Related Families: OCEANMAP, MASEPIE, STEELHOOK
Verticals Targeted: Government
Executive Summary
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has continued throughout 2023, with a plethora of both state-sponsored and hacktivist cyber activity taking place alongside kinetic warfare. In this report, PolySwarm provides the highlights of cyber activity associated with the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2023.
Executive Summary
AresLoader is a loader malware-as-a-service (MaaS) active in the wild since at least November 2022. AresLoader is designed to masquerade as legitimate software, while covertly downloading malicious payloads.
Related Families: WhisperGate
Verticals Targeted: Government, Law Enforcement, Non-profits, Information Technology, Emergency Services
Executive Summary
Cadet Blizzard is a Russia nexus state-sponsored threat actor group with potential ties to the GRU. However, their activity seems to be distinct from other GRU-associated threat actor groups.
Related Families: DboxShell, PowerMagic
Verticals Targeted: Defense, Critical Infrastructure, Transportation
Executive Summary
RedStinger, a relatively unknown threat actor group, targeted multiple entities in Ukraine, including those in the defense, transportation, and critical infrastructure verticals.
Related Families: Telemiris, TunnusSched, Roopy, JLORAT, KopiLuwak
Verticals Targeted: Government, Diplomatic Entities
Executive Summary
A Russian-speaking threat actor group dubbed Tomiris was recently observed conducting an espionage campaign targeting countries in Central Asia. The group uses a variety of tools, some of which overlap with the Russian threat actor group Venomous Bear.
Related Families: Andromeda, Kopiluwak, QuietCanary
Executive Summary
Mandiant recently reported on a Turla campaign targeting Ukraine. The threat actors used multiple malware families in this campaign, including Kopiluwak, QuietCanary, and Andromeda.
Executive Summary
This Threat Bulletin is part of PolySwarm’s 2022 Recap series. This report provides highlights of activity perpetrated by Russia-based threat actors in 2022. Russian APT activity in 2022 was heavily focused on targeting Ukraine for espionage and sabotage due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. While the Russian cyber threat landscape includes a wide variety of ransomware and cybercrime threat actors, we have limited the scope of this report to state-sponsored threat actor activity.
Key Takeaways
- This report highlights activity perpetrated by Russia-based APT threat actors in 2022.
- Threat actors featured in this report include Cozy Bear, Fancy Bear, Energetic Bear, Venomous Bear, Primitive Bear, VooDoo Bear, Ember Bear, Saint Bear, UAC-0041, UAC-0088, and UAC-0098.
- PolySwarm tracked malware associated with multiple Russia nexus threat actors in 2022.