The PolySwarm Blog

Executive Summary

Cyber threats pose a significant risk to the energy vertical, which encompasses various sectors such as oil, gas, electricity, renewable energy, utilities, and related critical infrastructure entities. PolySwarm has been tracking cyber activity targeting the energy vertical in 2023. In this report, we provide highlights of this year’s threat actors and cyber attacks known to target the energy sector.

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. 

THIS THREAT BULLETIN IS PROVIDED FOR SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

Background

PolySwarm recently published a Special Report, Threat Bulletin, and blog posts discussing Russia-Ukraine tensions and the potential for both kinetic and cyber conflict. In Russia-Ukraine Conflict and Cyberwar Implications, we discussed political tensions between Russia and Ukraine, past cyber altercations between the two nations, and potential cyber and kinetic implications if the current conflict escalates. In Armageddon Activity Targeting Ukraine, we provided commentary and IOCs for ongoing cyber activity targeting Ukraine, which industry analysts attributed to the Russian state-sponsored threat actor group Armageddon.