to cause harm to physical property, severe economic damage or loss of life would be referred to...

The notorious Russian hackers known as  Sandworm  targeted an electrical substation in Ukraine last year, causing a brief power outage in October 2022. The findings come from Google's Mandiant, which described the hack as a "multi-event cyber attack" leveraging a novel technique for impacting industrial control systems (ICS). "The actor first used OT-level living-off-the-land ( LotL ) techniques to likely trip the victim's substation circuit breakers, causing an unplanned power outage that coincided with mass missile strikes on critical infrastructure across Ukraine," the company  said . "Sandworm later conducted a second disruptive event by deploying a new variant of  CaddyWiper  in the victim's IT environment." The threat intelligence firm did not reveal the location of the targeted energy facility, the duration of the blackout, and the number of people who were impacted by the incident. The development marks Sandworm's  continuous...

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has revealed that threat actors "interfered" with at least 11 telecommunication service providers in the country between May and September 2023. The agency is tracking the activity under the name UAC-0165, stating the intrusions led to service interruptions for customers. The starting point of the attacks is a reconnaissance phase in which a telecom company's network is scanned to identify exposed RDP or SSH interfaces and potential entry points. "It should be noted that reconnaissance and exploitation activities are carried out from previously compromised servers located, in particular, in the Ukrainian segment of the internet," CERT-UA  said . "To route traffic through such nodes, Dante, SOCKS5, and other proxy servers are used." The attacks are notable for the use of two specialized programs called POEMGATE and POSEIDON that enable credential theft and remote control of the infected ho...

A previously undetected advanced persistent threat (APT) actor dubbed  Red Stinger  has been linked to attacks targeting Eastern Europe since 2020. "Military, transportation, and critical infrastructure were some of the entities being targeted, as well as some involved in the  September East Ukraine referendums ," Malwarebytes disclosed in a  report  published today. "Depending on the campaign, attackers managed to exfiltrate snapshots, USB drives, keyboard strokes, and microphone recordings." Red Stinger overlaps with a threat cluster Kaspersky revealed under the name  Bad Magic  last month as having targeted government, agriculture, and transportation organizations located in Donetsk, Lugansk, and Crimea last year. While there were indications that the APT group may have been active since at least September 2021, the latest findings from Malwarebytes push the group's origins back by nearly a year, with the first operation taking place in Decemb...

The advanced persistent threat known as  Winter Vivern  has been linked to campaigns targeting government officials in India, Lithuania, Slovakia, and the Vatican since 2021. The activity targeted Polish government agencies, the Ukraine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Italy Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and individuals within the Indian government, SentinelOne said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Of particular interest is the APT's targeting of private businesses, including telecommunications organizations that support Ukraine in the ongoing war," senior threat researcher Tom Hegel  said . Winter Vivern, also tracked as UAC-0114,  drew attention  last month after the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) detailed a new malware campaign aimed at state authorities of Ukraine and Poland to deliver a piece of malware dubbed Aperetif. Previous public reports chronicling the group show that it has leveraged weaponized Microsoft Excel doc...

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 Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has warned of a new wave of social engineering campaigns delivering IcedID malware and leveraging Zimbra exploits with the goal of stealing sensitive information. Attributing the IcedID phishing attacks to a threat cluster named UAC-0041, the agency  said  the infection sequence begins with an email containing a Microsoft Excel document (Мобілізаційний реєстр.xls or Mobilization Register.xls) that, when opened, prompts the users to enable macros, leading to the deployment of IcedID. The  information-stealing malware , also known as BokBot, has followed a similar trajectory to that of TrickBot, Emotet, and ZLoader, evolving from its earlier roots as a banking trojan to a full-fledged crimeware service that facilities the retrieval of next-stage implants such as ransomware. The  second set of targeted intrusions  relate to a new threat group dubbed UAC-0097, with the email including a number of image ...

Ukraine's technical security and intelligence service is warning of a new wave of cyber attacks that are aimed at gaining access to users' Telegram accounts. "The criminals sent messages with malicious links to the Telegram website in order to gain unauthorized access to the records, including the possibility to transfer a one-time code from SMS," the State Service of Special Communication and Information Protection (SSSCIP) of Ukraine  said  in an alert. The attacks , which have been attributed to a threat cluster called "UAC-0094," originate with Telegram messages alerting recipients that a login had been detected from a new device located in Russia and urging the users to confirm their accounts by clicking on a link. The URL, in reality a phishing domain, prompts the victims to enter their phone numbers as well as the one-time passwords sent via SMS that are then used by the threat actors to take over the accounts. The modus operandi  mirrors  that ...

Ukraine's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) has warned of Belarusian state-sponsored hackers targeting its military personnel and related individuals as part of a phishing campaign mounted amidst Russia's military invasion of the country. "Mass  phishing emails  have recently been observed targeting private 'i.ua' and 'meta.ua' accounts of Ukrainian military personnel and related individuals," the CERT-UA  said . "After the account is compromised, the attackers, by the IMAP protocol, get access to all the messages." Subsequently, the attacks leverage the contact information stored in the victim's address book to propagate the phishing messages to other targets. The Ukrainian government attributed the activities to a threat actor tracked as UNC1151, a Minsk-based group whose "members are officers of the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Belarus." In a follow-up  update , the agency said the nation-state group a...