Information Technology Security

By Vilius Petkauskas,  Cybernews Russian adversaries increasingly focus on targeting the cloud environment, Crowdstrike’s Global Threat Report on Cloud Security revealed. Fancy Bear, a Russian adversary associated with Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), used to rely on malware-based spear-phishing attacks, the report claims. However, with their tactics exposed by the US Department of Justice (DoJ), hackers have refocused their attention on cloud service providers. Since Fancy Bear’s primary source of intelligence comes from various credential harvesting practices that allow penetrating target organizations and individuals, it’s no surprise that the main targets are cloud-based email providers. According to the report, Fancy Bear focused their attention on service providers such as Microsoft 365, Google’s GSuite, as well as webmail providers that individuals usually use. Meanwhile, Cozy Bear, Russia’s state-sponsored hacker group controlled by the Federal Security service...

By Scott Ikeda, CPO Magazine A newly-uncovered phishing campaign is targeting diplomats by presenting malicious messages as official embassy communications, and basing out of legitimate cloud-based services such as DropBox and Trello to aid in evading detection and remediation. The scheme was uncovered by security firm Mandiant , who believe that state-backed Russian hackers are behind it. Embassies targeted by Russian hackers The phishing campaign is just one element of a rash of recent activity by advanced persistent threat group 29 (APT 29), probably better known to the general public as “Cozy Bear.” Believed to be backed by Russian intelligence, the group conducted a similar operation in 2021 that focused on compromising diplomats via legitimate-looking Constant Contact emails. Mandiant says that the current phishing campaign makes use of legitimate email addresses that have been previously compromised, and opens with what appears to be an administrative notice from an embassy. The...

A group of human rights lawyers and investigators has called on the Hague to bring the first-ever “cyber war crimes” charges against Russia’s most dangerous hackers. By Andy Grenberg, Wired For weeks, evidence has been piling up of the Russian military's apparent war crimes in the midst of its brutal invasion of Ukraine: mass graves, bombed hospitals, even makeshift torture chambers. But amidst those atrocities—and the push to hold the perpetrators accountable—one group is making the counterintuitive case that another arm of the Russian military should be included in any international war crimes charges: the Kremlin's most disruptive and dangerous hackers. In late March, a group of human rights lawyers and investigators in the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley's School of Law sent a formal request to the Office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague. It urges the ICC to consider war crime prosecutions of Russian hackers for their cyberatt...

By  Dev Discourse Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has observed a continuously growing number of threat actors using the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a lure in phishing and malware campaigns and targeting critical infrastructure entities including oil and gas, telecommunications and manufacturing. "Government-backed actors from China, Iran, North Korea and Russia, as well as various unattributed groups, have used various Ukraine war-related themes in an effort to get targets to open malicious emails or click malicious links. Financially motivated and criminal actors are also using current events as a means for targeting users," TAG wrote in a blog post . Below is the campaign activity observed by Google's TAG: APT28 or Fancy Bear, a threat actor attributed to Russia GRU, was seen targeting users in Ukraine with a new variant of malware which was distributed via email attachments inside of password-protected zip files (ua_report.zip). The malware is a .Net executable...

By Kate Conger and David E. Sanger, New York Times Hackers claim to have broken into dozens of Russian institutions over the past two months, including the Kremlin's internet censor and one of its primary intelligence services, leaking e-mails and internal documents to the public in an apparent hack-and-leak campaign that is remarkable in its scope. The hacking operation comes as the Ukrainian government appears to have begun a parallel effort to punish Russia by publishing the names of purported Russian soldiers who operated in Bucha, Ukraine, the site of a massacre of civilians, and agents of the FSB, a major Russian intelligence agency, along with identifying information like dates of birth and passport numbers. It is unclear how the Ukrainian government obtained those names or whether they were part of the hacks. Much of the data released by the hackers and the Ukrainian government is by its nature impossible to verify. As an intelligence agency, the FSB would never confirm a l...

By Tim Culpan, Bloomberg A U.S. operation to secretly remove malware from networks at home and overseas highlights the new front Washington is opening in its approach to global cyberdefense. It’s a much-needed strategy, but one that ought to be handle delicately if the U.S. is to maintain the cooperation necessary to keep pulling off such sneaky maneuvers. The U.S. and its allies found malicious code developed and planted by Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, in thousands of devices worldwide, Attorney General Merrick Garland revealed Wednesday. The U.S. and other nations have been on the alert for the possibility that Russia would conduct cyberattacks on businesses or critical infrastructure to retaliate against sanctions over the war in Ukraine.  But the mission disclosed this week went further than identifying where malware had turned up. According to the New York Times, secret court orders allowed the U.S. to remove the malicious software from Russian control by ta...