Background
Qualys Threat Research recently reported on a new Lazarus espionage campaign leveraging employment phishing emails to target the defense sector, primarily targeting those applying for a job at Lockheed Martin. The targeting is similar to previous Lazarus campaigns which targeted Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems. Qualys refers to the current campaign as LolZarus due to the threat actor group’s use of LoLbins in some of the samples, which according to Qualys is the first known use of LoLbins by a well-known threat actor group.
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Background
Last week we released a report and blog post on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, past cyber altercations between the two nations, and potential cyber implications if the current conflict escalates. In our report, we mentioned historical activity perpetrated by the threat actor group Armageddon. Palo Alto’s Unit 42 recently reported ongoing activity targeting Ukraine, which they attributed to Armageddon, also known in the industry as Gameredon or Primitive Bear. While Unit 42 did not elaborate on the magnitude or implications of these attacks, they did provide a breakdown of Armageddon’s infrastructure.
Overview
- Ongoing political tensions between Russia and Ukraine are at a breaking point, with the US and other NATO nations preparing to assist Ukraine if a military conflict arises.
- Russia and Ukraine have a long history of state-sponsored cyber conflicts, including both espionage and disruptive attacks.
- Recent cyber activity targeting Ukraine includes multiple government website defacements and WhisperGate, a wiper malware disguised as ransomware. IOCs for PolySwarm’s samples of WhisperGate are provided.
- Hacktivists recently attacked Belarus Railway to protest Russian troop transport and demand the release of “political prisoners.” This incident marked the first time hacktivists have leveraged ransomware in pursuit of political objectives.
- The cyber struggle between Russia and Ukraine has the potential to spill over and have a real-world kinetic impact. Our analysts provide a list of implications.
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Verticals Affected: Financial, Various
Victim Location: US, UK, Germany, Canada
Related Malware Families: TrickBot, Ryuk, QakBot, Zloader
A number of threat intelligence companies have recently reported on the return of the Emotet banking trojan. We first saw new variants of Emotet in our marketplace on November 15, 2021, before any industry in-depth analysis reports were released.
"As a unique malware detection and threat intelligence data platform, PolySwarm's crowdsourced model substantially improves the ability to explore, enrich, and mine malware data, which directly benefits the infosec community. Qi An Xin is excited to partner with PolySwarm to continue to innovate” Liejun Wang, Director of Threat Intelligence at QiAnXin.
We recently completed the “New Engine Claiming and Management” milestone on our development roadmap. Our goal was to make it easier for Engine owners to build, configure and test an engine, and then join the PolySwarm Marketplace, so we’ve completely redesigned the architecture.